Dephormation & Secret Agent; Notes on Addon Signing

Mozilla have announced that, from version 41 onward, Firefox will not permit unsigned add-ons to be installed.

That being the case, I can only recommend you switch web browser to one of the many excellent alternatives that respect your freedom to choose the software you want to install. The developers of Dephormation & Secret Agent will never submit to a compulsory developer registration, nor comply with any freedom of use restriction imposed by a US marketing company.

You remain welcome to examine the source code for Dephormation & Secret Agent; I am certain you won't find any cause for concern. In effect you face a restriction on your freedom imposed by your choice of browser developer (Mozilla), not your choice of add-on developer (Dephormation).

Other excellent browsers that respect your freedom of choice, and remain fully compatible with Dephormation & Secret Agent, include

  • Pale Moon - a web browser forked from the Firefox codebase, optimised for performance
  • Sea Monkey - a modern evolution of the original Navigator browser using the Mozilla codebase
  • Ice Weasel - a web browser forked from the Firefox codebase, running on the stable version of Debian Linux

If you choose to stick with Firefox, then according to Mozilla, your options are as follows;

The Developer Edition and Nightly versions of Firefox will have a setting to disable signature enforcement. There will also be special unbranded versions of Release and Beta that will have this setting, so that add-on developers can work on their add-ons without having to sign every build. To disable signature checks, you will need to set the xpinstall.signatures.required preference to "false".
  • in the Search box type xpinstall.signatures.required
  • double-click the preference, or right-click and selected "Toggle", to set it to false.type about:config into the URL bar in Firefox

If that procedure doesn't work, you should upgrade to a better web browser.

You can read more here:

Ghacks.net What you do when Firefox disables installed add-ons

Dan Stillman @Zotero; Automated Scanning of Firefox Extensions is Security Theater (And Here’s Code to Prove It)