Dear Mozilla Firefox Community: My question is about disabling an AddOn vs completely uninstalling it from a privacy/permissions stand-point. When I disable an AddOn from my browser, does that prevent the collection of data/revoke the permissions required to install it? Or does the AddOn sit idle, silently collecting data in the background? Also, when uninstalling an AddOn from my browser, does that instantly revoke all collection of data first allowed, or does it still collect residual data?
When an add-on is disabled, none of its code is executed. The main difference between uninstalling and disabling is that uninstalling will remove all of its local files, including settings etc. from your computer. The only downside to having many installed but disabled extensions - in theory (as in, you need a lot of extensions for this to be relevant) - is that Firefox still has to know that they exist.