An anonymous reader writes "While doing a weekly scrub of my Windows systems, which includes checking for driver updates and running virus scans, I found Firefox notifying me of a new add-on. It's labelled 'Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant,' and it 'Adds ClickOnce support and the ability to report installed .NET versions to the web server.' The add-on could not be uninstalled in the usual way. A little Net searching turned up a number of sites offering advice on getting rid of the unrequested add-on." The unasked-for extension has been hitchhiking along with updates to Visual Studio, and perhaps other products that depend on .NET, since August. It appears to have gone wider recently, coming in with updates to XP SP3.

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F02%2F01%2F2143218&from=rss

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Shortly, update for XP brings addon for you FF, which you 'must' use. You cannot uninstall it easily. To uninstall it you must do the following.

http://www.robertnyman.com/2009/01/26/microsoft-force-installs-firefox-extension/

(Well, if MS can't compete with FireFox. It can always clutter FF up to make it slower than IE. :D)

MS might get fined agan if the EU get wind of this.

low, even for microsoft.

apple doesnt fall so behind with it clustered and slow itunes.

EDIT:

DAMN i have it! T_T. uninstalling that shit now.

I'm sure Itunes causes more piracy than it helps solve , that thing is  a pain in  the ass.

What does the add-on actually do?

Corrupts the firefox.exe

jkn I dunno...

“Adds ClickOnce support and the ability to report installed .NET versions to the web server.”  whatever that means.

Makes sure your .Net runtime is up to date most likely.

at the cost of slowing down firefox a bit.

Just call it spyware. It asks no permission and still sents information so spyware should be the term.

Lucky me; I don't have it (...yet). Anyway, just another reason to hate M$.