Please fix MacOS "add-on" password request for Firefox updates
It drives me crazy that when Firefox updates, it requires me to enter my system password to install a mysterious, always unnamed add-on. I know it does this, and it's been going on for years, and I hate it. I never want to enter my system password to install something that is unknown. Since the add-on is never identified, well, it could be something beneficial, or it could be some new malicious package that snuck into the update process. How am I supposed to know? To me, it's unacceptable that Firefox keeps doing this. (Maybe it's MacOS's fault, but this doesn't happen with any other non-Apple software package. So it's Firefox's fault as far as I'm concerned.) I've been using Firefox for decades--since it was Netscape. I don't to use any other browser except for special cases. But I'm thinking of switching over to using Safari all of the time. Not that it would harms Firefox or anyone involved in developing it if I switched. But switching to Safari now would be a p.i.t.a., so it shows how much this install bug annoys me. (Years ago I submitted some kind of bug report in the bug system, but that's a pain. It's an opaque bug reporting system for anyone outside of the Firefox developer community.) Well,that's it. Lovin' Firefox except for this feature.
All Replies (2)
I think the "helper tool" might be the background updater. The following support article has some suggestions: Troubleshoot Firefox updates and the Helper tool.
Thanks very much @jscher2000. That's very helpful.
I still think that it's a problem that the password prompt doesn't identify the tool being installed. If someone did manage to sneak a malicious package into the process Firefox update, it would be bad for a user to assume that what required a password was the legitimate, non-malicious Helper tool if it wasn't.
Or maybe the password prompt does identify what's being installed, but in a way that's confusing because of naming, capitalization, and the use of "a" rather than "the"? The support page that you linked to refers to "the Helper tool", but the password prompt says "Firefox is trying to install a new helper tool", which conveys that it's trying to install some helper tool or other, and that it's a new one. So I read that and think "What helper tool, and why? What is it? What's it going to do?" The install button is labeled "Install Helper", with initial caps, but that still looks generic rather than identifying what's being installed.
Maybe it would be better if it the prompt said something like "Firefox is trying to install a new version of its standard Helper Tool." I don't know what constraints there are on the string that's passed to MacOS to generate the popup.
Again, thanks very much for the information and link.
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