318058 - "Clear Private Data" does not clear undo history of text fields like search and

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 409624

(Toolkit :: Form Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Tom Joseph]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

"Clear Private Data" on the Tools menu should clear the undo history of text fields in Firefox.  The undo history may contain private data, and as such it should be cleared by the Clear Private Data command.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Type something in search box in toolbar
2. Select it and delete it
3. Select Tools -> Clear Private Data
4. Navigate back to search box and choose Edit -> Undo or hit Cmd-Z or Ctrl-Z

Actual Results:  
The text I had deleted reappeared.

Expected Results:  
The text I had deleted should not have reappeared.  Instead, the undo history for the text field should have been purged.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

It undid the last chosen action (deleting).
The search was not yet a performed search, so it could not be deleted by "Clear Private Data", is my humble opinion. :)

Comment 2

[Tom Joseph]

I should have been clearer.  At least on my machine, you can hit Cmd-Z multiple times and the undo history to that point will be traversed.  This means you can look at completed searches too.

Comment 3

[iik]

Ria Klaassen, please change the "Hardware" and "OS" field to "All"
ps: vote for the bugs you want to get fixed :)

Comment 4

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

(In reply to comment #3)
To me, the current behaviour seems logical. 
Deleting was the last chosen action in that box.
When I choose Undo one more time, it is really gone. Or after a browser restart.

Comment 5

[Tom Joseph]

(In reply to comment #4)

I consider the search history to be part of the "Browsing History" (this is the term used in the dialog box).  Someone who wants to "Clear Private Data" would expect that no trace of her browsing remains when the "Browsing History" is cleared.  The persistence of search history fails this expectation: examining the search history via Undo would allow someone else to make an educated guess as to the otherwise erased browsing history.  This significantly decreases the security of the "Clear Private Data" feature.

Comment 6

[Jackie Liu]

Perhaps a "Undo History" checkbox should be added to the "Clear Private Data" tab, that when checked and "Clear Private Data" is invoked clears the undo memory?

Comment 7

[Daniel Serodio]

What about the Places history? It ain't cleaned either.

Comment 8

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Places History has nothing to do with form-field undo-transactions. That's too much to cover in one bug, please file a new one on places.

Comment 9

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Clearing form-field transaction history would be a new feature (the other data items cleared are all persistent data, we weren't initially concerned with session-only data like this since it's easy enough to shut down the browser). It's low priority.

If Places history isn't getting cleared that would be a serious regression bug and needs to go into a separate higher priority bug.

Comment 10

[Tom Joseph]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Clearing form-field transaction history would be a new feature (the other data
> items cleared are all persistent data, we weren't initially concerned with
> session-only data like this since it's easy enough to shut down the browser).
> It's low priority.

There isn't an indication in the UI that the feature is restricted to persistent data.  "Clear Private Data" should do what it implies.  If not, there should be some cue that it actually leaves one type of private data not totally cleared.

Comment 11

[Orrin Edenfield]

The Find bar should be added to "Clear Private Data" as well.  I tend to use Find a good bit and after doing a Ctrl+Shift+Del and then pressing Crtl+F I still can see what I last searched for.  Options are always nice.  My request is similar to Bug 256802

Comment 12

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Bug 324354 fixed this for the search bar (though bug 446274 was recently reported about it possibly being broken - need more info there), and the find toolbar is covered by bug 409624. Are there any other reasons for this bug to remain open?