Promoting something can benefit parties involved. But when things go wrong, one will definitely suffer.
The idea came when Mozilla promotes computer security and privacy awareness using an online game from Mr. Robot hacker TV series. But almost immediately, the plan started backfiring, with Mozilla taking all the blames.
What Mozilla did, was force-installing a Mr. Robot promotional add-on in some Firefox browsers.
The add-on, called Looking Glass, was intended to promote the season 3 finale of Mr. Robot. But the thing is that, the add-on was installed on users' Firefox browsers, without their knowledge. Since Mozilla always stresses how important users' privacy is to the organization, this is like the opposite of what it intended.
And not just that, the add-on had a cryptic name and description:
Puzzling users, many took to the internet and Reddit to find what it was.
Mozilla admits it, saying that:
"Firefox and Mr. Robot have collaborated on a shared experience to further your immersion into the Mr Robot universe, also known as an Alternate Reality Game (ARG)," Mozilla explained in a knowledge article.
"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."
Despite the troubling way the extension was installed, Mozilla said it doesn't do anything to users' system until they opt into the Alternate Reality Game, designed to take fans into the Mr. Robot universe.
"We heard from some of our users that the experience we created caused confusion," said Mozilla after realizing the backlash. As a result, Mozilla moves the Looking Glass add-on to its Add-On store, with the source can be viewed in a public repository.
Looking at its source code, available on GitHub, the add-on was supposed to trigger three URLs:
- https://www.red-wheelbarrow.com/forkids/*
- https://www.whatismybrowser.com/detect/*
- https://red-wheelbarrow-stage.apps.nbcuni.com/forkids/activitysheet/
It was found that Mozilla could force-installed this add-on via Firefox Studies, a Firefox feature that allows Mozilla to run experiments on users' browsers. According to a test carried out, the Firefox Studies feature is turned on by default on all new Firefox installs.