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Why is Firefox continuing to block all of the content I want to see, including tickets I want to buy off my favorite sites dispite changes not to block content?

  • 3 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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the program is continuing to block content even with the blocking feature turned off. I continually have to switch between browsers because of the annoying feature. I want it to stop blocking content, I want to disable blocking, but tediously have to stop at every site I visit and spend time while it blocks content, asks if I want to continue blocking content, annoyingly drops down, and must be told to "remember" not to do that and it continually does, while continually annoyingly blocks content! I want it to stop doing this. I am an adult, I am 60 years old. I do not need a babysitter on my browser telling me what I should see and what I cant see, so please resolve this asap. apparently turning off pop up blocker does nothing to stop this annoying problem. Its a pattern, and its filtering content. That's illegal i believe since my content I pay for and I pay to view all of the content on the world wide web. I want it to stop filtering my searches and blocking content! ENOUGH!

the program is continuing to block content even with the blocking feature turned off. I continually have to switch between browsers because of the annoying feature. I want it to stop blocking content, I want to disable blocking, but tediously have to stop at every site I visit and spend time while it blocks content, asks if I want to continue blocking content, annoyingly drops down, and must be told to "remember" not to do that and it continually does, while continually annoyingly blocks content! I want it to stop doing this. I am an adult, I am 60 years old. I do not need a babysitter on my browser telling me what I should see and what I cant see, so please resolve this asap. apparently turning off pop up blocker does nothing to stop this annoying problem. Its a pattern, and its filtering content. That's illegal i believe since my content I pay for and I pay to view all of the content on the world wide web. I want it to stop filtering my searches and blocking content! ENOUGH!

Chosen solution

You have an extension, the FindWide Toolbar, that many consider to be an unwanted intruder. You should be able to disable or remove it on the Add-ons page. Either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions.


To be thorough, here's my suggested procedure for tracking down and cleaning up bad add-ons and other ad injectors. I know it seems long, but it's not that bad.

(1) Open the Windows Control Panel, Uninstall a Program. After the list loads, click the "Installed on" column heading to group the infections, I mean, additions, by date. This can help in smoking out undisclosed bundle items that snuck in with some software you agreed to install. Be suspicious of everything you do not recognize/remember, as malware often uses important or innocent sounding names to discourage you from removing it. Take out as much trash as possible here.

(2) Open Firefox's Add-ons page using either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
  • in the Windows "Run" dialog, type or paste
    firefox.exe "about:addons"

In the left column, click Plugins. Set nonessential and unrecognized plugins to "Never Activate".

In the left column, click Extensions. Then, if in doubt, disable (or Remove, if possible) unrecognized and unwanted extensions.

Often a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.

Any improvement?

(3) You can search for remaining issues with the scanning/cleaning tools listed in our support article: Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware. These on-demand scanners are free and take considerable time to run. If they finish quickly and especially if they require payment, you may have a serious infection. I suggest the specialized forums listed in the article in that case.

Success?

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Could you describe which block this is? For example:

  • you get a red plugin notification about an insecure plugin
  • you need to approve redirecting to a different page
  • you get a shield icon in the address bar warning about mixed content
  • something else

Your Flash plugin is due for an update. Adobe released an update last week to resolve the critical issues it admitted were in the 18.0.0.203 version. You can get version 18.0.0.209 on this page:

https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html

In the first table, look for the row for "plugin-based browsers" and you can use either the EXE or the MSI installer.

To ensure that the old version is removed, please close any tabs that are using Flash, or exit out of Firefox, during the update.


To turn off the redirect block, you can use the Advanced panel of the Options page:

"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced

On the General mini-tab, in the Accessibility section, uncheck the box for "Warn me when websites try to redirect or reload the page"


Does this help so far?

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Chosen Solution

You have an extension, the FindWide Toolbar, that many consider to be an unwanted intruder. You should be able to disable or remove it on the Add-ons page. Either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions.


To be thorough, here's my suggested procedure for tracking down and cleaning up bad add-ons and other ad injectors. I know it seems long, but it's not that bad.

(1) Open the Windows Control Panel, Uninstall a Program. After the list loads, click the "Installed on" column heading to group the infections, I mean, additions, by date. This can help in smoking out undisclosed bundle items that snuck in with some software you agreed to install. Be suspicious of everything you do not recognize/remember, as malware often uses important or innocent sounding names to discourage you from removing it. Take out as much trash as possible here.

(2) Open Firefox's Add-ons page using either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
  • in the Windows "Run" dialog, type or paste
    firefox.exe "about:addons"

In the left column, click Plugins. Set nonessential and unrecognized plugins to "Never Activate".

In the left column, click Extensions. Then, if in doubt, disable (or Remove, if possible) unrecognized and unwanted extensions.

Often a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.

Any improvement?

(3) You can search for remaining issues with the scanning/cleaning tools listed in our support article: Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware. These on-demand scanners are free and take considerable time to run. If they finish quickly and especially if they require payment, you may have a serious infection. I suggest the specialized forums listed in the article in that case.

Success?

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Note that your System Details list shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize prefs each time Firefox starts. The user.js file will only be present if you or other software has created this file and normally won't be present.

You can check its content with a plain text editor (right-click: "Open with"; do not double-click). The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.

You can delete the user.js file if you didn't create this file yourself.

You can use this button to go to the current Firefox profile folder:

Windows hides some file extensions by default. Among them .html and .ini and .js and .txt, so you may only see a file name without file extension. You can check the actual file extension (type) in the properties of the file via the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer.