What are the answers? What kinds of things should go into a privacy bill of rights? This book doesn’t have those answers. However, there are at least two things that I would like to convince people of.

One: you should have the ability to make a profit from your data when it’s collected and put to commercial use.

Two: Terms of Service contracts should be explicit and clear about who is getting your data, what they’re going to do with it, and who the data is going to be shared with. In this episode, I’ll talk more about those two points.

Highlights of this episode include:

• Companies who collect and sell your data make a profit. Why shouldn’t you be included in that?
• You should have the ability to pay social media sites for an ad-free experience
• Why you don’t really have a choice when it comes to Terms of Service contracts
• Terms of Service that require you to agree to convoluted terms to use their services are a form of bullying
• Readers who text the word “sheetrock” to BJ will get a free PDF of his last book, Social Media is Bullshit

Links and Resources:

Text BJ at (646) 331-8341

Email BJ at BJ@BJMendelson.com

To purchase the book, visit YourPrivacyBook.com

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As we’ve learned over the course of this book, privacy really hasn’t existed since 1917. The question is, what are we going to do about it now? If left to their own devices, companies are going to continue to collect data in creepy ways, and data breaches are going to occur due to poor security. In this episode, I’ll talk about what we can do going forward, as well as about some good news.

Highlights of today’s episode include:

• Changes to Apple’s Safari browser
• Changes to Google Chrome
• The increased availability of tools you can use to protect yourself
• The section on privacy in Washington’s state constitution
• Privacy laws in New York
• How state attorney generals can help enforce privacy laws
• How grassroots organizing can help
• How the threat of changes at the state level could inspire companies to police themselves

Links and resources:

Signal

Tor Browser

To purchase the book, visit YourPrivacyBook.com

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At this point, you may be asking yourself whether you have any rights when it comes to privacy online. The answer is complicated. Children under 13 are somewhat protected by COPA (the Child Online Protection Act). Celebrities are somewhat protected because of the value of their images and likenesses. However, everyone else is in murkier territory.

You may also wonder what you can possibly do about protecting data privacy. It’s easy to feel apathetic about this issue, or to think that it’s not a big deal if it doesn’t seem to be affecting your daily life. But if the problems with data security are allowed to go on, they could get much further out of control before anything can be done about them.

Highlights of today’s episode include:

• How state representatives can help get laws on the books to protect your privacy
• How independent or non-profit groups could help oversee companies and hold them accountable for their security
• Organizations that are working to address privacy and data protection issues
• How attitudes toward data security and privacy mirror attitudes toward climate change or voting
• How apathy can allow problems with data security to grow
• What the future may look like if data security issues are not addressed

Links and Resources:

Electronic Privacy Information Center

Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Privacy Coalition

American Civil Liberties Union

cert.gov/">United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team

Federal Trade Commission

To purchase the book, visit YourPrivacyBook.com

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What happens when your data is stolen? This is a question that everyone needs to consider, because the chances are good that it will happen to you eventually. Remember, your data is valuable not just to companies, but also to criminals. In this episode, I’ll talk about what needs to be done to protect your data.

Highlights of this episode include:

• How the EU’s GDPR regulations are a blueprint for how companies could be held responsible for poor security management in the US.
• How lax security is often responsible for hacks and data breaches
• How common it is for ex-employees to be involved in data breaches
• How phishing is often used to pull of serious data breaches
• An explanation of phishing
• What to do if you get hit with a phishing scam
• What can happen if your identifying data is stolen by a criminal
• Why you should take password management seriously

Links and Resources:

Credit Monitoring by Mint

Annual Credit Reports

To purchase the book, visit YourPrivacyBook.com

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How are hackers, like those behind the Sony Pictures hack, or the hackers associated with Anonymous or LulzSec, able to do so much damage? The answer is simple: lax security measures, and a lack of interest in spending money to update security features. It doesn’t help that many people are still not good at creating strong passwords and safeguarding them. In this episode, I’ll touch on some aspects of hackers, security breaches, and how they should be handled.

Highlights of today’s episode include:

• How Sony had a file labeled “Passwords” that enabled the hackers that breached their security to do much more damage than they would have otherwise
• How Sony claimed that they had updated their security prior to the hack
• How Yahoo and Equifax faced no consequences for their security breaches
• What kinds of consequences companies should face for being irresponsible with users’ data
• How Wikileaks ended up publishing the personal emails of the Director of the CIA
• An explanation of the deep web

Links and Resources:

To purchase the book, visit YourPrivacyBook.com

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What does it look like when brick and mortar stores violate your privacy? How can retail stores use information like your phone number or data about how you move through a store? In this episode, I’ll talk about how retail stores are collecting and using data about their customers and give you some tips for how to prevent them from doing this if you don’t want them to.

Highlights of today’s episode include:

• How your phone’s Wifi broadcasts your location and phone number to other Wifi networks
• How stores can use the movements of their customers through the store to help them determine store layouts
• The possibility of stores sending push notifications to customers while they’re shopping – or even before they decide to go to the store
• Why you should consider turning your location settings, Wifi, and Bluetooth off before going shopping

Links and Resources:

To purchase the book, visit YourPrivacyBook.com

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In this bonus episode, B.J. Mendelson interviews Gabriel Weinberg from DuckDuckGo about how you can better protect your privacy online.

Highlights of today’s episode include:

• Gabriel’s tips on how to you can protect your privacy right now
• Why you should care about your privacy
• The benefits of using DuckDuckGo, and other privacy tools, instead of Google products.

Links and Resources:

To purchase the book, visit YourPrivacyBook.com

You can visit DuckDuckGo here.

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Online shopping is often blamed for killing brick and mortar retail. It’s true that a lot of brick and mortar stores are closing. But is online shopping really what’s causing them to struggle? In this episode, I’ll talk about what’s really causing the decline of brick and mortar stores, and how some of them are adopting the practices of tech companies.

Highlights of today’s episode include:

• Real statistics about online shopping vs. in-person shopping
• How and why the media contributes to the misconception that online shopping is replacing retail
• How erosion of the middle class, distribution pipelines, and other factors are contributing to the decline of brick and mortar retail stores
• Strategies that some stores are using to track and gather data on customers
• The importance of building relationships that rely on factors other than data to ensure customer loyalty

Links and Resources:

To purchase the book, visit YourPrivacyBook.com

This podcast is powered by PodcastMotor

When companies collect data in creepy ways, there’s often a backlash from media or consumers. When this happens, the company will usually back off, but they will usually try again at a later point once the backlash has died down. Why? Because data is valuable to their advertisers and investors. In this episode, I’ll talk about the ways that companies are incentivized to collect data in creepy ways.

Highlights of Today’s Episode:

• How Instagram changed their Terms of Service to allow themselves to sell users photos, usernames, and other data, with no compensation to the users
• How PayPal tried to find a way around telemarketing regulations, by changing their TOS to allow them to spam emails and phone numbers of users
• How Spotify attempted to change their TOS to allow them to access everything on your device and track your location
• The pattern of companies backing off when media or consumers call them on their behavior
• Why it’s not true that tech companies just have a different sense of privacy than their users do

Links and Resources:

To purchase the book, visit YourPrivacyBook.com

This podcast is powered by PodcastMotor

One problem with the practice of companies engaging in creepy behavior to collect data is that it’s never just one company, so it’s not enough just to identify the creeps and avoid them.

Smaller companies tend to imitate larger companies, hoping to achieve the same success. So, when small companies observe larger companies collecting data in creepy ways, they’ll follow suit. In this episode, I’ll talk about some of these creepy activities.

Highlights of today’s episode:

• Why companies change their Terms of Service frequently
• How AOL used to collect and sell data without permission
• How Google collected data from their street view vans, then claimed that it was an accident
• How the app Foursquare tracked users even when they weren’t using the app
• How Uber tracked customers even after they finished their ride

Links and Resources:

To purchase the book, visit YourPrivacyBook.com

This podcast is powered by PodcastMotor