How is this site remembering after everything cleared?

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Firefox
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Edster
Posts: 19
Joined: July 1st, 2004, 3:04 pm

How is this site remembering after everything cleared?

Post by Edster »

Firefox 64.0.2. Started with clean profile (i.e. profile folder emptied). Changed Options > Privacy & Security > History from default to "Use custom setting for history". Checked "Clear history when Firefox closes", went into its settings and checked everything (per the following picture for clarity):

Image

Went to http://www.realestate.com.au. Typed something in search box, picked a suburb and closed Firefox.

Reopened Firefox, went back to http://www.realestate.com.au, and the search box is pre-filled with the same suburb. WTF? How does that happen with the above settings?

On startup, the Cookies and Site Data > Manage Cookies and Site Data list is empty. The Control Panel > Flash Player (32-bit) > Local Storage Settings by Site list is empty, as is its online equivalent.

However, it seems something isn't getting cleared in the Firefox profile. On startup, the Cookies and Site Data list is empty, but it reports a small amount of disk space in use. If I use Cookies and Site Data > Clear Data > Clear, then voila! That site no longer shows my last search.

But it should be fully clearing that on exit if things are set as above, right? So is it a bug, or am I missing something about how it's meant to work?

Reproduced on two separate systems (Windows 10 and 8.1).
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malliz
Folder@Home
Posts: 43796
Joined: December 7th, 2002, 4:34 am
Location: Australia

Re: How is this site remembering after everything cleared?

Post by malliz »

They could be using a supercookie
https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/d ... upercookie
I know Realestate.com use some pretty aggressive methods after a over talkative real estate agent boasted about what they could do
What sort of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.
"Terry Pratchett"
Edster
Posts: 19
Joined: July 1st, 2004, 3:04 pm

Re: How is this site remembering after everything cleared?

Post by Edster »

Heard about those and other methods. But this one seems to be Firefox not quite working right, based on what I observed. Using Cookies and Site Data > Clear Data > Clear, or deleting the profile, or setting "never remember history", all prevent the search being remembered.

But "clear history when Firefox closes" seems to be falling short. With the above settings, shouldn't it be having the same effect as Cookies and Site Data > Clear Data > Clear? Just want to make sure my understanding is correct before taking it to Bugzilla.
atlanto
Posts: 97
Joined: March 7th, 2015, 4:19 pm
Location: Japan

Re: How is this site remembering after everything cleared?

Post by atlanto »

about:preferences#privacy -> Cookies and Site Data -> Keep until => Firefox is closed
seems work so far.

--
To be weird, performing Sanitizer.runSanitizeOnShutdown() in Browser Console works as expected.(clearing history manually works as well)
There may be something race-condition or such on real shutdown(exit browser)...
----
Another odd behaviour(for me) is
Clear Recent History(cookies) with Everything does delete the search string, but Clear Recent History(cookies) with time range(Today or Last...) doesn't delete it.
The search string is stored in Local Storage(webappsstore.sqlite) btw, ot.
----

Hmm, it seems that 60esr and 61.0 don't have this issue, but 62.0 or later have...
Unfortunately, mozregression failed to figure out.
>17:06.17 INFO: No more inbound revisions, bisection finished.
>17:06.17 INFO: Last good revision: 6541e8a5c886eda075983f8800008ab52ab6fd08
>17:06.17 INFO: First bad revision: ee7d95e669c929299356a7864af9f483ee7cdd1d
>17:06.17 INFO: Pushlog:
>https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/pushloghtml?fromchange=6541e8a5c886eda075983f8800008ab52ab6fd08&tochange=ee7d95e669c929299356a7864af9f483ee7cdd1d
>
>17:07.76 ERROR: Unable to exploit the merge commit. Origin branch is autoland, and the commit message for ee7d95e6 was:
>Merge mozilla-central to autoland. a=merge CLOSED TREE


Suspected bug:
1462662 - Wipe the container for privacy.usercontext.about_newtab_segregation.enabled on shutdown
The issue seems not occur when privacy.usercontext.about_newtab_segregation.enabled = false. (this pref itself was added by 1457929 - Enable privacy.usercontext.about_newtab_segregation.enabled)
...???

BTW, this is definitely a regression bug. Don't hesitate to submit a bug report.
Last edited by atlanto on January 13th, 2019, 5:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
Brummelchen
Posts: 4480
Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:51 am

Re: How is this site remembering after everything cleared?

Post by Brummelchen »

could be remembering by ip
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