Random pop ups caused by add on in Firefox

Question

I'm a bit conflicted. Firefox was open to it's default home page and after a few minutes of inactivity a new tab opens by itself to this (seemingly harmless) webpage: http://barisderin.com/?p=2264

The title on this page is "Facebook Message Seen Disabled" which I thought was a legitimate add on that I have installed: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-message-seen-disable/

I'm not sure how to proceed. I do use the add on but I don't want to have random pop ups and now I don't think I can trust them. I also have adblock plus installed, and I ran adaware and the only thing found were the registry keys HKCU\Software\Conduit

EDIT: how on Earth do we not have a adware tag?

Answer 1

You can fix this. You can stop the popups, if you don't like them. Its Open Source!

As you can see the source of the addon here . There are couple of lines on the top in bootstrap.js file.

    firstRunURL:'http://barisderin.com/?p=2262',
    updateURL:'http://barisderin.com/?p=2264',

Simply change them to ,

    firstRunURL:'',
    updateURL:'',

Additionally, the popup is caused by line-276

FacebookMessageSeenDisable.openURLInTab(window,facebookmessageseendisableUrl);  

Just comment out this line using //.

Above changes can be implemented in practice as follows.

1. Download the xpi file from here using chrome/ie/Download manager.
2. Open the xpi file with a Archiver like winzip/winrar/7zip.
3. Edit the bootstrap.js from the archiver with above changes and save it.
4. Once you save the bootstrap.js file, archiver will ask whether to update the archive with changes. Choose Yes. Now the .xpi archive is updated and saved.
5. Go to Firefox, Choose File->Open File from menu. Select the updated xpi file and install it.

Note: Also I did these changes and you can download from here . Replace already existing one with this. And those popups should be gone now!

Answer 2

You can't trust such messages! If you need a Flash Player or similar application, you should go to its official website. This is the safest way to install apps on your computer. Now you need to check your Task Manager first to uninstall each of suspicious entries. Once you do so, reset your Firefox. Sometimes adwares spread in one pack with BHOS and similar components, so you may need to scan your PC with anti-spyware as well.

Answer 3

To my mind, you can't trust unwanted adverts (mail, pop-ups etc...) and you should never click on them even if looks interesting, funny... Concerning those pop-ups I personnaly use Ad-block Plus and I have no problem, but if it is as you say due to a malicious add-on, I advise you to scan your browser with a scanning tool such as AdwCleaner wich works every time for me.

Answer 4

The extension is clearly injecting ads. As long as there is no virus downloading and so on, your biggest problem is random ads being shown where ever they want (Clear adware).

I can suggest you do the following:

• Remove this extension even though you use their service. If they are injecting ads now, who knows what else they will decide to inject?
• If you decide to continue to use the extension, make sure you do not "install" anything of theirs. If fact, don't even click on links that are being displayed to you.
• Always be aware of what is happening in your browser and be smart about it too. Any suspicious activity should be investigated until finding the source of the problem.