Hidden "surprise" in recent Windows update

[CharlieChomper]

For those who have recently kept Windows patched and are using Firefox, you may be surprised to learn that Microsoft recently released a "patch" which snuck in a new "add-on" to the browser which neither the Mozilla group nor their teams of devs attached to Firefox were aware of until after it happened--nor was it approved by them.

This particular add-on (which has the option to remove it or uninstall it greyed out and doesn't ask you if you want it there or not--it just installs itself whether you want it to or not with this patch), according to Microsoft, "Adds ClickOnce support and the ability to report installed .NET versions to the web server."

It so far appears to be attached to the .Net framework and has become more widespread as of the release of SP3 for XP--users often won't know about the existence of this plug-in until they go to load Firefox the next time and get a notice of a new add-on.

There has already been a workaround developed to remove it, which has been posted on a number of sites--however, it does require performing a bit of surgery upon the registry to do so.

There have been a few discussions regarding this on the Firefox support forum and most of the sentiment, not just over there, but throughout much of the tech/techie community has been largely of the variety of annoyance and sometimes frustration (to put it nicely) in not just the fact the company did this, but both the method used to go about it as well as in the inability for most people to be able to remove it.

However, I should note that no one was terribly shocked by it either...

[CountessCrazy]

Which update number was that?

[Jenni Rose]

One of the links in the link CharlieChomper provided says its Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.

[silverlining]

Just to clarify;
is this add-on in any way dangerous/harmful/annoying in itself or are people just upset about the way in which it was snuck into peoples computers?

[CharlieChomper]

Sorry for not responding to this sooner, but between too much to do of late to having had the connection problems from heck of late (which remain ongoing), I haven't had a chance to really to do so until now.

Having said that, in answer to the question as to which update this was, while it did originate with the Visual Studio update (as the application "suite" is .Net-based) and other .Net-based applications and programs released by the company (with the update having originally been spotted back in August), it's been confirmed to have crept in on a more massive scale to recent updates to XP (more specifically, those running SP3)--there is no actual known update number listed as to which patch may have contained it for those not running either Visual Studio or any other Microsoft or commercial-grade software that is .Net-based.

At the moment, as it's only recently become better known what's happening, it's still being investigated as to which specific patch may have been responsible.

There is another possibility in that the company has been known in the past to sneak patches in without letting the user know about it--the last such time this happened was over a year ago and when news of its presence became known (and that it was not the first such time they had done so), it caused a massive uproar within the community, not just because they had snuck something in, in such a way but because that patch was known to actually cause problems and (as with this situation) couldn't be easily removed (although, unlike this situation, in order to "remove" that sneaky patch, one ended up having to do a complete reinstall of XP).

So far, among the "known facts" aside from its being there and the difficulty in removing it are that (for whatever reason) XP SP3 users seem to have a greater likelihood of having this happen than those running older service packs (although, again, it's still too soon to rule out just how widespread or narrow this problem may actually be) and that almost everyone affected by it has the .Net framework installed. Beyond that, it's still being looked into.

That is also a part of what has had people so upset--the not knowing how it got there (as in which patch) and just the fact that (mostly) it's there whether anyone wants it to be or not and can't be easily removed by most people. There is also some question as to whether or not this add-on may be "phoning home", which has further led to some annoyance.

I know that within the Mozilla camp, despite the fact that they've publicly thrown their hat into the EU Microsoft anti-trust suit against Microsoft, officially I wouldn't expect to see any comments or official statements from them about this--just as their staff has locked down any further discussions on this subject or just Microsoft policies on their forums.

I should also note that Microsoft is hardly the first company to go about things this way.

Edited to add: Ironically, yet another company appears to have gone about things this way no sooner than I posted this response. I'll post that information when I get a chance to.

[CountessCrazy]

I read at N99 that people were having trouble with service pack 3 so it isn't installed on my new computer. Is it true that there are problems with it or should I install it?

[CharlieChomper]

Yes, it's true that SP3 does have some problems associated with it.

The company has been aware of them since a few months prior to its scheduled release, as well as the seriousness of some of them as SP3 somehow found its way into the updates cycle prior to its official release date (it was pulled shortly thereafter once news of the list of problems with it became known within the tech/techie communities with Microsoft claiming it supposedly had "never been released" at that time). It was confirmed that it was not a "beta" release, but the final release of Service Pack3 around that time as well.

It also came as a bit of an "eye opener" (albeit, not a shock or surprise) when they decided to release it "as is" to the general public on the scheduled release date for the home users/consumers/"end users".

[CountessCrazy]

I'll just leave auto updates off then so I don't get it.