Hi,

It shouldn't be a malware. Many users report the same behavior after the recent update. While it's definitely not intended and inconvenient, please feel free to pass the CAPTCHA and continue using Google. From what we know, it shouldn't appear more than once (unless you clear cookies / have set Firefox to clear cookies on restart).

Thanks for your reply. I did have cookies to clear set & I changed it so they are not supposed to clear upon closing Firefox each time. Unfortunately, that has not fixed the problem. Firefox is becoming useless for me.

Sorry for that... Anyway, the devs are working on a solution.

By the way, what add-ons do you use? Could you please try disabling them (on Firefox level)? (Running Firefox in Troubleshoot Mode should do it for you.)

I faced the same issue, and disabling AdGuard Adblocker resolved it for me. Maybe something similar is the cause in your case as well?

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me. I disabled all the add-ons & then ran in troubleshoot mode. I was able to do a search as I used to be able to. I'm afraid to do the refresh, if I lose my password manager I'm in trouble as I'm away from home & the reset key is there. How does one do it safely? I don't have AdGuard Adblocker, was using Privacy Badger. If I enable the password manager & leave the rest disabled, will using the refresh remove the password manager while setting it back to factory settings? Thank you. I do not consider myself very computer savvy & have Lyme brain.

Thank you very much for checking! I believe that info will also help the developers.

You don't have to refresh. Try disabling the extensions one by one to find the cause. It's most likely a single extension, and (temporarily) disabling just it should resolve the issue.

If you succeed in finding the extension causing this, please:

• Post it's name here, so that I can pass info to the devs
• (If you have time) Find that extension on addons.mozilla.org, click on Support site / Homepage (if there are those links) and report the issue to the extension developers.

Looking forward to your update anyway!

Hi Denys, I enabled them & tested one by one, & I don't have the problem anymore so I can't post the name of the offender. I have received notices at times that one or more of my extensions won't work in the future, though the notice never says which one. This is way over my head. Thanks so much for your help. Losing my browser was bad enough, now my cell doesn't work bc there's a nationwide (US) outage of various mobile companies. Not all phones not working; I'm one of the lucky ones. Thanks again for taking the time to help me. I'll be back if it acts up again.

Google has (temporarily?) resolved the issue on their side, so let's hope the fix will be persistent. For reference, the issue is now tracked under bug 2010196.