I’m proud of xIFr. I think I have made a great tool with that. But it has never been able to “edit metadata tags” or “compare metadata across multiple image files”.
And nor can an exact copy of xIFr.
I haven’t reported it yet. I guess I have to update my “standard reporting text”, and add lies to capabilities claimed in the description.
@Edward_Sullivan, any news on why a couple of earlier reported clones hasn’t been removed? Maybe especially the oldest, MetaVision Explorer uploaded Jan 11 by the account with the not very spam-like name “Instagram Reels Download - Snapinsta”? It has been reported twice (by me).
Sorry for my continuously postings here, but I want to keep focus on this very annoying problem.
The latest xIFr clone dropped the extra long description and custom icon from the previous one. We are back to standard “placeholder icon” and a short about-description. But experiments from the spammer hasn’t stopped…
The latest clone-extension is marked as compatible with Firefox for Android, and some user(?) has given it a 5-star review.
Thanks to Ed and the reviewers for the latest clean-up.
All remaining xIFr-clones on AMO I had discovered to date has been removed today.
That means that a total of 43 xIFr-clones has been found and removed since middle of November!
I have been very insisting regarding the clones of my own xIFr extension. But hope progress also is made identifying and removing clones of other extensions.
I haven’t seen any new clones of xIFr since late March. There used to be posted at least one new clone every week.
I know Mozilla/AMO have made some initiatives to get rid of clones. But I thought they were more “reactive” than “proactive”. But maybe not? Looks very encouraging and promising so far !
How about you @hans_squared? While I have mostly been focused on my own xIFr, you have looked at the bigger picture. Any idea if clone-spamming has stopped in general, or is it only me who is lucky about xIFr?
I couldn’t find any new clone extensions in Search results – Add-ons for Firefox (en-US)
But there’s a trivial extension called “YT Open in Muted Tab v223” with online gambling spam in the uploader’s profile.
Looks like it’s the same old spammer, he’s just changed tactics.
@igorlogius, if you don’t get any response from this, you might also tag Edward Sullivan from this thread. I had a lot of direct communication with him regarding the clones of xIFr, and Mozilla’s attempts to stop them.
Sigh, here we go again.
Or well, I’m not sure if it spam if it is just somebody posting a “copy” for fun and attention.
The extension I just discovered is called “EXIFdata Viewer”. It was posted on Jan 27th and has the version-number 1.2.1 (but it is the first version posted/available of it).
Even if not spam, I would say it is at least in violation of
If the add-on is a fork of another add-on, the name must clearly distinguish it from the original and provide a significant difference in functionality and/or code.
It brings nothing new compared to my extension.
I both installed it and looked through the code, and noticed the following:
It is based on my latest xIFr 3.1.0
Manifest: Changed version-number to 1.2.1, remove references to me, new id.
Replaced the logo-icons with monochrome versions of my logo-icons
Some reformatting of code in general including removal of my comments in the code
The boarding-folder was removed and so was related “on/up-boarding-code” from backgroundscript.js
On Options page, links to my “About xIFr” and “Getting started with xIFr” pages has been removed (a html-comment about the removal is actually inserted instead). Also link to my Privacy Policy and references to me and my homepage in general was removed from this page.
Changed text-colors in exif-popup and Options-page.
Removed settings and info about my unique “Deep Search”-feature from the Options-page (but “Deep Search” is still used in the extension)
Besides that, on AMO it has been marked as “Android compatible”. But it still requires right-click functionality to work, so…
PS. I also ran Fakespot Deepfake Text Detector on the first 120 characters of AMO extension-description. Result: AI Patterns Detected By Fakespot Apollo DFT Confidence score 96%
