Closed Bug 695487 Opened 13 years ago Closed 13 years ago

Feature: do not show potentially embarrassing autocomplete matches in the awesomebar

Categories

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Address Bar
Version:
8 Branch
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: me, Unassigned)

Details

(Keywords: privacy) 

When Firefox users are giving a presentation or otherwise showing someone else what's on their screen, they may wish to type in a URI by hand to go to a web page. Sometimes, the awesome bar will suggest recent history or bookmarks which the user would prefer not to divulge to those watching their screen. Even using private browsing mode when presenting does not resolve this, since suggestions are still made. The only option is to disable the awesomebar suggestions entirely.

Proposal: add a configuration checkbox to the location bar area of the privacy settings pane in Firefox saying something like:

> Try to avoid suggesting potentially embarrassing autocomplete results.

which is checked by default. When this setting is on, use the Google safesearch API to filter out potentially NSFW autocomplete suggestions, to avoid this embarrassing privacy compromise.
So... Avoid a embarrassing privacy compromise by sending all your awesomebar history to Google (including embarrassing URLs)?! :P

The value of this seems low. You can already use private browsing to avoid this, and who's going to remember to check some obscure setting before a presentation?

I think the better solution to this issue is the "log into your browser" idea that we've bounced around -- you'd just log out (or not log in), giving you a stock Firefox without your privacy-violating history/addons/settings/etc.
I welcome a more thorough study of private browsing mode by your user experience team, but it is my belief that people who have their own computers likely do not frequently use private browsing mode. Private browsing is far more likely to be used by people who have a shared family computer, or who do not control their own computer (such as employees in a work environment).

Whether or not you think that using Google's SafeSearch API is a good idea, an issue remains that there is no way to safely use Firefox with a group of other people (or when hooked up to a projector) in a meeting if you already have potentially embarrassing stuff in your browsing history. Yes, a user could create an entirely new browser profile, but the interface to do that is hidden, and requires that the user shut down their browser entirely. I would be shocked if even 1% of firefox users know how to bring up the Profile manager.

There is no lightweight, easy to access way to turn off, or temporarily disable the awesomebar. It might even be a good idea to do this by default during private browsing mode.
I don't believe there is a Google SafeSearch API. There is a Safe Browsing API, but Firefox already uses it. The way it works is that Firefox downloads a list of dangerous sites in advance and then checks against it on the client. This should work the same way.
An option to just flat out disable the awesomebar might be viable. But is that really enough? You might have embarrassing downloads, search/form history, addons, etc.
Don't we already have that option? In preferences on the Privacy tab change the Location Bar setting from the default "History and Bookmarks" to "Nothing" (or Bookmarks if you keep those clean).

Tom already acknowledged it in his initial comment ("The only option is to disable the awesomebar suggestions entirely.") and wants something different (and harder), but later comments such as comment 2 would seem to be satisfied by that existing option.
I think this type of feature is add-on material.  I wrote an add-on to do something similar a while back, but have been lax in maintaining it and it's not on AMO anymore.  You're welcome to help me out with this Tom.

http://blog.sidstamm.com/2009/09/notawesome.html
(In reply to Daniel Veditz from comment #5)
> Tom already acknowledged it in his initial comment ("The only option is to
> disable the awesomebar suggestions entirely.") and wants something different
> (and harder

... if not impossible. Users could be embarrassed by their addiction to Celine Dion being exposed. SafeSearch is for protecting children from adult stuff. These concepts may be overlapping but they're certainly not the same.
Re: comment #1 & comment #3:
I was mentally conflating the mode of operation of the safe browsing API with the content associated with SafeSearch. This feature is a lot more work than I initially thought. Perhaps Google would be willing to implement a similar API for SafeSearch, but that seems like a lot of work. 

Re: comment #6:
I don't think that preventing accidental data disclosure in common situations is generally add-on material, but I'll readily admit that the cost-to-benefit here isn't great.

Re: comment 7:
I'm using "embarrassing" as a euphemism for porn. In that respect, this proposal is narrowly scoped.
(In reply to Daniel Veditz from comment #5)
> Don't we already have that option? In preferences on the Privacy tab change
> the Location Bar setting from the default "History and Bookmarks" to
> "Nothing" (or Bookmarks if you keep those clean).

It is true that a configuration option already exists in the browser to do this, but it is obscure, and difficult to find. It isn't the kind of thing someone is going to go and turn on when someone else sits down next to them to search for something.

I propose the following:

1. In private browsing mode, disable the awesomebar by default
2. If someone right clicks on the URL bar, show a menu item to disable the awesomebar.
Wouldn't be much much easier to use a separate profile for presentations?
(In reply to Christopher Soghoian from comment #9)
> 1. In private browsing mode, disable the awesomebar by default
> 2. If someone right clicks on the URL bar, show a menu item to disable the
> awesomebar.

I agree with what mak says in comment 10, but getting to the profile manager can be hard (we should fix that or implement "log-in to your browser").

I could see the potential value of doing something like #2.  I don't think #1 aligns with private browsing usage.  I believe people generally do "private" stuff during private mode and want to hide it from public mode.  So if you visit all your embarassing sites in private mode and then give presentations in public mode, this shouldn't be a problem--right?
As someone who doesn't generally share an OS level profile the use I've come across for private browsing mode is sort of the opposite. When friends and I are borrowing each other's computers the guest will use private browsing mode so as not to disturb the host's cookies and tabs set up - especially for checking gmail, for example. In this case (and I think this is similar to the original case) it would actually be nice that autocomplete doesn't use suggestions from public mode.
I don't believe this is something we'll take in Firefox, for the following reasons:

* Lack of how to define "embarrassing" (or even "porn") in the first place
* Lack of existing capability/service to do so
* Existing mechanisms (private browsing) to prevent this
* More general future plans ("log into browser") as a better long-term solution

Inverting the intended use of Private Browsing mode is also a non-starter here. It's an interesting use case (especially compared to how it's intended to be used), but I think that first needs a general discussion (ie, newsgroups) on if that's something we should adapt to, and how to do so. Shoehorning unintended usages into an existing design rarely works well, and often just leads to more problems.

In the meantime, prototyping as an addon would be the suggested path here. And I'm fine with other bugs for specific changes / options along these lines (ala comment 4).
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 13 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.