Firefox “causes” breakup
From bug 330884:
This privacy flaw has caused my fiancé and I to break-up after having dated for 5 years.
The reporter's fiancé had secretly used Firefox on her computer to visit dating sites such as JDate, SwingLifeStyle, and Adult FriendFinder. While logging into those sites, he told Firefox to never remember passwords for those sites. He then uninstalled Firefox, probably because he was worried that she would find out which sites he had been visiting.
Later, she installed Firefox for herself, and happened to need to edit the list of sites to never save passwords for. She quickly realized that he had been visiting dating sites in secret, and was also able to determine that he was still an active member of some of the sites. As one might expect, this led to a breakup.
Should the Firefox uninstaller offer to delete profile data, like most game uninstallers do, or at least notify users that profile data was not deleted? Can it do so in a way that won't confuse users too much or cause accidental dataloss? What about platforms like Mac where most programs (including Firefox) do not have an installer or uninstaller?
March 21st, 2006 at 8:33 pm
This wouldn’t happen if people would use different accounts when they share the same computer… This wouldn’t have happenned either if the fiancé just used ‘not now’ instead of ‘never’ :-)
Last but not least, there is already a delete all private data menu item, so, really, is it such a big deal?
March 21st, 2006 at 8:40 pm
I’d said “Dishonesty causes breakup” and “Nothing to see here, move along”, but I guess it raises an interesting question. I don’t think there should be such a feature, but maybe because I’m the kind of person that thinks no two people should be sharing OS accounts. There’s very little advantage in having one user account and if you want to keep secrets from each other, then that’s definitely a stupid idea.
Perhaps the panic button (a.k.a Clear Private Data) should take that site password blacklist into consideration. I just checked it out and it seems to clear Saved Passwords, but it doesn’t say anything about the Never Remember Blacklist. That’s probably the best idea. Uninstallers should not be complicated, and almost everybody appreciates seeing all their preferences and bookmarks resurrecting after an uninstall/reinstall. I know I do.
March 21st, 2006 at 8:54 pm
That’s awesome.
March 21st, 2006 at 9:01 pm
[…] thanks jrud for the pointer, made my day. […]
March 21st, 2006 at 9:43 pm
Of course it should offer to do so – it’s an uninstaller, for $DEITY’s sake, and that’s what uninstallers are for. If that option is not offered, users will have to unhide folders and go where they’ve never gone before in Windows Explorer, should they ever want a clean reinstallation. And I don’t consider it a nice gesture to leave about 50 MB of cached data behind when the application is uninstalled – at least not without offering the user to get rid of that mess.
As for the UI: a simple checkbox which can’t be checked without confirming an alert dialog (which defaults to No/Cancel) might be sufficient – unless we want to offer per-profile uninstallation (maybe even for all user accounts).
Alternatively (or only for OS X), there could/should be a Firefox Clean-up application which is specialized in this task. This would have to be a separate download – at least something a help desk can point to, but not as friendly as integration into the uninstaller…
March 21st, 2006 at 11:03 pm
Who plans to marry someone for five years and then breaks up with them for having active accounts on free dating sites? Obviously someone who’s not very serious about wanting to get married.
March 22nd, 2006 at 12:13 am
digg has picked this up: http://www.digg.com/software/Firefox_user_blames_program_for_breaking_up_her_engagement
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:02 am
why is that such a big deal anyways?
so he was looking at profiles of other girls and maybe meeting them too
imo, what should really matter is that he stayed with the girl inspite of having looked @ other options…
and as for the main point of this blog, i dont think its such a big issue, as mentioned above using a seperate login account is a much better idea and also the “delete private data” option!
i wish digg would not post such dumb and pointless stuff, all i can see here is a bit of dry humour………..
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:06 am
Good night…. Let me get this straight. She’s engaged for five years (which brings to mind an old adage regarding the price of a cows milk) to someone who was playing around with the idea of playing around on her. And *firefox* is to blame?
Man, I’ve heard of misdirected aggression before but this really takes the cake…
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:11 am
No, and for a number of reasons.
1) As Marc said, you should use different accounts anyway if you want to keep this sort of thing private. (You should be using different accounts to prevent accidental damage to your files by others) It’s 2006. Modern OSs have some form of fast user switching, so this shouldn’t be a problem.
2) Preferences are user-specific. Therefore they are user data. Applications should not delete user data on uninstall. Word does not delete all your .doc files on uninstall. If you share space for your user data with someone else (e.g. if you MUST use the same account) you need to delete any user data (like your profile directory) yourself if you want to keep it from them.
The profile directory location *is* well documented, remember.
3) If the administrator removes an app from a computer, the users might want their profile data to hang around so they can (try to) migrate parts of it (bookmarks?) to another computer/application. Admins should make this decision separately from the decision to remove an app from the system.
4a) Not all user data may be available. If the app is installed on a shared network server then the uninstall can’t reach out to all the users computers to delete it, partly because it doesn’t keep track and won’t know what to delete, and partly because even if it did, some of those computers might not be switched on at the time.
4b) Not all user data may be available. If the master copy of the user’s profile is not currently available on the local computer (is an ActiveDirectory roaming profile, is NFS mounted, is a WebDAV share, is an encrypted volume mounted on login, is on a removable USB drive, etc…) then the data can’t be deleted anyway.
4a+b implies: You can’t give a reasonable assurance that this will work. Therefore you can’t really advertise it as a feature, unless you specifically want to have things like “helps maintain your privacy after uninstall /sometimes/, if the circumstances are right, and the wind is blowing in the right direction.”
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:47 am
If it weren’t for Firefox, this woman would have ended up suing a shirt company for allowing lipstick to adhere to shirts, thereby *forcing* jealous controlling women to dump their men.
This guy has no idea how lucky he is. Or, then again, perhaps he left this evidence on purpose …
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:49 am
The first reason Adam gives is sort-of good, but of the evangelical and dogmatic sort (the *right way* etc) and it fails to see this from the users perspective. I do agree with #2 though in the sense that user preferences should not be deleted *automatically*. The option should however be presented as countless users have trouble with this in my experience from the Finnish community site. The confusion with profile vs actual program leads to all sort of weirdness from the unknowledgeable users point of view… I’m sure everyone know that the primary way to correct things in Windows (for “normal” users) is to unistall/reinstall stuff… with the ridiculous last resort of reinstalling the whole OS.
Regarding 4a and 4b: these environments have a system administrator that can help. Home users are the primary market and they are their own administors.
The profile removal on unistall bug is 234680
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:57 am
> Preferences are user-specific. Therefore they are user data. Applications should not delete user data on uninstall. Word does not delete all your .doc files on uninstall.
I just *love* sophistry. .doc files are useful independent of Word. The Firefox password database is not useful independent of Firefox.
> You can’t give a reasonable assurance that this will work. Therefore you can’t really advertise it as a feature, unless you specifically want to have things like “helps maintain your privacy after uninstall /sometimes/, if the circumstances are right, and the wind is blowing in the right direction.â€
Yeah, I guess network installs, links to external help, etc. should not be included in any product because no assurance can be made that the network is accessible.
I’m sure you can come up with plenty of other reasons why no attempt should be made to make people’s lives easier.
March 22nd, 2006 at 2:06 am
> The first reason Adam gives is sort-of good, but of the evangelical and dogmatic sort (the *right way* etc) and it fails to see this from the users perspective.
In this case, “the user’s perspective” is invisible to Firefox because the man installed Firefox under the woman’s account — there was only one user. However, the real world possibility of serial users of the same account is another reason for Firefox to provide optional deletion of profile info.
> I do agree with #2 though in the sense that user preferences should not be deleted *automatically*.
This is a strawman, since no one suggested that it be done automatically.
March 22nd, 2006 at 2:33 am
Surely the correct way to look at this is “Firefox prevents brief, unhappy, marriage”?
As for the uninstaller, I see no reason that a checkbox saying “Remove all profile data” couldn’t be added, at least on platforms where it’s expected (Windows, at least). I don’t know what other OS X programs do about this – preatty much every program contains some kind of configuration information so it must be a solvable problem. However my reason for supporting this is the politeness afforded by not leaving random, unwanted, files, rather than a particular privacy concern.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:12 am
Firefox can’t prevent this sort of mess-up, or passwordmanager must be removed completely. It’s simply the users fault saving URLs of sites where passwords should never be saved. They have been accessible all the time firefox was installed, so why should they be inaccessible the moment firefox is deinstalled? It’s simply a lack of understanding the implications of privacy, what to do and what to never do. But if you believe to marketing, it’s your own fault.
And yes, I do understand that girl.
herman
March 22nd, 2006 at 6:59 am
ianam> “The Firefox password database is not useful independent of Firefox.”
True. But the password database is not the only thing in a user’s profile directory. What about the bookmarks file? That’s useful. What about your adblock server list in one of the easily-readable plain-text config files? (user.js?) Etc, etc, etc…
Each user’s home directory (and by extension their firefox profile directory) contains user-specific data, most of which will be valuable in some way to that user.
Even as a home user, if Dad decides to uninstall Firefox and install Opera instead, and Firefox removes users’ profiles (just because Dad doesn’t have anything interesting is his) then how is little Johnny going to get his bookmarks back? Leaving each user’s profiles in place, Dad could reinstall FF and have Johnny log in and transfer bookmarks “by hand” if automagic migration isn’t available.
Removing an app should *not* touch user data. If you reinstall an app, each user should be able to pick up where they left off. If a user wants to remove some cruft from their home directory, it should be that user’s decision what to remove and when (even if it is due to low-disk-space-prompting by the admin :-)
Come on, this isn’t DOS or Windows ’95 anymore.
March 22nd, 2006 at 7:33 am
I’m not sure whether they are better off without each other, or whether they deserve each other. Maybe both… and maybe they’d each be happy with other people and other browsers…
March 22nd, 2006 at 7:47 am
The fact is, she is 100% correct, after reading the article I went to my Windows 2000 Pro machine and went to tools > Options > Passwords > View Saved Passwords > Passwords Never Saved and there were a list of sites that I did not want passwords saved for. I then chose Clear Private Data and went back into the password manager. The list was still there. Lastly, I created a new user account, went into Password manager; guess what…the list was still there. Not only is the list not cleared with private data, it is also shared between user accounts on the same machine.
March 22nd, 2006 at 8:00 am
IMO, the issue here is, do end-users actually realize that when they uninstall firefox the profile/data isn’t deleted?
Hanging out in #firefox, I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard “I uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled it and the problem is still there”. These people obviously expect that uninstalling the application removes all of it, since it doesn’t say otherwise.
Personally, I’d suggest adding a notice that the profile isn’t deleted on the last page of the uninstaller, just to alert them of the behavior, which while its documented where most of the people who read this blog can find, the average user isn’t likely to, are made aware.
“Your bookmarks, settings and other personal information have not been deleted and will return when Firefox is reinstalled. [Delete these Settings]
March 22nd, 2006 at 8:24 am
“Til Firefox do us part”…
This woman doesn’t understand how Windows/Firefox profiles work and leaves her fiance of 5 years after finding info about dating sites he visited. Then she then files a bug about it on Bugzilla.
read more | digg story
All what her fianc…
March 22nd, 2006 at 9:26 am
[…] From Here: The reporter’s fiancé had secretly used Firefox on her computer to visit dating sites such as JDate, SwingLifeStyle, and Adult FriendFinder. While logging into those sites, he told Firefox to never remember passwords for those sites. He then uninstalled Firefox, probably because he was worried that she would find out which sites he had been visiting. […]
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:02 am
It’s a feature!
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:34 am
Shouldn’t she be thanking FireFox for this bug? If it weren’t for this bug she would have married him, had a few kids, and in 10 years found out that he’s a lying, cheating bastard.
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:36 am
John Doe: Whoa! That is a serious bug. You should report that one to bugzilla. There’s no way that sort of thing should be shared across user accounts.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Well, as an uninstaller, it shouldn’t give ANY offers or options to uninstall anything it should just uninstall everything. If you uninstall something, it’s to remove it completely off your system right? Hmm anyways, since the memory leak found in Firefox I uninstalled it through the control panel, found the registry links using Regseeker (and deleted them), went to the program files and found any folders linking to it (Mozilla Firefox, etc- erased it using Acronis Privacy Expert (or you could use Eraser) and Moved on to Opera.
But as for this relationship thing. He was guilty and got caught and she got smart. She should check for any STD’s.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:31 pm
This is a joke. He’s a moron, she’s a dipstick and the browser gets hung in the end.
This is the kind of garbage that people delight in seeing. ..lol
People just need to set the no password remembering option when first using ff and there you go.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:23 pm
HA! Good. Smart girl. Fucking jackass guys.
Really, guys like this do for the reputation of the human male species what white supremicists do for caucasians — give everyone else a reason to hate, fear, be skeptical of, etc.
Attention all guys, stop being retards. If you’re sexually compulsive get your ass in to SA or therapist or whatever you need to do. Don’t run around cheating on girls and screwing things up for the rest of us.
March 24th, 2006 at 12:41 am
Oh!!! So bad. But darling you have been dating him for last five years. Forgive him if he feels sorry. You have loved him.
Best of Luck!!!
March 24th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
“Not now” instead of “Never” is a not a solution because it’s a PITA to click “Not now” everytime you visit a site. As it is I wish this feature was smarter.
March 26th, 2006 at 6:32 am
[…] She discovered he’d been visiting numerous dating sites when she opened up a list of sites whose passwords were never saved on the shared machine. […]
March 26th, 2006 at 7:23 am
[…] When Firefox, privacy and relationships collide… van Metafilter Firefox ?causes? breakup… One man uses his fiance’s computer to surf dating and swinger websites. He’s careful to wipe his passwords etc. as he surfs – and then for good measure, de-installs Firefox. […]
March 28th, 2006 at 12:34 am
I believe that’s not FF’s mistake.
March 28th, 2006 at 5:35 am
“2) Preferences are user-specific. Therefore they are user data. Applications should not delete user data on uninstall. Word does not delete all your .doc files on uninstall. If you share space for your user data with someone else (e.g. if you MUST use the same account) you need to delete any user data (like your profile directory) yourself if you want to keep it from them.”
Bullshit.
Firefox doesn’t delete all your .html/,css files on uninstall neither :P.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:22 am
Of course it should! Do you want to break up a family just so that some of the users may have more options? Come on guys using a dating site is no worse than socialising with your friends from the opposite gender…just a bit ..ah! titalliating. The firefox should insure that such little indiscretions are not caught!
March 31st, 2006 at 6:38 am
[…] (link) […]
March 31st, 2006 at 8:23 am
Regardless of personal issues which may arise, I think it would be good to offer to delete profile data for the sake of thoroughness in general. Definitely should not be the default, but offering it would be nice.
P.S. Thanks for doing the burning edge Jesse! It’s a great way to keep tabs on development without being in too deep.
April 3rd, 2006 at 3:23 am
In addition to Digg, this was covered on metafilter (http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50300) and The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/23/firefox_bug_engagement_split_rumpus/).
April 3rd, 2006 at 3:26 am
Vladimir Vukićević filed a bug for storing password-never-saved sites as hashes: bug 331652.
April 3rd, 2006 at 6:12 am
Fiance -> Dating Websites, etc
—-
Break-up is bound to happen immediately or sometime soon !
Simple.
April 20th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
That was funny.
April 23rd, 2006 at 10:19 am
Don’t blame the browser–vlame your poor judgement of character. If he’s still ooking–he’s not happy…build a bridge–get over it and move on
April 25th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
In this case I would say, he’s an idiot, and she’s smart enough to catch him attempting to cheat on her. I’m glad she got out in time. He can attempt to blame Firefox all he wants, that isn’t going to cut it.
April 26th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Story and blame games aside, one thing I do think:
If you don’t want passwords logged on some sites, presumably to not show you visited them or to let others login on them on your account, then you probably DON’T want a happy list of the damn sites you don’t want traced, held in clear unencrypted text on your computer. That is an enhancement issue not a bug though, and one answer is pretty obvious – encryption and passworded user profile folders.
Maybe she should blame Xerox too… they invented the WIMP interface without which firefox wouldn’t exist :P
April 29th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Good riddance.
Few points:
1) If you are engaged for five years, and you aren’t married yet, you just aren’t that into each other.
2) If you have been with someone for a really long time and still find yourself looking at dating sites, you are probably not with the right person.
She she feel relieved that its finally over.