The intrusive advertisement of the Mozilla VPN service appeared in the Firefox browser – it randomly appears when browsing sites and blocks access to the site in the current tab before closing it. After complaints from users, the developer had to disable this feature.

Users pointed out that there was a bug in the implementation of Mozilla VPN’s ad serving mechanism: The popup banner was originally intended to appear after 20 minutes of inactivity, but it actually appeared during the full process. Users noted that such intrusive methods of promoting services are unacceptable, as they interfere with the work in the browser.

Some have pointed out that the close button in the popup is almost invisible – it’s a small cross that blends in with the background, and there’s no option to disable this title – just the “Not now” button. There were also reports of the browser freezing while viewing this ad and it took about 30 seconds. In the end, the owners of the sites also expressed their displeasure: their visitors might have the impression that the site is showing the intrusive ads, not the browser.