What is with the unwanted addition of hidden extensions in the FF68 update?
I noticed that after the FF68 update I now have "Hidden Extensions" that FF has added. They do not show in the regular Add-On page but are in fact installed but "hidden" extensions. They can be turned off but CAN NOT be uninstalled! I never gave permission for these extensions to be installed nor do have any way of knowing their permissions. It is very concerning that Firefox would install hidden extensions without users permission and have no way to remove them. Please advise as to their permissions, use and why they were installed without consent. Thank you in advance.
See Attached Image Amazon, Bing, Ebay, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia
All Replies (6)
These are features of Firefox. They aren't "Extensions" in that they are designed by third-parties. Specifically, these are the search engines that Firefox ships with by default.
Thank you for you prompt reply. If that is what you say they are then I guess that answers my concern. But I really want Absolutely Nothing To Do with Bing! Again thanks.
You can easily remove Bing. Add or remove a search engine in Firefox
Hi LastLoneWolf, what tool is that screenshot from? Hopefully they will update with more complete information for the search engine plugins.
As posted above, those are builtin default search engines that are stored internally in one of the omni.ja archives. I notice that the screenshot doesn't show a file path and that is likely because the files do not appear on the hard drive unless there would be an update available.
Firefox comes with a lot of builtin search engines as you can see:
- resource://search-plugins/
OK, I see these search plugins listed on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page. I see this information in extensions.json for the four search plugins that I've enabled via "visibleDefaultEngines":["google-b-d","bing","ddg","wikipedia"].
Name Version Type Active Location Google 1.0 ext true app-builtin Bing 1.0 ext true app-builtin DuckDuckGo 1.0 ext true app-builtin Wikipedia (en) 1.0 ext true app-builtin