I’ve had this problem for over a week. If I have the protonvpn extension enabled, firefox won’t load a page. As soon as I disable it, I can. Has anyone seen this before?
This tends to happen when there’s some kind of DNS configuration issue, most likely DNS over HTTPS. If that’s explicitly disabled in Firefox and the problem still occurs, then there are some troubleshooting steps to consider:
- Is Firefox up to date?
- Is the system up to date?
- Have you tried reinstalling the extension?
- Have you tried a clean Firefox profile with only the extension installed?
- Has the system been restarted since the problem began occurring?
Everything except point 4. I was thinking it could be in conflict with another, but I hadn’t tried that. Thank you
Must be specific to the extension, as the full VPN program has no issues with Firefox at all for me, on Windows or Linux
Try turning off DNS over https in firefox
Stupid question. What’s the benefit of an in-browser VPN extension, vs just having it on for my whole computer?
An in-browser VPN extension is innately contained to the browser it’s installed to, which has several benefits:
- high-bandwidth activities outside of the browser, such as software updates and game downloads, which many people don’t consider part of their privacy profile, won’t be limited by the speed of the VPN
- this is also possible with split-tunneling, but that requires more configuration, and not all VPNs support split tunneling on all OS environments
- the bandwidth savings are a big reason why most VPNs create browser extensions and encourage their use, as bandwidth use from web browsing is always going to be smaller than full system bandwidth
- different browsers or browser profiles can be configured to use different VPN endpoints, while most system-level VPNs can only select one endpoint for the entire system
- setup and configuration will be more OS-agnostic; setting up a system-level VPN properly on Linux can be more difficult than Windows or MacOS depending on the distro and system config
- running the VPN at the browser level usually takes less resources than at the system level, so on very old or very weak systems, it may be the best option
Of course, if you’re downloading actual Linux ISOs and want to avoid a nasty letter from your brain-dead ISP that thinks all torrenting is illegal, or if you just don’t want your ISP to spy on you and sell what it learns to data brokers, installing the VPN at the system level is a great option. Remember to bind any torrent software to the VPN to prevent leaks ;)
Thank you, this is a great explanation. The advantages don’t seem to apply to my use case, which is certainly NOT what you described in your last paragraph. Those are NOT things that I would do.
- high-bandwidth activities outside of the browser, such as software updates and game downloads, which many people don’t consider part of their privacy profile, won’t be limited by the speed of the VPN
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Probably the websites you’re visiting are blocking your connection. It happens.
Won’t load a specific page, or any page at all?
Any page
I haven’t seen it just flat out break the browser like that. I have had bugs and issues with the extension in the past, which is why I switched to the Windows app. My first guess would be un-installing and re-installing the extension.
If that doesn’t work, the app does have “Inverse” split tunneling, where only the listed apps and IPs go through the VPN, nothing else will. It’ll have the same effect as the extension.
