You can forward messages to your main number or let the spam pile up
Firefox Relay began as a way for people to set up modest email farms to field and forward signups, logins, and spam to or away from their primary accounts. It’s grown to be a bit more than that with some improvements in March including a beefier attachment limit. Now, as it prepares take its Relay Premium program up a notch, there’s word of new features that’ll be coming along for the ride.
Austrian Firefox blogger Soeren Hentzschel has found a few new features coming to Relay including a simple toggle to remove known trackers from incoming mail (something DuckDuckGo has done for its own Duck.com email service recently) and a native integration into the Firefox web browser — a natural move beyond the Chrome extension.
The most impressive change coming to the US and Canada on October 11 is the ability to set up extra phone numbers in addition to email addresses. Users will be able to reduce the inherent risk that comes with one-time passcodes sent via SMS. Either that or give those numbers out as a cheeky way to reject nasty advances from people at the bar. Doesn’t matter which you choose. At the moment, it’s not clear how many messages, voice minutes, or forwards a spoof number will get from the outset, but if we’re talking multiple phone numbers, Mozilla’s already outdoing Google Voice in this aspect.
Firefox has been offering Relay Premium at the promotional month-to-month price of $1. Customers are able to lock it in by signing up through September 27. Hentzschel reports that from thereafter, the price in Europe will double to €2 per month. There will be an annual package, however, that will cost €12, effectively keeping the current pricing in place to some extent.
Back in the US and Canada and also on October 11, Firefox will reportedly introduce a package deal for year-long subscriptions to both Relay and Mozilla VPN. There’s no indication of pricing just yet.
We generally think the base functionality of Firefox Relay is worth the higher price of entry by itself, but it’s still great to see the value for money that’s set to be injected here.
