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[dupe] Mozilla's new service tries to wipe your data off the web (theverge.com)
114 points by schalkneethling on Feb 7, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 43 comments


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)


[dupe]

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


"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).


Yep. If it were a service done by Mozilla I could trust it. But this way, what is it besides a referral program for some company I've never heard of?

Plus the 'It's just a Starbucks latte' pricing...


Too bad I don't live in Europe, what can I do? (shrug)


Unfortunately, while living in EU/UK, you have no means to force US company to wipe your personal data unless it officially does business in Europe.


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.


I always wonder how much data these companies have taken down that isn't their client's.


Antivirus vendor recipe "we have found 2840 possible threats on your computer!"


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.


It's fascinating that I have to pay to get my data removed from datasets into which they got without my consent (well, my consent "is not worth much" IMHO) and somebody else gets paid to put my data into this dataset.

So I need to pay to get something I never wanted in the first place.


You don't have to pay. You can have your data removed from all of these services directly but it's time consuming.


Makes me wish there was a service dedicated to providing the information of the people who run these services for free. The more details that can be used by marketing folks to profile and contact them, the better.


Isn’t that usually called extortion?


This is par for the course for Americans and credit reporting agencies. It's disgusting how they use your data without consent, don't protect it, then charge you to 'lock' your credit. I love unfettered capitalism.


Glad to hear it. All we do at Kanary is focus on exposure clean up. We've spent 4+ years refining how we find and match information to show accurate results vs a bunch of mismatched / irrelevant alerts.

We run a free trial & free version too so that it can be accessible for folks who want to run this type of clean up, have the time to DIY, and don't want to pay.


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?


I have a friend that once worked in a tech role within The Political Establishment. He had a file on his computer with personal information about me on it, aggregated from data brokers.


Making these connections is likely part of the value someone somewhere in this ecosystem provides. I doubt they do it for free or accept just anyone.


I'll pay. If anyone knows and wants to reach out, you will find my email through my profile.


DataBrokersWatch.org


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.


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


Then they got a larger issue


Then you file a complaint with your favorite reordenarías because somebody skirted the GDPR?


* Representative


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?)


>For example, by not sending the DNT header in all requests?

DNT is all but dead; it never got past the draft specification phase - even though being adopted by the major players in the browser realm. (Most have already removed the feature.)

GPC[1] is supposed to be the new DNT but I doubt it will have as much success.

[1] - https://globalprivacycontrol.org/press-release/20201007.html


> DNT is all but dead

Not sure, but I think a German court(?) recently ruled it's a legitimate way for a user to express intent that should be honoured by website.

Technically there isn't a reason to look for other means, the reason is mostly that advertisers would rather not have visitors choose this option. The reason DNT was almost instantly rejected, for example, was that the compromise text mentioned the user enable DNT, but then some browsers enabled it by default. Advertisers: Hurray! We found a reason to ignore user preferences!

So, for all I care it might be DNT, GPC or a plug-in that auto-clicks REJECT COOKIE. It's the default I would expect. It would be great the web simply would not offer ad targeting unless I explicitly enabled some tracking beacon because I sincerely like targeted ads better than old-school billboard.


> Not sure, but I think a German court(?) recently ruled it's a legitimate way for a user to express intent that should be honoured by website.

Yep, regarding LinkedIn. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38081633


> So, for all I care it might be DNT, GPC or a plug-in that auto-clicks REJECT COOKIE.

Regarding the plugin/extension option, there's one developed by Aarhus University in Denmark called Consent-O-Matic[0] — it moves the cookie dialog to a corner (or hides it, if you prefer) and either the options to the minimum on the majority of sites (I've only experienced it not working once in the two years I've used it) and plays nice with the other "privacy" extensions I've got installed (CanvasBlocker, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, LocalCDN, etc.)

[0]: https://consentomatic.au.dk/


It would have been just way toooo easy and non dark-pattern to replace the annoying cookie dialogues with that :(


Maybe some EU country would like to step in and offer this as a basic service to all their citizens? (I'm sure Mozilla would be happy to give a discount.)


Google offers something very similar for subscribers of Google One.


GOOGLE?! So... left hand cleaning up the mess created by the right hand? Isn't that called a Ponzi scheme, or something?


This would be an extortion racket instead, I think.


Well, that's the same thing they did with the "Topics" thing in Chrome -- “we can track you and figure out what you like and send that information to other websites, but they can't do that directly. You are safe in our hands. Don't you see that's better?“


they just want to be the exclusive owner of all yours datas!


I just looked through the perks on my Google One and don't see this offering. I don't see it in the premium perks either. Do you happen to have a link? Is it some kind of hidden benefit?


It shows in your Google Account settings, takes me to https://one.google.com/dwr/dashboard


Google just checks for your details in known data leaks. They don't talk to data brokers on your behalf.


A few of my personal details were found on "dark web" according to Google. Well, they can't really talk to those people and say don't leak my password.


No they don't; they only offer 'dark web scanning'. https://one.google.com/about/security




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