Favicons in bookmarks - How to get rid of them? (Firefox 3)

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
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Scarlettrunner20
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Favicons in bookmarks - How to get rid of them? (Firefox 3)

Post by Scarlettrunner20 »

I have no favicons anywhere...bookmarks or any place else in Fx 1.5 and 2 and I don't want any in Fx3. How do I get rid of them in bookmarks? I imported my bookmarks from 1.5 where there are no favicons and now bookmarks is crawling with those awful things. They are a privacy hazard besides being distracting and ugly.

I set browser.chrome.favicons;false, browser.chrome.site_icons;false, what have I missed?
Last edited by steviex on August 13th, 2008, 2:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Firefox 3 added to thread title, for clarity, as to what version of Firefox this topic is about.
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alterna
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Post by alterna »

Try also

browser.chrome.image_icons.max_size modify to 0



Also, Tidy your tabbar:


/* hide all tab favicons 3.0 */
.tabbrowser-tab > .tab-icon-image { display: none !important; }
Last edited by alterna on May 20th, 2008, 6:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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a;skdjfajf;ak
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Post by a;skdjfajf;ak »

long thread here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... highlight=

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1a1pre) Gecko/2008052003 Minefield/3.1a1pre Firefox/3.0 ID:2008052003
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Scarlettrunner20
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Post by Scarlettrunner20 »

alterna wrote:Try also

browser.chrome.image_icons.max_size modify to 0



Also, Tidy your tabbar:


/* hide all tab favicons 3.0 */
.tabbrowser-tab > .tab-icon-image { display: none !important; }


Yep. I had forgotten that one. Thanks! That helped but I still have favicons for mozillazine, all mozilla and firefox bookmarks, dslreports, Microsoft, and a few others. I certainly do NOT want any favicons that have to do with Mozilla official sites. I know Mozilla is pulling a Phorm on us users and I have blocked all official Mozilla sites in my Hosts and blocked Overture also. Sadly, I can no longer trust Mozilla and I definitely do not want any favicons from Mozilla sites as I suspect those are tracking me. So, how do I get rid of those? My home site is dslreports but I want that one gone too as I cannot trust them either as they try really hard to set utma cookies every time I login and I am a premium member for seven years. :(

If I can't get all favicons gone, I will go back to Fx 1.5. That is the last PRIVACY version of Fx sadly to say.

I don't want to hide favicons. I want them gone as they are a privacy risk. Besides, I use Tree Style Tab and Multiple Tab Handler ( the new Tabbed Browser Extensions). All favicons are now gone from Tree view of tabs. There are just some still in Bookmarks.
teoli2003
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Post by teoli2003 »

Scarlettrunner20: could you please explain precisely how favicon are a privacy risk?

PS: I advise you that you change your browser immediately as you cannot trust it anymore. Why wait?
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Scarlettrunner20
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Post by Scarlettrunner20 »

They can leak cookies for one thing.

All browsers cannot be trusted anymore so it is not so simple a thing to just blithly tell someone to change browsers. I must say though that Mozilla's decision to pull a Phorm on us users is going to come back to really bite them. Most users don't even know about it currently. Those that do are upset. I mean we are trying to stop Phorm and its look-alikes when it comes to our ISPs selling us down the river and then Mozilla decides to do it too and partner with a known malware operator. Worse, insist that we have to opt OUT instead of it being that we OPT in. Really, really bad. It is in effect right now. Did you know? Have you gone to Oveture and opted out? Like being tracked and profiled without your knowledge? It's just Mozilla and Fx sites at the moment but may soon be extended to all sites. I blocked all Mozilla and Firefox sites and Overture last night in Hosts on all my computers. This site is not officially connected to Mozilla so we are not tracked here...yet.

Hmmm...spelling check doesn't work on Fx3 RC1 on this Vista Ultimate computer.
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alterna
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Post by alterna »

To cleanse existing favicons,

Export bookmarks as html, then File > Open File, open html in browser, then run bookmarklet (Create new bookmark, enter the following javascript as location)

javascript:(function(){%20var%20ls=document.getElementsByTagName('*');%20for%20
(var%20i=0;%20i<ls.length;%20i++)%20{l=ls[i];%20l.removeAttribute('id')
;%20l.removeAttribute('last_charset');%20l.removeAttribute('icon');
%20l.removeAttribute('last_modified');%20l.removeAttribute('last_visit');
%20l.removeAttribute('add_date');%20l.removeAttribute('personal_toolbar_folder')
;}%20alert('Cleanup%20Complete%20-%20Save%20as%20Web%20Page,
%20Complete')})();

to remove the favicons, then save whole page to desktop, rename as html., and import as bookmarks, delete old ones.

(edit) Isn't a favicon just an icon image.
From typical html,


ICON="data:image/x-icon;base64,AAABAAEAEBAAAAAAIABoBAAAF(...etc, etc, etc...) agAAACgAAAAQAAAAIAAAAAEAIAAAAAAAQ/w==P//AAD//w=="

The bookmark works the same no matter what icon I select for it (or not)

edit - removed mistake about html
Last edited by alterna on June 23rd, 2008, 5:52 am, edited 4 times in total.
teoli2003
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Post by teoli2003 »

Scarlettrunner20 wrote:They can leak cookies for one thing.

Any request can "leak" cookies. I mean in what sense are they different from another http request to the same site?
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Scarlettrunner20
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Post by Scarlettrunner20 »

You lost me several times there. I ignore bookmarks as much as possible in 3.0. Places is horrible. I don't know if I will even be able to stand Places so that I can use Fx3. I can't add any new bookmarks to the folders for the existing ones. And dealing with bookmarks now in 3.0 is absolute hell. I was so looking forward to having columns that worked better than the extension I had for Fx 2(that I didn't use much because it was such a big effort to keep 2 clean privacy wise) and wasn't available for 1.5 my default browser on my main machine. There was so much that could have been done to improve bookmarks and history and instead Fx 3 makes a shambles of bookmarks and makes history a horrible jumble and I can't use Extended History extension.

Anyhow, I don't know what you mean by run "bookmarklet". I only tried bookmarklets once for Opera and didn't like them. As for "toolbar" I guess you mean bookmarks toolbar? I don't use any of the toolbars. I like my screen real estate. I even have tabs auto hidden.

Heck. I just noticed that History is CRAWLING with favicons. Horrible! Horrible! Horrible!
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alterna
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Post by alterna »

Scarlettrunner20 wrote:Anyhow, I don't know what you mean by run "bookmarklet". !


Create a new bookmark and copy and paste the posted javascript into "Location"'

When you open the bookmarks html in the browser and click on that bookmarklet, the favicon data will be removed, and you can then save that "cleansed" html. to desktop.
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ShareBird
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Post by ShareBird »

Hehe... I didn't understand these posts, until I did have a look on the link at the signature... lol
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alterna
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Post by alterna »

ShareBird wrote:Hehe... I didn't understand these posts, until I did have a look on the link at the signature... lol


That site's a parody. Are you implying Scarletrunner20's posts are parodies, too?
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Post by Bluefang »

Maybe not parodies, but poorly misinformed.
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=656064

The developers have stated that nay service that records and sends user data would be opt-in. The only thing that I can think of that would remotely objectionable to people would be the Safe Browsing functionality (which is also overblown). Any remote request is subject to the same security issues. Blocking a favicon dose just about as much as blocking a single image from a site. Heck, using AdBlock plus probably provides better security than blocking favicons. A better idea would be to have an extension that blocked favicons that aren't hosted on the same site the page it is for. But the only real reason you'd want to block favicons is to save space in the database.

As far as your problems making bookmarks, that is a problem and could be caused by a corrupt places.sqlite or one that doesn't have the proper permissions. A new profile works wonders. But, above all else, keep in mind that this is still a preview release. There are still things to be fixed before final.
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Scarlettrunner20
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Post by Scarlettrunner20 »

Bluefang wrote:Maybe not parodies, but poorly misinformed.
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=656064

The developers have stated that nay service that records and sends user data would be opt-in.


I can see you haven't read the new Mozilla Privacy Policy. You are being tracked as we speak. It is opt OUT only:

"Opt-out Procedures

If you do not want to allow your session visitation information on this Web site to be aggregated and analyzed by Mozilla or its third-party analytics providers, you may utilize the following opt-out mechanisms listed here."

http://people.mozilla.com/~basil/privac ... olicy.html


"Opt-Out Procedures

This page describes the procedure for opting out of Omniture-based web site analytics tracking as used on Mozilla web sites. There are two basic methods that can be used independently or in combination.
Using cookies

In order to opt out of Mozilla's Omniture-based analytics programs, you must install an "opt-out cookie". Mozilla's web sites detect the presence of this "opt-out cookie" and disables tracking.

* Please visit this page to enable or disable the Mozilla "opt-out cookie"

Note that if you clear your cookies, delete the opt-out cookie, or if you change computers or Web browsers, you will need to perform the opt-out procedure again. Otherwise, the cookie is good for a 10-year period from the moment you "install" it.
Using Hosts files
Another method to disable web site analytics is to block communications with the analytics servers. This can be achieved by adding some lines to your hosts file. This will disable communications to the Omniture servers.

In order to use this method, your local machine's hosts file must be modified. To find the location of your hosts file on a particular platform, see this article. Open the file in a text editor.

Add the following lines to disable Omniture analytics for Mozilla properties:

127.0.0.1 ostats.mozilla.com
127.0.0.1 mozilla.com.112.2o7.net

Note that this only disables Omniture on Mozilla properties and not on every web site where Omniture may be used.
For More Information

If you have feedback or questions about the Mozilla privacy policy or these procedures, please contact Mozilla at: privacy@mozilla.com.

April, 2008"

http://people.mozilla.com/~basil/privac ... t-out.html

"Third-Party Web Analytics Service Providers

This page describes the third-party web analytics services providers used by Mozilla.
Omniture, Inc.

* Technical Specifications for Web Analytics Data
* Mozilla Web sites using Omniture's SiteCatalyst
o www.mozilla.com
o www.firefox.com
o www.getfirefox.com
o *.mozilla.com"

http://people.mozilla.com/~basil/privac ... party.html

You can find more information at news.mozilla.org in the mozilla.governance news group.
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Scarlettrunner20
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Post by Scarlettrunner20 »

alterna wrote:
Scarlettrunner20 wrote:Anyhow, I don't know what you mean by run "bookmarklet". !


Create a new bookmark and copy and paste the posted javascript into "Location"'

When you open the bookmarks html in the browser and click on that bookmarklet, the favicon data will be removed, and you can then save that "cleansed" html. to desktop.


Thank you. I understand now. I'll try that.
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