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hacked???

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sometimes (not always) when i open firefox, the search bar at the top will be red with gray lines running through it. And over in the left hand corner where the lock is will be a robot that says "dev tools". Is this normal and should i be concerned that i have been hacked

sometimes (not always) when i open firefox, the search bar at the top will be red with gray lines running through it. And over in the left hand corner where the lock is will be a robot that says "dev tools". Is this normal and should i be concerned that i have been hacked

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No, that is not normal. It can indicate that external software is manipulating Firefox.

First, this post on Reddit describes how/where to check within Firefox and the shortcut you use to start it: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/q4rp07/remove_the_remote_control_robot_with_red_and_grey/hg0q1as/

Second, I suggest using one or more of the malware cleaning programs listed in the support article (all free or free trial): Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware.

Can you get Firefox back to normal?

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achievementhunter12 said

And over in the left hand corner where the lock is will be a robot that says "dev tools".

Seeing DevTools as the "tool tip" for the robot icon can refer to a command-line parameter in your Firefox shortcut. While a normal Firefox command line (Properties > Shortcut > Target) looks like this:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"

Yours might be modified to this:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"  --start-debugger-server

You can remove that.