The Firefox makers have decided that the browser will no longer support the FTP protocol in the future. Mozilla developer announced that the implementation of the File Transfer Protocol would disappear from the code. The farewell does not happen abruptly. Users would then no longer be able to download or view files about it.
Chrome – FTP Should Initially Be Switched Off By Default
The release of the update has been postponed due to the corona virus. The FTP file transfer protocol is old by internet standards: It was specified and encrypted transmission was considered unnecessary, which is different today. The encrypted version is now available, but the Chrome developers are of the opinion that it would not be worth implementing it.
Many Bugs In Firefox
Bug 1574475 deals with the removal of FTP support. The main reason why FTP is being removed is that it is considered insecure but Google’s decision to remove support from Chrome certainly played a role in Mozilla’s decision to remove support as well.
File Transfer Protocol is an insecure protocol and there is no reason to prefer it over HTTPS when it comes to downloading resources. In addition, parts of it source code are very old and difficult to manage. Mozilla recently found a number of security related bugs. Mozilla plans to turn off the support with the Firefox release scheduled for June. However, users should be given the option of reactivating the File Transfer Protocol support. From the beginning of this year, Mozilla could remove the entire code from Firefox. In any case, it would then no longer be possible to manually reactivate the support and work with the corresponding content.
In the currently postponed, planned new Chrome version, the FTP support should be switched off by default. From Chrome, which is expected to come in early summer, support for the network protocol will then be completely eliminated. Google says that only a very small percentage of Mozilla users use this protocol.
