Open Bug 320925 Opened 19 years ago Updated 2 years ago

"Clear private data" (sanitize) feature should have an option to clear the last used download target directory name and path

Categories

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

x86
Windows XP
enhancement

Tracking

()

UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: danpeer, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: privacy)

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

I have all components of "private data" selected except cookies and saved passwords, and also selected "clear private data when closing Firefox". Yet the target directory of items saved under "save image as" on rightclick is kept and shows as the default the next time somebody wants to "save image as" again, thus showing the next person what directory I have used to save images - an undesireable situation! The default directory should be reset when clearing private data to a generic directory such as "my documents" or "my pictures" etc.

Reproducible: Always
I selected "download manager" as the relevant area but it may be something else - i am not a big expert...
in a related item, shortcuts are also kept in \Documents and Settings\user\Recent showing the recent downloaded and saved files as well as the target directory where they were saved! This leaves a clear path to the activities of recent users which is undesireable - Firefox should clean all these up in same manner it seems to clear "temp".
(In reply to comment #0)
> I have all components of "private data" selected except cookies and saved
> passwords, and also selected "clear private data when closing Firefox". Yet the
> target directory of items saved under "save image as" on rightclick is kept and
> shows as the default the next time somebody wants to "save image as" again,
> thus showing the next person what directory I have used to save images - an
> undesireable situation! The default directory should be reset when clearing
> private data to a generic directory such as "my documents" or "my pictures"
> etc.



(In reply to comment #2)
> in a related item, shortcuts are also kept in \Documents and
> Settings\user\Recent showing the recent downloaded and saved files as well as
> the target directory where they were saved!

Firefox doesn't add these entries, see bug 310071.
Severity: normal → enhancement
Component: Download Manager → Preferences
OS: Windows 2000 → Windows XP
QA Contact: download.manager → preferences
Summary: download target directory name and path kept after clearing all private data → "Clear private data" (sanitize) feature should have an option to clear the last used download target directory name and path
Oops, I somehow forgot to reply to comment 0. I meant to say:

It's a valid request, though I'm not sure most consider that to be "private data". Not very hard to implement, though.
(In reply to comment #2)
> in a related item, shortcuts are also kept in \Documents and
> Settings\user\Recent showing the recent downloaded and saved files as well as
> the target directory where they were saved! This leaves a clear path to the
> activities of recent users which is undesireable - Firefox should clean all
> these up in same manner it seems to clear "temp".

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > I have all components of "private data" selected except cookies and saved
> > passwords, and also selected "clear private data when closing Firefox". Yet the
> > target directory of items saved under "save image as" on rightclick is kept and
> > shows as the default the next time somebody wants to "save image as" again,
> > thus showing the next person what directory I have used to save images - an
> > undesireable situation! The default directory should be reset when clearing
> > private data to a generic directory such as "my documents" or "my pictures"
> > etc.
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > in a related item, shortcuts are also kept in \Documents and
> > Settings\user\Recent showing the recent downloaded and saved files as well as
> > the target directory where they were saved!
> Firefox doesn't add these entries, see bug 310071.

"Firefox doesn't add these items..." but would be very nice if it deleted them anyway as an example of "good behavior beyond the call of duty..." so there are no traces at all of having used it - how is it possible for the user who is concerned about privacy to disable this completely in Windows?

...and another item of interest concerning "Private Data" .... FF very dutifully adds ADDED, LAST MODIFIED and LAST VISITED (date and time) to Bookmarks.html. It doesn't accomplish much to clean history.dat and leave this information in bookmarks.
(In reply to comment #5)
> "Firefox doesn't add these items..." but would be very nice if it deleted them
> anyway as an example of "good behavior beyond the call of duty..."

Simply downloading a file with Firefox won't put it in that list, is what I meant to say. If you don't want to have that list populated, there's an OS setting that allows you to do that.
(In reply to comment #6)
> ...and another item of interest concerning "Private Data" .... FF very
> dutifully adds ADDED, LAST MODIFIED and LAST VISITED (date and time) to
> Bookmarks.html. It doesn't accomplish much to clean history.dat and leave this
> information in bookmarks.

What concern would clearing those times address? You don't mind someone seeing which sites you visit regularly as long as they don't know when?
"You don't mind someone seeing which sites you visit regularly as long as they don't know when?"
I do so mind! and the shortcuts in the "recent" folder have a date&time stamp on them! so I go to a site and download a "nice" jpg or mpg I see there for my private enjoyment later into my secret directory...then anyone with an even rudimantary knowledge of Windows goes and looks in the "recent" list and sees that and when I've been there, and they can look at them and find out all my secrets! FF does a pretty good job of deleted these kinds of tracks - why not make an effort to do a really complete job? it clear "temp", lists of visited sites etc. and doesn't seem to put anything in the registry - but these items I mentioned here remain!

As far asbookmarks - I didn't see these "last visited" etc. items - where are they? of course, the discussion of where to keep this file and have it hidden is a whole other subject...

"If you don't want to have that list populated, there's an OS
setting that allows you to do that"...where is that setting?


(In reply to comment #8)
> (In reply to comment #6)
> > ...and another item of interest concerning "Private Data" .... FF very
> > dutifully adds ADDED, LAST MODIFIED and LAST VISITED (date and time) to
> > Bookmarks.html. It doesn't accomplish much to clean history.dat and leave this
> > information in bookmarks.
> What concern would clearing those times address? You don't mind someone seeing
> which sites you visit regularly as long as they don't know when?

As I said before, Firefox isn't adding those items to the recent documents list, Windows is, so it's up to Windows to let you disable that feature. You can do it using Tweak UI. None of this has anything to do with this bug.
(In reply to comment #10)
> As I said before, Firefox isn't adding those items to the recent documents
> list, Windows is, so it's up to Windows to let you disable that feature. You
> can do it using Tweak UI. None of this has anything to do with this bug.

I agree with the comments about "recent" etc. - they are of course valid and Tweak will do it etc. The thrust of my whole discussion here perhaps goes beyond the mandate of FF - it is, after all, just a browser. But I thought that perhaps there is value to making it super-excellent-incredible browser that will at least attempt to do what others don't...so in the area of privacy, it would be nice to be able to have a session on the net with absolutely no traces left and it's not clear whose job it is to do that, or even that it's desireable.
(In reply to comment #9)
> As far asbookmarks - I didn't see these "last visited" etc. items - where are
> they? of course, the discussion of where to keep this file and have it hidden
> is a whole other subject...

Bookmark Manager > View > Show Columns > Last Visited
*** Bug 353767 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Something else that should probably be cleared is the contents of the search box.  What the last person to use the browser searched for is a privacy issue.
Paul: we already clear out the search bar values (and have since bug 324354 was fixed in Firefox 2). If you have evidence to the contrary please do file a bug.
I've done as Gavin suggested and reported the search box issue.  See bug 446274
Severity: normal → S3
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