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For the last six months (since the Firefox madness started and they keep on taking control of my PC) I'm terrified to touch Firefox.

Problem is however, I've been using it in my business (since once upon a time it was a trustworthy application with useful extensions like FireFTP) and that installation (and plugins) holds four years of information.

So Firefox continually deletes my important data (by) messing up (or blocking/or worse: auto-updating) my plug-ins, even crashing my computer as a result.

Today Firefox killed FireFTP by (again) autoupdating FireFTP without my permission, and I did my best to disable that nonsense in about:config).

Result: none of the (over 100) FireFTP accounts can be logged on to, they suddenly all ask for a password. I do not have the time to to find all of the passwords and reconfigure FireFTP again.

How can I undo the mess Firefox created once again? That is, where are the passwords, how do I downgrade?

As a side-question, how can I make Firefox behave again? I'm the boss of my computer, not them! How can I once and for-all take back control and completely kill every kind of auto-update feature?

Update:
I've been in contact with the (very nice and helpful) author of fireFTP and as turns out, the passwords should indeed have been stored in firefox itself (sadly). This was apparently since the very beginning (according to the author).

Upon further research, the passwords appear to have been deleted by firefox during the forced update 3.6.28 to 12.

Thank you firefox!!

So here is another documented and provable proof of the MESS Firefox has created in just 6 months.

Sadly the browser (that the modern internet was built on/for) is no longer safe to use for any business or long-term personal environment: deleting data is just unacceptable.

Funny, whilst on the official support forums serious complaints that boil down to the depriving of choice are quickly done away with; on the background.. some firefox developers themselves realize that exactly this stupid move just might have killed firefox instead of saving it. See http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2012/07/10/mozilla_dev_admits_firefox_killed_its_rep_with_huge_amount_of_updates

I agree: the by now widely documented breach of trust (no means NO) will be almost impossible to recover from.
Apart from the fact that more and more old-school users are starting to refer to firefox as "FaceFox" (since they cater to much of their specific wishes thereby crippling the browser from being a standards-compliant tool and force those cripplings to knowledgeable users through the updates).

I wonder what fresh team (with un-tainted reputation) will build the browser for the next decade, that will take over the market the same way firefox once did: by having the knowledgeable early adopters unanimously at their side, spreading the word to their family members and friends/colleagues. Remember the time when they informed people to use google instead of king altavista (do you even remember altavista?) or the time when those people informed people not use IE6 but firefox?

So the final answer to the question is: FireFTP passwords gone (after update)? Then they are gone. Complain to firefox (since that is one of the other reasons behind the rapid update-scheme: if users don't publically complain on a large scale, then they assume everything is fine: that is their solution to saving time on testing, enabling the rapid-release cycle. (I read this 7 months ago on a official firefox developer's blog))

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  • What on earth are you talking about? What is "it" that took control of your PC, and how?
    – Michael Hampton
    Nov 4, 2012 at 21:09
  • @MichaelHampton: 'it' referredt to firefox auto update none-sence. I updated the question to make it more clear now. Thank you for the hint!
    – GitaarLAB
    Nov 4, 2012 at 21:14
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    Just a note: Firefox offers a version of Firefox for businesses and users that don't like the constant updates called "Firefox ESR". It only updates to deliver high importance security fixes so it won't break compatibility (much!). Every 7 versions of normal Firefox releases = 1 new version of Firefox ESR.
    – Wk_of_Angmar
    Nov 5, 2012 at 19:11
  • @Wk_of_Angmar: thank you for the esr tip. Me personally am trying to migrate (what is left to save, since I and my business took multiple BIG (and either expensive or even unrecoverable) hits in data-loss purely thanks to firefox) to palemoon, hopefully that will give me a reliable host-platform for the plugins I rely upon until I find alternatives to migrate the data to.
    – GitaarLAB
    Nov 7, 2012 at 6:47

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The passwords are saved along with your other firefox passwords. So, go to Tools » Options… or (Edit » Preferences… under Linux/OS X) and from there go to Security » Show Passwords » Show Passwords.

For disabling auto-update:

  1. Type about:config in the address bar
  2. In the filter field, enter: app.update.enabled
  3. Set it to false
  4. Then again type in the Filter field: app.update.auto
  5. Set it to false

And also uninstall Mozilla Maintenance Service; as far as I know, it's only use is to auto-update Firefox.

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  • Sadly none of the fireftp accounts (& none of their passwords) where under "show passwords". Might it be different on (broken) firefox 12 (that was 'forced-updated' upon me) than on current firefox version? As to the "Mozilla Maintenance Service" (that was documented to do in the near future what Adobe recently has actually done: chance WINDOWS SETTINGS), I was lucky enough my security-settings fully blocked access to the programfiles folder, so I was not infected. But thank you for that hint should I have not known about this. I have'nt restarted firefox yet, hoping I might retrieve something
    – GitaarLAB
    Nov 4, 2012 at 22:23
  • "Infected" is a rather harsh term for it :-p And check the fireftp folder under your profile folder to see if there are any backups.
    – CrumpledMemories
    Nov 4, 2012 at 22:26
  • Im actually trying to be polite haha. Wilst I agree that for the average 'young unexperienced internet-user', aka your typical "internet = facebook, youtube and e-banking" they are trying to do some (arguably, since they should leave windows settings alone) good things. But their core-(power)users that have more browsers installed (identity, common browsing, ebanking) and used firefox 3 as a legacy tool to do some work are treated 'not so nice'. No should mean no, and if I need an older java applet to work (in a controlled secure environment) I should be able to unblock it. That's my opinion.
    – GitaarLAB
    Nov 4, 2012 at 22:38
  • Well, they do give you the power to do anything you want. You can easily switch off "updates" and they don't let you unblock old java applet because they have no way of knowing that you are doing the work in a controlled secure environment.
    – CrumpledMemories
    Nov 4, 2012 at 23:25
  • Updates ARE (and where) switched off, also the ones you mentioned. I'm also not the only one who is shure all that crap was turned off, but who where updated (without their concent and somewhere between my bookmarks should be an official mozilla link where it is confirmed there was some kind of hidden 'grace-period' and if you did not voluntarily replaced your good ff3, they did it for you what ever you set or clicked after a certain amount of time). Reading some more on the subject, turns out I'm not the only one that got $%^&* this month with the fireftp update, my current problem is common.
    – GitaarLAB
    Nov 5, 2012 at 0:38

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