New 'Firefox Monitor' will alert you if your data or passwords are stolen →

Mozilla unveils the email security tool it has been testing since last fall.

If you've ever wondered whether your email has been compromised in one of the many data breaches in the last decade, Mozilla now has an answer for you. Yesterday, it unveiled Firefox Monitor, a website that can give you detailed information about any of your accounts that may have been hacked.

"It can be hard to keep track of when your information has been stolen, so we're going to help by launching Firefox Monitor, a free service that notifies people when they've been part of a data breach," Nick Nguyen wrote in a blog post for Mozilla."After testing this summer, the results and positive attention gave us the confidence we needed to know this was a feature we wanted to give to all of our users."

The effort represents the culmination of a partnership between Mozilla and renowned Australian digital security expert Troy Hunt, the brainchild behind HaveIBeenPwned.com. There is little difference between Firefox Monitor and HaveIBeenPwned.com, but when Hunt announced the partnership in June, he said Mozilla's massive user base would help popularize the tool.

"Over the coming weeks, Mozilla will begin trialling integration between HIBP and Firefox to make breach data searchable via a new tool called 'Firefox Monitor'," Hunt wrote in a June blog post about the partnership, adding that they were "baking" HIBP into Firefox.

"This is major because Firefox has an install base of hundreds of millions of people which significantly expands the audience that can be reached once this feature rolls out to the mainstream."

HaveIBeenPwned.com currently has a secure database of 5.1 billion records, with 3.1 billion unique email addresses, yet only a bit more than 2 million subscribers. The more people who take advantage of the pwned website, the more people will be able to secure their accounts and make it safer for everyone, including the websites involved in the original hack.

When I put my own email address in, Firefox notified me of 4 data breaches that may have included my email address and account information. My email was found in a Ticketfly data breach in May, a 2013 breach of Adobe, and two 2012 hacks of Dropbox and LinkedIn. The information released in these hacks included email addresses, names, phone numbers, physical addresses, password hints, passwords, and usernames.

Despite the name, the website can be accessed from any browser, and both Mozilla and Hunt have painstakingly described the complex process that they use to search for email addresses while protecting your privacy and encrypting any information about you.

They use a technique known as hashing to mathematically encode data, making it impossible for HIBP to actually read any of the email addresses sent to it by Firefox. A Mozilla spokesperson told The Register UK that its goal was to protect their users by bringing HIBP to a wider pool.

"One difference for now is that sensitive sites will only be sent to you after you've verified your email to help keep you safe. There are future plans to integrate it more deeply into the Firefox and future products that are underway," they told the Register.

Mozilla and HaveIBeenPwned.com initially announced a partnership last fall that saw the web browser add an alert that would notify users when they were visiting a website that had recently been involved in a data breach. In June, 250,000 mostly U.S.-based users were invited to join a trial period for the website.

Hunt also secured a deal with 1Password, a password management app, in February that allows users to search if their email or password had been released in a data breach.

*this article was featured on Download.com on September 26, 2018: https://download.cnet.com/blog/download-blog/new-firefox-monitor-will-alert-you-if-your-data-or-passwords-are-stolen/

Mozilla's Firefox Monitor security tool checks if your accounts have been compromised by hackers

Mozilla's Firefox Monitor security tool checks if your accounts have been compromised by hackers

Despite the prevalence of hacks and data breaches in the news recently, few people ever find out if their information has been released or taken advantage of unless there is a noticeable problem. Just last year, more than 179 million records were exposed in the U.S.

Mozilla is hoping to change that by teaming with Troy Hunt -- a renowned Australian digital security expert who runs HaveIBeenPwned.com -- to create Firefox Monitor. The website HaveIBeenPwned.com allows you to search for your email address to see whether it has been involved in a data breach, giving you the date, breached company, and amount of data stolen. The website also gives a description of the hack your email was involved in and suggests ways to move forward.

Have I been pwned?

"Over the coming weeks, Mozilla will begin trialling integration between HIBP and Firefox to make breach data searchable via a new tool called 'Firefox Monitor'," Hunt wrote in a blog post about the partnership.

"This is major because Firefox has an install base of hundreds of millions of people which significantly expands the audience that can be reached once this feature rolls out to the mainstream."

HaveIBeenPwned.com currently has a secure database of 5.1 billion records, with 3.1 billion unique email addresses, yet only a bit more than 2 million subscribers. The more people that take advantage of the pwned website, the more people will be able to secure their accounts and make it safer for everyone, including the websites involved in the original hack.

"Understandably, people are now more worried about internet-related crimes involving personal and financial information theft than conventional crimes. In order to help keep personal information and accounts safe, we will be testing user interest in a security tool that lets users check if one of their accounts has been compromised in a data breach," Mozilla wrote in its announcement of the deal. 

Check for a privacy breach

"Visitors to the Firefox Monitor website will be able to check (by entering an email address) to see if their accounts were included in known data breaches, with details on sites and other sources of breaches and the types of personal data exposed in each breach. The site will offer recommendations on what to do in the case of a data breach, and how to help secure all accounts," they said adding that they were working on another feature that would let users know when their information was involved in a data breach.

Mozilla and HaveIBeenPwned.com initially announced a partnership last fall that saw the web browser add an alert that would notify users when they were visiting a website that had recently been involved in a data breach.

Hunt also secured a deal with 1Password, a password management app, in February that allows users to search if their email or password had been released in a data breach.

Both Hunt and Mozilla wrote extensively about the security concerns people may have with the database and entering their email addresses into the service. They employ a detailed strategy that makes it nearly impossible to use or even identify the email addresses in their database.

According to Mozilla, Firefox Monitor will begin testing next week, with 250,000 mostly U.S.-based users invited to join the trial period.

Mozilla Firefox since the end of last year has put protecting its users privacy and personal data at the top of its list. Firefox lets you create and manage strong passwords with an easy-to-use password manager that can handle credit card and other login information. The Firefox browser also includes tools that block websites from tracking your online activities. You can also extend Firefox's usefulness through browser extensions that let you harden your browser's security.

*This article was featured on Download.com on June 26, 2018: https://download.cnet.com/blog/download-blog/mozillas-firefox-monitor-security-tool-checks-if-your-accounts-have-been-compromised-by-hackers/