Mozilla VPN exits beta, launches on Android and Windows for $5 a month | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla VPN exits beta, launches on Android and Windows for $5 a month

venturebeat.com

80 pointsinput_sh60 comments

Previous threads on this:

1 month ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565192

10 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20927832

This is just rebranded consumer VPN service? So Mozilla is outsourcing their brand. Seems very risky for them. I don’t know why anyone would trust a consumer VPN service. CIA or another country’s spy agency could easily be behind any of them. Just like Crypto AG. Being based in Sweden is no guarantee at all. Encrypted email services are another obvious thing for spy agencies to run.

The only useful purpose of a consumer VPN is torrenting and bypass geographic blocking. Privacy can be either increased or decreased with a consumer VPN service.

I don't get it. Who are they outsourcing it to?

They’re using Mullvad’s network. Basically reselling it. But it seems to be around 70 cents (US dollar) cheaper since Mullvad charges in Euros and Mozilla uses US dollar.

I’ve been using Mullvad for several years now and they’ve been reliable. They have independent security audits done and are known for their privacy.

So, they're just doing it for commercial reasons? Does Mozilla add anything to it than its name?

As far as I can see, the only thing they've "added" was their own client applications. The connection limits and server locations are the same as Mullvad.

One thing that Mozilla does not offer yet, but Mullvad does, are Wireguard proxies. These are socks5 proxies run internally on every Wireguard server. Using these you can connect to another server, for example EU --> US, and achieve "multihopping".

Mozilla also seems to only offer the Wireguard protocol, but this doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

> The only useful purpose of a consumer VPN is torrenting and bypass geographic blocking.

This is profoundly untrue. Firesheep still exists, not everybody's on HTTPS for everything (though they should be, and clients don't have control over that), and with the existence of stuff like SNI I don't necessarily (read: really, ever) want an ISP knowing where my traffic is going.

This is a great project for users from a privacy-first company. I hope it's good for users, and that Mozilla gets significant support from this project.

Agreed, Mozilla seems to be a force for good on the Internet and a reliable and diverse revenue stream is really important to keep that going.

Just wondering but what are some of the reasons that you believe Mozilla is a privacy first company?

I just don't to blindly believe into that.

I thought in the past Mozilla had partnered with ProtonVPN[1]. I wonder why they are now working with Mullvad?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18277278

ProtonVPN charges €6.63 to €10/month (depending on duration of plan) for 5 devices, while Mullvad only charges €5/month. Mozilla might have negotiated a better contract with Mullvad.

https://protonvpn.com/pricing

https://mullvad.net

Direct link to the Mozilla VPN homepage:

https://vpn.mozilla.org

This is an offering by Mullvad, and uses Wireguard.

As of this moment, the homepage says:

> We currently offer Mozilla VPN in the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia.

In the meantime, send.firefox.com has been unavailable for at least a week now (probably longer, but for sure not in the past 7 days).

Wonder if this is a resource issue or they are planning on launching it as well.

FF Send was suspended indefinitely because it was being exploited to distribute malware. I used it constantly (not for malware!) so I hope it comes back.

Crap - wasn't aware of that.

Maybe it can come back as a paid service like the VPN. I'd pay $5/month for it!

It's really cool but why does it have to be so expensive. I get that nowdays "whatever you want costs 5 dollars a month" but realistically things which should be way cheaper are now 5 dollars a month. I'm in my 2nd Nordvpn 3 year sub which also increased in price to 3€ per month. I mean if you want 100 things which require 100 subscriptions you end up at at least 500€ a month. And now there are 5 video streaming platforms which cost even more and you realistically want all of them. The whole sub life thing might be getting out of hand

But it's only the price of a coffee! /s

Noteably Cloudflare have a similar VPN which is completely free and purports to be privacy-conscious too, though it's only for mobile at the moment.

Cloudflare Warp does not hide the client's IP address.

> From a technical perspective, WARP is a VPN. But it is designed for a very different audience than a traditional VPN. WARP is not designed to allow you to access geo-restricted content when you’re traveling. It will not hide your IP address from the websites you visit. If you’re looking for that kind of high-security protection then a traditional VPN or a service like Tor are likely better choices for you.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-warp-plus/

You know, no matter how decently you earn, $5/mo is still an annoyance that you're forced to pay monthly. It does also add up.

Because Mozilla is an organization worth supporting: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto

As one example: Without Firefox, there would effectively be a single browser renderer in the market: Chrome

This is untrue (for multiple reasons), but WebKit and Safari are a thing and arguably doing a better job at walking the walk wrt Mozilla's ideals than the Firefox team. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23714401:

> it doesn't help the "toppling" effort when you lump WebKit in with [Blink]. WebKit is an effective check against Google's power, but not if folks continue imagining that two distinct projects that diverged years ago are one and the same.

(This comment written in Firefox, by the way.)

You mean webkit based, including blink.

Maybe stop spending on stuff you can live without to let the services know they won't be getting users with their pricing.

They also have firefox extension, already used it for several months and its pretty solid, very quick and easy to use!

Mullvad is great, but what does Mozilla add?

Very excited to pay for this on Linux

Mozilla consistently putting Linux last yet claims to pride itself on open source

Android is literally Linux.

I keep hearing this. How is it that in practice I can get my desktop to do anything I want, but I can't get my phone to do anything I want?

Make your desktop send a phone call natively i.e. not LTE/WiFi

How do you think phones make phone calls?

Because today, they use LTE.

However that has nothing to do with whether Android is Linux or whether one can make a desktop do whatever they want.

When you run 'Linux' on the desktop, you are running the Linux kernel with GNU userspace. The GNU project would rather you call it GNU/Linux, to pay homage to their hard work. That is too hard to say, so everybody simply says 'Linux'.

Android also runs the Linux kernel. However, the tools that allow you 'to do whatever you want' are not what you interact with. Android has its own userspace tools designed by Google. These are what you are familiar with. It used to be possible to use a terminal and sort of interact with an Android device like a desktop Linux computer, but that has slowly been disabled overtime.

Quite a bit of "whatever you want" is still possible on Android[1], though ideally you will have root, be comfortable using adb, etc. Ultimately the reason it's easier to do what you want on a linux desktop is that Google isn't actively trying to stop you there...

1: https://hackingpassion.com/android-hacking-with-termux/

Ouch. You know, I've heard many times about the GNU / Linux conversation but not being an expert I didn't really know where one starts and the other ends. So your comment has been extremely useful for me, thank you. And yes, we should pay more homage to GNU...

This gets to the controversy, "GNU/Linux" vs "Uses the Linux kernel"

https://www.fossmint.com/difference-between-android-and-linu...

>In Conclusion, Android is not a GNU/Linux distro but its Kernel is Linux and since it is the convention that a collection of software put together around the Linux Kernel is referred to as Linux, Android is Linux.

> * Android cannot run any programs that are meant for GNU/Linux distros

also;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy

I believe GP was referring to GNU/Linux, often called 'Desktop Linux' or even just 'Linux'. Due to the fact that 'Linux' beat 'GNU/Linux' in the naming wars in the 90s, most people will never refer to Android as 'Linux'. Rather, Android/Linux is called 'Android'. While you are technically right that Android runs Linux, nobody says that 'Microsoft Word is now available for Linux' because its available on Android.

> nobody says that 'Microsoft Word is now available for Linux' because its available on Android

Some people do ;-)

Since GNU/Linux could also be very different from what most people would consider "Linux" I usually say "standard Linux" (or "standard Linux system" with very pedantic people).

This is a good idea. And yes I realize some people do say. that. I should have said 'most people do not say ...'

I guess if you are a Linux user, you dont really need Mozilla help to use a VPN

No, but even today people don't need help using a VPN. That isn't why Mozilla is offering an official branded VPN solution. It is because the name Mozilla is suppose to imply trust.

Most Linux users get Firefox from distros, not from Mozilla directly.

People are downvoting this but it's a fact that Firefox got hardware accelerated video playback only this year on Linux.

VDPAU and VA-API have been around for years now, supported by VLC, mplayer, mpv, etc.

People are downvoting because it's comparing apples to oranges. It's perfectly acceptable, and smart even, to pride oneself on open source while treating the least dominant desktop OS as a second class citizen with regard to product offerings. It also comes off as a bit whiny, since it's abundantly clear from the first paragraph that there's no plans to shun Linux.

If you think Mozilla should prioritize profit over freedom and privacy then it doesn't sound acceptable or smart to me.

I'm a Linux user myself, but if I were building a product for commercial purposes, I'd prioritize building it for the platforms where the majority of the users are. Unfortunately, that majority isn't on Linux.

"Mac & Linux coming soon" is good enough for me for now.

I understand not prioritizing Linux for commercial purposes but Mac? General assumptions about people with Macs: 1. have disposable income 2. more likely to care about privacy.

I think they're literally just prioritizing by how many firefox users they have on each platform.

1) Market share for Mac is probably on a similar scale to that on Linux. In this case being low single digits. Of those users, a significant market share are likely not to be using Mozilla's products over Safari. Unlike Linux platforms where Mozilla products are the typical default.

2) Anyone on any of these platforms can likely afford 5 dollars a month. I don't even think platform plays a variable in this at all. It isn't like the unique iOS apps which bring value/features and are the only mechanism for attaining those given features.

In this case, there is plenty of competition already in play, and users can already pick a VPN provider if they want. Same can't be said for say a video editing app that is the only thing available on the iOS store.

3) Mac users care about privacy less than Linux users. A few weeks ago it was found that Catalina was sending a hash of every single program you run to Apple.

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/catalina-executables.htm...

Yep, Apple likely knows everything you could potentially be doing on your Mac. Not very private I would say.

I don't really agree with any of your assumptions in this case.

My message was ambiguous, I meant more likely to care about privacy than Windows and Android users not Linux users. 1 and 2 of what you said are good points tho.

How did you find that Mac users care more about privacy?

stronger privacy restrictions are part of the value proposition of the Apple ecosystem. For at least some part of the market that is what draws them to purchase Apple products.

It really isn't that much different or extra work to create a cross-platform app. They are rebranding a solution that already has Linux support. Besides, if larger companies started releasing on Linux first I'm sure those numbers would shift dramatically. Linux really is a superior desktop for developers and engineers.

Maybe they're just trying to buy themselves in into the 'missing markets.' Us linux people, "by the way^1", might suffer to wait for a while. It's a good move, in some ways, it's good to infiltrate Win and Android, first, actually, and then, they'll drop the logical bomb here too. I guess that's a good move. Actually.

^1 Arch Linux

Except they we wasting development cycles prioritizing platforms that are generally built on proprietary platforms. When you've got a bunch of telemetry and other services recording your VPN address after you've logged in using personally identifiable information, or they have fingerprinted you, then you are no longer anonymous.

Linux users who are interested in Mozilla VPN can use Mullvad (the service that Mozilla VPN is rebranding and reselling) until it is released.

https://mullvad.net

This is the VPN to recommend to friends and family.

Why would you recommend they use a VPN at all? Is this for the USA or elsewhere?

So that ISP doesn't log the sites they visit under their real names?

does it work in China?

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