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Why does 55.0.2 (64bit) try to access Amazon AWS after it is closed?

Composmentis

I use Zonealarm with Win 7, so I know when a program is trying to access the Internet. Of course, I need to give Firefox access through Zonealarm, and that works fine. However, since updating to 55.0.2, Zonealarm flashes up a warning that Firefox is trying to access a certain URL after Firefox has shut down. I deny this attempt to access the Internet after Firefox has shut down. Researching the IP addresses that Zonealarm reports, I find that there are several and they all trace back to Amazon AWS. The Firefox installation file was downloaded from your web site. I have done an antivirus scan and a Malwarebytes scan, and both turn up nothing. What is going on? Is this some kind of tracking or reporting gimmick?

I use Zonealarm with Win 7, so I know when a program is trying to access the Internet. Of course, I need to give Firefox access through Zonealarm, and that works fine. However, since updating to 55.0.2, Zonealarm flashes up a warning that Firefox is trying to access a certain URL after Firefox has shut down. I deny this attempt to access the Internet after Firefox has shut down. Researching the IP addresses that Zonealarm reports, I find that there are several and they all trace back to Amazon AWS. The Firefox installation file was downloaded from your web site. I have done an antivirus scan and a Malwarebytes scan, and both turn up nothing. What is going on? Is this some kind of tracking or reporting gimmick?

All Replies (3)

Amazon AWS is used for emails and possibly Sync.

Are you using Sync?

Chosen Solution

Upon further examination of the Zonealarm message, I see in the small print that pingsender.exe is the application being used by Firefox that causes this. After doing a search for pingsender.exe, and reading a lot of the links that the search brought up, I find that pingsender.exe is used by Firefox to send data (supposedly) back to Firefox programmers. However, the information indicated that pingsender.exe was only used in the nightly versions of Firefox. My solution was to go into the Firefox directory and delete pingsender.exe.

Thanks for your help. You may mark this "Solved".

PingSender is used by Telemetry to send data on shutdown.

Not sure if this all still applies.

Note that you should be cautious with deleting files in the Firefox program folder.