Settings, About Firefox. Tap the logo several times until it enables the debug menu. Back to settings, Nimbus Experiments. Find the VPN setting at the bottom of the list and you should be able to turn it off there.
A super straightforward process, 100% seriously good design by Mozilla.
Wtf does those settings even do? I can enable a setting called control, and is then prompted to enable telemetry. Clicking on telemetry crashes Firefox... I guess I'll have to live with the ad
In what world is a public email sensitive PII, mate? Sure, “never post anything on the internet ever” is the best OPSEC posture by default, but this user is a clearly-experienced self-hoster who understands the risks and consequences of what they’re doing.
It’s listed as their whois domain contact, and anyone with OSINT chops can find a long-term email tied to a custom domain with enumeration tools + breach data. Why hide it?
It can now pretty reasonably be assumed what OP's first name is, and that can be associated with his username.
Granted, his username might also be a derivative, but on its own there is a certain amount of plausible deniability there.
The more crumbs of identifiable information you leave around, the easier it becomes for malicious parties to gather them together and build a profile on you.
Right, but speaking for the dev crowd, plenty of us have public identities. Anyone can find my email trivially by scraping github. If you have a public online identity in the first place, it’s far preferable to treat your public-facing email as public information, rather than to rely on security by obscurity and assume no one will ever discover it.
The only glaring risk from an online attacker is credential stuffing, and falling victim to that one is a skill issue tied right back to assuming your email address won’t become public.
Email is an unique identifier, so whatever content and metadata goes along it is identified. For example now we know accounts lena and gregor use the same device and most probably belong to the same person.
You could've also simply gone through my post history and seen that I switched accounts like two years ago. Both of my accounts were also admins of my instance at some point.
A lot of forks of firefox don't have forced shit like this, try one. Personally I like waterfox, no AI bullshit, built in ad blocker, and (luckily for you) the VPN banner does not appear.
Considering someone else gave that actual answer, here's something to consider: switching to Waterfox will give you essentially all the benefits of Firefox, but without the bloat, and with some extra privacy features baked in.
This instance is named "gregtech" simply because my name is used to be Gregor, and I didn't check whether there is already something called "gregtech" before registering my domain name. Yes, even EU, which is a thing in the minecraft mod, is simply a coincidence. I guess you can also post about Gregtech, the minecraft mod, here.
Not OP, but I already have a VPN and have no interest in Mozillavad. If I have no interest in what they are advertising, it would be nice not to have to constantly work around the persistent ad.
it's like how I now have a big Claude button in my Excel toolbar, despite not using Claude or having access to it. and the button takes priority over other toolbar sections that I actually use but are now hidden, so it has a quantifiable effect on my work.
I don't want it, so I should be able to not see it
I typically avoid VPN's, becuaee in my opinion DNS over TLS/HTTPs + HTTPS are enough for my privacy/security needs, but I will happily use the free VPN every once in a while to get around a firewall or test if a website is universally down. I find it very useful, and am happy that firefox has added. And although I'm not entirely pleased given recent relevations about Mullvad, I'm happy to see that Mozilla is attempting to make money by offering privacy, rather than taking it away.
For me, yeah all of the above. I don't trust my ISP with my info, they're famously corrupt where I live. And I watch region gated content on programs that aren't my browser. And I use 3rd party frontends for social media. And I share torrents. My browser is only 20% of my traffic at most on any device.
59 replies
Settings, About Firefox. Tap the logo several times until it enables the debug menu. Back to settings, Nimbus Experiments. Find the VPN setting at the bottom of the list and you should be able to turn it off there.
A super straightforward process, 100% seriously good design by Mozilla.
Wtf does those settings even do? I can enable a setting called control, and is then prompted to enable telemetry. Clicking on telemetry crashes Firefox... I guess I'll have to live with the ad
Thanks! All that to disable some advertisement built into the browser. Utter bullshit.
IronFox, baby!
Or fennec I think also removes it
Iceraven!
Or waterfox
bullshit. a hidden multi step process to turn off a paid subscription feature no one asked for should not be fucking hidden
it should be a simple switch in settings to turn off. not a multistep turning on debug menu level process.
Sometimes a person says the opposite of what they mean.
This is the Internet, with how batshit insane people are you can never tell. That's why we have "/s"
People always say exactly what they mean 100% of the time.
Bullshit, no they don't.
Pro should learn to use e a fucking "/s" then
isn't the one built into firefox free and called firefox VPN? and isn't their paid option using mullvad's infrastructure Mozilla VPN?
Don't post screenshots with personal identifyable information...
My email is publicly accessible on my website, so I don't really care
In what world is a public email sensitive PII, mate? Sure, “never post anything on the internet ever” is the best OPSEC posture by default, but this user is a clearly-experienced self-hoster who understands the risks and consequences of what they’re doing.
It’s listed as their whois domain contact, and anyone with OSINT chops can find a long-term email tied to a custom domain with enumeration tools + breach data. Why hide it?
It can now pretty reasonably be assumed what OP's first name is, and that can be associated with his username.
Granted, his username might also be a derivative, but on its own there is a certain amount of plausible deniability there.
The more crumbs of identifiable information you leave around, the easier it becomes for malicious parties to gather them together and build a profile on you.
Right, but speaking for the dev crowd, plenty of us have public identities. Anyone can find my email trivially by scraping github. If you have a public online identity in the first place, it’s far preferable to treat your public-facing email as public information, rather than to rely on security by obscurity and assume no one will ever discover it.
The only glaring risk from an online attacker is credential stuffing, and falling victim to that one is a skill issue tied right back to assuming your email address won’t become public.
If Lemmy wasn't a collection of people fascists want to kill I'd agree
I'm the only daychilde on the internet. It's trivial to find my name and my wikipedia entry.
Nobody's murdered me yet.
I know you just didn't flag yourself that hard, you should have figured out by now these script writers are hacks.
Email is an unique identifier, so whatever content and metadata goes along it is identified. For example now we know accounts lena and gregor use the same device and most probably belong to the same person.
You could've also simply gone through my post history and seen that I switched accounts like two years ago. Both of my accounts were also admins of my instance at some point.
I meant it as an example. You decide what information you want to make public.
I mean, I just sat through annual privacy training and was taught that email addresses are legally PII in many jurisdictions.
Legally, of course it’s PII — but is it sensitive information if you treat it as public and distribute it yourself?
I’m speaking to the functional cybersecurity angle, not the semantics of PII.
Alsi, you want to be in about:config to remove the vpn menu item
A lot of forks of firefox don't have forced shit like this, try one. Personally I like waterfox, no AI bullshit, built in ad blocker, and (luckily for you) the VPN banner does not appear.
Libre fox for desktop and ironfox for mobile.
You mean https://www.librewolf.net/ ?
Yes, Fox wolf canine.
Considering someone else gave that actual answer, here's something to consider: switching to Waterfox will give you essentially all the benefits of Firefox, but without the bloat, and with some extra privacy features baked in.
This is the way
Given this is mobile, Waterfox is not an option.
Fennec and IronFox are
Bullshit
https://www.waterfox.com/download/
Waterfox is also on mobile
Are they only pushing to play store? I've never seen them on FDroid
Thought I had loaded it from F-Droid but checked and I installed it with Obtanium from their github @ https://github.com/BrowserWorks/Waterfox-Android
TIL, thanks.
NP! I also have Ironfox and Fennec installed, both from F-Droid. I think any of them make a good replacement for Firefox
Unless you’re on team fruit tree!
?
I use Waterfox on mobile no problem.
Apparently Waterfox can be installed through Obsidian, which I was unaware of.
I had only checked the FDroid repositories. I do not use Play Store.
You play gregtech modpack?
See my instance's sidebar
Now that you've gotten some answers,.why would you want to get rid of it? Is there something about VPNs that I don't know?
Not OP, but I already have a VPN and have no interest in Mozillavad. If I have no interest in what they are advertising, it would be nice not to have to constantly work around the persistent ad.
it's like how I now have a big Claude button in my Excel toolbar, despite not using Claude or having access to it. and the button takes priority over other toolbar sections that I actually use but are now hidden, so it has a quantifiable effect on my work.
I don't want it, so I should be able to not see it
I assume any VPN integrated into a browser is useless at best. Anyone know specifically the problems with it?
It's actually pretty damn good in terms of privacy. It's Mozilla VPN, which is white labelled and resold Mullvad (but at the same price).
Mullvad is a no logs provider with a good track record.
Unfortunately,: https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.html
I typically avoid VPN's, becuaee in my opinion DNS over TLS/HTTPs + HTTPS are enough for my privacy/security needs, but I will happily use the free VPN every once in a while to get around a firewall or test if a website is universally down. I find it very useful, and am happy that firefox has added. And although I'm not entirely pleased given recent relevations about Mullvad, I'm happy to see that Mozilla is attempting to make money by offering privacy, rather than taking it away.
But it doesn't obscure any traffic that isn't on your browser, does it? That feels like it would defeat the purpose
What is the purpose of a VPN?
To obscure the traffic of your whole machine?
To obscure 99% of the traffic on your machine since it's from your browser?
To bypass censorship for a website or two?
For me, yeah all of the above. I don't trust my ISP with my info, they're famously corrupt where I live. And I watch region gated content on programs that aren't my browser. And I use 3rd party frontends for social media. And I share torrents. My browser is only 20% of my traffic at most on any device.
Easiest way is to install LibreWolf
On android? And I think there are easier ways.
IronFox for mobile