this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by Daughter3546@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 

Onerep is a privacy monitoring service/ privacy provider that Mozilla partnered with for their Mozilla Monitor service.

Yesterday, Brian Krebs (a cybersecurity journalist) dug into Onerep and found that the CEO is a shady Belarussian. Dimitri Shelest, CEO, of Onerep owns multiple “people searching” websites. Shelest has also been linked to aggressive spam and affiliate marketing emails.

Onerep’s reputation is shady due to their CEO’s multiple conflicts of interest. At worst, Onerep is sucking your personal information. At best, you’re paying for a service that doesn’t do anything. Either way, I would not trust Mozilla Monitor service .

This is a copy and paste from a post I made to firefox@lemmy.ml. I do not no know how to crosspost and I apologise for my mistake a head of time.

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[–] LWD@lemm.ee 25 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

At best, OneRep is sucking your data through Mozilla.

This isn't even the worst thing Mozilla has done recently: they also

  • Bought an "AI" shopping company with a trove of private data
  • Promise they will sell the data to advertisers
  • Integrated this into Firefox:

FakeSpot collects your browsing and search history

More info

[–] Daughter3546@lemmy.world 29 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (8 children)

I really love Firefox, but I dislike some of the initiatives the for-profit arm, Mozilla Corporation, is taking. This is another head scratcher moments for me. I want my browser to be just a browser. I don't want Pocket, Google Search, nor any other nonsense.

I get that they are subsiding the development costs of Firefox, but surely, there must be other avenues to generate revenue. It is really hypocritical of Mozilla when they market Firefox as a privacy focused alternative to Chrome/Edge/Safari and then bundle ads and sponsored nonsense.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 28 points 8 months ago (7 children)

That's the thing, Mozilla keeps talking about diversifying to avoid becoming irrelevant, but those diversification efforts seem to only involve finding a shiny new thing, chasing it, then dropping it and laying off 60 employees. And then pursuing the next shiny new thing

[–] Daughter3546@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You couldn't have said it better. If money and revenue is an issue, then why keep chasing the next shiny thing.

Just last month, they had a press release announcing they'll incorporate AI into their product suite. In my opinion, the release was just a buzzword laden nonsense. I just don't see the why other than to keep themselves relevant.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I did some digging into FakeSpot's history. I don't have the pages handy, but they didn't call themselves an AI company until 2022. I doubt anything changed. And at one point, they were even dabbling with NFT verification (something they've since purged from their site).

Mozilla is chasing trends by... Buying other companies that are also chasing trends.

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