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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

#171

Post by Vinnl »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #106
cwales95 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're likely starting with the US because either their partner(s) for this is US only and/or it's easier to start with a single large market. The US is about a 50% larger market in terms of GDP than all EU countries combined.

That is correct, and it's way more of a problem in the US (but also e.g. in Brazil).

Also: are you the JohnTHaller of PortableApps fame? If so: thanks for making my high school computer usage bearable, way back when!

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

#172

Post by Vinnl »

wolverine876 wrote: post #88
Vinnl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

That doesn't account for them retaining your data and simply toggling the 'Publish' flag from 1 to 0.

True.

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

#173

Post by anjel »

rayshan wrote: post #101
anjel wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cleared my name from the net using another service that charged by the month. I paid them for three months, when their work clearing my data from about 100+brokers was completed, then cancelled. 2 years later, my name and personal data still remain no longer to be found like it once was before the scrubbing.

What is the service you used?

OneRep. I'm a once and former customer, otherwise unaffiliated.

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

#174

Post by Vinnl »

Liquid_Fire wrote: post #47
pluc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It doesn't look the same to me. haveibeenpwned will notify you if your email address was in a breach. The Mozilla offering seems to include the same, but also cover other pieces of personal data, and the ability to request removal from data brokers.

That is correct, with the additional note that Monitor has also existed for a while providing that functionality for free (in collaboration with HIBP), and will continue to do so for free, and worldwide.

The new thing is scanning for your info at data brokers (for free, but USA-only), and automatically removing them and continuously checking that they stay removed (paid, US only).

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

#175

Post by Vinnl »

pluc wrote: post #83
Liquid_Fire wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't look the same to me. haveibeenpwned will notify you if your email address was in a breach. The Mozilla offering seems to include the same, but also cover other pieces of personal data, and the ability to request removal from data brokers.

That ability is not the product they're offering though, that's something you can already once you identify where your data is. And obviously that's if they have a way for you to do request removal and if they feel like doing it at all which are the same constraints for Mozilla. I think this is all purely for convenience of having it all done for you (which is okay)

That is correct, and we do help you identify where your data is for free. Many people unfortunately have their data exposed in lots of places,in which case manual removal is a PITA, and that's where the Plus plan comes in.

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

#176

Post by Vinnl »

anjel wrote: post #78
ary wrote: post #7

I’m a happy, long term Optery user (not affiliated) and they take care of 100% of this for you. 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.

I cleared my name from the net using another service that charged by the month. I paid them for three months, when their work clearing my data from about 100+brokers was completed, then cancelled. 2 years later, my name and personal data still remain no longer to be found like it once was before the scrubbing.

That's great to hear, often they do show up again later, which is why it's a longer-term subscription service. OneRep is the provider for the removal functionality of Monitor, incidentally.

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

#177

Post by Vinnl »

tholtken wrote: post #68
mozempthrowaway wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does this even mean? How does Mozilla know what benefits me, the user?

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.

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

#178

Post by Vinnl »

katrotz wrote: post #80

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

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.

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

#179

Post by Vinnl »

niels_bom wrote: post #31

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?

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.

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

#180

Post by Vinnl »

nubinetwork wrote: post #75

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.)

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