First of all, thank you for all the great work made in all of the different parts of the Zotero ecosystem.
Currently, as of June 2022, if you have the Firefox Extension "Zotero Connector" installed as a Firefox browser add-on, this is what happens:
DESCRIPTION
You turn on your computer.
Probably you want to do something on the Internet.
Most likely using Firefox.
Maybe you will even make use of "Zotero Conector".
Or maybe not.
You open Firefox.
You didnt go anywhere yet.
You're just staring at an empty Firefox window .
Automatically, without you touching anything:
DNS request:
Your computer sends a DNS request asking who is "repo.zotero.org"
DNS answer:
Your DNS resolver (most probably your home router), answers something like:
9 repo.zotero.org. 60 IN A 54.157.21.23
10 repo.zotero.org. 60 IN A 54.144.170.220
11 repo.zotero.org. 60 IN A 54.172.40.173
Those 54... servers belonging to Zotero are hosted on Amazon AWS. Their name there is something like, ec2-54-157-21-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com
a TCP request
Your computer then open a TCP connection to that server. It requests a https connection, that is on port 443 to those servers
10:51:39.724546 IP your_computer.XXXXX > ec2-54-157-21-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com.https: tcp 0
Your Firefox Extension "Zotero Connnector", than does whatever it needs to do connected to that computer.. That's not the point here.
The point here is that your personal computer machine just automatically phoned another computer machine on the Internet, telling it "hello", what time it is, where am I calling from etc. All of that, even if you are not using Zotero. Just using Firefox, for something else.
DISCUSSION
Just like hundreds of other Firefox Extensions, the Firefox Extension "Zotero Conector" may need to connect to the Internet.
To update itself or its inner workings somehow. Maybe it's internal list of extractors, to do this or that, etc. That is not bad per se.
What is bad is that this behaviour is automatic, it happens every time you start Firefox.
And there is no switch or control for the user to decide if he wants that. Something like a check box "Automatically let Zotero Connector check for updates".
This is how most other reputable Firefox Extensions work. If, by any technical reason, they might need to somehow regularly connect to the Internet more or less regurlarly, they'll let the user choose how to do it.
An example. Ublock origin is one of the most used Firefox Extensions. For proper effective functioning It needs, very very frequently, to keep it's block lists updated.
It does not however force the user to somehow accept any automatic connection and checking for updates. It, like many other offers a simple checkbox "Auto update filter lists". If the user decides not to use that option, there is a button to press and do it manually, called "Update Now"
The above described "good behaviour", is the common standard and practice of all respected Firefox extensions.
In almost 20 years of using Firefox, I've seen, used and continue to use and test hundreds of Firefox extensions. I've dozens right now installed. None of them behaves like this. No matter how complicated their inner workings might be. If they do, I uninstall it.
REQUEST
I also sincerely believe the needed work and changes to implement it on Zotero Connector is minimal, and hereby request this to be implemented.
adomasven
commented
2 years ago
First of all, thank you for all the great work made in all of the different parts of the Zotero ecosystem.
Currently, as of June 2022, if you have the Firefox Extension "Zotero Connector" installed as a Firefox browser add-on, this is what happens:
DESCRIPTION
Your computer sends a DNS request asking who is "repo.zotero.org"
Your DNS resolver (most probably your home router), answers something like:
Those 54... servers belonging to Zotero are hosted on Amazon AWS. Their name there is something like, ec2-54-157-21-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com
Your computer then open a TCP connection to that server. It requests a https connection, that is on port 443 to those servers
Your Firefox Extension "Zotero Connnector", than does whatever it needs to do connected to that computer.. That's not the point here.
The point here is that your personal computer machine just automatically phoned another computer machine on the Internet, telling it "hello", what time it is, where am I calling from etc. All of that, even if you are not using Zotero. Just using Firefox, for something else.
DISCUSSION
Just like hundreds of other Firefox Extensions, the Firefox Extension "Zotero Conector" may need to connect to the Internet.
To update itself or its inner workings somehow. Maybe it's internal list of extractors, to do this or that, etc. That is not bad per se.
What is bad is that this behaviour is automatic, it happens every time you start Firefox.
And there is no switch or control for the user to decide if he wants that. Something like a check box "Automatically let Zotero Connector check for updates".
This is how most other reputable Firefox Extensions work. If, by any technical reason, they might need to somehow regularly connect to the Internet more or less regurlarly, they'll let the user choose how to do it.
An example. Ublock origin is one of the most used Firefox Extensions. For proper effective functioning It needs, very very frequently, to keep it's block lists updated.
It does not however force the user to somehow accept any automatic connection and checking for updates. It, like many other offers a simple checkbox "Auto update filter lists". If the user decides not to use that option, there is a button to press and do it manually, called "Update Now"
https://i.imgur.com/dRTdeWU.png
The above described "good behaviour", is the common standard and practice of all respected Firefox extensions.
In almost 20 years of using Firefox, I've seen, used and continue to use and test hundreds of Firefox extensions. I've dozens right now installed. None of them behaves like this. No matter how complicated their inner workings might be. If they do, I uninstall it.
REQUEST
I also sincerely believe the needed work and changes to implement it on Zotero Connector is minimal, and hereby request this to be implemented.
Thanks in advance.
https://github.com/zotero/zotero-connectors/issues/349