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Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#61

Post by jopsen »

preinheimer wrote: post #3

(disclaimer I guess I own a company that offers VPN services, it's like ~1% of revenue though). I think this seems like a bit much. I'd love Firefox to double down on building a great browser, rather than getting into Pocket, VPN, a Phone, IOT, etc. Sure, a VPN can be really helpful when you're on sketchy open wifi, or other adversarial network conditions. But you're still trusting someone to handle your connections…

I trust Mozilla would throw ProtonVPN under the bus at the first hint of trouble.

Can you actually check if a VPN provider logs data? No, but Mozilla certainly has more sway than I do.

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#62

Post by jopsen »

ryanlol wrote: post #47
intopieces wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But do we really expect VPN providers to not crunch the same numbers and come to the same conclusions? Yes, because those numbers are different -- there's actual competition among the providers, which is not so for ISPs. I agree it's still a gamble, and still requires trust, but if/when that trust is broken, there's someone else ready to fill that void.

"competition" doesn't work super well here given the information asymmetry between users and providers. There's simply no way for customers to tell if their VPN provider is selling them out.

Isn't that why you want Mozilla?

By siding with you they can certainly pave over the asymmetry in the relationship between provider and users.

I trust Mozilla, not ProtonVPN, and I trust Mozilla vetted them and will continue to look them over the shoulder.

That's more than I can say for my current VPN provider.

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#63

Post by tempestn »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #17
IngoBlechschmid wrote: post #6

Honest question: Why not bundle Tor, instead of relying on a proprietary VPN service? It seems that Tor satisfies the advertised use case ("insecure public WiFi") just as well.

Well, "Tor Browser", which shares code in both directions with the Firefox project, is already available. So that's already an option. It's not ideal though. A large fraction of the web blocks access from Tor relays, or makes you jump through extra hoops, like completing onerous captchas. It's not a great experience.

Plus, by nature of having to go through several hops, it will always be slower than a standard VPN. (And that's in the best case. In reality it's noticeably slower, I assume due to congestion of exit nodes.)

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#64

Post by svrtknst »

nyxtom wrote: post #57
_8j50 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look,you're missing two very important points here. 1) yes,vpn providers crunch the numbers and come at a different conclusion. This is because they sell privacy before anything else. You don't gamble on the heart of your business model unless you intended to sell out your users from the begining. And there are well vetted providers run by well known individuals with a lot to lose if they sell out users. 2) It is in…

I would actually love it if Mozilla ends up operating protonmail and brings over firefox mail of sorts.

Same here. I like Mozilla, and if they can bring me a qualitative email service and VPN on top of a great browser and the MDN, I'm psyched.

Here's to hoping that they also develop an e-mail product to replace Googles Inbox...

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#65

Post by svrtknst »

BoysenberryPi wrote: post #23
preinheimer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like when they slipped a Mr. Robot plugin into the download without telling people? https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robo...

I must be the only one who thought this was a non-issue. A molehill turned into a mountain.

No, I agree at least. I mean, it was a bad move and thoroughly short-sighted, but then again - what's the score?

One slight privacy infraction from Mozilla, vs. the countless others from Google, or Facebook, or whatever. It wasn't a good move, it also wasn't as bad as people make it out to be, and it's defeinitely better than any competition.

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#66

Post by svrtknst »

jacekm wrote: post #37

I have mixed feelings about this move. On one hand I like that Mozilla gets additional source of income to support their mission. Plus people will certainly benefit from using a vpn service. On the other hand though this will redirect people to a particular provider that may not necessarily meet their needs. Proton VPN offers a decent service, but not sure if the best one. I'd be much more comfortable with this if th…

> I'd be much more comfortable with this if they were suggesting multiple different providers.

I don't see anything saying that they won't. They might only offer ProtonVPN for all of time, but I could also see them adding additional providers down the line. In any case, I'm imagining that the vetting process is relatively costly to perform and keep up, and I'd trust Mozilla more than myself to do it.

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#67

Post by sjellis »

BoysenberryPi wrote: post #23
preinheimer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like when they slipped a Mr. Robot plugin into the download without telling people? https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robo...

I must be the only one who thought this was a non-issue. A molehill turned into a mountain.

The incident was trivial, but it exposed serious concerns in the process. Mozilla itself strongly promotes privacy and digital rights, but their marketing people did not understand that this was a breach of trust, and all of the technical people involved in the release of the add-on either did not realise this either, or were overruled.

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#68

Post by Leace »

nyxtom wrote: post #57
_8j50 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look,you're missing two very important points here. 1) yes,vpn providers crunch the numbers and come at a different conclusion. This is because they sell privacy before anything else. You don't gamble on the heart of your business model unless you intended to sell out your users from the begining. And there are well vetted providers run by well known individuals with a lot to lose if they sell out users. 2) It is in…

I would actually love it if Mozilla ends up operating protonmail and brings over firefox mail of sorts.

Wow, I never thought about this but strangely it makes sense.

It seems ProtonMail frontend is open-source: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClient

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#69

Post by Leace »

Fnoord wrote: post #32
clusmore wrote: post #25

This is a little vague on the technicals, but it sounds like you would be downloading and installing the full VPN service as if you had obtained it directly from ProtonVPN? i.e. this isn't a browser plugin? It'd be interesting if there were some tie-ins with the browser, like perhaps separate VPN connections per container (not sure this is possible, I'm no expert).

I'd prefer it if it used some kind of way to proxy traffic through WireGuard instead (which ProtonVPN does not yet support while they should if not just for performance reasons alone [1]) [1] https://www.wireguard.com/performance/

There is a uservoice request for WireGuard: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-feedback/sugg...

(but I don't know if Proton looks at these requests, the last response from administrators was in 2016).

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#70

Post by Dylan16807 »

Karunamon wrote: post #45
bigiain wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - it was a dumb move on Mozilla's part. But keep in mind that while it was pushed out into people's browsers in a stupidly-lacking-in-foresight fashion, it still required use activation before it'd do anything... I'm at least four nines sure Google have got worse privacy-eroding code in Chrome that does way worse things that flip some text upside down after you specifically activate an add-on...

As I tell everyone that tries to defend this, it's not about what the plugin did or didn't do. It could have literally been a copy of about:blank, it changes nothing. The entirely justified outrage was its purpose for being put there (which boils down to advertising) and the lack of consent for its being put there. That's it.

Doing nothing is not advertising. The only way for this to be used in advertisement was from Mr. Robot fans to Firefox.

> lack of consent

Pretend it was a copy of about:blank when you answer this question: What makes this different from the giant pile of patches merged into each release of firefox that you don't read?

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