How to Enable Breached Site Warnings in Mozilla Firefox

[The AchieVer]

How to Enable Breached Site Warnings in Mozilla Firefox 

The security of our data is critical and since we spend most of our time online in a browser, it’s extremely important that companies developing these apps continue improving protections offered to users in a way that would help block the latest hacking techniques.

Google, for example, has recently announced a new extension for Chrome browser that would notify users when their credentials were exposed following a site breach.

And now Mozilla wants to do the same thing with a similar update for Firefox that would alert users when they visit a website previously compromised by hackers.

First, some context. Back in 2017, Mozilla started working on a warning system for its browser that would issue notifications whenever personal details like usernames and passwords could be exposed to hackers. Efforts in this regard continued next year when Mozilla started offering Firefox Monitor as a key security feature to users, recommending them to check this database regularly to make sure their accounts were still secure.

Based on a database belonging to Have I Been Pwned, Firefox Monitor allowed users to determine whether their email addresses and passwords were included in a breach of a service they use.

Starting with Firefox 67, Mozilla makes a new step towards its warning system, and the browser will begin alerting users whenever they load a website that’s known as being compromised.

So for example, if domain.com has previously been flagged as a hacked website and you visit domain.com in Firefox, the browser should display a notification asking if you own an account on this page. If you do, you can check Firefox Monitor to make sure your details are still protected.
 

 

 

The warning system is still in its early days right now and does not provide an automated check, which means that you still have to connect to Firefox Monitor manually to perform a credential verification.

Obviously, you can also dismiss the notifications and prevent them from appearing again if you don’t want to be warned of breached websites.

At this point, however, the feature is still in testing, so here’s what you need to do in order to give it a try.

First and foremost, you’re going to need Firefox Nightly to enable it because Mozilla is currently evaluating the feature with the help of its testing browser.

In the address bar of Firefox Nightly, copy and paste the following code:

about:config

Then, you need to search for the following flag using the search bar at the top of the screen: 

extensions.fxmonitor.enabled

Set this flag to true by just clicking the Toggle button. There is no need to reboot the browser, and the next time you visit a page that is included in the breached site database, you should see a notification like the one shown in the screenshot in this article.

Firefox also comes with two additional parameters for this particular flag. They are called:

extensions.fxmonitor.firstAlertShown
extensions.fxmonitor.warnedHosts

The first flag allows Firefox to monitor the first warning displayed to you, and it lets you reset the configuration in order to be notified once again of websites that were breached in the last year. The second of them stores information on the websites that were included in alerts issued by Firefox, so you can just reset it completely to restore the default configuration and be alerted once again when you visit them.

It remains to be seen if Mozilla further refines the experience with this new feature by the time it becomes available to all users in Firefox 67. According to the existing schedule, Firefox 67 should launch for everyone on May 14, 2019.

 

 

 

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