Mozilla is ready to regain the trust of users, and regain the market share that, month after month, is losing. And for this he wants his browser, Firefox , to once again be an example of security and privacy, an alternative to Chrome, Edge and Safari where users can navigate safely, without traces, and so that their data can always remain safe . And, for this, Mozilla is preparing new functions and security measures thanks to which we offer users that degree of security and privacy that is so necessary today.
The current version of Mozilla’s browser, Firefox 91, introduced an important security measure thanks to which we can navigate with greater security: the HTTPS-only mode . What this new function does is guarantee that we only browse through connections encrypted with the HTTPS protocol. All unencrypted and insecure HTTP connections are automatically blocked to prevent us from taking unnecessary risks.
Now, Mozilla is going to go a step further, and, after protecting our connections, what it is going to do is also protect our downloads. This is how this new security measure works.
Firefox will block unsafe downloads
Currently, Firefox uses Google’s Safe Browsing to analyze downloads before starting to download them to the PC. In this way, the browser is able to block all those downloads that may be unwanted, dangerous, have malware, or simply that are not common downloads and may pose a danger.
Now, from the next Firefox 92, the browser will block all those downloads that are not safe . There are web pages that, although they load in HTTPS, carry out the downloads through the HTTP protocol. Downloads through this protocol may be altered during the process, which may pose a risk to our security.
From now on, Firefox will detect such mixed downloads and block them before the download starts. We can see a security notice that will explain why it has been blocked, and a button with which, if we want, we can allow the download, assuming the risks.
According to Mozilla, this new feature will block 1.5% of all downloads that are carried out on average through the browser. And with it, users can be a little more secure.
Activate this feature in Firefox 92
At the moment, this new feature is only available in the beta version of the browser. In addition, it is disabled by default. If we are users of Firefox beta, and we want to test it, we can easily activate it from the experimental options of the browser.
We will write ” about: config ” in the address bar, accept the risks, and use the search engine at the top to search for ” dom.block_download_insecure “. We set its value to “true”, we restart the browser and that’s it.
In case you want to deactivate this option, so that downloads are not blocked, then we simply have to change the value from “true” to “false” and restart the browser again. So we can continue downloading from all kinds of websites without problems, even through HTTP. In any case, as it is a security measure, we do not recommend deactivating it.