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

blog.mozilla.org

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

#51

Post by isodev »

Vinnl wrote: post #13
Flimm wrote: post #5

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.

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.)

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.

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

#52

Post by mattstir »

dataflow wrote: post #27

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 f…

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/):

> 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.

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

#54

Post by beyondd »

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. 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.

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

#55

Post by erinnh »

Vinnl wrote: post #32
kmfrk wrote: post #25

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 Fastmai…

> 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 Integrating that with Monitor is pretty high on at least my personal wish list.

It’s an ok way to do it. And I’ve been subscribed (but not using it) for 2 years.

But until Firefox Relay supports custom domains, I am of the opinion that it’s not ideal.

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

#56

Post by WirelessGigabit »

nickthegreek wrote: post #15

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…

I have used Permission Slip by CR with limited success.

I use @., and you cannot enter a wildcard in Permission Slip.

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

#57

Post by beyondd »

pluc wrote: post #39
Flimm wrote: post #5

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.

haveibeenpwned.com has been offering the same service for free for years.

haveibeenpwned.com provides data breach monitoring, but does not remove personal info from data broker sites as Optery and Mozilla Monitor do.

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

#59

Post by feedsmgmt »

mattstir wrote: post #52
dataflow wrote: post #27

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 f…

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/ ): > Optery, Inc. must send your PII to the data brokers and information aggrega…

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.

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

#60

Post by beyondd »

eltondegeneres wrote: post #50
tholtken wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially with a backend service provider (onerep.com) that is questionable at best.

What are the issues with Mozilla's use of onerep?

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
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