Microsoft Stealth-Installs a Firefox Extension
Mon 1 Jun 2009 7:40 PM

I don't know. I suppose I should be angrier about this. But by now, this is the kind of stuff we've come to expect from Microsoft.

Earlier this year, Microsoft issued a service pack (fancy name for a bunch of updates) for their .NET Framework, which is one of their myriad programming platforms. A lot of third-party programmers, and Microsoft programmers themselves, use it to create a lot of different Windows programs.

Lots of us across the world looked at it, and tested it. It seemed to work fine, and it seemed to do everything it said it did, and it seemed to cause no problems during our testing. So we installed it. And we recommended that other people install it.

Apparently, however, this .NET update automatically - and very, very quietly - installed a Firefox add-on that is both difficult and dangerous to remove. What it does, is this: it allows any Web site to easily - and silently - install software on your PC.

We Firefox users have always prided ourselves on the fact that we have a Web browser that is so much safer than Internet Explorer. Microsoft has now, without our permission, taken away one of the basics of that safety.

Oh - and here's the kicker: there's no uninstall. You read that right: once you install it, there's no easy way to get rid of it. It's not like real Firefox extensions, where you can just remove it from the Add-ons menu. Oh, no - Microsoft knows better than you, and they know you'll never want to remove something that provides such a wonderful service as letting any whack-job on the Internet install anything on your machine behind your back.

The only way to get rid of it is to go mucking about in the Registry. Those of you who've been following me for a long time know just how I feel about this - it's not for the Average Person; the possibility of royally screwing up your system is very high. Because they are our friends, and they love us so much, Microsoft has just released another update to the .NET Framework that puts back a button to remove this extension. And they clearly expect kudos for doing that. Well, whoop-dee-friggin'-doo.

I'm really disappointed in Microsoft on this one. I had thought that my esteem for Microsoft was so low that nothing they did could ever disappoint me again; apparently, I was wrong. I mean, I understand their reasoning, I guess. They're losing the browser wars, mainly because Internet Explorer is so prone to viruses. Since they apparently don't have programmers capable of fixing that, they've decided to level the playing field by making their number one rival just as susceptible to the crap that gets through Internet Explorer. Okay, I guess that makes sense to them. But not to me.

I really don't know what to say about this. It's so egregious. I understand that whatever Microsoft wants to do to their own software, that's their business, and that's fine. That's part of the price you pay for running Microsoft's operating system. But when they start screwing around with software from other companies, and doing it behind your back, that's just low class.

Just one more reason to be happy I run Linux.