577685 - Do not allow adding search engines during private browsing mode

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, defect)

Description

[(no longer active)]

Adding search engines during private browsing mode is a privacy violation because the website visited can be easily inferred from the search engine's meta data.  We need to disable the option of adding search engines inside the private browsing mode.

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

Attachment: Patch (v1)

Comment 2

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

Hmm, how is this different than bookmarks? Aren't the privacy implications just as obvious?

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

We have another bug on file to disable adding bookmarks in private browsing mode for Firefox 4 as well.  :-)

Comment 4

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

(should probably get ui-review on this explicitly)

Comment 5

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

I believe that the UI decision around Bookmarks, Add-Ons and other "additions" to Firefox was that they should persist beyond the Private Browsing session.

That might need to be revisited: if we do revisit it, we should disable those controls in the Private Browsing mode.

An explicit non-goal would be having bookmarks that are only visible when in private browsing, of course :)

Comment 6

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

beltzner: see comment 2/3! The bug Ehsan refers to is bug 566010.

Comment 7

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

Comment on attachment 456878 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch (v1)

uir+a=beltzner, I'm sure faaborg will agree - this patch disables the ability to add search engines in private browsing mode

(Gavin: I saw the comment, didn't see the bug, oops!)

Comment 8

[(no longer active)]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/30c9a8296035