Firefox is failing to start apps such as reCAPTCHA usually with an update-your-browser message
 

Hi,

I have been having increasing troubles using Firefox. The most common manifestation of late has been that the Google "reCAPTCHA" simply refuses to start and tells me I need to update to the latest browser. It used to work, both the older distorted-characters version and the newer pick-pictures-containing version, but then it has stopped working. I've not been able to use a number of websites and almost all of them tell me to update my browser.

The final straw was just now when I updated Firefox and tried to look at the introduction for their new "Firefox Send" feature (whatever that is) and Firefox told me to update Firefox! I have attached a portion of a screenshot to prove it!

Something has changed, most likely web pages are now using some feature which my machine doesn't have. I run Slackware 14.2 with an older Linux 4.4.14-smp but with updated packages.

Either it's that or my machine has had an intermittent failure which has now become permanent which affects only some decision in Firefox but apparently nothing else. (I used to debug hardware so I know how faults can indeed only affect certain programs which exercise those faults.) JavaScript is a piss-poor language for debugging hardware faults, so I hope it's not that.

Does anyone anywhere have any idea on how to fix this (Other than going back to Windows!) or even what questions to ask so I can narrow in on the problem?

Hi,

My guess is that the problem is the architecture. I see from the screenshot that you're running a 32bit FF.
Most likely 32bit browsers are not supported any more by those apps, because here (FF 64bit and tested with other browsers too) everything works fine.

Regards

Do you have addons installed that might be causing this? Like a user agent spoofer?
also, go to about:config and enter useragent as a search string and show us waht you get.

Here (FF 45ESR 32-bit) reCatcha's are having no problems too.

an addon could be blocking the js

you could try disabling them one at a time, or mark the site as safe in each one.

you might have something further up blocking it, hosts file, dns proxy .. or privoxy maybe

Seriously, FF 45, from 2016? I'm not surprised.

He's having NO problems with 45, as I, with various old ESR versions.

GreyBeard,

I've experienced some difficultly with reCAPTCHA too. I'm using FF 69.0 (64 bit), the same problem also manifested with FF 68.x.x.

In my instance the issue was narrowed down to the privacy settings I'd made to that particular FF profile. Not sure whether it's actually worth it, but I make a token effort to protect my privacy with the way I have configured the browser. On top of the configuration of settings I have it permanently set to private browsing mode. Sometimes because of settings I've made some websites I visit refuse to play nice, or even play at all.

The reCAPTCHA problem has surfaced a couple of times for me over the last fortnight. Typically the issue has been encountered at sites where I was trying to join a discussion forum or an email mailing list. The sites wouldn't permit me to complete the formalities of creating a user identity because the reCAPTCHA hadn't been completed, but in my browser window it had not even been displayed. Conincidentally, one of those sites was LinuxQuestions.

I tried making ad hoc, on the fly changes to the privacy settings of the FF profile I'd set up over the course of months to get the reCAPTCHA on a webpage to appear. No change I was prepared to make made any difference. The workaround I came to was to create a new vanilla FF profile with the FF profile manager.

Close any running instances of FF and in terminal type:
firefox -p

That will launch the profile manager. Use it to create a new profile. It will have the default settings, no extensions. Use it to test the sites where you had problems.

Out of this process I wound up with four FF profiles to choose from:
#1. Primary profile, has all my preferred privacy settings, extensions, and preferred UI tweaks.
#2. Modified primary profile, privacy settings relaxed a little.
#3. Vanilla profile, no changes made to defaults.
#4. Vanilla profile modified with a few modest security/privacy enhancements and UI tweaks.

With current FF versions it's easy to clear browser history, cookies and site data to return the vanilla profile to a pristine, out of the box state. Scratch around in Preferences > Privacy and Security.

For a long time I was stuck with having to use FF 52. The arrival of a new system running Ubuntu exposed me for the first time to FF Quantum (first Q version was 57). Mozilla are making a big marketing push to present FF as the best browser option for privacy conscious users. They are promoting several associated privacy tools alongside it, like FF Send. Recent FF versions can be locked down more than they ever could be previously just from changing the browser settings. Privacy can be further enhanced with various extensions. Privacy functionalities previously only available from extensions are now built into the browser. Last night I tried out GNU Icecat. It takes web privacy and freedom to another level. I persist with use of browser profiles with locked down privacy settings and extensions in the hope that it diminishes the quality of the picture Big Brother is building of me. But there is work involved in choosing this route because sometimes it makes the internet road quite bumpy.

Yes, me too. An addon to be precisely.(*)
But more and more of FF can be configured without add-ons, making changes to about:config etc.
However, vanilla FF 68 (oh, it's 69 now), without changes of that sort, does not hinder google captcha. It wouldn't come far as a mainstream browser if it did.

(*) I recommend uMatrix. It does not require a profile change or even browser restart to get those pesky sites working.

Problem solved.
 

It turns out that the reply from "ondoho" sent me in the right
direction. It took me a while to find the actual problem because of
other insanity in my life, but eventually I found some very useful
websites. They showed me that my Firefox was broadcasting a very
old version number.

https://www.whatismybrowser.com/dete...-my-user-agent
Homepage --> Detect my settings --> What is my user agent?

And also
https://winaero.com/blog/change-user-agent-firefox/

which led me to about:config. There was a "general.useragent.override"
setting which said:

Mozilla/5.0 (masking-agent; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0

Clearly wrong, so I simply deleted that setting to let FF give its real
answer and things started working again. I am no longer getting error
messages telling me my browser is too old, and Google's reCAPTCHA is
working again. :)

(Yah, yah, I *SHOULD* *HAVE* *KNOWN* about the User Agent header
but I didn't. Blah, blah, blah. A big truism in life is that "You don't
know what you don't know until you know it." So please pardon my
ignorance about something which has escaped my attention since birth.)

I've messed around with a few things in about:config over the years, but
the FF version number / User Agent string is not one of them. Nor have
I knowingly used an add-on which would mess with that. So the only
remaining problem is, "How did general.useragent.override get set?" :confused:

That's a question for another day. But for now it's PROBLEM SOLVED.

I would have changed it to Firefox/99999.0 out of principle.

It used to be possible (and still is in Waterfox and Palemoon) to set site-specific overrides, so different domains get given different useragents.

No need to apologize.
Glad it's solved, and I was able to help!