June 4, 2011
First, I should never have installed Firefox 4. It is awful. It abuses the privilege of being awful. It is so awful that I may go back to Internet Explorer. These idiots moved my home page/icon to the far right side of the screen, then shrank it. How dumb is that?
But it's not as bad as Chrome.
Techies just will not let good enough alone. They love "neat" code. They want to make "our" (their) browsing experience better. They don't. They simplify things into complete confusion.
Second, I got hit with something called MAFIAA. It redirects my clicked links to a list of sites that are mirror sites for file-sharing sites.
I don't use file-sharing.
The page is a Chrome page.
Why is it in my system? What is is it fouling up my software?
I sent this question to a techie friend. He knows all. He responded.
This came about probably because you set your Firefox settings to automatically install, without asking, any new updates. When Firefox upgrades to a new version, they have a deal with Google to auto-install a Chrome add-on unless you tell them not to - which you don't have a chance to do if you've told them to auto-install in the first place. Go to Tools>Options>Advanced>Update and change the radio button to "Ask Me What I want to Do". This will force Firefox to ask permission before it can install any unwanted third-party programs - which pay Firefox (a non-profit organization) fees - and enable them to continue providing this great program to you for "free".
"Ask me what I want to do? Is that a revolutionary idea, or what?
I did it. I clicked the box.
But wait. There's more!
I read recently that if you aren't paying for something, then you are NOT the consumer, you are, in fact, the "product" which is then sold along to the ultimate consumer (advertiser?) paying the producer for the product. Liked it.
He added:
***If you are using Chrome as a stand-alone browser, I'd recommend you turn it off immediately. You can uninstall it via the Install/Uninstall Programs option in the Windows Control Panel.
I hate Chrome, so it's not my browser.
It's easy to turn off Chrome inside Firefox.If you are using Firefox and somehow Chrome has installed a Firefox add-on, you can disable it, if you want, by going to: tool>addons>extensions and disable it.
Chrome, by Google, reports back to Google pretty much everything you do - and likes to "help" you by providing redirects and exclusions to "protect" your internet browsing...like the block_and_redirect_list that Google keeps.
BTW, if you have upgraded to Firefox 4 (and it's fast) - and miss all the old toolbars at the top (they're not displayed by default to make Firefox 4 look 'cleaner'), you can instantly restore all of them by right clicking on the File/Edit/View bar or any gray bar at the top of the screen and turning back on the Menu, Navigation and Bookmarks bars. (For color blind info) The gray bar is the one directly below the dark blue bar at the very top which has the Firefox logo on the left hand side and the -/../X boxes on the right hand side.
That's a whole lot of free tips for the week. Enjoy!
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