from Hacker News

Mozilla's new service tries to wipe your data off the web

by schalkneethling on 2/7/24, 9:27 AM with 43 comments

  • by neogodless on 2/7/24, 12:33 PM

    See related:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39274631 (blog.mozilla.org)

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

    (posted 22 hours ago, 260+ points, 189+ comments)

  • by ChrisArchitect on 2/7/24, 12:49 PM

    [dupe]

    Lots of discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39274631

  • by Siberium on 2/7/24, 11:43 AM

    "Mozilla partners with a company called Onerep to perform these scans and subsequent takedown requests"

    Reputation companies have perverse incentives and often need to pay off offending privacy-invading sites - see https://thewalrus.ca/clean-online-reputation/.

    You'd be essentially funding this continued privacy invasion of individuals - even if this service is successful for yourself.

    That's a lucrative product for a for-profit company to offer, but seems like a poor fit for the parent foundation's goals of creating a more privacy-respecting internet on a systemic level (rather than just for a few paying customers).

  • by thallium205 on 2/7/24, 11:55 AM

    I ran my info through the scanner and it said it found hundreds of matches. I looked through them and exactly 0 of them were me. Trash.

  • by chriscampbell on 2/7/24, 12:13 PM

    I am a big fan of Kanary - https://www.kanary.com/

    I’ve tried one rep, delete me and a few others. This service goes much wider to delete all public mentions and hidden ones in broker databases that are being sold. It has made a considerable difference for my data privacy IMO.

  • by jdmoreira on 2/7/24, 11:42 AM

    I'm going to go against the trend here and put on my evil hat.

    How do I buy this data? Who are these brokers? And how do I buy it?

  • by SushiHippie on 2/7/24, 12:49 PM

    FWIW they use haveibeenpwned.com to find the breaches when you enter the e-mail. So you could just go to https://haveibeenpwned.com to check if you are affected by any breaches.

  • by herunan on 2/7/24, 12:10 PM

    US-only. What if my EU data is found in US-based data brokers?

  • by repelsteeltje on 2/7/24, 10:20 AM

    Darn, I looks like someone stole my identity and threw in the $8.99/m to DeleteMe!

    ...Now I have to start all over training the ad targeting I carefully built over all those years.

    But seriously, wouldn't it make more sense if this service were free for everyone except those that opted in? (For example, by not sending the DNT header in all requests?)

  • by glauber on 2/7/24, 11:01 AM

    Google offers something very similar for subscribers of Google One.