Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have gained popularity in recent times as user awareness and concern increases around the security of their information and who may be wanting to get access to metadata associated with web traffic. Perhaps most controversially this year, Facebook rolled out its own VPN service to its users with the irony being that mobile data traffic traversing the VPN would be collected and analyzed to improve the company"s products and services. Unsurprisingly, the social media business was asked by Apple to voluntarily remove its VPN app from the App Store for violating the latter"s data collection policy.
While one company may have grasped the wrong end of the stick with respect to the fundamentals of a VPN service, another is kicking off a limited test of a resold offering. In an announcement on its blog, Mozilla has foreshadowed an addition to its Firefox user experience that will recommend the purchase of a ProtonVPN monthly subscription for $10 a month. While this is more expensive than obtaining the Basic or Plus plans directly from ProtonVPN, unspecified portions of the total amount will be divided up between Mozilla and ProtonVPN.
At this stage, the trial, which will kick off on Wednesday, October 24th, will be limited to "a small, random group of US-based Firefox users" and those that do shell out for the service will be able to cancel at any time. If the offer does take off, it may prove to be a good way for users to get access to while Mozilla is able to diversify its income sources and reduce the heavy reliance on revenue generated from Google searches made via the search bar. Of course, it remains to be seen if this will indeed turn out to be the case.