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when making a purchase on merchant website and wanting to pay with paypal, firefox will not connect to paypal.

  • 14 tontu
  • 1 am na jafe-jafe bii
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  • i mujjee tontu mooy soapboxmom

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When I am making a purchase on a merchant website and choose paypal as my form of payment, all I get is a page with a padlock on it and a spinning circle. It never gets past that to connect with paypal.

When I am making a purchase on a merchant website and choose paypal as my form of payment, all I get is a page with a padlock on it and a spinning circle. It never gets past that to connect with paypal.

All Replies (14)

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Hi, what security software are you running ?

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There are many things to check, but please make sure the redirect block is turned off:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste access and pause while the list is filtered

(3) If the accessibility.blockautorefresh preference is bolded and "modified" or "user set" to true, double-click it to restore the default value of false

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was already false

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Windows defender

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W10 Pro 1803x64 Defender FF61.0.1x64 login into my account on paypal and click to see my transaction without problem. I think it is your merchant site that PayPal doesn't recognize.

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it isn't just one merchant, it is always. tonight is was USPS site. Microsoft Edge works but i don't like edge, so it is a pain that it doesn't work in Firefox

soapboxmom moo ko soppali ci

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Can you just login to your paypal without going through a online retailer to see what happens?

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We don't currently have a lot of clues to go on. If a site is generally known to work in Firefox, these are general suggestions to try when it stops working normally:

Double-check content blockers: Firefox's Tracking Protection feature and extensions that counter ads and tracking may break websites that weren't built to operate normally without the blocked components.

Do you see a shield icon toward the left end of the address bar, near the lock icon? More info on managing the Tracking Protection feature in this article: What happened to Tracking Protection?.

Extensions such as Adblock Plus, Blur, Disconnect, Ghostery, NoScript, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin or uMatrix should provide toolbar buttons to manage blocked content in a page. There may or may not be a number on the icon indicating the number of blocked items; you may need to click the button to see what's going on and test whether you need to make an exception for this site.

Cache and Cookies: When you have a problem with one particular site, a good "first thing to try" is clearing your Firefox cache and deleting your saved cookies for the site.

(1) Clear Firefox's Cache

See: How to clear the Firefox cache

If you have a large hard drive, this might take a few minutes.

(2) Remove the site's cookies (save any pending work first). You probably need to visit Paypal to do this; don't do it in the middle of a transaction.

While viewing a page on the site, try either:

  • right-click (on Mac Ctrl+click) a blank area of the page and choose View Page Info > Security > "Clear Cookies and Site Data"
  • (menu bar) Tools > Page Info > Security > "Clear Cookies and Site Data"
  • click the padlock or "i" icon in the address bar, then the ">" button, then More Information, and finally the "Clear Cookies and Site Data" button

In the dialog that opens, you will see one or more matches to the current address so you can remove the site's cookies individually without affecting other sites.

Then try reloading the page. Does that help?

Testing in Firefox's Safe Mode: In its Safe Mode, Firefox temporarily deactivates extensions, hardware acceleration, and some other advanced features to help you assess whether these are causing the problem.

If Firefox is not running: Hold down the Shift key when starting Firefox. (On Mac, hold down the option/alt key instead of the Shift key.)

If Firefox is running: You can restart Firefox in Safe Mode using either:

  • "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Restart with Add-ons Disabled
  • (menu bar) Help menu > Restart with Add-ons Disabled

and OK the restart.

Both scenarios: A small dialog should appear. Click "Start in Safe Mode" (not Refresh).

Any improvement?

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I can log directly into paypal and works fine, I only have this problem when trying to use as payment method on merchant sites

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jscher2000, I will try these next time it happens to me. Thank you

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soapboxmom said

I can log directly into paypal and works fine, I only have this problem when trying to use as payment method on merchant sites

So what sites are they? That sounds very odd behavior to be happening.

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Just about any site that offers paypal as an option with the exception of ebay

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soapboxmom said

Just about any site that offers paypal as an option with the exception of ebay

That doesn't narrow down the problem....asking the site that gave the problem. Providing a site helps anyone from guessing what sites.

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last one was USPS.com