400368 - onestepsearch/zango is spyware toolbars that should be blocked.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Description

[john]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.8) Gecko/20071008 Firefox/2.0.0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.8) Gecko/20071008 Firefox/2.0.0.8

when I tested every spyware i can think of- what i seen is onestepsearch, zango watches what is done in the web browser. it can cause the browser to start having problems with memory and it floods the browser. The browser also has a problem with eating to much memory; when the browser opens it takes up at least 75Mb of page file. With zango and onestepsearch it goes to a high 275Mb in memory.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. download onestepsearch and zango
2. use a packet manager or port watcher on the programs
3. watch the toolbar send personal information such as your browsing habits.
Actual Results:  
uninstalled mozilla firefox, then the toolbars. 

Expected Results:  
reinstalled firefox. bloat is still there though. 

Mozilla should be written in the program area as less sloppy, and less DLL dependency, what i mean is the less things the browser has to load- the faster it works and loads up. It would be nice to see it eat 10-15Mb but nothing hard core.

Comment 1

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

> Mozilla should be written in the program area as less sloppy,

Code quality in Mozilla is generally high, at least the code that I read.

> and less DLL dependency, what i mean is the less things the browser has to
> load- the faster it works and loads up.

Reporting general programming advice like this through Bugzilla is a waste
of time.  If you have concrete ideas on how to improve startup times then
discuss it in dev forums first <http://www.mozilla.org/community/developer-forums.html> and file an enhancement request when there is a concrete
proposal that can be implemented.