Downloading a editable PDF via Firefox ruins its functionality

[Doubtfire_Redux]

1) Official Government sites (Internal Revenue Service, FINCEN, Beneficial Owner reports, FATCA, etc) in the USA and in Europe OFTEN use ADOBE GENERATED PDF's, which are supposedly enabled to be filled in by the long suffering citizen. This is because a government has the money to afford the full on Adobe subscription.

2) When the unsuspecting citizen downloads such a PDF using FIREFOX, and later tries to open it with either ADOBE Reader or with any of the "third party PDF" read & edit software, THEN the act of downloading and saving it with Firefox appears to have STRIPPED that PDF of whatever "secretive, non-transparent PERMISSIONS" that are apparently necessary to be allowed to open that PDF to read & edit it.

3) I have experimented with several common browsers, which I dislike for their data-gobbling spyware ( EDGE, Chrome, SAFARI) to see whether this also happens on those browsers. The results are varied.

Would it be possible for Mozilla/Firefox to find OUT EXACTLY WHAT IT IS that makes such PDFs downloaded via FIREFOX behave this way? That would be nice.

I would put my attention on simple data "bits and pieces" such as the DATE when a particular PDF was generated the first time (at the government office), and the DATE it was saved to disk the second time (at the home of the intended user. Resetting the date might work. Another item to look for is, maybe, a counter within the PDF file, which keeps track of how many times the file had been saved, and resetting that counter to ONE.

I would like to tell governments that they should not use such "greedware", but then again, have you or anyone
ever been able to successfully tell a "government bureaucrat" to do something better or smarter? Likely not.
Why? Because, as a rule of thumb, governments and software companies do not listen.

Mozilla is a software company. Would they ever listen, or, gaaaaasp, understand, or double-gaaaasp, respond in a reasonable fashion? I am still betting on Mozilla, but I am waiting for a response

Will the new EDIT PDF in the Firefox browser solve this problem? I will be back and report on this, when I find out.

[marco]

Hello @Doubtfire_Redux! This should not be happening. How are you saving those PDFs? Are you using the Save button or the Print button?

[Doubtfire_Redux]

I am using the DOWNLOAD button, which consists of a downward Arrow which  points to a thingi  that looks either like a plate or box.   Files going in there go into the "Downloads" folder.

I have meanwhile learned that I have to, reluctantly, use Edge or Chrome, whenever I download a fillable form from a government agency, for example the IRS , that is using ADOBE to create that form.  Some sort of permission or function gets stripped from a fillable Adobe created form when I save it via the most recent Firefox version.  Since software formats apparently now have a mind of their own, there is nothing I can do about it, and the idea that software actively attacks other software is something we must put up with, because pretty much all software people lack decency, consideration of others, conscience, knowledge of and agreement with the Golden Rule.   

To save you the time and effort, here goes : "The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as you would like to be treated yourself, often summarized as "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This ethical guideline is found in many religions and philosophies throughout history."

[marco]

Could you share a link to one of these PDFs so we can test?