12 ms·

Mozilla Monitor Plus: automatically remove your personal info from data brokers

288 points by mikece 3y ago

jactoryfoe 3y ago
[dead]
kiliancs 3y ago
[flagged]
- causal 3y ago
  Not sure I understand how this comment follows the announcement. What about it makes you lose trust in Mozilla?
  - kiliancs 3y ago
    The consistent lack of focus. I should have elaborated in my comment.
- tbitrust 3y ago
  > I lose trust in Mozilla Why did you lose trust in Mozilla? What other browser would you recommend instead?
  - temp0826 3y ago
    Mozilla != Firefox The ceo is a joke and the org sucks.
    - mozempthrowaway 3y ago
      Not sure why this is downvoted. Mitchell has been a disaster for Mozilla (her only accomplishment is squeezing more money out of Google for the search deal despite an ever dwindling user base for FF - we measure DAU and MAU and the hemorrhaging hasn’t stopped). Very few people in the org actually work on FF. It’s increasingly other bets that don’t pan out or weird acquisitions: Hubs, Pocket, FakeSpot, VPN, Relay, now Monitor. Eventually these lose enough money and they’ll cut them. Then inevitably Mitchell will run a surplus in the budget by cutting projects early and squeezing more money out of Google, funnel the money back to the Mozilla foundation which she also chairs, and then doll it out to her pet political projects.
  - mozempthrowaway 3y ago
    Brave
- tsherr 3y ago
  I always enjoy the vague yet threatening online comment. I'm of the opinion that this is from one of the better bot farms who have learned if you make people nervous, you can control their choices.
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
    Agreed. I ceaselessly flag comments like this online. Scary passive voice messages would be worthless even if they weren't from an influence campaign. Say what you mean or hold your tongue! I have zero patience for cowards using vague passive voice.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      I agree about vagueness, and it's great that there's more awareness about rhetorical technique. Still, it's written in active voice.
  - kiliancs 3y ago
    I see how I was too vague. I decided to post without elaborating because I thought the concerns were obvious from previous HN discussions about Mozilla announcements of different sorts, and because I was running out of time, which probably was a mistake. The Pocket partnership and acquisition, the 250 layoffs with the 4x CEO pay increase, the Mullad partnership for a worse offering, are all concerning and they do destroy trust, but my primary concern is the apparent lack of focus. Can Mozilla sustain all these potentially positive initiatives (like this recent announcement or https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/)? I very much doubt it. And I hope this changes before Firefox usage drops even further. I'm not a Mozilla hater. I have contributed Firefox translations in the past, built extensions, and I even collaborate actively with some of the projects that I think are distracting Mozilla.
- ethagnawl 3y ago
  This is a much better path forward than some of their other gimmicks. Hopefully it works as billed and is successful. They could have been where Proton is -- offering a security/privacy-first suite of tools -- had they not spent time and resources chasing Pocket and invasive ad campaigns.
  - drdaeman 3y ago
    The deeds speak more than the words, so I'm highly skeptical of their stance on privacy and attitude toward their users in general. I fail to see how it's any better than your average corporate "we highly value your privacy here at $corpName". Yes, of course, they aren't as obnoxious as Google or Facebook - spam and big data hoarding is not their business. But it's not that they're any particularly good, the world-wide enshittificaton just made us move the plank so much lower, that anyone not blatantly trying to make buck from anything they can touch is considered "good" those days. Heck, modern Mozilla seem to be very comparable to Apple - both use the same themes of "oh look we're so pro-privacy (when it makes sense to us)", while becoming increasingly user-hostile and "knowing better". Apple aren't my friends, so aren't Mozilla - yet I'm practically forced to use and trust them, because the competition is no better or, typically, even worse (and tech is too convenient to forgo entirely). The most obvious example - and my favorite pet peeve - is how they dealt with sync. They went the most typical corporate road - made their own unique system, extremely poorly designed (I've mentioned this a few times, it's exceptionally bad engineering), requiring an account with them, somewhat documented but with zero practical chances of being interoperable. And the ability to self-host and have a separate account wasn't anything more than an afterthought - I'm 99% sure it's there only because they needed to test against non-production servers, not because anyone cared about end users the slightest tiniest bit. If someone would've cared, and their voice would've been heard, the world would've been a somewhat better place - most likely, we would've had a simple (or, at least, sane) interoperable standard on storing and synchronizing browser data, and praised Mozilla for it, like in the old good days. That hadn't happened. They sure had some ideals, but they lost the sight of them, yet they pretend they didn't. And I'm sorry for those folks at Mozilla who have those ideals. I'm sure there are decent, good people there, who care and are passionate about what they do. But talking about the company as a whole, I can't say I'm happy to trust Mozilla - I do so begrudgingly. Their interests are certainly not aligned with mine.
causal 3y ago
I like this in theory, I don't have time to chase down every data broker to opt-out on my own. I'm just wondering how I can measure whether it's really effective or not. Anyone have experience with this kind of thing?
- Vinnl 3y ago
  The data brokers that show your info will be listed, so you can spot check them yourself to see if they still show you. Not perfect, but should give you some confidence that if it says your data has been removed, it actually has been removed. (You can scan for brokers before upgrading to Plus for automatic opt-out, so you can also check beforehand that you can see your data.)
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    That doesn't account for them retaining your data and simply toggling the 'Publish' flag from 1 to 0.
    - Vinnl 3y ago
      True.
- dylan604 3y ago
  This is always my pessimistic view of the world we live in today. Why in the world would they delete that data vs just putting it on mute/ignore/etc? The only "proof" you have is if you send a request to see the data they hold on you. If they send you an empty report because the ignore flag was set, you would only see an empty report. You have no evidence that the data was actually deleted.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    I also wonder if it stops them from collecting it. Also, what are the legal requirements if a customer asks their data to be removed? Still, I'm not giving up a plausible solution because potentially it's only a partial solution.
Flimm 3y ago
I wanted to try this, but it seems to be restricted to only people in the USA. It is impossible to enter a location outside the USA in the sign-up form, and it's impossible to skip that form. Please, Mozilla, make it much clearer which countries are supported to avoid causing this frustration and to give people a reason to come back once other countries are supported.
- Vinnl 3y ago
  Sorry about that. The form should only be shown for people in the USA, but detecting the country you're in can't be done perfectly. Which is a good reminder - we'll look into making the US-only part clearer. (I'm an engineer on Monitor.)
  - isodev 3y ago
    Or perhaps, just thinking out loud, you could extend support for the service to other countries. The EU would love you for this at the very least.
    - mynameisvlad 3y ago
      I'm sure if it was as easy as snapping their fingers, they'd have done it. Time is a finite resource, and a lot of these data brokers seem to be very geographically-specific and have their own ways of requesting deletion.
    - Vinnl 3y ago
      I am from the EU, so tell me about it :) But yes, the sibling comment is right: this isn't something you can expand to other countries with the push of a button. Personally, for this specific functionality, I don't think the EU wouldn't be at the top of the list though: these types data brokers are way more of a problem in other countries. We have laws like GDPR :)
  - cwales95 3y ago
    I'm also not clear why this is US only. There's definitely a market in other areas of the world. I'd be interested to know why it should be US only.
doix 3y ago
> Privacy starts with a Mozilla Account I like how the solution to the privacy issue is _yet another account_. I don't know why, but I find it highly amusing. I do get it, you need to share your details with them so they know which details to delete, but I still can't help but laugh.
- westpfelia 3y ago
  For something like this to work you have to trust SOMEONE. And Mozilla is definitely more trustworthy then others in the space.
  - mozempthrowaway 3y ago
    Eh kind of. One of the recent themes at our all hands was “data collection for user benefit” which I’m sure is what every company says.
    - tholtken 3y ago
      What does this even mean? How does Mozilla know what benefits me, the user?
      - Vinnl 3y ago
        For example, Firefox can collect quite a bit of data regarding what hardware correlates with what type of crashes on what code paths. It doesn't have to know anything about you to know that fewer crashes benefit you.
- RDaneel0livaw 3y ago
  I attempted to use this, entered my email, was prompted with a "create your account" page, laughed out loud and closed the tab. This is a comical misunderstanding of what the product even IS or DOES.
  - dvngnt_ 3y ago
ary 3y ago
I’m a happy, long term Optery user (not affiliated) and they take care of 100% of this for you. https://www.optery.com https://www.optery.com The Mozilla offering looks somewhat comparable, but I do wonder if they’re going to beat a company which has the sole focus of solving this problem.
- tholtken 3y ago
  Especially with a backend service provider (onerep.com) that is questionable at best.
  - eltondegeneres 3y ago
    What are the issues with Mozilla's use of onerep?
    - beyondd 3y ago
      One of the issues are OneRep's affiliate partnerships with the very data brokers you're paying them to remove you from: https://imgur.com/a/juSC66b https://imgur.com/a/juSC66b
      - fdgadfagfgd 3y ago
        Any other issues besides that possible conflict of interest? Also, you're the founder of a competing service, right?
        tholtken 3y ago
        not affiliated with Optery but agree conflict of interest, also misleading by onerep and at best deceptive. take that potential lack of trust together with the several reports online that onerep's us operation is a sham and they are really operating out of eastern europe and sending user data there...seems shady. begs the question: what does a privacy-respecting org like Mozilla see in onerep and how is it better than what other companies offer?
nickthegreek 3y ago
Mozilla Monitor Plus - $14/mo, or $108/yr. Too pricey for most. >Every month, we use the information you provided about yourself (name, location and birthdate) to search across ⁨190⁩ data broker sites that sell people’s private information. If we find your data on any of these sites, we initiate the request for removal. Data removal can take anywhere from a day to a month. This feature is available for ⁨Monitor Plus⁩ users only. Anyone know if there are any local/open source tools to do this?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  I have used Permission Slip by CR with limited success. I use <website>@<personal-domain>.<tld>, and you cannot enter a wildcard in Permission Slip.
  - devrand 3y ago
    I use this pattern but I'm starting to move away from it. Some things just don't work (ex. linking accounts between companies) and it also throws customer service agents into a panic when they see their own company name in the e-mail address. I'm also not sure it gets me that much. I do get to see how was compromised or sold my data, but most of that just goes to spam anyway. I also usually find out about the compromises from other sources anyway.
    - MyNameIs_Hacker 3y ago
      Sure some of the CSA's panic a bit, but I've never had one not go along especially after explaining my purpose. I've not seen too many compromises, but some of them were not public. Especially with small businesses like a car dealership, they may never know themselves.
    - rdgddffd 3y ago
      Try just rot13 or hashing the website name.
ethagnawl 3y ago
How do they get your data removed from the brokers' databases?
- tholtken 3y ago
  onerep.com "If you are located in the United States and have a Monitor Plus subscription, OneRep receives your first and last name, email address, phone number, physical address and date of birth in order to scan data broker sites to find your personal data and request its removal. OneRep keeps your personal data until you end your Monitor subscription in order to check whether your information shows up on additional sites, or has reappeared on the sites you’ve already been removed from."
  - riddley 3y ago
    I wonder how it works for people who use business-name@personal-domain.tld as their emails with whatever businesses.
- JohnMakin 3y ago
  They submit an opt-out request on your behalf. Frequently, the data will not be removed entirely, or re-surfaces later on. You're entirely dependent on the good will of the data broker sites, who are likely trying very hard to stop automation like this.
  - ethagnawl 3y ago
    > Frequently, the data will not be removed entirely, or re-surfaces later on. You're entirely dependent on the good will of the data broker sites, who are likely trying very hard to stop automation like this. This was my instinctual, cynical assumption, too. Unless there's a GDPR-like law in place and some standard for differentiating identities, they're just going to find loopholes to recapture peoples' data (e.g. remove middle initial, modify address format, etc.).
    - JohnMakin 3y ago
bluish29 3y ago
I wonder if they will bundle it with VPN, Relay, for a good and reasonable price. This would be an attractive bundle to subscribe.
kmfrk 3y ago
One of the ironies of these things is that they tend to map to a specific e-mail address, whereas the more paranoid of us who'd want to pay for a service like that tend to have different addresses, either entirely or something like Gmail with +filters. HIBP supports domain searches[^1] at least, but part of the problem is also how we keep trying to reinvent the e-mail system to not fall prey to this, much how Fastmail have Masked Emails, and Apple have Hide My Email. In a sense, it sounds like the advice of the services is less subscribing to them than trying not to have a few e-mails that map to your personal identity. [^1]: https://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch https://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch
- Vinnl 3y ago
  > In a sense, it sounds like the advice of the services is less subscribing to them than trying not to have a few e-mails that map to your personal identity. Firefox Relay is a great way to do that :) https://relay.firefox.com https://relay.firefox.com Integrating that with Monitor is pretty high on at least my personal wish list.
  - kmfrk 3y ago
    The phone masking looks great, too. Like Privacy.com, it's awesome with virtual alternatives for PII, except they don't tend to be available here in Europe, but I'm definitely jealous.
    - miki123211 3y ago
      If you need a privacy.com alternative for the EU, Revolut is a good option. They offer both one-time-use (disposable) cards, as well as normal virtual cards that are valid until revoked. They're not as advanced as privacy.com AFAIK, cards that only work for a single merchant but multiple transactions aren't offered for example, but they're good enough for most purposes. Eu regulations on card networks make such a service much harder to offer, privacy.com makes money on card fees, which you can't really do here. Such a service would either have to be paid or bundled with other services which you can make money on, which is what Revolut does.
dataflow 3y ago
Not sure if dumb question: If they use the data you provide (such as your address) to search other data brokers, doesn't that potentially give the data broker MORE information than they already had on you? Do the companies in this space prevent this somehow? Edit: Lest people think this is somehow impossible otherwise - all it should take would be to search for just your name + location, get the query results, then filter on the client side. Which is exactly what a human would do for the brokers that have a "remove this entry" option when you see (presumably) yourself in the search results. However, this not only requires the data brokers to support such an API, but also requires the deletion services to actually put in the effort to do it this way for every broker they can, which seems nontrivial. Hence my question of whether these services make such an attempt at all.
- notyourwork 3y ago
  It seems to me like this is a core problem with the scummy nature of this business. I’d like to believe you’re weong but have trouble given the business model.
- mattstir 3y ago
  Not a dumb question at all. Yeah, in the process of finding you within a data brokers system and sending a removal request, they need to send that broker your personal data... it's a bit awkward. Optery, another PII removal service has a whole section about this in their privacy policy (section 7 of https://www.optery.com/privacy-policy/ https://www.optery.com/privacy-policy/): > Optery, Inc. must send your PII to the data brokers and information aggregators included in the Removal Lists... We cannot control, guarantee or warranty how these third-parties will treat your PII or what they will do with it.
  - feedsmgmt 3y ago
    And you need to enter all of the information that you're trying to protect into one central location that is probably heavily targeted. These types of services never made sense to me.
  - beyondd 3y ago
konart 3y ago
I find it kind of amusing: The article mentions (obviously) Mozilla Monitor. When I follow the provided link (leads to https://monitor.mozilla.org https://monitor.mozilla.org) in the default Firefox container and enter my email a new tab (now https://accounts.firefox.com https://accounts.firefox.com) is created in a Google container (despite the fact that nothing suggests me leaving https://accounts.firefox.com https://accounts.firefox.com) Automatically remove your personal info from data brokers you say?
- sf_rob 3y ago
  I'm willing to bet that this is a inference due to "Login with Google" being an option. Probably worth sacrificing a click in their sign-in funnel to prevent it though.
niels_bom 3y ago
Pricing should be way more obvious and up front. I had to search the comments here to find pricing. Do I really need to login to get pricing information?
- Vinnl 3y ago
  It should be listed in the pricing table on the front-page, but it's only available in the US, so we only try to show that to people there.
nurtbo 3y ago
Why would you use Mozilla Monitor Plus when onerep.com offers the same service for a lower cost? (And from other comments, I’d actually the same underlying service)
- diggan 3y ago
  Because I've never heard of onerep.com before while I have a history of using Mozilla products for decades at this point. If the service is exactly the same, it's a no-brainer, even if it costs slightly more.
- bluish29 3y ago
  The price on onerep for monthly payment is $14.95 vs Mozilla's $13.99. Both offer discount for yearly payment and they will be almost the same. Of course, this is the price for individual. onerep offer better, cheaper plans for family (6 for $28) but Mozilla doesn't offer that (yet at least). So I'm not sure if it is a lower cost.
- mozempthrowaway 3y ago
  Can confirm it is just one rep
flanbiscuit 3y ago
There is a service I've heard advertised on twit.tv podcasts called DeleteMe that I've been interested in that does a similar thing and seems to cover way more data brokers: https://joindeleteme.com/sites-we-remove-from/ https://joindeleteme.com/sites-we-remove-from/ OpenRep is another one I've seen mentioned. Covers 190+ sites: https://onerep.com/sites-we-remove-from https://onerep.com/sites-we-remove-from One thing I can't find is a list of sites that Mozilla Monitor covers. Here's a comparison. I only listed the individual plans since Mozilla seems to only offer that. The other 2 offer plans for multiple persons DeleteMe: https://joindeleteme.com/ https://joindeleteme.com/ brokers: 750+ https://joindeleteme.com/sites-we-remove-from/ https://joindeleteme.com/sites-we-remove-from/ edit: I just realized looking through that list that they are a bit deceiving. They have qualifiers next to each website: * Included in Standard Plan and above (90 sites) ** Included in Business Gold, Diamond, Platinum and VIP Plans (27 sites) *** Included in Diamond, Platinum, and VIP Plans (1 site) ᵒ Exclusively in Platinum and VIP Plans (13 sites) ~ International requests (12 sites) ^ Custom Requests (665 sites) Seems like the majority need a "custom request" which defeats the purpose of signing up for something that is supposed to handle things automatically pricing: https://joindeleteme.com/privacy-protection-plans/ https://joindeleteme.com/privacy-protection-plans/ - individual plan: (they also have couples and family plans) - $10.75/month if you sign up for 1yr - $8.71/month if you sign up for 2yr ------------- OpenRep: https://onerep.com/ https://onerep.com/ brokers: 190+ https://onerep.com/sites-we-remove-from https://onerep.com/sites-we-remove-from pricing: https://onerep.com/pricing https://onerep.com/pricing 1 person: $8.33/mo, they also offer family (up to 6 ppl) and teams (10+) ------------- Mozilla Monitor: https://monitor.mozilla.org/ https://monitor.mozilla.org/ brokers: 190 data brokers (could not find a list of data brokers they cover) pricing: https://monitor.mozilla.org/#:S1 https://monitor.mozilla.org/#:S1: - "Monitor" - their FREE tier where they scan the data brokers and just inform you which ones have your info and you have to manually go in and remove your information from each one through whatever process each site uses. - "Monitor Plus" - Automatic Data Removal - $13.99/month, or $8.99/month if you sign up for a year Both tiers come with "Data Breach Alerts" which I guess is similar to haveibeenpwned's notify me. -------------- edit: adding one more: https://www.optery.com/ https://www.optery.com/ brokers: 305+ https://www.optery.com/pricing/#data-brokers-we-cover https://www.optery.com/pricing/#data-brokers-we-cover pricing: https://www.optery.com/pricing/ https://www.optery.com/pricing/ & https://www.optery.com/business-pricing/ https://www.optery.com/business-pricing/ will only cover the personal pricing: free - self-service (similar to Mozilla's free tier) 3.99/month - removal from 110+ sites 14.99/month - removal from 200+ sites 24.99/month - removal from 305+ sites
hammyhavoc 3y ago
Not sure what I think about charging people to remove this information—are they not also just as bad? This seems like the sort of thing that shouldn't require a victim to pay for, but for law to enforce this not happening. As with for-profit healthcare in the USA, just seems scumbag to profit off of misfortune and misery.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  In fairness, Mozilla can't make a law.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    Sure, but they are also treating it as a business opportunity, just like the people compiling the data are. They should perhaps be pushing on the legal aspect of what's wrong with the situation rather than making money from it.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      You're assuming they are driven by a business opportunity; I have no evidence of their motives (do you?), but another way to see it: There is no law and no prospect of one soon. Mozilla can partially solve the problem by providing the service - I think that's great. Otherwise people would have less recourse. And also, Mozilla must have money to operate; charging for this service seems among the least-bad options.
      - hammyhavoc 3y ago
        Well, we arrive at the whole "the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero" train of thought, otherwise there is no money-making opportunity. They push on the legal aspects of other problems, but I don't see them pushing on the legal aspects of this. Mozilla receives half a billion dollars per year from Google, making up most of their revenue. Mozilla's CEO is also paid millions of dollars each year. If they can't survive as-is whilst paying out those kinds of salaries with such revenue, that's a management problem.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Put some dates on your blog posts Mozilla!
beyondd 3y ago
Optery founder here. If you're taking a look at Mozilla Monitor, I recommend taking a look at Optery too: - Optery's Ultimate plan covers 300+ data broker sites and offers Unlimited Custom Removals providing the most comprehensive coverage in the industry. Optery has a variety of plans for different coverage needs (Free, Paid, Family, Business), and the ability to pause or cancel a subscription at any time. - Mozilla Monitor Plus is powered by OneRep, which partners with data brokers through its affiliate program: https://imgur.com/a/juSC66b https://imgur.com/a/juSC66b. This is a fine line most data removal services do not cross. Optery's removals are proprietary and are not powered by any other company. - Optery (YC W22) was awarded the Fast Company Next Big Things in Tech in 2023 and PCMag.com Editor's Choice award in 2022 and 2023, over DeleteMe, Kanary, Incogni, IDX Privacy, etc. - Optery has completed its SOC 2, Type II security certification. To our knowledge, DeleteMe is the only other data removal service with this certification. This is probably the most overlooked attribute when selecting a data removal service.
- lkdfjlkdfjlg 3y ago
  > Optery (YC W22) Nothing against your company specifically, but at this stage anything associated with YN is a negative.
  - fdgadfagfgd 3y ago
    I think if you express an opinion like that you ought to say why too. It could be you have a point. But you could also be (mis)interpreted as a critic who, instead of building things themself, finds imperfections in things the real builders make...
- some_random 3y ago
  Wait what, why would a data broker partner with a company whose entire purpose is to reduce the completeness of their dataset?
  - tholtken 3y ago
    money
Mistletoe 3y ago
What are the cons of data brokers having my info and does it outweigh losing $14.99 a month?
- beyondd 3y ago
  For many its just getting their home address, phone number and email off the web, which can make you less of an easy target by attackers. For others its something really specific, like someone who is divorced and doesn't want their name showing up next to their ex's name as a spouse or relative. For others, they want their age off the web to prevent age discrimination in a job search. Others may be hiding from an abuser or stalker.
AzzyHN 3y ago
Snake oil at best
nubinetwork 3y ago
I'm not sure I want to give my information to Mozilla, should they get hacked, it's no different than my information being held by another entity. (I don't use pocket or Firefox sync, etc.)
- Vinnl 3y ago
  Your Firefox Sync data is end-to-end encrypted and thus won't be leaked in a hack. (Unless you also leak your password.)
katrotz 3y ago
Found the choice of words "Get a free scan" on their website button funny. My first involuntary thought was - it is a scam.
- Vinnl 3y ago
  It's super annoying. We also have that when e.g. trying to emphasize what we're doing to protect your privacy, since "caring about your privacy" has become distorted to mean its opposite at least in my mind.
Schnitz 3y ago
Does this cover spam-enablers like Zoominfo?
pkaye 3y ago
Which laws are Mozilla using to get the data brokers to remove personal info in the US. I know there is such a law in California but is there also a federal law?
- beyondd 3y ago
  No federal law in the U.S. yet unfortunately, but more states are passing laws by the day (fortunately): https://iapp.org/resources/article/us-state-privacy-legislation-tracker/ https://iapp.org/resources/article/us-state-privacy-legislat...
- wildrhythms 3y ago
  Our representatives can't even comprehend that Google doesn't make the iPhone, so I personally wouldn't expect any federal legislation any time soon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmuROTmazco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmuROTmazco
pompino 3y ago
For people who are the target market for such products- Can you explain to me the appeal of such products for you? Have you previously been the victim of any escalation resulting from a data breach?
gnicholas 3y ago
> we can automatically and continuously request to remove your personal information with an annual paid subscription of $8.99 per month ($107.88 a year). This is a lot of money for most people. What would the benefit be of doing this all the time versus just subscribing once a year? How quickly do details reappear in databases?
- spiffytech 3y ago
  I'm given to understand these data broker services make it as painful and time-consuming to opt out as they can. Supposing you can even find all the places you're listed (Optery supports 305+ sites), it sounds like a substantial time commitment to follow through on all of them.
  - hellcow 3y ago
    I signed up, and Mozilla warns it takes 7-14 days for data on most of these sites to be removed. They must need to do a lot of things by hand. This would also explain why you get 1 scan per month.
    - KittenInABox 3y ago
      These sites deliberately are slow in the removal of requests. So there is both manual sending but also needing to re-check if the site actually removed your info because brokers just kind of suck.
  - 7734128 3y ago
    I'm confused how the internet is just ok with Mozilla engaging with these extortion websites. These sites are not legitimate and now that Mozilla and Google are engaging with them they just play into the protection racket.
- Klonoar 3y ago
  This really isn’t a lot of money for anyone in the USA, which is where the product is offered. Hell with the current economic environment I unfortunately spend more than this on my morning coffee.
temp0826 3y ago
Doesn't look like there is a place to enter past addresses. In the last 15 years I've moved ~10 times. Would be nice to have a way to check those as well.
- altairprime 3y ago
  Anecdote: I provided one zip code and it found a past address in another zip code — but I've only ever had two addresses total under this legal identity, so that doesn't speak to how far back it goes.
johnkpaul 3y ago
Do any of these offer family plans? I feel like At these price points, I would really like to sign up everyone in my household. The FAQ pages seem to all imply individual and I don't think I'm asking for a "business" or "enterprise" option.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  Onerep (another commenter believes this is Mozilla's U.S. partner) has a $15/mo family (paid annually, 6 people) plan.
- beyondd 3y ago
  Optery offers a family plan: https://www.optery.com/family/ https://www.optery.com/family/
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    As feedback for the CEO, that "family pricing" landing page really does you a disservice by obfuscating your pricing (unless that was the goal). At a minimum, add a pricing calculator with a slider for "family members". For comparison, see Onerep's very clear pricing page here: https://onerep.com/pricing https://onerep.com/pricing
    - beyondd 3y ago
      That's great feedback! We'll add more pricing detail to the Family page. For comparison, here is the Optery pricing page: https://www.optery.com/pricing/ https://www.optery.com/pricing/
  - sdn90 3y ago
    Does this support adding family members on a single account? I have some non technical family members who I'd like to manage it for them and giving them their own account is most likely going to be a major headache.
    - beyondd 3y ago
8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y ago
How does this compare to Kanary?
- kanary 3y ago
  Kanary members have our full support for all types of exposures, not just data brokers. To build a broader service, we rely on automation and human assistance. Mozilla is using OneRep to power this service, so comparing Mozilla to Kanary at this stage is comparing OneRep to Kanary. Here are a few considerations: https://www.kanary.com/blog/best-removal-service-onerep-kanary-or-deleteme https://www.kanary.com/blog/best-removal-service-onerep-kana... We have a free trial that auto-downgrades into our free tier. We encourage everyone to compare services before joining. https://www.kanary.com/#sign-up https://www.kanary.com/#sign-up
_cenw 3y ago
These services sure are the new sell it to everyone infinite margin after you built it once thing on YouTube sponsorships after everyone who was ever going to buy one has a VPN now. What actually creates this cost, though? I was hoping it'd be free or at cost for the infrastructure and maintenance.
hangonhn 3y ago
I really wish employers would pay for a service like this because a lot of spear phishing attacks start with data stole or scraped from brokers, LinkedIn, etc. If a company buys a service like this in bulk, it can get significant discounts. Personally I've resorted to hiding my information on LinkedIn and noticed that I've been passed over by attackers while my coworkers get spear phishing attacks all the time.
- kanary 3y ago
  Many employers do - we work with plenty of teams and even have specific guidance for how members can ask their HR or Security lead to sponsor a membership. (some basic info here: https://www.kanary.com/enterprise https://www.kanary.com/enterprise)
MiddleEndian 3y ago
How does Mozilla determine what 190 data brokers are relevant?
DamnableNook 3y ago
Ironically, their page doesn’t seem to work on Safari. I get a 404 error after signing in, every time. Switching to Chrome on my desktop lets it work.
- Vinnl 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing, we've seen some reports and logs of some people running into this issue with Safari, and we're investigating.
naw1 3y ago
From my initial testing, the result quality leaves a bit to be desired. There are a lot of false positives. For example, my info is definitely not on mugshotlook.com... And about 2/3 of the results I've clicked on have already been removed by Kanary (full disclosure, on the team, but was a happy customer before) or weren't real to begin with.

288 points by mikece 3y ago

jactoryfoe 3y ago

[dead]

kiliancs 3y ago

[flagged]

causal 3y ago
Not sure I understand how this comment follows the announcement. What about it makes you lose trust in Mozilla?
- kiliancs 3y ago
  The consistent lack of focus. I should have elaborated in my comment.
tbitrust 3y ago
> I lose trust in Mozilla Why did you lose trust in Mozilla? What other browser would you recommend instead?
- temp0826 3y ago
  Mozilla != Firefox The ceo is a joke and the org sucks.
  - mozempthrowaway 3y ago
    Not sure why this is downvoted. Mitchell has been a disaster for Mozilla (her only accomplishment is squeezing more money out of Google for the search deal despite an ever dwindling user base for FF - we measure DAU and MAU and the hemorrhaging hasn’t stopped). Very few people in the org actually work on FF. It’s increasingly other bets that don’t pan out or weird acquisitions: Hubs, Pocket, FakeSpot, VPN, Relay, now Monitor. Eventually these lose enough money and they’ll cut them. Then inevitably Mitchell will run a surplus in the budget by cutting projects early and squeezing more money out of Google, funnel the money back to the Mozilla foundation which she also chairs, and then doll it out to her pet political projects.
- mozempthrowaway 3y ago
  Brave
tsherr 3y ago
I always enjoy the vague yet threatening online comment. I'm of the opinion that this is from one of the better bot farms who have learned if you make people nervous, you can control their choices.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
  Agreed. I ceaselessly flag comments like this online. Scary passive voice messages would be worthless even if they weren't from an influence campaign. Say what you mean or hold your tongue! I have zero patience for cowards using vague passive voice.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    I agree about vagueness, and it's great that there's more awareness about rhetorical technique. Still, it's written in active voice.
- kiliancs 3y ago
  I see how I was too vague. I decided to post without elaborating because I thought the concerns were obvious from previous HN discussions about Mozilla announcements of different sorts, and because I was running out of time, which probably was a mistake. The Pocket partnership and acquisition, the 250 layoffs with the 4x CEO pay increase, the Mullad partnership for a worse offering, are all concerning and they do destroy trust, but my primary concern is the apparent lack of focus. Can Mozilla sustain all these potentially positive initiatives (like this recent announcement or https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/)? I very much doubt it. And I hope this changes before Firefox usage drops even further. I'm not a Mozilla hater. I have contributed Firefox translations in the past, built extensions, and I even collaborate actively with some of the projects that I think are distracting Mozilla.
ethagnawl 3y ago
This is a much better path forward than some of their other gimmicks. Hopefully it works as billed and is successful. They could have been where Proton is -- offering a security/privacy-first suite of tools -- had they not spent time and resources chasing Pocket and invasive ad campaigns.
- drdaeman 3y ago
  The deeds speak more than the words, so I'm highly skeptical of their stance on privacy and attitude toward their users in general. I fail to see how it's any better than your average corporate "we highly value your privacy here at $corpName". Yes, of course, they aren't as obnoxious as Google or Facebook - spam and big data hoarding is not their business. But it's not that they're any particularly good, the world-wide enshittificaton just made us move the plank so much lower, that anyone not blatantly trying to make buck from anything they can touch is considered "good" those days. Heck, modern Mozilla seem to be very comparable to Apple - both use the same themes of "oh look we're so pro-privacy (when it makes sense to us)", while becoming increasingly user-hostile and "knowing better". Apple aren't my friends, so aren't Mozilla - yet I'm practically forced to use and trust them, because the competition is no better or, typically, even worse (and tech is too convenient to forgo entirely). The most obvious example - and my favorite pet peeve - is how they dealt with sync. They went the most typical corporate road - made their own unique system, extremely poorly designed (I've mentioned this a few times, it's exceptionally bad engineering), requiring an account with them, somewhat documented but with zero practical chances of being interoperable. And the ability to self-host and have a separate account wasn't anything more than an afterthought - I'm 99% sure it's there only because they needed to test against non-production servers, not because anyone cared about end users the slightest tiniest bit. If someone would've cared, and their voice would've been heard, the world would've been a somewhat better place - most likely, we would've had a simple (or, at least, sane) interoperable standard on storing and synchronizing browser data, and praised Mozilla for it, like in the old good days. That hadn't happened. They sure had some ideals, but they lost the sight of them, yet they pretend they didn't. And I'm sorry for those folks at Mozilla who have those ideals. I'm sure there are decent, good people there, who care and are passionate about what they do. But talking about the company as a whole, I can't say I'm happy to trust Mozilla - I do so begrudgingly. Their interests are certainly not aligned with mine.

causal 3y ago

I like this in theory, I don't have time to chase down every data broker to opt-out on my own. I'm just wondering how I can measure whether it's really effective or not. Anyone have experience with this kind of thing?

Vinnl 3y ago
The data brokers that show your info will be listed, so you can spot check them yourself to see if they still show you. Not perfect, but should give you some confidence that if it says your data has been removed, it actually has been removed. (You can scan for brokers before upgrading to Plus for automatic opt-out, so you can also check beforehand that you can see your data.)
- wolverine876 3y ago
  That doesn't account for them retaining your data and simply toggling the 'Publish' flag from 1 to 0.
  - Vinnl 3y ago
    True.
dylan604 3y ago
This is always my pessimistic view of the world we live in today. Why in the world would they delete that data vs just putting it on mute/ignore/etc? The only "proof" you have is if you send a request to see the data they hold on you. If they send you an empty report because the ignore flag was set, you would only see an empty report. You have no evidence that the data was actually deleted.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  I also wonder if it stops them from collecting it. Also, what are the legal requirements if a customer asks their data to be removed? Still, I'm not giving up a plausible solution because potentially it's only a partial solution.

Flimm 3y ago

I wanted to try this, but it seems to be restricted to only people in the USA. It is impossible to enter a location outside the USA in the sign-up form, and it's impossible to skip that form. Please, Mozilla, make it much clearer which countries are supported to avoid causing this frustration and to give people a reason to come back once other countries are supported.

Vinnl 3y ago
Sorry about that. The form should only be shown for people in the USA, but detecting the country you're in can't be done perfectly. Which is a good reminder - we'll look into making the US-only part clearer. (I'm an engineer on Monitor.)
- isodev 3y ago
  Or perhaps, just thinking out loud, you could extend support for the service to other countries. The EU would love you for this at the very least.
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    I'm sure if it was as easy as snapping their fingers, they'd have done it. Time is a finite resource, and a lot of these data brokers seem to be very geographically-specific and have their own ways of requesting deletion.
  - Vinnl 3y ago
    I am from the EU, so tell me about it :) But yes, the sibling comment is right: this isn't something you can expand to other countries with the push of a button. Personally, for this specific functionality, I don't think the EU wouldn't be at the top of the list though: these types data brokers are way more of a problem in other countries. We have laws like GDPR :)
- cwales95 3y ago
  I'm also not clear why this is US only. There's definitely a market in other areas of the world. I'd be interested to know why it should be US only.

doix 3y ago

> Privacy starts with a Mozilla Account I like how the solution to the privacy issue is _yet another account_. I don't know why, but I find it highly amusing. I do get it, you need to share your details with them so they know which details to delete, but I still can't help but laugh.

westpfelia 3y ago
For something like this to work you have to trust SOMEONE. And Mozilla is definitely more trustworthy then others in the space.
- mozempthrowaway 3y ago
  Eh kind of. One of the recent themes at our all hands was “data collection for user benefit” which I’m sure is what every company says.
  - tholtken 3y ago
    What does this even mean? How does Mozilla know what benefits me, the user?
    - Vinnl 3y ago
      For example, Firefox can collect quite a bit of data regarding what hardware correlates with what type of crashes on what code paths. It doesn't have to know anything about you to know that fewer crashes benefit you.
RDaneel0livaw 3y ago
I attempted to use this, entered my email, was prompted with a "create your account" page, laughed out loud and closed the tab. This is a comical misunderstanding of what the product even IS or DOES.
- dvngnt_ 3y ago

ary 3y ago

I’m a happy, long term Optery user (not affiliated) and they take care of 100% of this for you. https://www.optery.com https://www.optery.com The Mozilla offering looks somewhat comparable, but I do wonder if they’re going to beat a company which has the sole focus of solving this problem.

tholtken 3y ago
Especially with a backend service provider (onerep.com) that is questionable at best.
- eltondegeneres 3y ago
  What are the issues with Mozilla's use of onerep?
  - beyondd 3y ago
    One of the issues are OneRep's affiliate partnerships with the very data brokers you're paying them to remove you from: https://imgur.com/a/juSC66b https://imgur.com/a/juSC66b
    - fdgadfagfgd 3y ago
      Any other issues besides that possible conflict of interest? Also, you're the founder of a competing service, right?
      - tholtken 3y ago
        not affiliated with Optery but agree conflict of interest, also misleading by onerep and at best deceptive. take that potential lack of trust together with the several reports online that onerep's us operation is a sham and they are really operating out of eastern europe and sending user data there...seems shady. begs the question: what does a privacy-respecting org like Mozilla see in onerep and how is it better than what other companies offer?

nickthegreek 3y ago

Mozilla Monitor Plus - $14/mo, or $108/yr. Too pricey for most. >Every month, we use the information you provided about yourself (name, location and birthdate) to search across ⁨190⁩ data broker sites that sell people’s private information. If we find your data on any of these sites, we initiate the request for removal. Data removal can take anywhere from a day to a month. This feature is available for ⁨Monitor Plus⁩ users only. Anyone know if there are any local/open source tools to do this?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
I have used Permission Slip by CR with limited success. I use <website>@<personal-domain>.<tld>, and you cannot enter a wildcard in Permission Slip.
- devrand 3y ago
  I use this pattern but I'm starting to move away from it. Some things just don't work (ex. linking accounts between companies) and it also throws customer service agents into a panic when they see their own company name in the e-mail address. I'm also not sure it gets me that much. I do get to see how was compromised or sold my data, but most of that just goes to spam anyway. I also usually find out about the compromises from other sources anyway.
  - MyNameIs_Hacker 3y ago
    Sure some of the CSA's panic a bit, but I've never had one not go along especially after explaining my purpose. I've not seen too many compromises, but some of them were not public. Especially with small businesses like a car dealership, they may never know themselves.
  - rdgddffd 3y ago
    Try just rot13 or hashing the website name.

ethagnawl 3y ago

How do they get your data removed from the brokers' databases?

tholtken 3y ago
onerep.com "If you are located in the United States and have a Monitor Plus subscription, OneRep receives your first and last name, email address, phone number, physical address and date of birth in order to scan data broker sites to find your personal data and request its removal. OneRep keeps your personal data until you end your Monitor subscription in order to check whether your information shows up on additional sites, or has reappeared on the sites you’ve already been removed from."
- riddley 3y ago
  I wonder how it works for people who use business-name@personal-domain.tld as their emails with whatever businesses.
JohnMakin 3y ago
They submit an opt-out request on your behalf. Frequently, the data will not be removed entirely, or re-surfaces later on. You're entirely dependent on the good will of the data broker sites, who are likely trying very hard to stop automation like this.
- ethagnawl 3y ago
  > Frequently, the data will not be removed entirely, or re-surfaces later on. You're entirely dependent on the good will of the data broker sites, who are likely trying very hard to stop automation like this. This was my instinctual, cynical assumption, too. Unless there's a GDPR-like law in place and some standard for differentiating identities, they're just going to find loopholes to recapture peoples' data (e.g. remove middle initial, modify address format, etc.).
  - JohnMakin 3y ago

bluish29 3y ago

I wonder if they will bundle it with VPN, Relay, for a good and reasonable price. This would be an attractive bundle to subscribe.

kmfrk 3y ago

One of the ironies of these things is that they tend to map to a specific e-mail address, whereas the more paranoid of us who'd want to pay for a service like that tend to have different addresses, either entirely or something like Gmail with +filters. HIBP supports domain searches[^1] at least, but part of the problem is also how we keep trying to reinvent the e-mail system to not fall prey to this, much how Fastmail have Masked Emails, and Apple have Hide My Email. In a sense, it sounds like the advice of the services is less subscribing to them than trying not to have a few e-mails that map to your personal identity. [^1]: https://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch https://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch

Vinnl 3y ago
> In a sense, it sounds like the advice of the services is less subscribing to them than trying not to have a few e-mails that map to your personal identity. Firefox Relay is a great way to do that :) https://relay.firefox.com https://relay.firefox.com Integrating that with Monitor is pretty high on at least my personal wish list.
- kmfrk 3y ago
  The phone masking looks great, too. Like Privacy.com, it's awesome with virtual alternatives for PII, except they don't tend to be available here in Europe, but I'm definitely jealous.
  - miki123211 3y ago
    If you need a privacy.com alternative for the EU, Revolut is a good option. They offer both one-time-use (disposable) cards, as well as normal virtual cards that are valid until revoked. They're not as advanced as privacy.com AFAIK, cards that only work for a single merchant but multiple transactions aren't offered for example, but they're good enough for most purposes. Eu regulations on card networks make such a service much harder to offer, privacy.com makes money on card fees, which you can't really do here. Such a service would either have to be paid or bundled with other services which you can make money on, which is what Revolut does.

dataflow 3y ago

Not sure if dumb question: If they use the data you provide (such as your address) to search other data brokers, doesn't that potentially give the data broker MORE information than they already had on you? Do the companies in this space prevent this somehow? Edit: Lest people think this is somehow impossible otherwise - all it should take would be to search for just your name + location, get the query results, then filter on the client side. Which is exactly what a human would do for the brokers that have a "remove this entry" option when you see (presumably) yourself in the search results. However, this not only requires the data brokers to support such an API, but also requires the deletion services to actually put in the effort to do it this way for every broker they can, which seems nontrivial. Hence my question of whether these services make such an attempt at all.

notyourwork 3y ago
It seems to me like this is a core problem with the scummy nature of this business. I’d like to believe you’re weong but have trouble given the business model.
mattstir 3y ago
Not a dumb question at all. Yeah, in the process of finding you within a data brokers system and sending a removal request, they need to send that broker your personal data... it's a bit awkward. Optery, another PII removal service has a whole section about this in their privacy policy (section 7 of https://www.optery.com/privacy-policy/ https://www.optery.com/privacy-policy/): > Optery, Inc. must send your PII to the data brokers and information aggregators included in the Removal Lists... We cannot control, guarantee or warranty how these third-parties will treat your PII or what they will do with it.
- feedsmgmt 3y ago
  And you need to enter all of the information that you're trying to protect into one central location that is probably heavily targeted. These types of services never made sense to me.
- beyondd 3y ago

konart 3y ago

I find it kind of amusing: The article mentions (obviously) Mozilla Monitor. When I follow the provided link (leads to https://monitor.mozilla.org https://monitor.mozilla.org) in the default Firefox container and enter my email a new tab (now https://accounts.firefox.com https://accounts.firefox.com) is created in a Google container (despite the fact that nothing suggests me leaving https://accounts.firefox.com https://accounts.firefox.com) Automatically remove your personal info from data brokers you say?

sf_rob 3y ago
I'm willing to bet that this is a inference due to "Login with Google" being an option. Probably worth sacrificing a click in their sign-in funnel to prevent it though.

niels_bom 3y ago

Pricing should be way more obvious and up front. I had to search the comments here to find pricing. Do I really need to login to get pricing information?

Vinnl 3y ago
It should be listed in the pricing table on the front-page, but it's only available in the US, so we only try to show that to people there.

nurtbo 3y ago

Why would you use Mozilla Monitor Plus when onerep.com offers the same service for a lower cost? (And from other comments, I’d actually the same underlying service)

diggan 3y ago
Because I've never heard of onerep.com before while I have a history of using Mozilla products for decades at this point. If the service is exactly the same, it's a no-brainer, even if it costs slightly more.
bluish29 3y ago
The price on onerep for monthly payment is $14.95 vs Mozilla's $13.99. Both offer discount for yearly payment and they will be almost the same. Of course, this is the price for individual. onerep offer better, cheaper plans for family (6 for $28) but Mozilla doesn't offer that (yet at least). So I'm not sure if it is a lower cost.
mozempthrowaway 3y ago
Can confirm it is just one rep

flanbiscuit 3y ago

There is a service I've heard advertised on twit.tv podcasts called DeleteMe that I've been interested in that does a similar thing and seems to cover way more data brokers: https://joindeleteme.com/sites-we-remove-from/ https://joindeleteme.com/sites-we-remove-from/ OpenRep is another one I've seen mentioned. Covers 190+ sites: https://onerep.com/sites-we-remove-from https://onerep.com/sites-we-remove-from One thing I can't find is a list of sites that Mozilla Monitor covers. Here's a comparison. I only listed the individual plans since Mozilla seems to only offer that. The other 2 offer plans for multiple persons DeleteMe: https://joindeleteme.com/ https://joindeleteme.com/ brokers: 750+ https://joindeleteme.com/sites-we-remove-from/ https://joindeleteme.com/sites-we-remove-from/ edit: I just realized looking through that list that they are a bit deceiving. They have qualifiers next to each website: * Included in Standard Plan and above (90 sites) ** Included in Business Gold, Diamond, Platinum and VIP Plans (27 sites) *** Included in Diamond, Platinum, and VIP Plans (1 site) ᵒ Exclusively in Platinum and VIP Plans (13 sites) ~ International requests (12 sites) ^ Custom Requests (665 sites) Seems like the majority need a "custom request" which defeats the purpose of signing up for something that is supposed to handle things automatically pricing: https://joindeleteme.com/privacy-protection-plans/ https://joindeleteme.com/privacy-protection-plans/ - individual plan: (they also have couples and family plans) - $10.75/month if you sign up for 1yr - $8.71/month if you sign up for 2yr ------------- OpenRep: https://onerep.com/ https://onerep.com/ brokers: 190+ https://onerep.com/sites-we-remove-from https://onerep.com/sites-we-remove-from pricing: https://onerep.com/pricing https://onerep.com/pricing 1 person: $8.33/mo, they also offer family (up to 6 ppl) and teams (10+) ------------- Mozilla Monitor: https://monitor.mozilla.org/ https://monitor.mozilla.org/ brokers: 190 data brokers (could not find a list of data brokers they cover) pricing: https://monitor.mozilla.org/#:S1 https://monitor.mozilla.org/#:S1: - "Monitor" - their FREE tier where they scan the data brokers and just inform you which ones have your info and you have to manually go in and remove your information from each one through whatever process each site uses. - "Monitor Plus" - Automatic Data Removal - $13.99/month, or $8.99/month if you sign up for a year Both tiers come with "Data Breach Alerts" which I guess is similar to haveibeenpwned's notify me. -------------- edit: adding one more: https://www.optery.com/ https://www.optery.com/ brokers: 305+ https://www.optery.com/pricing/#data-brokers-we-cover https://www.optery.com/pricing/#data-brokers-we-cover pricing: https://www.optery.com/pricing/ https://www.optery.com/pricing/ & https://www.optery.com/business-pricing/ https://www.optery.com/business-pricing/ will only cover the personal pricing: free - self-service (similar to Mozilla's free tier) 3.99/month - removal from 110+ sites 14.99/month - removal from 200+ sites 24.99/month - removal from 305+ sites

hammyhavoc 3y ago

Not sure what I think about charging people to remove this information—are they not also just as bad? This seems like the sort of thing that shouldn't require a victim to pay for, but for law to enforce this not happening. As with for-profit healthcare in the USA, just seems scumbag to profit off of misfortune and misery.

wolverine876 3y ago
In fairness, Mozilla can't make a law.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  Sure, but they are also treating it as a business opportunity, just like the people compiling the data are. They should perhaps be pushing on the legal aspect of what's wrong with the situation rather than making money from it.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    You're assuming they are driven by a business opportunity; I have no evidence of their motives (do you?), but another way to see it: There is no law and no prospect of one soon. Mozilla can partially solve the problem by providing the service - I think that's great. Otherwise people would have less recourse. And also, Mozilla must have money to operate; charging for this service seems among the least-bad options.
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      Well, we arrive at the whole "the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero" train of thought, otherwise there is no money-making opportunity. They push on the legal aspects of other problems, but I don't see them pushing on the legal aspects of this. Mozilla receives half a billion dollars per year from Google, making up most of their revenue. Mozilla's CEO is also paid millions of dollars each year. If they can't survive as-is whilst paying out those kinds of salaries with such revenue, that's a management problem.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Put some dates on your blog posts Mozilla!

beyondd 3y ago

Optery founder here. If you're taking a look at Mozilla Monitor, I recommend taking a look at Optery too: - Optery's Ultimate plan covers 300+ data broker sites and offers Unlimited Custom Removals providing the most comprehensive coverage in the industry. Optery has a variety of plans for different coverage needs (Free, Paid, Family, Business), and the ability to pause or cancel a subscription at any time. - Mozilla Monitor Plus is powered by OneRep, which partners with data brokers through its affiliate program: https://imgur.com/a/juSC66b https://imgur.com/a/juSC66b. This is a fine line most data removal services do not cross. Optery's removals are proprietary and are not powered by any other company. - Optery (YC W22) was awarded the Fast Company Next Big Things in Tech in 2023 and PCMag.com Editor's Choice award in 2022 and 2023, over DeleteMe, Kanary, Incogni, IDX Privacy, etc. - Optery has completed its SOC 2, Type II security certification. To our knowledge, DeleteMe is the only other data removal service with this certification. This is probably the most overlooked attribute when selecting a data removal service.

lkdfjlkdfjlg 3y ago
> Optery (YC W22) Nothing against your company specifically, but at this stage anything associated with YN is a negative.
- fdgadfagfgd 3y ago
  I think if you express an opinion like that you ought to say why too. It could be you have a point. But you could also be (mis)interpreted as a critic who, instead of building things themself, finds imperfections in things the real builders make...
some_random 3y ago
Wait what, why would a data broker partner with a company whose entire purpose is to reduce the completeness of their dataset?
- tholtken 3y ago
  money

Mistletoe 3y ago

What are the cons of data brokers having my info and does it outweigh losing $14.99 a month?

beyondd 3y ago
For many its just getting their home address, phone number and email off the web, which can make you less of an easy target by attackers. For others its something really specific, like someone who is divorced and doesn't want their name showing up next to their ex's name as a spouse or relative. For others, they want their age off the web to prevent age discrimination in a job search. Others may be hiding from an abuser or stalker.

AzzyHN 3y ago

Snake oil at best

nubinetwork 3y ago

I'm not sure I want to give my information to Mozilla, should they get hacked, it's no different than my information being held by another entity. (I don't use pocket or Firefox sync, etc.)

Vinnl 3y ago
Your Firefox Sync data is end-to-end encrypted and thus won't be leaked in a hack. (Unless you also leak your password.)

katrotz 3y ago

Found the choice of words "Get a free scan" on their website button funny. My first involuntary thought was - it is a scam.

Vinnl 3y ago
It's super annoying. We also have that when e.g. trying to emphasize what we're doing to protect your privacy, since "caring about your privacy" has become distorted to mean its opposite at least in my mind.

Schnitz 3y ago

Does this cover spam-enablers like Zoominfo?

pkaye 3y ago

Which laws are Mozilla using to get the data brokers to remove personal info in the US. I know there is such a law in California but is there also a federal law?

beyondd 3y ago
No federal law in the U.S. yet unfortunately, but more states are passing laws by the day (fortunately): https://iapp.org/resources/article/us-state-privacy-legislation-tracker/ https://iapp.org/resources/article/us-state-privacy-legislat...
wildrhythms 3y ago
Our representatives can't even comprehend that Google doesn't make the iPhone, so I personally wouldn't expect any federal legislation any time soon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmuROTmazco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmuROTmazco

pompino 3y ago

For people who are the target market for such products- Can you explain to me the appeal of such products for you? Have you previously been the victim of any escalation resulting from a data breach?

gnicholas 3y ago

> we can automatically and continuously request to remove your personal information with an annual paid subscription of $8.99 per month ($107.88 a year). This is a lot of money for most people. What would the benefit be of doing this all the time versus just subscribing once a year? How quickly do details reappear in databases?

spiffytech 3y ago
I'm given to understand these data broker services make it as painful and time-consuming to opt out as they can. Supposing you can even find all the places you're listed (Optery supports 305+ sites), it sounds like a substantial time commitment to follow through on all of them.
- hellcow 3y ago
  I signed up, and Mozilla warns it takes 7-14 days for data on most of these sites to be removed. They must need to do a lot of things by hand. This would also explain why you get 1 scan per month.
  - KittenInABox 3y ago
    These sites deliberately are slow in the removal of requests. So there is both manual sending but also needing to re-check if the site actually removed your info because brokers just kind of suck.
- 7734128 3y ago
  I'm confused how the internet is just ok with Mozilla engaging with these extortion websites. These sites are not legitimate and now that Mozilla and Google are engaging with them they just play into the protection racket.
Klonoar 3y ago
This really isn’t a lot of money for anyone in the USA, which is where the product is offered. Hell with the current economic environment I unfortunately spend more than this on my morning coffee.

temp0826 3y ago

Doesn't look like there is a place to enter past addresses. In the last 15 years I've moved ~10 times. Would be nice to have a way to check those as well.

altairprime 3y ago
Anecdote: I provided one zip code and it found a past address in another zip code — but I've only ever had two addresses total under this legal identity, so that doesn't speak to how far back it goes.

johnkpaul 3y ago

Do any of these offer family plans? I feel like At these price points, I would really like to sign up everyone in my household. The FAQ pages seem to all imply individual and I don't think I'm asking for a "business" or "enterprise" option.

CharlesW 3y ago
Onerep (another commenter believes this is Mozilla's U.S. partner) has a $15/mo family (paid annually, 6 people) plan.
beyondd 3y ago
Optery offers a family plan: https://www.optery.com/family/ https://www.optery.com/family/
- CharlesW 3y ago
  As feedback for the CEO, that "family pricing" landing page really does you a disservice by obfuscating your pricing (unless that was the goal). At a minimum, add a pricing calculator with a slider for "family members". For comparison, see Onerep's very clear pricing page here: https://onerep.com/pricing https://onerep.com/pricing
  - beyondd 3y ago
    That's great feedback! We'll add more pricing detail to the Family page. For comparison, here is the Optery pricing page: https://www.optery.com/pricing/ https://www.optery.com/pricing/
- sdn90 3y ago
  Does this support adding family members on a single account? I have some non technical family members who I'd like to manage it for them and giving them their own account is most likely going to be a major headache.
  - beyondd 3y ago

8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y ago

How does this compare to Kanary?

kanary 3y ago
Kanary members have our full support for all types of exposures, not just data brokers. To build a broader service, we rely on automation and human assistance. Mozilla is using OneRep to power this service, so comparing Mozilla to Kanary at this stage is comparing OneRep to Kanary. Here are a few considerations: https://www.kanary.com/blog/best-removal-service-onerep-kanary-or-deleteme https://www.kanary.com/blog/best-removal-service-onerep-kana... We have a free trial that auto-downgrades into our free tier. We encourage everyone to compare services before joining. https://www.kanary.com/#sign-up https://www.kanary.com/#sign-up

_cenw 3y ago

These services sure are the new sell it to everyone infinite margin after you built it once thing on YouTube sponsorships after everyone who was ever going to buy one has a VPN now. What actually creates this cost, though? I was hoping it'd be free or at cost for the infrastructure and maintenance.

hangonhn 3y ago

I really wish employers would pay for a service like this because a lot of spear phishing attacks start with data stole or scraped from brokers, LinkedIn, etc. If a company buys a service like this in bulk, it can get significant discounts. Personally I've resorted to hiding my information on LinkedIn and noticed that I've been passed over by attackers while my coworkers get spear phishing attacks all the time.

kanary 3y ago
Many employers do - we work with plenty of teams and even have specific guidance for how members can ask their HR or Security lead to sponsor a membership. (some basic info here: https://www.kanary.com/enterprise https://www.kanary.com/enterprise)

MiddleEndian 3y ago

How does Mozilla determine what 190 data brokers are relevant?

DamnableNook 3y ago

Ironically, their page doesn’t seem to work on Safari. I get a 404 error after signing in, every time. Switching to Chrome on my desktop lets it work.

Vinnl 3y ago
Thanks for sharing, we've seen some reports and logs of some people running into this issue with Safari, and we're investigating.

naw1 3y ago

From my initial testing, the result quality leaves a bit to be desired. There are a lot of false positives. For example, my info is definitely not on mugshotlook.com... And about 2/3 of the results I've clicked on have already been removed by Kanary (full disclosure, on the team, but was a happy customer before) or weren't real to begin with.