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Mozilla Bans Popular Firefox Add-On That Tampered With Security Settings (softpedia.com)

Posted by timothy on from the you-crossed-the-line-but-then-erased-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has banned the popular (250,000+ installs) YouTube Unblock add-on that allowed users to view YouTube clips blocked in their country. The reason for this move is because the add-on was caught disabling a Firefox security setting (code signing) which the allowed it to silent-install another add-on, which Avast (antivirus software) was detecting as malware. Earlier in 2015, the same plugin was again caught cheating when it was using an self-contained update system that was bypassing Mozilla's add-on review process.

2 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Security design-flaw in Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Security relevant settings should of course be changeable. But they should only be changed by the user, and only via native browser UI, or maybe by explicit opt-in permission from the user via native browser UI. I say maybe because is already dangerous to let users grant that kind of permission. Firefox is for the general population, people who have been trained to give anything they install sweeping permissions without even reading the boilerplate.

  2. Re:I didn't realise this add-on existed... by cdrudge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    people who write ad-ons that do not respect the rights of publishers most likely have no respect for your rights either.

    So authors the various ad blockers, NoScript, Ghostery, etc aren't respecting your rights when they also don't respect the publisher's rights, blocking all the crap the publishers include? How am I suppose to live with myself and sleep at night violating the publisher's right to violate me?