Social Media companies have no real incentive to reduce the vitriol that fills their servers. The fact is that content that makes people angry is what drives engagement... and engagement means advertising revenue. It also makes a profitable hunting ground for cybercriminals. But that might not be the case over the next few years. Joe Basques and Lou Covey sit down to consider the sea change that is coming for social content. They look at the social media companies claim they are nothing more than telecommunication companies and court cases that may change how libel laws are applied.

Biometrics is something of a broad topic because it relates to any piece of information about you connected to your body that can be used to identify you. That includes fingerprints, DNA, eyes, voice, faces, and even medical and dental records. As a result, biometrics are a hub for personal security, identity theft and government surveillance. Protecting that stuff is kind of important. The problem is that companies tend to keep their data in just one or two places and that makes it attractive to criminals. The bigger it is the bigger the potential payday.

Personal data isn’t just about your name, phone number, credit cards and social security numbers. It’s also about your online habits. All that stuff is recorded, filed and analyzed by various companies, including your employers. That data can identify who you are and are as much a part of your digital identity as your user name and password. In fact, that data might be more accurate than your password. But whether a company is employing that kind of protection is a question that needs asking.

This was one of the scarier interviews I’ve done on this podcast. I’m talking with Paul Smith, country manager for Sweeft Digital, a UK agency helping companies manage their digital presence, including compliance with UK and Europe privacy regulations in the UK and Europe. He confirmed many of the concerns I have about the US versions of the GDPR, which do more to regulate whether users can stop companies from selling personal data than they do the companies collecting it. Bottom line is, each of us has to take care of ourselves. Our governments are not going to.

Welcome to the first episode of our fifth season and the first of 2022. Last year ended in a flurry of announcements, disasters, progress and new technology designed to keep us more secure and our last two interviews tied well into each other. We talked separately with Matt Morris, CISO at 1898 & Company, and Will Ruby, COO of FortifyIQ, and found that what Matt predicts is, in essence, the business model of Fortify IQ. So we glued them together. Patrick Boch handled the talk with Matt and Lou Covey spoke with Will at a live event, fully masked, in December (hence the muffled voices). Altogether we think this is a positive way to start the new season. Happy New Year.

At the 58th annual Design Automation Conference in San Francisco, it seemed, at long last that the semiconductor industry is considering making their products secure, if only because they are being forced to. Standards organizations, not the least being the National Institute of Science and Technology, are creating mandatory minimums forcing hardware companies to force their chip suppliers to consider closing gaping holes before they go to manufacturing rather than create patches. At one of the technical sessions, your reporter asked a question that got the conversation going in a direction we all need to hear. And so we end our fourth season of Crucial Tech. See you in the new year.

A few weeks ago we did a video demonstration of the Fletch.ai on the Cyber Protection Magazine Youtube channel, but wanted to share just the audio portion in this week's podcast because it's a solid tech gift for Christmas. Check it out.

We interviewed Jen Caltrider of the Mozilla Foundation about the fifth annual Privacy Not Included list the foundation publishes annually and if you are thinking of buying some electronics as gifts or for yourself, you might think about referring to the list at www.privacynotincluded.org. Let us know if you ever consider privacy features when you are gift shopping.

For the past five years, the Mozilla Foundation has published reviews of products rated on their relative privacy aspects. The least private products are labelled "Very, Very creepy. We interviewed Jen Caltrider, Mozilla's lead in their Privacy Not Included Division and found what makes a product or service creepy. Hint: the better the price, the creepier it becomes.

Quantum computing is one of those technologies that causes hyperbole, confusion, and concern. A lot of the discussion is not much more than wishful thinking or uninformed fear. For most people, it will not affect them in their lifetime. That’s not to say it isn’t something to completely ignore.

We talked to Alan Grau, VP of business development for the startup company PQShield in this week’s episode of Crucial Tech to get an overview of where we are in quantum security and what their company has to offer.