Firefox connects out to this IP

Been testing my internet connections with Wireshark & found something revealing about FF. "If" i've got this right, it "could" explain why for a Long time i've wondered why my FW's icon very briefy blinks to indicate activity often, even when not surfing.

I checked for Addons & it found 2 which i updated. I only had one instance of FF open & closed it to relaunch & get the updated Addons included.

Immediately i relaunched ONLY going to an internal blank page.



WS showed it made these connections ?



http://www.stopbadware.org = 128.103.64.79

128.103.64.79 = Harvard University

After doing a WhoIs i went back to http://www../ & got the same 2 connections ?

I have set ALL options in FF & the Addons NOT to auto update, & i rechecked to make sure they were. Just to ensure nothing was leaking out from ANY of them, I disabled EVERY one & closed FF, which also clears out ALL the cache etc. Relaunched FF & the same thing happens ? I've repeated this relaunching a number of times with the exact same result.

So i'm wondering if FF is coded to connect to stopbadware ? And why ? If it's NOT coded to do that, why would i get the connections anyway, & every time ?

 

Try opening Firefox in Safe Mode with all boxes checked, or create a new profile.

 

Have you got the firefox security options enabled ?

"Block Reported Attack Sites
"Block Reported Web Forgeries"

http://www.stopbadware.org/home/faq

Do they get their lists from Google ? ...maybe it`s something to do with that ?

 

firefox -safe-mode



Thanks, i did that & got the Exact same connections = StopBadware

Good point but i have those already disabled & checked.

Yeah, i noticed that !

That's what i wondered, but i have deleted ALL google entries in about:config Before i did that i saw with WS that FF was making a number of connections to google I had previously deleted google from being the Search default. So now i get NO google connections at all.

I'm wondering if it's my ISP that has teamed up with StopBadware ? as in my screenie it shows them as DNS entries !

Just left viewing here & returned the page to www & once again i see the above 2 DNS StopBadware entries !

 

@CloneRanger

If you want to research a particular domain or IP address you could use http://www.bfk.de/bfk_dnslogger.html.
It was quite helpful to me, I found an add-on developer who likes to host she-male porn using the site to research their IP's.
You could say I was curious.

Cheers

 

Looks like i've tracked down the culprit



That was Enabled

I'd updated Calomel which corrected a previous minor conflict with the same settings in RP. So as it undid the conflict it unaviodably reenabled the DNS setting

But i'd still like to know why enabling the DNS Prefetching connects to www.stopbadware ?

Thanks

Really

 

Thank you!

 

@ ronjor

Thanks a LOT for finding that which sets the record straight finally. I did have a look at http://www.stopbadware for info, but didn't see that

That's probably why. So panic over well not really panic, but those connections out not directly initiated by me, appeared strange.

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There's a "bit" more info here http://stopbadware.org/home/pr_091508 but it's Very short on details. What i'm now wondering is, how on earth our FF's connecting out to http://www.stopbadware on EVERY launch & CLOSE is

It "sounds" as if they must be monitoring our visted www's, either by storing them first and/or dipping into our Cache etc, and/or our bookmarks How else could they accomplish what they say otherwise ?

"If" that's the case, then i'd say it's a BIG privacy issue, as NOWHERE blatantly are FF declaring this before installing it

 

So whatever browser we use there is no privacy.Now we can all stop bashing chrome/google on privacy issues.

 

@ JRViejo

Thanks for the link I found quite a bit of useful info on there

Re Add-ons Manager ?

I can see my Add-ons when i go to Tools/Add-ons, & that shows my Extensions, not Add-ons but they are Add-ons i know. What i don't see is anywhere is the Add-ons Manager Where is it ? FF v3.6.14

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This might of interest to peeps

I was able to disable a few more Auto connects with the help of that