How do I get rid of this?

betterdeadthanreddit 134 points 17 days ago

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.

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lena 45 points 17 days ago

Thanks! All that to disable some advertisement built into the browser. Utter bullshit.

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I_Am_Jacks_____ 27 points 17 days ago

IronFox, baby!

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DarkSirrush 11 points 17 days ago

Or waterfox

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Cris_Citrus 9 points 16 days ago

Or fennec I think also removes it

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john_t 5 points 16 days ago

Iceraven!

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BigDanishGuy 3 points 14 days ago

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

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green_link 2 points 15 days ago

100% seriously good design by Mozilla

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.

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betterdeadthanreddit 25 points 15 days ago

Sometimes a person says the opposite of what they mean.

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green_link 1 point 14 days ago

This is the Internet, with how batshit insane people are you can never tell. That's why we have "/s"

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ggtdbz 8 points 15 days ago

People always say exactly what they mean 100% of the time.

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betterdeadthanreddit 2 points 15 days ago

Bullshit, no they don't.

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green_link 0 points 14 days ago

people should learn to use e a fucking "/s" then

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pewgar_seemsimandroid 4 points 15 days ago

paid subscription

isn't the one built into firefox free and called firefox VPN? and isn't their paid option using mullvad's infrastructure Mozilla VPN?

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green_link 1 point 10 days ago

nothing is ever free

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green_link 1 point 10 days ago

You mean the "try it for free" where you only get 50GB of usages per month for "free" where it will stop working if you hit that, and then they have a paid subscription if you want more? That "free"?

"If you need more data, you can subscribe to Mozilla VPN for unlimited usage"

Sounds like fucking advertising to me

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pewgar_seemsimandroid 1 point 10 days ago

50 GB is 50 GB

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fraksken 58 points 17 days ago

Don't post screenshots with personal identifyable information...

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lena 27 points 17 days ago

My email is publicly accessible on my website, so I don't really care

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dgdft 20 points 17 days ago

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?

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Humanius 16 points 17 days ago

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.

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dgdft 7 points 17 days ago

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.

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CrimeIsLegalNow 1 point 16 days ago

If Lemmy wasn't a collection of people fascists want to kill I'd agree

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daychilde 3 points 16 days ago

I'm the only daychilde on the internet. It's trivial to find my name and my wikipedia entry.

Nobody's murdered me yet.

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CrimeIsLegalNow 0 points 16 days ago

I know you just didn't flag yourself that hard, you should have figured out by now these script writers are hacks.

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OrganicMustard 5 points 17 days ago

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.

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lena 4 points 17 days ago

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.

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OrganicMustard 6 points 17 days ago

I meant it as an example. You decide what information you want to make public.

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TragicNotCute 1 point 16 days ago

I mean, I just sat through annual privacy training and was taught that email addresses are legally PII in many jurisdictions.

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dgdft 5 points 16 days ago

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.

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fraksken 3 points 17 days ago

Alsi, you want to be in about:config to remove the vpn menu item

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LeighWeighTacoma 22 points 17 days ago

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TropicalDingdong 21 points 17 days ago

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RougeEric 15 points 17 days ago

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.

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Routhinator 3 points 17 days ago

Given this is mobile, Waterfox is not an option.

Fennec and IronFox are

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crandall 8 points 17 days ago

Waterfox is also on mobile

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Routhinator 6 points 17 days ago

Are they only pushing to play store? I've never seen them on FDroid

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crandall 5 points 17 days ago

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

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kettuli 1 point 17 days ago

Unless you’re on team fruit tree!

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Perky 3 points 17 days ago

I use Waterfox on mobile no problem.

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Routhinator 3 points 17 days ago

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.

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the_riviera_kid 2 points 15 days ago

Bullshit

https://www.waterfox.com/download/

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the_riviera_kid 2 points 15 days ago

This is the way

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the_riviera_kid 6 points 15 days ago

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.

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faintwhenfree 2 points 15 days ago

Libre fox for desktop and ironfox for mobile.

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Goodlucksil 2 points 15 days ago

Libre fox

You mean https://www.librewolf.net/ ?

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faintwhenfree 1 point 15 days ago

Yes, Fox wolf canine.

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ChonkyOwlbear 1 point 17 days ago

I assume any VPN integrated into a browser is useless at best. Anyone know specifically the problems with it?

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moonpiedumplings 9 points 17 days ago

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/...

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.

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DeepDown 2 points 17 days ago

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moonpiedumplings 5 points 17 days ago

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?

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DeepDown 2 points 17 days ago

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ColdWater 1 point 15 days ago

You play gregtech modpack?

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lena 0 points 15 days ago

See my instance's sidebar

The domain name

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.

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JustPlainDave 1 point 15 days ago

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?

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mrgoosmoos 4 points 15 days ago

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

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spwyll 4 points 15 days ago

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.

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begrudgedcarfolk -2 points 16 days ago

Easiest way is to install LibreWolf

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lena 2 points 16 days ago

On android? And I think there are easier ways.

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begrudgedcarfolk 2 points 15 days ago

IronFox for mobile