6.3 Disable Firefox Shield Studies

Information

Shield Studies are controlled tests that allow proposed changes to be compared to the current default version of Firefox for representative populations before releasing and pushing those changes to everyone else.

Rationale:

If you decide to opt-in to Shield Studies, you agree to let Firefox collect data for their use. This data includes usage hours, what day Firefox was used on, study info (Study Name/ID, Experimental Branch), and study status transition events. Allowing this data to be shared with Firefox could lead to inadvertently sharing sensitive data.

Impact:

Data will not be shared with Firefox.

Solution

To establish the recommended configuration, set app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled to true:

Type about:config in the address bar

Type app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled in the filter

Configure the setting as prescribed.

OR

Open the mozilla.cfg file in the installation directory with a text editor

Add the following lines to mozilla.cfg:

lockPref('app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled', true)

Default Value:

True (Enabled).

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/4299

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-7a.

Plugin: Windows

Control ID: 289b462aeb530c01637ca655e2e72bada94d2d26723cd958859b264e33a8b794