I also have discovered Speed Dial disabled. Would have been nice to receive warning so data contained in dials could be retrieved. Poor form folks.

Hi All, sorry for the bad experience. If your speed dial URLs were sync'd to that company's servers, then you may be able to recover them using their other extensions in Firefox or in Chrome or in Edge. Still waiting to hear how that might work out.

To avoid losing more data in Firefox, do not remove/uninstall the extension.

By the way, here is another active thread on this problem: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1358850

What F'wit decided to pull this without notice! Type of crap expected of Fakebook or Crapple but not from an organisation that allegedly cares about it's users! Maybe Edge/Chrome aren't so bad, been using Brave.. can recommend it

Hey PG, for what it's worth, you can read the explanation using the link on the Add-ons page for this extension in your Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/blocked-addon/pavel.sherbakov@gmail.com/77.5.7/

jscher2000 and all,

Thanks for the input/suggestions. I wish there was a replacement for FVD Speed dial that I could add to Firefox. If not, I may have to look for a different, non-snooping browser replacement that may have such a feature.

For the record, I understand their stated reason for disabling it; what I do NOT understand is why they did it with no advance warning. They state that they've repeatedly, apparently over some stretch of time, advised the developer that they should comply. I don't understand why they didn't advise their customers at least ONCE before pulling the plug. There's no reason they couldn't have.

It's like having someone come into your office in the middle of the night unannounced, empty the contents of your filing cabinets all over the floor, and leave behind nothing but a note saying, "Sorry. Had to be done. These file cabinets were unsafe. We told the manufacturer to replace them many times, but they ignored us."

I'm also REALLY upset. I've been using FVD for years and have a lot of my work- and research-related links saved there because it's easier to access them there than using Favorites or other options. I have a TON of links saved.

I'm also angry because the information provided by Mozilla states that FVD had repeatedly violated Mozilla's terms but someone decided that now was the time to cut off access. There was no "cat is on the roof" messaging, like "due to repeated violations of Mozilla's terms, FVD Speed Dial will be disabled on (date) if they are not in compliance by that date."

If I had been notified about disabling FVD, I would have hopefully had time to transfer my critical links to another utility or a different plug-in. At the moment, I'm at a loss. Unfortunately, EverSync seems to use a proprietary format for backing up the links, and I'm not aware of an export option.

I'm angry at Nimbus as well. I assume that since Mozilla had notified them of their violation of terms many times, they must have seen this coming. But they continued to violate terms. Didn't notify users that this might happen. Didn't offer any alternatives or ways to recover saved links.

Feudor888,

Sorry, what? I don't understand. Could you perhaps explain this with a bit more detail? Thank you!

Unfortunately, EverSync seems to use a proprietary format for backing up the links, and I'm not aware of an export option.

I'm sorry to hear you have this problem.

What kind of back up do you have? On another forum, someone mentioned a file with a .sd extension which actually is a Zip file. If you rename the file with a .zip extension, you may be able to access its contents. Those might not be in a convenient format; I have not used this extension myself so I have no idea.

Hi

In 2020, we became aware that the developer of the FVD add-on had begun intercepting search queries that were being sent to a third-party search provider, in clear violation of the Mozilla Add-ons Policies. After a repeated violation we again explicitly told them under which circumstances this type of data collection is not acceptable. At the time, the developer disabled the feature, and we continued to host FVD Speed Dial.

Recently we have become aware that the developer has re-enabled the offending functionality, which remains in violation of AMO policy. In light of these repeated offenses, we have blocked this addon. While we regret the impact that this has had on some of our users, we believe that our commitments to user safety and the importance of user trust in Firefox and its surrounding ecosystem have obligated us to take this action, and we stand by this decision.

jscher2000,

The backups I have use the .sd extension. If this is actually a ZiP file, that could be really helpful. Thanks for suggesting it!

Seburo,

My complaint is not specifically that FVD was disabled. Because they violated Mozilla's policies and security policies, the plug-in does need to be disabled.

My complaint is that there was no advance notification that gave users of FVD time to move their links to an alternative. I was in the middle of work today and all of my frequently-used work-related saved links suddenly disappeared when FVD was disabled.

I did back up my links using EverSync, but that doesn't make the links readily accessible.

I've seen a couple of suggestions from other posters that may be helpful. I'm going to try them out. I'll be happy if I can transfer my saved links somewhere else and I can use a different speed dialer in the future.

It felt almost like my bank had suddenly disappeared with all my savings. It may not in fact be as tragic as that scenario, but there are hundreds of lost hours in saved links, ability to access work and personal websites, and recovery time (if recovery is possible).

"While we regret the impact that this has had on some of our users, we believe that our commitments to user safety and the importance of user trust in Firefox and its surrounding ecosystem have obligated us to take this action, and we stand by this decision."

Seburo,

- While I understand user safety, what about user productivity? How is deleting an app, with no advanced notice and losing years of data, promoting trust in your Firefox product(s)? - For myself and the numerous complaints in multiple threads, the issue is retrieving the information/links from the speed dials. This isn't one or two links, this is about 50 - 100+. - If you are truly commited to your users, you might start by treating this problem seriously and not with a casual dismissive response. - Bottom line: what concrete remedies can you (or any support staff) provide to the many users that relied on this app, to obtain the lost data from the FVD Speed Dials? Thank you.

Hello @Seburo (and other Mozilla staff), What you did and say is in total contradiction with your "users caring"statements. Your last sentence is really revealing : "obligated us to take this action, and we stand by this decision". It can be translated to we wanted to do it now, and we don't care about any of you having problem with it, this is unbelievable! At least hear us and suggest a solution for everyone! Like at least retrieving the readable links from the sqlite firefox save files ?

Hi,

The people who answer questions here, for the most part, are other users volunteering their time (like me), not Mozilla employees or Firefox developers. If you want to leave feedback for Firefox developers, you can go to the Firefox Help menu and select Submit Feedback... or use this link. Your feedback gets collected by a team of people who read it and gather data about the most common issues.