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Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

#311

Sadly, this removed my settings for multi-account containers extension :(

Just heads up here. I was able to restore it partially on Windows using https://www.shadowexplorer.com/downloads.html (which is, btw, a great tool!) You'd be looking for a file C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\YOUR_PROFILE\containers.json and also ...\YOUR_PROFILE\browser-extension-data\@testpilot-containers

Thanks, you just saved me a headache.

Re: Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can boot up almost any 20 year old piece of Windows software and it'll work fine, it might not make sense in the current world but it won't go "2019? Fuck off!" Is that really true? Would it connect to 802.11m WiFi router? Would you consider it secure enough to open your banking website on it? The bar is not just booting up the machine. The bar is whether the machine is usable (secure).

> Would it connect to 802.11m WiFi router? Sure. It's using OS networking APIs. Or running in a virtual machine. > Would you consider it secure enough to open your banking website on it? If I'm running 20 year old software, it's probably to interact with a legacy system. There are still businesses that run on like 486's with Windows 3.1. This is more common than you think! > The bar is whether the machine is usable (…

> For all they know I'm using the software in a museum, 20 years from now, about this era of computing.

And then you'll simulate a time appropriate for the device/software. As a date before 2038 to not have unix time overflow. Or 2000. Or any other time specific bug.

Or how often did you have to "fix the internet" for one of your relatives because their damn CMOS battery died? Yeah, time seems to be quite relevant for trust.

And I don't even like mozilla enforcing signatures for addons that strongly, but people can go overboard.

Re: Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the same for me. Firefox 66.0.3 on Xubuntu 19.04. I also turn off a lot of phone-home behaviour. And I never had any problems with extensions getting disabled. I have no idea why I wasn't affected. But frankly, "not being affected" isn't good enough for me. Even if I dodged this bullet I might not dodge the next. I'm looking for an alternative browser. Falkon has been interesting so far. It's a little bare-bon…

One screwup is enough for you to jump ship? Or have there been others? (I'm genuinely curious, not trying to be aggressive.) I personally don't think all this talk of "Bye-bye firefox" is quite fair (I'm referring to a number of comments on this page, not yours specifically). In my opinion (you may disagree), Mozilla is one of our best and strongest allies in the fight for a fair internet. Their values matter because…

It's not one screw up. I love the sync functionality and Rust/Syncro is great. But on the other side it feels like 'they' take constantly power functionality away while the shallow and shiny homepage claims: "More power to you". But maybe I'm just still sour because of the Eich ousting?

Re: Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

#314
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but i also don't have the fix, since i turned off studies. i'm guessing the cert check was blocked. what url does the check attempt to connect to?

Cert check doesn't need to connect to any url to fail. It's just the cert's only expired 20 hours ago, so this issue is currently only affecting approximately 83% of users who happen to be checking at a time of day that has already passed, over the next 4 hours that will go up to 100% (ignoring users who receive a fix before it breaks).

ah, good point. i didn't think through beforehand how this should have worked.

Re: Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the same for me. Firefox 66.0.3 on Xubuntu 19.04. I also turn off a lot of phone-home behaviour. And I never had any problems with extensions getting disabled. I have no idea why I wasn't affected. But frankly, "not being affected" isn't good enough for me. Even if I dodged this bullet I might not dodge the next. I'm looking for an alternative browser. Falkon has been interesting so far. It's a little bare-bon…

One screwup is enough for you to jump ship? Or have there been others? (I'm genuinely curious, not trying to be aggressive.) I personally don't think all this talk of "Bye-bye firefox" is quite fair (I'm referring to a number of comments on this page, not yours specifically). In my opinion (you may disagree), Mozilla is one of our best and strongest allies in the fight for a fair internet. Their values matter because…

Oh, it's not just this screwup. I've had growing misgivings about the way Mozilla has handled Firefox's path for years now. Most of my grievances have to do with refusing to provide tools to enable users to kill off idiotic and/or evil decisions on the part of website developers. For example:

No ability to restrict websites' overrides of keyboard shortcuts as long as Javascript is enabled.

In a similar vein, the scourge of scrolljacking. Every time some web developer thinks that my scrolling down a few notches with my mouse wheel equals "that user wants to scroll precisely one whole page down in slow motion!", my blood pressure spikes.

The Mr. Robot thing. (I came very close to abandoning ship after THAT one.)

The unsettling creepy nature of Pocket, Snippets, and studies.

The stubborn refusal to put easy-to-use media autoplay controls in the normal preferences.

This whole "killing off almost everyone's extensions" debacle.

And now this Normandy thing that's just been publicized, which allows Mozilla to quietly override user preferences. Even if they have the best of intentions in its use, can they be trusted to competently and wisely wield that power?

I just don't trust Mozilla's intentions or competence anymore. So I'm jumping ship. And frankly, I'm starting to develop a real dislike of the web in general. I used to regard Mozilla as the group that provided a great way to access all the cool sites built by talented developers. More and more I'm starting to see Firefox as a necessary evil alternative to Chrome, and the average web developer as a soulless cog in the wheel of the "fuck your privacy, user, we've got advertising we need to ram down your throat and personal data to slurp up en masse!" advertising industry.

Re: Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

#316
Can we take a moment and consider the side effects?

This is a once in a lifetime chance for Google & Co. to get a glimpse of all those sly fuckers hiding behind adblockers.

This effectively uncloaked a very specific subset of Internet users and exposed them to the very companies that they've been actively trying to avoid. Not just those who avoid Chrome, but those who take extra steps to explicitly evade the tracking.

Surely Mozilla, the privacy advocate, must understand the impact of this fuck up, and yet the offered "fix" doesn't even mention a one-click .xpi install, but rather asks to enable a mechanism that, if left enabled, will grant unnecessary control to Mozilla over people installs.

This ain't right.

Re: Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

#317
post #52
post #18

Instead of enabling studies just click on this link. It installs that specific "study" (hotfix) without installing anything else. https://storage.googleapis.com/moz-fx-normandy-prod-addons/e...

How do I uninstall this? It doesn't show up anywhere after installation.

`about:studies` will show active studies and allow you to remove

Re: Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that's pretty unfair. 1) They state they are working on a fix for normal, release channel users who don't want to run studies 2) they tell you to temporarily run studies to get the fix within up to 6 six hours (could be faster; set expectation) 3) You can explicitly install nightly or 66.4 before it's pushed if you want a fix now Yes, it's unfortunate, I'd expect them to meet it head on, push a tested fix in a tim…

Not saying that their current actions are wrong , just that the optics of it are terrible for them. There was a chain of bad decisions that led them here though: 1) thinking it's ok to disable software after its installed (using cert expiration -- I'm ok if the cert was revoked but that's a totally different discussion), 2) Taking more control of people's local software than many people are comfortable with, especial…

What does optics mean in this context?

Re: Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

#319

From ghacks (comment section): https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/04/your-firefox-extensions-ar... This should allow the extensions to work until the next check (Verified locally): 1) Shut down Firefox 2) Open extensions.json (located by about:profile -> Root Directory) 3) Replace all instances of “appDisabled”:false to “appDisabled”:true 4) Replace all instances of “signedState”:-1 to “signedState”:2 5) Save and close e…

it works!

Re: Update Regarding Add-Ons in Firefox

#320
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying that their current actions are wrong , just that the optics of it are terrible for them. There was a chain of bad decisions that led them here though: 1) thinking it's ok to disable software after its installed (using cert expiration -- I'm ok if the cert was revoked but that's a totally different discussion), 2) Taking more control of people's local software than many people are comfortable with, especial…

For what it's worth, the (initial) mechanism for disabling add-ons (your 1) has been present since before Firefox 1.0. It was designed to quickly deactivate any malicious add-on as soon as it was detected, before it had a chance to do too much damage. In my books, that's a good thing. Here, the mechanism that kicked in was the protection against add-ons that could have been signed with stolen credentials, which would…

> It was designed to quickly deactivate any malicious add-on as soon as it was detected, before it had a chance to do too much damage. In my books, that's a good thing.

I hate this attitude from security people so much. If for the sake of fighting malicious code you are crippling the software usability or my user experience, you are the malicious code.

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