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MS Issued a Fix For Its Unwanted FireFox Extension

Posted by kdawson on from the unevenly-distributed dept.

As we discussed last February, and again a few days ago after the Washington Post noticed, Microsoft installed without permission a hard-to-remove Firefox extension along with a service pack for .NET Framework 3.5. Reader Pigskin-Referee lets us know that, as it turns out, Microsoft issued a fix a month ago; details here.

4 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So the WaPo reports a story a month obsolete? by Fujisawa+Sensei · · Score: 3, Informative

    I know that its bad that Microsoft silently installs things that are difficult to remove

    I'm upset about the silent install but could someone please clarify the "difficult to remove" bit? I "removed" it by going into "add-ons" and clicking "disable". Problem solved as far as I'm concerned.....

    Simple: disable != remove

    --
    If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
  2. Re:So the WaPo reports a story a month obsolete? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    It still left .NET to your user agent string. To get rid of false user agent string, you have to enable the extension, install MS removal tool and uninstall the extension with it. Just disabling it or using removal tool to disabled extension will not stop your browser advertising .NET extension.

  3. And the rest of the story... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Scott Hanselman put up a nice post today outlining the whole story. He points out why it turned out this way, how to uninstall it and even put up the source code so you can see their evil ways for those who were too lazy to unzip the xpi.

    http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToRemoveTheNETClickOnceFirefoxExtension.aspx

  4. Re:So the WaPo reports a story a month obsolete? by melstav · · Score: 5, Informative

    Since you dragged the other discussion into this, allow me to point out a comment in that very discussion which points out why it's nowhere near the same thing. (Like the fact that Sun announced months in advance that they were going to do it, and the fact that you can, in fact remove it.)

    That comment is +5 insightful. You don't even have to drill down to find it. Just scroll a bit. Given that (some of) the comments are regularly more fair and balanced than the article summaries, you ought to at least skim the discussion before you decide whether this guy is bringing something useful to the discussion or just throwing more FUD onto the pile.