485111 - request: preferences to disable JavaScript snooping mouse position and keypress

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Ken Winiecki, Jr.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009021906 Firefox/3.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009021906 Firefox/3.0.7

Please add JavaScript preferences "Allow scripts to:" -- "Detect unclicked mouse cursor position", and "Detect alphanumeric key presses".

Only in the past few years has it become popular for Web pages to use JavaScript to determine the viewer's mouse cursor position (before they click) and their keypresses (before they hit return), and then use the information for invasive purposes (such as pop up subwindow-like content or send the information elsewhere across the Internet).  While at the same time, other page functions are so JavaScript-dependent that turning it off completely renders the page nonfunctional.  This new behavior is considerably more invasive than some of the currently implemented preferences such as "Change status bar text", and no 3rd-party solution has yet appeared to address it.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Ken Winiecki, Jr.]

Do not mark an enhancment request "resolved incomplete" without either resolving it or describing how it is incomplete.

Comment 2

[Suzanne Smedberg]

I marked this bug incomplete because it won't ever be exposed in the UI, and there isn't a point in tracking it unless someone creates a patch for it.  If after almost 5 years no one has taken this and found a patch, it seems likely that no one ever will.

Comment 3

[Ken Winiecki, Jr.]

No evidence supporting the assertion that it "won't ever be exposed in the UI" was presented, and closure on unsupported assertion alone is improper.  Additionally, it is not a bug, it is an enhancement request, and there is no statute of limitations on requests.  Requests do not become less due to the passage of time alone.  There is no way to determine in advance the value of any particular enhancement request at any particular point in time without specific address.

Comment 4

[Suzanne Smedberg]

Then we're above my pay grade.  Gavin?

Comment 5

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

I agree with Suzanne that this is not something we will be including in Firefox in the near term - this type of feature is best handled by add-ons.