Re: Enhanced Tracking Protection shield button is gone

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi Maxim,

Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> writes:

> I've noticed for some time already that the blue shield button [0] that used
> to be present on the left of the URL bar has vanished in recent versions
> of IceCat.  That button could be used to whitelist a particular site and
> disable the builtin tracking protection features of IceCat.
>
> Is there a reason for its omission, or is it a bug?

I intentionally hid it, using the following patch:

  
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git/tree/data/patches/hide-protections-dashboard.patch?id=bcfe407570cae32d00dd33a268de0e0593166f7b

The rationale is that in IceCat, a large part of "tracking protection"
functionality has been disabled, and I did not want to give users a
false impression by displaying the shield icon.

Firefox tracking protection is based on centrally-managed blacklists.
Before making a network request, Firefox queries servers managed by
Google and Mozilla to find out whether to block the request, using an
API based on Google Safe Browsing.  The API is ostensibly designed to
avoid leaking your browser history to those servers, but I'm skeptical.

In any case, the "Safe Browsing" functionality is intentionally disabled
in IceCat by default, via changes to the default values of the
"browser.safebrowsing.*" settings, here:

  
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git/tree/data/settings.js?id=bcfe407570cae32d00dd33a268de0e0593166f7b#n100

Ideally, I would like to provide a nice interface to allow users to
fully enable "tracking protection" if they wish.  The "Enhanced Tracking
Protection" section of <about:preferences#privacy> should be modified to
properly support the default IceCat mode (Safe Browsing disabled).  That
panel is currently somewhat misleading in the IceCat previews, which is
one of the reasons that these are previews and not official releases.

> There doesn't seem to be a way to whitelist a website from it anymore.

I suspect that the "Manage Exceptions" button in the "Enhanced Tracking
Protection" section of <about:preferences#privacy> does the same thing,
albeit less conveniently.

I'm open to suggestions or criticisms regarding IceCat's approach to
these issues, but the most helpful thing would be concrete proposals,
and ideally patches :)

     Regards,
       Mark