Mozilla has announced that it’s going to be bringing back its Test Pilot program, claiming that it’s like a cat and has many lives. The firm stated that unlike the last Test Pilot iteration, products this time will be far more polished, essentially, beta products nearing a public release.
The company has already selected a couple of new products that will arrive on Test Pilot at a later date, for the meantime, though, Mozilla is just introducing one product, a VPN service called Firefox Private Network, which we mentioned before its name was announced. The Firefox Private Network is an extension which sets up a secure, encrypted connection to the web allowing users to browse more safely.
With Firefox Private Network, you get protection on public WiFi access points, your IP address is hidden making it more difficult for advertisers to track you, and you can toggle the service on or off at any time. Mozilla is very unlikely to keep the new Firefox Private Network service free when it rolls out to the wider general public; in its announcement Mozilla said that the testing phase would allow it to work out a pricing scheme.
In future, more inclusive projects will come to Test Pilot but for the time being, Firefox Private Network is only available to users in the United States, with Firefox accounts, running Firefox on the desktop. Mozilla says it will announce when it’s ready to bring the service to other locales and platforms. If you"re in the U.S. and at a desktop computer, you can begin testing the service now.