Episodes

Last week, we all learned about a company called CrowdStrike that apparently has the capability to single-handedly bring multiple airlines, hospitals and other large companies to their knees in an instant. There are many lessons we should be learning from this incident, though I’m not going to hold my breath. I’ll tell you what happened and what I think we should be doing to avoid a repeat of this incident in the future. In other news: Google finally throws in the towel on blocking third-party ...

If someone decided to dig into your life – perhaps even try to ‘dox’ you – how might they go about doing that? What could they find about you right now on the internet? You might be surprised at how much information is readily available from public sources, including your local government agencies and state databases. Today I’ll be talking with Jason Edison from Intel Techniques whose day job is using open source intelligence, or OSINT, to find suspected criminals and whose night job is helping ...

Ads on the web are beyond annoying – they are actually a threat to your privacy and sometimes even your security. Ads pay for a lot of the “free” web content we consume, but until ad networks stop tracking us and selling ad space to phishing and malware groups, we need tools to block them. Today I’ll give you two solid options for doing so. In the news: Australian man charged for WiFi scam on flights; Airbnb reveals 35,000 complaints about hidden cameras; Linksys routers expose WiFi credentials...

We’re generating a ridiculous amount of data every day. Much of it is highly personal and that’s dangerous. But there are actually several Privacy Enhancing Technologies that may allow us to use this personal data to improve our collective quality of life without ruining the privacy of the data subjects. I’ll be discussing these PETs with Irene Knapp who spent five years working in the privacy department at Google. I will also spend a good bit of time asking them about what it’s like working at ...

We’ve talked about how to backup your local device data and how to back up data that is primarily stored in the cloud. But there’s a lot of important, irreplaceable data we take for granted: data owned by others. This might be shared online photo albums, cloud document collaborations, eBooks and other digital media, and even websites you frequently rely on. Today we’ll talk about how you can make local copies of these files in case they should ever go offline. In other news: European politician...

Every day, we generate tons of digital exhaust: our web browsing, GPS location, online and in-store purchases, emails and messages, social media posts and feed viewing habits, and much, much more. Online marketers and data brokers have been living off these breadcrumbs for years. The intelligence and law enforcement agencies have found this data to be incredibly revealing, and they can buy most of this data on the open market without requiring any sort of warrant – and they have. This has import...

Until recently, most of our important data lived primarily on our devices. Backing up that data often meant choosing a cloud backup service. But today, many of our most important photos and files are actually stored in the cloud. While cloud servers are supposed to be more robust than home computers with flaky hard drives and smartphones that get lost or stolen, it also means that someone else is in control of that data. Cloud services go offline, get bought out or even shut down. We now need to...

Encrypted communications are important for everyone, even if you have nothing to hide. But they’re also important when you’re trying to hide global criminal operations. Drug smugglers and money launderers have special needs when it comes to secure messaging. Several phone companies were created to address this market. Unfortunately for the criminals, the most popular one – Anom – was secretly run by the FBI. Today Joseph Cox from 404 Media will tell us about this astoundingly audacious sting ope...

Most major social media platforms are a hot mess. Your feed is filled with tons of crap you never asked to see and your data is mined mercilessly to serve you targeted ads. The promise of having a place to trade interesting posts with friends and family is now muddied up with sponsored content chosen by hidden algorithms optimized to keep you scrolling. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve found something much better, and I’m inviting you to come join me. In other news: Ticketmaster breach leak...

Our privacy has never been more threatened. While some of us are vaguely aware of this, most of the rampant data collection and sharing is completely opaque. And the consequences are more dire than most of us realize. We can’t afford to be complacent. We need to push back, to ask questions, and make better choices. Privacy-respecting apps and services do exist today. Making a deliberate and overt decision to use them will force the market (and our elected representatives) to take notice. My gues...

Security experts talk at length about how to choose a good password – but we don’t often talk about how to choose a good PIN code. A recent analysis by a researcher shows popular patterns humans use when choosing PIN codes, and therefore what you should avoid doing. In the news: MediSecure e-Rx firm hit by data breach; CISA warns of active D-Link router exploit; a couple cases of insecure APIs being abused; 53k Nissan employees’ SSN’s leaked; new macOS malware called Cuckoo; Ascension Healthcar...

Russia has been hacking Ukraine for at least a decade now, but since the invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, the cyber war has changed. Instead of being a tactical element, cyber war is now a full-fledged strategic aspect of the conflict, on both sides. At the outset, Ukraine put out an official call to enlist cyber warriors from around the globe to their cause in what’s been called the IT Army of Ukraine. Today we’ll look at how this group was formed, how it operates, and what we should al...

Google’s Chrome browser has dominated the planet – both on desktop computers and mobile devices. Furthermore, many other popular web browsers are actually based on the same Google-made Chromium browser engine, including Microsoft Edge and Brave Browser. This gives Google an inordinate amount of influence on web standards, in particular preventing better privacy protections. We need to support privacy-forward alternatives lest they disappear. In other news: US passes expanded mass surveillance p...

AI has been grabbing all the tech headlines, but cryptocurrency is still innovating and changing. One of the primary goals of cryptocurrency was to be decentralized and therefore not controlled by governments like fiat currency. That is about to change. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is a new type of cryptocurrency that is created and governed by nation states, which comes with serious implications for privacy and global economics. Thankfully I’ve got cryptocurrency expert Seth for Privacy...

You’ve heard people like me recommend this for years. It’s time to just do it: freeze your credit report. There are really no downsides at this point. For example, it’s now free everywhere in the US, by law. It’s also free to temporarily “thaw” your credit. And it’s gotten a lot easier to do, too. Freezing your credit is your main defense against financial identity theft. And with the sheer number of data breaches (like the recent massive AT&T leak), the personal information needed to commit ide...

There’s a lot of nasty stuff online – things we would prefer our kids not see, at least not until they’re mature enough to handle it. Our elected representatives have proposed various regulations to try to protect kids online, and while this is obviously a laudable goal, the devil is always in the details. Many of the proposed solutions have serious negative consequences for both kids and adults, chilling free speech and blocking useful content. I’ll discuss the latest iteration of these propose...

Today I answer some of the most interesting listener questions from the past several months, including: how to do you get SMS 2FA codes while traveling abroad; should I periodically change all my passwords; how do hackers attack IoT devices inside my home network; can a website fingerprint me based on a hardware security key; can you recommend an email client that protects your privacy; if I give my IoT device permission to see my local network, does that include the guest network; how to hacker...

Today I talk with Justin and Jodi Daniels about that state of privacy today, how we can help consumers and companies better understand the importance of privacy and security, and how companies are dealing with these aspects internally. We talk about the state of privacy regulations (or the lack thereof), why companies are failing to protect their customers, and what we can do about that. Justin and Jodi host a podcast together called She Said Privacy, He Said Security. They’ve also co-written a...

Passwords, two-factor authentication and even passkeys don’t matter if you can access someone’s account by answering three simple account recovery questions. Also, just about every account today has a way to reset your password, no matter how strong it is, if you can gain access to someone’s email account. Until we can remove these weak links, it doesn’t matter how secure our regular authentication schemes are. In the news: old A&T breach data is making the rounds; Apple Silicon chips have a se...

The United States has no general data privacy laws. However, we do have some sector-specific regulations, including HIPAA for health data. But there are many misconceptions about HIPAA. For example, the “P” in HIPAA does not stand for Privacy – it stands for Portability. So, what information does HIPAA cover? Which healthcare and related service providers are governed by HIPAA? And most importantly, what can you do to protect your medical and health data? Today we’ll dive deep into this subject ...

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a fantastic way to improve the security of your online accounts. However, if you lose access to the device containing your authenticator app, you may lose access to your 2FA-protected accounts. You need to backup the seed codes used to set up each account. I’ll give you several methods for doing this. In the news: FBI uses smartphone push notifications to track down criminals; Roku TVs block all access until users consent to force arbitration; cheap video door...

With the rise of IoT and tracking technologies (both online and in the real word), we are generating staggering amounts of highly personal information. This massive trove of juicy data has drawn the attention of several interested parties outside the realm of consumer marketing. Like chum in the water, it’s created a feeding frenzy from data aggregators as well as from law enforcement and intelligence agencies, both foreign and domestic. The journalists at 404 Media have published several blockb...

Artificial Intelligence is the buzzword of the day. Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, there has been a flood of AI-based tools and services. Many tech firms are racing to build AI into their products without considering the consequences, let alone taking the time to build in guardrails for privacy and security. Today, I’ll tell you about some of the risks, how to mitigate them and explain why you should spend some time playing with AI tools so we can understand how they do (and don’t...

Modern cars are chock full of sensors and connected to the internet via built-in cellular modems. That’s a recipe for massive data collection. Last September, Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included team released a blockbuster report how much data our cars were gathering and it was absolutely staggering. According to the hard-to-find privacy policies, your car can collect extremely personal information including precise location, contact lists from your phone, call and message data, and – believe it or n...