Disabling data mining options break Card Preview and sites with Let's Encrypt certificates
Disabling either the "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" or the "Allow Firefox to install and run studies" options under the Privacy & Security settings page break all of my homelab SSL certificates using Let's Encrypt and breaks the tab/card preview functionality. The only way for these to work is to leave both options enabled. Disabling either one breaks both of those.
When they are disabled the card preview just doesn't work. The Let's Encrypt-backed self-hosted services are a bit different. I get a warning that the pages are insecure, and if I click the Advanced button to continue (sometimes it is there and sometimes it is not) I get looped back to the same insecure page with no way to accept or proceed.
Things I've tried: - Disabled all Add-Ons - Deleted/reverted all modified settings in about:config - Firefox Refresh - Uninstalled/cleared cache directories/reinstalled - Deleted my whole Mozilla account and recreated, thinking it was a bad setting being synced
Fedora Systems information: - Firefox v130.0.1, Mozilla Firefox Flatpak - Flathub Flatpak from official Mozilla source - OS: Fedora 40, Gnome - Hardware: Framework 13 12th-gen laptop, custom desktop PC
Ubuntu System information: - Firefox v130.0.1, Mozilla Firefox Snap for Ubuntu - Snap as provided from fresh Ubuntu installation - OS: Ubuntu 22.04.4, Gnome - Hardware: Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen4, Intel 13th-gen
This is not an issue on Firefox for Android seemingly. This started on my laptop first a few weeks ago, I don't remember changing either of those privacy settings at the time but I may have.
All Replies (3)
As a follow up, I do see that there is a study ("Tab Hover Preview Release Rollout") that enabled the card previews and I recognize that it's not an official feature yet.
Maybe this study is fixing my Let's Encrypt sites? I haven't tried disabling that yet, I just found it... "Encrypted Client Hello - Fallback Mechanism"
So the tab preview makes sense being linked to that study, we can disregard that until it's an official release. When I first discovered this I didn't realize it was the study controlling it.
I'm still looking for some insight into the Let's Encrypt certs. I created a new profile and then removed the "Encrypted Client Hello - Fallback Mechanism" study, and was able to recreate my issue. In my case I have disabled the DNS over HTTPS options, and my network points to my own DNS servers. The IP resolves for my endpoints correctly, and in this case I'm pointing to my Kubernetes ingress controller. After I removed the "Encrypted Client Hello - Fallback Mechanism" study I can no longer access it.
Does anyone know if this is a recent change? I don't believe that I've had studies enabled for a long time, but it also seems that disabling it is not synced across devices so it may have been overlooked. If I disable studies on Firefox for Android it still works as expected, and accessing my ingress controller from Chromium works without any issues.
Well I was wrong about Firefox for Android. I believe when I was testing it last night it was simply cached. I force stopped it and cleared app cache, and now I'm getting the same behavior. At least this is all consistent.
Modified by nb623107
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