Tech Teacher

Author/Source: Brian Krebs See the full link here

Takeaway

This article explains that Mozilla, the company known for the Firefox browser, has stopped working with a privacy service called OneRep. Mozilla found out that OneRep was secretly owned by a data broker, which is a company that collects and sells people’s information. Because of this misleading situation, Mozilla ended their partnership to protect their users.

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Technical Subject Understandability

Intermediate

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Analogy/Comparison

This situation is like hiring a security guard to protect your personal belongings, only to find out the guard also works for a company that specializes in collecting and selling personal information.

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Why It Matters

This matters because people pay for services to protect their privacy, and they expect those services to be honest. The article shows that users who bought the OneRep service from Mozilla were unknowingly paying a company that was itself part of the data-sharing industry, which defeats the purpose of protecting personal data.

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Related Terms

Data broker, Privacy service, Opt-out services. Jargon Conversion: A data broker is a company that collects and sells people’s personal information, like addresses and phone numbers. A privacy service is a company that helps you remove your personal information from websites that share it. Opt-out services are tools that help you tell companies to stop collecting or sharing your personal information.