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Mozilla

Prevent websites from removing right-clickability

Between being sick the other day, and studying for some serious tests next week, I’m reading and seeing things (and not other things). Disregard. For historical purposes only until further notice.

First let me say on a personal level, I’m very much in favor of bug 86193. But I’m not sure everyone will be as thrilled as I am.

The web browser serves as the vehicle to the corporate intranet. A vast resource of company resources. The problem many companies have had with making their companies assets available on the intranet is stealing. It’s harder for an employee to go into a document storage facility, and steal some folders. It’s very easy for someone to browse into the companies document retention system and lift some very important data.

But enough background, what does this have to do with Mozilla?

I’ve got a small suspicion, this could cause Mozilla to loose a chance at being the browser of choice in the workplace, with this patch. The problem is many companies are deploying Asset Management Software. They want employees to browse the resources, and easily work with them as necessary, and per company protocols. What they don’t want, is a user just saving to their HD. As a result, with software like this, right click is often disabled (see bug), and various other methods are used to obscure the image (funny CGI’s that save with file name and improper extension, etc.).

Granted there is no 100% security on the web, and a user could also take a screenshot, or http dump, or one of the many methods available (get Page Info and go to the media tab). Most of these methods are out of reach (or at least knowledge) of the casual user. Meaning, the assets are at least safe from the general user who wants to take advantage.

Again, this is nothing more than a reflection, with some knowledge of such systems. It’s not meant to spark a huge debate, or a flame. Just a thought out loud. Because that’s what the internet is all about.

2 replies on “Prevent websites from removing right-clickability”

Um.. isn’t this why we have the facility for an administrator to set some prefs and lock them so that users can’t change them?

Um… Maybe I’m missing something here, but…
The pref to invoke this feature is disabled by default. If you are going to be knowledgeable enough to turn the pref on, then you sure as hell are going to knowledgeable enough to know that you can access everything on the context menu in other ways,
Have you looked at the file menu (Save Page As) or the View menu (Page Source)? These are not obscure solutions like http dump or Page Info. You can find the same options in Internet Explorer or Netscape 4.x or Opera. Yet these companies continue to use web browsers that allow these thiefy menus! Of course you can get Mozilla to run without access to these options, but you can just as easily leave the pref disabled.
It seems to me like context menu blocking provides absolutely no deterrent against theft and that people would have to morons to think otherwise.
Maybe I’m wrong though.

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