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Comment by miroljub | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather not have Firefox installed, than Firefox preloaded with MitM certificates, disabled uBlock Origin, Proxy Switcher, added Adobe, Copilot, and a few more "useful" extensions and security add-ons that can't be disabled, and so on.

If company IT gets hold of Firefox, it's not better than just using Edge or Chrome that comes by default.

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hopefully the IT department pushes out uBlock Origin with whatever browsers they require people use. I used to push it out to several customers with the Chrome GPOs... although I know it doesn't work in Chrome anymore

Of course they won't do that. That would require companies to admit that ads are a bad idea.

uBlock Origin requires permission to read and alter anything on any website. Although I trust it, and I don't see an alternative for something like an ad-blocker, I can see how that would be a deal-killer for corporate IT.

Yes, they prefer ZScaler which can read and modify anything on any website and network resource, even when running on localhost.

ZScaler comes from a vendor and a purchase agreement, uBlock Origin comes from "some guy" for free and that makes corporate folks uneasy. If Firefox would offer uBlock Origin in their enterprise version for $100/seat/month and market it as an "endpoint malware blocker for the cloud" instead of an ad blocker they'd probably get a lot of uptake.

This is the best Mozilla product idea I've heard since they started trying to sell shit like VPN service.

Like seriously, Mozilla could probably make some serious revenue with this. I only wonder if it would open them up to getting sued, somehow.

Your web browser also has the ability to read and alter anything on any website, do you trust the makers of your web browser? (And everyone else in the supply chain...)

Not surprisingly it's easy for a organization to trust Mozilla Corporation than to trust a random Canadian guy.

I wouldn't call Raymond Hill a "random" Canadian guy. I am also fairly certain that these same organizations rely on code written by even more obscure, random individuals every day.

AFAIK Firefox add-ons go through review before being uploaded, so this would actually only be an issue if you don't trust both the Canadian guy and Mozilla.

Yet corporations are all ok with letting people use Windows, that disclaims that it can send any data on your computer to MS at any time.

It's insane how much access companies give MS. The insights they must have on so many companies by snooping on what they do in outlook and excel alone...

Note that Firefox Enterprise and Firefox can live side by side, so your workflow would still work, unless your corporate admin specifically moves to block it.

Exactly. My company mandates Chrome or Edge with no extensions for work, and the SSO only works with these. I use Firefox in the side for browsing because IT doesn’t control it and I can block ads.

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