The author is Rand Fishkin, who's not a journalist. He's the founder of SparkToro and Moz, both companies that provide tooling and analytics for SEO.

I haven't looked deeply into Fishkin's companies, but I wouldn't expect either to be on the user's side when it comes to privacy. Both companies seem to monetize clickstream data and personal information from users who probably didn't give informed consent.

If the source was trying to get this information to a responsible journalist who cares about privacy, I have no idea why they'd approach a company (not even a news organization) who seems to fund the erosion of user privacy.