What's the website URL for the website that you think is phony? I'll bet that you probably have malware, and the update website is definitely a fake and probably malicious if it is asking you to change your search provider or anything else suspicious. The official website of Firefox is www.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox. You should download Firefox there. If you believe that you have malware, download ADW Cleaner, run a scan with it, and remove any malware, then download Malwarebytes, run a scan with it, and remove any malware. Scan your PC with an antivirus or download one, like Avast!. You can also update Firefox safely yourself by clicking the Menu button, clicking the Help icon (question mark icon), then clicking About Firefox.

If you aren't sure about the authenticity of a website or the safety of it, you can always use common sense or an online website scanner, like VirusTotal .

hello CatLoraine, this sure sound like adware or malware is active on your system. please perform all these steps:

1. reset firefox (this will keep your bookmarks and passwords)
2. afterwards go to the firefox menu ≡ > addons > extensions and in case there are still extensions listed there, disable them.
3. finally run a full scan of your system with different other security tools like the free version of malwarebytes, adwcleaner & kaspersky security scan to make sure that adware isn't present in other places of your system as well.

Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

regarding firefox updates in general: if a site prompts you to download a .exe file in order to update firefox this will almost certainly always be a scam - firefox loads automatic updates internally! you can always check yourself if there is a new version available by going into the firefox menu ≡ > help ? > about firefox.

I have Symantec and Windows Firewall running all the time. Both report no risks found. There were Trojans that got in but were quarantined. The website is too large and complete, kind of worried what type of organization would go to all that trouble. One thing I did notice was after I cleaned the Registry the spam in my e-mail went from 179/day to 17/day.

I appreciate all the malware advice. Believe me I do know about that and have as stated Symantec and Windows Firewall. I cleaned the Registry key by key, cleaned the browser and computer is working beautifully. BUT this Fire Fox update keeps appearing and as I have stated, leads to a huge, absolutely authentic looking site repleat with join the community, asking which group you want to join. I said write and got a reply asking me what I would like to write about.

please try a scan with the various tools recommended above - traditional security suites like norton and others have a rather bad record in finding adware and browser hijackers.

But since website is so elaborate I am suspicious of a real bad group of expert hackers. Now may be getting somewhere. After I managed to submit something to the supposed Support site and it vanished "Service Unavailable," I now got an e-mail from Google with hyperlinks to no-reply Mozilla and saying "Recipient address rejected" and "User unknown in virtual recipient table." I think I should just uninstall Fire Fox even though it's a nuisance. I will use the address you guys have suggested to be sure it's not going to those hackers. I hope other people are not getting these updates because they look so real.

You can report the website at http://www.mozilla.org/legal/fraud-report/

This is on bottom of many mozilla.org pages.

FredMcD, in case you see this thread, please do not post that copy+paste stuff here like you post to threads like this.

I'm sure it isn't a large corporation. A lot of malicious websites like to make themselves look official, but if you scroll to the bottom of the website or read the disclaimer, it most likely says the the website isn't affiliated with Mozilla. What they want you to do is download their fake update installer. The update installer is actually a bundled installer, which means that they put advertisements in the installer like optional software which doesn't actually come with the thing the installer is supposed to be installing. They earn advertising revenue from this. Don't trust anything that randomly pops up telling you to update something if you're browsing on a website. They aren't hackers usually; they just want money. I wouldn't advise downloading anything from those websites either way.

Recalling, it definitely was a fake update notification because it had 3 things to install and Mozilla never sends that. The toolbar and some search engine and I don't recall the third, but that was the start of it all. Ever since I have been getting these update notifications. I took you guys advice and used a link provided and went to Fire Fox and downloaded an upgrade. I bookmarked that link and to be safe from now on I will only download it manually from there. It is too bad because for years Fire Fox has been automatically updating but it seems like these phony installers link to a computer and harass them. There was a Google redirect and even a G-mail interference. Next thing I have to do is use those malware and virus cleaners and try and remove any tag links that might be calling these fake update notices. Another one that I think caused trouble is an Adobe Flash Player update. Same thing, Adobe always updated automatically, then it started trying to add these things same as Fire Fox. Thanks everybody, at least I know better what to look out for.