Good. I really wish Mozilla would rely less on these shady backroom deals and open up to direct user funding. The Mozilla Foundation accepts donations, but they don't go toward funding Firefox; instead, they fund advocacy campaigns.
> Firefox is maintained by the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. While Firefox does produce revenue — chiefly through search partnerships — this earned income is largely reinvested back into the Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation’s education and advocacy efforts, which span several continents and reach millions of people, are supported by philanthropic donations.[1]
It's probably too late now... but IMO, what should have been Mozilla's most natural progression towards financial security would have been with Thunderbird. Basically, they were in a position to offer what Outlook/Office365 email does a couple decades ago.
Integrate better calendar and contact management, then create a best of class commercial email service platform, and commercial hosted services around that.
I thought it would have been a great option long before Gmail was even a thought. Even today, they could work with or create a service like Protonmail or another system to offer these services. 10m users at $4/mo/user is $480m/year and that wouldn't be an unreasonable expectation just for the US market in 3-5 years given where they were in 2008.
Of course, I had similar thoughts about Blackberry when iOS and Android hit the market... since they were already entrenched in corporate email at a lot of places, they could have created a best in breed mobile client for their integrated usage ahead of MS playing catch up.
But with Mozilla, it would have been a natural extension as a commercial offering without disrupting the good will behind Firefox and Thunderbird as they were...
Damn, I apparently missed the memo that the backend service for Mozilla Monitor was shady while I used it.
Are there any actual services like this that work properly? I've noticed whenever it indicated that a service has removed my data, that same service would come back online as having my data a few weeks later.
The "respawning" issue slabity mentioned where data vanishes and then pops back up weeks later is the core structural problem of this industry. It’s a game of whack-a-mole: you get removed from Broker A, but they re-ingest your data from a public record scrape or another broker a few months later. That’s why effective removal has to be continuous, not a one-off.
However, the specific issue Krebs highlights with Mozilla/OneRep is trust. It turns out OneRep’s founder was actually running active people-search sites (like Nuwber) on the side. It's hard to trust a removal service that has a financial stake in the very industry it's supposed to be fighting.
For an alternative without that conflict, take a look at Optery (YC W22). We've been flagging the OneRep situation for years. Full disclosure, I'm on the team at Optery. Optery launched on HN in 2021.
Mozilla says they have "high standards for vendors" in their latest statement, but why didn't those standards apply back when they were told about this in March 2024?
> In March 2024, Mozilla said it was winding down its collaboration with Onerep — an identity protection service offered with the Firefox web browser that promises to remove users from hundreds of people-search sites — after KrebsOnSecurity revealed Onerep’s founder had created dozens of people-search services and was continuing to operate at least one of them. Sixteen months later, however, Mozilla is still promoting Onerep. This week, Mozilla announced its partnership with Onerep will officially end next month.
Why would anyone give Mozilla any money after this, even for a product that wasn't privacy-oriented (like a VPN)? Also:
> But a review of Onerep’s domain registration records and that of its founder reveal a different side to this company. Onerep.com says its founder and CEO is Dimitri Shelest from Minsk, Belarus, as does Shelest’s profile on LinkedIn. Historic registration records indexed by DomainTools.com say Mr. Shelest was a registrant of onerep.com who used the email address dmitrcox2@gmail.com.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 65.4 ms ] thread> Firefox is maintained by the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. While Firefox does produce revenue — chiefly through search partnerships — this earned income is largely reinvested back into the Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation’s education and advocacy efforts, which span several continents and reach millions of people, are supported by philanthropic donations.[1]
[1]: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/donate/help/#frequently...
Integrate better calendar and contact management, then create a best of class commercial email service platform, and commercial hosted services around that.
I thought it would have been a great option long before Gmail was even a thought. Even today, they could work with or create a service like Protonmail or another system to offer these services. 10m users at $4/mo/user is $480m/year and that wouldn't be an unreasonable expectation just for the US market in 3-5 years given where they were in 2008.
Of course, I had similar thoughts about Blackberry when iOS and Android hit the market... since they were already entrenched in corporate email at a lot of places, they could have created a best in breed mobile client for their integrated usage ahead of MS playing catch up.
But with Mozilla, it would have been a natural extension as a commercial offering without disrupting the good will behind Firefox and Thunderbird as they were...
Are there any actual services like this that work properly? I've noticed whenever it indicated that a service has removed my data, that same service would come back online as having my data a few weeks later.
No
>I've noticed whenever it indicated that a service has removed my data, that same service would come back online as having my data a few weeks later
That's literally their business model. Or it pops up on another site from the same people.
However, the specific issue Krebs highlights with Mozilla/OneRep is trust. It turns out OneRep’s founder was actually running active people-search sites (like Nuwber) on the side. It's hard to trust a removal service that has a financial stake in the very industry it's supposed to be fighting.
For an alternative without that conflict, take a look at Optery (YC W22). We've been flagging the OneRep situation for years. Full disclosure, I'm on the team at Optery. Optery launched on HN in 2021.
How in the world was this not considered fraud, or in the very least - breach of contract?
Still not fixed
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/03/mozilla-drops-onerep-aft...
how do mozilla keep being fooled by these things?
Why would anyone give Mozilla any money after this, even for a product that wasn't privacy-oriented (like a VPN)? Also:
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/03/ceo-of-data-privacy-comp...
> But a review of Onerep’s domain registration records and that of its founder reveal a different side to this company. Onerep.com says its founder and CEO is Dimitri Shelest from Minsk, Belarus, as does Shelest’s profile on LinkedIn. Historic registration records indexed by DomainTools.com say Mr. Shelest was a registrant of onerep.com who used the email address dmitrcox2@gmail.com.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitri-shelest
> McLean, Virginia, United States
An immigrant who makes money aggregating and selling Americans' personal information. Is there some way he can be deported?
As in, you don't want a law to make it illegal in general, you only want to ban immigrants from being data brokers?