August 27th, 2009
Not wanting to expose NSFW links, 1 in 4 Firefox 2 users avoid upgrading to FF3
Users have refused to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox because they were afraid the browser would expose their, well, sensitive bookmarks.
“Sensitive,” as in potentially “not safe for work.”
In an amusing post on PC Pro, Barry Collins notes that a recent Blog of Metrics post by Mozilla’s security team notes that the revamped version of Firefox’s location bar, which auto-suggests sites as you type, was a particularly, uh, sensitive subject.
When we expanded the capabilities of the location bar to search against all history and bookmarks in Firefox 3, a lot of people contacted us to say that they had certain bookmarks they didn’t really want to have displayed. In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object. Having something from your previous browsing displayed to someone else who is using your computer (or even worse) to a large audience of people as you are giving a presentation, is really one of the most embarrassing things that Firefox can do to you. So now in Firefox 3.5, users have complete control over what types of information are displayed in the location bar (or suggestions can be turned off entirely).
You know, folder hierarchies. “Certain bookmarks.” Things you wouldn’t want to pop up during a business meeting.
In May, Mozilla gave one last attempt at persuading the people using Firefox 2 to upgrade with a prompt and a questionnaire for those that declined, asking why they didn’t want the latest software.
The number one reason? The new location bar, according to one in four users, and the fact that it delved into users’ bookmark collections to suggest sites as they typed.
(See what other reasons people had for refusing to upgrade here at Hardware 2.0.)
Mozilla has since offered a “Private Browsing” mode in Firefox 3.5.
Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
