Today marks the official launch of Firefox Monitor developed by Mozilla and « Have I Been Pwned » to let you know if you’ve been involved in a data breach. Testing of the tool began in June.
After a few months of testing, Mozilla has publicly released Firefox Monitor, a free service that will notify end users when their personal data is compromised in a data breach. The tool was built as part of a collaboration between Mozilla and Troy Hunt’s « Have I Been Pwned » (HIBP) website.
There are two ways by which Firefox Monitor helps users recover from a data breach. First, the service scans your email address against the HIBP database, which contains a vast repository of data breach incidents. That can only be done after you visit monitor.firefox.com and type in your email address.
To help keep the email addresses private, the user’s email information will be hashed. By doing this, Mozilla is making sure the email addresses will not be shared with any third parties.
Additionally, Firefox Monitor permits users to sign up to receive notifications in the event their email addresses are involved in future data breaches. For Firefox users, the collaboration involving Mozilla and HIBP also provides notices once they go to websites which have experienced a breach in the past.
In addition to Firefox Monitor, Mozilla also recently announced a new anti-tracking initiative that aims to help block the unrestrained data collection activities online. All of these efforts highlight the organization’s intention to help keep the privacy of people on the internet.
Source: Mozilla
