Open Bug 1812107 Opened 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Firefox View's Last Active tile includes the "Device Name" text buried at the end of its google search context-menu-item

Categories

(Firefox :: Firefox View, defect, P2)

defect
Points:
3

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: dholbert, Unassigned)

References

(Depends on 1 open bug, Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

(Whiteboard: [fidefe-firefox-view] )

Attachments

(2 files)

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1790861 +++

STR:

  1. Open Firefox View (with Sync configured so that you have a "Last Active" tile)
  2. Right-click any of the "Tab Pickup" tiles
  3. Choose the "Search Google for [...]"
  4. Look at the Google search term, in the search tab that gets produced.

ACTUAL RESULTS:
The search string includes your "device name" (which was shown at the bottom of the tile).

EXPECTED RESULTS
Device name should not be included, since

  • it's almost certainly not a useful/helpful thing to include in the suggested-search
  • moreover, it's an actively harmful thing to include, since it's potentially revealing personal information (the user's local username and/or machine name) to Google, without it being obvious to the user that that's what's going to happen.

That second bullet point -- the accidental personal information leakage -- is the most important thing here.

The first bullet point applies to all of the "labels" on the tile -- the timestamp, the domain name, and "Last Active" pill. Those also get included in the context menu's suggested-search, and they're not particularly useful parts of a search. See bug 1790861 comment 5 and following comments for why it's not necessarily worthwhile to attempt to remove them.

But the Device Name has special personal-info importance that justifies taking some extra steps to exclude it, to avoid turning this right-click|search [...] into an accidental-info-leakage footgun for users.

(Sorry, I forgot to update the bug title when cloning the old bug -- adjusting now.)

Summary: Firefox View's Last Active tile includes the "Last Active" text at the start of its suggested google search context-menu-item → Firefox View's Last Active tile includes the "Device Name" text buried at the end of its google search context-menu-item
Attached image screenshot from the end of screencast (deleted) —

Here's a screenshot from the very end of the screencast, showing the unintended inclusion of my Sync device name, in the suggested-search that Firefox View set up for me in its context menu.

Two notes:

  • Given that we want the whole tile to be a link, it's apparently a bit awkward to remove some of the tile's labels from the suggested-search (since you have to remove them from the linked tile, while still having them appear as part of the tile). But it's worth doing in this case to prevent PII leakage, even if it's clumsy, and I think (?) we have at least one strategy for doing that, which was being pursued in the patch over on bug 1790861. (It was targeting a different label over there, but I imagine we can apply the same strategy for this device-name label just as easily.)

  • ayeddi made a good suggestion over in bug 1790861 comment 13 that we might want to create a generalized way to customize the suggested-search text for a link. But I think that requires further thought, and would need someone to champion/design/implement such a feature (and, depending on the usage of this suggested-search feature, there's a case to be made that it'd be more trouble than it's worth). And we shouldn't hold up this specific user-data-leakage footgun on that general feature being available, as long as we have another short term fix (even if it's a somewhat clumsy one).

(Looks like bug 1790861 has been reopened and maybe will end up addressing this. Depending on how that goes, we can dupe this back to that bug if this Device Name leakage ends up being addressed by whatever outcome we arrive at there.)

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:sfoster, could you have a look please?

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Flags: needinfo?(sfoster)

From comment #4, this sounds like a P2 to me - if there's a targeted fix for just the specific symptoms described here, we'd like that solution landed ahead of the broader bug 1790861 which is P3.

Severity: -- → S3
Points: --- → 3
Flags: needinfo?(sfoster)
Priority: -- → P2
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