And how exactly do we know for certain that all that juicy web access data complete linked to whatever identifying information associated with a Mozilla account isn't going to be sold?!
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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Yeah, sadly Mozilla lost most of the trust one would have given to them in advance a few years ago.
The same could be said about any VPN out there. Read the ToS and privacy policy, and either believe it or don’t.
True, but Mozilla being what it had been the past few years I trust them no further than I can throw them
Edit: pay the few dollars for mullvad
Samme as every other vpn???
Processed by LLMs no doubt.
I loved Mozilla for years but trust nothing from them these days.
So they know it's you all the traffic comes from?
Exactly. No thanks. Nothing is ever "free".
If something is free then you are the product
How does that sqaure away with FOSS?
Usable addition, and the fact that it is only in-browser is actually a merit in some cases. Firefox gets a lot of hate but is way more privacy centric out of the box compared to Chrome. AI is only opt-in and you can literally customize the entire browser using about:config. Mozilla also maintains the only real competing web engine (not considering Apple's locked in ecosystem) and they are the reason browsers are open source these days.
AI is only opt-in
Not to take anything away from your overall point, which I completely agree with, but this may be a bit of a stretch. All of the "AI" buttons and features are - to my knowledge - on by default. They have made it a lot easier to change that to "off by default now and in the future", which is very welcome, but "only opt-in" is, again, a bit of a stretch.
It's not on by default.
Well, yes. In so far as they’ve added a new opt in button, and it would be silly to assume every user wants it off now. Instead, users that previously installed get a “turn off AI here” button when the update happens.
I’d say that’s a good trade off.
Please stop adding bloat to my browser. I have nothing against VPN, but it's not a fucking core feature of a web browser. Put that stuff in an extension that I can install if I want.
They should make a "Firefox Core" which contains only the browser with basic features, and then make another version which contains all the "fun" stuff.
Isn't that what extensions are for? This basically already exists. It's a shame Mozilla doesn't utilize it for this
Install LibreWolf then disable the cookie clearing and resistFingerprinting.
They need to separate gecko properly so we can build things using just the renderer.
It depends on the country you are living in. There are plenty of people with restricted and surveilled internet.
Sure, but do you think they're going to allow Firefox if it comes with a built-in VPN?
How exactly are you going to 'disallow' a piece of software?
Texas and Florida haven't banned it yet.
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Firefox’s free VPN won’t be using Mullvad’s infra though; it’s hosted on Mozilla servers around the world (if beta testing of the feature done in late 2025 tracks).
...oh.
And an ai watchdog to keep you clean
Holy shit, people really lose any rationality when it comes to AI, don't they?
Mozilla mentioned integrating AI, got flak for it, reversed gears. Everything is optional and opt-in now.
And yet, a third of comments here are crying about Big Bad Firefox AI coming to eat them at night.
If anyone missed them removing the "we will never sell your data" from their promise to their users, this is clearly their next step in monetizing their users.
This is exactly my worry. Usually the reason a VPN is free is because they're selling your data on the backend. No thank you.
“Free” as you pay with your data?
~~ No, Mozilla uses Mullvad as a partner, they're a serious and nolog VPN provider.
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/mullvad-vpn-was-subject-to-a-search-warrant-customer-data-not-compromised ~~ EDIT: Didn't read the article, the free VPN won't be using Mullvad apparently.
It doesn't seem like it, or at least there's zero evidence I've seen that this is the case. As the linked OMG Ubuntu article speculates, probably the main benefit financially is making users more likely to sign up to their paid VPN.
Aside: Based on their blog post, the service seems like a proxy rather than a VPN.
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For everyone who thinks this is just gonna be a way for them to somehow sell your data, I don't think so.
Think about it like this. You can buy a VPN plan for as little as $2 a month or less depending on the provider if you have a long-term commitment (e.g. 1-2 years). That pricing includes margin.
Firefox can essentially operate at lower prices than that, because they:
- Don't have to charge themselves an extra margin
- Have an economy of scale since they're not just one user paying for themselves, they're a company paying for thousands at a time
- Cap their per-user cost well below what most users actually use. (I used over 300 GB of data in the last 30 days just on my PC, almost all through Firefox, with even more on Firefox on my phone.)
I would bet this would probably cost Mozilla less than a dollar per user per month, and that's also assuming all those users are continuing to use the VPN service over time, maxing out their data limit, but refusing to pay for anything else after.
Meanwhile, Mozilla conveniently sells their own VPN service provided through Mullvad, which they make a profit on.
If a user cares enough to continue using the VPN because they want a VPN, they'll blow through the data limit and be more inclined than the average user to pay for Mozilla's option. (rather than going "I guess I'll only care about my privacy for 5 days out of the month")
If a user doesn't care enough to continue using the VPN because they were just trying it out, but they chose to use Firefox because it had a free VPN bundled in, which sold them on it over another browser, Mozilla just paid less than an ad would cost for a conversion.
And at the end of the day, it also just helps keep up their reputation as a browser that respects your privacy, which makes it easier to promote the browser elsewhere, in ads or otherwise.
This feels more like a marketing ploy that's likely to just save money on ad conversions for new Firefox users, and increase Mozilla VPN conversions, rather than something they're gonna use to super secretly siphon off your data and sell it to advertisers.
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