Privacy settings reset to default on upgrade

[Adam Porter]

Ubuntu Trusty 14.04
Firefox 49.0

For some time now I have noticed that every time I upgrade Firefox, my profile's privacy settings are reset to default. For a while I didn't know why they were being reset, so I put a script in a cron job (see attachment) to monitor them and alert me when they changed. Since doing that I have realized that they are reset when I upgrade Firefox.

This is a serious violation of user trust and privacy. Users may have their preferences set to not save history, to not save cookies, to delete them upon exit, etc, but after installing a routine upgrade to Firefox (which happens every few weeks), their privacy settings will be reset to "Firefox will: Remember history", and the user will not be informed of this.

I don't know if the cause lies in Firefox itself or in the Ubuntu packaging, but this needs to be fixed.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner.

There have been many changes in Ubuntu and Firefox since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version.

When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running only once:

apport-collect 1629607

and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for firefox (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]