Firefox’s new feature provides you with a fake phone number in order to reduce spam

Firefox Relay, a Mozilla tool that allows you to disguise your “actual” email address by providing you with fake ones, is also offering virtual phone numbers. According to Mozilla product manager Tony Amaral-Cinotto in a blog post, the relay service produces a phone number for you to give to firms if you fear they will use it to send you spam messages in the future, or if they will share it with others who will.

The idea is that giving up this other phone number would make it easy to stop future spam phone calls or messages. You have the option of blocking all calls or texts received to your relay number or just specified people. It also allows you to keep your “actual” phone number hidden, which is important if you use it to receive sensitive information like two-step verification codes by SMS.

Once joined up, the Firefox phone number masking service allows you to receive 50 minutes of inbound calls and 75 text messages every month. According to Mozilla’s blog post, you may use its service to respond to texts from your last sender but not to make outgoing calls or send messages to anybody you want (though the group claims it is considering adding these functions in the future).

Unlike Firefox Relay’s current email relay tool, which allows you to create several email addresses that redirect to your actual account, the phone number service only provides you with access to one relay phone number, which cannot be altered once selected. The phone number masking service is also more costly, costing $4.99 per month (or $3.99 per month when paid yearly), while the email service has a free tier and a premium tier that costs $1.99 per month (or $0.99 per month when paid annually). Finally, the new phone number function is currently limited to the United States and Canada but also includes email masking as part of the same subscription.

Firefox’s blog article makes no mention of employing encryption on text messages that flow via its relay service, which is not unexpected considering that SMS is not an encrypted protocol. We’ve reached out to the business for confirmation, but it’s worth noting if you’re considering utilizing Firefox Relay to receive sensitive private or confidential communications.