Firefox Now Sends Your Address Bar Keystrokes to Mozilla

Re:Firefox Now Sends Your Address Bar Keystrokes to Mozilla by DemiGuru on Friday October 08, 2021 @07:30PM (#28805393)

Sadly It doesn’t come as a complete surprise to me. About 2 years ago using Firefox Focus on iOS I came across an odd behavior - each time I launched the app it was accessing and reading the device’s clipboard. I called it out to Mozilla both through the app review and Mozilla support. The only response I got was that it was a feature. That I misunderstood what they were attempting to do. They removed that “feature” in the following version.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Firefox Now Sends Your Address Bar Keystrokes to Mozilla by bink on Friday October 08, 2021 @07:34PM (#28805423)

Just a guess, but it could've been a way for them to determine if you were about to paste content into the address bar. I worked for a company that did something similar. It would compare the clipboard to the contents of the input field. If it was a URL and they matched it would assume you had pasted a URL and would take some extra actions based on that.

It wasn't until the OS started alerting the user to this clipboard read that it started to look very suspicious.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Firefox Now Sends Your Address Bar Keystrokes to Mozilla by DemiGuru on Friday October 08, 2021 @07:51PM (#28805551)

I’ll grant you that it’s a possibility. But it’s unsettling when your clipboard has your recently used password.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Firefox Now Sends Your Address Bar Keystrokes to Mozilla by kymaz on Friday October 08, 2021 @09:18PM (#28806127)

> It wasn't until the OS started alerting the user to this clipboard read that it started to look very suspicious.

Maybe sprinkle in a bit of users didn't consider it suspicious until it was reported that some apps were abusing the privilege.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Firefox Now Sends Your Address Bar Keystrokes to Mozilla by intelMgmntEnema on Friday October 08, 2021 @07:37PM (#28805440)

In about:config, while it lasts -- if it's even available--, try flipping the bool for:

dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled

To false

Edit: my mental molasses delayed my seeing that the feature was removed and that you've moved on. I'll leave the comment though.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Firefox Now Sends Your Address Bar Keystrokes to Mozilla by okdjnfweonfe on Friday October 08, 2021 @07:51PM (#28805550)

If you had a URL in the clipboard, it would allow you to 1 press open the URL

[ Parent | on HN ]