Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Firefox still allowing to delete history/timeline (GPO)

  • 7 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 17 views
  • Last reply by Mike Kaply

more options

Hello,

we are setting our firefox setting for our domain over the gpo. I installed the the apmx template at our domain controller and setted it.

Our goal is, to disable private surfing and preventing to delete the history. (So we could look it up if the law&order want them).

In the pictures you can see which settings are set in the gpo. Users are still to use the delete function under Settings. Do i miss some kind of gpo?

The gpo for private surfing is working fine so nobody can use it atm. A record with rsop.msc is showing evrything correctly. The Problem is on all machines. With outher browsers and gpo we do not have that kind of problem.

Following GPO Rules (Tranlated): Disable Chronicle -> Disabled Clear the history when Firefox is closed -> Disabled Disable Clean Firefox -> Enabled Disable private browsing -> Enabled Forgot button Deactivate button -> Enabled Mozilla/Firefox/Clear data when browser is closed -> Locked -> Enabled

Hello, we are setting our firefox setting for our domain over the gpo. I installed the the apmx template at our domain controller and setted it. Our goal is, to disable private surfing and preventing to delete the history. (So we could look it up if the law&order want them). In the pictures you can see which settings are set in the gpo. Users are still to use the delete function under Settings. Do i miss some kind of gpo? The gpo for private surfing is working fine so nobody can use it atm. A record with rsop.msc is showing evrything correctly. The Problem is on all machines. With outher browsers and gpo we do not have that kind of problem. Following GPO Rules (Tranlated): Disable Chronicle -> Disabled Clear the history when Firefox is closed -> Disabled Disable Clean Firefox -> Enabled Disable private browsing -> Enabled Forgot button Deactivate button -> Enabled Mozilla/Firefox/Clear data when browser is closed -> Locked -> Enabled
Attached screenshots

All Replies (7)

more options

We currently don't have a policy to prevent the deletion of history. Unfortunately it touches a lot of places so it's going to take some time to implement.

more options

Mike Kaply said

We currently don't have a policy to prevent the deletion of history. Unfortunately it touches a lot of places so it's going to take some time to implement.

Hello,

thanks for the quick Answer. Is there another way to disable this function? Sure i do not know how firefox is programmed but it should be easy to disable a button through a parameter/gpo/bool to prevent very very first level /basic user to delete their history. (It's the most common way users know)

more options

Even if we disabled the button, they could go into history and delete the individual items, or use shift+delete on items in the URL bar (and there are probably more).

I don't want to implement something that has easy workarounds.

more options

i can understand that, that you want to be this feature to be clean as possible. But my intention is to prevent easy removing.

Like you said there are other ways to easy remove them. And i dont understand why such a good browser, which is not small, cant handle that already. If we are honest, if somebody wants to delete his history, they can always remove the files under Appdata.

We as company wants to continue to use Firefox, because we see it as very professional browser for work. But we also need to block this feature, and are considering to switch to another one.

You could add this feature as exmperintal rule, so you would block first all common ways, and get feedback from the community which ways are still open.

Modified by Schnuecker

more options

FYI, the bug is here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1466882

I'll move it up in our priority.

more options

Hello,

you said you wanted to move it up in priotory. Sadly i cant see that in the history of the bug report.

Please dont give me more bad concern on bad support from Firefox.

more options

I've raised the priority. I'm aware this is needed, but we have limited resources.