Mozilla has removed from the addons.mozilla.org (AMO) catalog the FVD Speed ββDial add-on that has been in development since 2006, with about 69 active installations. The add-on offered an alternative implementation of the start page, provided quick access to the most frequently visited sites and allowed you to create visual bookmarks with the division of sites into groups. The reason for the deletion is a violation of the rules of the directory, namely, the interception by the add-on of search queries sent by the browser to the search engine.
The rules explicitly prohibit the accumulation of information about search queries or their interception without notifying the user of such activity and prior confirmation of the add-on's access to search queries (opt-in), even if this data is used locally by the add-on, for example, to provide a list with search history.
The specified violation was first identified in 2020, but after notification of the problem, the developer disabled the specified functionality. Request interception was recently re-enabled, and after the second violation, Mozilla removed the add-on and also blocked the work of already installed instances, adding the FVD Speed ββDial add-on to the block list, disabling add-ons already installed on users' systems.
Users of the add-on were outraged that the block was made without warning and the negative effect of stopping the work of the add-on turned out to be incomparable with the detected violation that did not pose a threat to confidentiality only about intercepting requests). After installing the Firefox 94.0.2 update, the FVD Speed ββDial add-on stopped working, resulting in the loss of links and site groups added for access from the start page. To restore and transfer bookmarks added via the FVD Speed ββDial, users can disable the add-on block list by changing the "extensions.blocklist.enabled" setting in about:config.
Source: opennet.ru