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What is setup.exe and why does it try to go online after installing firefox?

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I just downloaded the latest firefox installer and ran it, after the installation was completed i was asked by my firewall programm if setup.exe should be allowed or denied network acess. I found it's located here: C:\users\user\appdata\local\temp\7zsc6e8770c\setup.exe Now what is this and what does it do? What happens if i grant it network access, what data does it send to Mozilla and why?

I want to use this opportunity to also ask about defaultuseragent.exe, why does it even exist? What data does it send to mozilla, what does it do exactly?

I just downloaded the latest firefox installer and ran it, after the installation was completed i was asked by my firewall programm if setup.exe should be allowed or denied network acess. I found it's located here: C:\users\user\appdata\local\temp\7zsc6e8770c\setup.exe Now what is this and what does it do? What happens if i grant it network access, what data does it send to Mozilla and why? I want to use this opportunity to also ask about defaultuseragent.exe, why does it even exist? What data does it send to mozilla, what does it do exactly?

All Replies (6)

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if you download from say https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/ then you will get the small online stub installer.

The full offline installer for Windows can be downloaded from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release

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The Default Browser Agent is controlled by this pref:

  • about:config => default-browser-agent.enabled

The Default Browser Agent is a Windows-only scheduled task which runs in the background to collect and submit data about the browser. Some info about the Default Browser Agent and the “default-browser” ping data it sends.

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James said

if you download from say https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/ then you will get the small online stub installer. The full offline installer for Windows can be downloaded from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release

I downloaded the installer here: https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ I know about https://www.mozilla.org/eu/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release but i was told to avoid the unique identifier i should download from the archive. You're basically saying the setup.exe is not included when downloading from the link your provided but instead it has a unique identifier, great. So where do i download firefox offline installer without setup.exe and without unique identifier?

And i still don't know anything about setup.exe, what it is, why it exists, what data it sends...

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cor-el said

The Default Browser Agent is controlled by this pref:
  • about:config => default-browser-agent.enabled
The Default Browser Agent is a Windows-only scheduled task which runs in the background to collect and submit data about the browser. Some info about the Default Browser Agent and the “default-browser” ping data it sends.

Thanks that was useful.

{

 build_channel: <string>, // ex. "nightly", or "beta", or "release"
 version: <string>, // ex. "72.0.2"
 os_version: <string>, // ex. 10.0.18363.592
 os_locale: <string>, // ex. en-US
 default_browser: <string>, // ex. "firefox"
 previous_default_browser: <string>, // ex. "edge"
 default_pdf_viewer_raw: <string>, // ex. "firefox"
 notification_type: <string>, // ex. "initial" or "followup"
 notification_shown: <string>, // ex. "shown", or "not-shown", or "error"
 notification_action: <string>, // ex. "no-action" or "make-firefox-default-button"
 notification_not_shown_reason: <string>, // ex. "user-request" or "no-default-browser-transition"
 previous_notification_action: <string>, // Same possible values as notification_action

}

So what does mozilla want with all that data? I asume, or atleast hope... it is anonymized data, this could potentialy identifiy a unique user. "Firefox the privacy browser" - but we are also collecting your data.

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James said

if you download from say https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/ then you will get the small online stub installer. The full offline installer for Windows can be downloaded from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release

The so called "full offline installer" does also run setup.exe after installation which is what i wanted to block and find out what it does.

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I still don't know what setup.exe is, but it's for sure not the firefox installer because this one has a different name, Firefox_Setup_105.0.exe.

So what is setup.exe i can't find any info n it...