SuperAdBlocker Plugin

Bulldog · Post by **Bulldog** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 6:19 pm

Firefox 3 ships with a SuperAdBlocker plugin. Is SuperAdBlocker related to AdBlock? I'm very satisfied with AdBlock and ABP and I don't think I need two different ad blocking utilities, so can I just disable the SuperAdBlocker plugin?

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:28 pm

"Firefox 3 ships with a SuperAdBlocker" - I don't think so. This plugin was already installed on your system when you installed Firefox 3.

Bulldog · Post by **Bulldog** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:39 pm

I am very certain that I did not install SuperAdBlocker on my own. It was definitely not installed on my copy of FF 2, which I upgraded to FF 3 to discover this new plugin.

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:50 pm

Firefox 2 didn't show plugins in any of its usual UI, you had to go to about:plugins to see them. So I would guess that it was there but you simply didn't see it.

Google doesn't tell anything about Super Ad Blocker being bundled with other software - so maybe you installed it so long ago that you forgot.

Uninstalling should be possible via Control Panel / Add or Remove Programs. Otherwise, Firefox 3 now also allows to disable plugins.

Bulldog · Post by **Bulldog** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:34 pm

However the plugin got there in the first place...I would rather remove it altogether vs. disabling it. But that's a Firefox question, so I'll take this opportunity to say that I appreciate AdBlock very much.

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:41 pm

As I said, that's a Windows application, so it should be uninstallable from Control panel / Add or Remove Programs. This has very little to do with Firefox.

Bulldog · Post by **Bulldog** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 3:25 am

You've been very patient with me so I don't want to appear ungrateful. Having done more research I'm now able to 'close the loop'.

Super AdBlocker installs with a plugin for Firefox (i.e., it's not a separate download). You can choose, from SAB's interface, whether you want this plugin to be enabled. When I uninstalled SAB the uninstaller did not remove the plugin, which remained in the Super AdBlocker folder in Program Files.

Firefox can search for plugins in a program's own folder - that's where it found the plugin. Of course, without the program the plugin was useless.

I would never have known about this were it not for the new FF 3, which now displays all its plugins. It was a simple matter of deleting the plugin (two small files) from FF's plugins folder and, voila, problem solved.

(I must have manually removed the Super AdBlocker folder in Program Files some time ago.)

To summarize: I've taken up your time with something that has nothing to do with AdBlock Plus and which I would have figured out on my own with a little more patience.

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:27 am

Thank you for following up on this, good to know - I was already wondering whether you might have the plugin but not the application, and how that could happen.

asdf · Post by **asdf** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 7:24 pm

Why has nobody else said this?

bulldog, if you're sure you did not isntall SAB on your own, it sounds like a spyware/malware problem!

asdf · Post by **asdf** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 7:28 pm

Anyhoo, if you don't want 3rd party software on your windows system gettings injected into your firefox, go to about:config and set application.use_ns_plugin_finder to false. This pref apparently works by scanning your program files folder and finding plugin files within their program's own folder tree, and may be accidentally presented to you as an extension.

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:27 pm

I checked, this isn't malware.