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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

#91
post #3

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?

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.

> Why in the world would they delete that data vs just putting it on mute/ignore/etc?

If you're serious it's because having a fig leaf is useful to reduce risk in controversial business practices, especially if the vast majority of people don't take advantage of it.

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

#93
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what's the point of paying for Optery per year? Isn't removing your data be a one time request. Except for supporting new brokers that might appear.

Your point is spot on. Data removal services have an aspect where a ton of value is obtained in the first 1 - 4 months as the majority of profiles are wiped away, and then after that you're sort of in maintenance mode where the service catches profiles as they pop back up, or when new data brokers are added to the system for coverage. Optery generally has 2 types of customers: - The first type are those that care a l…

Have you considered adding a 3-months-every-year option? I wonder if automating the second type of customer would provide you a lift in revenue.

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

#94
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Any other issues besides that possible conflict of interest? Also, you're the founder of a competing service, right?

Yes - I flagged myself as an Optery founder on my first comment, but the comment was subsequently flagged and hidden from view (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39276106). It is also made clear here: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=beyondd

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

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any other issues besides that possible conflict of interest? Also, you're the founder of a competing service, right?

They are. There's a flagged dead comment where they say so (I don't know if this link will work for a flagged dead comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39276106 beyonddd should really identify themselves as the founder of a competitor. Nothing wrong with posting, but pseudo-anonymously disparaging the competition seems very inappropriate.

Yes - I flagged myself as an Optery founder on my first comment, but as you mentioned the comment was subsequently flagged and hidden from view. It is also made clear here: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=beyondd

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

#96
post #2

[flagged]

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.

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.

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

#97

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.

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.

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

#98
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think "partnership" seems like too strong a word for what appears to be the simple use of an affiliate program. Why would OneRep know or care about an individual affiliate and the content of their site, as long as their behavior with regards to the affiliate program is above-board?

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

#99
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.

Anyone have experience comparing this to Incogni? I’ve been an unaffiliated user for over a year now. While many brokers have replied, many never seem to.
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