Mozilla, makers of Firefox, also have Mozilla VPN and Firefox Relay. You would think that being as recognizable and trusted a brand as Mozilla that their products would be reputable as well. Yet I never hear people talking about them or recommending them. Are there technical faults? Not private enough for most threat models? What’s the deal?
I kind of wish their other products would be more successful to so they could become more independent from Google.
Isn’t Mozilla VPN and Mullvad the same product?, I remember reading their VPN was some deal they made with Mullvad.
There are better options out there.
For example, Bitwarden or Keepass are a better alternative to storing them in the browser, as this is a browser first, password manager second.
Same as the VPN, but some extra considerations such as the location and the laws regarding the VPN, the 5, 9 and 14 eyes, if they log or not, open source or not, and if they are under a company that works with other like how they got paid google money for it to be the default engine. Not that specifically that being a bad thing since we can change it. Account and Payment models also play a part like Ivpn and non account needed with Crypto or mailing money as a method.
Not to mention, there are literal better alternatives, the difference here is its all in one and convent for the average or below average person starting out.
Plus there are threat models to a VPN and whatvis actually needed before hand like a firewall, DNS settings, privacy settings and dynamic IPs, but a VPN just adds to that (correct me if I am wrong though) just to name a few.
No shade on them, its great that its an option, but for us, we know of better and possibly cheaper alternatives.
Like @privacy_parrot said, there are better options out there.
For example, Mullvad VPN is better than Mozilla’s one. With Mullvad, you can pay with Monero and Cash and that’s super cool for anonymity and they are very trustworthy
The Mozilla servers links directly to the Mullvad servers, they are just reselling the Mullvad VPN renamed to Mozilla VPN.
I wouldn’t say that Mozilla is a gold standard. They’ve got plenty of their own issues and have done some controversial things, but the same is also true of other browser companies. I think they’re only recommended as far as browsers go because they’re better than most other options, but still not perfect. Generally, for other tools besides browsers there are offerings from other companies with a better track record than Mozilla, so Mozilla’s offerings are going to be subpar compared to them. And as said above, Mozilla VPN is just a reskinned Mullvad so you might as well skip the middleman, and browser password managers are less secure than dedicated apps.
i’m not sure i would call Mozilla a trusted company - they have pulled some incredibly silly and downright stupid shit in the past
that said, i still recommend Firefox as a mainstream browser, but only because it’s very hackable through config options and because it still supports manifest v2 for add-ons which is important for content blocking
truth is, all mainstream web browsers are bloated piles of garbage - they have to be in order to deal with all the garbage that is the “modern web”
I wouldn’t go so far as to demonize Mozilla, but if the story at the end of the day is their privacy tools are just not as good or rebranded versions of trusted products, it is what it is. To me it’s a shame and a missed opportunity for them to not be able to spin up profitable businesses that can help make them more independent and get the respect from the privacy community.
i don’t really mean to demonize Moz, but i’ve been using FF since 1.0 and i’ve watched how the goals have changed and witnessed the stupid decisions that were made - all this has caused me to lose a lot of respect for them
that said, i think it’s pretty clear that FF is better suited to privacy … once it’s beaten into submission … and i totally respect their decision to keep manifest v2 compatibility, though i wonder for how long that’ll last