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Blogging since the First Age

Firefox users do not install NoScript

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First of all, beware the extensions you install. Extensions can be poorly coded and bugged or even made on purpose to introduce any sort of bad stuff on your computer. Extensions can do pretty much everything once you install them.

Then, NoScript promises to protect your computer by disabling javascripts in Web pages. The problem with it is you have only two options, disable everything or enable everything with a blacklist/whitelist of domains. Once you enable, adding the site to the whitelist, NoScript is mostly useless.

Last thing, NoScript author is getting money from advertisement in his Website. Since you can block the advertisement with the ADBclockPlus extension, it changed NoScript installation to hack ADBlockPLus in order to "unblock" the advertisement from NoScript. This is VERY wrong among extensions and it is the usual bad policy to make changes on people's computers without asking permission. Even worse considering NoScript is sold as "security" software.

In short, do not install NoScript, technically it does not add any real security to your Firefox and its author cannot be trusted. To get better security you just add this line to your ADBlockPlus list of rules:
http://*$script,third-party
It will block all scripts that come from domains other than the one you are browsing. Then you can whitelist those domains you really really need. with something like:
@@http://www.blogger.com/widgets/*$script

You Can't Get What You WantWhat did you expect from Windows 7?

Comments

Aux 4. May 2009, 10:01

Oh the cool world of firefox and extensions!..

Lorenzo Celsi 5. May 2009, 07:19

There is ONE big issue that is there isn't any code review for extensions that are published on AMO. Probably there will never be.
So basically extensions can degrade Firefox performance or introduce security exploits because of poor coding or even have any sort of undocumented features.
That is something because, like I said, extensions can do EVERYTHING once installed.

Anne 5. May 2009, 18:32

There should be security restrictions on what extensions can do. If an extension breaks the rules, the user should at least be warned by the base browser.
Why do developers open up their programs that way? The trust that users put into Firefox is misused by its extensions. :smile:

Lorenzo Celsi 5. May 2009, 18:47

Extensions do have a meaning because they are powerful enough to really "extend" Firefox functionality. You compare them with Opera's widgets for example. Opera's choice is to include all the real functions in the core application. So you have Firebug and AdBlock as extensions in FF while Dragonfly and "block content" are integrated as "tools/features" in Opera. Firefox philosophy originally comes from a kind of community driven project, open source and aimed mainly to developers and power users. Extensions and themes authors were sort of "contributors" to the project. Nowadays things have moved a little more towards "third party" software so yes, you are right, there is an issue about trust that users automatically extend from Mozilla to unknown people providing extensions.

K C N Martínez 15. May 2009, 16:33

Thanks for the warning Lorenzo. I appreciate it...since I use my HP Mini very often. :o:

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