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)
Lots of discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39274631
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).
Plus the 'It's just a Starbucks latte' pricing...
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.
So I need to pay to get something I never wanted in the first place.
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.
How do I buy this data? Who are these brokers? And how do I buy it?
...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?)
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
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.
