Mozilla recently debuted a new service called Firefox Monitor that you can use to check whether your personal information has been compromised by any of the numerous data breaches that occur every year.
Data breaches strike fear into businesses of every size due to their devastating effects. According to a 2017 Kaspersky Lab report, the average cost of a data breach for a small business in North America could go as high as $117,000. This is a high price to pay, but luckily, the free Firefox Monitor service can help you stay alert to data breaches.
“We’ll let you know if your email address and/or personal info was involved in a publicly known past data breach,” said Nick Nguyen, Mozilla’s VP of Firefox Product, in a blog post. “Once you know where your email address was compromised you should change your password and any other place where you’ve used that password.
If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because Mozilla has teamed up with Troy Hunt’s “Have I Been Pwned” website. This website has been offering breach notifications to its users for years now.
Getting Started with Firefox Monitor
To get started, all you have to do is to visit monitor.firefox.com and type in your email address. Your email address will be scanned against a database that serves as a library of data breaches. The search only takes a few seconds and you will be notified if your email address was compromised in any breach. The notification includes the name of the company that was hacked, the breach date, number of compromised accounts, and compromised data.
In addition, much like Have I Been Pwned, Firefox Monitor also allows you to sign up for alerts that are sent directly to your email. This is a more proactive approach to staying on top of data and privacy breaches.
Of course, getting alerts about a data breach is important, but you also need to follow a good password discipline. At a minimum, make sure you use a unique password for every online service that you use. This way, you are almost certain that one hack won’t compromise your entire online existence.
Image: Mozilla