How to remove unwanted add ons from mozila

#How to remove unwanted add ons from mozila software

The solution we are pursuing, as described in our last post, is for the builds used by the majority of Firefox users to require that add-ons be signed by Mozilla.

These violate another of MozillaвЂ™s basic principles: IndividualsвЂ™ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional. These add-ons are not created with user security in mind and can break fundamental browser security. Most of these unwanted add-ons are advertising related in some way, tracking user actions and altering content. Their Internet experience is being shaped by these third party add-ons in ways they did not choose and that benefit third parties and not the user.

#How to remove unwanted add ons from mozila software

Even updates of software that many users find indispensable or software from download sites run by trusted news organizations come bundled with these unwanted extras. Users run the risk of picking up unwanted extra add-ons and other software every time they download software over the Internet. While only fourteen add-ons hosted on our site have more than a million users, and only two of those have more than 3 million, many tens of millions of users have non-hosted add-ons that were installed without their informed consent. The Web experienced by tech-savvy developers, however, is not the Web experienced by most people. Add-ons are one manifestation of a freedom so important to us that we have enshrined it in our Mozilla principles: Individuals must have the ability to shape the Internet and their own experiences on the Internet. Add-ons can use, manipulate, or even replace just about any aspect of Firefox internals. Firefox add-ons arenвЂ™t restricted to a limited API for manipulating Web content and parts of the browser. I myself have 22 active add-ons at the moment, with another seven disabled but on hand just in case. We love add-ons and wouldnвЂ™t want to browse the Web without the enhanced experience they offer. This post should give you a better idea of why we think extension signing is necessary and how we are still honoring our principles of openness and user control. In our last post we mentioned the difficulties of tracking down add-ons and blocking them, but thereвЂ™s much more behind the decisions that were made to come up with this plan. I would like to add more insight into why we are making this change.

Most of them were concerned with the burden this puts on developers who donвЂ™t host their add-ons on AMO as well as the centralization of add-on oversight. MozillaвЂ™s recent announcement that mandatory extension signing is coming to Firefox this summer generated a lot of feedback from our developer community.