Firefox is phoning home during start-up in Tor Browser based on ESR 68

Starting up one can see a bunch of requests going to Mozilla owned domains:

https://firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com/v1/buckets/monitor/collections/changes/records?collection=cfr-fxa&bucket=main
https://firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com/v1/buckets/main/collections/cfr-fxa?_expected=1562598365297
https://firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com/v1/buckets/main/collections/cfr-fxa/records?_expected=1562598365297&_sort=-last_modified
https://content-signature-2.cdn.mozilla.net/chains/remote-settings.content-signature.mozilla.org-2019-10-02-18-15-08.chain

https://snippets.cdn.mozilla.net/us-west/bundles/bundle_8afc759e26e7da7a6283552f250fdf0a5602f4f3.json

We should figure out what we should do with those requests/underlying functionality.

added TorBrowserTeam201909R component::applications/tor browser ff68-esr owner::tbb-team points::1 priority::medium resolution::fixed severity::normal status::closed tbb-9.0-must-alpha type::defect labels

Moving must-alpha tickets to September.

Trac:
Points: N/A to 1

Patch for review in https://github.com/acatarineu/tor-browser/commits/31575 (two commits).

I investigated a bit where these requests where coming from, and all are from the newtab ActivityStream. The first ones (containing cfr-fxa) are done in ASRouter.jsm, which calls RemoteSettingsClient.jsm and that does a bunch of fetches to sync. The snippets ones are coming from ASRouter.jsm.

There are a bunch of browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.* prefs that probably we could use to disable these, but I opted for the simple solution of just not loading the AboutNewTab.jsm at all. That means it's not possible anymore to change the newtab page, so I also removed that option from the UI in the patch.

Trac:
Status: new to needs_review
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201909 deleted, TorBrowserTeam201909R added

If the approach is ok, I think this would also fix #30846 (moved) and #30662 (moved).

Replying to acat:

Patch for review in https://github.com/acatarineu/tor-browser/commits/31575 (two commits).

I investigated a bit where these requests where coming from, and all are from the newtab ActivityStream. The first ones (containing cfr-fxa) are done in ASRouter.jsm, which calls RemoteSettingsClient.jsm and that does a bunch of fetches to sync. The snippets ones are coming from ASRouter.jsm.

There are a bunch of browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.* prefs that probably we could use to disable these, but I opted for the simple solution of just not loading the AboutNewTab.jsm at all. That means it's not possible anymore to change the newtab page, so I also removed that option from the UI in the patch.

Hrm. I am not sure we should strip users from easily adjusting their new tab experience. Would we solve this bug by just flipping the prefs? I guess that would still fix #30846 (moved) as well? What about #30662 (moved)?

Trac:
Status: needs_review to needs_information

If we's go that route then we should rip the code out not comment it because the latter makes it harder to figure out what part is actually a comment and what part is just code we don't use due to a patch. Let's use commenting just for comments.

So, marking that as needs revision either way.

Trac:
Status: needs_information to needs_revision
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201909R deleted, TorBrowserTeam201909 added

Patch for review in https://github.com/acatarineu/tor-browser/commits/31575+1 (two commits).

Now choosing "Firefox Home" for newtab or home in about:preferences will load about:tor instead of Firefox newtab. For newtab the default will be about:blank.

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201909 deleted, TorBrowserTeam201909R added
Status: needs_revision to needs_review

Sorry, it still remains to change Firefox Home string to Tor Browser Home and localize it. I was not sure whether to do that separately later, but I think it's worth it doing it here, so setting it as revision_needed and will do that change too.

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201909R deleted, TorBrowserTeam201909 added
Status: needs_review to needs_revision

Replying to acat:

Sorry, it still remains to change Firefox Home string to Tor Browser Home and localize it. I was not sure whether to do that separately later, but I think it's worth it doing it here, so setting it as revision_needed and will do that change too.

Note that the English title of the about:tor page is About Tor. I think we should use that in the preferences UI rather than Tor Browser Home but of course other people may have different opinions. For me, Tor Browser Home introduces a new term without much benefit.

Cc: Antonela and Pili in case they have smart things to say ;)

Trac:
Cc: N/A to antonela, pili

Note that the English title of the about:tor page is About Tor. I think we should use that in the preferences UI rather than Tor Browser Home but of course other people may have different opinions. For me, Tor Browser Home introduces a new term without much benefit.

Thanks! I think it makes a lot of sense, going that route for now. Patch for review: https://github.com/acatarineu/tor-browser/commits/31575+2.

I also changed this so that the default about:tor does not appear as Custom URL in about:preferences, but as About Tor (about:home also redirects to about:tor, but that's not the default value for browser.startup.homepage).

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201909 deleted, TorBrowserTeam201909R added
Status: needs_revision to needs_review

Looks good to me. Cherry-picked onto tor-browser-68.1.0esr-9.0-2 (commit fa3095e61aacd345601435a0e91ee2b44e1a9b07 and e11a1889ae871a9ced871346f5f9eb3e0a9ab6d3).

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

FWIW we fixed #30662 (moved) here as well while we were at it.

closed

changed time estimate to 8h

mentioned in issue #31740 (moved)

mentioned in issue #31983 (moved)

mentioned in issue #33853 (moved)

moved to tpo/applications/tor-browser#31575 (closed)

mentioned in issue tpo/applications/tor-browser#31740 (closed)

mentioned in issue tpo/applications/tor-browser#31983