From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox


PSA:

Accidentally typing your login by accident into Firefox URL bar when search suggestions are enabled will be transmitted to your search engine before
you hit Enter.

However...

If you disable search suggestions, Firefox will only show local matches (bookmarks/history) until you press Enter, meaning nothing is sent online
until you actually perform the search.

Chrome behaves similarly to Firefox.
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

Marian wrote:

PSA:
Accidentally typing your login by accident into Firefox URL bar when search suggestions are enabled will be transmitted to your search engine before
you hit Enter.

However...
If you disable search suggestions, Firefox will only show local matches (bookmarks/history) until you press Enter, meaning nothing is sent online until you actually perform the search.

Chrome behaves similarly to Firefox.

I'd rephrase that: Firefox behaves similarly to Chrome
Chrome is a product of Google and that (public) convenience is typical
of them. At least we can turn that feature off in FF.
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

R Daneel Olivaw wrote:

If you disable search suggestions, Firefox will only show local matches
(bookmarks/history) until you press Enter, meaning nothing is sent online
until you actually perform the search.

Chrome behaves similarly to Firefox.

I'd rephrase that: Firefox behaves similarly to Chrome
Chrome is a product of Google and that (public) convenience is typical
of them. At least we can turn that feature off in FF.

Good point. I only added Chrome as an afterthought as I didn't want it to
seem like I was attacking the Firefox privacy design in this PSA.

Taking your helpful input into account, and looking up the question:
Q: Is it true you can't turn it off for Chrome?
A: ?

Looking it up...

By default, Chrome sends what we type in the address bar to our default
search engine which is used to provide search suggestions. As with FF, if
we accidentally type sensitive info (like a login), it will be transmitted before we hit Enter.

I don't have Chrome itself on my system (I have ungoogled chromium, Brave, Aloha, Opera, etc.) but looking it up, apparently it can be turned off.

Chrome > Settings > Sync & Google services > Autocomplete searches & URLs
chrome://settings/syncSetup

Taking Opera as the example for a chromium browser, I couldn't find it.
opera://settings/syncSetup

Aloha didn't have it either:
aloha://settings/syncSetup

But the 138.0.7204.168 Official Build, ungoogled-chromium) (64-bit) had it. Mine was turned off, by default:
Sync and Google services > Other Google services
Improve search suggestions = on/off
When you type in the address bar or search box, Chromium sends what
you type to your default search engine to get better suggestions.
This is off in Incognito.

I don't know if I had turned that off, or if it's off by default
in Ungoogled Chromium though.

However, apparently once disabled, Chrome will only show local matches (bookmarks/history) until we press Enter, similar to Firefox when
suggestions are off.

This feature seems to be stripped out of the privacy browsers though.
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

On 19.12.2025 17:47, R Daneel Olivaw wrote:

Marian wrote:

PSA:
Accidentally typing your login by accident into Firefox URL bar when search >> suggestions are enabled will be transmitted to your search engine before
you hit Enter.

However...
If you disable search suggestions, Firefox will only show local matches
(bookmarks/history) until you press Enter, meaning nothing is sent online
until you actually perform the search.

Chrome behaves similarly to Firefox.

I'd rephrase that: Firefox behaves similarly to Chrome
Chrome is a product of Google and that (public) convenience is typical
of them. At least we can turn that feature off in FF.

it's absolutely horrible when you watch your network traffic
on a 2nd screen (linux router with sniffer) and
every single keystroke triggers a request to google.com ;)

ciao...

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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

Marian wrote:

R Daneel Olivaw wrote:

If you disable search suggestions, Firefox will only show local matches
(bookmarks/history) until you press Enter, meaning nothing is sent
online
until you actually perform the search.

Chrome behaves similarly to Firefox.

I'd rephrase that: Firefox behaves similarly to Chrome
Chrome is a product of Google and that (public) convenience is typical
of them.-a At least we can turn that feature off in FF.

Good point. I only added Chrome as an afterthought as I didn't want it to seem like I was attacking the Firefox privacy design in this PSA.

Taking your helpful input into account, and looking up the question:
Q: Is it true you can't turn it off for Chrome?
A: ?

Looking it up...
By default, Chrome sends what we type in the address bar to our default search engine which is used to provide search suggestions. As with FF, if
we accidentally type sensitive info (like a login), it will be transmitted before we hit Enter.

I don't have Chrome itself on my system (I have ungoogled chromium, Brave, Aloha, Opera, etc.) but looking it up, apparently it can be turned off.

Chrome > Settings > Sync & Google services > Autocomplete searches & URLs chrome://settings/syncSetup

Taking Opera as the example for a chromium browser, I couldn't find it. opera://settings/syncSetup

Aloha didn't have it either:
aloha://settings/syncSetup

But the 138.0.7204.168 Official Build, ungoogled-chromium) (64-bit) had it. Mine was turned off, by default:
Sync and Google services > Other Google services
Improve search suggestions = on/off
When you type in the address bar or search box, Chromium sends what you
type to your default search engine to get better suggestions.
This is off in Incognito.

I don't know if I had turned that off, or if it's off by default
in Ungoogled Chromium though.

However, apparently once disabled, Chrome will only show local matches (bookmarks/history) until we press Enter, similar to Firefox when
suggestions are off.

This feature seems to be stripped out of the privacy browsers though.

afaik Brave is the best Chrome-based browser around, although I hardly
ever use it nowadays because FF is just far more configureable. If a
site can't handle FF then I go somewhere else.
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

R Daneel Olivaw wrote:

This feature seems to be stripped out of the privacy browsers though.

afaik Brave is the best Chrome-based browser around, although I hardly
ever use it nowadays because FF is just far more configureable. If a
site can't handle FF then I go somewhere else.

To that point of which is a good "privacy" platform to work on, I
personally tested all the so-called "privacy" browsers, starting in early
July when the chromium-based Epic Privacy Browser went bust, where I
started with Mullvad & Brave but both made adding a VPN extension
miserable.

Mainly I've settled on Opera (where the VPN is built in) and Aloha (where I
had to add autohotkey scripts to keep the VPN on all the time) as "the
best" privacy browser which supports free no-registration VPN extensions.

I did test all the known Mozilla-based & Chromium-based supposedly free supposedly no-registration supposedly ad-free VPN extensions, where all
failed the one-strike-you're-out test, but Browsec was the best overall.

Like you, I've tested every browser out there, and every free VPN
extension, so just consider that a quick summary off the cuff of "best".
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

Schugo wrote:

I'd rephrase that: Firefox behaves similarly to Chrome
Chrome is a product of Google and that (public) convenience is typical
of them. At least we can turn that feature off in FF.

it's absolutely horrible when you watch your network traffic
on a 2nd screen (linux router with sniffer) and
every single keystroke triggers a request to google.com ;)

I think that's why we always instantly remove "Chrome" from any platform, whether that's Android or Windows where it's often there by default.

And, I think, NOT phoning home is expressly what Bromite/Chromite (Android) and Ungoogled Chromium (Windows) are for (are they not?)

As a related aside, I've written a few tutorials recently for creating your own privacy environment on Windows, where I've modified the open source implementation of both Privoxy & ProxyBridge to incorporate proxies in
series with VPNs (either before the VPN, or after the VPN connection).

In general, I found the Mozilla browsers much more easily adapted to
proxies but the Chromium browsers more likely to follow system defaults by default. It's a double-edged sword though, since one easily allows each browser to use a different proxy while the other follows them by default.

To your point about "sniffers", I abhor the too-voluminous output of Wireshark, but I've found the output from ProxyBridge thankfully brief.

Each connection echoes to the console with a single line of the format:
[CONN] psiphon-tunnel-core.exe (PID:6060) -> 127.0.0.1:20579 via Direct
[CONN] firefox.exe (PID:8668) -> 44.215.143.203:443 via Proxy SOCKS5://127.0.0.1:1080
[CONN] firefox.exe (PID:8668) -> 54.89.164.209:443 via Proxy
[CONN] psiphon-tunnel-core.exe (PID:6060) -> 127.0.0.1:20635 via Direct
[CONN] firefox.exe (PID:8668) -> 44.215.129.188:443 via Proxy SOCKS5://127.0.0.1:1080

The beauty of ProxyBridge FOSS software is that you can place ANY Windows executable into it, to track where it's going.

I wrote a few tutorials on how to do that, so that's just a 1-line
summary of an advantage to putting any Windows executable in the
pb.bat rules.txt file.
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

Marian wrote:

PSA:
Accidentally typing your login by accident into Firefox URL bar when search suggestions are enabled will be transmitted to your search engine before
you hit Enter.

However...
If you disable search suggestions, Firefox will only show local matches (bookmarks/history) until you press Enter, meaning nothing is sent online until you actually perform the search.

Chrome behaves similarly to Firefox.

While on this subject, I was looking to disable this glorious feature on
my Android smartphone (Firefox of course), any idea how? The settings
menu is ambiguous.
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