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Why is Firefox making a connection to cloudfront.net after startup (which is kept established the whole time)?

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  • Last reply by philipp

NicoM
NicoM
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When I start Firefox and only a blank page is shown, it still makes an https connection to cloudfront.net . It even does that after following all advice on https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections . When testing, I disabled all addons, plugins and language packs, too.

Why does make Firefox make this connection? What is transmitted? How can I disable it?

When I start Firefox and only a blank page is shown, it still makes an https connection to cloudfront.net . It even does that after following all advice on https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections . When testing, I disabled all addons, plugins and language packs, too. Why does make Firefox make this connection? What is transmitted? How can I disable it?

Chosen solution

thank you for bringing this up - looks like we have to update that page in the knowledge base. in order to disable heartbeat, enter about:config into the firefox address bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named browser.selfsupport.url. double-click it and change its value to a blank string. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Advocacy/heartbeat

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philipp
philipp
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hi, can you launch firefox with the -jsconsole argument and look in the network tab of the browser console if you find more information about that connection there (like the exact url - this might give more information about what is happening)... https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Tools/Browser_Console

NicoM
NicoM Question owner
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The exact server being contacted is server-54-230-219-14.mrs50.r.cloudfront.net Thank you for your hint about the browser console! After looking there, I found that the connection corresponds to a connection to https://self-repair.mozilla.org/de/repair/ . Now, I see that this corresponds to "Firefox Heartbeat". I didn't know it existed and it isn't listed on the help page that lists automatic connections. I never received a prompt for a rating from Firefox. I don't understand why this makes a connection at every Firefox startup.

philipp
philipp
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Chosen Solution

thank you for bringing this up - looks like we have to update that page in the knowledge base. in order to disable heartbeat, enter about:config into the firefox address bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named browser.selfsupport.url. double-click it and change its value to a blank string. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Advocacy/heartbeat