422548 - After Clear Private Data, some history still appear in the location bar due to bogus EXPIRE_NEVER annotations

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect, P2)

Description

[Mauro Pennacchia]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4

I am used to clearing my history and having my url history disappear as well. No matter what I try I cannot delete the url history and it is visible when you pull down on the address bar.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Close browser
2.open browser
3.clear private data
Actual Results:  
nothing. url history is still viewable

Expected Results:  
url history should be gone. should have blank line for urls

Comment 1

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

Are the items appearing in the location bar dropdown bookmarks? We search those too now.

Comment 2

[Steve]

Yes, I'm able to repro everything you mentioned... every time.
I have tried every option I could think of as well.  It seems to delete download history & form history without a problem but url history does not delete.

Steps:
open browser
clear private data (all)
close browser
re-open broswer to check history
history still there.

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

you've not replied to question.

Are all items that you can't remove Bookmarks? could you post a screenshot of your url bar (if you're comfortable doing that)

Comment 4

[Mauro Pennacchia]

All the items are Bookmarks. In the regular version of Firefox everything gets deleted with no issue. My toolbar history becomes blank. Here it does not.
I don't want to attach a screenshot, but you can try replicating it with your browser and see that the history cannot be deleted from the bar.
Thanks!

Comment 5

[Mauro Pennacchia]

And yes, the items appearing in the location bar dropdown bookmarks?

Comment 6

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

the url bar searches your history *and* your bookmarks now, so this is the intended behavior.

Comment 7

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> All the items are Bookmarks. 

Clear Private Data doesn't delete bookmarks. So what you're basically saying here is that the drop-down will show you bookmarks that you've typed in before after clearing your private data, but similarly, those things will appear in unfiled bookmarks as well.

Didn't we have another bug which made it so that CPD returned the visit count of those bookmarks to 0? Wouldn't that also drop the frecency to 0 and have them not show up in the drop-down list?

Comment 8

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

re-summarizing and confirming, though I think this might be INVALID or WONTFIX

Comment 10

[Mauro Pennacchia]

(In reply to comment #7)
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > All the items are Bookmarks. 
> 
> Clear Private Data doesn't delete bookmarks. So what you're basically saying
> here is that the drop-down will show you bookmarks that you've typed in before
> after clearing your private data, but similarly, those things will appear in
> unfiled bookmarks as well.
> 
> Didn't we have another bug which made it so that CPD returned the visit count
> of those bookmarks to 0? Wouldn't that also drop the frecency to 0 and have
> them not show up in the drop-down list?
> 
That's exactly it. Is there a way to delete the bookmark history that I typed in?

Comment 11

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

You can delete the bookmarks in the Library (Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks...) or from the Bookmarks Sidebar (View > Sidebar > Bookmarks)

This bug is now asking to have CPD remove them from the result set that's shown when you click the drop down arrow, but we will always return bookmarks as a result when you type words into the location bar. That's a feature we worked hard to include :)

I'm also not sure that this bug will even be fixed, as it's a little strange to expect that clearing private data would remove references to data you specifically asked Firefox to remember. You probably want bug 422151.

Comment 12

[Benjamin Huot]

It remembers sites that are *not* in bookmarks as well. And it happens on Mac
OS X as well. I deleted all my bookmarks and I also deleted all my "places"
special bookmarks like "most frequently visited" and cleared all private data
with all options checked. There were still urls and titles in the drop down
list.

Comment 13

[Benjamin Huot]

Why do people seem to think that we are filing bugs that are not legit? There is too much negativity and suspicion on Bugzilla. We are not trying to make fun of your product. We just have something annoying that is happening and we are spending a lot of our time to try to get it resolved - doing it the right way. Would you rather we just tell people not to use Firefox and not give Bugzilla a chance?

Comment 14

[Mauro Pennacchia]

(In reply to comment #11)
> You can delete the bookmarks in the Library (Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks...)
> or from the Bookmarks Sidebar (View > Sidebar > Bookmarks)
> 
> This bug is now asking to have CPD remove them from the result set that's shown
> when you click the drop down arrow, but we will always return bookmarks as a
> result when you type words into the location bar. That's a feature we worked
> hard to include :)
> 
> I'm also not sure that this bug will even be fixed, as it's a little strange to
> expect that clearing private data would remove references to data you
> specifically asked Firefox to remember. You probably want bug 422151.
> 

You don't understand the issue.

If I want Firefox to remember a site, I bookmark it.
I don't want Firefox to retain my browsing history within the address bar.
I want to be able to clear what I have viewed in the address bar just like I do in the current version of Firefox.
I'm not talking about returning bookmarks either.
I'm talking about someone being able to pull down the arrow on the address bar and seeing the sites I have typed in.

Comment 15

[Mauro Pennacchia]

(In reply to comment #11)
> You can delete the bookmarks in the Library (Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks...)
> or from the Bookmarks Sidebar (View > Sidebar > Bookmarks)
> 
> This bug is now asking to have CPD remove them from the result set that's shown
> when you click the drop down arrow, but we will always return bookmarks as a
> result when you type words into the location bar. That's a feature we worked
> hard to include :)
> 
> I'm also not sure that this bug will even be fixed, as it's a little strange to
> expect that clearing private data would remove references to data you
> specifically asked Firefox to remember. You probably want bug 422151.
> 

One more note - I don't have organize bookmarks when I go to bookmarks. I did check to make sure everything is visible.

Comment 16

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

please stay in topic, general discussion is not useful here.

1. location bar dropdown searches UNVISITED BOOKMARKS too, and it has to do so since it has been designed to do so. 
Since this, if after CPD you see bookmarks in dropdown that is by design, and is not showing your visits/history. This is NOT a privacy issue since the same items are available in the Bookmarks Menu and in Show All Bookmarks (now called Organize Bookmarks), so everybody could see them also if dropdown would be empty.

2. if, after a CPD, you see items THAT ARE NOT BOOKMARKS (without star) in the dropdown then we need to know
- actual used build of the browser
- from what version of Firefox 3 you are using the same profile (alpha/beta version)
- attach your places.sqlite zipped (or if you are not comfortable attaching here you can send it to me by mail, or attach as a password protected and send me the password by mail)

If places.sqlite is too big in size i'll post instruction to query into extension SQLITE MANAGER, to eventually find problems in the database.

Comment 17

[Steve]

(In reply to comment #3)
> you've not replied to question.
> 
> Are all items that you can't remove Bookmarks? could you post a screenshot of
> your url bar (if you're comfortable doing that)
> 

Yes, they are all bookmarks.  But I thought that's why we have bookmarks so we can delete the personal data like browsing history.  The CPD box doesn't show it grayed out after I use CPD. But the download history and saved form/search history does.  It should be consistent or people will think their personal data is not being deleted properly.  
(screenshot attached)

FYI: I'm running ff on win xp pro.  Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4

Comment 18

[Steve]

Attachment: CPD not grayed out after clearing all data

Comment 19

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to comment #17)
> The CPD box doesn't show
> it grayed out after I use CPD. But the download history and saved form/search
> history does.

that is a wanted change, see bug 347231

Comment 20

[Benjamin Huot]

Attachment: this is my places sqlite file

Comment 21

[Benjamin Huot]

actual used build of the browser Firefox 3 beta 4 - Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030317 Firefox/3.0b4

I have had the same profile for several years now as far as I know - how do I find that out?

places sqlite file attached above

Comment 22

[Benjamin Huot]

Attachment: screenshot of places bug

Comment 23

[Benjamin Huot]

Attachment: screenshot of places bug

Comment 24

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Marco, if you can figure out why this is happening to Benjamin, let us know and if it's easily reproducible, feel free to nominate for blocking.

Benjamin: I can't reproduce using a fresh or old profile, fwiw.

Comment 25

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Benjamin, thank you for posting your db, i found the problem, in bug 409945 we have moved old charset annotation since they were undeletable. but probably you have imported and removed some bookmark before that change, so you still have some bogus charset annotation for the removed bookmarks.

technically they now are EXPIRE_NEVER we need to convert them to a EXPIRE_WITH_HISTORY and the problem will go away. Coming with a patch.

Asking blocking as a privacy issue

Comment 26

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

place: uris into the location bar dropdown are instead due to a frecency problem, that is going to be addressed in bug 416313

Comment 27

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Attachment: patch

Comment 28

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Do you want to adjust the title of the bug for the expire_never -> expire_with_history issue?

Comment 29

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

patch here could become invalid since i'm about reverting EXPIRE_NEVER to be usable on page annotations in bug 317472
this annos will become deletable then and we could revert to old behaviour (saving charset to an EXPIRE_NEVER page anno)

Comment 30

[John Doe]

How do I stop the bookmarks from dropping down appearing like History!  This is a very very annoying feature in Firefox 3!

Comment 31

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

(In reply to comment #30)
> How do I stop the bookmarks from dropping down appearing like History!
You're looking for bug 424557.

Comment 32

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

Marco, please split this out from bug 317472, so it can move forward independently.

Comment 33

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to comment #32)
> Marco, please split this out from bug 317472, so it can move forward
> independently.
> 

bug 317472 is near check-in, so i'm not splitting for now

Comment 34

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

fixed by check-in of bug 317472

Comment 35

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

verified with: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b5pre)
Gecko/2008031806 Minefield/3.0b5pre

Comment 36

[Jason Lockhart]

I don't think this issue has been resolved as I am having the same issue with RC1 on Windows XP SP3.  I have no bookmarks on this installation and the profile came from 2.0.0.14 (didn't remove before installing RC1, my bad).  This is a virtual machine image I use for testing BETA software so it's pretty clean.  I will try to delete the profile and create a new one, but this is *NOT* fixed or "invalid".

I must note that "Clearing Private Data" means clearing private data.  If there is still data being retained, for any purpose, then you're creating a possible security risk with the "feature".  It would be nice to see more concern for this issue from the developers posting here as this is non-trivial to many in the Firefox user community.  We use your browser (up to this latest release) because it does such a good job at clearing private data from machines.  It would be a shame to see that value-add taken away from the best FOSS browser on the market.

Comment 37

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to comment #36)
> I don't think this issue has been resolved as I am having the same issue with
> RC1 on Windows XP SP3.  

you can send me your places.sqlite file by mail or attach it here if you don't have privacy concerns, so i can check what is the issue with it

Comment 38

[Michael Murdock]

STILL BROKEN IN Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0 Which was downloaded and installed today.

Installed product went to type in a url and found there were things I had not opened in months showing up. Fixing this at some point soon would be nice. One reason I use Firefox is that it did clear private info.

Thanks!

Comment 39

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

(In reply to comment #38)
> STILL BROKEN IN Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9)
> Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0 Which was downloaded and installed today.
> 
> Installed product went to type in a url and found there were things I had not
> opened in months showing up. Fixing this at some point soon would be nice. One
> reason I use Firefox is that it did clear private info.
Was it a bookmark that was showing up?

Comment 40

[Dana Trantham]

I'm running Firefox 3.0.1 on Mac OSX 10.5.4 and this bug is still present. These are bookmarks that are showing up. The Location Bar history is not being cleared when I do a "Clear Private Data". Not good.

Comment 41

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

(In reply to comment #40)
> I'm running Firefox 3.0.1 on Mac OSX 10.5.4 and this bug is still present.
> These are bookmarks that are showing up. The Location Bar history is not being
> cleared when I do a "Clear Private Data". Not good.
That is not this bug.

Comment 42

[Dana Trantham]

It sounded similar to Mauro's initial description, "No matter what I try I cannot delete the url history and it is visible when you
pull down on the address bar."

The difference is the url history is being cleared but the address bar history is not being cleared when I do a "Clear Private Data".

Because of the similarity, I assumed perhaps incorrectly that they might be related and so I camped onto this bug. Perhaps this merits a new bug entry after all.

Comment 43

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

bookmarks showing up is (will be) addressed by a location bar special config in about:config. Bookmarks showing in the location bar is not affected by default by clearing history, so they will still be present, and it is by design.

Comment 44

[Dana Trantham]

I'll be interested setting the location bar special config when it becomes available. Until then, it's back to 2.0.0.16.

Comment 45

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv