
I am getting unwanted links being added to my bookmarks
I am using the version 115.20.0esr (64-bit) and have noticed I have links in my bookmarks, that are either from other bookmark folders but I never copied them over, or I have new links that I never clicked to be saved? I have deleted those I found but some more keep popping up?
All Replies (4)
No reply to this problem since February 2025! and the problem still exists!
Modified
No reply to this problem since February 2025! and the problem still exists!
You write at the top of the Firefox Community Forum:
"39 questions in the last 24 hours have no reply. Help solve them!"
WHY ARE YOU, MOZILLA, NOT HELPING US???
It's the same for most companies now, they create a "Community Forum" and then leave the users to do the work they should be doing. We may not have to pay to use the Firefox Browser money wise, but they earn their money by stealing our time to read advertisments they get money to show!
Of course they will ignore this post, as all the other companies do.
Modified
Hey Mac, extremely sorry your question got lost in the mix. These forums are volunteer driven. Which means unpaid volunteers like myself jump in here on our free time to help everyone out the best we can. For the last few years though, these forums & many other popular ones are being attacked by spam & AI bots to advertise random products, games and websites. Which produce a lot of unnecessary trash/useless posts that cover up the good, legitimate ones asked by people like yourself. So I believe that's a huge part of the reason your question was missed because the spam posts push your question back multiple pages before we get a chance to look at it. Please accept our apologies on this, it's super frustrating for us too.
Anyway, I'm personally sorry you've been dealing with this since February (!). I can already imagine the frustration. What I can tell you right away, is that Firefox doesn't add new random bookmarks on its own. It comes pre-bundled with a set of 4 bookmarks in a single folder called "Mozilla Firefox". Those bookmarks names are: "Get Help", "Customize Firefox", "Get Involved" and "About Us".
So that tells me that malware or adware could be installed on your system, adding all these random links to your bookmarks. It could even be a malicious addon installed in Firefox as well. Have you run any scans using software like Malwarebytes or AdwCleaner or HitmanPro? I highly recommend it. If the scans find nothing then that's good & we at least ruled that out. Links:
- https://www.malwarebytes.com/getprotection
- https://www.malwarebytes.com/adwcleaner
- https://www.hitmanpro.com/
Then if the system is clean, I would next look at all your addons & double check that they are well known trusted ones. And if the addons are good then I believe the places.sqlite file that holds your bookmarks may be corrupted. It doesn't explain to me how it adds new bookmarks that you never clicked to be saved but that file being corrupted can explain how bookmarks in different folders can show up in other folders that you didn't copy them to.