542388 - Fennec should offer more granular "Clear Private Data" options

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 589729

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Right now, Fennec has a "Clear Private Data" button that seems to clear _everything_ -- history, passwords, cookies, and I don't what else.  (though I know it does *not* clear bookmarks)  This button seems like too much of a sledgehammer, and it's not clear from a user's perspective what it will & won't actually delete.

Fennec should offer clearer, more granular private-data-deletion options, to support (at least) these use cases:

 (a) "Clear Browsing Tracks" scenario -- user wants to clear history (& maybe cookies/cache), *without* clearing passwords.  Let's say he's just been "shopping for gifts for a family member", and he wants to clear that history, but doesn't want to lose all his saved passwords.

 (b) "Clear Auth Data" scenario -- user wants to clear passwords (& maybe cookies), *without* clearing history.  Let's say he's just realized that all his bank passwords are saved in the clear on his mobile device (bug 540769), and he realizes that someone who steals his device could steal all his money. He wants to clear that data, without losing his awesomebar results.

Personally, I just found myself in use case (b) -- I decided I wanted to clear my saved passwords on my device until bug 540769 is fixed. Desktop-Firefox exposes this via the Password Manager, but there's no such interface to saved passwords on Fennec.

NOTE: that the "Remember Passwords [yes/no]" option *seems* like it accomplishes (b), but it actually doesn't clear anything at all.  (If I toggle it to "no", then Firefox stops autofilling my passwords, but when I toggle it back to "yes", it starts autofilling my passwords again -- even if I've restarted Fennec since the toggle-to-no.)

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

NOTE: Weave seems to ameliorate this issue a bit, by re-synching history & passwords back onto the device, after I've cleared private data.  However, it's not at all obvious to a user that this is what will happen (or what should happen). A user might fear (or expect) that Weave would sync his now-cleared-out profile up to the cloud and then onto his other machines, blowing out all the history/passwords/etc there.  (Luckily from a dataloss perspective, it seems like this isn't what happens right now.)

Comment 2

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Instead of blocking on bug 589729, I think this is a dupe of it. Bug 589729 changed to be more than just cookies (as originally filed)