Tech Tho(ugh)ts

US Code Section.. what?? ‘Isn’t this a tech show?’ It is, which is why we’ve chosen to take this week for a discussion on tech laws that are threatening the very foundation of the internet as we know it.

Sources:

US Code Section 230 (Part of Communications Decent Act of 1996/Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996):

• Cornell Legal Information Institute, 47 U.S. Code § 230 – Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

FOSTA-SESTA:

• Vox, 2018 July 2, ‘A new law intended to curb sex trafficking threatens the future of the internet as we know it’
• Slate, 2018 April 27, ‘After Backpage’
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 2020 June 1, ‘Sex Worker Rights Advocates Raise the Alarms about EARN IT‘

Tumblr:

• Business Insider, 2019 December 20, ‘A year after Tumblr’s porn ban, some users are still struggling to rebuild their communities and sense of belonging’
• The Verge, 2019 August 12, ‘Verizon is selling Tumblr to WordPress’ owner’

COPPA & Youtube/Google:

• Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 2019 November 22, ‘YouTube channel owners: Is your content directed to children?

EARN IT Act:

• Library of Congress, S.3398 – EARN IT Act of 2020
• Stanford (The Center for Internet and Society), 2020 March 5, ‘The EARN IT Act Is Here. Surprise, It’s Still Bad News.’
• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 2020 June 30, ‘The EARN IT Act is a Disaster for Online Speech and Privacy, Especially for the LGBTQ and Sex Worker Communities‘

Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act – We did not get to this as news for it released after the episode was recorded. It’s still important.

• Tutanova, 2020 June 30, ‘New anti-encryption bill worse than EARN IT. Act now to stop both.’

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Website: https://breadnet.xyz/podcast/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/techthoughtspodcast/

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Encryption! You’ve more than likely heard about it before in marketing, but what is it? We keep mentioning it, so now it’s time to finally give an explanation. Learn how encryption keeps your digital information safe!

Sources:

Symmetric Encryption:

• Cryptomathic, 2019 January 18, ‘Symmetric Key Encryption – why, where and how it’s used for banking’

Sharing Keys Over Insecure Mediums:

• Comparitech, 2019 March 15, ‘What is the Diffie–Hellman key exchange and how does it work?‘

RSA Algorithm:

• Doctrina, 2012 May 26, ‘How RSA Works, With Examples

TLS Handshake (How TLS Works):

• Cloudflare, What Happens in a TLS Handshake

How Signal Works:

• Signal, Documentation

We had mentioned we’re going to talk about the EARN IT Act, but here’s a direct link to it’s text for now:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3398/text

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Website: https://breadnet.xyz/podcast/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/techthoughtspodcast/

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Password requires a minimum of eight (8) characters in length, at least one (1) Uppercase letter, (1) lowercase letter, (1) digit, (1) special character… but why? Is it really that easy to break in? Find out that the answer is yes, and what you can do to keep safe and organized.

Sources:
How easily some passwords can be cracked:

SHA CPU Instructions:

• Wikipedia, Intel SHA Extensions

• Forbes, 2019 September 16, ‘Google Warns LastPass Users Were Exposed To ‘Last Password’ Credential Leak’

KeePass:

• KeePass Website
• European Commission’s Free and Open Source Software Auditing (EU-FOSSA 1) [Security Audit for KeePass Source Code]

• Sucuri, 2020 January 1, ‘Why 2FA SMS is a Bad Idea’

Hardware Keys/Tokens:

• Science Direct, Hardware Token

U2F:

• Internet Engineering Task Force Paper, ‘TOTP: Time-Based One-Time Password Algorithm’

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Website: https://breadnet.xyz/podcast/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/techthoughtspodcast/

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We’ve explained why Google Chrome probably isn’t your best browser choice, so now we’ll guide you into switching to a browser that focuses on privacy (hint hint: it’s Firefox).

Extensions Mentioned:

• (TOS;dr) Terms of Service, Didn’t Read
• Canvas Defender

• Containers
  • Facebook Container
  • Google Container (with Integrations)
  • Amazon Container
  • Twitter Container

• Not mentioned, but useful
  • uBlock Origin (lightweight adblocker)
  • DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials (sets some of the episode-mentioned preferences automatically + switches your default search engine to DuckDuckGo)
  • Decentraleyes
    

Sources:
YouTube Using Deprecated API:
CNET, 2018 July 26, ‘Mozilla engineer says Google slowed YouTube down on non-Chrome browsers’

‘Canvas Fingerprinting’:
BrowserLeaks, Canvas Fingerprinting Test Page

‘First Party Isolate’ Functionality:
gHacks, 2020 April 17, ‘Mozilla adds Dynamic First Party Isolation option to Firefox 77’

Firefox Sync’s Future (in the works):
Mozilla Services Github Repo, ‘Future of Sync blog post’ Issue

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Website: https://breadnet.xyz/podcast/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/techthoughtspodcast/

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Google Chrome, should it really be your first browser choice? This episode we go into some of the reasons that we think it’s probably a little more malicious than you may think. This is our first two parter, stay tuned for the conclusion!

Sources are displayed below:
AMP:

• The Register, 2018 Sept. 7, ‘Official: Google Chrome 69 kills off the World Wide Web (in URLs)’
• Android Police, 2020 June 12, ‘Google resumes its senseless attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 85’
• The Register, 2017 May 19, ‘Kill Google AMP before it kills the web‘

Chrome vs. Firefox Cookie Info:

• The Washington Post, 2019 June 21, ‘Goodbye, Chrome: Google’s Web browser has become spy software’

.webm:

• The Guardian, 2011 March 4, ‘US Justice Department reportedly investigating MPEG LA over VP8 threats’
• Info World, 2010 May 28, ‘Google’s WebM license could undermine the meaning of ‘open source”

Browser Marketshare:
https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx

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Website: https://breadnet.xyz/podcast/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/techthoughtspodcast/

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…absolutely no one! (but we’re looking to change that ;p)
You’ve heard of VPNs, but what exactly are they? Vacant Panini Nutribullets? Voracious Potato Nets? Virtual Private… Nets?
Tune in to learn about what they are, why to use them, and what to look out for when picking one.

For more information on picking VPNs:
https://thatoneprivacysite.net/

This resource is no longer valid, as they have been bought out.

Website: https://breadnet.xyz/podcast/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/techthoughtspodcast/

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A complete introduction to the show! Learn why we chose the Privacy Arc for our first season.
This episode features: Anecdotes, A Few Short Stories, Dramatic Re-Enactment, & Snark.

Website: https://breadnet.xyz/podcast/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/techthoughtspodcast/

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An introduction to the show, and what to expect from it.

Website: https://breadnet.xyz/podcast/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/techthoughtspodcast/

Opening Music: Another World by BETTOGH