The Mozilla Foundation will match all donations made to Tor Project by the end of the year, the Tor Project announced today.
Η announcement posted as Tor Project launched this week the planned donation campaign through which the agency is backing the budget next year.
What does matching mean? For each donation offered by Tor Project users, the amount will be doubled by the Mozilla Foundation.
This is the second consecutive year that the Mozilla Foundation has agreed to match Tor Project donations. Last year, Tor Project raised 200.000 dollars from user donations and with Mozilla's contribution that number surpassed $ 400.000.
With last year's money, the Tor Project was able to fund a huge facelift of the Tor Browser for each desktop, but also to release a dedicated Tor Browser for Android devices.
With funds to be gathered this year, Tor Project promised to:
- Boost the capability, configuration and scalability of the Tor network by improving and integrating other privacy tools more easily and more reliably.
- Better test, measure and design solutions for internet censorshipnetwork, allowing people around the world living under oppressive governments to access the web securely and privately.
- Boost the development of Tor Browser for Android, with an application that uses minimum bandwidth.
The Tor and Mozilla organizations are deeply connected. Most people already know that the Tor browser is a version of Mozilla's Firefox browser with a lot more characteristics security. But Firefox is also heavily dependent on Tor Browser.
From 2016, Mozilla developers bring security features originally developed for the Tor Browser as part of an internal project called Tor Uplift.
For example, the Tracking Protection feature, which the Mozilla Foundation enabled for all users yesterday with the release of Firefox 63, originally relied on a list of known fingerprinting domains maintained by the Tor Project to block in the Tor Browser. The Mozilla Foundation incorporated this list into Firefox 48 and later evolved it feature in the most advanced Enhanced Tracking Protection function that was released yesterday.
For these reasons, the Mozilla Foundation doubles Don Project donations from 2017 and 2018. It will probably continue to double them in the future.
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