Mozilla revealed why addons.Mozilla.org (AMO) is showing extensions aren’t being monitored notice to users. The organization apparently has confirmed they’re testing this and only a few users are getting it and isn’t a permanent part of AMO yet. They’ll decide whether to keep or modify or drop it after the users reaction.
What’s happened?
Since the last few days, Mozilla add-ons site is showing a notification to users for some extensions with a message that: ” This extension isn’t monitored by Mozilla. Make sure you trust the extension before you install it”. The thing is Mozilla has shown this warning even for their own extensions also. This may put the user in a dilemma whether to install the extension or not?
Apparently, an add-on developer whose 7 extensions tagged with “not monitored” message” asked on the discourse that the warning is being displayed for 16k extensions and is this to make users install only recommended extensions?.
The developer further says there is no point in showing this message to users where they can’t make a decision, he suggests Mozilla to introduce “trusted developer” badge with info letting the users know “this extension is made by developer who creates extensions for 2 years and has overall rating 4.4 from 10,000 users”, he also suggests to provide dev’s contact information on the extension page to users.
Jorge Villalobos, the product manager for addons.manager.org replies the warning is correct and says “most extensions on the site aren’t regularly code-reviewed. so we can’t guarantee their safety”
AMO PM says we can’t assess safety by providing developer ID or positive reviews the extension got and the developer has been contributing for so and so years. He says “we’ve had incidents in the past with long-standing add-ons and “reputable” developers.”
“We’re trying to draw a line between add-ons that are closely monitored and those that aren’t. At the moment that’s limited to a small set of recommending extensions, but that can change in future depending on the success of the program” Jorge concluded.