729614 - Softblock McAfee Site Advisor versions < 3.4.1.195

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Blocklist Policy Requests, defect)

Description

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Versions older than 3.4.1.195 of the McAfee Site Advisor add-on have serious memory leaks that can make Firefox unstable after extended periods of browsing. Versions 3.4.1.195 and later should be used instead, and all current users should upgrade as soon as possible. This block is intended to warn users that they should upgrade to avoid problems.

We will asses the uptake of version 3.4.1.195 next week (on the 29th) and decide if that's the right time to do the block.

Comment 1

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Davoud, can you please give us an update on the .195 uptake?

Comment 2

[davoudm]

Pretty much 90% of our entire user base has upgraded to 3.4.1.195. Anyone installing 3.4 will be updated to 3.4.1.195 in 24 hours. There is not that many users out there who will have this issue. So blocking older versions will most likely have not much effect since not many users are on it.

Comment 3

[Nicholas Nethercote [inactive]]

90% uptake is excellent, I'm glad to hear it.  But Site Advisor is popular enough that if 10% are on the old version that's still quite a lot of users.  So maybe a softblock is still worthwhile?  If we did softblock, is it possible to communicate to users that 3.4.1.195 is available and mostly fixes the problems?

Comment 4

[davoudm]

Nicholas,

I assure you that we are trying our best to increase this to 100%. But it is not as easy as there are partners and other issues involved in the process. Every day, there are more and more users on 3.4.1.195 so this percentage is increasing every day. To be honest, I personally do not think that this is now as big of an issue as it was a week ago. A block of older siteadvisor versions may not even be necessary since the number of users moving  to 3.4.1.195 is increasing daily. But this is your guys' call as there will always be some percentage of users who are behind and have not upgraded.

Comment 5

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

I think we can do the block next week, to give remaining users some time to upgrade. It'll never be 100%, but we can help push you closer to that by warning users about it. A soft block gives users the option to continue using the add-on, so it isn't as problematic as a hard block. It should work as a good reminder that they need to upgrade their software asap.

Comment 6

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

The block is now in place: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/blocked/i72

Users can still opt-out from the block, and upgrading to the latest version should also unblock the Site Advisor extension.

Comment 7

[Kaz Nishimura]

The block list mentions version 3.4.1.915 but I could not download any newer version than 3.4.1.195.  Is the version number correct?

Comment 8

[davoudm]

It says < .195

(In reply to Kaz Sasa from comment #7)
> The block list mentions version 3.4.1.915 but I could not download any newer
> version than 3.4.1.195.  Is the version number correct?

Comment 9

[Masatoshi Kimura [:emk]]

Only the first occurrence says 3.4.1.195.
> Who is affected?
>     All Firefox users who have installed the McAfee Site Advisor on Windows and 
> have a version older than 3.4.1.915.
>     Versions 3.4.1.915 and above should be unaffected by this block.

Comment 10

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

The description in the block said .915, but the block itself was correct (< .195). I corrected the description, and the block should be working correctly. We would have known if it had been wrong a long time ago.