Søg i Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Why does something start downloading when I activate Fire Fox when I have updates for Fire Fox and Add ons disabled?

more options

When I start Firefox 18 on either of my two laptops it starts downloading "something", I know not what.

1. I have automatic updates for Firefox turned off. 2. I have automatic updates for plugins and addons turned off. 3. I have automatic updates for windows turned off. 4. I have automatic updates for Kaspersky Internet Security turned off. 5. I log on with a 56k modem. I monitor for network activity and none is occuring. My home page in Firefox is a blank page. I activate Firefox 18 and go no where but monitor my internet traffic and 2 minutes later the downloading begins. I close Firefox 18 and the downloading stops. 6. I activate a different browser and no downloading occurs even 5 minutes after activating. 7. Out of curiosity I went down to a coffe shop yesterday, logged on to their wifi and activated Firefox 18. Eighty Nine (89) megabytes later, the downloading stopped. I have no fricking idea what got downloaded after I activated Firefox 18 but I went nowhere on the internet, just sat there and stared at my Blankpage (homepage) and watched the mysterious download take place. 8. I log on to the internet today with my 56k modem and two minutes later the downloading starts again. 9. I have an old desktop that has Firefox 3.6 something on it along with Kaspersky Internet Security and this does not happen on the desktop.

Since this only happens with Firefox 18, it seems reasonable to me to see it as Firefox 18 related and possibly a security or privacy issue but I suppose it could also be a settings issue. I do update my Internet Security every two days. I do scan my laptops regularly. This still happens. I cannot use Firefox for a browser because half my paltry 56k bandwidth is being sucked up by some mysterious unsolicited downloading that only occurs when Firefox 18 is activated.

When I start Firefox 18 on either of my two laptops it starts downloading "something", I know not what. 1. I have automatic updates for Firefox turned off. 2. I have automatic updates for plugins and addons turned off. 3. I have automatic updates for windows turned off. 4. I have automatic updates for Kaspersky Internet Security turned off. 5. I log on with a 56k modem. I monitor for network activity and none is occuring. My home page in Firefox is a blank page. I activate Firefox 18 and go no where but monitor my internet traffic and 2 minutes later the downloading begins. I close Firefox 18 and the downloading stops. 6. I activate a different browser and no downloading occurs even 5 minutes after activating. 7. Out of curiosity I went down to a coffe shop yesterday, logged on to their wifi and activated Firefox 18. Eighty Nine (89) megabytes later, the downloading stopped. I have no fricking idea what got downloaded after I activated Firefox 18 but I went nowhere on the internet, just sat there and stared at my Blankpage (homepage) and watched the mysterious download take place. 8. I log on to the internet today with my 56k modem and two minutes later the downloading starts again. 9. I have an old desktop that has Firefox 3.6 something on it along with Kaspersky Internet Security and this does not happen on the desktop. Since this only happens with Firefox 18, it seems reasonable to me to see it as Firefox 18 related and possibly a security or privacy issue but I suppose it could also be a settings issue. I do update my Internet Security every two days. I do scan my laptops regularly. This still happens. I cannot use Firefox for a browser because half my paltry 56k bandwidth is being sucked up by some mysterious unsolicited downloading that only occurs when Firefox 18 is activated.

Valgt løsning

I appreciate your response but not sure now if it could have been anything in that answer because.......

This problem appears to have gone away, not sure why but I have a possible theory. This is only a theory on my part as I'm not knowledgeable on the inner workings of Firefox. When I installed Firefox 18 it had all the automatic updating options turned on by default. By the time I turned them all off, I'm assuming it had started to download updates for all the plugins and addons, like java, quicktime etc. etc. etc. even though I hadn't personally initiated those downloads and updates. My theory is that once those downloads had started, even though I had turned off the automatic updating, it was going to continue downloading the updates that had started and was not going to stop until it had done so.

I do not disable the anti-phishing and evil website detection stuff but I seriously doubt the updating for those items would have consisted of 89 megabytes of data but I could be wrong.

So for now, I'll close this out and mark it solved and continue to monitor to see if I have any more "weirdness" go on.

Læs dette svar i sammenhæng 👍 0

Alle svar (2)

more options
more options

Valgt løsning

I appreciate your response but not sure now if it could have been anything in that answer because.......

This problem appears to have gone away, not sure why but I have a possible theory. This is only a theory on my part as I'm not knowledgeable on the inner workings of Firefox. When I installed Firefox 18 it had all the automatic updating options turned on by default. By the time I turned them all off, I'm assuming it had started to download updates for all the plugins and addons, like java, quicktime etc. etc. etc. even though I hadn't personally initiated those downloads and updates. My theory is that once those downloads had started, even though I had turned off the automatic updating, it was going to continue downloading the updates that had started and was not going to stop until it had done so.

I do not disable the anti-phishing and evil website detection stuff but I seriously doubt the updating for those items would have consisted of 89 megabytes of data but I could be wrong.

So for now, I'll close this out and mark it solved and continue to monitor to see if I have any more "weirdness" go on.