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Mozilla VPN

blog.mozilla.org

361–370 of 531 posts

Re: Mozilla VPN

#361
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only Mozilla can make me pay for Google services like Email/Calendar etc. I think I subconsciously trust the brand more than most internet companies out there.

How about FastMail? They have a stellar email service. They also offer contacts and calendars, though I don't personally use those (I use iCloud for that).

I really love Fastmail, but shared contacts have never seemed to work with the default Mac contacts app. According to Fastmail support as of a few years ago, the default Mac contacts app cant handle multiple address books (shared and personal) from the same account. Not Fastmail’s fault, but has anyone else had this trouble?

Re: Mozilla VPN

#362

Every time someone mentions a VPN provider in my techie social circles, the "A VPN doesn't protect you" crowd piles in, usually with links to something like: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 I don't understand this argument, but would like to. I run https://everytwoyears.org , a political non-profit focused on ending the warrantless metadata collection of U.S. citizens' communications. From every…

I'm a fan of James Mickens' "Mossad or Not-Mossad" internet threat models ~essay: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf

Re: Mozilla VPN

#363
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most importantly: 0) Get your own domain and set up MX record to fastmail servers This way if you ever migrate again, you will not need to do it all over again. One word of advice - keep your registrar login and emails associated with the domains _not_ on your domain, otherwise it is going to present a problem should you ever need to fix anything related to domains.

Then you are pushing the problem to someone else to manage the domains right? How do you set this up?

Not sure I understand the question.

I have to manage a domain and have a basic understanding of how DNS works, that is unavoidable.

DNS is a bit complicated to describe in short reply but on a very high level: say I register a domain example.com. Registrars usually give you an interface to manage DNS where you can set A records (association with IP), you basically put there 2-5 IP addresses of the DNS servers serving your domain. You can also setup MX records that are used to resolve mail servers for your domain. Setting up fastmail is simple: you tell them that you want them to serve mail for example.com and setup couple of MX records pointing to the Fastmail servers (they give you the full host names).

Re: Mozilla VPN

#364

Every time someone mentions a VPN provider in my techie social circles, the "A VPN doesn't protect you" crowd piles in, usually with links to something like: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 I don't understand this argument, but would like to. I run https://everytwoyears.org , a political non-profit focused on ending the warrantless metadata collection of U.S. citizens' communications. From every…

Most people use a VPN because it lets them have a different geolocation (to watch Netflix in a different country, access thepiratebay, etc.) If you do use a VPN to mask your traffic, there are two questions to ask yourself: 1. who are you masking your traffic from? 2. can you trust the VPN network more? In general, you cannot trust a VPN network more, and HTTPS is the solution as it provides end-to-end encryption wit…

You can use HTTPS with a VPN. With HSTS and certificate transparency, a modern browser will not let you get compromised by a HTTPS MITM.

I also trust many VPN providers more than my ISP, which actively engages in MITM like compressing images to be a lower resolution on HTTP pages on 4G networks.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#366
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only Mozilla can make me pay for Google services like Email/Calendar etc. I think I subconsciously trust the brand more than most internet companies out there.

How about FastMail? They have a stellar email service. They also offer contacts and calendars, though I don't personally use those (I use iCloud for that).

Has anyone tried Rackspace email hosting? Looks to be the same price as Fastmail.

https://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail

Re: Mozilla VPN

#367
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most importantly: 0) Get your own domain and set up MX record to fastmail servers This way if you ever migrate again, you will not need to do it all over again. One word of advice - keep your registrar login and emails associated with the domains _not_ on your domain, otherwise it is going to present a problem should you ever need to fix anything related to domains.

Then you are pushing the problem to someone else to manage the domains right? How do you set this up?

OK, I think the other reply missed your question (if I am reading this correctly).

Basically, if you register your domain through namecheap, then after setting up email at *@ximeng.net, don't update your email address to be namecheap@ximeng.net when changing the rest of your accounts. Reason being, if for some reason there is a problem with the domain, you don't want your only means of fixing that problem to potentially be invalid.

Therefore it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep the account associated with your registrar still on the original Gmail address (or if you are really paranoid, create a new email address through someone like protonmail just for your registrar account).

Re: Mozilla VPN

#368
post #141

Come on Mozilla, hurry up! I want to give you money for goods and services (I also donate monthly [1]), but I'm not that interested in a VPN (I can and do also pay Mullvad). Give me that real internet stuff - email, calendar, file sync, chat(?) - give me Firefox Premium. Bundle in the Lockwise password manager. I'd pay good money to see a company fill the void of paid, privacy first essential internet services and I…

"I'd pay good money..."

Sorry, Google pays more. :)

As much as you would like to be, you are not Mozilla's customer. You are, as they say, a "product". The subject of an ongoing marketing study. There are people willing to pay for the results of that study, and they are willing and able to pay much more than you will ever pay for Mozilla's open source software or use of its servers to store your personal data (email, calendar, files, etc.).

We are told that Mozilla has to keep pace with Chrome (because ..., and that's because ....), and the only way they believe they can do that is to take money from Google. Mozilla's CEO and employees are far too expensive for their salaries to ever be paid by end users.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#369
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have much too add, I'm just replying in case Mozilla devs see this. I want this so much as well! I don't mind the VPN though. I pay for it now even though I run mostly Linux

I'm in exactly the same boat. Paying for the VPN to use on exactly one device because everything else is Linux, and would happily put more money towards it if they offered a paid equivalent to GSuite that was privacy-respecting.

Question--why does everything else being Linux negate the need for a VPN? AFAIK, aren't the main reasons for a VPN bypassing georestricted content and avoiding ISP snooping? I don't see how running Linux negates any of these, and routing through a VPN certainly doesn't stop win10 from exfiltrating data.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#370
post #204

Every time the VPN service industry is discussed on HN there is a barrage of comments that use keywords like “honeypot”, “snake oil”, and “shady”. I’m not denying that the industry has problems, but in this thread I’d like to focus on how we can improve it. Please tell me - What makes a VPN provider trustworthy, and how do you _know_? Personally I believe a trustworthy provider is _characterized_ by consistent action…

I'll give my opinion on this based on the two VPNs I've used: TunnelBear and Private Internet Access. Yes... LTT pointed me to them.

Reason for TunnelBear: independent audit. They had had an audit that went through their system and, at least how I understood it, confirmed what they had said they were doing.

Reason for PIA: they had a history of being questioned by authorities and providing nothing - because they had nothing.

The latter is why I continue to trust Apple more than Google, too.

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