stop pdf's opening in the browser

"How can i overcome this to prevent Firefox from performing merely as a browser?"

Do you mean to only be a browser, not 'prevent'

If so, stop FX from opening and use what is the default on your OS which is what by the way :)

My apologies, not clearly described. I want Firefox to only act as a browser. Other functionality makes me uncomfortable. Thanks for responding so promptly.

Yes thought that's what you meant.

So set the OS to use another app etc.

All the best

Hi John,

If amoun's reply resolved your issue, please consider marking it as a solution to highlight it for other users.

Apart from that, it might be interesting to look into the actual issue you've encountered. I'm pretty sure Firefox isn't supposed (and shouldn't be able to?) change PDF passwords. Could you please share some more details about what happened?

Hello Denys Thanks for your response.

Even though Foxit is set as my default pdf reader, out of the blue Firefox started intercepting. My medical insurance provider's communication - amongst many others - is encrypted with a password. The document opened in Firefox without me tapping in my password. In terms of South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act, sensitive data such as financial and medical must be password protected. So this breaks the confidentiality. Firefox is supposedly rated as one of the top browsers in terms of privacy and protection and that is why I chose it. If the document arrives via Thunderbird as an attachment it defaults correctly to Foxit, so that part is OK. As an example i logged in to my Medical Insurance website and requested a copy of my latest statement. I clicked on their download button and voila, it opened in a new tab without a request for the password. I have been a member for 30 years and this is the first time it has happened. As i said in my original report this only started some time last week

Sincerely 

john coombes

Thank you for clarifying. I've asked the team, and they said that Firefox definitely doesn't override anything when opening PDFs, it just reads info from the files. However, in terms of protection, many things depend on the kind of protection used. For example, if the password is only supposed to prevent editing/printing (but not viewing), it may not be respected by many PDF readers. If you are curious what happens in your particular case, you can send the file to cdenizet@mozilla.com (referencing this question), and the team will take a look at it specifically.