hello, yes it's right to be suspicious about such messages - they are often a scam tactic trying to trick you into installing malware-bundled software, so don't download or execute this kind of stuff! firefox updates itself are handled automatically, when a website claims that you need to download and run a .exe file to update it will be fake (you can always manually initiate a check for updates in firefox > help > about firefox).

i'd recommend running a scan of your system with different tools specialised on browser hijacking like the free version of malwarebytes, adwcleaner in order to make sure that there isn't already some sort of adware active on your system that triggers these false alerts.

Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

Note that you have a user agent that might be corrupted because it has ZemanaAID/FFFF009F appended and shows a Firefox 24 version (check the version in Help > About).

• Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0 ZemanaAID/FFFF009F

See:

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Finding+your+Firefox+version
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/websites-say-firefox-outdated-or-incompatible

Philip, I've done exactly what you recommend. I downloaded malwarebytes and it cleaned up several small adware that had been a problem these last 2 weeks. Seems like Firefox is now being fed on by these adware. Thanks for taking the time to help. I appreciate it a lot.

m

What is your current user agent and what Firefox version are you using?

• Help > Troubleshooting Information

to answer you, my Firefox is V 27.0.1, but I'm afraid I don't know what a user agent is. perhaps you could explain.

thanks, m

If you open the Help > Troubleshooting Information then there is a line in the first Application Basics section that has the user agent.

You can also check if there is a general.useragent.override pref mentioned in the "Important Modified Preferences" section further down.

See also:

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Using+the+Troubleshooting+Information+page

Thanks for your instructions. I've located the user agent data, so here it is:

user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0 ZemanaAID/FFFF009F general user agent override: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0 ZemanaAID/FFFF009F ...................................... to mention, once I ran malwarebytes, it located a number of adware/malware issues, which I then deleted. another that had downloaded onto our pc was Bench/BService/bservice.exe, which I deleted.

as to what the useragent 'means' or what one does with that data, I'm afraid i still don't understand that.

Thanks..m

You can open the about:config page via the location bar and you can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config

You can type of paste general.useragent in the search bar at the top of the about:config page and reset all user set (bold) general.useragent prefs via the via the right-click context menu to the default value.

• general.useragent.override

See:

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/websites-say-firefox-outdated-or-incompatible