Weird Firefox Behavior (v120.0 b4-bit) MATE 20.04 LTS

#1

I applied the latest Firefox update on my Ubuntu MATE system (20.04 LTS) and now I'm seeing some odd behavior:

"Private" window browsing on some sites now becomes unusable. But not on all (I know that the only real benefit to private browsing is not saving history/cookies, but I use it at times to reduce the clutter). Typically, there isn't any difference in the user experience, but now I'm finding some sites I can not log in using a private window, but have not problem using the "standard" Firefox interface.

This suggests to me that Mozilla has added or tweaked some security capability in the latest Firefox, and that setting now collides with some sites. But I can't figure it out.

Odder still, is that the same release of Firefox on Mac (not tried yet under Windows) does not exhibit the same behavior.

Like I said, weird. Thoughts?

#2

Well, I appear to have found a workaround, if not a complete solution:

There is a Firefox extension called Hide Private Mode. According to its listing details, "News sites like The New York Times, LATimes, New Statesman, etc. try to detect private browsing mode via the presence of the IndexedDB API and block access to the site. This extension provides a fake implementation to bypass these blocks." The site I encountered the issue now works.

I learn something new every day. Now, I find servers can actually block private mode. Is nothing sacred?