referer.spoofSource breaks Google Hangouts

[TimeBomb]

Hey guys, I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox, happily leveraging some options in ffprofile.com. I noticed a random, seemingly unrelated problem in Firefox, where hangouts.google.com wasn't delivering my text messages - it was just hanging and eventually failing to deliver. What this looks like: https://gfycat.com/ifr/GleefulBlaringHarpyeagle

Through some trial and error, I eventually confirmed that it was due solely to "network.http.referer.spoofSource" being set to the non-default of "true" by the prefs.js ffprofile.com gave to me. Setting it back to "false" fixed Google Hangouts and it no longer has trouble sending text messages.

I forget exactly what I checked on ffprofile.com for that settings to be set to true, but a more explicit warning about it breaking some sites, potentially even an explicit warning about it breaking Google Hangouts itself, would be useful so others don't run into this issue as well.

Cheers.

[allo-]

Almost every setting which prevents such data to be sent has the potential to break something. There are plans to create "breaks: xy" notifications (https://github.com/allo-/userjs-schema/blob/master/prefs.json), but this needs to be implemented first ...

Can you test with the RefControl extension and this article what are the maximum privacy settings where it still works?

spoofSource should be one of the least problematic settings (i.e. in contrast to sending no referer at all). If hangouts really needs the full referer, you probably should use RefControl for using a whitelist.

[jklmli]

Ran into this too - network.http.referer.spoofSource breaks Hangouts for me. Haven't tried using the RefControl extension.

[allo-]

RefControl does not work with recent firefox as far as I know.

Have you tried other combinations of the options in https://www.ghacks.net/2015/01/22/improve-online-privacy-by-controlling-referrer-information/? It would be nice to find a combination which can be recommended for privacy without breaking things.

[Atavic]

Anything Google related needs most tracking entries untouched: that's exactly the opposite of what this repo is doing. I suggest either a new profile or another browser for using Google services.