Celebrating Data Privacy Day

Explore options to have a less creepy and more carefree online life

Happy International Data Privacy Day! While January 28 marks a day to raise awareness and promote best practices for privacy and data protection around the world, we at Mozilla do this work year-round so our users can celebrate today - and every day - the endless joy the internet has to offer.

We know that data privacy can feel daunting, and the truth is, no one is perfect when it comes to protecting their data 24/7. At Mozilla though, we want to make data protection feel a bit easier and not like something else on the never-ending life to-do list. We build products that protect people online so they can experience the best of the web without compromising on privacy, performance or convenience. The internet is too good to miss out on - we'll take care of securing it so you can focus on exploring and enjoying it.

To accomplish this, we started with square one: our Firefox browser - enhancing its privacy and tracking protections over the past year, while improving its user experience to make surfing the web less dangerous and more carefree.

Say goodbye to creepy ads

In the physical world, you wouldn't expect hundreds of salespeople to follow you from store to store, spying on the products you look at or buy. If you're using the web though, you unfortunately have to contend with that kind of pernicious, ongoing surveillance on the internet, as major browsers allow your activity to be closely tracked by the sites you visit.

We don't think that's right. Everyone deserves their privacy. We have rolled out several new products to make it harder for companies to monitor your browsing. From blocking third-party cookies, including supercookies, to fully erasing your browser history from any website, these tools prevent companies from snooping on your online activity.

From A to Z... It's in the vault

Despite how it sounds, you don't need to be a hacker to make use of an encrypted connection. Whether you're online shopping or want to make sure your login credentials are safe from attackers, we're working on ensuring your browsing experience is secure from start to finish. That's why, when you open up a Private Browsing tab on Firefox, you can be confident that your information is safe thanks to our HTTPS by Default offering, which ensures the data you share with and receive from a website is encrypted and won't be able to be intercepted, viewed or tampered with by a hacker. To take this one step further, we're also working with Internet Service Providers like Comcast and other partners through our Trusted Recursive Resolver program, to begin making DNS encryption the default for Firefox users in the US and Canada.

Your own personal cone of silence

With many folks still working remotely, often using personal devices to connect to less-than-secure internet at coffee shops, banks or wherever life takes you, your data, along with that of companies around the world, is more exposed than ever. With this in mind, we launched and expanded the availability of the Mozilla VPN this year, our fast and easy-to-use Virtual Private Network which protects your data regardless of what network you're connected to when you browse. Whether you're a business adjusting to the realities of remote work or just someone looking to up their privacy standards, the new-and-improved Mozilla VPN combined with Firefox ensures your browsing experience is one of the most private available today.

Building you a digital fortress

Hackers are a creative bunch. Sometimes, they're like pickpockets who target you with phishing emails and untrustworthy websites. Other times, they're more like bank robbers who go directly to the bank's safe and get everyone's money in one swoop. Because browsers are some of the most widely used software in the world, they make interesting targets for hackers. At Firefox, we work around the clock to fight off those attacks. Some of the recent work we've rolled out includes site isolation that prevents an attack on one website to spill over into another one, essentially putting down partition walls between websites. Another technology we introduced, called RLBox, isolates parts of the Firefox code, essentially putting the code in boxes. This helps to minimize the impact of a targeted attack on other parts of our massive code base, so even if hackers breach one wall, they don't have run of the full castle.

Say no to spam and leaks

As our users' lives continue to shift online, and their virtual profiles, from email to social media, hold more personal details, hackers have doubled down on ways to compromise these accounts and steal our valuable information.

Over the past year, we've launched tools that give you peace of mind by enhancing account security. Relay is a Firefox extension that helps keep email inboxes spam free and safe from hackers and Firefox Monitor lets you know if you've been part of an online data breach.

And while strong, complex passwords may be hard to remember, don't let that be the reason your account is breached, or why you keep hitting that forgot your password" button. Use our integrated password manager to securely store your log-in information and feel free to forget them. This is real peace of mind!

Get to your happy place, faster

When your toolbox is full of products that take care of your privacy, then you can spend more time going to your happy place online. So while we're dedicated to building a browser that is safe and secure, we also believe it can do much more than just that. The browser doesn't have to exist in the background of our lives, in fact, it can serve as a powerful tool to help you get to where you want to go faster.

From unveiling a newly redesigned Firefox to launching Firefox Suggest, we've invested in several updates to make the browsing experience more personal, smoother and frictionless, without compromising on your privacy and security.

On Data Privacy Day - and every other day of the year - we are dedicated to building technology that enables everyone to experience the joy, connection and delight of the internet while knowing they are safe and secure in the process. Now that's something to really celebrate!

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