As it happens, Matt Zimmerman recently reported this very problem, but I was unable to reproduce as normal user.
I trawled through the apport code, and there was simply *nothing* using file:// URLs. However, I do use gnome-open URL, so a bug there would automatically apply to apport.
I can confirm that gnome-open rewrites URLs when being called as apport does for system crashes:
I. e. apport-gtk runs as root (first sudo), but calls gnome-open as the original user ($SUDO_USER) in order to get the real user's gconf preferences. This command opens file:///ubuntu in Firefox.
As it happens, Matt Zimmerman recently reported this very problem, but I was unable to reproduce as normal user.
I trawled through the apport code, and there was simply *nothing* using file:// URLs. However, I do use gnome-open URL, so a bug there would automatically apply to apport.
I can confirm that gnome-open rewrites URLs when being called as apport does for system crashes:
sudo sudo -H -u '#1000' gnome-open https:/ /launchpad. net/ubuntu
I. e. apport-gtk runs as root (first sudo), but calls gnome-open as the original user ($SUDO_USER) in order to get the real user's gconf preferences. This command opens file:///ubuntu in Firefox.
Thus I mark this as a duplicate.