What to do about Junk Firefox Ad-Ons??

mightyglydd · Post by **mightyglydd** » December 13th, 2006, 1:29 am

Yes..... Ban Them.. specifically anything with ARVI's name on it! AMO is being played like a fiddle(no pun intended) by this guy.The fox is in the hen house, and as for Bug Reports; I looked at todays; there's an anthill of them,and I doubt most are treated any differently than Spam Mail. Clearly no action has been taken on this ongoing problem.

Ahriman · Post by **Ahriman** » December 13th, 2006, 3:49 am

Aitan wrote:Listen: if AMO and MoCo really wanted to keep the place clean they don't need us to watch the new tricks used by those pricks.
Each extension must be approved, so they could just remove any extension as soon as the author starts trying to bend the rules, I didn't see any place where it's stated that all and every extension will be offered in AMO, so if you can't put your extension there, it's your problem, and the most important element in AMO should be the trust of the users so they know that everything in AMO has been tested so they can install it safely without fears of any kind of misbehavior (memory leak, inestability, breakage of other extensions, etc..)
If the author of an extension is always trying to bypass the rules to get higher exposure for their extensions, How can you trust him that he won't try to do anything shady in their extensions?

They don't need to develop a new system from scratch, the only ones that are damaged while the current system is active are the users and the credibility of MoCo, while those fake developers just spend their time trying to find new ways to keep with their game. Ban them, if they want to provide the toolbar for their users then they can put it in their page and ask users to accept it, they don't need AMO for that.

It could be said louder but not better. I'm for banning from AMO the people (and their extensions) that break the rules: 1st. fault, an advice; 2nd. fault, a temporary ban; 3rd. fault, you are busted.

The user confidence is a big part of FF success. You can't gamble with it.

VanillaMozilla · Post by **VanillaMozilla** » December 13th, 2006, 7:18 am

Ahriman wrote:I'm for banning from AMO the people (and their extensions) that break the rules

Right. What rule?

VanillaMozilla · Post by **VanillaMozilla** » December 13th, 2006, 7:36 am

mightyglydd wrote:The fox is in the hen house, and as for Bug Reports; I looked at todays; there's an anthill of them,....

I don't see anything about a loophole. Still needs a bug report.

On a related note, bug 362102 is interesting. It is marked as a duplicate of a closed bug. That means it's a sensitive security issue.

mightyglydd · Post by **mightyglydd** » December 13th, 2006, 12:12 pm

Update...the My Wiki Toolbar has been changed back to Wikipedia Toolbar!? Getting scared ARVI?

vettbass · Post by **vettbass** » December 13th, 2006, 12:58 pm

vanilla and viper:

Thanx for the reply on the "Download Statusbar" issue. Not sure what to tell you beyond what my experience was with it. Have since upgraded to FF2 but truth is, this extension didn't really knock me out that much anyway. I'm just going to leave it alone.

The ONE extension I HEARTILY recommend is "NoScript". This one should be a "must have" for any security conscious surfer.

I'm sure there are others I would enjoy and continue to try out.

BTW, I personally LOVE the "Aluminum Kai 2" theme which I use, but we all have our own taste of course.

Thanx again to both of you.

the-edmeister · Post by **the-edmeister** » December 13th, 2006, 3:22 pm

Does anyone have any opinion about how many "legitimate" extensions would be affected by a ban on extensions that contain *.exe files?

Ed

old zmanzero · Post by **old zmanzero** » December 14th, 2006, 11:10 pm

oh lord, just when i thought i could weed them out...

along comes the Bibirmer Toolbar.

*cough... Privacy and Security... cough*

Please note:
Please see our privacy policy here-
http://www.bibirmer.com/Extensions/privacy.html

venus_de_mpls · Post by **venus_de_mpls** » December 15th, 2006, 3:10 am

the-edmeister wrote:Does anyone have any opinion about how many "legitimate" extensions would be affected by a ban on extensions that contain *.exe files?

Ed

That is a legitimate question. It seems there is no checking for well, just about anything common denominator wise within AMO unless the 'developer' chooses a category.

DonGato · Post by **DonGato** » December 15th, 2006, 3:17 am

And why AMO would ban such thing?
AFAIK they don't disallow that, so there is nothing wrong unless it's spyware or harmful to your PC in some way.

VanillaMozilla · Post by **VanillaMozilla** » December 15th, 2006, 6:42 am

They can't check binary files very well. They can't even check ASCII files thoroughly. The draft policy, which is officially ignored because it's only a draft, says that they are automatically suspicious of binary files. Personally, I wouldn't even consider an extension with a binary file.

old FatJohn · Post by **old FatJohn** » December 15th, 2006, 7:04 am

Is there other reason to include binaries except spyware?

old LoudNoise · Post by **old LoudNoise** » December 15th, 2006, 8:57 am

zmanzero wrote:oh lord, just when i thought i could weed them out...

along comes the Bibirmer Toolbar.

*cough... Privacy and Security... cough*

Please note:
Please see our privacy policy here-
http://www.bibirmer.com/Extensions/privacy.html

Actually, I kinda like this:
From the Bibirmer section of AMO

We will give you US$5000 if after creating a toolbar, you can demonstrate that would be defined as spyware according to accepted:

•The program does not install any component or support file that is not expressly required for it's function, including registry modifications.

Assuming you gotta get all four definitions before they cough up the dough this sort of strikes me as the "No Redeeming social importance" loophole the porn industry used to use .

DonGato · Post by **DonGato** » December 15th, 2006, 11:45 am

Well, if we follow this definition they can be regarded as spyware:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware

- Spyware is computer software that collects personal information about users without their informed consent
- Like many recent viruses, however, spyware — by design — exploits infected computers for commercial gain
- monitoring of Web-browsing activity for marketing purposes
- routing of HTTP requests to advertising sites

vettbass · Post by **vettbass** » December 15th, 2006, 11:47 am

It's always a "buyer beware" situation even when the product is free. The point about "TRUST" IS the real issue. If AMO, MoCo do not NOT strictly enforce their own rules, then trust is lost in the process.

I trust FF as it comes "out of the box" but anything beyond that as created by others is suspect. No offense intended here, just caution. Even the best intended developer CAN overlook a nasty bug that crops up into a big problem. (I need not state the obvious as far as malicious infectors are concerned.)

If you DO find a bug in FF there is a wealth of resources to tap into to resolve it. As to third parties, it's a crap shoot. No offense to concientious developers here of course, but it's just wise to be sceptical about third party providers. That sceptisism is of course a bane to all serious developers, but then you know that going in. You have to build your own reputation since trust is earned, not taken for granted by the wise.