If you used Mozilla Firefox over the weekend, you may have noticed that some of your add-ons and extensions stopped working. Fortunately, the problem has now been fixed, and if your browser doesn't update itself automatically, you can update it manually by downloading installation files here or here.
The problem causing this was simple: A digital security certificate that verified the integrity of Firefox add-ons and extensions expired. As a safety measure, the add-ons and extensions were automatically disabled by the browser.
Widely used Firefox extensions such as Netflix, NoScript, Ghostery, uBlock Origin and LastPass were reported to no longer work starting at midnight universal time Saturday, May 4, when the certificate expired. That would have been 1:00 a.m. Saturday in London, 8:00 p.m. Friday in New York and Toronto and 5:00 p.m. Friday in Los Angeles.
Longtime users of Firefox ad blockers suddenly saw a level of online noise that the rest of us have to deal with every day.
"Opened Firefox ... guess a certificate died somewhere because all my add-on scrip[t]s are disabled and there are singles in my area waiting to meet me," tweeted information-security reporter Steve Ragan. "Oh, and I won some sort of trip."
But that's all done now. Your Firefox ad blockers and Netflix extensions should be working again. If not, click the links in the first paragraph of this story to update Firefox.
Firefox Browser Tips
- Clear Your Internet History in Firefox
- How to Use Firefox Sync
- Try Cool New Firefox Features with Test Pilot
- How to Update Firefox
- Mute Noisy Firefox Tabs
- Change the Default Search Engine in Firefox
- How to Show White Text on a Black Background in Firefox
- Stop Autoplaying Videos
- Firefox Quantum versus Chrome
