Why Mozilla has severed ties with its privacy partner
Mozilla has officially ended its partnership with data removal service, Onerep, following revelations about the company's CEO, Dimitri Shelest, and his connections to a data broker. Shelest confessed to holding an ownership stake in Nuwber, a website specializing in people search. Brandon Borrman, Mozilla's Vice President of Communications, clarified that while no customer data was jeopardized, the external financial engagements and activities of Onerep's CEO contradicted Mozilla's core values.
Impact on Mozilla's Monitor Plus subscription
Earlier this year, Mozilla incorporated Onerep's data removal service into its new Monitor Plus subscription, available for $8.99 per month. This integration empowered users to find their personal information online and submit requests for its removal across various websites via Mozilla's partnership with Onerep. The dissolution of this partnership will inevitably impact this feature of the subscription service.
Onerep CEO's stake in people-search website
A thorough investigation by Krebs on Security exposed that Shelest had established "dozens" of people-search websites over a span of several years. Responding to the report, Shelest acknowledged his ownership stake in Nuwber, a platform that facilitates users in searching for individuals using their name, phone number, address, or email. Despite this disclosure, the Onerep CEO maintained that there was "zero cross-over or information-sharing" between Nuwber and Onerep.
