“I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that…” That’s the default position from the makers of the Firefox Web browser.

It doesn’t matter that you’ve turned off all the browser’s Update settings (Options | Advanced | Update | “Never check for updates”) and so on. You’ll still be nagged. Regularly. With a slide-down into your screen, while you’re browsing, telling you the browser is ‘out of date’.

There is a simple way to fix it, and though it took a long time to find it, and applying it worked for me:

1) type about:config to get into Firefox’s deep settings.

2) Search for the config entry extensions.shield-recipe-client.enabled and ensure it is set to False. A double-click should toggle the True/False settings.

3) Exit about:config and restart Firefox.

In the end, though, this nag prompted me to make the switch to the Opera browser. Which I’ll detail in another post. Well done, Firefox guys.