Several years after creating a Tor extension for Firefox, Mozilla has collaborated once again with the onion browser. The goal? To create an anonymous mode accessible to all internet users.
A new collaboration
Indeed, this is not the first time Firefox and Tor have worked together: they had already created TorBirdy, an extension for Thunderbird (Mozilla’s email client) in order to send emails via the Tor network.
A real opportunity for data protection
Even though Tor is mainly known for being the main gateway to the deep web, it is first and foremost an excellent way of making yourself anonymous on the web. The Tor network changes your IP address thanks to its network, which makes your browsing completely untraceable. But then, why add the Tor network to Firefox?
After all the commotion online around the GDPR, internet users asked themselves a great many questions about the protection of their personal data — and Tor, with its system for anonymous browsing, makes it possible to protect that data easily. So a “super private” extension provided by Tor will help reassure Firefox users.
Those in charge of The Tor Project have even stated that, in the long term, they would like to transfer all the features of their browser to Firefox, even if it means Tor disappearing. This merger of the two browsers would be a genuine asset for Mozilla against its competitor Google, whose browser is used by the majority of internet users. We would be talking about hundreds of millions of additional potential users for Firefox.
The two organisations have stated that this new extension will take time to develop, so they have not announced an official release date for the time being.
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