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Comment by shak77

9 years ago

This is what it looks like: https://imgur.com/a/mriUw

It scared the hell out of me! Are these guys losing their minds?

It was reported as a bug and the response thus far is indeed underwhelming for such a severe issue: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1424977

44 comments

shak77

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bwat49  9 years ago

It wasn't supposed to be visible on the addons page

  • mark-r  9 years ago

    I don't think that makes it better. Knowing that there's a way to get an addon installed invisibly is going to be more justification for paranoia.

    • dahart  9 years ago

      There almost certainly is not a way to invisibly install add-ons, unless you are part of Mozilla, and, you know, making Firefox. If paranoia is your thing, it might be worth considering that Mozilla can do anything it wants inside Firefox core, all of it is "invisible" to you.

      6 replies →

  • zzzeek  9 years ago

    that would be worse

    • Sylos  9 years ago

      How exactly? Whether they push out code to you by just changing the binary or by installing an extension makes no difference. In fact, pushing it out as an extension, means they actually have less control over your browser, because are bound to the restrictions that extensions have.

      Every browser vendor has this control over you when you use their browser. Some have even more, because they don't even need to tell you about it when they're closed-source.

grawprog  9 years ago

>Are these guys losing their minds?

Yes

  • shak77  9 years ago

    I don't know what the hell is going on with Mozilla. Ever tried to install Firefox on Android? The new tab page is full of ads by default!

    And this is the company we are supposed to trust? Because right now I feel like I trust Google more, and that's a lot to say.

    • teekert  9 years ago

      Adds are annoying yes, but they are only bad for your privacy if they track and profile you. Adds allow for free stuff and they can be done the right way. Granted this is becoming more and more rare so I understand your standard association of adds with distrust. The adds you refer to are non tracking (please tell me if I'm wrong though) and will slowly be replaced by sites you visit (often).

      8 replies →

    • grawprog  9 years ago

      No. Firefox was too big for my old phone and I switched to palemoon when firefox stopped allowing unsigned plugins on my desktop. I've been using habit browser on my phone. I don't really trust it at all so I give it minimal permissions and try not to do any browsing on my phone I don't expect to be tracked or monitored. It's fast and customizable and has a built in adblocker so I've been fairly happy with it. I've tried a lot of different mobile browsers. I haven't really found any I liked. They all kinda suck in one way or another. I was really hoping something from F-Droid would be appealing to use but they were all disappointing. The state of mobile browsers in general is kind of abysmal.