Hello
Was using Firefox 10+ years in a row now and was always happy to have this browser.
But now Mozilla turned into something that I cannot trust longer.
Beginning with the high praised Quantum which destroyed my meticulous installed and clean profile in just a second. Quantum destroyed my profile because another user was using the same installation with a fresh profile. Fresh profiles are set to auto-update by default. And as I was starting my profile later… it got ruined.
It cost me very much time to find out why the installation was updated. And it took much time to figure out that avoiding auto-update is nearly impossible… at least if you use profiles.
More as one year I was using FF 50-56 on different computers after Quantum release… each computer with different profile and addons. Regularly I tryed to find replacements for the Quantum-killed addons… but without success. One of the important addons (used in all my profiles) broke more and more so I was not able to use FF properly.
Time to leave my beloved FF installation and install it fresh with last version. It took me 3 full days to search and test new addons again and again… to overtake all my settings… bookmarks… addon-preferences… speed-dial shortcuts… and passwords.
Passwords was really funny! FF stores passwords in special files. My installations were using version 3 ( ? ) of these files. On the way from my version ( 50-56 ) to version 65 Mozilla was also updating the password files to new versions. Version 5 is latest. This is shown nowhere. It was impossible to update the password storage from 50-56 to 65 - password storage was empty after this. I had to update the installation by hand through all stable versions just to ensure that FF will update the storage from version 3 to 4 and then to 5.
After each update I was checking for passwords and that auto-update is still off. Then I was working on all the settings, addons, shortcuts, bookmarks. All together 3 full days.
I copied this installation to other computers… just to see that FF has magically turned on auto-update again… and it started auto-update on first start to version 66. WUNDERFULL !!
This was 2 months ago.
Next point is that you removed the option to “don’t search for updates”. A dozen times every day I get this pesky “hey there is an update”-popup. Also above video streams and such.
NOW… Mozilla ruined that all again. Without any update of my software installation. They tell me what software I may use on my own computer hardware. They remotely deactivate all my installed addons. They leave me with a blank installation… unsecure… without my script- and content-blockers. They let me run on darkweb pages without security. I have a broken profile again… and have to wait maybe days or weeks or months until there are signatures or alternate addons. Not to talk about all the work to get my FF installation running again as I want.
2 times in a row you destroyed my profiles… without any help. You just push the red button and destroy the hardly installed and well working internet experience on users computers all over the world. You have no right to change any byte on my computer without asking me if I want that.
You say it’s for better browsing, secure browsing, protecting FF-users from bad addons and or malware. But it’s not just that. It’s that you just want protect Mozilla so that peoples cannot say that easy “using Mozilla or addons is unsecure”. You call it blocklist for addons. I call it kind of DRM. You say you want protect users. I say you want control them… what they are allowed to do and to see and what not.
While writing this I have to think about bad regimes of some nations in their darkest periods. That’s why we have Tor and other software.
What we need here is an addon to terminate your pesky update-popups… an addon that prevent FF from contacting update URLs… and an addon to kill your addon-blocklist. But guess what? You will never give signatures for them or whitelist them.
Thank you Mozilla!