Firefox’s free VPN will offer 50 gigabytes of monthly data, which is pretty generous for a browser-based VPN. A Mozilla account is required to make use of it, which isn’t a hardship (they’re free), but is a point of friction some may wish to know upfront.
Looking forward to seeing people complain that they got caught torrenting while the “Firefox vpn” was turned on because nobody understands how anything fucking works any more.
Right, this is just a proxy, isn’t it?
If it’s running inside Firefox, it can only encrypt/modify Firefox’s traffic.
Usable addition, and the fact that it is only in-browser is actually a merit in some cases. Firefox gets a lot of hate but is way more privacy centric out of the box compared to Chrome. AI is only opt-in and you can literally customize the entire browser using about:config. Mozilla also maintains the only real competing web engine (not considering Apple’s locked in ecosystem) and they are the reason browsers are open source these days.
AI is only opt-in
Not to take anything away from your overall point, which I completely agree with, but this may be a bit of a stretch. All of the “AI” buttons and features are - to my knowledge - on by default. They have made it a lot easier to change that to “off by default now and in the future”, which is very welcome, but “only opt-in” is, again, a bit of a stretch.
Well, yes. In so far as they’ve added a new opt in button, and it would be silly to assume every user wants it off now. Instead, users that previously installed get a “turn off AI here” button when the update happens.
I’d say that’s a good trade off.
They added dangerous bullshit that nobody wanted with no good ability to turn it off, and then, year or so later, added a switch to turn it off.
Most of the Firefox users don’t want for llm to read web pages for them and group their tabs based on whatever bullshit rules it hallucinated this day. People go to Google and Microslop for this treatment.I definitely wouldn’t call “local llm features” dangerous.
Edit: I suppose the tab grouping may not be local? Their docs don’t really specify one way or another. So I could be wrong in that one. The rest is definitely local, minus the “you have to sign in with an llm account” sidebar chat thing.
It’s not on by default.
It was on my computer, on, until well after they implemented it, they allowed an opt out.
Weird. I was just setting up three Linux laptops and was asked if I wanted to turn these features on every time.
I am still on windows, I want to make the switch but my main computer broke, the cursor and the keyboard stopped working despite not being connected to the internet for years. And my backup computer the C drive is almost completely full which I have no fucking idea how that happened as I have barely done anything on this piece of shit. So I’m afraid if I try to download Linux I will end up with no computer that works. I am not a tech guy obviously.
You could try connecting an external keyboard/mouse to your main computer.
As for the backup one - how much space do you have left? You’d need between 4 and 6 GB to download a Linux ISO and around 2 MB for Rufus with which you’d build a bootable “live USB”.
If you don’t have even that much, grab WinDirStat to check what exactly is taking up so much space - maybe you can remove some of it.
Thanks for the help, I did buy an external keyboard and mouse despite not knowing if that works without authorizing it. Someone else told me I could take apart the back and sometimes the wire comes loose. The old one should have a lot of memory the thing is a beast.
The backup one however the c Drive is like 90 some percent full and keeps sending me messages about clearing up space but I’ve already done everything I can. I have no idea what is even on the C drive. I barely saved anything, 95% of my music is that my old one, and documents and whatever that’s all I save.
It absolutely, positively is on by default. Moreover, it’s actually quite hard to completely turn off. Even their new fancy switches are sus, but for the longest time you needed to go to about:config and switch like ten different weirdly named parameters to turn everything off.
Weird. I was just setting up three Linux laptops and was asked if I wanted to turn these features on every time.
And how exactly do we know for certain that all that juicy web access data complete linked to whatever identifying information associated with a Mozilla account isn’t going to be sold?!
Yeah, sadly Mozilla lost most of the trust one would have given to them in advance a few years ago.
Of course, my mozilla account will have the name John Smith and I was born in 1996.
The same could be said about any VPN out there. Read the ToS and privacy policy, and either believe it or don’t.
True, but Mozilla being what it had been the past few years I trust them no further than I can throw them
Edit: pay the few dollars for mullvad
Same as every other vpn???
Other vpns aren’t integrated into your browser that you’re globally logged in into.
Nah just integrated in your machine
I mean, depending on the word integrated. Everything is integrated in a sense. But it’s harder to be more integrated than being literally the same app.
So they know it’s you all the traffic comes from?
Exactly. No thanks. Nothing is ever “free”.
If something is free then you are the product
How does that sqaure away with FOSS?
You are [building] the product?
You are either going to donate, or spread word to others, who will pick it up and donate themselves.
Money still gets made, its just less opportunistic and predatory, and more a reward from those who can afford, to fund for those who cant.
They also know it’s you when you don’t use it. I’m not sure how is it worse? Seems like a handy way to go around geoblocks.
People’s conception of what VPN actually does is skewed by shady ads. Now they hear VPN and assume it’s suppose to be this unbreakable anonymizer that somehow also secures you from some unspecified dangers.
A VPN to me is a way to prevent my ISP from seeing I torrent and to go around geoblocks. It’s not a privacy tool at all. So yeah, I’m evaluating them from that angle.
every fucking youtuber is sponsored with those ads i hate this timeline
its better than betterhelp i guess
Uhm, what? Maybe my ISP knows, but they are regulated (at least here). But VPN is a virtual direct-line to another server.
Another server that belongs to the same company as your browser, so they have an access to both ends of the direct line. If you don’t trust Mozilla to be thrustworthy vpn server (which is good, shouldn’t trust anyone), bad news, they already have an access to your whole traffic because they own your browser
But unlike the VPN server, the browser is on my end and i can make sure it doesn’t rat me out. Coincidentally, my policies.json over the years was almost the same as Waterfox’.
Processed by LLMs no doubt.
I loved Mozilla for years but trust nothing from them these days.
Aha so that’s why they have been sabotaging themselves in the last few years. To allow for higher bandwidth per user on their vpn!!
Great for newcomers, especially in restricted regions.
And an ai watchdog to keep you clean
Holy shit, people really lose any rationality when it comes to AI, don’t they?
Mozilla mentioned integrating AI, got flak for it, reversed gears. Everything is optional and opt-in now.
And yet, a third of comments here are crying about Big Bad Firefox AI coming to eat them at night.
I don’t trust mozilla though.
Interesting. I’d actually pay for an in browser VPN, it’s handy to be able to switch countries on the fly. Ideally even per browser tab.
I would not however pay for Mozilla’s mullvad thing. I don’t like mullvad since they dropped port forwarding and OpenVPN. I use proton now for that. But in the browser is a different usecase for me.
It’s just weird that it’s not possible to pay for this but only for the thing I don’t want.
The free option is limited to a certain amount of GB. Mozilla can upsell an unlimited version in the future. Likely the reason they don’t do that right from the start, is that their VPN network is completely new and it’s hard to judge the network capacity needed.
I keep hearing about people dropping Mullvad for port forwarding…why do y’all need port forwarding while trying to stay anonymous?
AFAIK torrent. But I’ve been torrenting all my life without port forward and I have all the seasons from my favorite Linux distros,.
If I can’t download it without jumping through yet more hoops, I’m sure I don’t really need that particular Linux distribution.
It is basically a requirement in most private trackers. Either because it literally is, or to be able to hit seeding limits quickly.
Torrents, you can’t peer with other people behind NAT.
Firefox ftw. Thanks firefox for making my surfing great.
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Why do you need a free vpn, it’s gonna be slow anyway and in that case I guess tor is completely free and like the best anonymity you’d ever get just by downloading a browser.
You don’t live in a state that blocks porn and it shows.
Well ye that’s true.
How much does your VPN cost?
Also, whatever Firefox puts out there is not gonna be slower than TOR which has 3x the encryption and routing overhead of a typical VPN and also has no SLA guarantees at all. There’s a reason a middle-ground exists between no tunnel and mega 3x tunnel, and there’s nothing wrong with saving a few bucks if all you want to do is not be as profitable to data aggregators
TL:DR; stop making shit up
oopsy I don’t know not a big fan of browser bloating up, Ig I am wrong though my past experience with free vons weren’t that good, and I always ended up using tor.
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Make a crypto wallet add on. Make a VPN with crypto payment channel settled once a week. Charge fair price of 2-5 cents per GB.
Alternarively use probabilistic payments but that’s bit of inconsistent for the end user
Make a crypto wallet add on. Make a VPN with crypto payment channel settled once a week.
Go use brave if you want to use a crypto trash browser
*crapto
Remember when people said “go to Brave if you want a built-in VPN trash browser”?
Just give it a few months
