Mozilla Firefox Plugins Blocked for Third Parties; Browser's Privacy Recognized as 'Most Trusted Internet Company'

Mozilla Firefox is in the news for two very different reasons but both affect the browser.

A study by the Prone Institute has recognized Mozilla among the "Most Trusted Internet Company for Privacy" in 2012.

The objective study was conducted by asking consumers to name and rate organizations they believe have committed to protecting the user's privacy and more than 100,000 adults were surveyed.

Mozilla Firefox did not get the top title, losing to American Express, but ranked in the top 20. The list also saw Amazon, eBay, Verizon, Microsoft, and AT&T in the top 20, but unlike the before mentioned companies, this is Mozilla's debut.

"Mozilla is a unique technology organization that puts people at the center of the Web," said Mozilla Chief Privacy Officer Alex Fowler. "Being ranked the most-trusted Internet company for privacy is validation that users want mainstream applications like Firefox to provide a great user experience and better transparency, choice and control online. Much more is ahead for Mozilla as we work with stakeholders across the Web and mobile to help people understand how their information is being used and shape their own online experience."

Despite the good news, Mozilla noted in their blog that a lot more work has to be done.

"It's unfortunate that users largely distrust the ecosystem of online service and application providers," the blog posted noted. "What we really want is an environment where those of us developing Internet and social media services and applications deepen trust in a way that empowers and protects users and engenders confidence. We all have to continue our efforts - both big and small - to create a more trustworthy environment of online products that seamlessly integrate ease of use, transparency, and user choice."

In other Mozilla news, the company announced that it will require "Click to Play" for third party plugins on their browsers, except for current versions of Flash.

The change, according to Mozilla, is to help increase Firefox performance and stability and provide security benefits.

"Leveraging Click to Play Firefox will only load plugins when a user takes the action of clicking to make a particular plugin play or the user has previously configured Click To Play to always run plugins on the particular website," wrote Mozilla's Director of Security Assistance Michael Coates.

He added that poorly designed third party plugins are the number one causes of Firefox browsers crashing, "This is often seen in pauses while plugins are loaded and unloaded, high memory usage while browsing, and many unexpected crashes of Firefox. By only activating plugins that the user desires to load, we're helping eliminate pauses, crashes and other consequences of unwanted plugins."

Coates noted that during the change, they will monitor the results.