Episodes

The US government is once again looking to break or hobble encrypted communications in the name of national security and law enforcement. They claim that we’re “going dark” – that modern end-to-end encryption used in apps like Signal and Wickr that protect user privacy are preventing them from keeping us safe and bringing the bad guys to justice. Cryptographers and technology companies have soundly squashed the idea of putting “backdoors” in these systems that supposedly only the “good guys” can...

Why do most VPN apps suck so badly? How do you know which VPN service providers you can trust with your privacy? How is it that our internet service providers know so much about our web surfing habits? Today I explore these questions and more with John Graham-Cumming, the CTO of the internet performance and security company. He will also tell us about a new VPN service coming soon from Cloudflare called Warp that may finally address all of these problems. John is a computer programmer and autho...

How many of your “smart” devices are smart enough to update their own software? For that matter, how many of them can upgrade at all? It’s a good bet that most of them run some flavor of the free and open-source Linux operating system. A nasty bug was just found that affects almost all Linux systems, allowing a simple remote command to bring the system to its knees. There have been other bugs found in Linux and there will be more. If your device’s software can’t be updated, it will always be vul...

In today’s show I have a sobering discussion with the EFF’s Eva Galperin about the rise of stalkerware (sometimes called “spouseware”). It’s become all too easy for abusive, unscrupulous people to spy on their significant others, tracking their every move, monitoring all their communications. We’ll talk about how our phones can be subverted and what measures you can take to prevent it. Eva also provides practical and prudent advice for people who suspect they may be victims of stalkerware. Eva ...

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser on the planet by far, used by about two thirds of all web surfers. But Google is an advertising company and ad blockers are a direct threat to their business model. Google is planning to make a highly controversial change to Chrome’s plugin framework that would break some popular ad blocking extensions like uBlock Origin, forcing them to use much less effective techniques for blocking ads. Compare that to Mozilla’s Firefox browser, which just announ...

Is it possible to hide your tracks online? Is it even worth the effort to try? How do you know which companies, products and services you can trust? Is government regulation the answer? We’ll address all of these questions today in part 2 of my interview with David Ruiz. David will give you several great resources for getting more informed and also for getting more involved in the fight for privacy. David Ruiz is a pro-privacy, pro-security writer for Malwarebytes Labs, where he covers online p...

In January of this year, Malwarebytes (a world-class antivirus software maker) conducted a massive poll on privacy that included 4000 people from 66 different countries. On today’s show, I will delve into the key takeaways from this poll and some rather (pleasantly) surprising results. (Tune in next week for part 2.) David Ruiz is a pro-privacy, pro-security writer for Malwarebytes Labs, where he covers online privacy, legislation, and the interplay between technology and the law. Further Info...

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Google can read your Gmail. You may even realize that Google is scanning your emails for things like trip itineraries, which allows them to automatically add flights and hotel reservations to your Google Calendar, for example. But you may not realize how much other juicy info is there to be mined, like online purchases. Every email receipt you’ve received since you’ve had your Gmail account has almost surely been parsed and indexed. In today’s show, I’ll t...

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes makes a heartfelt and cogent argument for breaking up the world’s dominant social media company, Facebook. The litmus test for the US Government has focused too much on impact to consumer pricing, which has little to do with “free” services such as Facebook. It’s time to also consider social and consumer impact. In other news, a photo storage service has been caught using your images to train facial recognition systems without proper disclosure, Google has unvei...

A disturbing study in the JAMA Network Open journal showed that almost all of 36 mental health apps they downloaded were sharing your data to some extent – many without proper or even any disclosure. Many shared basic data with Facebook and Google, and a few shared very sensitive information like health diaries and self reports of substance abuse. I’ll give you some tips on how you can protect yourself. In other news, Firefox plugins were all shut off over the weekend due to a Mozilla certifica...

Facebook has once again gone too far and, when caught, asked for forgiveness and promised to change. First it was revealed that Facebook has been requesting since May 2016 that new users provide their email account passwords in order to verify their email addresses – without giving any obvious way to opt out. When caught, they said they would stop doing this. However, it was then revealed that Facebook “unintentionally” hoovered up the email contact lists of 1.5 million Facebook users that gave ...

How do you deal with the threat of identity theft? Follow Adam Levin’s 3 M’s: 1) minimize your exposure, 2) monitor your accounts, and 3) manage the damage. We discuss these techniques and much more in part two of my interview with Adam Levin, author of Swiped: How to Protect Yourself in a World Full of Scammers, Phishers, and Identity Thieves. Adam Levin is a consumer advocate with more than 40 years of experience in security, privacy, personal finance and many other things. He is the former d...

Identity theft is arguably one of the worst cyber crimes in terms of deep and lasting impact to the victim. This runs the gamut from simple credit card fraud to committing crimes in someone else’s name. We’ll talk about the entire spectrum today in part one of my interview with Adam Levin, author of Swiped: How to Protect Yourself in a World Full of Scammers, Phishers, and Identity Thieves. Adam Levin is a consumer advocate with more than 40 years of experience in security, privacy, personal fi...

Bad guys have been using scary emails and pop-up messages to bilk unsuspecting victims of millions of dollars for a long time now. But recent scams purporting to be from the CIA have taken things to a new level. In today’s show, I’ll walk you through one variant of this scam and teach you how to spot similar scare scams. In other news, government spyware has made its way into everyday apps on the Google Play Store, WinRAR has a serious bug that you need to patch, hundreds of millions of Faceboo...

How often have you run across something so obviously bad or behind the times that you just want to scream: Hey, fix this already! Electronic Frontier Foundation to the rescue! Gennie Gebhart explains the EFF’s new #FixItAlready campaign – a “most wanted” list of no-brainer bugs and shortcomings in today’s most popular services and products that just should not be. Examples include no end-to-end encryption of Twitter DMs, using two-factor Facebook phone numbers for marketing, and not being able t...

What happens to your digital life when you die? The answer is only slightly less philosophical than what happens to your soul. The laws, as least in the US, haven’t kept up with the times and there aren’t clear rules for who has legal rights to your online accounts or the files you’ve stored in the cloud. In today’s episode, I’ll tell you how to prepare for your inevitable digital afterlife. In other news, Facebook revealed that 100’s of millions of its users passwords were left open on interna...

In second half of my interview with EFF’s Bill Budington, Bill helps us understand how we can at least attempt to disguise ourselves on the web and basically try to blend in with the crowd. We’ll also see how tools like EFF’s Panopticlick can hep us pinpoint the things that are making us stand out, which enables us to be tracked more easily. Finally, we’ll discuss several browsers and plugins that can help you preserve your privacy. If you missed Part 1, you can listen to it here: http://podcas...

In the first part of my discussion with Bill Budington from the EFF, we’re going to talk about some of the key ways in which we are tracked around the web as we surf from site to site. I’ll ask Bill who is tracking up, why they’re tracking us, and we’ll get into some of the clever and downright devious methods by which we are tracked and recognized on the web. In part 2 (next week) Bill will help us understand why it’s so hard to disguise ourselves on the web and how tools like EFF’s Panopticli...

The Mayor of Tampa, Florida, had this Twitter account hacked due to “the usual weaknesses, including poor passwords.” The hackers used the account to tweet pornographic images and even an incoming ballistic missile alert. Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile service used a default account security PIN of “0000”, which allowed several customers to have their accounts taken over. You not only need strong passwords, you need strong second factor authentication. That’s defense in depth. In other news, Microsof...

The European Union has recalled a GPS smart watch meant to be worn by children so that their parents can keep tabs on them. Unfortunately, due to horrible security, anyone can track these watches – and even send messages to the children. The Internet of Things (IoT) is well-known for having lax or non-existent security protections. Connecting our children’s toys to the internet in this manner is raising serious (and valid) privacy concerns. In other news, there’s a devious new Facebook and Goog...

Last week I told you about the literally billions of email addresses and passwords that were released by hackers as “Collections 1-5”. I also told you how you can check to see if your information was contained in these (or other dumped data) by checking haveibeenpwnd.com. And today I’m interviewing the man behind this wonderful, free service: Troy Hunt! He tells us how he gets his hands on all of this data and what we should be doing to mitigate the damage from these inevitable breaches. The wor...

Last week we saw perhaps the single largest data breach dump in history, close on the heels of another massive data disclosure from the same group. Dubbed “Collections 1-5”, together these data dumps represent literally billions of unique user email addresses and passwords. Using the online tool Have I Been Pwned will tell you whether your email address or password is contained in this hacker’s treasure trove. I will also tell you how you can mitigate the damage from this and future breaches. I...

We’re celebrating international Data Privacy Day along with the 100th episode of Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons! And what a show we have! My guest today is none other than Bruce Schneier: internationally renowned security technologist and author of 14 books, including the best-seller Click Here to Kill Everybody)! Bruce and I discuss the current state of data privacy and what it’s going to take to rein in the corporations that are buying and selling our data with abandon. In this show I will also...