754444 - Don't automatically update my browser!

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Garry Kaluzny]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070206 Firefox/3.0.1
Build ID: 2008070206

Steps to reproduce:

I had my Firefox 3.6 browser to NOT check for Firefox updates! But it updated anyway. :-(


Actual results:

You ******** automatically updated my Firefox 3.6 browser, even though I had turned Firefox updates off! Damn you all! I do NOT want to use the later "minimalist" Firefox browsers. I am sticking with Firefox 3.6. I also have an older Mac at home running Mac OS X.4--any newer Firefox than 3.6 will NOT work with that OS. If you auto update that  computer, I'll have to switch to other (non-Firefox) browsers, and they all suck even more than Firefox 12.


Expected results:

What should have happened? You should NOT have forced a heavy-handed update on me, or on any other users! It is MY computer, and I should be in control of the software on it. A lot of "updates" break links with older software. Fortunately, I have older installers squirelled away, and will keep reinstalling the older browsers, but I don't want to have to do that every 10 minutes after you force another update! Listen to the users! (And yes, I am aware of security issues re: using older software--but the fact is that newer software is NOT any more secure. Hackers will still come up with ways to hack new stuff. I do take other precautions to be secure.

Comment 1

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

(In reply to Garry Kaluzny from comment #0)
> User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US;
> rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070206 Firefox/3.0.1
> Build ID: 2008070206
> 
> Steps to reproduce:
> 
> I had my Firefox 3.6 browser to NOT check for Firefox updates! But it
> updated anyway. :-(

If there's anything we can do here, we're definitely interested in helping. When you install FF3.6 again and double-check your update settings, does FF automatically update again?

Comment 2

[Garry Kaluzny]

Firefox has not updated itself again after I reinstalled v.3.6. I also changed the UNIX permissions for the Firefox.app to take away write permissions from all users, including the user-owner.

The thing that really disturbed me about the forced update was this: I thought that the Mac OS prevented ANYTHING from being written to the Applications folder without an admin's ID and password. Since I use my Macs as a non-admin, somehow you folks were able to bypass the Mac's security. Or, does the Mac allow applications to "update" themselves by writing into the Applications folder once the application was initially authenticated? To me, this is a serious security breach, since if you folks can write into that folder, then so can hackers! In other words, it will hard to have confidence in the future that the programs I am running are the original binary executables I installed, and not some hacked copy.

I know there are some programs that needed the user to set world-writeable permissions for their application as it would write preference, etc, files, into its own program folder. That just means those folks don't have a clue about computer security! Mostly that has been in the Windows world, but their are some unenlightened Mac programmers who insist on doing the same.

And regarding why I want to stay with Firefox 3.6... I detest the "Chrome" style "minimalist" web browsers that like to do away with menus, and even with buttons to allow the user to stop a web page from loading. I always preferred Firefox over other Mac browsers like Safari since Firefox has the best add-ons, like AdBlockPlus and NoScript. I hate web pages that have a millions scripts running, usually just trying to gather information about me. Damnit, I am not just data to be harvested! And I am sticking with my older Mac at home running Mac OS X.4, as I have a PowerPC Mac that can't run any newer Mac OS, not to mention that Apple has wrecked their user-interface with Lion. I also have a LOT of older programs like PageMaker that only run in OS 9. Those programs work well, they are paid for, and I don't want to spend thousands of dollars to buy replacements that just plain don't work as well. It's just like the way Microsoft has destroyed the usability of any version of Office after 2003/2004, many newer programs were programmed by idiots who obviously never checked with the actual users as to the usability of their programs!

Oh, there have been a few times on my work Mac (running OS X.6) where the Firefox browser has suddenly become unresponsive in the past week. I suspected it was trying to still try to force an update and so I force-quit it and started over. I don't know what had caused Firefox (3.6) to stall at those times, but I wasn't taking any chances on an update again!

Garry Kaluzny