Private browsing: enforcing use of an extension

Add-ons
1

From These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 51 – Firefox Nightly News:

… Ongoing work on:

  • User opt-in for extensions in private browsing windows
  • …

Found:

Anything else?

Expect some use cases to require private browsing with an extension without the ability for an end user to disable or remove the extension.

Imagine, for example, Impero Education Pro in a managed environment with Firefox ESR 68.

What will be the preferred method of enforcing use of an extension?

2

Hey @grahamperrin! You might also want to follow the tracking bug 1380809](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1380809) for more related bugs.

Let me ask around about the use case you mentioned; I’m not sure if there’s a way to enforce extension usage for enterprise users.

1 Like
3

It’s confirmed that there is no way to force an extension to run in private browsing, even with enterprise policies. This is by design.

The only way to enforcing use of extension is to disable private browsing mode entirely through enterprise policies. That would force extensions to run in normal browsing mode.

4

OK, thanks for the clarification.

Prevention of private browsing is a real drag, from an IT support perspective. I lost count of the number of times that I was frustrated by it. AFAICT we’re currently free from the constraint, hopefully it’ll not return.

I wonder whether the Impero server, or client-side extension, will be able to enforce prevention of private browsing …