What is setup.exe and why does it try to go online after installing firefox?
I just downloaded the latest firefox installer and ran it, after the installation was completed i was asked by my firewall programm if setup.exe should be allowed or denied network acess. I found it's located here: C:\users\user\appdata\local\temp\7zsc6e8770c\setup.exe Now what is this and what does it do? What happens if i grant it network access, what data does it send to Mozilla and why?
I want to use this opportunity to also ask about defaultuseragent.exe, why does it even exist? What data does it send to mozilla, what does it do exactly?
Wšykne wótegrona (6)
if you download from say https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/ then you will get the small online stub installer.
The full offline installer for Windows can be downloaded from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release
The Default Browser Agent is controlled by this pref:
- about:config => default-browser-agent.enabled
The Default Browser Agent is a Windows-only scheduled task which runs in the background to collect and submit data about the browser. Some info about the Default Browser Agent and the “default-browser” ping data it sends.
James said
if you download from say https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/ then you will get the small online stub installer. The full offline installer for Windows can be downloaded from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release
I downloaded the installer here: https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ I know about https://www.mozilla.org/eu/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release but i was told to avoid the unique identifier i should download from the archive. You're basically saying the setup.exe is not included when downloading from the link your provided but instead it has a unique identifier, great. So where do i download firefox offline installer without setup.exe and without unique identifier?
And i still don't know anything about setup.exe, what it is, why it exists, what data it sends...
cor-el said
The Default Browser Agent is controlled by this pref:The Default Browser Agent is a Windows-only scheduled task which runs in the background to collect and submit data about the browser. Some info about the Default Browser Agent and the “default-browser” ping data it sends.
- about:config => default-browser-agent.enabled
Thanks that was useful.
{
build_channel: <string>, // ex. "nightly", or "beta", or "release" version: <string>, // ex. "72.0.2" os_version: <string>, // ex. 10.0.18363.592 os_locale: <string>, // ex. en-US default_browser: <string>, // ex. "firefox" previous_default_browser: <string>, // ex. "edge" default_pdf_viewer_raw: <string>, // ex. "firefox" notification_type: <string>, // ex. "initial" or "followup" notification_shown: <string>, // ex. "shown", or "not-shown", or "error" notification_action: <string>, // ex. "no-action" or "make-firefox-default-button" notification_not_shown_reason: <string>, // ex. "user-request" or "no-default-browser-transition" previous_notification_action: <string>, // Same possible values as notification_action
}
So what does mozilla want with all that data? I asume, or atleast hope... it is anonymized data, this could potentialy identifiy a unique user. "Firefox the privacy browser" - but we are also collecting your data.
James said
if you download from say https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/ then you will get the small online stub installer. The full offline installer for Windows can be downloaded from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release
The so called "full offline installer" does also run setup.exe after installation which is what i wanted to block and find out what it does.
I still don't know what setup.exe is, but it's for sure not the firefox installer because this one has a different name, Firefox_Setup_105.0.exe.
So what is setup.exe i can't find any info n it...