There was a time once you could do almost anything during a browser or could a minimum of install extensions to try to do what the browser natively can’t. While the craze of turning browsers into Swiss Army knives has mellowed down a touch, there are still many belongings you can do with the software that might generally require a separate app for an equivalent task. Ironically, Firefox is occupation the other direction and is removing FTP functionality that has been a staple in web browsers for many years.
FTP, short for File Transfer Protocol, isn’t exactly something that most users directly access. Still, it’s the technology that permits many file download or upload activities on the web. This predated more modern ways to transfer and share files and, as you would possibly expect, isn’t exactly up-to-date on the newest security technologies. Unlike HTTP, however, FTP doesn’t have an immediate HTTPS equivalent that would be easily supported on both server and client sides.
Mozilla and Google have made the difficult decision to only excise FTP support from their browsers ultimately. Mozilla explains that FTP, while convenient and straightforward, is additionally a security nightmare waiting to happen. The connection is often easily spoofed, and therefore the data is modified to suit a hacker’s needs, making the protocol just about non-secure by default.
Firefox 90 completely removes FTP support after a period of deprecation that started back in April. Users got to confirm they’re on the newest version to require advantage of the safety implications of this alteration, but they could even have to form other preparations beforehand. Starting with Firefox 90, all FTP links will be pushed to external applications, presuming you’ve got one installed in the first place.
There could be fewer uses of FTP online lately, so that won’t exactly be a drag for many users. That said, removing FTP functionality from the core of Firefox also means extensions that utilized the browser’s FTP support will not work starting with this version. Thus, heavy users of FTP are urged to seek out a particular application for handling those links, but, likelihood is that they could already be employing a different program for their more advanced use cases.
