Digital Self-Defense

Episode summary Master Keys means identifying which parts of your digital life unlock the most doors, then protecting them first and best. We've talked a lot about email as a Master Key, but there are many others. One of the most important is your password manager. In many ways, it is just as important as your email account, though for different reasons. Despite its importance, most people don't g...

Episode summary Confident Awareness means knowing which threats matter most to you and learning how to face them with confidence. Confident Awareness includes learning about the potential threats you may face, understanding your options for defending against them, and taking time to think about which threats are most relevant to you. It's also a mindset. For many, this is the greatest obstacle the...

Helpful episodes to listen to first Episode 4: Protection Partners Episode summary Protection Partners means building habits that help you pause and check with trusted people before making important digital decisions. The most fundamental, universal and powerful defenses against digital threats are humans you can trust. That has always been true, but recent advances in AI have raised the stakes in...

Episode summary Today is our first episode under the new name of the podcast: Digital Self-Defense. This isn't just a rebrand, though. The new name reflects how much my approach to teaching online safety has evolved. Along with the new name, I want to introduce our new focus: 3 fundamental Safety Skills. Each episode will focus on one Safety Skill - a new way to learn it, apply it, or think about...

Episode summary Beginning with our next episode, we are renaming the podcast to "Digital Self-Defense." Here’s the quick story behind the change. When I started this business three years ago, I knew I wanted to teach people how to stay safe online. What I didn’t know yet was the fastest, clearest, and most effective way to help people get there. So over the past few years, I’ve been experimenting...

Episode summary A forwarding alias is an email address that passes along email to your real email address without the original sender ever knowing what that email is. They usually allow you to reply, with the email coming from your alias also, thus providing privacy in both directions. Unlike burner aliases, you will need to create an account in order to start creating forwarding aliases. One soli...

Episode summary Burner aliases are short lived. You don't have to register an account to create one, or share any personal information. Some of the services that provide burner aliases automatically delete the alias after as little as 10 minutes. This is a great security and privacy feature. I mostly recommend burner aliases for cases where you want to receive only a single email, and nothing supe...

Episode summary There are three types of email aliases. They each work quite differently but share the same purpose: to avoid exposing your real email address to abuse. The first type is a burner alias. These are very short lived email aliases, often used for receiving just a single email. The second type is a forwarding alias. These stay around for as long as you need them, but can be deleted at...

Episode summary Email has a lot of flaws. One of the biggest is that anybody can send you an email without your permission. They don't have to know you - they just need to discover your email address - by any means. Email aliases can't directly fix this flaw, but they can do a lot to help mitigate the problems it causes. The idea of an email alias is simple. It's an email address that will deliver...

Helpful episodes to listen to first Episode 96: Why Your Email Account Should Only Be For Email Episode summary They say pick your battles. Well, I'm picking mine. I want you to ditch Gmail. Maybe you're holding back because you think that means giving up Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Photos, or some other Google service. If this is you, I have great news. I promise: you can ditch Gmail, but k...

Episode summary Proton provides a lot of the same services as Google, but with a privacy focus. From the beginning, their core values have been privacy and security. They offer a great, useful free version for many of their products. For full functionality, a paid subscription is required. They started with email (Proton Mail), and have expanded to other core services comparable to what is offered...

Episode summary My top choice for email app, both on my phone and my laptop, is the native Fastmail app. This app only works though if Fastmail is your email provider - which I highly recommend. I have been using Fastmail as my primary email account since 2013. I also have several gmail accounts and for them, I use the gmail app on my phone, and Mimestream on my laptop. It's a strange sounding nam...

Episode summary I've talked about it endlessly. I will keep doing so. Your email account is vital to protect. But most people are missing a simple and powerful layer of protection for their email account: using an app to check email instead of the browser. Virtually everyone uses an app to check email on their phone - that's a good start. But most people use a browser when they check their email o...

Episode summary What do I mean when I say your home network is compromised? I mean that one of the devices in your home has been taken over by a hacker without you knowing it. It could be any device that connects to the internet, not just your phone or laptop. Cameras, doorbells, routers, appliances, and smart TVs are all valuable targets. There's a tool that can help figure out if this has happen...

Episode summary There is a simple feature that can help you greatly in the fight against phishing. Yet all the email providers I've checked, aside from Fastmail, lack this feature. What is the feature? The ability to route emails you receive based on whether the sender is a known contact. Here’s how you use it: 1 - Set up a rule to route all email from unknown senders to an “Unknown Sender” folder...

Episode summary I believe your email account should only be for email. Instead, most free email providers turn your email account into an account for all their services. Google is probably the worst for this. Your Gmail account is actually a Google account that gives you access to Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Photos, Google Chat, YouTube, and much more. On top of that, many websites allow you...

Episode summary Blocking all spam before we see it is tough. Email providers are reluctant to block it entirely, in case they are wrong and it’s not spam. The compromise is that they send it to the Spam or Junk folder, where it can be recovered. As the reader of that email, though, it’s often easy for us to identify it as spam and say, "I never want to receive email from this sender again." This i...

Episode summary You have an email account, but how did you pick your email provider? Do you use Gmail simply because that’s what everyone you know uses? I want your choice of email provider to be intentional, not accidental. Today is the first in a series of episodes where we’ll examine my most important considerations when picking an email provider. Some will be "micro" considerations: specific,...

Episode summary When I choose a digital or tech service, I look for a company with a clear focus that aligns with mine. For each option, ask yourself: what’s the one thing this company does really well? Take Gmail, the most widely used email provider. If you ask what Google’s "one thing" is, some people might say email - but I’d argue most would say "search." For me, I see it as building the inter...

Episode summary When you join the email workshop, you will be making some decisions. The first two are simple but important: which email provider you’ll use, and which email client. Your email provider is the company that gives you an inbox and stores your messages on their servers. The big ones are Google (Gmail), Microsoft (Outlook, Hotmail, Live), Yahoo, and Apple (iCloud). An email client is t...

Episode summary Most people I know have email inboxes that are overflowing. I can’t count how many times someone has proudly (or sheepishly) shown me their phone with hundreds - sometimes thousands - of unread emails piled up. That would drive me comletely insane. For me, ending most days with an empty inbox isn’t just satisfying - it’s also a big security win. That’s why we’re tackling it in the...

Episode summary Privacy is a popular buzzword these days, but not one you have heard a ton about from me. Especially with email. Mostly because the email system we all depend on was not built for strong privacy. Some companies, like Proton and Tuta, provide encrypted email services. I trust, respect, and am in fact, extremely grateful for their efforts to compensate for such a huge failing in our...

Episode summary This may be the fourth priority in our email workshop, but it’s truly #1 in importance: protecting your email account from takeover. Your email is the master key to all your online accounts. If you want to keep anything secure, you have to start here. The good news? It doesn’t take much. The first step is simple, but it’s something most people still don’t do: use a unique password....

Helpful episodes to listen to first Even a Security Expert Can Get Phished Episode summary Today's priority for our email workshop is learning how to dodge the phishers. Too often the only advice we hear is: don't click the wrong thing. While true, that also means living in a state of what Mad-Eye Moody calls constant vigilance! That sounds exhausting. The real problem is that email was never desi...

Helpful episodes to listen to first 10 Spam Per Year Episode summary The second priority of our email workshop is eliminating spam. It’s one of the biggest sources of email stress -- see episode 86 for why this matters so much. Cutting out spam also removes most phishing attempts before they ever reach you. Yet many people see spam like death and taxes: unavoidable. I’m here to tell you that spam...