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Smart Ad Block is blocking about:addons

  • 4 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

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An addon I downloaded added Smart Ad Block. It's been spontaneously redirecting Google to Bing and about:addons redirects to about:blank. The addons list will not appear so I can't remove any addons or extensions. I previously thought that Microsoft Co-Pilot was redirecting me. But I looked at the "Back" list. The redirect showed "search.smartadblock.net".

An addon I downloaded added Smart Ad Block. It's been spontaneously redirecting Google to Bing and about:addons redirects to about:blank. The addons list will not appear so I can't remove any addons or extensions. I previously thought that Microsoft Co-Pilot was redirecting me. But I looked at the "Back" list. The redirect showed "search.smartadblock.net".

All Replies (4)

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What was the addon you downloaded that added Smart Adblock? Is it the same as this SmartAdblock?

Try disabling your extensions to find which one is responsible.

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I found a separate extensions thing, otherwise your suggestion wouldn't have solved it.

 Remember what I wrote about the addons list not showing up.

about:addons, the Add-ons Manager, was blanked out by SmartAdBlock. They wanted to prevent anyone from removing it by the usual methods. about:addons brought up about:blank instead. But I found a separate button on the menu bar for extensions only that let me remove SmartAdBlock. That had a much shorter list than about:addons. After removing SmartAdBlock there is now only one dead extension there.

Modified by vkk4

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Extensions should not be able to intercept about:addons being loaded in the address bar. Are you sure the SmartAdblock extension is responsible? Do you see the same problem if you remove it and install SmartAdblock from addons.mozilla.org?

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Note that you can always start Firefox in troubleshoot mode to remove such an extension.