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June 25th, 2024

Firefox 3rd Party Installer Campaign – Mozilla Community Portal

Mozilla launches a campaign to investigate unofficial Firefox download sources for security risks and outdated versions. Participants report findings to enhance user security and experience. Campaign runs from June 14 to July 14, 2024.

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Firefox 3rd Party Installer Campaign – Mozilla Community Portal

Mozilla is running a campaign to investigate third-party websites offering Firefox downloads outside of the official Mozilla.org source. The campaign aims to uncover potential security risks, outdated versions, and incorrect locales associated with these downloads. Participants are encouraged to search for unofficial sites, identify those allowing Firefox downloads without redirecting to Mozilla.org, and report their findings to the Firefox team. Rewards include swag and a blog feature for submitting valid reports. The campaign provides guidance on identifying official installers, checking Firefox versions and locales, and finding download links. Mozilla emphasizes the importance of user contributions in enhancing security, privacy, and user experience for Firefox users. Participants are advised to use non-Firefox browsers for better results in their search efforts. The campaign runs from June 14 to July 14, 2024, and aims to improve distribution practices for Firefox downloads.

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Link Icon 10 comments
By @lolinder - 5 months
It's a bit sad to me that I've lost so much trust in Mozilla that I'm immediately suspicious of this campaign. This could be exactly as innocuous as they want this to sound:

> Your report will help us identify the attributes and traits of third-party websites that offer Firefox download outside our official source, so we can work with them towards better distribution practices – eventually, leading to better security, privacy, and user experience for Firefox users.

It's also possible that what they really mean is that they're going to go after these providers for trademark violations [0] like what happened with Debian [1].

I'd love to be in a world where I can trust Mozilla to generally do the right and honest thing, but I'm having a hard time imagining what other form this "work[ing] with them" could take, and it makes me very uncomfortable that they're not forthright about the details of their plan when asking users to help them identify targets.

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/policy/

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Debian%E2%80%93...

By @birdman3131 - 5 months
Ive been using a third party installer for probably 15 years.

It is very hard to beat ninite.com for installing everything at once on a new pc.

By @abhinavk - 5 months
Needs a better name. I thought they want us to create custom 3rd party installers.
By @SushiHippie - 5 months
> In 2023, a significant portion of Firefox downloads came from unknown sources.

Does anyone know where they get this data from?

By @rurban - 5 months
Finally more Android extensions, than previously only being possible with Fennec
By @curiousdeadcat - 5 months
How about Mozilla figure out wtf is going on with their builds being language specific and it basically being impossible to convert Spanish Firefox to English Firefox. Absolutely baffling. (No really, changing the spell check language doesn't change the spell check language and you can only side-load non-official English spell check packs in the Spanish build. Its one of those things where so many wrong decisions had to be made, and leaves users out to dry.

Or, at the very least, don't do the same stupid crap every other site does, aka: sniff my geo-ip and then opaquely serve me a specialized build without my knowledge. Just another thing on the list of reasons why i don't bother being a Firefox advocate anymore. There's so many basics not accounted for.

By @pennybanks - 5 months
I couldnt do something like this in good conscience. It just feels too much like im snitching haha. Not that i know any of these sites
By @yellow_lead - 5 months
So Mozilla wants me to search the web and install random binaries claiming to install Firefox, and in return they'll put my name on a blog post and (maybe?) send me merch? Who thought of this?