355074 - search suggestions can be extremely inappropriate

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[»Q«]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7
Build Identifier: Firefox 2.0rc1

Typing very innocent works in the search bar can result in being given suggestions most people wouldn't want kids to see.  The most glaring example I know of was found by Mozilla Champion Leonidas Jones;  typing "mommy" in the seach bar while Google is selected results in the top suggestion "mommylovescock".  With Yahoo, the second suggestion is "mommygotboobs".

The search sits make the suggestions, but it will look to the user as if Firefox itself makes the suggestions.  I'm filing the bug because (a) this could harm kids and (b) this could result in some very bad PR for the project.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Select either Google or Yahoo in the search bar.
2.  Type "mommy" in the search bar, but do not hit enter.
3.  Wait for suggestions to load from the remote site, and have a look.

Actual Results:  
Suggestions for popular but far from wholesome searches will be displayed.


I don't know;  one idea would be to disable the suggestion feature by default, going back to using saved searches to make suggestions.

Comment 1

[»Q«]

note: I was using Fx 1.5.0.7 when I filed this bug, and bugzilla recorded that, but the bug is only for 2.0+

Comment 2

[Nir]

confirmed .
using Firefox - 3a1 under Fedora Core 5

Comment 3

[jay garcia]

I have the permissions to change the status on bugs but won't in this case because you can simply right-click in the search box field and deselect "Show Suggestions". Personally I would mark this as invalid.

Comment 4

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

It's not an invalid request, but it's not something that we can fix. Google and Yahoo already filter suggest results, but apparently they've missed some cases.

Comment 5

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

I wonder if Google Suggest even uses SafeSearch filtering.
<http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/customize.html#safe>

Comment 6

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Looks fine to me now, apparently Google and Yahoo have gotten on the ball. I couldn't get inappropriate suggestions even when I tried to give the most leading prefixes I could think of.

WFM?

Comment 7

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

The trick is not to give leading prefixes, which the filters are sure to test against, but to give non-leading ones. [amatur] (the most misspelled word in porn) returns "amaturporn" from Google right now, and I'm sure someone who's willing to spend more than two minutes could find more and better.

It will never be perfect, no filtering will, and it isn't something we can fix, so the only question for this bug is "will we disable search suggestions by default to avoid things that don't get filtered?"

WONTFIX, almost certainly, but not WFM.

Comment 8

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

I guess the only question now, is how to mark this bug. :-) Does a fix need to checked into Mozilla code for a bug to be marked as FIXED? As far as I'm concerned, this bug was about search suggestions giving inappropriate results, not a request to disabled it by default. I'd mark it as FIXED (by Google). 

Comment 9

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

I'll do the honours....

Marking FIXED.

Comment 10

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> not a request to disabled it by default.

I take it, then, that you didn't actually read comment 0?

Comment 11

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

I had. :-) (even the discussion in mozilla.support.firefox, before this bug was reported[1]. ;-) ;-) )
Disabling search suggestions was just an idea for fixing the bug.

[1]<http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.support.firefox/browse_frm/thread/a33d5254f5da16fb>

Comment 12

[»Q«]

(In reply to comment #9)

> Marking FIXED.

But comment #7 indicates it's not fixed.  IMO, it should be left open unless there's a WONTFIX decision.  And if you can reproduce the result of typing "amatur" (I can), it should be marked VERIFIED.  ;)

Comment 13

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Reopening

"VERIFIED" is if for verifying a resolution.

Verifying that a bug exists, happens when a bug goes from UNCONFIRMED to NEW. (Confirmed)
For more info on a bug's life cycle, see <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html>.

Comment 14

[»Q«]

(In reply to comment #13)
> Reopening

Thanks.

> "VERIFIED" is if for verifying a resolution.
> 
> Verifying that a bug exists, happens when a bug goes from UNCONFIRMED to NEW.

Ugh, sorry. I knew that, too.

So that this is not just bugspam, typing "lol" in causes a couple of things to appear which I really thought Google would not let through.

Regarding the 'turn it off by default' idea, I raised it because it seemed to be only fix Mozilla could bring about.  Since it would turn off a useful feature, a WONTFIX decision would make sense to me;  I filed the bug just so the issue would be considered, not to advocate turning off the feature. 

Comment 15

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

WONTFIX, then. Feel free to report these to the search providers.

Comment 16

[Leonidas Jones]

I was the first to report this issue in the newsgroups.  It does, in FF 3, seem to be resolved. I wonder, why am I just tonight receiving this notice? It is two years after it was raised.

Lee