Mozilla's Firefox Monitor Now Lets Anyone Check If Their Email Was Compromised in Data Breach

Mozilla has launched Firefox Monitor, a free service to notify individuals concerned about their privacy in case of a data breach. The service - which has been built in partnership with Australian Web security expert Troy Hunt, the creator of 'Have I Been Pwned' website - was piloted back in June. It allows people to check if their email addresses have been a part of a data breach. Mozilla notably invited hundreds of thousands of Firefox users in the initial testing, and received "positive attention" for the final product. Firefox Monitor uses Have I Been Pwned's API endpoints to enable data breach monitoring.

Much like Hunt's Have I Been Pwned site, Mozilla's Firefox Monitor lets you easily see if your email address has been a part of a data breach. There is an email address bar to conduct a basic scan. Mozilla claims that the email address entered for the basic scan will not be stored. Further, you can sign up using one of your active email addresses to get a full report on your compromised accounts and to receive notifications whenever your accounts appear in new data breaches.

Firefox Monitor scans your email address against a database that is backed by Hunt's Have I Been Pwned. Once it detects if the given email address or any personal information related to that email address is involved in a publicly known data breach in the past, it will notify you. "If you're wondering about how we're handling your email address, rest assured we will protect your email address when it's scanned," Mozilla said in a blog post.

It is recommended to change the password linked to the email address found by the Firefox Monitor service to protect it from hackers. And, of course, you shouldn't share your credentials on any third-party service or website.

While the experience on Firefox Monitor is similar to the Have I Been Pwned site, Mozilla has a larger audience through its Web browser that could help bring a large number of people on board. Eventually, it will help several Firefox users to see if their email addresses and personal information weren't a part of the recent data breaches.