Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons Podcast

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...

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 impli...

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...

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...

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...

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 an...

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 o...

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? A...

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 t...

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 in...

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 an...

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 inf...

It’s tax time here again in the USA, and therefore it’s also time for tax scams. I’ll explain how to recognize common tax scams, how to respond to them, how to prevent scammers from taking over your IRS account and even filing fraudulent tax returns in your name. In other news: the Mother of All Breaches (MOAB) contains 26 billion records; 23andMe is in trouble after massive data...

Are Macs really safer than PCs? What should you do to make your Mac more secure? How do you know if your Mac has a virus? And how do you know which security apps you can trust? I’ll dig into all of these questions and more today with Mac security guru Patrick Wardle. Patrick Wardle is the founder of the Objective-See Foundation. Having worked at NASA and the NSA, as well as presented at coun...

While every week is Data Privacy Week here at Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons, the rest of the world stops to join us in focusing on how and why to protect your personal data. I’ll give you some of my top privacy tips and refer you to a lot of top privacy resources. In the news: Microsoft executives’ emails are hacked by a nation-state actor; Facebook is gathering even more data wit...

Drones are everywhere today. Cheap and tiny accelerometers, gyroscopes and processors have allowed us to create drones that anyone can afford and everyone can fly. Drones have been used by law enforcement and military forces, as well – for surveillance but also for killing. With the rapid development of AI technologies, what happens when we make these drones autonomous? What are the implicat...

The new year is here! And I’ve got a handful of solid tips for you that you should absolutely plan to accomplish in 2024! I also have a lot of news to catch you up on: 23andMe blames its customers for their data breach; Burger King in Brazil using facial recognition to offer discounts based on how hungover you look; Russian agents hack live webcams to hone in on targets in Ukraine; fake cele...

Data breaches are usually produced by hackers looking for financial gain. Data leaks, on the other hand, are usually published by whistleblowers or perhaps accidentally disclosed via negligence. Journalists today are inundated by such data leaks – to the point where specialized tools and techniques are required to parse through the piles of digital detritus to ascertain the value and import...

Every week, I record a special, private bonus podcast for my patrons. Until today, all of that content was restricted to my supporters. But today I’ve got a sampler platter of some of the best snippets from my bonus Q&A with my interview guests, along with an episode of my more-technical bonus series I call Merlin’s Musings. You’ll hear from Josh Corman (CISA and I Am the Cav...

Today, I dip back into the archives to bring you a classic interview from the first year of this podcast. In Episode 21 (Aug 2017) I interviewed Ladar Levison, the founder of the secure email service Lavabit. He started Lavabit in 2004 as one of the first truly secure, end-to-end encrypted email services focused on the privacy of users, almost ten years before Proton Mail launched. But when the FB...

I’ve culled through the podcasts from the last year and put together an hour’s worth of the best content! Here’s a nice little charcuterie sampler of the top interview segments from 2023. Episode Links Ep347 (Oct 16) What’s Your Threat Model? https://podcast.firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2023/10/16/whats-your-threat-model/   Ep342 (Sep 18) Your Face Belongs to Us https://podc...

We here in the US like to believe that we’re the gold standard for democracy. And yet, in recent years, much of the electorate has lost faith in the outcome of our elections. Many security researchers have found concerning vulnerabilities in our voting systems, and yet we have no evidence that those vulnerabilities have actually been exploited. Many people believe that people are voting mult...

Your online account credentials have two parts: a user name and a password. Today, most online providers force you to use your email address for your user name. This gives the service provider a guaranteed way to contact (and spam) their users, but it also means that bad guys know half of all your credentials and data brokers have a unique ID to track you across all your accounts. Today I’ll...

City governments are relying more and more on a vast network of sensors to tell them what’s going on: stop light cameras, gunshot detectors, air quality sensors, license plate readers, automated toll booths, and much more. While these technologies can help the powers that be allocate precious resources and gain helpful insights, they can also lead to over-policing, chilling of free speech an...

The holiday gift-giving season is upon us – and therefore it’s time for my annual guide on the best and worst gifts for your loved ones, at least in terms of security and privacy. There are some perennial favs on the nice and naughty lists, but there are some newcomers, as well. And I’ve got some top tips for how to shop for privacy-respecting, security-protecting products! I&#82...