Users are familiar with the extensibility of Firefox – functionality can be painlessly extended through the installation of add-ons or extensions from addons.mozilla.org. However, while this process is user-initiated it’s strangely possible for 3rd party applications to install their plugins without any user intervention. This is clearly a security nightmare which makes it even more odd developers at Mozilla would allow such a thing in the first place.

Some of the plugins likely found installed on your Firefox installation include: Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office, or iTunes. Now, these all likely provide a benefit to you the user but that’s only because the name behind these plugins is known and generally trusted. Can you say that about every piece of software downloaded and installed however?

Unlike user-installed extensions, 3rd party plugins can’t be uninstalled through the normal user interface – you can only disable them which may or may not be sufficient for you. Strangely, the only way to uninstall the plugins is to locate them on the filesystem and delete them – a rather low-tech solution in my opinion.

The first step is to locate the plugin in question on your hard drive which can be made easier by exposing the full path to the plugin file.

Under about:config locate the preference plugin.expose_full_path by using the Filter box and change it’s value to true.

Now we can see the full path to the installed plugins under about:plugins. The Office system plugin is located under the plugins directory in the Firefox installation folder. Typically most of the plugins will be found here – applications can just throw whatever they want loaded by the browser on launch in this folder. See why this is a security nightmare now?

Traverse to the folder location in Windows Explorer and remove any and all plugins you wish to rid your system of. As always, the suggestion should be made to back-up the file or folder just in case the removal causes you more problems than it’s worth in Firefox. Reverting the changes are as simple as putting the file back into it’s original location and launching Firefox.

Surprised by any installed plugin in particular? I know I was!