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Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing
- marindez 9y agoI don't understand why is this called Firefox Send. Shouldn't it be called Mozilla Send?
- elsurudo 9y agoProbably branding purposes. Even non-techies recognize the Firefox brand. Mozilla – not so much.
- Markoff 9y agoeh, what's current Firefox market share? I would not bet my money many non techies recognize Firefox at all, it's pretty niche nerd product for people with addon fetish, rest of the world just use Chrome/IE/Edge
- floatingatoll 9y agoTest Pilot experiments are by the Firefox team. They're usually more embedded in the browser, is all.
- geostyx 9y agoThis has been out for a while. I use it occasionally, but a single download is a narrow use case.
- hnarn 9y ago> a single download is a narrow use case. Is it really? I mean, if I wanted to send a file to someone via Google's e-mail servers or a chat application like Facebook Messenger but wanted to make sure it didn't stick around for those two companies to data mine, this seems like it would do the trick. From Mozilla's perspective, doing "one upload, one download" also kind of solves the problem of becoming a new "megaupload" for illegal content. Not the problem of the illegal content being there (since it's unsolvable), but the accountability of being the party responsible for spreading it around.
- Chirael 9y agoI've used this once or twice a week since it was announced a month or two back here on HN, and love it. It's my go-to way to send any file that's > 10MB. I remember doing some mortgage applications last year and being frustrated that the built-in Zip encryption in Windows is weak/broken, and begging them to have a secure file upload feature. With this, it's all set - as long as the recipient picks it up within 24 hours of course. 48 would be better but I'm not quibbling, I can always resend and if 24 is what they need to keep the service up, 24 it is. This is simple and awesome and I appreciate everyone who worked on it.
- floatingatoll 9y agoFor many users, a single download is the most common case.
- NikolaeVarius 9y agoIt really is a shame that there still isn't a easy way (A person whose computer knowledge extends to using facebook), that I know of, of sending arbitrarily large files that isn't tethered to a specific cloud service and is also reliable (can tolerate connection dropping). It seems that bitorrent protocols are pretty close, but I don't think there is a seamless client that allows for "magical" point to point transactions.
- bubblethink 9y agoBoth parties would have to be online for any p2p solution to work. And if they are online, there are plenty of ways to create a p2p link. It is complicated by things like NAT though. However, that is the less common case. In most cases, the receiver isn't going to be online. So you need an intermediate server, and that's how you end up with third party solutions.
- wybiral 9y agoYeah, the "being online" detail seems like the problem. It would be best if the encrypted data were distributed (something like IPFS) but then why would peers host files that aren't for them.
- thatcat 9y agoYou would need a seedbox to function as a cloud. Then when you send a file, send to seedbox simultaniously. This approach might also increase dl speed for the reciever.
- C0DEHERO 9y agoThey don't currently, but Filecoin is supposed to create an incentive for people to host other people's files. Obviously, you'll have to pay some amount to have your files hosted.
- m-p-3 9y agoStorj is based on a similar concept.
- HalfwayToDice 9y agoMozilla have donated $100,000 to the radical left-extremists RiseUp (who on their website state they want a worldwide revolution against capitalism). By doing so, Firefox have made themselves a political organisation. So... my question is this. Is this Send feature safe to use for people who have different political opinions?
- matthew349hall 9y agoIf you're in business to do business then do business, if you're in business to do politics, do politics. Be non partial.
- icebraining 9y agoMozilla was always and primarily a political organization. To answer your question, while I'm not a Mozilla employee or developer, I'd say yes since the contents are encrypted end-to-end, so they can't actually tell the user has different political opinions.
- dang 9y agoOk, since you've ignored our requests to stop breaking the site guidelines, we've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
- vesinisa 9y agoDo they share my files and "anonymized" upload history with a third party (edit: was "advertising company") for this service as well?
- HalfwayToDice 9y agoThey share it with RiseUp, the radical-left organisation they fund. Don't worry my friend, your files are safe with them.
- robin_reala 9y agoI guess you’ve got nothing to back up that assertion?
- mtmail 9y agoIn another comment you say the donated money to that organisation. Why do you think user data would be shared with them?
- HalfwayToDice 9y agoBecause by donating to RiseUp, Mozilla have made themselves a political organisation, and political organisations do things for political ends, not privacy ends.
- icebraining 9y agoDefending privacy rights is a political goal.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- manveru 9y agoWhat you're referring to is this: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/10/03/mozilla-awards-half-million-open-source-projects/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/10/03/mozilla-awards-half... RiseUp seems to be an organization providing VPNs, Email-service, Jabber, and general security advice. Citing from https://riseup.net/en/about-us https://riseup.net/en/about-us (at least what you seem to be worried about): > The Riseup Collective is an autonomous body based in Seattle with collective members world wide. Our purpose is to aid in the creation of a free society, a world with freedom from want and freedom of expression, a world without oppression or hierarchy, where power is shared equally. We do this by providing communication and computer resources to allies engaged in struggles against capitalism and other forms of oppression. I'm interested what exactly they do wrong in your eyes to deserve your passion?
- metahost 9y agoSo, where is the money coming from ? Who's the product here ?
- Yoric 9y agoGood question. In this instance, the product is Firefox. The money is coming from the usual sources of revenue of Mozilla, i.e. Firefox.
- soapdog 9y agoWhen thinking about a Mozilla offering, it is healthy to think beyond "money and product" as this type of analysis will usually leave you with a conclusion of "this doesn't make business sense". Mozilla is in the game of keeping the internet healthy. Part of it involves products, such as Firefox and its quest to recover userbase. Parts of it involves money, such as MOSS awarding grants or prizes for FOSS stuff they use and see value. But most of Mozilla actions can be thought on "how close they get Mozilla to achieve its mission as stated in the Mozilla Manifesto[1]". In the case of Firefox Send, it enables less friction sending files and protects the user privacy, so it IMHO advances item #4 of the manifesto: "Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional." It also serves as a nice branding reminder for people, as it works with other browsers, makes people using some other solution remember Firefox... [1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
- programmarchy 9y agoNot sure how true that is anymore. They seem to by trying hard to squander their reputation. First their MITI officially signaled they now consider themselves a political force, then the whole Cliqz debacle following shortly after showed their willingness to sacrifice their principles.
- floatingatoll 9y agoWhat's MITI stand for here?
- thinkMOAR 9y agoJust my experience/test: it takes longer to upload the file to mozilla then it would have sending directly to DSL of a friend.. edit- Download tested now too, not bad, though nothing to write home about.
- AndrewDucker 9y agoWhat software did you use to create a direct connection to your friend?
- thinkMOAR 9y agohttps
- chrisper 9y agoThat's a protocol. Not a software.
- thinkMOAR 9y agoYou must be great at parties. Software is irrelevant imo. Indicating same protocol as FF send is imho more relevant.
- ohitsdom 9y agoThe whole point of this discussion is that sending files to another computer is still cumbersome. Software is entirely relevant. So if you're complaining about speed of FF Send, you should specify what you're comparing it to.
- icebraining 9y agoThe whole point of this discussion is that sending files to another computer is still cumbersome. No, the discussion is about Firefox Send generally. The cumbersomeness discussion is a specific subthread.
- sarabande 9y agoI'm curious -- Mozilla says it can't decrypt the file on their side: Mozilla does not have the ability to access the content of your encrypted file [...] https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/send How is the receiver able to decrypt the file -- i.e. what is the decryption key if not the URL slug, which presumably Mozilla has as well?
- justusthane 9y agoI would guess public key cryptography at the client-side.
- KwanEsq 9y agoThe key is the hash, which isn't sent over the wire when loading a page. Now granted it's accessible via location.hash in the client, but one has to trust Mozilla not to do that.
- sarabande 9y agoThanks. I was just looking at the screenshots and didn't seen any hashes, but when I tried it out and copied to the clipboard I saw the form "https://send.firefox.com/download/xxxxx/#yyyyy" https://send.firefox.com/download/xxxxx/#yyyyy".
- snvzz 9y ago#yyyyy would be the encryption key. The webserver end never sees it. It can, however, easily be read via javascript, so mozilla needs to be trusted in any case.
- madeofpalk 9y agoat least you can check that its not going back to the server.
- jhasse 9y ago
- mtgx 9y agoThey should add this as a shortcut button in Firefox. I think it makes even more sense than having the Pocket icon there. Not everyone may want to save their articles on another service, but pretty much everyone needs to send a file privately to someone else every now and then. So something like this should be super-easy to access. I learned about Firefox Send when it launched but completely forgot about it until now. I would definitely use it more if it had an easy-to-access (read: not burried in the Settings page) shortcut in the browser.
- floatingatoll 9y agoIt's a Test Pilot project, so easy-to-access may be deferred until they choose to upgrade it from Test to Release, but it is certain they'll consider ease-of-use if/when they do decide to release it.
- Numberwang 9y agoI wonder how many downloads can be done before it expires
- reinhardt1053 9y agoOne download
- 0xfeba 9y agoAnother commentator found you can initiate multiple downloads, and complete them all. As long as you start them before any finishes.
- floatingatoll 9y agoThis is technically a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14901998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14901998 from a couple months ago.
- lwerdna 9y agoIf you only need to send text, https://cryptopaste.com https://cryptopaste.com does everything client side and shows the ciphertext in a "staging area" before you commit it to the cloud. You can instead save it as a self-decrypting document, attaching it to email, copy to thumbdrive, upload dropbox, etc.
- n2j3 9y agoGreat implementation but doesn't work with Greek, spews out garbage. Here against original text in notepad.exe https://i.imgur.com/n1WCsnZ.png https://i.imgur.com/n1WCsnZ.png
- naskwo 9y agoIs this a Wetransfer killer?
- skarap 9y agoMandatory XKCD link: https://xkcd.com/949/ https://xkcd.com/949/
- Aissen 9y agoI've just checked the code. It indeed deletes the file once a download has been completely consumed, so it can't really replace other file-sharing services. BUT I wonder how does it deal with race conditions ? My guess is that if many people start a download at the same time, they'll all be able to complete it before the file goes away. At least that's how I'd see it working with S3 or local storage. You could abuse it by sending the same file many times in order to create lots of download links; but there's little to gain in bandwidth savings: you might as well run your own server. The only advantage I'd see is hiding your IP address, but then you could also run a tor hidden service. The other would be bandwidth amplification by synchronizing all the clients (for big files).
- Aissen 9y agoSo, I just tested, and the race-condition method does work. I was able to download a 200M the encrypted file three times, and they match. You could imagine a site operator with hundreds of users uploading a file once every hour or so and lots of synchronized users downloading it for each generated link.
- ge0rg 9y agoThe sender could open a download connection and stall it as far as possible (maybe keep the download rate shaped to some bytes/second, to prevent an inactivity timeout). That would open a large time window for further downloads.
- AgentME 9y agoI assume the file would be deleted as soon as any client finishes downloading. (If the files are backed by regular files on a unix-like system, then the existing open handles to the file will keep working, allowing currently-connected clients to finish downloading, but preventing any new clients from starting the download.)
- Aissen 9y agoIndeed, I tested this too, but forgot to mention. That's how it works.
- Devid2014 9y ago1 download limit looks really problematic to me. Some times download just do not start or get aborted and then everything need to be done again. Something like 3 downloads limit would make this more usable!
- ElijahLynn 9y agoOne thing that could be improved with this is to have an option for a human readable/typeable link. I wanted to quickly transfer a file from my desktop to my phone. Used Send and realized I didn't want to type that cryptographic URL. I ran the Send link through Typer.in (specializing in hand-typed urls) and it worked as I initially expected. However, it would be nice if Send had this functionality by default.
- cdancette 9y agoThe private key is in the url, and mozilla says explicitly that they don't know this private key. They could shorten the url but then they would have the private key.
- konart 9y agoWell, if you use Firefox on your phone you can leave tab openned on your desktop and choose this tab on your phone. Or, if you are a Telegram user - you can send the link you yourself. You can also use you mail inbox.
- dublinben 9y agoYou could have also just generated a QR code of the URL and scanned it with your phone, if you didn't want to send it electronically. I'm sure they expect users to just email these links to their recipient.
- jwcacces 9y agoTyper.in stores the link you give it, and returns a human readable lookup link. The whole point of Send is that the link includes the secret key to decrypt your file. Whoever you give that secret to, including Typer.in can get the file. The Send link must include the secret key, because no one else should get it, and that key must be of sufficient length to protect your file. Thus human-readable-izing it could do nothing to decrease its complexity and would just result in a huge string of words that were just as much as a pain to type in.
- indiv0 9y agoAt least at the moment, downloading the file once removes it from Mozilla's servers. So in the event typer.in used the URL you provided to download the file, you would know as the file would no longer be accessible.
- sangd 9y agoWhat does it mean "it’s best to keep your file under 1GB"? Can I send 2GB+ size files?
- mnx 9y agoIt seems nice, but I think it should be made more explicit upon downloading, that you can only do that once. I can see myself e.g. downloading a file I received on my phone to take a quick look, intending to then download it again on my computer later. I would be surprised to see it just gone.
- fluxsauce 9y agoKnown issue, apparently - https://github.com/mozilla/send/issues/497 https://github.com/mozilla/send/issues/497
- SgtSauceBoss 9y agoI've learned not to trust companies when they tout "completely encrypted" and "totally private". Show me the open source code, otherwise they're likely collecting data in some way to pay for hosting this web application.
- Larrikin 9y agoCan anyone confirm whether this works in Safari/iOS now? It seemed great but when I tried to send some files to friends to promote it it completely shat the bed and my mobile friends ended up getting nothing but garbled text when the (fairly large) downloads finished. It was quite frustrating since the upload was painfully slow.
- kiliankoe 9y agoSeems to work fine on my end.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- peternicky 9y agoHow does this compare to Keybase folders?
- lucb1e 9y agoLet me guess, with free Pocket® integration? Mozilla blew it for me recently in so many ways, I am taking them about as seriously as I would Facebook right now.
- hollander 9y agoHow can you compare the Pocket thing with Facebook? The good kid messed up this time. And you can simply ignore it, don't have to use it. Yes like you can decide not to use Facebook, but then all your friends and family use it, or use Instagram of Whatsapp and force you to use it. That includes uploading your complete contact list two or three times. Do you have to use Firefox because your family uses it? I don't think so. How do those two compare?
- lucb1e 9y agoMonths after the whole Pocket thing, they destroyed the Firefox on Android homepage to replace it with 60% "Recommended by Pocket" articles. I'm not sure how they determine what's recommended for me, but it seems an awful lot like sending browser history to this company. And even if not, I'm not interested in this bullshit, I just want my bookmarks homescreen (with HN and some other sites I check regularly). Oh and the WebExtension thing which breaks every single reason I'd use Firefox over Chrome. All extensions that do not exist for Chrome because Firefox' model was more powerful, can no longer exist in the new Firefox. It's terrible decision after terrible decision. In another HN thread someone called it intentional decisions by someone wishing Mozilla harm. I don't think there's bad intentions, but I can see why it seems like it.
- srathi 9y agoThey are repeating it with the Cliqz integration now. I love Firefox, but these decisions are baffling!
- zaroth 9y agoAs I recall, there was a Bitcoin wallet service which relied on securing the access key behind the '#' in the URL for its security -- turns out it's not perfectly reliable and shouldn't be used for protecting money. Likewise for files you really need to be secure. Since boring crypto shouldn't have weird failure modes like this, I'm thinking this design is a big mistake? EDIT: I think it was Instawallet and apparently while they had robots.txt set to prevent crawling, the theory was people typing their URL into Google (or Omnibar) would alert Google to the URL and it got into search results anyway. I know that web-keys is based on the theory that since the fragment isn't sent by User-Agents in the Request-Uri that it's secure, but there are things that see the full URL which aren't conforming agents, and it just seems risky for any long-lived secret.
- akavel 9y agoGiven that it's explicitly a short-lived secret (below 24h), and one-use - so probably Google crawler (or typing into url bar - presumably to immediately follow by Enter) would invalidate it on first access - I don't feel convinced any of those concerns apply?
- narag 9y agoThis is actually very useful. You can send files from and to mobile devices and desktop. Delete on download doesn't seem to be a problem, just adjust your storage strategy. Security could be acceptable for most use cases. I hope they add it to the browser.
- fefe23 9y agoWhy do the Mozilla people keep doing this sort of thing? Aren't they supposed to be making a good browser? I remember them telling me they are now going back to their core competences. I think it was after Firefox OS failed. Not trying to piss on anyone's parade here, just wondering how this kind of thing keeps happening. I was wondering the same thing when Mozilla added Pocket and now Cliqz to Firefox. What is the rationale here? Do they have leftover money they need to spend before January 1st or something?
- mplewis 9y agoThe engineers on the product are listed as two interns. There are eight people on it total, and I bet most of them aren't working on it full time. This hardly seems like a massive waste of resources. https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/send https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/send
- joeframbach 9y agoWhat you're telling me is that I'll see this at the top of HN in another year as the vector of some major security breach.
- Spivak 9y agoThat would require people actually using it. /zing
- Crontab 9y agoI have to agree with your concerns. All they have to do is make a good web browser and they have the funds to do that. It concerns me that they are wasting time, energy, and money chasing rabbits.
- darkhorn 9y agoI think this is for free advertisment.
- wtetzner 9y agoSoftware development doesn't always (usually doesn't, in fact) work that way. After a point, throwing more money and engineers at Firefox is unlikely to speed up its pace of development, or improve its quality.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- spyridonas 9y agoI think Mozilla should create a more privacy friendly analytics service, since they experiment with new projects
- wodenokoto 9y agoI don't think Mozilla should do one thing at a time.
- jagermo 9y agoDo you know Piwik? Its a really nice open source, self hostable alternative to Google Analytics. I've been running it for years, very stable and great insight. www.piwik.org
- nneonneo 9y agoThe last time this was posted I hacked up a quick and dirty Python client for Send: https://github.com/nneonneo/ffsend https://github.com/nneonneo/ffsend. I just updated it for recent Send changes, which streamlined the crypto and removed some redundancy. Firefox’s JS client requires the whole file be in memory in order to perform the encryption, and has to decrypt the whole file in memory in order to download it. My client doesn’t have that limitation so it could theoretically upload much larger files (subject only to the server’s upload limit).
- mcemilg 9y agoBut why?
- Markoff 9y agobecause it's easier to do this than give mobile Firefox users option to pull down to refresh, thus enjoy Brave or Samsung browser and stay away from Firefox
- wyred 9y agoI made a subreddit for anyone to upload any file and the first person who accesses the link gets to download it. https://www.reddit.com/r/send/ https://www.reddit.com/r/send/
- bikamonki 9y agoI need something like this to send myself links from my phone to my pc.
- Markoff 9y agoChrome, Firefox or Samsung browser have all bookmarks sync
- rebyn 9y agoI've just uploaded a 140MB file from my mountain cabin (in Viet Nam) and it was lightning fast. I then gave the link to a friend of mine residing in Melbourne, Australia and his download speed was blazing fast as well. Would be keen to learn more about the infrastructure setup behind this service to achieve such a good performance.
- hnarn 9y agoProbably Amazon.
- viperscape 9y agoPushbullet offers a great service. I'm not related to the team, but really enjoy the product. It's both an addon for browsers, desktop app, and standalone mobile app. Easy as pie, and now they have 'portal' which is local network direct transfers
- Markoff 9y agohow is this different from Mega.nz ?
- _pdp_ 9y agoIn order to take this further, this functionality needs to be part of the browser so that one can trust the page is not maliciously modified in transit or at the server.