Mozilla Is Recruiting Beta Testers For a Free, Baked-In Firefox VPN (theregister.com) 36
Mozilla is testing a free, built-in VPN for Firefox that routes traffic through Mozilla-managed servers directly in the browser. The Register reports: According to a staff post on Mozilla Connect, the company's idea-sharing platform, Firefox VPN is still an experimental feature in the early stages of development, but users will be selected at random to test it "over the next few months." Moz describes the feature as one that will sit beside the search bar on Firefox, routing web traffic through a Mozilla-managed VPN server, concealing the user's real IP address while adding a layer of encryption to their communications. Firefox VPN is a different project entirely from Mozilla VPN, a separate, paid-for product. The Firefox version will be free to use and confined to the browser itself, while Mozilla VPN can be used by up to five devices at a time.
The Moz staffer on the product team who announced the feature said of the upcoming beta test: "We'll start simple, then gradually add new capabilities while learning how it impacts browsing, usage, and overall satisfaction. "Our long-term vision is ambitious: to build the best VPN-integrated browser on the market." In response to feedback, the staffer noted that while it will be a desktop browser feature first, "mobile is definitely a natural next step."
The Moz staffer on the product team who announced the feature said of the upcoming beta test: "We'll start simple, then gradually add new capabilities while learning how it impacts browsing, usage, and overall satisfaction. "Our long-term vision is ambitious: to build the best VPN-integrated browser on the market." In response to feedback, the staffer noted that while it will be a desktop browser feature first, "mobile is definitely a natural next step."
But will it be any good? (Score:1)
Most VPNs over promise and under deliver on security. So, I wonder, who holds the keys? What length keys? Elliptical curve? Ehat curve? What encryption is used? What about quantum-proofing?
Maybe I should apply to beta-test?
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I only use them for torrenting.
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It's Mozilla. You trust them completely, right?
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Every time I see a goofy new feature from Mozilla, I'm reminded how Firefox started as Netscape without the bloat. That was a great product. I wonder what happened to it.
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"I'm reminded how Firefox started as Netscape without the bloat. That was a great product"
IIRC it was Phoenix, then Firebird then Firefox.
"I wonder what happened to it"
Web 2.0 & web content bloat
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Also routine spying, deep packet inspection, fuckery with networks and so on and so forth.
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It claimed to be Netscape without bloat, but in fact it was Mozilla Suite without mail and an Internet Explorer-like UI. For my use case, Mozilla Suite was much better at the time.
Careful (Score:2)
The problem came when competition from Microsoft started to heat up. The exec suite decided that, rather than focusing on what they were good at, they needed to go after the MS enterprise stack, which led them to buy an also-ran called Collabra who made enterprise groupware whatevers. Collabra ended up effectively taking over and drove them into the ground, both t
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If their implementation is open source, you do not have to. You can trust security experts inspecting the code.
If this is well done with proper end-to-end encryption and properl multi-hop routing, I do not see why you should not be able to trust the implementation.
This actually looks like a pretty good idea for a change.
Re: But will it be any good? (Score:2)
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Most VPNs over promise and under deliver on security. So, I wonder, who holds the keys? What length keys? Elliptical curve? Ehat curve? What encryption is used? What about quantum-proofing?
Maybe I should apply to beta-test?
Agreed, I use VPNs a lot but I never used even once a commercial VPN and I wouldn't use Firefox free one either.
As a matter of fact, those can just concentrate the watching and tracking to one more single point yet.
I use several VPNs at the same time that don't change the default route on my desktop and several others on my router which may change the default route or not. On the desktop, it's to access protected resources. On the router, it's usually to optimize latency and throughput by routing through mo
iCloud Relay (Score:2)
Probably one of the most common "VPNs", but not really in the front pages is iCloud Relay. Apple devices and Safari use different servers to route traffic through in order to mask the originating IP address. This works well on almost any connection except a really shitty one, or one where the Apple relays are firewalled since someone wants to slurp the IP and MAC data from devices to harvest and sell.
By having it completely transparent in the browser makes it easier to use and more effective... and perhap
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Most VPNs over promise and under deliver on security. So, I wonder, who holds the keys? What length keys? Elliptical curve? Ehat curve? What encryption is used? What about quantum-proofing?
Maybe I should apply to beta-test?
Mozilla made a recent promise to start focusing on AI. If I were a betting man, the focus of this VPN will be data aggregation for training sets, not security. Sure, they'll throw in some encryption to make it look good, but in the end, it's routing through their servers for a reason. Especially if this isn't a subscription model of some sort and is offered "for free." They're getting something out of it, and my bet would be that what they're getting is "all the browsing data of anyone dumb enough to use th
Anyone have the About:Config (Score:2)
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You will probably just have a checkbox in the settings. It's not like every setting is hidden.
Stoner featuritis (Score:5, Insightful)
It is my daily driver, and I'm going to be bummed when the closest thing to a user-aligned browser is Safari, but there we are.
Nothing is free (Score:3)
Re: Nothing is free (Score:2)
The catch is that they collect data on all of your browsing habits and sell them to the highest bidder.
Re: Nothing is free (Score:2)
Yeah, no thanks.
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How do you know this? They haven't even started implementing this?
I mean if they do, I agree, but could we not defer the judgements until we know?
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What's the catch?
You say that as if your accountant is still waiting on your Q3 Firefox expenses.
Last I checked the “F” in FOSS isn’t short for Fuck-You-Pay-Me.
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There are two parts here.
One part is developer time and effort to create a product. This can be free (as in zero cost) to the user, if the developers choose to not ask money for it. I can download and use Debian for free, because people put it together for free and some people offer to host the files for free. This makes sense.
Running a VPN service, though, costs money, likely more so than hosting Debian ISOs. I doubt that someone is going to do it for free (that is, pay out of his own pocket to run it). So
Cloudfart (Score:3)
Prepare to battle the abomination that is cloudflare; probably Google too. They make Internet use a real PITA.
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It's probably Mullvad VPN, like the original Mozilla VPN is.
Infrastructure costs (Score:3)
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It would generate a dataset that could train AI models, and a valuable list of users interested in things like FF. Also, a single point target for anyone interested in what people want to use a firewall for, I guess.. whatever. FF hasn't been a compelling choice for me, for a long time. I hate a lot about Chrome but use it and Safari.
Free VPN from an ad company (Score:2)
Dear Firefox, (Score:3)
Please just be a web browser.
and stop using 8gb of ram to do fuck all.
Why? (Score:2)
VPN have their uses circumventing geofencing, reaching out on restricted networks, and probably a few other things that I'm not too concerned with. But I see no point running *all* your connections through a VPN 24/7 unless you're a state enemy or something of that caliber. It's not about security (TLS is doing its job), it's not really about tracking protection (you get my IP that might or might not be static, and might or might not be shared with multiple users, big fucking woop, 99% of the tracking happe
"And then..." (Score:2)
"And then we'll add a waffle-maker because everyone loves waffles. Eventually we'll get around to adding a web browser but lets not get ahead of ourselves." -Mozilla 'Dev' Team
Really? (Score:2)
Does it still get 7321 'check if you're human' tests every day?
Everybody will be exactly different (Score:2)
Isn't the point of using a VPN to have privacy? I see here a scenario where Mozilla becomes the one predictable gateway, and the people are using a frequently-compromised tool to get to that gateway.
hmmmm... (Score:2)