95: How precisely to protect your data! Hear from the world’s leading expert on data security,...

Welcome to the Mutually Amazing Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Domitrz, with the Center for Respect. The episode you're about to listen to was recorded when this show used to be called the Respect Podcast, so you might hear that mentioned during this episode. Well, let's get to the show. I am so excited about this week's guest. He is a Dear and close friend. He's also a role model for me as a parent and as a human being. And he is a leading cybersecurity and digital privacy expert, one of the leading experts in the world. He's also an author and a Hall of Fame keynote speaker. John deals with respect every day, respect for security and the privacy of the critical data inside of our organizations and our homes, from firewalls to Facebook to Amazon Alexa, two-factor authentication, which we're going to get into today. Data security is all about respect. John's going to share that with us, but I want you to meet him right now. That is John Sileo. John, thank you so much for joining us.

Mike, it's really good to be here. Thanks.

Absolutely. Well, I want to dive right in because you are the person in the world when it comes to talking about this, about making good choices. And I want to start off with the most obvious question.

How does respect play into the everyday person who's listening's life when it comes to our data, Gosh, I think, you know, having kind of failed at respecting it properly, of, you know, of taking care of data and what it defines about us, respect is about understanding this issue that we have got with identity theft, cybersecurity, privacy before it happens to us. And I unfortunately did not. know that, did not do that, and had a couple of difficult situations because of it. And, you know, really my respect came out— I don't know how often you find this with your guests, but my respect came out of failure to respect. And they were hard-won lessons.

Well, and let's go there, Jon, because for those listeners who haven't heard you before with me, it's an incredibly powerful story. So, can you back up and give people what lesson you're referring to? What happened that made you look at your entire data in your life completely differently?

Yeah. So, it's kind of a 2-part story quickly. One is way back in the time when we used to still throw out our trash and documents, physically throw it out without shredding it. I did exactly that after a real estate purchase, buying a new home. And threw out copies, I guess, of the mortgage documents. And this woman, Rosemary Serrano, went and rummaged through our garbage, pulled out everything she needed to steal my identity, my social, banking information, et cetera. And she actually bought a home across country in Boca Raton, Florida. We live in Denver. Bought a home in my name and on my credit. And then spent down our bank account and defaulted on the loan and left me with bankruptcy, in essence. And that was kind of the first brush that I had with, hey, this stuff is— this can take literally your life savings away. It took hundreds of hours of recovery. It was embarrassing. And I'd say that I started in that, I started to respect the power of our personal information. But I didn't, I didn't make it all the way there. What I didn't do was I didn't kind of evolve that into, uh, my business, my company. So—

Yeah, because this goes a whole nother route here in a moment, right? Because right now we're talking a personal life situation that took place, that took, that took you down a horrible experience. And then the, then the business. And then for those who aren't aware, you had a very successful business. It wasn't like, oh, I had a little thing and I lost a little bit. You had a long-standing, very successful family business.

Yeah, it was a family business that, that because it was a computer company and, and that was dying at the time because of big box stores. And so I morphed it into a, uh, an application company. Essentially, we provided accounting over the internet. Now, this was in, uh, like 1999, 2000. So this was early on in you know, what we now call the cloud computing or the app computing game. And in that process, I brought in a business partner, my— frankly, my best friend, my rock climbing partner. And we had this incredibly successful business model years before it would become popularized. And unfortunately, he was using my identity during that entire time to embezzle from our clients. So, it was an accounting package. And he was using that, his, you know, my identity, his access into their records to embezzle from all of our clients. So I faced the 2-year criminal trial, lost the business, essentially lost everything that I had other than my family because of a failure to respect some basic principles about who we give information to, how we trust, who we give access to in our systems and so forth. And it was— You know, obviously it was one of those life-changing moments. It was really my oldest daughter that kind of brought about— brought it about at some point that said, hey, you know, this stuff is worth deep respect, even though it's just ones and zeros.

And it was your oldest daughter that brought that about. Can you explain that? 'Cause she was still young at the time.

Yeah, so she was 5 when we were going through this, when I was, you know, essentially, feeling like I was going to be put in jail. I mean, every crime looked like it was me because it was my banking login credentials. It was my signature on the line. And, at one point, my daughter Sophie who was 5, she kind of wandered into my home office and asked me to read her a bedtime book. And, I don't know if you've been there, but I was so distracted. I was so worn out. This had been 2 years running. I hadn't been Essentially, hadn't been working in that time. And, I told her that I didn't have time for her. And, she looked up at me with these big eyes and it was this realization that I had sacrificed so much in those 2 years because of some basic things that I could have done that we all can do with our businesses and in our personal lives.

Yeah.

In that moment, I realized I lost 2 years to this crime. I didn't just lose money. I didn't just lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. I really lost, I guess when you get down to it, her respect for me as a dad. And God, in that moment when she looked back up at me and said, you know, when you're done with all of this, can I be important? Can you read me the bedtime story? Everything flipped. Everything flipped.

Yeah. And for those who don't know you, I mean, I said at the opening there, you're a role model father because when you say everything flipped, I mean, your family— and we all say our families are a priority and we all believe it. I don't mean that like people are just saying it because they don't mean it. But you are really, really wonderful at respecting the boundaries of, this is the time I have for my family and it will be with my family. I don't care what's happening. That's my family time. And I do not breach that. And you define that so well in your life. And I don't mean a little bit, for people listening going, well, I do that on Sundays. I mean, Jon does that continuously, every day. Every day he treats it with that kind of priority. It's beautiful to watch.

Well, thank you. And I think, you know, I'd love to ask of you, as somebody who deals with respect throughout all things, do you feel like you gain respect? I mean, can you gain it organically without Without going through something so difficult? I mean, for me, I don't— I think I'm the dad I am because of that moment, right? Because of that failure.

Yeah, it's an interesting question, Jon, and I don't believe you gain respect. I think it's a given. I think that— and that's something that I discuss a lot, which is our, our culture says you earn respect, you gain respect. And that's the problem, right? We don't just give it, which we don't give it as an inalienable right, which is what it should be. If everybody treated everyone with respect, if you— I don't have to prove, make you prove your respect, like you have to prove to me you deserve my respect and I give it to you, I don't embezzle. I don't do awful things to human beings because I treat everyone with respect, which means I'm treated with respect, which means I don't need the worst sides of me to rein my decision-making. And if we can get there, then you also aren't in the office freaking out, right? Because you would have— we all would recognize, and I've done it too. I've absolutely done it, John, where, you know, your kid's like, hey, this, and you're like, I can't right now, right? And then you're like, what did I just do? And you catch it, right? And you're like, but we wouldn't even said I can't right now if we didn't think I have to do something right now to get this result over here, you know? And that is more important. So, I don't think that, uh, now that's basic human idea of respect. Like, I'm going to give you respect. I think that's different than when you're discussing, do I respect, am I good at respecting the value of my money? That's a different discussion, right? Because that's behavior will show that.

Right. So I guess the distinction of what I was saying was I didn't have respect for the protection of these things, that the connection between the Social Security number and the relationship I had with my daughter. And my family. I didn't have the respect for that at that time. So it's a, you know, a different use of that, of that term.

Yeah.

But for me, it was, it was hard won. It was nobody giving it to me. It was me making that connection, that link that I had never had before something really terrible happened.

Well, and I'm going to say something that's really important for a lot of our listeners, because people in, in my area of work, people self-blame a lot. And when horrible things happen to them, self-blame is what almost every human being does. How could I have let that happen? And I think it's really important for our listeners to understand right now, everything that happened to you, John, was the other people's fault. And everything, everything you teach is to protect from those people. In the end though, it was those people. If they don't do that, right? If they don't do that, no crime is happening.

Absolutely.

So, the crime doesn't happen because you failed to respect your data or you failed to respect It happened because a person made a horrible choice against you that they totally chose. Now what we're trying to do is how can we respect ways that we can protect ourselves?

Yep, I totally agree.

And I think that's really important for listeners to understand because often we do think, oh, I did made the same mistake John make and I lost a million or I lost $10,000 or I lost— and they're blaming themselves instead of recognizing no, no, no, no, no. Somebody did something awful. They're at fault. What we're discussing today, what John shares with the world all over the world are, what are ways we can protect ourselves from those who don't live with respect, for those who don't respect our finances, our money? So, what are ways we can protect ourselves? And that's really what you do.

Absolutely. Yeah. Whether it's at the personal level or at the business level.

Yeah. And that's, that's the beauty of what I love that. I think that's such an important conversation because I think too often people don't add that part in. And it sounds like everything happened to you, John, because you didn't do everything right, and how people can interpret that versus, no, it happened because somebody did something awful. And now John wants to help people protect themselves. You're the self-defense instructor with data.

Correct.

Yeah, which you're, you're the ultimate because you're so good at this, uh, which— so I want people to be able to protect because we do live in a culture where there is so many people out there trying to do harm right now. And there are things we can do to help protect ourselves. So what are some of those things, John, that you, you've mentioned that, hey, I didn't respect my finances, or I didn't respect ways to protect my data. So what are ways people now can do that?

Yeah. So, I mean, it's kind of 2 different conversations if it's personal or, you know, or in the workplace. So, you know, personally it's, it's stuff that you've all heard of, right. That, that we know is out there. It's, it's the taking action on it that so often doesn't happen. So, uh, you know, the old-fashioned example, that is less relevant now, but still relevant, is shredding your documents. When you open a piece of mail, a statement or whatever, and you throw it out, that used to be a major source of theft. Not so much anymore, because if a criminal can hack a database and get a million of those at a time, it's worth a lot more money for them to sell that on the dark web than it is getting it one at a time. The more modern form are just the things we do to protect our devices, the things we do to protect our computers. So you mentioned, at the, you know, at the opening, 2-factor authentication. I'm guessing that there's not many people out there at this point who don't know that you can have a secondary password sent to you by text or through an app or on a little key fob that protects your bank account, that protects your Facebook account, your Gmail account. The problem is not necessarily that people don't know that that exists and is out there. They don't know why it's so strong and they don't take the time to actually turn it on. So here's the way that, I mean, just real quickly, that 2-factor authentication works. You have a password to log into your bank account. That password is the same one that maybe you used on LinkedIn or on Facebook that have been hacked constantly all the time. Well, the criminals go and they take your username, which is always your email address in most cases, the password that has been hacked elsewhere, and they run it through a million banks, and they see if they can get in. When you have 2-factor authentication, you have a second form of passcodes. It's something— it's a text you get to your phone. The criminal has your hacked password. They don't have your phone. They can't get into the account. This is one of the simplest tools, and it's literally— I mean, I go into corporations, and I see that they don't even have this this enabled, and yet you and I could turn it on for our bank, our investment company, our email, uh, any software that we use in, in, you know, 30 seconds. It's that simple.

Well, yeah, and that's what a lot of people don't realize is— I know many people who say, I've heard of it, but I'm like, we already use it. Like, if you log into your bank, banks almost mandate it now. A lot of bank services do, but they don't use it on their other stuff. They don't use it, you know, they use Dropbox to put all their files in but they don't double— they don't do 2-factor authentication there. And you're like, whoa, that's all your— that's access to all your data. Literally all your files are in there potentially. So I think that's so brilliant that you shared that with us. What are some other common mistakes people make and what's a solution to the mistake, John?

Common mistakes that people make as individuals, like such a simple one that again, it's a 15-year-old tool that still a majority of Americans don't utilize, and that's a simple credit freeze. So when Equifax goes out and loses, um, you know, I don't remember what it was, 500 million accounts with, you know, Social Security numbers and so forth, or, uh, Anthem lost, you know, 80 million accounts, having a credit freeze so that somebody can't go out like Rosemary Serrano did in my case, right? She bought a home Using my credit profile, meaning my Social Security number. And you can lock that just like you lock your computer with a password or your, your front door with a lock. You can freeze your credit so that people don't get into it, so that criminals can't take out credit, buy a home, buy a boat, get a cell phone, whatever. And yet it's like 94% of Americans have not frozen that, even though their, their data has been breached over and over again.

Well, yeah, and what a lot of people don't realize is that in the past few months, all 3 are available online now. It used to be that one of them you had to mail in, and they finally caught up. So of the 3 credit companies, you can do it all online.

You can. And, and, you know, it takes— so your computer needs to be secure, right? You have to have taken the, the steps to, to make sure you have a safe computer before you do that. But literally in 30 minutes' time, you can take the number one protection that stops about 90% of all of the worst cases of financial identity theft with one step. And you do that for yourself, your spouse, and your kids, and you're a pretty safe family at that point. But the reality is people are going to listen to this, they're going to think it's a great idea, and they're not going to, you know, they're not going to give the respect to it and actually go and take the step, even if it's one thing that you do. That's the, that's the missing piece in terms of, you You know, adopting a culture of security.

Well, and that's what I love this discussion is because people don't realize that they're like, well, once I freeze it, then if I want to get a loan, I'll have to unfreeze it. How often are you getting loans? Like, how often are you buying cars on financing? For most people, they might be doing something like that once a year. You know what you do? You go online, you unfreeze for the timeframe you need. Could be a week, could be a month. We, we have to do it with, uh, if you have a kid in college and you're doing financing, You just unfreeze it and you have it for a date and it goes right back to freeze. It's way easier than people realize.

Yep. The time not to freeze is if you're about to do a refinance or to make a major purchase for you, you know, where you and your spouse are, are co-signing. That's 6 unfreezes, that's 6 thaws that you have to do. So, you know, if, if that's in your near future, hold off. But other than that, there are very few things that you, you wouldn't want to spend I mean, what you're doing is if you do it online, you can unfreeze it in about a minute and a half.

Yeah.

Right? So you spend 15 minutes upfront, a minute and a half on the backend, and for the average American, you're protecting more than $300,000 in money, in buying power, because that's what your credit is worth.

Yeah. It's so, so important. That's why I love you sharing this. It's awesome. Okay. So what do you think— not what do you think, what do you— I know you know. What are the most common mistakes people make when it comes to the smartphone? 'Cause if you leave your smartphone near Jon, you better watch out because Jon's gonna have some fun because he knows the tricks, right? You do. Uh, so that, that can be a fun little game you can play, but, but it's a serious issue. So what is a common mistake with the smartphones?

Yeah, so you're right. I love to hack into somebody's iPhone in my audience because it shows you how quickly, um, you can get an amazing amount of data. So Right there, there is the answer to the first part, which is that physical access. That is the first thing. I mean, do I want to— if I'm a hacker, can I hack it through your Wi-Fi connection? Yeah. Is it easier to just have the device itself and have the passcode? Absolutely. So, what I do in that exercise when I'm on stage is I take somebody's iPhone, right? They're at a speech on cybersecurity. They know what we're dealing with. I still get the iPhone out of their hand. I get enough information from challenge-response answers and questions by asking them in different ways, and I essentially socially engineer them out of the code to get into their phone. Once I've got the phone physically and I'm into the phone, I do a down swipe, I type in the word bank, it shows me their bank, I bring up their banking app. I've got all kinds of access then into— You know, uh, making a phone call as them, making a transfer as them, and so forth. And really, that physical access and the giving away of, of answers that they think aren't related to getting into their phone, that's kind of the first step, is, is that thing better be on you and near you at all times because it's super powerful.

Well, and this is a mistake you'll see teenagers make, is they'll let their friends have their passcodes. To use their phone, right? And suddenly their friend's posting stuff as them they don't want posted, and they think, oh, it's funny and all, but the— that friend could share that post— that password with somebody else when you're not around, and they might not just be doing silly things with the phone. They could do harmful things with the phone.

Yeah, we all think it's silly or fun or lighthearted at the start, and then you have something happen like that. And, you know, and, and you've sat on, on juries where, you know, you're, you're testifying about how, uh, Normal situation turns bad. And it's the same way here that, you know, somebody sends, you know, they sext from the phone or whatever, and, and quickly you're in hot water. And it's very difficult to prove that it was not you, that, that the presumption is it's your phone, it was your, your text.

Yeah. Well, so now what about social media and the sharing of data on social media?

So before we go there, I want to go back once because I only answered the first part on the smartphone. So The second area is the digital side of it. It's everything from having a passcode. And by the way, if you've still got a 4-digit passcode, it's eminently hackable. It's easy. So, you know, a 6-digit numeric passcode, or even better, an alphanumeric passcode, which every phone, every smartphone out there now has alphanumeric passcode. It will automatically wipe the information if somebody, you know, enters the wrong passcode 10 times or more. You're, of course, backing it up on, you know, on your computer or in the cloud. So you've got a backup if it ever does get wiped out. Those basic things of putting in a strong, long and strong password. Yes, maybe you attach your fingerprint to it or a facial scan so that it's convenient and that you use it. But kind of the overall lesson here is going through and, and changing the defaults on your phone, going into the actual security and privacy defaults on your iPhone or your Droid Now, that's the missing step again. That's what people are not doing. And, I'll tell you what, if you spend half an hour when you're bored and in line at the DMV or something and you go through every one of those settings and ask a few questions, you can Google if you don't know what it is. We do all kinds of videos and blogs on it, but there's all kinds out there. And, change those default settings. Who's tracking your location? Do you truly want Uh, a game that you're playing to track your, your location and your purchases elsewhere? No, you turn that off. And changing those defaults is— that's really the big missing link here.

Well, and so that's going to walk us right into what I was about to go into, which is social media. Because a lot of people allow Facebook and everybody else to track, because then it'll— they'll post a picture, it'll say, I'm in Italy, and the picture will say, I'm in Italy. So can you go into those— the dangers of that kind of sharing on social media?

You can, and actually, depending on the platform you're on, some of them make it rather easy to make changes, and we'll walk you through it. Facebook has had so much heat put on them from so many breaches that, you know, they do a pretty good job of walking through it. But let me dispel any notion that you actually have any privacy of your information at all if you're on social media. Face it, we are in a surveillance economy, right? We are, the business model of the internet is surveillance capitalism. They are collecting our information. They are sharing it, selling it, analyzing it, adding it to big data databases. That is the model of the internet. That's why you get Facebook for free, so to speak. That's why you get Instagram, or, you know, that's why Amazon Prime is so cheap. They are learning your behaviors and your habits. That's the reality. If you think that you can be on social media and not have a great deal of information about your behaviors, your patterns, and so forth shared, you're wrong. I mean, that is the business model. However, you can go in there and you can turn off who gets to see. So does it go outside of your friend group? Does it go to everyone? You cannot put your correct birth date in. I know it's Not legal by Facebook's policy, but I would never put my correct information in there. I would never share. I mean, with a hometown and a birthdate, I can generate your Social Security number. It's— Carnegie Mellon built a model that does that with those 2 factors.

Well, let's pause. Let's pause there because I found— you and I had this discussion just a month ago personally. I found my own— not mine, I'm sorry. I found somebody else's. It was what it was. Somebody else's birthday and then started doing searches under lots of people and found all their birthdays. Online. So that's something I think people don't realize is happening. And from what you had told me, John, you're like, there's not a whole lot you can do, Mike, because if it's public record, like they can go down to a birth certificate in a county or whatever, they can put it online. There's not a whole lot you can do. Is that true?

That's true. There's a huge amount of information that before we thought through these things diligently that were uploaded and put online. Now governments are walking that back, but You know, on the list of things to do for your local county government, are they really going to do that? Are they, you know, right? Is that the first thing on their list? No, it's not. So a great deal of our information is, is already out there, which is why we do the preventative stuff like the credit freeze.

Yeah, exactly. And now, now you add in Alexa, Siri, uh, how does that play in? You have, you have listening devices. Is the iPhone always listening, or only if you've activated Siri to listen? Like, Which, you know, we hear the different stories. Alexa, you know it's listening because it's built to do that.

Well, if Siri weren't always listening, she wouldn't know when you say, hey Siri, to turn on, right? So yes, always, always listening. Always recording? Not yet. But there was a really interesting research project, an article done by the New York Times not long ago, and it It took a look at the patents for Alexa, for Google Home, for Siri, and what they're all going for is always-on access. They want to be recording every conversation. I mean, that's why they are putting that device in your home is so that they can be recording, hey, these people are talking about wine, so next time they're on Amazon, I'm gonna advertise that type of wine to them. That is the whole point of taking search into a digital assistant mode is they can listen to everything, not just the words that you type into their search engine.

How do you think this all plays into the concept of respect?

I think it plays in, to some degree, I mean, in that we are actually not giving what I would consider true consent in our privacy. We are signing up for these services and getting apps and all of this convenience. And we think that we're, you know, that we're giving a little bit of information, but we're giving massive amounts. And it doesn't really, in my opinion, the average user doesn't know enough to actually be consenting to what they are doing. It's kind of a blind consent. Yes, I checked the box, but I certainly didn't read the data use policy, and I don't know how they're selling and using and aggregating my information. So I would say right now we are in a period where there is not respect from the corporate aspect for our personal data. It's purely a profit motive.

I agree 100%. You know, the way we define consent in our organization is that it's mutually wanted, enthusiastically given. And those 2 phrases alone do not apply to most apps. It's not mutually wanted what's being agreed on. It's, it's actually, I guess I have to agree to this just to use the app. So they feel like, uh, I'm hesitantly consenting, which is not an ideal understanding of consent at all.

It's not. So what, in your realm, what is the— not the answer, I mean, that's oversimplified, but where do we go?

Yeah, well, and that's just it. It's what if we said to people, look, uh, you cannot consent to this until you have to show that you've read what you're consenting to and be able to answer questions based on it. Could you imagine how that would change all this? That—

So, God.

It would change everything, right? So, I have to read every paragraph, and after each paragraph, I can't just check a box that says I read it. I have to answer a question about what was in the paragraph. If I get it wrong, then this isn't a mutual agreement because I don't even understand the agreement.

Right.

Right?

Which there's no way to do pragmatically. I mean, in my world, there are 100-page data use policies That nobody can understand.

And you're checking a box. So what would that force them to do? It forced them to cut that thing down to a page.

Yeah.

Because nobody would be able to do the 100 pages, right? So now suddenly they have to get way more simplistic, which means they can't use all the legal jargon to protect themselves from doing things that people don't want them doing. So that would be the game changer here.

It would, and it would take legislation that's not going to happen.

Right, right, exactly. That's the sad part.

I hate to say it. Yeah.

Yeah, you and I just solved all the world security problems on apps and software. Who's gonna legislate that?

That's about it. That is the question. And it's, you know, for me, it's the frustrating part. I mean, do you find that in your field that there are just, there are walls that you're beating up against that are exceptionally difficult to bring down?

Well, I mean, so, the state you live in, and I won't release that for privacy reasons, but the state you live in has the worst, in my opinion— you and I have looked at it—

Yep.

Laws when it comes to minors and sexual decision-making. It's ridiculous what it has, saying that a 15-year-old can consent to being sexually active with a 24-year-old and it's okay, right? That's just insane. And, and then another clause that's in there that's even worse, actually, And yes, you see that and you go, who allowed that through legislation? And it was not that long ago, the legislation. So yes, we run into the same thing. So who's out there fighting for the consumer in this case when it comes to data? Is there anyone effectively?

I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's pretty obvious that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been gutted. Um, you know, there's no teeth left in that. So that, that has disappeared, and because of it, fraud has gone up. In terms of cyber legislation, really beyond California and Massachusetts, there's nobody taking an active role. There's no federal— there's not even a federal head of the cyber unit anymore. That person was relieved of their position 2 years ago when the latest president took office. So it's an exceptionally difficult time for cybersecurity because there's nobody that's watching the wheel. There's nobody paying attention. For the— on the consumer side of it.

That's really scary. It's, I mean, really scary stuff. So it's something for everyone to listen to when you talk to your legislators saying, what are you gonna put back in to protect us, right? I mean, that's what should be being asked right now.

Absolutely. And bring back some of what we've had. And I'm not saying bring it back stuff that was just from a Democratic or an Obama administration. I'm saying stuff that was started by Republicans and Democrats. And somehow has disappeared as non-important because of, frankly, because of business lobbying, because it's better for these companies to be able to collect everything. And here's why. I mean, the stuff that I see in the back channels of government is when the organizations collect all of this information, ultimately, the government gets access to it. and they love that. They love that for tracking criminals, for all kinds of good reasons. They love that for determining how people will vote, as we've seen with the loss of the Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica data. That was, hey, I know that this woman is on the fence, and I can change her vote by advertising this way. So, there's self-interest there at governmental levels of wanting this information to flow freely because they benefit in their personal world from it.

So I want to make sure we get in this last question because we're— this is so fascinating to me. I could go for hours with you. You know that, John. Uh, so I want to go to this question though. Now people know that I can go into a private tab when I'm on any browser, whether Safari or Chrome, or I can go into a private tab to have privacy and that's not going to get tracked. True or false?

Well, partially true. Because there's all kinds of people who are still in the midst of what you're doing. The computer that you're on, the Apple, knows where you're going. The browser itself, whoever produced that, knows where you're going. Your ISP, the person who gives internet connectivity, knows where you're going. So yeah, I mean, does it, does it reduce the amount? Yes. Even, even putting a you know, VPN, a virtual private network on, still doesn't encrypt it to all the people who have to get you to the internet and at the other end of it. So yes, those things do, and I never wanna give the sense that taking those steps don't matter. I mean, we just wrote a whole book on that topic of these privacy settings that we have on all of our devices. It's a quiltwork, it's a patchwork. You have to do more than one thing in order to keep your privacy. And, I wish I could say it was simple and immediate. It's not. It's like when you— I wish that you could buy the car and put the seatbelt on in a cyber format. You can't because right now, there's no legislation saying, hey, you've got to have seatbelts and airbags on this device. Consequently, every device is different and you have to change it on every device.

Yeah, absolutely. And I want to make sure everybody can find you. So it is Sileo, S-I-E-S-I-L-E-O, sileo.com. That simple. It's all going to be in our show notes along with all of John's links. But we want to make sure you also know about John's book. It's Your Data Is Showing: 12 Privacy Tools for the Surveillance Economy. And by the way, folks, when I say a short book, small book, quick, easy to read, this defines the concept of a small Short book, easy to read, that just loads you with great information. John, what would you wanna add about the book?

Just that, you know, we've— I've done my share of long books that go into detail about it. This is just the action items. This is, here's what you do with your Alexa, here's what you do with Siri, here's how you set your phone, here's how you do 2-factor authentication, here's how you freeze your credit. It's just the meat of it because that's what people want. They just wanna solve the problem.

And is the best place for them to get the book on your website?

You know, I appreciate it when they do that because, you know, we don't get a whole lot back from publishers and stuff when we do it through the other sources. So yeah, it's cilio.com directly or yourdataishowing.com. That's a great place to get it.

All right, perfect. John, thank you so much for joining me today.

Total pleasure. Thank you, and I hope we get to do it again.

Well, absolutely, anytime. You know that. And, and this is what I love, and I hope our listeners understand. You know, sometimes I get— I think listeners hear this and think, well, how close Are a guest. You know what I mean? It's a guest. And John is somebody that I've talked to earlier today that had nothing to do with the show. I'll talk to on Monday. And I think that's really important for all of us to think of. A lot of us have amazing people in our lives and we forget the gifts we're surrounded by right now. And I hope all of our listeners are thinking, who do I have in my life that could be a great resource for me? Have I asked them questions I should be asking? Maybe, you know, somebody that works at a bank, it could help you realize some of the things with your own security, with your own money. Because people like John are a gift in my life, not just with security, but as I talked earlier, being a role model as a father. So thank you so much, John.

Oh, it's a pleasure, Mike. And this— the same goes for you. I get so much out of our relationship. Thank you.

Well, thank you. For our listeners, you know what's next. It is Question of the Week. This week's question is, Mike, why are women way more often degraded for being sexually active when men are often praised for the same kind of sexual choices or sexual activity? Why does this happen? And sadly, there are so many reasons this happens in our society because of a historical preference of treating women this way, that men can be sexually active, have multiple partners, and women must be loyal to one. And this theory has been out there for so long in this belief system, in this cultural teaching that men sow their seeds, but women better stay pure and innocent. And because of that, there's this entire culture that praises men for being sexually active while degrading women for being sexually active. And that historical past does not make it okay ever to do that. If you are going to say that an action is okay for one gender, then it should be true for all genders. If men can be sexually active, women should be sexually active. If you think that women should have high standards for themselves, men should have high standards for themselves. You should not have it so that one gender has to live in a world or a culture where they're more restricted than other genders. That's not freedom and it's not okay. We'd love to hear your questions, your thoughts, and your ideas. And the best place to leave those with us is on our Facebook page at facebook.com/MutuallyAmazingPodcast. Of course, you can always contact us on our website at mutuallyamazingpodcast.com. Remember to subscribe to the show so you automatically get it every week. And if you could take one moment to leave a review, that really helps other people find the show, which we are greatly appreciative of. So thank you so much for joining us. May you make today and every day a life full of mutually amazing relationships.