Don't record update history on the Tor Browser

1. Open "about:support".
2. Click "Show update history".

My TBB shows long history.

Can you stop logging these(and clear existing history)? The date/time information is useful to track Tor users.

added component::applications/tor browser owner::tbb-team priority::medium severity::normal status::new tbb-disk-leak tbb-update type::defect labels

Trac:
Component: - Select a component to Applications/Tor Browser
Priority: Very High to Medium
Owner: N/A to tbb-team
Severity: Critical to Normal
Keywords: N/A deleted, tbb-disk-leak added

To remove the existing information, find the updates.xml file within your Tor Browser profile and delete it.

Currently, there is no preference (visible or hidden) that we can use to disable writing of the update history. Having the information available can be useful, but I can also understand why, at least for some people, it may give away too much information. For example, the timestamps associated with the list of updates could be used to determine that Tor Browser was likely in use on certain days and at certain times.

Georg, do you think that recording this info violates the disk avoidance aspect of the Tor Browser design?

Trac:
Cc: N/A to brade, mcs

Yes, I think it should at least not be as detailed as it is right now. We should think about what exactly we want to retain from the update history and scrub the remaining things. I am actually not even sure we want to have the history available at all. As far as I can see we have never needed it so far to debug anything.

Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, tbb-update added

moved to tpo/applications/tor-browser#25064