Email forwarding and aliases
Firefox Private Relay privacy rating
Email masking service from Mozilla that creates aliases and forwards mail to a real inbox. Works on the web and through a Firefox add-on.
Summary
Firefox Private Relay scores 33 out of 100 (grade F) on the email forwarding and aliases criteria. It meets 4 of 16 criteria: open source, no ads or data sales, transparency report and tells users about requests. It partly meets TLS configuration and no stored mail. It does not meet no trackers or telemetry, independent audit, security headers, end-to-end encryption, open protocols, custom domains, sign up without personal data, mail transport security, Sender Rewriting Scheme and ARC sealing. It is based in the United States: Five Eyes member; subject to the US CLOUD Act. Automated tests: SSL Labs grade A- and Mozilla HTTP Observatory grade C+.
Score 33 out of 100. How scoring works
Criteria
- Yes
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No
No trackers or telemetry Weight 3 of 3
Are the website and apps free of third-party trackers, with any analytics anonymous and any telemetry off by default?
The Relay website and extension use Google Analytics unless the browser sends Do Not Track.
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Yes
No ads or data sales Weight 2 of 3
Is the product funded without advertising, ad targeting or selling user data?
Funded by the Premium subscription. Relay shows no ads.
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No
Independent audit Weight 2 of 3
Has an independent security or privacy audit been published within the last three years?
No independent audit is published.
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Yes
Transparency report Weight 2 of 3
Does the provider regularly publish how many government and legal requests it receives and how it responds?
Mozilla publishes counts of government and legal requests for user data twice a year.
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Yes
Tells users about requests Weight 1 of 3
Does the provider promise to tell users about requests for their data, unless a court forbids it?
Mozilla notifies affected users of requests unless legally prohibited, and after any required delay ends.
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No
End-to-end encryption Weight 2 of 3
Can mail be end-to-end encrypted so that the provider cannot read message contents?
Not supported. Relay has no PGP or other end-to-end encryption for forwarded mail.
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Partial
No stored mail Weight 3 of 3
Is forwarded mail passed through without being written to disk?
Mail is not stored after delivery. Undeliverable mail is kept for up to three days.
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No
Open protocols Weight 2 of 3
Can any standard app connect over IMAP, POP3, SMTP, CalDAV or CardDAV, without extra software?
No IMAP or SMTP access. Mail is forwarded to an existing inbox and replies go through the mask.
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No
Custom domains Weight 1 of 3
Can mail be sent and received with your own domain?
Own domains are not supported. Premium offers a custom subdomain of mozmail.com.
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No
Sign up without personal data Weight 2 of 3
Can an account be created without a phone number or another email address?
A Mozilla account with an existing email address is required.
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No
Sender Rewriting Scheme Weight 2 of 3
Is the envelope sender rewritten with SRS when mail is forwarded, so forwarded mail keeps passing SPF?
No published documentation on SRS for forwarded mail.
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No
ARC sealing Weight 1 of 3
Does the provider validate and add ARC (RFC 8617) signatures, so authentication results survive forwarding?
No published documentation on ARC signing or validation.
Automated tests
-
Partial
TLS configuration Weight 2 of 3
Does the website pass the Qualys SSL Labs test with a grade of A or better?
Grade A-
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No
Security headers Weight 1 of 3
Does the website pass the Mozilla HTTP Observatory test with a grade of A or better?
Grade C+ (60/100+)
-
Not tested yet
Modern web standards Weight 1 of 3
Does the website score 90% or higher on the Internet.nl website test?
Not tested yet.
-
Not tested yet
Email security standards Weight 2 of 3
Does the mail domain score 90% or higher on the Internet.nl email test?
Not tested yet.
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No
Mail transport security Weight 3 of 3
Does the mail domain enforce encrypted, authenticated delivery with MTA-STS, DANE, DNSSEC, TLS-RPT and an enforced DMARC policy?
Passes: SPF, DMARC quarantine. Missing: MTA-STS missing, TLS-RPT, DNSSEC, DANE none.
Email standards
- Yes: Mail serversMXinbound-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
- Yes: RFC 7208 sender policySPFpublished
- Yes: RFC 7489. Quarantine or reject counts as enforcedDMARCp=quarantine
- No: RFC 8461 strict transport securityMTA-STSmissing
- No: RFC 8460 TLS failure reportsTLS-RPTmissing
- No: RFC 4033 signed DNSDNSSECnot validated
- No: RFC 7672 TLSA records on MX hostsDANEnone
- No: Brand logo record (not scored)BIMInone
- No: RFC 6186 and RFC 8314 service records (not scored)SRVnone
IMAP
Could not test: No server found (set a host in the rating file or publish RFC 6186 SRV records)
POP3
Could not test: No server found (set a host in the rating file or publish RFC 6186 SRV records)
SMTP submission
Could not test: No server found (set a host in the rating file or publish RFC 6186 SRV records)
Capabilities are what each server advertises before login. How these tests work