1619319 - Examine Avast's impact on Firefox startup times

Status: NEW

(External Software Affecting Firefox :: Other, task)

Description

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

As part of an examination on egregious startup times, I've started to collect evidence from Telemetry, as well from scouring various forums, that the Avast anti-virus and anti-spyware product can impact Firefox startup times.

In particular, via Telemetry I'm noticing a correlation between Avast being registered as an anti-spyware product on Windows, and a very long delay occurring between delayedStartupStart and delayedStartupFinished.

I'd like to determine if there's a causal relationship, and if so, see what we can do to fix this.

Comment 1

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

These are older forum posts but might be relevant:

• https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=183487.0
• https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/dnp469/firefox_70_upgrade_cause_first_webpage_to_load/

Comment 2

[Walter K.]

During each startup Avast inserts its mitm certificate "avast! Web/Mail Shield Root", notwithstanding Avast's Web Shield and Mail Shield not being installed/enabled. There is no way to permanently remove or distrust this root certificate as far as I know.