Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons Podcast

Protecting your privacy today is hard. It's really hard. It's too hard. Every 'smart' device you own is tattling on you, constantly, to dozens of companies. Your phone, your tablet, your PC, your TV, your streaming box, your DVR, your smart thermostat, your internet-connected medical devices... The list goes on and it gets longer every day. What if you could not only see all these illicit communications but also block them all, in one feel swoop? In part one of my interview with Richard Stokes, this former AdTech CEO will reveal what finally caused him to not only leave the industry but to develop a promising new product that puts users back in control of their privacy.

Richard is the CEO and founder of Winston Privacy. Previously, he was the founder of AdGooroo.com, one of the first digital market research services, and later became the Global Head of Innovation for Kantar Media. He founded Winston Privacy in response to the increasing abuses of privacy taking place in the AdTech industry. Additionally, he's the author of "The Ultimate Guide to Pay-Per-Click Advertising". He has a Computer Science degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and an MBA from Kellogg / Northwestern University.

Further Info:

Winston Privacy: https://winstonprivacy.com/Pre-Order: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/winston-take-back-control-of-your-online-privacy#/

The US government is once again looking to break or hobble encrypted communications in the name of national security and law enforcement. They claim that we're "going dark" - that modern end-to-end encryption used in apps like Signal and Wickr that protect user privacy are preventing them from keeping us safe and bringing the bad guys to justice. Cryptographers and technology companies have soundly squashed the idea of putting "backdoors" in these systems that supposedly only the "good guys" can go through. But now these agencies have come up with a proposal that neatly sidesteps these issues: they simply want to be added as another "end" to the end-to-end scrambled session. A "ghost" in the chat, and BCC that neither of the original participants are made aware of. But this has several problems, as well.

In other news, FigLeaf has conducted a survey of users about online privacy that shows major shifts in thinking since just before the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal; "pre-saving" new releases on Spotify and other music streaming services is allowing music companies unbelievable access to your personal info; and Mozilla (maker of Firefox) has created a creative tool that let's you fool online advertisers into thinking you're someone completely different.

Why do most VPN apps suck so badly? How do you know which VPN service providers you can trust with your privacy? How is it that our internet service providers know so much about our web surfing habits? Today I explore these questions and more with John Graham-Cumming, the CTO of the internet performance and security company. He will also tell us about a new VPN service coming soon from Cloudflare called Warp that may finally address all of these problems.

John is a computer programmer and author. He studied mathematics and computation at Oxford and stayed for a doctorate in computer security. As a programmer he has worked in Silicon Valley and New York, the UK, Germany, and France. His open source POPFile program won a Jolt Productivity Award in 2004. John is the author of a travel book for scientists published in 2009 called The Geek Atlas.

Further Info:

Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 App: https://1.1.1.1/Cloudflare's Crypto Week Blog: https://blog.cloudflare.com/welcome-to-crypto-week-2019/ Big Brother 2.0: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/big-brother-2-0/

How many of your "smart" devices are smart enough to update their own software? For that matter, how many of them can upgrade at all? It's a good bet that most of them run some flavor of the free and open-source Linux operating system. A nasty bug was just found that affects almost all Linux systems, allowing a simple remote command to bring the system to its knees. There have been other bugs found in Linux and there will be more. If your device's software can't be updated, it will always be vulnerable. I'll go over some basic IoT security tips to mitigate your vulnerability, but in the end, older IoT devices that can't be upgraded should just be pitched.

In other news, Firefox just patched two critical vulnerabilities, Dell's built-in remote assistance software can be remotely hacked, Venmo transactions are still painfully public by default, a Spanish soccer apps turns its fans into unwitting narcs, and Facebook has launched a new cryptocurrency called Libra.

In today's show I have a sobering discussion with the EFF's Eva Galperin about the rise of stalkerware (sometimes called "spouseware"). It's become all too easy for abusive, unscrupulous people to spy on their significant others, tracking their every move, monitoring all their communications. We'll talk about how our phones can be subverted and what measures you can take to prevent it. Eva also provides practical and prudent advice for people who suspect they may be victims of stalkerware.

Eva Galperin is EFF's Director of Cybersecurity. Prior to 2007, when she came to work for EFF, Eva worked in security and IT in Silicon Valley and earned degrees in Political Science and International Relations from SFSU. Her work is primarily focused on providing privacy and security for vulnerable populations around the world. To that end, she has applied the combination of her political science and technical background to everything from organizing EFF's Tor Relay Challenge, to writing privacy and security training materials (including Surveillance Self Defense and the Digital First Aid Kit), and publishing research on malware in Syria, Vietnam, Kazakhstan. When she is not collecting new and exotic malware, she practices aerial circus arts and learning new languages.

Further Info

Surveillance Self Defense: https://ssd.eff.org/EFF Newsletter: https://supporters.eff.org/subscribeDonate to the EFF: https://supporters.eff.org/donate/

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser on the planet by far, used by about two thirds of all web surfers. But Google is an advertising company and ad blockers are a direct threat to their business model. Google is planning to make a highly controversial change to Chrome's plugin framework that would break some popular ad blocking extensions like uBlock Origin, forcing them to use much less effective techniques for blocking ads.

Compare that to Mozilla's Firefox browser, which just announced even more built-in tracking and ad-blocking capabilities - many of which will be on by default. The evidence is clear: Firefox respects your privacy and is giving your more and more tools with which to protect it; Chrome is doing the opposite. It's time to switch to Firefox and ditch Chrome.

In other news, Maine has just signed bill into law which will require internet service providers to get your explicit consent before collecting and selling your web surfing data, Apple has announced several privacy-enhancing features to debut in iOS 13 this fall, and Windows Remote Desktop Services are under attack by hackers.

Further Info:

Patch your old Windows Systems Now! https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/a-worrisome-windows-worm/Switch from Google Chrome to Firefox: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/its-time-switch-to-firefox/Firefox's content blocking settings: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking

Is it possible to hide your tracks online? Is it even worth the effort to try? How do you know which companies, products and services you can trust? Is government regulation the answer? We'll address all of these questions today in part 2 of my interview with David Ruiz. David will give you several great resources for getting more informed and also for getting more involved in the fight for privacy.

David Ruiz is a pro-privacy, pro-security writer for Malwarebytes Labs, where he covers online privacy, legislation, and the interplay between technology and the law.

Further Info

Who Has Your Back? https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2018Privacy Not Included: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/Terms of Service; Didn't Read: https://tosdr.org/Malwarebytes poll on privacy: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2019/03/labs-survey-finds-privacy-concerns-distrust-of-social-media-rampant-with-all-age-groups/Top 6 Takeaways from poll: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/101/2019/05/the-top-six-takeaways-for-user-privacy/Help me to help you! https://www.patreon.com/FirewallsDontStopDragons

In January of this year, Malwarebytes (a world-class antivirus software maker) conducted a massive poll on privacy that included 4000 people from 66 different countries. On today's show, I will delve into the key takeaways from this poll and some rather (pleasantly) surprising results. (Tune in next week for part 2.)

David Ruiz is a pro-privacy, pro-security writer for Malwarebytes Labs, where he covers online privacy, legislation, and the interplay between technology and the law.

Further Info

Malwarebytes poll on privacy: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2019/03/labs-survey-finds-privacy-concerns-distrust-of-social-media-rampant-with-all-age-groups/Top 6 Takeaways from poll: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/101/2019/05/the-top-six-takeaways-for-user-privacy/

It shouldn't surprise you to learn that Google can read your Gmail. You may even realize that Google is scanning your emails for things like trip itineraries, which allows them to automatically add flights and hotel reservations to your Google Calendar, for example. But you may not realize how much other juicy info is there to be mined, like online purchases. Every email receipt you've received since you've had your Gmail account has almost surely been parsed and indexed. In today's show, I'll tell you how you can view this history and even delete it (painful as it may be).

In other news, an FCC commissioner has released an update on the selling of location data by cell phone providers, San Francisco is poised to become the first major US city to ban the government use of facial recognition systems, and many popular games have been found to give away tons of user data.

Further Info

Check your Google purchase history: https://myaccount.google.com/purchases

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes makes a heartfelt and cogent argument for breaking up the world's dominant social media company, Facebook. The litmus test for the US Government has focused too much on impact to consumer pricing, which has little to do with "free" services such as Facebook. It's time to also consider social and consumer impact.

In other news, a photo storage service has been caught using your images to train facial recognition systems without proper disclosure, Google has unveiled plans to allow users to auto-delete certain sensitive user data after a specified number of months, and Facebook has cranked up the creepy factor by encouraging you to identity up to nine of your friends that you are secretly crushing on.

Further Info

New York Times Privacy Project: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/opinion/google-sundar-pichai-privacy.htmlIt's Time to Break Up Facebook: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opinion/sunday/chris-hughes-facebook-zuckerberg.htmlFirewalls Don't Stop Dragons links & errata: https://github.com/Apress/firewalls-dont-stop-dragons