Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons Podcast

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 th...

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 m...

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 Thi...

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...

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. Exa...

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 inevi...

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 b...

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 (ne...

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. Y...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for decades, but has only recently begun to fulfill the promise of truly replicating human-like decision making. The Information Age has generated enormous quantities of data and modern technology has given us unprecedented power to ingest and analyze this data. AI systems today control airplanes, financial and insurance systems, and even criminal sente...

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...

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 hi...

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...

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...

Ancestry analysis firm 23andMe has just inked a 4-year, $300M deal to share its DNA samples with the colossal pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. What are they going to do your genetic material? Good question. Did you carefully read and understand your Terms of Service? Sure you did. I’ll tell you how you can ask 23andMe (or Ancestry.com) to discard your samples. In other news, some user...

Last month Australia passed a sweeping surveillance law, quickly and without meaningful debate, called the Assistance and Access Act. Like the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016. this law aims to give authorities unprecedented power to force makers of messaging services to break their software and lie to their users. Danny O’Brien, International Director for the Electronic Frontier...

Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not following you. A new study by Digital Content Next and Vanderbilt University shows just how much and how often Google apps on Android phones are tattling on you. Even an idle phone contacted Google 340 times a day. But can you avoid this by using Apple phones? Not completely. In other news, Microsoft’s Bali project a...

It’s that time of year again – time to make your New Years Resolutions! You know all those really important things I’ve been telling you to do, but you haven’t done? Well, I’m listing out the top ones on today’s show – and challenging each of you to check them off this year! There’s also a lot of news to catch you up on: why the green padlock symbol...

Several US states are trialing programs to replace the venerable plastic driver’s license card with a new smartphone app. Unlike the “dumb” physical cards, the app would always be up to date. One study showed that 77% of all US adults have a smartphone. If you’re an adult under the age of 30, that percentage jumps to 94%. But as our guest, Chad Marlow, explains this is a so...

It’s bad enough that online ads are watching us, but now billboards and other real world ads are watching us, too. Using video cameras and signals from our smart devices, marketers are tailoring their billboards and digital signage based on our appearance and even our identity. Sean O’Brien from Yale Privacy Lab explains how this is done and the significant privacy implications of this...

Marriott reports this week that it has exposed up to 500 million Starwood guests’ data going back as far as 2014. Affected hotels include Sheraton, Westin, W Hotels, Starwood timeshares and more, While it’s still not clear how much data may have been stolen, what is clear is that corporations are still not guarding their data properly. In today’s show, I’ll tell you what sort of customer informati...

Our mobile phones today are chock full of private information and are constantly tattling about our whereabouts and activities. Most phones today have GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, motion detectors, magnetic field detectors, microphones, cameras, and of course cellular radios. Some even have facial recognition built right in. With all this personal data and telemetry information, is it even possible to pr...

The gift-giving season is once again upon us! “Smart” devices make great presents, but you want to make sure that you’re not also giving a gift to the hackers out there! In this special, annual holiday episode, I’ll tell you about some of the best and the worst holiday gifts and accessories, from a security and privacy viewpoint. Thinking about giving someone a DNA analysis kit? You might want to...

Just because the caller ID says it’s the IRS or the Social Security Administration, don’t believe it. It’s almost surely a scammer trying to get your money or information. Government agencies don’t call people to confirm information in their records about you or with threats if you don’t pay up. And the caller ID information you see often has no relation whatsoever to who is actually calling or wh...

Your physical world is governed by many laws and regulations that protect your freedom and privacy. Why should the digital world be any different? Todd Weaver, CEO and Found of Purism, explains how Big Tech managed to write the rules for the digital world and why those rules are at odds with your freedom, security and privacy. But it doesn’t have to be this way. As citizens, we can force those rep...