hello SteveGS, yeah your suspicion is right - those sites often want to trick you into installing stuff bundled with adware and other useless crap. the only legitimate site to download firefox from is mozilla.org - firefox also contains an automatic updater, so you don't need to download any file manually. you can always go to the firefox menu ≡ > help ? > about firefox in order to trigger a manual search for updates.

if you are getting loads of popups of that sort it might also be a sign of malware already active on your system:

1. reset firefox (this will keep your bookmarks and passwords)
2. afterwards go to the firefox menu ≡ > addons > extensions and in case there are still extensions listed there, disable them.
3. finally run a full scan of your system with different security tools like the free version of malwarebytes and adwcleaner to make sure that adware isn't present in other places of your system as well.

Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

Thank you for your response and solution! Steve

browser reidrect Try the below manual removal: 1. Open Firefox menu and choose Options> Options. 2. Then choose General tab and type in new address for home page. 3. Next, click on the drop-down button of search engine on Firefox toolbar. In the showing window, remove the unwanted and set another as default. Step Two: Reset Hosts 1. Open Run Box by pressing Windows + R together. 2. Then Type in “C:\Windwos\system32\drivers\etc” and press Enter. 3. In showing window, click on “hosts” and open with notepad. 4. You can see a line: 127.0.0.1 localhost (Windows xp) or 127.0.0.1 localhost # ::1(Windows 7/vixta/8), if there other lines below delete them and save the changes in notepad. Step Three: Show Hidden Files Windows xp/vista/7 1. Open Start menu and enter Control Panel. 2. Choose Folder Options. 3. Choose View tab, scroll down and highlight “show hidden files and folders”, then click OK. Windows 8 1. Open Start screen and enter File Explorer. 2. In showing window, click File tab and check “hidden items” and “file name extension”. Step Four: Clean Leftovers 3. Open Run box and type in “regedit”.(windows vista/7/8 users can type “regedit” in search field and access to Registry Editor directly.) 4. When windows open, navigate the entries and delete keys and values related to this virus.