It Could Happen Here - Delete Your Account?
Episode Date: November 21, 2024Online harassment is as bad as it’s ever been. And the election results have a lot of people worried about their privacy & safety. Before you make any big moves like logging off forever, do a qu...ick digital hygiene check. There are a few simple steps you can take today to make life a little harder for online trolls. Resources: https://www.wired.com/story/the-wired-guide-to-protecting-yourself-from-government-surveillance/ https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-artwork-zines/cybersecurity-with-pigeon-know-your-cyber-civil-rights https://open.nytimes.com/how-to-dox-yourself-on-the-internet-d2892b4c5954 https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/some-steps-to-defend-against-online-doxxing-and-harassment https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/26/doxcare-prevention-and-aftercare-for-those-targeted-by-doxxing-and-political-harassment See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show,
where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more.
After those runs, the conversations keep going.
That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about.
It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories,
their journeys, and the thoughts that
arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming.
This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award.
Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
But hurry, submissions close on December 8th.
Hey, you've been doing all that talking.
It's time to get rewarded for it.
Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,
where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral.
We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura.
I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories,
combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up
comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast.
And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.
From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,
Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech
brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.
Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.
On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida.
And the question was, should the boy go back to his
father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay
with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen
to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a show that is no longer hypothetical now that it is happening here.
I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger,
and today I just want to talk to you a little bit about your online security. It's a hot topic right
now for obvious reasons, and this won't be a comprehensive overview on the subject by
any means. I'm sure there will be more episodes in the future covering specific angles on this
and more depth, but today I just want to touch on some basics,
especially for people who may be asking themselves some of these questions for the first time. This
is more of a mental framework and a pep talk. The main message here is don't freak out. I'm not
saying the situation isn't serious or your concerns aren't real, it's very serious. But freaking out is not gonna do you any good.
And if you're looking for complicated, high-tech solutions
to the very real anxiety that you're feeling right now,
this episode doesn't have it.
That's not what I have for you today.
And I know a lot of people have really specific concerns
about apps they might be using
to track their menstrual cycles or fertility.
And we're not going to touch on that today because I think it's a topic that deserves
its own episode and an episode where I talk to an actual expert. So I'm hoping to get that out
next month. So what are we talking about? The answer is pretty simple. Calming down and shutting up.
That's right.
It's only Thursday when this airs,
but it is always shut the fuck up Friday in our hearts.
Because the main source of the risks you can do something about is your own mouth.
Because here's the thing.
I'm not an expert on digital security.
I'm not a computer programmer or a hacker.
I had to call our producer Danil one time because I went to record an episode and my little recording device said no.
And I almost cried and it turned out I accidentally slid the little tab on the data card that locks it.
I don't know.
But what I do know a lot about is how to exploit someone else's
lack of digital security. If you're a listener to my show, Weird Little Guys, you know that I
kind of have a knack for finding out everything there is to know about a guy. So what I can offer
you is a sort of reverse engineered guide to stay safe online from someone like me, but evil.
I like to tell people that you should be thinking of your digital security kind of like your health.
People are going to have different risk factors, different vulnerabilities, different concerns,
different goals. If you're undocumented or on a student or work visa, the risks and possible
consequences for you are very different. If you're queer or trans a student or work visa, the risks and possible consequences for you are very different.
If you're queer or trans or a person of color, your risk profile looks different.
If you're economically dependent on family members whose politics don't align with yours, your risk profile is different.
If you have a criminal record, if you work in a field where your political activity is a significant threat to your continued employment,
if you're running for office, if you have a security clearance, if you have children or vulnerable family,
these are all different vulnerabilities. And you're going to have specific concerns that
are unique to you, and this isn't meant to address those specific risk scenarios.
But just like people who may have different risk factors when it comes to their health,
everyone can benefit from the basics.
You know, no matter who you are, you have to wash your hands.
And when it comes to digital security, a lot of people want to jump right to the exciting, complicated technical fixes.
You know, they want the Kim Kardashian full-body MRI equivalent of being safe online.
People want to talk about buying burner phones and getting a
Faraday bag and evading high-tech surveillance, but they're not washing their hands. People love
to say they're going to buy a burner phone, but if you go to Walmart and you buy a burner phone
and you put your credit card into the machine that is recording a video of your face and then
you take that phone home and turn it on inside your house next to your real phone, you've done nothing but waste your time and money. So we're not talking about solutions like that.
What we are talking about is boring, unsexy, basic stuff that everybody can and should be doing
before they jump into the deep end if you choose to go that route. Because I'm not saying you
shouldn't worry about more advanced threats. I'm just saying you have to start here. So before you can figure out how to mitigate a risk, you have to nail down
what that risk actually is. What is the outcome that you're hoping to avoid? There's a lot of
anxiety right now about unknowable possibilities. And it's really easy to get overwhelmed with the
what ifs of a worst-case scenario and
then you just end up feeling really helpless. And look, yeah, there are some potential threats here
that I don't have the tools to help you address, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be taking
the steps that are within your control right now. You have to fight off that feeling of helplessness.
So what we're talking
about here is threat modeling. I gave a little workshop a few months ago about digital security.
And the first thing I asked the group was, what is the bad thing that you were worried will happen?
And most people's answer to that was, they're worried about getting doxxed. Okay, that's fair. That's a valid fear. But what do you mean
by that? What specifically is the piece of information you are worried someone will
discover? Is it your name, your address, where you work? Is it connecting two pieces of your
online identity that you thought were separate? Doxxing can mean a lot of things to different people at a different
context. And it can happen in degrees, right? Like, you know, my full legal name, I'm, you know,
doxed to whatever extent that means anything. But this could still happen to me. Someone could still
discover a piece of information about me that I wish they didn't have. And most people can't become completely anonymous. I can't help
you do that. And honestly, I don't think that should be most people's goals. Don't disappear.
I'm not telling you you should disappear. This is just about figuring out what makes sense for you
and what you can do to navigate the landscape that you've chosen to operate in.
Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show,
where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs,
athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going.
That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the
pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout?
Well, that's when the real magic happens.
So if you love hearing real inspiring stories from the people, you know, follow and admire,
join me every week for post run high. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run
and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun.
It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun.
Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts
dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.
Black Lit is for the page turners,
for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands,
for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters.
From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,
we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.
Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works
while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them.
Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers
and to bring their words to life.
Listen to Black Lit on the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the
Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite
has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative
AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech
from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.
This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists
to leading journalists in the field,
and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse
and naming and shaming those responsible.
Don't get me wrong though, I love technology.
I just hate the people in charge
and want them to get back to building things
that actually do things to help real people.
I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough.
So join me every week to understand
what's happening in the tech industry
and what could be done to make things better.
Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts,
wherever else you get your podcasts.
Check out betteroffline.com.
The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming.
This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award.
Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
But hurry, submissions close on December 8th.
Hey, you've been doing all that talking.
It's time to get rewarded for it.
Submit your podcast today
at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
Hola, mi gente.
It's Honey German,
and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again,
the podcast where we dive deep
into the world of Latin culture,
musica, peliculas, and entertainment
with some of the biggest names in the game.
If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities,
artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you.
We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars,
from actors and artists to musicians and creators,
sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.
You know it's going to be filled with cheeseisme laughs and all the vibes that you love.
Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity,
community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.
Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories.
Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral.
Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
So what is the actual negative outcome specifically that is making you feel afraid?
What is the concrete thing that you are thinking about when you experience that fear?
And people's answers tend to be that they're worried about getting harassed.
They're worried about their physical safety.
They're worried about negative fallout at work or at school.
People's fears tend to be about things like getting arrested, getting sued, getting fired,
getting hurt, and getting embarrassed.
And so the next question is, can you identify the potential sources for the kinds of harm
you're worried about?
And you can sort these into a few primary categories.
The state can harm you.
That's the police, the government.
You can get charged with a crime.
Institutions can harm you. If you're a student, you can get in trouble at school. If you have some kind of
professional license, people could file complaints against you. Politicians and organized political
groups can harm you. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene might tweet your TikTok video or Canary
Mission might do a blog post about where you work. And right-wing groups can harm you.
You might get targeted harassment from some Nazi telegram channel. Worst case scenario, maybe you
were physically threatened or attacked by an extremist group. You could get swatted. And then
there's just this sort of wild card of the random strangers and internet mobs and the way they factor into and exacerbate all of the
above scenarios. When it comes to harm from the state, that's beyond what we're talking about
with this digital hand-washing metaphor. A lot of the prevention steps you can take today are
still going to help you, they're still worth taking, but at the end of the day, if the government wants
to know who runs a Twitter account, who drove to a protest, who supported a movement, who donated money, that's
beyond the basics. Most of what I have direct experience with are just these basic measures
that you can take today to make it a little bit harder for the average weird little guy to get
into your business. It'll stop the average online troll. It'll slow down a decent
sleuth, but it's not the kind of stuff that stops a guy with a warrant. Think of protecting your
online identity like being inside your house. If you have no curtains, someone walking down the
street can see you even if they didn't go out of their way to look. If you're putting everything
out there with no thought to digital security, somebody could dox you without even if they didn't go out of their way to look. If you're putting everything out there with
no thought to digital security, somebody could dox you without even trying, just like they would be
able to see in through your windows from the street. Somebody who is a little more curious
about you might walk into your yard. But if you put up a fence, maybe that person will decide,
this isn't really worth my time. Somebody who loves peeping in windows and
really wants to see you, he's going to hop your fence, right? But the average troll will see these
barriers and they'll get bored. But again, curtains, a fence, a locked door, a guard dog,
these don't stop a guy with a warrant. So we're talking about just putting up barriers that slow down and discourage the average low to mid-level weirdo.
In short, delete your Facebook, set your accounts to private, use Signal, put a passcode on your phone, say less, and try to do something about the data brokers.
Let's break these down one at a time.
I'm sure it's been talked about on this show before, but
I tell everyone in my life, download Signal. Download Signal. It's free. Put it on your phone.
It's just an encrypted messaging app. And I use it by default pretty much exclusively in place
of regular texting, just because it's easier for me to have everything in one place. It doesn't
collect or store your metadata. It doesn't back up to the cloud. And you can set all of your conversations to automatically disappear at whatever time
interval you choose. You don't need text messages from a year ago. You don't. Those can never help
you. They can only hurt you. Just let them go. And turn off the biometric unlock on your phone,
whether that's a fingerprint or a face ID, turn it off.
Turn it off, set a passcode. If you get arrested and you have your phone on you,
they can use your finger or your face to unlock it without a warrant. But if you have a passcode,
you're a little bit safer. So set a passcode that's at least six digits long,
longer if you can bear it, I know.
When it comes to social media, you have some choices.
You may look at your own threat model and say, well, I don't care if everyone can see what I've posted.
And that's okay, right?
We all have different goals and vulnerabilities.
And if you're a very public organizer, then yeah, you need public social media.
But if you've been using Facebook for 20 years,
you probably weren't always very careful about what was on there. And there are privacy settings
now where you can retroactively set all of your old posts to a new privacy settings.
You should do that. Start there if you haven't done that. But that still leaves a lot of digital
debris. If you've changed your display name to something
more private in recent years, something that isn't your current legal name, old posts that
other people made about you still have your old name in them. So if they tagged you 10 years ago,
that old name is still a link to your current profile. And you can't control the content
that your friends and family posted years ago.
And on the flip side, if in the end you decide
you don't care what's on your Facebook about you,
when you're doing your threat modeling,
consider the people close to you.
Because when I'm working at this from the other side,
a lot of times I'll find that, you know,
the guy that I'm looking for has done a pretty good job
cleaning up his own digital presence,
but his wife, his mom, his sister,
someone in his life has not.
So if there's someone in your life
who maybe is at greater risk than you are,
don't be their weak spot.
And if you're in a position to do so,
talk to the people in your life about this. Have these conversations about what are our risks? What
are our goals? Let's do a digital hygiene check together. Because you can build an impenetrable
digital fortress around yourself, but if your Aunt Kathy is live streaming your baby shower,
that didn't do you much good. And now that more people are talking about these kinds of concerns, you can try broaching
the subject with people in your life that may not have been receptive to it a year ago. Show your mom
how to set her Facebook to private. Take the time to explain to your less political siblings why
they should think about the ways in which their social media use
might expose someone they care about. Don't just scold them or say it's reckless that you're doing
this. Talk about why. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show,
where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs,
the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a
chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.
You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout?
Well, that's when the real magic happens.
So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.
It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all it's light-hearted pretty crazy and very fun
listen to post run high on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
hey i'm jack these thomas the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.
I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.
Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to
audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace,
wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,
we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary
works while uncovering the stories
of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers
and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.
From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.
with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep
getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I
love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that
actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough,
so join me every week to understand
what's happening in the tech industry
and what could be done to make things better.
Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.
Check out betteroffline.com.
The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming.
This is the chance to nominate your podcast
for the industry's biggest award.
Submit your podcast for nomination now
at IHeart.com slash podcast awards.
But hurry, submissions close on December 8th.
Hey, you've been doing all that talking.
It's time to get rewarded for it.
Submit your podcast today
at IHeart.com slash podcast awards.
That's IHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.
You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love.
Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.
Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories.
Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,
where we get into todo lo actual y viral.
Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
So when it comes to social media,
I'm saying delete your Facebook as a sort of shorthand for the general cleanup of the stuff
that you've left online for the last 20 years.
Cleaning up your online presence
is the number one thing you
can do right now to thwart the bizarro universe version of me who is trying to collect every
piece of information about you. Because even if you're careful today, even if you're so smart
about it now and you're not putting anything online that puts you at risk, you weren't always
that careful.
We're all guilty of it. People who've been doing this for a long time, people who know better,
we're all guilty of being a little messy online. It's okay. There's no shame that you didn't know before. Don't feel silly. Don't feel guilty. Just start cleaning it up today. And so to figure out
what exactly you might've been leaving out in the open, one thing you
can try is doxing yourself or do it with a friend, right? Try doxing each other. So start with a
completely clean cache, delete your cookies, whatever, open an incognito browser, start with
a blank slate and just Google yourself. Google your name, your address, your phone number,
Google yourself. Google your name, your address, your phone number. Google the usernames that you currently use on various sites. But Google the username you used in high school. Google your old
aim handle. Google the email address you made when you were 12. What comes up? And is that
information you want everybody to have? Probably not. Start by deleting accounts you don't use anymore.
Just wipe those bad boys right out. You don't need those. A lot of people have no idea that
the ghost of their old MySpace page still exists online. I've actually used that one fairly recently
to confirm the details about a person's close associates and family members. They hadn't
logged into MySpace since 2010, but your top eight lives forever. So delete or set to privates any
account that you don't use, don't need, or just don't need to be public facing. Log into every
social media site, every forum, every online store where you've ever created an account,
and just look at what's visible. Your online reviews may contain information about where you
live. Your profile on some forum you posted on in 2012 probably has your birthday on it.
And if you're an active Pinterest user, your Pinterest boards are probably revealing a lot
more information about you than you realize. Information about your family, your interests, your plans for the future.
People will make Pinterest boards with names like Jaden's second birthday.
And now I know that you have a son named Jaden
whose second birthday party you were planning last July.
That's a real example.
So set these things to private.
Change your profile picture to something that isn't your face.
Look at your username. Did you have to put some numbers at the end of that because the one you
wanted was taken? Are those numbers your birthday? And vary your usernames a little bit. Unless you
have some kind of professional reason for using a personal brand across every platform, don't use
the same username everywhere. Keep separate areas of your
life separate. Don't make it any easier than it needs to be to connect these different pieces of
your digital footprint into one picture of who you are. Because again, I'm not talking about
becoming completely anonymous online. A lot of people need to exist online as the person that they are. You
have a LinkedIn, you do public facing organizing. I'm not saying you need to disappear from online,
but if you have accounts that you don't want connected back to your true identity,
if there are pieces of you that exist that you don't want side by side, don't connect them.
that you don't want side by side, don't connect them.
So if you anonymously run a social media account for an activist group,
don't use it to follow your own real account.
Don't like your boyfriend's posts
when you're logged into your anarchist shit posting account.
If you don't want it connected to you,
don't create overlap.
If you post a screenshot from one social media platform
onto another, you know,
a screenshot of a tweet on your Instagram, whatever, be mindful of what's in that image.
Is there a thumbnail of your own profile picture in there? Does the screenshot show that you
interacted with that post? Because a filled in heart on an Instagram screenshot is something I
have used as a building block for a docs.
And maybe you've never posted anything identifiable on Twitter, but have you ever posted a link to your Twitter account on Reddit? Or are you in a big discord and you shared one
of your own posts with your friends in there? Like, hey, look at this banger tweet, I'm going
viral. And I say both of those specifically because both of those are specific mistakes that I have seen people make that were, for me, a crucial link between two accounts that connected the dots to figure out who they were.
Use two-factor authentication.
Use a password manager.
Use complex passwords.
Never recycle a password.
Check databases like have I been pwned?
See what's been leaked about you you and some of that data is out
of your control now but it's out there and you can't call it back but you can change all of your
passwords today you can download a password manager and change all of your passwords today
and all of your passwords should be something different from one another i'm going to say it
again change all your passwords stop using your dog's name as your password for everything. It was hard, but I did it, okay? And when you're doing this
digital hygiene check, you're Googling yourself, you're checking these breach databases, one of
the things you're going to find is your address and your email address and your phone number and
your parents' names and your parents' address,
all of these pieces of what you thought were personal private information,
they are bought and sold to data brokers. And these data brokers put them online on sites that
people can pay to access. Be like People Finder, True People Search, White Pages, there's hundreds
of them. Now, by law, all of these sites have to
have a link on them somewhere where you can ask them to delete your information. Some of them
make it kind of hard, and it may take weeks for them to actually honor the request, and you may
have to follow up. But theoretically, if they're operating legally, you do have the ability to
manually clean up how much of your
personal information comes up from these data brokers. But I'll be honest with you, it's
whack-a-mole. You could spend one afternoon a week for the rest of your life making opt-out
requests and following up on them and checking back to make sure it's really gone. You can do
that. I used to do that. But there are also services that will do it
for you for a fee. I think there may be an episode in the pipeline examining that particular ecosystem
in some more detail. So I won't go into the pros and cons of different services that exist.
But if that's something you're interested in paying for, do some research about it before
you put your money down. But at the end of the day, I just want you
to remember, you can't solve this whole problem. That might sound like a defeatist message, but
I think it's healthy. I'm not saying it's hopeless. I'm saying you have to spend your
energy where it counts. People ask me all the time, are you worried about this or that specific threat? And the answer is, yeah, probably. Yeah, of course I'm worried. But you can't let that fear overwhelm
you. You know, if I get fixated on the existence of threats that are outside of my control,
I'll just freak out. And that makes me less capable of focusing on mitigating the threats
that are within my control.
So don't put blinders on, don't lie to yourself, you know, be realistic, but don't wear yourself
out worrying about things that are so far out of your control that all you have is fear.
So today, now, take a deep breath, delete your MySpace account, and talk to your mom
about setting all her old Facebook
pictures to private. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast post run high is all about
it's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories their journeys and
the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together listen to post run high on the iHeart
radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it.
Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast.
And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite
and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, Hot Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.
Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things
trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and
some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors,
and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that
matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only
Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999,
five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez
was found off the coast of Florida.
And the question was,
should the boy go back to his father in Cuba?
Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home
and he wanted to take his son with him.
Or stay with his relatives in Miami?
Imagine that your mother
died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.