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What happened to Firefox Send?

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Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#51

Post by WJW »

rkangel wrote: post #27
jbc1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up to 2GB https://wetransfer.com

Thank you. Do we trust them and their security approach? Genuine question - it was a major selling point to me that Mozilla were operating Firefox Send. I was happy to give some trust to them and their approach to encryption.

I used to work there, security was mostly decent with the exception of not encrypting files client side. We advocated for it many times but the founders wanted to keep the UI as simple as possible for users, which means that forcing users to send the encryption keys to the receiver via a secondary channel (ie not via WeTransfer, which would defeat the purpose as we would be able to MITM it) was a no-go. You can always encrypt the files yourself with the method of your choice and then send the encryption key over Telegram/Signal/whatever. The company has existed for over 10 years now and is profitable, so it's not going to disappear overnight or anything.

That said, the thing that apparently killed Mozilla Send (becoming a hub for spam and child abuse material) was much easier to handle. The last big project I was involved in was an automated photoDNA scanner to detect suspected child abuse material. It would pull in various lists of hashes of known bad material and flag any matches for manual verification by the department of the Dutch police that handles such things.

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#52

Post by johannes1234321 »

torben-friis wrote: post #43

I really don't understand it. - Content was used to spread malware/illegal content - It was not profitable How are those two things something you find out after the fact? What was the reasoning for launching the product in the first place?

Mozilla Foundation, as owner of Mozilla Corp, is a non-profit. Thus the second argument is not that important. Also a single feature can be unprofitable if it helps to drive the related products.

First argument is more relevant, I see it as underestimated the risk there and coming out of a technical experiment ...

That all said: Mozilla Corp's "focussing" doesn't convince me.

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#53

Post by blooalien »

0-_-0 wrote: post #6

This is due to people sharing malware: https://www.techradar.com/news/mozilla-suspends-firefox-send... The content can't be scanned server-side because uploaded files are encrypted

Terrible shame how lame people somehow always find a way to ruin everything good they find online for everyone else without a second thought about it. :(

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#54

Post by bede »

DarkmSparks wrote: post #15

Hows firefox doing these days? I've not really used it since it used to run out of memory every few hours, did try it again after they rewrote everything but it was really buggy with half the sites I frequent not working.

It has been my daily for several years on MacOS and is quite reliable. Lack of true chromeless fullscreen browsing is annoying.

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#55

Post by Ensorceled »

bscphil wrote: post #28
Ensorceled wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Firefox on Mac in mid 2019, no problems at all. Wish it had chrome style profiles but glad it doesn’t have chrome’s other issues.

> Wish it had chrome style profiles Could you explain what you mean by this? Firefox does have profiles, and more than one can be active at a time. (There's also the newer containers feature which allows further compartmentalization.)

Chrome style profiles that are a 1st class feature; that isn't accessed with a secret url, doesn't require multiple instances of Firefox in my dock, can be toggled between profiles easily, can be easily identified with a icon in the top corner of the browser.

I heavily use the firefox containers feature which is awesome.

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#56

Post by alexvoda »

rkangel wrote: post #11

I once again don't have a good solution for 'how do I email a large file' but https://webwormhole.io/ is useful and simple, particularly for sending something big to someone you're video chatting with.

When I send files across the globe I use MegaUpload M E G A Upload to me today Send me a file Meeeeegaaaaaaa (mega.nz)

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#58

Post by boomboomsubban »

torben-friis wrote: post #43

I really don't understand it. - Content was used to spread malware/illegal content - It was not profitable How are those two things something you find out after the fact? What was the reasoning for launching the product in the first place?

I assume they expected some use to spread illegal content, but the ratio of illegal use to accepted use was far different than their expectations. Presumably the reason to launch it was to advertise Firefox by providing a useful tool that encourages linking to others.

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#60

Post by amelius »

tpetry wrote: post #40
wodenokoto wrote: post #14

For transferring large files between machines that don’t necessarily have the same clients installed I find file.pizza quite convenient. My understanding is it basically loads a JavaScript BitTorrent client and let’s you transfer using that protocol, so both ends needs to be online, but there is no file size limit, and good support on flaky connections. There’s a few services like this, but I always find file.pizza t…

Has been shared a lot on hn and i always find it funny that it is simply not working for me. I can't even transfer files between tabs in a single browser nor between browsers on the same host.

Perhaps your browser stops Javascript in tabs that are not active (?)
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