Allow Canopy Shield to filter browsing content through Firefox built-in VPN on Windows

throwaway — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 17:39:20 GMT

For those who don't know, Canopy Shield is a parental control program that filters text and media content locally, unlike the traditional domain-based filtering that most other apps use. I discovered that the VPN bypasses this and I cannot block it separately without blocking the entire browser because the running process uses the same firefox.exe file name.

This suggestion can expand to other parental control programs and operating systems and is in line with the existing approach at Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, as Canopy Shield technically uses an AI to filter the content locally. Since Canopy filters content locally instead of sending browsing history to a non-Mozilla server, this suggestion would also be among the privacy values listed in the same approach.

Re: Allow Canopy Shield to filter browsing content through Firefox built-in VPN on Windows

dftf — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 19:38:27 GMT

You can quickly disable the built-in VPN by typing about:config in the URL bar, then search for and change these options:
browser.ipProtection.enabled = false
browser.vpn_promo.enabled = false

Obviously any somewhat technically-minded user could undo those changes.

If the users of your PC don't have admin rights, and can't install software, then you can go into Notepad and type the following in:
{
"policies": {
"BlockAboutConfig": true,
"Preferences": {
"browser.ipProtection.enabled": {
"Value": false,
"Status": "locked"
}
}
}
}

Save the file with the name "policies.json" and copy it into this folder:
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\distribution\

This will lock-down use of the VPN, and prevent access to the about:config settings page.

On an enterprise device, you could also look into Group Policy templates Mozilla provide for Firefox, or perhaps see if their VPN traffic can be blocked at a firewall level?

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Allow Canopy Shield to filter browsing content through Firefox built-in VPN on Windows

Re: Allow Canopy Shield to filter browsing content through Firefox built-in VPN on Windows