It was in the middle of last year that Mozilla announced what they called Firefox Private Relay, now shortened to Firefox Relay, and has been in beta ever since. But no more: the service opens its doors to anyone who wants to use it and is also reinforced with an additional payment plan with which to obtain some benefit if possible, because in the end that has been the purpose of Mozilla since a beginning.
As we told you at the time, Firefox Relay «allows the one-click email aliasing so that the user does not have to expose their real address each time they register on a new site, thus avoiding spam and other potentially harmful inconveniences for the security of their account. As simple as that”. Why launch such a service when, as Mozilla itself recognizes, there are quality alternatives to spare?
According to the company, because “Firefox Relay can encourage more users to use email aliases”, a function that is undoubtedly very interesting to avoid not only problems, but stress, but that few users – mostly advanced – use, despite That it is really accessible: almost any current email service allows at least the use of simple aliases.
However, Firefox Relay has other motivations: the first affects the privacy protection in which the company embarked for a little over a couple of years, partly as a definition for a project that, except for the banner of being open source software, lacked essence. This includes the many news that Firefox has received in this regard, including also services integrated in the browser such as Firefox Monitor and Firefox Lockwise or Mozilla VPN.
The second and most important, from which all the movements that Mozilla has made in this time derive, is that the relevance of the company and Firefox is losing at the rate that the market share of the browser falls, which implies a diminishing injection economic by Google, which in turn leads to the massive layoffs that we have seen in recent times … (while, in the purest style of a criminal businessman, the CEO and part of the top management of Mozilla raised their millionaire salaries, which many traditional supporters have not liked, but that’s another story).
Firefox Relay is perfectly integrated into Firefox
In other words, Mozilla needs revenue not just to, in an uncertain future, become independent from Google, but to continue operating at its usual level. And since most of its most loyal and uncompromising users do not scratch their pockets a bit, at least they try with services such as the aforementioned Mozilla VPN or with this one at hand, Firefox Relay, which has a limited free plan, supported by another payment with all the features included.
Thus, Firefox Relay can be enjoyed for free with a limit of up to 5 email aliasesWhile the premium plan includes unlimited aliases, adding your own domain, and the option to reply to sent emails, all for $ 0.99 per month as a limited-time offer. Firefox Relay relies on a browser extension through which to quickly create and manage aliases …
… But, look at you, what the Firefox Relay extension is only available for Firefox, which may seem logical at first, but it is still an ugly movement that later turns against it, and it would not be the first time that Mozilla’s environment complains that the case is made against it. Chrome is not the same as Firefox.
However, it is possible to create aliases from any browser by accessing the Firefox Relay site, which is not available for everyone, it should be added: it is only available in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, France, Belgium Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Ireland… and also in Spain. Hence, we echo the news.
If you are interested, you can try Firefox Relay here. The idea is not bad, and Mzilla’s implementations of these services are generally good, so Firefox users would do well to check it out. Users of other browsers … Let’s say that there are more powerful and comfortable alternatives for them, but everyone is free to use whatever they want.
