Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog
Categories: contests developers

Thanks for competing in the add-ons contest!

17 responses

Thanks to everyone who submitted add-ons for the Amp Your Firefox contest. If you’re still waiting for your add-on to be reviewed, no worries—as long as you submitted it before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on July 18, 2013 (7:59 a.m. GMT on July 19, 2013), your entry is valid.

If your add-on doesn’t pass full review, be sure to make any requested changes in a timely manner (within one week, to be exact) to stay in the running. The judges will sift through the entries and select the category winners, which will be announced around the end of August.

Once category winners are announced, the community will vote to determine the Best Overall winner. Please stay tuned for the announcement!

17 comments on “Thanks for competing in the add-ons contest!”

  1. Paul Morris wrote on

    Hi Amy, I read “before July 18” as meaning “on July 17” (!). I looked it up and I’m glad the contest closed at the end of the day, midnight PST time, on the 18th. So I did get my submission in on time. Thanks!

    “The Contest […] ends at 11:59 p.m. PST on Thursday, July 18, 2013 (7:59 a.m. GMT on July 19, 2013)”

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on

      Cool!

  2. Rex wrote on

    Can you extend the deadline by just a few extra days? PLZ PLZ PLZ!

  3. Swenmau wrote on

    Hey Amy ,

    Why i can not sent comment?

    I want to warn about a serious piracy. Please take action.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloader-pure/

    They are not obeying No Surprise policy with update 1.97.4 and show users ads without user consent and they send users privacy details to server without permission.

    1 ShowAd chrome/content/overlayVDP.js Line 527

    2 chrome/content/overlayVDP.js Line 652

    They save details in localstorage rather than preferences to secretly hide piracy. I sent emails for editors but nobody reply. Thank you very much.

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on

      Hi Swenmau, we are looking into this. Thanks

      1. Geek in Training wrote on

        How does something like that get past full review?

    2. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      As far as I can tell, the add-on only shows advertisements in its own popup. Injecting ads into web pages can qualify for No Surprises under some circumstances, but not when this is the add-on UI, where it is clear who is generating them, and no private user information is sent along with the ad request.

      In short, I don’t see anything this add-on is doing against our policies.

      1. Swenmau wrote on

        Hey Jorge

        Let me clear;

        1. They send browser locale or language to server.

        chrome/content/overlayVDP.js Line 658 ** Version 1.97.5

        Server Request URL for DE browser:

        http://my.startpage24.com/_libs/extension.lib/Werbung/?cmd=GetAd&retType=xml&loc=de-DE

        Server Request URL for US browser:

        http://my.startpage24.com/_libs/extension.lib/Werbung/?cmd=GetAd&retType=xml&loc=en-US

        Locale is used to identify user and to return suitable affiliate site according to user country. You can check previous url for fetched XML entries that are formed by using browser language:

        http://go.startpage24.com/redirect.asp?Target=ebay.de&Keywords=Nero%2012%20Software

        No add-on is allowed to send browser locale to server without permission and if it does its privacy breach.

        2. Here it comes. After properly identifying user, they redirect user to either Ebay or Amazon and set cookies to get revenue from purchases by adding affiliate tags.

        http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=Nero 12&tag=sp24-20

        tag=sp24-20 stands for startpage24-20 which is id of the company.

        And you know what, user does not have to buy ad items immediately to generate revenue for the company. Those cookies remain two days in browser and any purchase done in two days generate unrelated and undeserved revenue for the company. This is why they use a stupid Nero ad. It does not matter which product to place in ad. It is just the clicking on the ad to trap user into this. Once the ad is clicked, user is forced to share some money for the company when he purchase something by this hidden trapping mechanism.

        And they can see and what item user bought. This is a serious privacy concern. Even they can pool shopping habits of Firefox users by this way which is too unrelated for a video download add-on.

        This is done secretly and no user is in the knowledge of this affiliate tags and revenue share system.

        3. Plus these changes are introduced at the third update,Version 1.97.4, because they knew that they would not get approved for initial release. Those installed first version did not have ads and later without any warning or Opt-in prompt, they have been introduced ads and privacy breaches at third update, which breaks No Surprise policy.

        4. This is the exploit of Firefox policy. They do not show web site ads but bypass the policy by combining add-on UI ads and web site affiliate system.

        5. Placing ads in Firefox UI is a terrible idea. Because they use redirect URLs, they can easily redirect novice Firefox users for Paypal phishing sites or for another fraud site. How can you trust for a third party company to place links and ads in Firefox UI?

        http://go.startpage24.com/redirect.asp?Target=ebay.de&Keywords=Nero%2012%20Software

  4. Geek in Training wrote on

    Before 11:59? Mine was submitted right about 11:59 and 30 seconds.

  5. Allasso Travesser wrote on

    Hello, Amy,

    There seems to be no way to verify that one’s submission of an addons into the contest were accepted. I submitted 2 addons (All Tabs Helper and Hugo) and wanted to be sure. Both were submitted comfortably before the deadline. I was wondering this because of strange activity I am seeing in the reviewing of one of them.

    Allasso

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on

      Hi Allasso, we have your submissions! We’ll send out some communication soon about where we are in the judging process. Thanks

      1. Allasso Travesser wrote on

        thank you, Amy

  6. Jivko wrote on

    Is there a problem if I submit a new version of my add-on. I’ve entered the contest but will releasing a new version somehow affect my entry?

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on

      The version you submitted during the contest period, if it was approved, will be the version that counts.

      1. Geek in Training wrote on

        And if it was not approved, but you fix it within a week of them letting you know that it did not pass full review, it still counts, right?

        1. Amy Tsay wrote on

          Yes, that’s correct–you get one chance to fix it to pass review.

  7. capella wrote on

    CAN HAZ T-SHIRT ??? 😀