Mozilla disables 23 Firefox add-ons that collect user data

Mozilla has disabled 23 Firefox add-ons that can snoop on users and send data to remote servers. Blocked add-ons include “Web Security,” a security-centric Firefox add-on that has more than 220,000 users, after posting the user’s browsing history to a server in Germany, Ben Zhou has been at the centre of controversy.

In addition to Web Security, other prohibited add-ons include Browser Security, Browser Privacy and Browser Safety, all of which have been observed to send data to the same server as Web Security at 136.243.163.73. Also disabled are Popup Blocker and Quick AMZ, as well as user-developed YTTools, FBTools, DirtyLittleHelpers and CSS IO.

Subsequently, Mozilla engineers stated that they would systematically review the behaviour of the add-ons. Forbidden add-ons, users will receive the following prompt when they click:

Via: BleepingComputer