I was downloading the latest version of Firefox today and came across a Google sponsored ad in my firefox search . The sponsored link goes to FirefoxIIl.com (that’s the word firefox plus two capital i’s and one lower case L). I found it interesting that the Mozilla foundation would sponsor a new distribution, and more interestingly under a new domain name. After checking out the web site, I found the site did not have any copyrights or links to other mozilla/firefox web sites or plugin downloadss. Further more, the only thing you can download from the site is the version 3 exe install and a couple themes. Who ever put the site together listed a few Firefox plugins, obviously the authors favorites.

The owner of the domain is not the Mozilla foundation. The current domain owner is “INTERNETWIRE COMMUNICATIONS GMBH”, web site: http://www.internetwire.de. They do not appear to have any connection with Firefox or Mozilla.

Just to check that someone is not doing some weird hoax or distributing a version with spyware or a virus, I downloaded the version from firefoxiiL.com and did a compare to the one from Mozilla. They are identical files, so at least no one is being harmed by this stunt.

So the question is, why would someone create a hoax site and pay Google to advertise it?

Update

@blookins from twitter replied with the lookup of the IP address of the server hosting firefoxiiL.com, it is hosted in China. Very suspicious.

Google

Why are you selling your Adsense service to a potential fraudulent web site?

Well, I’ve finally found others who are finding the same problem. I will be surfing the net, open a page and bam! Firefox crashes. More recently the computer was running slow when Firefox crashed and I swear I saw a pop up from quicktime asking me if I’d like to update. Since then, I’ve used a computer without iTunes and QuickTime with Firefox and have had no problems.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4630001

I want my iTunes. So to avoid this crashing in the future, I’ve taken the necessary steps below.

1. Click Start >Â Programs > QuickTime > QuickTimePlayer
2. Click Edit ? Preferences > Player Preferences
3. Click the Update tab and remove the check next to “Check for updates automatically”
4. Click the File Types tab and unselect everything except “QuickTime Movie Format” Uncheck the option at the bottom titled “Notify me if other applications modify these associations”.
5. Pray that QuickTime doesn’t crash your Firefox again.

Hopefully this is helpful to others.