Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are getting a lot of attention at the moment, for… well, lots of reasons, some of which are beyond the scope of PCWorld’s usual coverage. Before we talk about ways to secure and anonymize your web traffic, pardon me for a second, I need to go put out a burning dumpster fire… and I’m back. Anyway, free VPNs are often a bit dubious, but now there’s one built into Firefox.
To be clear, yes, this VPN is totally free. It’s provided by Firefox maker Mozilla starting with version 149, and you can use it right now… maybe. There are some important qualifications.
First, this Mozilla-provided VPN is not to be confused with Mozilla VPN, which is a separate, paid product, similar to other paid VPNs like ExpressVPN or Surfshark. Mozilla VPN will route all traffic on your device through a remote and (allegedly) private server. Firefox’s built-in VPN works only for traffic that originates from the Firefox browser. That’s neat, but it’s an important limitation to consider if you’re looking at a VPN from a perspective of privacy and security.
Second, like most free VPNs, there’s a limit to how much data you can use. Firefox users will get 50 gigabytes of VPN-protected traffic a month, metered whenever the VPN toggle in the toolbar is on. That’s actually pretty darn generous for a free service. For the sake of comparison, I generally go though about 400 GB of data in a month on my home system, combining a full-time job and constant video/audio streaming. Various estimates from the last few years put the average US household internet use at 500 to 1,000 GB a month, with a lot of variation.
It’s not going to cover everything, but 50 GB would cover a lot, even if I were (for example) trying to get around streaming video region lock-outs. If I only needed to use a VPN for the occasional sensitive data access, 50 GB a month would be more than enough. (On that subject, I should add that you need to log in with a Mozilla account in order to access the VPN. Yes, for security and privacy, VPNs are kind of just moving the risk one notch up the chain.)
Fortunately, the built-in tool will alert you when you’re approaching that limit, as seen in the screenshot above. Another limitation that I’m guessing is applied is that you won’t be able to select the location of your VPN server, another frequent issue for free VPNs.
And I have to guess at the above because of the final limitation, which is a more immediately annoying one for me: Firefox’s VPN isn’t available to everyone yet. As Mozilla explains on the Firefox blog, it’s “progressively rolling out in the US, UK, Germany, and France”… and “progressively” does mean slowly, as a fresh install of Firefox 149.0 isn’t giving me the option to to test it out when I log into Mozilla. Rats.
