Unwanted Firefox Plug-Ins

By | November 29, 2010 | 9 Comments

Unwanted Firefox Plug-Ins

Asa Dotzler, the Director of Community Development at Mozilla Corp. has raised a fair question:

Why do I have these plug-ins in Firefox? I don’t think I ever asked for any of them

There are quite a few plug-ins that make little to no sense, for example:

Why would Firefox ever need a Google or RockMelt Update? Furthermore, why is it okay to install all this malware for the big guys like Apple or Google?

P.S. They are enabled by default.


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • everybody

    I remember when Google released first version of Chrome and I installed it to test new browser. This Google Update plug-in was causing crashes on Firefox every few minutes.

  • Olivia

    I would like to see an option in Firefox where you can enable/disable sneak installs of extensions, with that I mean extensions that aren’t installed by the user. Some extensions, that I didn’t install, don’t even have an uninstall option, I don’t like that.

    • Tiago Sá

      Plugins are computer wide, Firefox can’t do anything to prevent you from installing them. No browser can, to date, although Firefox seems to be the one most ahead in that race. Extensions are never installed without your consent.

  • bonch

    “Malware?” It’s not malware. Don’t be dramatic. Also, putting the word “okay” in quotation marks makes no sense.

    • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas

      Malware, short for malicious software, is software designed to secretly access a computer system without the owner’s informed consent. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.

      Makes perfect sense to call it malware :-)

      • Pothi

        I just some of those malwares! I don’t know what they had been doing so far.

  • RamaSubbu SK

    Firefox can implement a feature to address this!

  • nobody

    it affects all browsers, mostly because:

    – it is how netscape plugin architecture works: you put valid plugin into valid folder and it is launched
    – most browsers spam their ‘plugin path’ with all known locations for plugins – thats why opera can use ff plugins and ff can use safari plugins etc.
    – it is the plugin installer that spams this shit over all possible folders. it is really hard to block installer from copying a file into some folder after you gave it permission to do so. first UAC in vista could prevent that, but it was dumbed down ‘because people complained’

    so.. it affects all browsers (all that can handle these plugins anyway, so obscure ones are ‘safe’)

    • daddylo

      Do you know the location where these plug-ins are located ?
      I like to see and remove useless ones :).

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