PID				Local	      Remote Address	R Port			Sent		Received

I was trying to solve a slow-startup problem with my new upgraded Firefox 68 when I stumbled upon this. If I disconnect my internet, Firefox 68 starts instantaneously. If internet is available, Firefox is taking 45~60 seconds to appear. Worse, while it is background-starting, it is also freezing my UI (Windows Explorer (W7-64)) during the entire time it is conducting these private transactions. After searching for a solution via the forum, reading the support docs for "slow startup" (why do they always steer me towards the "it's not us" solutions?), I decided to monitor FF with my TCPViewer. After what I found, I decided to create a Firefox account (I didn't want to), just so I could report this here, and hear what people might say about this. Is this happening to anyone else? TCPView showed me eight (8) local ports opened by Firefox (not a problem, part of the architecture, local is blazing fast), followed by 5 to 8 remote TCP ports-- some to a distant 443 (https, and secure), but also a few 80's (http, insecure). One transaction, which was repeated on two consecutive startups, was a pull of more than 550MB from a site belonging to Microsoft (per GeoIP). Please note that my Firefox has uBlock Origin as its only Add-On. I upgraded to 68 because 67 wouldn't stop popping the "update available" message, and now I've also added my own policies.json (so I am now free of the pestering). Are these factors? My bottom line question is, why so much remote data exchange before completing startup? Not responding to events from the UI while this is going on... PID Local Remote Address R Port Sent Received firefox.exe 448 TCP 192.168.0.8 55515 204.237.142.178 80 ESTABLISHED 1 297 1 384 firefox.exe 448 TCP 192.168.0.8 55520 54.191.252.154 443 ESTABLISHED 4 1,385 6 3,771 firefox.exe 448 TCP 192.168.0.8 55521 72.21.91.29 80 ESTABLISHED 1 380 1 788 firefox.exe 448 TCP 192.168.0.8 55525 137.135.71.87 443 ESTABLISHED 4 1,418 297 554,808 Microsoft firefox.exe 448 TCP 192.168.0.8 55526 151.139.128.14 80 ESTABLISHED 1 375 2 916