How does support.mozilla.org get browser configuration data from Firefox?
When posting a question on support.mozilla.org there is a feature that automatically collects a list of all the plugins and all the configuration data of the browser. How does a website do this and doesn't that pose a substantial privacy and security risk for the browser itself? What is to stop any other site from automatically pulling the same browser configuration data? How does a user control a site's access to this information in Firefox?bold text
Všetky odpovede (8)
Yes, when you post a question. But, you must allow it to run. No Personal Information Is Collected.
Don't panic. Firefox has an internal messaging feature for web developers which allows pages to submit requests to the browser. In this case, it is a "remote-troubleshooting" request. Such requests need to have a site permission in order to be honored.
Firefox comes set to allow two sites to use the "remote-troubleshooting" permission:
I don't know whether other sites could request permission to extract the troubleshooting information page; I might experiment with it and see whether I can trigger it.
By the way, any site you allow to run JavaScript can see your plugins. You can prove it to yourself on my plugin lister page here:
https://jeffersonscher.com/res/plugins.html
(There is ongoing discussion of how to hide plugins from bulk enumeration to reduce the ability of sites to "fingerprint" your browser; the previous attempt was removed because it broke too many sites. More info: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!top.../_PsjN5SvZlo)
- Bug 1097168 - [AAQ] Use the inproduct about:support API when available
- Bug 1079563 - give access to about:support data to specific whitelisted Mozilla websites
Please do not comment in bug reports
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html
- chrome://global/content/aboutSupport.js
- resource://gre/modules/Troubleshoot.jsm
Is there any way for users to control which sites are whitelisted?
a012 said
Is there any way for users to control which sites are whitelisted?
Nothing convenient comes to mind.
Are you concerned about those two Mozilla sites or about other sites?
It just seems that there should be a way for users to control this for overarching privacy reasons. The bug report appears to mention that there was a pref that got delayed being added for some reason. Are the two whitelisted sites actually hard-coded in the browser source code?