WHAT ARE YOU THINKING???

https://support.microsoft.com/windows/experience/startup-boot/configure-startup-applications-in-windows#configure-startup-applications-from-task-manager

Can you go to Task Manager -> Startup apps -> select Firefox -> Disable?

First of all that won't show up there, but if you use Microsoft Sysinternals Autoruns that will easily stop it but that's completely missing the point. For YEARS Firefox has fought against this kind of behavior. Why the sudden change? Staying signed into web browsers may be convenient but it also makes you a target for marketing and privacy/hacker issues and robs your pc of power you could use elsewhere. For the best security and better pc operation the best choice is to only log into something when you use it and then sign out and that's been an indisputable fact for 2 decades. Marketing wants to keep you logged in to everything all the time so they can see and hear everything you do so why the sudden policy change? That's the scary part of this, now Firefox is caving in to marketing and telemetry? Then I'm done with it. This breaks every reason I have had for sticking with them for 20 years. I can kill the startup and I can remove every browser and use a portable so that's not the point. This is a reversal of everything Firefox has stood for. THAT is the problem. it's not WHAT the browser is doing, it's WHY!!

Go to Settings -> Home and startup and turn off Open Firefox automatically when your computer starts up.

This is not a default setting, I guess you turned it on somehow.

While I appreciate your help you are completely missing the point. I am an IT at a major manufacturing company and oversee a little over 600 pc's every day in 11 locations. The fix took 3 keystrokes and 2 mouse clicks to fix all of them in less than a minute. THIS is what your missing. This was a recent change that came with a recent update like in the last week maybe 2 at this point. Most likely it's because they have incorporated a full time AI in Firefox. The thing is Firefox has always been pretty transparent about how it does things and why and has been one of the best maintained privacy focused browsers for over 2 decades. They incorporated this into the system without telling ANYONE! There was no warning, no anything to tell the millions of users out there that these are the changes and why, all they said is we have a new look. This is a HUGE TRUST ISSUE!! In my case I have this in over 600 pc's and we handle government and private contract work and inventory management. Now I have to explain to my superiors why this happened and make sure nothing got leaked to the world. For a company that made a product that has always been forward thinking and up front with thier users this is a HUGE issue. What REALLY bothers me is there are millions of users out there that have no clue this is going on at all. THAT'S the whole problem. This goes against everything they have stood for. So is it profits? Is it marketing? Why hide something if it's supposed to be great? WHY COVER THIS UP TO YOUR USERS? WHY WAS THERE NO WARNING? When something is constantly running in the background that is supposed to be off this is a huge security concern! The very least you could have done is warned us and given us a choice!!!! NOW I have to find something to replace it because I am in a situation where this cannot happen again. THAT is the whole problem!

Hi,

I don't think there was any intentional change from the Firefox side. Most likely, you are facing a bug or some sort of side-effect of a third-party tool.

Also, I'd want to clarify that while we get your frustration and want to help, we are just other users like you volunteering our time, not Mozilla employees or developers. So let's keep this constructive.

From your messages, I understand that you've already resolved the issue. If you want to report a bug, the right place would be Bugzilla, Mozilla's bug tracker. Please also feel free to share a link here, so that we can follow along.

Just to give you some context. Everything is being done in the open so you can verify yourself whether you trust the code changes and people's reasoning behind the timelines; the option you're mentioning has gotten some changes recently:

• bugzilla.mozilla.org/2038097
• bugzilla.mozilla.org/2032645

You might be just hitting a bug, or a weird corner case. It would also help to understand the context if this is happening in an enterprise rollout using a policy? The folks over at support.mozilla.org/questions/firefox-enterprise could help further if that's the case.

Most likely it's because they have incorporated a full time AI in Firefox. They incorporated this into the system without telling ANYONE! There was no warning, no anything to tell the millions of users out there that these are the changes and why,

The only thing AI in desktop Firefox is mentioned in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-ai-controls

Making such claims without a shred of evidence. The desktop Firefox web browser is open source and not closed source as you can also download the source and build it yourself. Oh people would notice if your claim of full time AI in Firefox was true as it would be a very hot topic here and elsewhere . Initially when the mentioned ai features in that KB article came about there was a huge backlash so Mozilla opted to put in controls to make it easy to enable/disable them instead of relying on about:config though many wanted them removed entirely vs being disabled.