Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

The Mr. Robot series centers around the theme of online privacy and security. One of the 10 guiding principles of Mozilla's mission is that individuals' security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional. The more people know about what information they are sharing online, the more they can protect their privacy.

...which you've done by installing a fishy-looking addon without our permission and making us less likely to trust you?

Well-done, Mozilla.

The whole idea of slipping paid advertorial content into what are billed as "research" kind of gives the lie to this whole thing and is why I never turn these on in any product. Which is also why it's now "opt-out" by default, and why it will eventually not be an option at all. It's all for our own good, you see.

> Participation in an individual study is opt-in

Source: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Shield/Shield_Studies

If that didn't happen in this case, then I suspect it's probably a bug.

Wrong, as far as I see: Looking in my about:config, I see

    app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled=true
    browser.onboarding.shieldstudy.enabled=true

That means that the user must actively take steps to disable them, if he knows that they exist and where he can disable them.

Every time the user creates a new profile, and most probably also when he "refreshes" an old one, he has by default the studies allowed.

It's even worse in other aspects: through the UI the "Allow Firefox to install and run studies" can be unchecked but it doesn't change the value of "experiments.enabled" to false in about:config.

Apparently the "experiments" allow Mozilla to install the "experimental" extensions to any user, without him knowing. And these extensions are invisible in the GUI! Even if the user goes to the about:config and sets extensions.ui.experiment.hidden to false, it will be automatically set to true again.