There Are No Girls on the Internet - DOXXING 101: Our personal information is available online and it’s putting women at risk. Meet the woman who is fighting back.

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

There is so much personal information about us available online and from election workers, to people running for local office, or even being a teacher, it's making it easier to target women. And it's even worse for Black women and women of color.     Shauna Dillavou is a complete badass who created Brightlines, a service that  helps activists, candidates for public office, and anyone at risk for being targeted to keep their information safe.    White Parents Rallied to Chase a Black Educator Out of Town. Then, They Followed Her to the Next One: https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-dei-crt-schools-parents   Learn more about Brightlines: https://brightlin.es/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I actually drop better when I'm high. It heightens my senses, calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful. Honestly, it just helps me focus. That's probably what the driver who killed a four-year-old told himself. And now he's in prison. You see, no matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive.

Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. When a woman gets attacked online, it's a woman, it's her children, it's her mother, it's her sisters. Like, that will shut us down. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and UnBossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. With historic numbers of women running for statewide office also comes a sobering reality. That those same women are more likely to be targeted online for it. It's not just women running for office.

We've seen educators, election workers, and their families being targeted. Now, this doesn't just harm the women being harassed and a, attacked. It's also meant to keep us from being able to fully participate in civic life. It's an attack on our democracy, and it's dangerous. I'm Shauna Dilavu, and I am the CEO of Brightlines. Shauna is used to dangerous work. She learned about how the internet works and used what she learned to train law enforcement officials on how to target and combat violent drug cartels. So I worked on Mexico and like the drug cartels, and this was like 2000. 2010, 2011, and they were doing a fair amount of killing journalists, citizen journalists.

And so, yeah, I was really deep into that side of the work. So it was really fulfilling. Shawna became an expert on PII, personal identifying information, and eventually started working to support journalists, activists, and civil society in places like the former Soviet Union to try to maintain a sense of democracy amidst a crumbling empire. And then, in the United States, Trump was elected. And her work became that much more relevant and in demand at home. And Trump got elected and people in America finally wanted my services.

And then around 2020, more and more people were concerned about their information online. So the stuff that I'd been training law enforcement on 10 years prior started to become really important to people here. understanding that they had a lot of PII out there on all of these data broker sites and people search sites, now facial recognition sites, and how could they get that down so that people couldn't do them harm? And so in 21, we got a little bit of seed funding, and I started Brightlines in August of last year. Something that I read about your work is that it's, I guess I meant use the phrase, like trauma-informed. Like, you kind of bring that lens to the work that you do, which I feel like so often when I have conversations about technology and the internet and how to

stay safe, the word trauma never even enters the conversation. And yet trauma is really like a, I think, oftentimes a part of that experience. Absolutely. It is a magnifier. It scales trauma, just like it scales anything else. The way that it's built to be so exclusive to a certain kind of experience, to exclude the lived experiences of the people who are using it. It's just like, This thing on its own can create trauma, can magnify trauma. And then if you're going through something traumatic because of the Internet, it ignites a trauma response in a human being that you can't do anything about it, right? You can't go to health.

There's no help, right? And it's so proximate because, like, your phone is under your pillow at night. It is mine under my pillow at night because I fall asleep listening to my podcast. I don't wake up my family. So, like, it's right here in my ear. and to wake up and see like a flood of messages of people who are angry with me is triggering. And like not triggering in the sense of like it's a trigger warning. It might bring back memories like triggering of a autonomic response.

Yeah, I had a trauma experience when I was living. And so I spent a summer in Mexico and was attacked when I was there. I was stabbed by a man just in like a random like he wasn't even trying to rob me situation. And when I came home, I had a lot of night terrors, was diagnosed with PTSD. It took me a few years to finally sleep through the night and feel comfortable in my own skin. And I brought that experience. I could see it in everybody that we worked with overseas. And I can see it in the movement work that we do now.

And I can see it with the people who come to us for support because they're afraid of being doxed or they've been doxed. It is everywhere, the trauma. and like how do we how do we keep like lining these rich white dudes pockets for technology that's like causing so many of us actual harm so fun yeah i mean i i it's it's the reality of the work and i think that you're so right that we keep allowing the rich white dudes to create and get rich off of technology that causes harm while not even like not even, they don't even have to reckon with that. They can just sort of pretend like, like, what harm? What trauma?

It's like the way that we've allowed wealthy tech folks who are mostly white men to get rich off of our harm and turn our lives into like a marketplace for negative harmful experiences, it infuriates me to no end. My friend Soraya Shemali always says, these guys named Jack on the board of Twitter, they're making money every time someone goes after me. He's like, there are more men named Jack than women on the board. And every time someone tweets bullshit at me, they make money.

And I don't think we say that enough. I don't think that we hit on that enough. There's zero accountability around that, right? We know they don't let their own children use these tools, but love it when ours do. Have you zero conscience? Great. Great. More impactful than any nation state, you know?

now you have more breadth and more money than any of us. So it's awesome. It's awesome times. There was once a time where I thought digital security kind of began and ended with protecting my credit card information or my social security number from scammers. But today, the real threat is so much more than that. So for folks listening, can you give us a definition of doxing?

Yeah. Yeah, I think the really sort of bare bones definition is anything that, is private being published publicly in some way. So a lot of times doxing means your private documents, like that's where the docs comes from. In the beginning, I think folks considered that to be just like social security numbers or credit card numbers. We spoke with a legal team that was working with an abortion provider last week,

who is a she has she works with a public university in the Midwest and so they were concerned about the public records requests they were getting and saying okay so we have to fulfill these requests what of her information might be PII personally identifiable information that could be doxed right they were thinking about like that like credit card numbers social security numbers. And so we briefed them on just the amount of data. We would call PII, so again, personally identifiable information that could lead to a dox. I'd say the biggest threat of doxing is someone showing up at your home. The next threats are people making like threatening phone calls or sending threatening texts. We had a client who was receiving photo texts of guns.

like a bunch of guns laid out on a bed with the accompanying message that I'm coming for you. Sometimes it's messages to their loved ones, particularly if they're women, women of color, other intersectional identities, that threat gets spread out. So the docs will happen to their children, to their loved ones, their partner, their parents, right, their mothers. It's usually other female presenting people. And so those numbers might get shared or those email addresses might. get shared or those home addresses. We spoke to a client today who was like, I don't own my home, but I help my mother buy her home and I'm worried about that part. I don't want anyone going

after my mom. That's pretty common, right? So when someone gets kind of chewed up by this outrage machine, they're looking for any way to find a way to them in their personal life. So as we were explaining to these lawyers, like, you need to think about it. is that person's cell phone number in their signature block on the emails that they're asking for? Is their personal email address in there? Are there photos of their newborn child that they might have shared with their colleagues at work? Is the name of the child out there? Because especially with abortion providers, child protective services will get called on them.

And they can't do that if they don't know the name of the kid. So in that case, they're looking for a way to get to you. And doxing would just mean publishing that someplace. Doxbin is a really popular place for that. There are other doxing only websites. And sometimes folks do that on Twitter. Sometimes they do that on their own websites. Sometimes they, you know, do it on telegram or Kiwi farms or 8chan or, you know,

just kind of school places. Yeah. Such a cesspool of crap. We call it the Altnut and we're being nice, but I just generally call it. like the cesspool, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty sad. And I think something that I, so in doing the podcast, I think I had a little bit of a shift

and how I understand doxing and the kinds of attacks and harassment that particularly marginalized people can face. I always thought that it was like, you know, who am I? Like, no one's ever going to want to come after me. I'm not really like, like, who would want to, who would spend their time finding this information?

And something that people say again and again is like, you never know what's going to be the thing that gets you on the wrong side of the wrong, like gets you on that bad side of the wrong side of the internet. You really never know. And so be proactive to protect yourself. You never know when it's going to be your turn in the barrel. That's what we always say. The outrage machine loves to pick off an individual. It's like so hungry. It needs to be fed. And like individual people get thrown in there and sometimes for nothing. Do you know, like did you see that this? Maybe not. the Warby Parker customer service was fielding a bunch of threatening calls and threats to docs

because Borby Parker wasn't advertising, I think, on Dan and Bengino's website anymore. The women being targeted are not usually big, flashy public figures or well-moneyed or well-connected. They're just regular people who wanted to serve the public. Back in 2021, educator Cecilia Lewis didn't even know what critical race theory was. let alone had she been hired to teach it to school children in the Cherokee County School District in Georgia, where she had just been hired as a school administrator. But that didn't stop groups from organizing online to run her out of town and run her out of the next town where she was hired to teach. This teacher, oh my gosh, I've been thinking about this ProPublica article, this teacher Cecilia Lewis.

She was an educator. You've heard the story. I have. Went down to work in Georgia. the people assumed she was there to teach critical race theory. They asked Cecilia Lewis what CRT is. She's like culturally something something. She was not her agenda.

And then they followed her to her next job in Georgia. It's just like, why? You know, like you're just looking for a scapegoat all the time. You know, so you never know if it's because you help to update a Wikipedia article that someone's going to be angry with you. Or you tweet something that gets taken out of. context or you know, you're an election official. Yeah.

Your mama mint. Yeah. Oh my God. Shea and Ruby Freeman, their testimony, I mean, this is such a tangent, but their testimony in the January 6th commission broke my heart. Like, people showing up at her grandmother's house. Like, it was heartbreaking. Anybody who has an ounce of empathy could feel that.

They did nothing wrong. They were doing it. and not exactly like a glamorous or high paid or like well compensated or all around or even like well appreciated job. They're doing a pretty tough and thankless and hot job and probably not getting paid very much for it. And that's the thanks they got. Yeah. I mean, and in that testimony, they talk about how, you know, they were drawn to community service, like helping their community. And I think that something is really broken and.

wrong when the cost of serving your community is being the target of these kinds of dangerous attacks. You're a teacher. You're a teacher because you love children because you believe that like the next generation needs all the love and care and like just support that they can get. And then someone accuses you of being a groomer. And that's the end of your life as you know it. Like what the hell is wrong with people? Like if you've got some kind of grievance about what's happening for, For you, that's like yours, right? But it's like you can go and project that on other people all you want. But in an age where political tensions are clearly very high, we have more guns than we

have people in this country. And we have all this PII available. Like I said, I started working on this 10 years ago, the amount of data now versus then, it's exponentially more that's out there. You can find anything on anybody. That's not, that's, I think, we've, we've. gone a little too far swinging in that direction. Oh, yes.

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Think IHart. streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-heart to get started. That's 844-8-4-Ehart. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers

to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world, fighting for our lives.

All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. We're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it.

Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before.

And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense.

And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get to fly. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball, like, After you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball.

So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At our back. We already know that women, especially black women and women of color, have long been targeted, harassed, and attacked. But Shauna says it wasn't until the issue started impacting powerful white men and their families that, legislators and tech companies really started paying any attention at all. In addition to poll workers like Shea and Ruby Freeman, who are black women, being harassed and threatened after Trump baselessly claimed that they had helped rig the election against him in Georgia, Trisha Rappensberger, the wife of Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger,

started getting threatening text messages and the militia group, the oathkeepers, showed up outside of her home. Her daughter-in-law's home was broken into in what Trisha says was an attempt to intimidate her and her family? So many things to say. First of all, we don't have these tools because up until a year or two ago, this only happened to women and women of color and people of color and people who were not white men.

It only started happening to white men. I'd say in 2020 with Brad Raffinsberg, and even then it was his wife that was getting all the hate, right? Like, it didn't happen to people who mattered to people, right? And by people, I mean legislators and tech companies. Then they're run by the same group of people. So zero empathy, right?

We're not people to them. Fine. So this was happening to just us. Great. So not a real concern. The police would tell folks all the time, like, oh, just get off the internet as though that were possible. Because, again, fundamentally don't understand.

It's not happening to me. I don't have to worry about it. Then you have all of the. legislators who refuse to understand how technology works and because of Citizens United have been running their campaigns on tech donations and how can they possibly regulate them without without having to do something, you know, like to piss off their money bags. They're like daddy warbooks, right? So like now now there's more political will for it because again, we're supposed.

starting to see the political islands amp up because there's so much data out there. But I would argue Bridget, and I don't see this anywhere else, and I don't understand why. All of these pieces of legislation that are getting proposed now carve out states selling data to data brokers to start with. It is state agencies, whether they're DMVs. That's pretty well documented. If they're utilities, if they're law enforcement. databases that are getting sold to data brokers who are then selling them back to us if it's

like ICE or some other federal agency. But they're also selling them to data brokers. Just to make sure I understand. So state agencies, the DMV, my utilities company, my PEPCO, whatever, there might be the ones who are selling this data and making money off of it that is putting people at risk. They are the ones that are doing it. Okay. So if you can't, Can't tell what Shauna just said, that it's actually our public services and state agencies. The places that we all have to deal with may want the heat or the power or the water turned on in our apartments or just register to vote are also the same places selling our sensitive data. Floored me. I just had no idea that that's one way that our information is being put out there.

This is shocking information to me. You're probably like, oh yeah, buckle up. It gets worse. But I think that would be shocking information to most people. Right? You would never know it until you went to FOIA it. And I read, so the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown did this two-year research projects. They published it earlier this year called the American Dragnet.

And their list of sources is just like they foiled all of these agencies across, I think it's 28 states, something like remarkable that sold their law enforcement databases to. ice. That was their specific focus. I'd say in addition to utilities, we know that courts sell court records. And those usually, like, so you imagine that you get a parking ticket because I live in D.C. And I can never remember which side of the street is street cleaning this week. I get a parking ticket. And then there's a traffic court date. If I want to go, I don't even think about it. A ticket. It's like done. But there's a record, right? That has my name, my home address, the VIN number of my car, probably my date of birth, the information for my driver's license plus my car. And so that's a court record that would get sold. So then what happens? Someone wants to follow like the thing that

terrifies me the most is with these election officials, what they were describing was that people would wait for them in the parking lot to leave. They would follow them, take pictures of their license plates. They didn't have to follow them home. They could then just go online. pay 20 bucks and find out that person's home address, telephone number, whatever, because they had the license plate of that person. That's, I mean, the idea that we've, yeah, I mean, I guess there's an expectation that government, that your, you know, state and local agencies like that would be invested in keeping you safe, but I guess that's just not the case.

Not at all. I don't think that they even think about that. I think they feel what's killing me is that we pay taxes. So before data brokers approached any of these agencies and said, hey, can you sell me your assessor database? So I know who lives where and I can put it on block shopper because I'd love to add that information. Whatever. Like before that happened, these agencies ran just fine on our tax dollars. If the issue is they have budget shortfalls because we don't aren't paying enough in taxes, like, well, we're still paying for it.

You know what I mean? Like, in most cases, what is heartbreakingly ironic is that they're not even charging the value of it. Like $20. Well, but I mean, D.C. sells its entire voter file for two bucks. That includes Supreme Court justices. Like, a lot of really big people live in this jail. And so I see laws like, God bless her. Esther Saul is the federal judge in New Jersey whose son was murdered.

in an attack on her home that the guy was looking for her, killed her son, shot her husband. My family has experienced a pain that no one should ever have to endure. And I am here asking everyone to help me ensure that no one ever has to experience this kind of pain. Judge Esther Salas's story is as tragic as it is terrifying. In July of 2020, an assailant came to Judge Salas' home and her 20-year-old son answered the door.

Her son was shot and killed. Her husband was also shot, but he survived. The primary suspect was Roy Den Hollander, a self-proclaimed, quote, anti-feminist lawyer, known for things like bringing unsuccessful lawsuits against nightclubs for having ladies' nights and colleges for teaching women's studies courses. He had previously gone before Judge Salas in 2015

in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the male-only military draft. Hollander died by suicide after being named a suspect in the attack. And after his death, it was revealed that he was also planning an attack on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. In response, Judge Salas champions Daniel's Law, legislation specifically designed to protect personal information about active and retired judges, law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and their immediate family members from being made public. She drafted Daniel's law that was passed in New Jersey.

They brought it to the federal, you know, to the federal level. And it just, it carved out two things. First of all, it carved out allowing their addresses. So they had to be flagged on a database if they were a federal judge or some other kind of judicial person. But never was it that they had to hide that information. So like if D.C. flagged the federal judge or in this case of New Jersey, if, if, if, Sorsalas herself was flagged, she would never show up on a public, like on a database on a, on a website. You could never search for her name and find her, search her address and find her.

But what they don't seem to understand is that New Jersey would just sell the full database. And while she was flagged to not show up on their public facing website, there's no protection of her if the whole file just gets sold. So they don't seem to get that, right? And even with this ADPPA, like the American Data Privacy Protection Act, I think I don't remember entirely what it stands for, but they carve out state agencies. They're not considered. They don't even consider them when it comes to who's selling the data to data brokers, let alone consider like what a data broker is and how they would self-identify. I don't know if you've ever seen these tech companies when they get squirmly asked like, are you a media company? Are you a tech company? I agree that and they will not say because they don't have to. Because then they'd be regulated like what they are and they just won't do it. These data brokers aren't going to, Thompson Reuters is a journalism company that also has data of mine for 25 years.

It has like a dorm address for me. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I'm like, I didn't even have utilities. There are no cell phone. How do you have this address? So, yeah, I like to call it commodification without consent because they just keep selling it and I think I was saying this California sells its entire DMV database for like $30 million. Like they grossly undervalue their own product. It's like how so painful. It's so fucked up. You're going to just like sell us out. Could you at least make enough money?

Yeah, like make enough money that like oh you'll fix the roads. It's like what like why do I sell potholes? if you're like, you know, you're going to pull that shit. And then I still have to live with like your bullshit roads. Exactly. I can die and try it continually. So you tell me if that's enough or do you have follow-up questions there. It's just so frustrating for them. They just don't get it.

Or if I don't, I can't see how they understand. And by they, I mean legislators that like maybe a child protective service is database doesn't need to be sold to Spokio, doesn't need to be sold to Thompson Reuters. Maybe that's something that could be protected because it fucking matters that it's protected. Like, who needs to see that? Nobody.

Nobody needs to know. And I think it just speaks to this idea of like, do we want to live in a world where everything, even our most sensitive information about ourselves, our children is for sale, has a price? I would argue, no. I would argue some things shouldn't be for sale, particularly by my state and local government.

Not without my consent. People still shit with the bathroom door closed. Until that changes, I would argue that no, they get to make that decision for themselves. And this is not that we don't get to decide. You have to have an ID to get on an airplane, to drive a car. You have to have an ID to get into a bar. You have to have identification.

There's no option there. So that they're selling our ID. information to some private company is fucking mind-blowing. You can't, how are you supposed to have heat? You're going to just freeze because you can't, you don't want your information to be sold to some conglomerate, which, by the way, that conglomerate gave Equifax, gives Equifax all their data to sell them.

Because in the 90s, they didn't understand the ramifications of the amount of data they were collecting. And of those 85 utilities or so, you know, millions, tens of millions of Americans' data, these Equifax was charged with building the database to put it all together. And in exchange, it got the sole rights to sell it to third parties. In the 90s, no one probably thought of anything of it because they were dumb. We didn't know. Who do? Apparently, these guys at Equifax are like, this is fucking money. Look at all this data. This is going to meet something someday.

So evil. So evil. I'm happy that we are starting to get services and tools that are better than just like, oh, do this to that, like piecemeal solution. What kind of services does Brightline offer for folks who are running for office, who are activists who might be wanting to protect themselves online? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so yes. So to my final, to the last point, I wanted to just say the narrative, the consistent narrative is that you did this to yourself. You operating on the internet and your social media and being on Facebook or posting this information, this is why your data is out there. You did this to

yourself. And that is such a bald face lie and absolute bullshit. And it's the same story we hear from tech over and over. It has nothing, we didn't do anything wrong. So first and foremost, like if your PII is out there, it's nothing you did. More than likely, unless you took a photo of your driver's license and it's always, but most people don't do that kind of shit. So even then, wouldn't have been scraped by most of the databases, if not all, who have it. So don't believe that lie first. What do we do at Bright Lines? So I think when you talk about Delete Me, there's another one called Canary. There are other services like that privacy duck used to exist that would help scrape your information from data broker sites.

That is low-hanging fruit. For the most part, those sites will opt your information out at least for a while. They do pop it back up, right? And so you can go through and do that kind of whack-a-mole with them across these hundreds of sites, so you can pay someone to do it with a bot and some human interaction, and that's relatively inexpensive. It is not easy, however, to get your information down at the core. And that is what we do.

We go to the root of the public record. What's really difficult about the work we do is that it takes so much follow-up, cajoling, like being a really nice, like white lady. And I see that you love Jesus, me too. Do you make this abortion doctor shit off your website? Literally, a conversation we have this week. blessings was her response in any event like there's a lot of kind of following up there we have no protections right like section 230 well hated among privacy activists it's like this shield for the content that's on a website

the website owner isn't responsible for the content that gets placed there so like we were talking about the start of the hour like no accountability and that is the upper you know the modus operandi of this industry there's no accountability. Public records, that is where we're different than anyone else because we don't want you to keep coming back. Other services are designed to keep having to knock your information down. That's fine. That's just not how we like to operate. So say a candidate, an activist, a journalist, a medical doctor, in some cases a climate scientist will come to us and say, hey, I'm worried about these pieces. My mom owns a home. I own this farm because that's a thing that actually a handful of our clients have farms. Like I started a company, registered it in my name and my home address.

I'm registered to vote in this state that I'm worried about that. And they'll ask, you know, what do I do? I've been getting some messages online that bother me or I'm afraid that because my work is in race equity, I will. And I have a little. child at home or I have several children at home or I'm Chinese American and that's our latest like hate flavor right so what can I do so we'll take a few minutes with them to understand their concerns talk through what has happened and what they're what's coming up for them in their lives and then the areas where and by that I mean like are they going to be speaking publicly are they publishing something et cetera and then talk with them about you know who's at home who they want to

protect what they want to protect. Sometimes it's an identity. Sometimes it's an identity or a previous marriage that they don't want folks to know about or they have little children or their mom, right, or their grandmom. And so what we'll then do is take like a delete me and start scrubbing the low-hanging fruit that's on the data broker sites and then use a handful of, frankly, arcane legal mechanisms to try to compel a website to remove their information and or an agency. So we'll often tell folks to put their home in a revocable trust, which isn't an easy thing to do to find an estate lawyer who understands your privacy concerns can help you name your trust in a way that wouldn't immediately identify you.

And then to understand what that updated filing looks like on, say, DCRA's website. or on Jefferson County or Marion County's website. Would the website also have the addendum that's like, this was this and now it's this? Like, is there a transfer of sale? What does all of that look like? So in some cases, we ask them for revocable trust for folks who can afford it. We talked to them about using an LLC because that's more coverage. It's more protection.

It's just harder with capital gains. Folks lose out on the gains of their money. And sometimes of their, investment. Sometimes the mortgages, mortgage companies won't lend to an LLC. So there's more complexity than it is necessary there. The point is to create a firewall between your name and your home address. That's our number one. Always, always, always. Because with our clients who have successfully put their homes in trusts, we see the amount of data across the board nose dive within a few months. Wow. It's expensive. It's a high barrier to entry and it sucks that that's the case.

we just should maybe not be selling that data point blank. You know, like just don't, it doesn't need to be online everywhere. Then we'll talk to folks about voter records because those are often those voter files get sold to lots of people. And there is no like DRM. Like if you sell it to a campaign, there's nothing stopping that camp. And a campaign can buy it, right? Like in a lot of cases, they are perfectly protected buyer of a voter file. They need it.

But there's nothing stopping them from selling it down the line. Most are scrupulous. They wouldn't do that. But not everybody's life that. And so then that, there's one state, Colorado, that allows someone to file as a registered or as a confidential voter. In no other state does that exist. So there we try to work with an address confidentiality program that's set up for

survivors of domestic violence and intimate partner events, not for just like regular folks. Not all states have them. Not all would be flexible on. enough to allow a person who's just being taunted online or threatened with doxing to apply and to have their application approved. In some states, it's possible. And what that does is shield the home address. People have an alternate address that would forward the mail to their home if they wanted.

It shields their home address from the DMV. And it shields their home address from a voter record. So you basically are hiding from the government in these really difficult, and expensive ways. Yeah, I mean, it's, I'm so grateful that you're providing these services to people, but I, and I really admire the tools that you all are building, but part of me wishes that you didn't have to be, you know, doing this. Like, do you do you see a situation where that's ever the case, like where we have the

kind of world where the kind of tools that you offer folks just aren't necessary? I mean, you're up under GDPR. they can do a round of like a delete me and for the most part their information is scrubbed more after a quick break another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy not quite on humor me with robert smigel and friends me and hilarious guests from bob odenk to david letterman help make you funnier this week my guest s nL's mikey day and head writer streeter sidel help an acapella band with their between songs banter Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

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Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed.

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he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. But get that thing. That man, hell get the flying.

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Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crime jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a pyramid of possible. chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be

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They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter, and dive into it unfiltered and unbothered and ask, How Hard Can It Be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of My Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's get right back into it. GDPR or general data protection regulation is a regulation that came into effect in 2018 that aims to enhance control and rights over individuals' personal data across Europe. We had a client their principles moved to the U.S., but the client is a UK-based company. And they were like, what are you all doing? Why do they have so much of your data? Why are your own agencies betraying you? And I was like, yeah, no, you're right. No, I'd love it.

I'd love it if we had a piece of federal legislation in place that protected us. If we had a whole suite of tools. If we had recourse. If we had an agency like the FTC that could actually have some teeth. If we could file lawsuits. Do you know that meant something? Like these fines, even my biggest complaint with GDPR is the fines that these companies get. They're just like, oh, cost of doing business.

Like, what's 30 million? What's 300 million? Not that much to them. Like, I don't think the fine is the way that it works, you know. I think there needs to be, yeah, the only way through this is for there to be a consideration around state agencies selling data. And first, we have to admit we have a problem. Just, you know, step one, admitting to yourself another person. This is a big fucking problem.

Yeah, when people are having to go to like go through so many hoops, us to vote and own property or rent a place or whatever, I would say that's a problem. Yeah. Yeah. There's no privacy in America any longer. And who's benefiting? A bunch of wealthy white men run companies, big big corporations. Why are we doing this to ourselves? How many assassinations will we have to see before we start to put two and two together? This man showing up at Pramila Gaya Paul's like outside of her home. Terrifying. Terrifying. We can find to all of those folks. That's not great. And so like when representative Jayapal, when this happened to her, the sergeant in arms, you know, in Congress was like, oh, here's money you can spend to like lock down your

house. It's like, brough. Like if they're already at your house, you've lost. Yeah. Like, why not stop them long before they get there? It's like, oh, now you have mouth cancer. We can do this really invasive and difficult thing and it might save you. But if you just brushed your teeth for the last 30 years, you wouldn't be here. You know what I mean? Yeah. Just like not, yeah, I would love it if we didn't exist. Don't repeat that to any investment. I would love it if we didn't exist. I'm banking on that we'll have to for a while. Yeah. I mean, I wonder, do you see, you know, we've seen more and more like women, LGBTQ folks, folks of color, you know, running for office, which is awesome and like holding public office, which is awesome. But the reality is that these same folks are disproportionately targeted

for this kind of harassment. And so I'm wondering, like, do you see this as a gender and race issue? And like, do you see it as like, I don't know, I just see it as a direct threat to our democracy. Like we can't have a functional democracy while this is a thing that is happening. We don't anymore. Arguably, so I, this became my like, A real bee in my bonnet in 27, I'm from Iowa. And a candidate who was running against the reprehensible Steve King, running with Kim Weaver, dropped out of a raise in 2017 for a couple of reasons that didn't really get reported all that well.

One, she came out of her house one day and there was a for sale sign in the front yard. Two, the government agents and state agency she was working for had just had their budget cut by the exact amount of her salary. And she was like, well, I'm harming people in my office who did. nothing wrong and they're coming to my home. I'm done. And she dropped out of a race. And I was like, that's, we no longer live in a democracy. If a person can't run out of those fears, someone's going to physically harm her or because we're women, like the way that we, for the most part, not to be completely like genderizing this, but like for the most part, women take,

take a very, we take risks in a certain way. We'll risk not for ourselves necessarily, our personal gain, will take risks for the people around us. the inverse is true as well. If the people around us are being harmed by our behavior, we've been trained throughout our years of presenting as women that we need to stop whatever we're doing. So that is why when a woman gets attacked online, it's a woman, it's her children, it's her mother, it's her sisters.

Like, that will shut us down because that's our training, right? So, yeah, arguably we don't live in democracy anymore. I started this because I thought, the way that America would survive in some way, shape, or form, not necessarily as the democracy we see today, because I don't think it's much of a real democracy. It's founded on, like, a lot of privilege and on the backs of enslaved peoples. So, like, I don't care if that democracy continues. But what I'd love for our country and, like, our communities and our society, like globally to look like

would be one where we're actually represented by the people in our communities in an equitable manner. That's not going to happen if we have to keep electing Joe Biden to fight off Donald Trump. Bless him, he's maybe, you know, a really wonderful person,

but his lived experiences aren't Kamala Harris's. You know, just not? He has no idea what she's been through in her life. I would much rather see a leader like that who has had to learn a lot about empathy and the experiences of other people and herself having those inform the policymaking,

only then are we going to start treating people like human beings? We wouldn't see Roe v. Wade being overturned if we had been able to elect people who looked like us who had our lived experiences. It's a complete lack of empathy on the part of those judges. It's such a cruelty. If you've ever known or yourself lost a pregnancy that you very much wanted, I have, like that is so, it is so cruel what they've done.

And like we just wouldn't be there as a nation treating people like non-humans. Wouldn't be a hundred or however many hundreds of police officers standing outside of a school. Well, children were being murdered because we would see those children as human beings. And I just don't, I just don't think that our structure. allow for that at this point. I feel like I've gotten really far afield from Brightline. No. I mean, I think it's all related. And I think it makes me feel good that the thing that animates you and motivates you in

this work is getting back to that humanity because it does feel like we've, we've take it. We've come so far from that. I feel it in our national political conversations. And the way that we interact online, like it's so clear that humanity, we have just like, has somehow gotten lost in the men. completely there's no seeing each other as human beings anymore it's like what can i do to satisfy my own feelings of like need or outrage my own selfishness right it just really it is not a high

point for the citizens of this country by and not even citizens that's not fair but like the people who inhabit turtle island that inhabit this space right you know like it's not we're not it's not a high point in our existence as a species by any means. And I think that's been fueled by the way our technology has been built. If you look at the beginnings of the internet and all the hopes for this utopian space and how we could be so connected, I think about being a kid who was just weird. I was just a weird kid growing up in Iowa. I wasn't like other kids. And I didn't know that other weirdos were out there until I got to college. And then I had to like go abroad. And I was I found other even, and then I came here to D.C.

And I was like, oh, yeah, you're my weirdos. My nephew is 16. He's out as by in Illinois. So, like, in a similarly very, like, kind of small Midwestern place. And he knows he's not alone. He knows there are other people out there. He also has to deal with a fair amount of shit that I didn't have to as a kid who didn't have social media and the Internet so close, right?

But at least he knows that he's not alone. And I think there was this promise of the internet being a place where you didn't have to, where you would feel connected to other people. And where you could increase your empathy skills and you can understand the experiences of people who weren't like you. And we have gone so far afield from that. Now it's like this tool to divide. Whether being manipulated by like Russian or like even frankly like I worked on China. understood that they also do this work where they intentionally, not necessarily in foreign countries, but sway influence public opinion online.

Like we can be manipulated outside of the country. We can also be perfectly manipulated by our own people. If Shinsuwe can be assassinated in a country without guns, that's all you need to know. We don't need to train militias anyone. We don't need trade military forces. It's frankly, like, we need to get inside of the head of one. person. All of us have become sleeper cells. That's terrifying. You know, what point do you make a bad decision because of something you're sure you heard on like some Q&On? That's some YouTube,

whatever craziness. And like there's no, you fall down that rabbit hole and where do you come out? It's true. It's true. And, you know, something that you said that really sticks with me because it really resonates with my own experiences. You know, I live in D.C. as well. I grew up in Virginia. And yeah, I was like the weird kid in a tiny town in the South who didn't know. I felt very alone. I felt very alien. I felt very strange. And the day that my parents brought home a computer and I first got on America online.

Remember that like terrible noise? Like that awful noise. That was the first time that I was like, oh, there's other people out there like me. Like I'm not alone. And I know that I would not like the path of self discovery that that set me on. I am so grateful for in my life. and I know that I wouldn't be where I am now without it. And I feel like the generation that comes before us,

I wonder, are they having the same experiences that feel like self-discovery, that feel like creativity, that feel like safe exploration of who they are? You know, are we leaving behind an internet that is worse or better than the one that I grew up with that was so impactful for me? I would argue it's not better.

It's not better. It's certainly not better. No, I don't think more is better. I don't think more images are better. These friends of mine, they have a, my friend has a stepdaughter who is in college. And bless her, she had to graduate from high school and do her freshman year, both during, like, COVID quarantine. So she got robbed of quite a little bit. She's a really adaptive young woman, bright, beautiful young woman.

She finally gets her, like, trip to Italy over the summer and creates an itinerary that's where she can take all of her Instagram shots. It's not how I plan my trip to Italy. And they're like laughing. They're like, it's not how we planned our trips to Italy. Like, that's not how we did our like summer in Europe or whatever privilege, cool thing that we got to do, right? Like, it's, I don't, I don't know that her experience was like that much better because she got to go to these like beautiful places and take these beautiful photos of herself looking amazing. Sure. I'm sure, right?

And would it have been just as cool as see the Maillermo? Like, would have been just as cool as he like St. Peter's Besel? You know, like, could you have had an amazing time? that led you down a different path in your life if it weren't so if you weren't if you hadn't been so focused on what you were doing for the gram yeah oh i don't know that it's better i don't think it's better and it doesn't feel safe it doesn't feel like it's a safe place to explore because the ramifications are so real world it was one thing to feel unsafe because you could be harassed that's already shitty but then to know that you'd be outed to your parents

Your grandparents, like your friends, your people back home, like to a community that you struggle to be part of still because they're bigoted for whatever reason, right? And it's no one else's business but your own. Like you get to decide when you come out and blah, blah, right? Like to have someone know that about you and then find you at IRL and then share it, like that's a risk I didn't have to take with the internet. I could still be my crazy self. No one was ever going to know. I lived in Spain for my junior and senior year, trying not to hate it was so amazing.

I would call my family once a week because that was the long-distance plan that they could afford. Still a lot of money to call back then, right? They had no idea what I was doing. There were no ramifications for the life that I had. I got to live this like fairy tale existence where I got to like leave behind all the family trauma and like all the drama and like

all their stuff and just live my own life for two years. There was a reason I didn't come home after my junior year abroad. I was like, this great. Yeah, I can't. That doesn't that one that doesn't happen now. You can't happen now. So yeah, I really wish that the real world ramifications weren't what they used to be or weren't, aren't what they are now for people. Yeah, they were closer to what they used to be, which was nothing, very little. What you decided to share, what you consented to be trauma-informed and sensitive about it. Like, for your decisions to inform the image that the information people get to receive. We don't live that way now in real life, let alone online. Does that make sense? It makes so much sense. It makes so much sense. It makes so much

sense. And I think that's exactly it. Somewhere along the line, it's like we gave that up without even really realizing how precious it was. Yeah, you know, a few years ago, my mother-in-law was living with us. She's disabled. She was sick. And she'd come up here because she couldn't, you know, North Carolina was one of those states that didn't have the Medicaid expansion. So she needed, she needed more care. And it was no longer affordable down there. And I remember reading something, this was 2017, about how the Girl Scouts had chosen this Palo Alto networks to partner with them to make the cybersecurity badge.

And I'll go to look at their like board of directors and they're C-suite. And I'm like, oh, there's one woman. Do I have to tell you what department she was running? HR. Of course. No, right? I was like, these fucking guys, right? And so I'm about to go on a Twitter tirade.

And then I think about Kathy sitting on my front porch and how easy it would be to find her day in and day out. And I cannot, I can't rant like I'd like to, which is a privilege, right? But like to be able to like speak my mind. But it's one that most folks assume we have as an absolute right. And most of us don't.

And fewer of us do now than you ever did. Oh, absolutely. You know, on this show, we talked to most of us. women, women of color, LGBTQ folks, most of whom are involved in things, like they're activists or they're like advocating for making technology safer and better, the internet safer and better. I would say probably at least 10 different times I have done interviews. They are in some level of hiding. It's like, oh, I'm not, I'm not in my apartment right now. I'm speaking to you from a safe location. Just recently, someone I had an interview set with had to cancel. She was like, I've pulled

out of all public appearances because of because I'm being attacked by right-wing extremists because of my disinformation work with the Biden administration. And it was like the amount of times that I have heard that story again and again where it's like, oh yeah, because of my work, my opinions, putting my opinions out there, being civically engaged, I'm not safe. I'm not able to be at home. I'm in a safe place. You're speaking to me from a safe house. Maybe you're not speaking to me at all. Like, it has happened again and again and again. And I think it really says something about the state of play that we're at right now. Yeah. Yeah. Like, if they can't be civically engaged, then no, we aren't living in a democracy. That's violence against women

in politics from top to bottom, right? It can happen to women being like politically assassinated who are running for office, who are part of a party, who are in office. And it also means that women can't participate. That is the same level of opie in my mind. Like, you're not, yeah we are not this is not a democracy and i think the sooner he said to my husband the other day i was like what do you think a civil war would look like in america in the 21st century and he's like this i think we're living it i think and we just don't realize it for the most part yet this is it like we are not in a position where i cannot believe so if you have other guests who are in this position who need help please feel free to send them our way we don't we're not cheap and

we can get in touch with different funds for different kinds of activists and journalists to help pay for things because it makes me sick and I'm not surprised. This is where we are. This is why we started this because I believe we're more than we are acting like we are right now. As a species, I believe that we're more than what we're doing right now. And I won't stop being hopeful and I won't stop being optimistic about the future of humanity. And I won't stop fighting for us to be more. And this is one small way that I feel like we can start to move towards more, evolved, more human, more kind, more whatever the word is. Yeah, we're more than we are.

It is a 21st century moment. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at Hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. your podcasts. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas.

And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast, Point Game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was calling it. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow.

Then after that game seven, Marquis come in to you, he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I actually drop better when I'm high. It heightens my senses,

calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful. Honestly, it just helps me focus. That's probably what the driver who killed a four-year-old told himself. And now he's in prison. You see, no matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different,

you drive different. So, if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. This week on Crimless, Rory and I welcome a very special guest. When I did a podcast, I wear my sleep masks. I like where this is going. So if you guys will indulge me.

That's right, the incredibly talented and hilarious Will Ferrell on an episode dedicated to crimes committed by people named Will Ferrell. You're good for 300 crimes? Yeah. We've got two. I'm ready to go right up to present day. Listen to Crimless on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.