One of the greatest strengths of the Firefox web browser is the development community that has produces thousands of add-ons for practically any activity on the Internet. The recent introduction of the so called private browsing mode in Firefox has caused a problem in regards to this add-ons as it is currently not required for add-ons to respect the private browsing mode in the web browser.
This basically means that it can be that date gets stored on the user’s computer in private browsing mode if an add-on has a function to store data.
That’s obviously not the intention of the private browsing mode and the Mozilla developers have addressed the inconsistency in a blog post.
The developers, once again, explain that private browsing mode has been designed to only prevent browsing data to be stored on the computer system. Browsing data refers to data that can be used to identify the websites the user was on. This includes website addresses, cookies or temporary data.
The developers have agreed on how privacy support in add-ons has to be realized:
- If your add-on stores browsing data in any way, it must support PBM. This support cannot be disabled in any way, not even with hidden preferences.
- If your add-on stores some other type of personal data, support for PBM is optional. What we did with Fire.fm is a good guideline: have a preference “support PBM for the data this add-on handles”, turned on by default.
Mozilla will start enforcing this new rule at the end of March. Add-ons that are updated or newly added to the Firefox add-on repository after that date will be rejected if they do not comply with the new privacy rules. The rules will however have no effect on add-ons already listed in the extension gallery. (Mozilla blog via Techie Buzz)
Related Articles:
First Look At Firefox’s Private Browsing ModeOpen Links in Private Browsing Mode In Firefox
Autostart Firefox In Private Browsing Mode
Improve Firefox Private Browsing With Private Browsing Window Add-on
Firefox History Disable Button, Private Browsing Mode Lite
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The reason why people used this add-on was so you FF doesn’t close all your opened windows and tabs when you choose ‘Private Browsing’. Both IE & Google Chrome don’t close all your work the way FF does.
Why doesn’t FF just update their user interface so Private Browsing sessions don’t close all your windows anymore?