I have been told that I am perhaps being unfair to Mozilla...For reference, here are the connections that Firefox tries to establish immediately after startup

I have been told that I am perhaps being unfair to Mozilla...For reference, here are the connections that Firefox tries to establish immediately after startup So: It connects to Mozilla itself and to Google (specifically their server for the malware/phishing DB). The fact that Ghostery is in there is because you have third party addons installed. FWIW shavar.prod.mozaws.net is a Mozilla server which updates the blocklist for Tracking Protection. Somewhat ironic you're complaining about it given the context.