Disable New Tiles feature in Tor Browser based on ESR 38

On about:newtab are now shown tiles with affiliate links that are fetched from Mozilla's infrastructure and pings containing detailed data about which tiles have been seen are sent back. See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1042214#c33 for more detailed information.

We should avoid all these things although our default Private Browsing Mode with no history being enabled might mitigate the tracking risks.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1073823 contains a way turning that feature off and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1030832 is the meta bug. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1030832#c6 is interesting and we want to keep an eye on this as "a website defining own enhanced tiles via a meta tag" sounds potentially dangerous to me.

added MikePerry201507 TorBrowserTeam201507R component::applications/tor browser ff38-esr owner::tbb-team priority::high resolution::fixed status::closed tbb-5.0a3-essential tbb-linkability tbb-pref type::task labels

To disable the "enhanced" tiles, I think we can set browser.newtabpage.enhanced = false. See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1042214#c34 I am not sure what our policy should be about Firefox's efforts to include ads like these (I doubt this will be their last such effort). But the tracking that advertisers always demand is probably unacceptable for Tor Browser, at least in its default configuration.

Trac:
Cc: N/A to mcs

This gets fancy with suggested tiles in Firefox 39 and 40 it seems: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1140185

I think given the potential confusion around this feature, it is probably worth disabling these tiles in 5.0a3 even if they are not yet based on any personalized recommendations, at least until we better understand the exact nature of these tiles, and can articulate a clear position on the exact behavior.

Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, MikePerry201506, tbb-5.0a3-essential, tbb-pref added

I pushed the pref to disable tiles for now, and filed #16443 (moved) to audit the full feature in FF45-esr.

Trac:
Resolution: N/A to fixed
Status: new to closed

anonym noted that the tiles are still in fact enabled in 5.0a3. We need to set one more pref: 16:18 < anonym> the Tiles are still fetched in a completely vanilla linux64 Tor Browser 5.0a3-build5 :/ 16:19 < anonym> I've noticed that setting browser.newtabpage.directory.source = "" makes the Tiles empty, and nothing is fetched

Trac:
Keywords: MikePerry201506 deleted, TorBrowserTeam201507 added
Status: closed to reopened
Resolution: fixed to N/A

The code that is causing trouble is a combination of _setDefaultEnhanced(), here: http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-esr38/source/browser/modules/DirectoryLinksProvider.jsm#138 (which is called at init time) and the pref observer that is in that same module: http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-esr38/source/browser/modules/DirectoryLinksProvider.jsm#155

Since at first there is no user pref value in Tor Browser, _setDefaultEnhanced() when called at init time sets browser.newtabpage.enhanced = true. If you then set browser.newtabpage.enhanced = false (e.g., via about:config), the user pref value disappears because the browser default pref value is already false in Tor Browser 5.0a3. And then when the pref. observer is invoked it calls _setDefaultEnhanced(), which determines that there is no user value and therefore sets the pref. back to true for you. How unpleasant.

Ok. How about we just avoid all of this mess and make about:tor be our newtab page as well, then?

I just pushed mikeperry/bug16316 with this change, and also a change to remove the source and ping urls for this newtab business, lest they get loaded in the background.

Leaving this as needs_review in case anyone objects to making about:tor our new tab page for now.

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201507 deleted, MikePerry201507, TorBrowserTeam201507R added
Status: reopened to needs_review

Replying to mikeperry:

Leaving this as needs_review in case anyone objects to making about:tor our new tab page for now.

I think this is OK. I would prefer about:blank as the new tab page (less distracting) but I am biased because that is how I configure my own browsers.

Does setting the .source and .ping prefs to "" cause more noise to appear on the error console?

Ok, I think I agree about about:tor being non-ideal. Also, disabling the newtab tiles completely is bad for people who store disk records. Also, yes, blank entries caused error console noise.

I set these fetch urls to data uris and fixed the check in browser/modules/DirectoryLinksProvider.jsm and pushed this for 5.0-next. It seems to preserve the old 'classic' about:newtab behavior now, with disk records either enabled or disabled. Closing.

Trac:
Resolution: N/A to fixed
Status: needs_review to closed

closed

mentioned in issue #16443 (moved)

mentioned in issue #16547 (moved)

mentioned in issue #16578 (moved)

mentioned in issue #16722 (moved)

moved to tpo/applications/tor-browser#16316 (closed)

mentioned in issue tpo/applications/tor-browser#16443 (closed)

mentioned in issue tpo/applications/tor-browser#16722 (closed)