Mozilla and Firefox could be about to change the VPN and privacy market

https://www.techradar.com/news/mozilla-and-firefox-could-be-about-to-change-the-vpn-and-privacy-market-forever

by libab • 7 years ago

120 39 7 years ago

I wonder if they're seeing an opportunity here to ride on other people's advertising - with so many VPN providers sponsoring content creators heavily on YouTube, maybe the public will actually know the term and understand the idea of the feature without Mozilla having to do much work.

achingtooth• 7 years ago

It'd be interesting to see 'super private browsing mode' which has Tor integration be shipped with Firefox. Making Tor easier to use and more accessible for normal people is a huge win for privacy.

pseudosavant• 7 years ago

I know it isn't Firefox, but Brave is a Chromium-based browser that has Tor built-in with their 'Private Tabs'. It is a really nice privacy focused browser. Everything good about Chrome, without everything bad about Google.

gruez• 7 years ago

Tor tabs is useless without fingerprinting resistance, otherwise you still can be tracked.

jraph2• 7 years ago

Everything good about Chrome, without everything bad about Google.

Except, of course, its use of the chromium engine, which is something I think we should fight against. So, basically, one of the biggest anti-features of Chrome from Google.

Not to speak about Brave's business model, around basic attention tokens (my attention is not available, sorry). This is incompatible with privacy. Brave is an ad company! It may be in a nice phase where ads are opt in but it may not be like that forever.

The obvious browser closest to Firefox including Tor is Tor browser, based on Firefox, provided by the Tor project itself.

zaarn• 7 years ago

The very continued existence of Chrome is the bad thing about Google, Brave can only fix that by using the Firefox engine.

kabwj• 7 years ago

Isn’t this what Opera already does for free?

bufferoverflow• 7 years ago

I was skeptical about Opera's VPN, but it does seem to work. Of course, I don't count on it not logging my real IP, but still, it's a useful free service.

chupasaurus• 7 years ago

Opera had been acquired by a Chinese company and after that the browser went full on telemetry and IIRC same privacy policy works for their "VPN" too.

mises• 7 years ago

Opera just got bought out by some chinese company. It's for you to choose whether that is or is not a concern for you, but I personally am uncomfortable with such a company as my VPN, particularly I can add it to the server which I already keep for miscellaneous uses.

mirimir2• 7 years ago

Firefox Send allows you to share large files securely (but not store them). The caveat being that you need to have a Firefox account to use all of the above ...

There's no requirement for a Firefox account, for Send. And it works well via Tor, with no CAPTCHA bullshit.

hellcow• 7 years ago

I cannot express how much I love this service. Firefox Send is flat out the best way to send files securely over the internet by giving someone a URL (and optionally a password).

SubiculumCode• 7 years ago

I use it all the time for its convenience and simplicity.

bhauer• 7 years ago

And, since it's a Mozilla product, you can self-host it: https://github.com/mozilla/send

extra88• 7 years ago

You don’t need a Firefox account for files up to 1GB but you do for files from 1 - 2.5GB in size. It says so right on the home page.

https://send.firefox.com/

mikeyhew• 7 years ago

However the surprise announcement throws in more questions that it answers

Does anyone know what announcement they're talking about? There's no link.

lettergram• 7 years ago

I already use Thunderbird with the ProtonMail bridge and ProtonVPN on my phone and computers (combined with my self rolled VPNs).

I would welcome FireFox into the mix, they'd do quite well together -- plus maybe they can make the bridge unnecessary (which IMO is the most annoying part of ProtonMail).

jumbopapa3• 7 years ago

If you're using Firefox go to about:config and set media.autoplay.allow-muted to false.

Blocks all of those pesky autoplay videos!

Zenbit_UX• 7 years ago

This is a default feature as of the latest version.

SECProto• 7 years ago

I'm using the latest version and it was set to true.

jumbopapa3• 7 years ago

The default feature is to mute autoplay videos that have audio, so you need to enable this to prevent all autoplay.

daphneokeefe• 7 years ago

No, that doesn't stop the videos from playing. It only mutes them. You still have the visual interference of the animation, along with unwillingly downloading massive amounts of video data.

jumbopapa3• 7 years ago

That's not how it works at all... Firefox allows muted autoplay videos by default, but if you enable said flag it will prevent everything.

Zak• 7 years ago

As an aside, Firefox for Android is great for power users because it has extensions. It's much closer to feature-parity with desktop browsers than Chrome is, and offers more significant advantages over Chrome on Android than desktop as a result.

nfriedly• 7 years ago

Yes! Firefox for Android is one of the primary reasons I haven't switched to an iPhone.

(There is a Firefox for iOS, but it's basically a skin on Safari because of Apple's restrictions.)

bengerbil• 7 years ago

For power users, it's not just the extensions on Android (though it's a big part). It's the massively cross-platform for many years: Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Android, BB10, MacOS, and more (I'm only listing the ones I've used in somewhat recent memory). To have that feature parity across so many platforms has immense value to me. I can support family, friends, co-workers.

Mindless2112• 7 years ago

I wish Mozilla would get into the email service market. I could really go for a reasonably-priced, ad-free, Gmail-sized, bring-your-own-domain email service.

kradeelav• 7 years ago

... thunderbird?

(I'm aware they're no longer maintaining it(?) but it's posed as a genuine option.)

smt88• 7 years ago

I think GP means a Gmail competitor, where Mozilla runs the servers for you.

maverick74• 7 years ago

Not only they're maintaining it again, but the number of developers assigned as been increased!

However, they intent the community picks its development up, eventually.

However, for now, thunderbird is being developed by Mozilla again, afaik

(i guess they understood there was the need for an e-mail client and that thunderbird was in a good place for competing.)

I, honestly, see KDE's Kontact as the ONLY decent OS alternative. Too bad it's not of easy install & support on windows... It would be a great e-mail client...

mirimir2• 7 years ago

There's speculation in TFA about Mozilla buying ProtonMail/ProtonVPN.

onyva2• 7 years ago

I hope it’s true. I’d love to support financially an added value service by Mozilla.

hackerbabz• 7 years ago

What is the redacted company that might own Proton?

borumpilot• 7 years ago

Tesonet.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17254113

MR4D• 7 years ago

The should buy DuckDuckGo.

Mozilla and Firefox could be about to change the VPN and privacy market

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