Subject: bug#55089: [IceCat and IceDove]: Doesn't use system's locale/timezone.

From: Mark H Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2022 17:11:04 -0400

Hi Raghav and bdju,

"bdju" via Bug reports for GNU Guix <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Sun Apr 24, 2022 at 1:06 AM CDT, Raghav Gururajan via Bug reports for GNU Guix wrote:
>> Hello Guix,
>>
>> It appears that the applications IceCat and IceDove doesn't follow 
>> system's locale/timezone. By default, it uses UTC.
>>
>> This is observed in Guix System and not sure about foreign distros.
>>
>> Regards,
>> RG.
>
> In IceCat at least I believe this is due to the resistfingerprinting
> about:config setting.

Indeed, the "privacy.resistFingerprinting" setting in <about:config>
makes an attempt to avoid leaking personally identifying information
about you.  Locale and time zone are two such pieces of information
which narrow down the set of people you might be, even if you are using
Tor or a VPN.  It is set to "true" by default in IceCat, and "false" by
default in upstream Firefox.

We should probably expose the "privacy.resistFingerprinting" in the
IceCat-specific privacy settings in <about:preferences#privacy>, since
it's a setting that many users will want to turn off.  The same setting
also causes problems for some Javascript programs, including some
audio/video players.

      Regards,
        Mark

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