[PSA] Your email may be publicly shown as your name on discourse.mozilla.org

I’m actually pissed. I and many other users on the forum got an email from Chris Hayes on this:

Hello,

This is a friendly email to make you aware that your personal email address is currently visible to the whole internet via Mozilla’s Discourse forum. It will show up in Google Search results. The affected email is the one that this email was sent to.

Many users may not be aware that their email address is publicly visible and Mozilla has not done anything about it in the 4 years it has been known, so I’ve taken this into my own hands to inform you.

What can you do?

You can update your profile name to be something else (actually, profile name is completely optional, so you can leave it blank if you want).

Steps to update profile name:

If you search for “Mozilla Discourse forum” it should be one of the first results.
Login. (Top-right)
Click on your profile picture at the top right.
Then, click on your username, at the top of the dropdown menu.
Click on the “Preferences” button.
Change the “Name” field, and click “Save Changes”.

How did this happen?

There’s a misconfiguration with Mozilla’s Discourse forum that when you sign up with your Firefox account, it will by default use your personal email address as your profile’s public name.

This is not a new issue, and has been known since 2020. The Mozilla Discourse forum is not actively maintained by Mozilla, so this has yet to be fixed.

You are one of 4,630 other users impacted by this privacy issue. It impacts 19% of all forum users, and 28% of new users.

More information:

There’s a Discourse discussion about this problem here: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/email-is-displayed-by-default-for-the-new-account/92266

If you have connections to Mozilla, please help escalate this issue to the right people. This is a serious and long-standing privacy issue at an organization that should value “Privacy by default”.

Sincerely,@chrisA fellow Mozillian

I am not Mozilla: This is not an official Mozilla email, I do not represent or work for Mozilla. This is an email from a fellow community member spreading awareness of this unaddressed privacy issue.

Rules

Always be civil and respectful
Don’t be toxic, hostile, or a troll, especially towards Mozilla employees. This includes gratuitous use of profanity.

Don’t be a bigot
No form of bigotry will be tolerated.

Don’t post security compromising suggestions
If you do, include an obvious and clear warning.

Don’t post conspiracy theories
Especially ones about nefarious intentions or funding. If you’re concerned: Ask. Please don’t fuel conspiracy thinking here. Don’t try to spread FUD, especially against reliable privacy-enhancing software. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Show credible sources.

Don’t accuse others of shilling
Send honest concerns to the moderators and/or admins, and we will investigate.

Do not remove your help posts after they receive replies
Half the point of asking questions in a public sub is so that everyone can benefit from the answers—which is impossible if you go deleting everything behind yourself once you’ve gotten yours.