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Firefox Internet Security Issue

G

Grandcheapskate

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2014
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903
Location
New Jersey, USA
Hi Guys,
I am using Windows 7 with Firefox as my browser. uBlock is installed on both Firefox and Chrome and has not been touched since installation.
Over the past week a weird thing has occurred. The only difference over that week is I believe Firefox issued an update.
On Firefox, I can no longer get into the websites for Home Depot and Lowes. I can get to their home page but any attempt to do a search or look at an item results in some type of access denial. All other website I normally access seem to be working without issue, including doing searches on sites like eBay.
I can fully access both sites using Chrome (although installed, I never used that browser and believe it hasn't been updated in forever).
Based on this, I would think the problem is with Firefox.
One side note and question. I believe I hard coded the server address but forgot how I did it or how to find it. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks...Joe
 
I have noticed that websites are starting to clamp down on browser useragents and versions to deal with scrapers spoofing a browser to access pages.
The other stuff is now just flatly refused. Some of the newer clients get stuck in the cloudflare bot check more often than normal and the latest clients normally get the greenlight.
 
One thing I notice with Firefox is that after a while uBlock stops blocking, as if there was nothing to block, so there's this sudden avalanche of ads. Have to quit firefox and restart it.
 
Robbbert said:
One thing I notice with Firefox is that after a while uBlock stops blocking, as if there was nothing to block, so there's this sudden avalanche of ads. Have to quit firefox and restart it.
Click to expand...

This is because of the cat and mouse game that ad networks and ad blockers are constantly playing. You have to update your ad blocker lists at least once a week to stay ahead of the ads. There are also anti-adblock blockers that are constantly trying to break browsers running ad blockers, which have to be managed as well.
 
It seems I am finding other websites which are now getting "something has gone wrong" messages from Firefox. Chome is working but websites may not display correctly. Looks like I have to upgrade my internet machine to release 11, which probably means I have to get a new machine, unless there is a browser which is still fully functional under Windows 7.
This constant updating just to accommodate browsers is ridiculous.
 
I'm using the last Firefox ver 115.33.0 esr, released Feb 2026, seems mostly ok although I don't visit so many sites. The machine of course also has Edge, which works pretty well considering it hasn't been updated for a few years.

You could try R3dfox, latest version is based off Firefox 148. The last one I have tested is ver 137, which runs ok apart from a bug with setting up the download folder.

github.com

Releases · Eclipse-Community/r3dfox

r3dfox is a modern Firefox based web browser for Windows Vista & 7. SourceForge link for downloading with older browsers. https://sourceforge.net/projects/r3dfox/ - Eclipse-Community/r3dfox
github.com github.com
 
Robbbert..I am on the same release. I wonder if you could try getting into the Lowes or Home Depot site past the home page. Just try searching for any item and see if you get error messages.
 
I assume you mean the American versions of those stores, as we have our own.

But if you mean: https://www.lowes.com/ and https://www.homedepot.com/ , then yes they block me. Can't access home depot at all, the home page is blocked. Lowes blocks when a search term is entered. Their loss - just go to somewhere else who is willing to work with you.
 
Last edited:
I've noticed issues with github, sometimes there's message that the page couldn't load, or sometimes it just gets the never-ending turning wheel, i have to hit F5.

So maybe the Firefox people really did break something. Pity this is the last release, it will therefore never get fixed.
 
Thank you for trying.
Yes, I was referring to the American version of the websites. I can get to those websites with Chrome but that is also very old and I never kept it up to date.
It is not the companies who are blocking us out, it has to be Firefox.
It seems to be the last update which broke Firefox as it was working before then. If I could load the previous release or back out the last update I would. I do have another machine I use as a backup should this machine fail and it has not been updated in months so it would have an older release. But I have no idea if I could transfer that release to this machine.
Thanks...Joe
 
The last release had over 20 security fixes, which is much more than normal. I'm willing to bet that some AI farm combed through the code and came up with all this. Unfortunately AI makes a lot of mistakes, and clearly made one or more here.

I don't know if Firefox offers bug bounties, but it's often the case that AI farms come up with anything they can in order to create an income from bounties.
 
On the site supprt.mozilla.org it appears the older releases are available. When I select an older release (in this case I tried 115.30.0), all I get is a list of directories and files.
How do I use these to reinstall Firefox?
Thanks...Joe
 
If what you see matches what I see, you would need to access the correct directory for your OS (possibly win64) and then the directory for your language (likely en-US) which will offer either an MSI or an EXE version of the installer. Run whichever you choose to download and if everything works right, it will install.

The EXE is probably just a wrapper around the MSI so that shouldn't make a difference.
 
Most AI scrapers ignore robots.txt and are run from all kinds of networks. This puts an extremely high load on web sites, requiring providers to tighten down security.

If your browser identification matches an AI scraper or looks somewhat odd, the likelyhood of your request simply being blocked increases.

Thank the machine overlords for destroying the internet.
 
rittwage said:
As more sites begin to require TLS 1.3 and stop supported TLS 1.2, Windows 7 will stop being able to reach those sites, right?
Click to expand...
No. Windows 7 has no issue with that. It's more up to the browser. For example, if you install RetroZilla onto Windows 9x it can get to TLS 1.3-only sites, but since it (the browser) doesn't have modern script support the result looks like crap.

There's sites that make new certificates available for the older OS's. Only takes a few minutes every 3 months to keep up to date.
 
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