There Are No Girls on the Internet - Looking for an abortion online? Listen to this first.

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

In the wake of the devastating Supreme Court ruling on abortion, questions are swirling about how to stay secure online. Should you delete your period tracker app? What about Incognito mode, or using a VPN? Computer scientist and social media expert Dr. Jen Golbeck has been running a popular TikTok series educating people on how to be more secure while navigating abortion online. Follow Dr. Golbeck on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jengolbeck?lang=en See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, it's a Shanti Plummer from Fudderound and Find out. This week, Azee Fud and I sat down with Step and Curry. Step talks pressure, confidence, and what it really? takes to stay great. There's different categories, I guess, on like, conditioning, shooting drills where you try to simulate kind of games. Look at her face. We have a love-hate relationship with those,

because you know you're getting something out of it. You don't look forward to those days. Listen to Futter Around and find out on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to take a moment to address the June 24th Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe versus

Wade. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion care, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. This decision could also lead to the loss of other rights. To learn more about what you can do to help, go to choice.cr.cr.co. And I encourage all of y'all to speak up, take care, and spread the word. Common decency also does not exist in surveillance capitalism, just in case anybody's worried about that. If they can make money on it, they do not care how evil it is. And that is a pretty universal lesson. 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.

By now you probably know that last week, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision legalizing abortion in the United States. Now, I have spent most of my adult life working on expanding and protecting abortion access, so I'm not going to lie. I took it pretty hard. And even though abortion advocates and providers have been expecting this for many, many years and preparing for it, it still felt like a punch to the gut. I'm angry, I'm numb, but most of all, I am just fucking exhausted. Now, let's be clear, abortion is a technology issue.

Because in 2022, the issue isn't so much, quote, back-alley abortions and coat hanger imagery. It's the digital surveillance and criminalization of people's social surveillance. suspected of having abortions or aiding in abortions in states where it's banned. When the news broke, there were a ton of questions circulating around social media. Should you delete your period tracker app? How can someone securely find that obtain abortion pills without creating a digital paper trail? It's a lot to navigate, and I'm not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice, nor am I a cybersecurity or digital security expert. But I know somebody who is.

I turned to Dr. Jen Goldbeck, professor at University of Maryland and computer science. I found Jen on TikTok where she's been doing a popular series teaching people how to more securely access health care, including abortion care online. So I have to start by really asking this kind of grounding question, like in these very weird, intense times, like, how are you? How are you? I know that this time must be intense for someone with your body of work. How are you holding up? Like, not great if I'm going to be like super honest, I'm getting stuff done. It's been really nice being on sabbatical this year, which I think a lot of people think that means you don't have to work for a year, but it's just

you kind of work on different stuff. But you don't have to teach classes. You don't have to go to all the committee meetings that you normally do. So I've been writing a book, and it's been good to have a slightly slower pace. But yeah, you know, I deal with a lot of bad stuff on the internet. Like that's kind of my job. And the bad stuff, man, sure has not stopped in the last couple years. So it can get a little overwhelming. I'd be really happy for it not to be a thing anymore. But I'm still functioning, you know, so I count that as a win. Yeah, you've got to get your Ws where you can these days, I feel like. For sure. So how did you come, like you have this, I was reading about your background and it's fucking amazing. How did you come to be doing this work? Like,

what brought you to digital security? What brought you to really doing research into the way the implications of the online tools that we use every day? Yeah, you know, so I started, I started my PhD in 2001. And I remember going to my advisor and being like, so social networks, that's a thing that people study in sociology. What happens if we put one of those on the web? And he's like, interesting idea. Like maybe try that and see what happens.

And so my timing was like just perfect for, you know, at that point it was blogging and then social media kind of emerged. So I've really been studying it since it was a thing. And it was like, it had all this promise to be really great. And I think, frankly, it's done a lot of great things, especially for traditionally marginalized communities. Like, we take a lot of crap there, but it also has given us things that we wouldn't have in any other way.

But it's also, man, like the dark, terrible stuff that goes on there. And so, you know, as a computer scientist, I'm kind of building artificial intelligence and technology that works in that space. But I've always had kind of this interdisciplinary bent. And the department I'm in, which is called Information Studies, it lets you do that. You can do whatever you want there, which is amazing. And so I've kind of consider myself like a public anthropologist,

sort of of like the bad internet. So like, you guys really don't want to go there. But I'll go there and I'll let you know the kind of stuff they're doing. And there's a lot of demand for somebody to tell people that because the people very rightly don't want to go look at it themselves. And so I kind of fill that gap, like, I'll, I'll endure it, and then I'll tell you what it's about. And then we can think about that. I know that you've been doing this series trying to give people information about how to avoid being tracked online if they're trying to access an abortion. How did this come to be? Like, how did you start doing this?

So, you know, I have never had an abortion. And I've never been pregnant, right? But I have never wanted kids. And so it has been a thing my whole life that I've been grateful to know was an option. Like I was clear from the time I was six years old. I thought you just got pregnant like you got a cold. Like you just woke up one day and you had like a big belly. And I remember telling my mom, like it's six like, God, I hope that never happens to me. Right. Never a doubt in my mind that I didn't want kids.

And so, you know, obviously like I've always been very careful. But I have always known that like if I ended up pregnant, like I was not going to stay pregnant. You know, eventually, after about 10 years of harassment, managed to get a doctor to tie my tubes for me. That's a whole other conversation. So it's not a thing that I personally worry about, but I am like so aware of like how important for my whole life it has been knowing that I would have access to that if I wanted it. And knowing all, I mean, I know, and we all do, whether we know it or not, I know a ton of women who have had abortions and a ton of men. who have been with women who have had abortions and like how important that is. And yeah, like,

you're really good at getting my rage up today. Let it. I mean, it's a raging topic. It is, it is, I'm right there with you. It is a ragey topic. I think a thing like that has built up over the last two years, well, more, right? I mean, we have like Trump and then we have COVID and then we have the election and the insurrection. Like all of this stuff that's been happening. Q and on, right, which has been a big presence in my life. It's like there's, I do what I can do, which is to sort of bring some light into spaces where people might be confused. But I feel very powerless to kind of fix what I see as like such a big problem, big complicated, festering problem. And this was like another one of those things. Like I can't believe like this is like

yet another thing in this string of awful stuff. What can I do? Well, the one thing that I can do is that you can get an abortion in a lot of the cases where women need them. You can do it with medication. You can do it safely. That is easily accessible online. Like you can go online. You can buy it and they will send it to your house. No problem, right? No matter what state you're in, they'll ship it to you from another country. You can get it. And so then the concern becomes, well, how are they going to track this? And like we all know to be worried about that now, but not exactly how it's working. And when I do these videos on TikTok talking about this stuff, I get hit a lot of kind of like bros, honestly, in the comments going like, well, if you just use a VPN,

it's not going to be a problem. And like, I'm all for a VPN, right? Like, that'll encrypt the traffic coming out of your computer, so it's less likely to get snooped on. But it does not solve any of these problems of like capitalist surveillance, digital tracking, all of this. And so people sometimes think, like, oh, I know this one thing to do, right? I'll use incognito mode on my browser. I'll use a VPN and that'll protect me. And it won't. So I want to talk you through, here's the entirety of this process if you were to go buy abortion medication and get it shipped to you. And here's what you have to do for every single one of those ways they're going to track you. There's protections that you can take in every one of those steps to actually get access to that. So it's a way that makes me feel

like I have a little bit of control over what's going on, at least helping people know that like if you're going to go that route to buy medication online to have an abortion, here's the steps that you can take to be really protected. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned the response that you got from like Brobe types, because something I've sort of been wrestling with. I have noticed, this is just my anecdotal opinion, whatever, I have noticed that the surveillance and like digital security space for the last 10 years has been a little bit, I guess, broby, for lack of a better phrase. For sure.

And I guess we're in this moment where it is so clear to me, oh, it's always been the case, but in this moment in particular, it's so clear to me how important digital security and issues are for women, for non-binary people, for people who are traditionally marginalized, so who are not, you know, pros, when we think about surveillance, I guess, how do we make sure that that doesn't get lost? That the issue doesn't become like, oh, the face of digital security is like a white dude. How can we get to a place where we can have a more honest understanding of what is that stake for who when it comes to digital security and things like us being tracked online?

I mean, I think you nailed a really important point there. It's like the bros are not at risk in the same way that women are, that people of color are, say, trans people now, right? I mean, they're having all of their own big legal issues with access to health care. It's not the bros that are having those problems. And there's a really interesting dynamic here that I've seen kind of before these social issues, say over the last two or three years have brought this to the forefront. But when I would just talk about security and privacy in general, you get a response that's like, well, what you just said isn't a perfect solution. Right? So when I was, one of the first videos I did about abortion is like, hey, if you're going to search for like abortion-related

stuff online, use incognito mode in your browser, at least. And then I'm like, you can use the tour browser that prevents you from getting tracked, but at least use incognito mode. Now, all incognito mode does is delete your search history when you close the window. That is the entirety of the protection you get. So it's very insecure, but we've seen women already be arrested and charged with murder when they have miscarriages because they searched for abortion-related stuff at some point. And that's just the cops taking their computer and looking at their search history and it's in there. So like, don't keep your search history. It's a thing that's going to get you some percentage of safety. And I do that video and they're like, well, you know, incognito mode, like it doesn't do this and it doesn't do this.

not a perfect solution. It's like, yeah, man, like, I know, but that doesn't mean don't do things. And this is a thing that I think a lot of security bros get really caught up on is like, you don't have a perfect solution. Like, I can find ways that that thing is insecure. And so you're dumb and bad and wrong and I'm smarter than you. They don't actually come with another solution or like a thing that makes it better. They just want to have that little powerplace of like, let me explain to you while you're wrong about this. And that I feel is the real. And that I feel is the real. real problem where it's like they don't face the same issues that we do, whatever those issues are, whatever group you're part of. They're kind of safe. It's really easy to come from a place of like,

well, you suck and you're wrong and I'm smarter than you and not bring any solutions with that. And I think that's sort of what we're dealing with. And frankly, that we see a lot online is like, they're kind of used to being in this position of power. And so women come along, people of color, come along, trans people come along and go, here's the thing that we can do to stay safer. They want to kind of reclaim that position of power and be like, that's not right. Like, I know better than you guys. So I see that kind of power dynamic, which we've seen so many times with so many things online, just kind of playing out in the security space as well. I think for a lot of them, it's like theoretical. And for us, it is not theoretical. It is very real world. For sure. Not everyone is a digital

security expert. In fact, the people who most need practical advice on how you can more securely access abortion online are folks who might not necessarily consider themselves techies. This is why Jen keeps accessibility at the forefront of her work. She wants to make sure that the tips and tools that she highlights are accessible enough to actually be helpful for the folks who need the most. Going back to what you were saying about how sometimes you get these bro-y people responding to you about like, oh, you're wrong about this, you're not doing that perfectly. I think it's really tricky because the audience that you're speaking to, for the most part,

they're not going to be digital security experts or tech experts. They're people who are looking to access abortion, right? And so you kind of have to walk this line of making sure that your tips are accessible for people who need them. And those people, by and large, I'm sorry, are not people who are going to, you know, already be showing up a level of tech expertise. And so coming from a place of like, oh, it has to be perfect to even be, you know, something that you put out into the world, again, I just feel like it doesn't reflect

where we're actually at. Like, how do you balance making sure that the tips that you give are actually going to be accessible for the folks who need them? Yeah, you know, so there is a nearly perfect way that you could buy abortion medication and not be tracked. You take a whole bunch of cash. You go buy a burner phone. You use it on public Wi-Fi. You use the Tor browser. You use cash to buy gift cards that you use to pay for the medication.

You have it shipped to, this is kind of the big question mark, someplace that's not you, and pick it up from there. and there's no digital trace of you. So great. One, that's super hard. Two, it's very expensive, right? That's not accessible. I mean, if I, I think, like, if I were, like, 17 and needed an abortion and didn't want to tell my parents about it, right? I mean, I think that's part of the audience I'm reaching on TikTok. They're not going to use a bunch of cash to go buy a burner phone and use public, and, like, all use the tour browser, right? Like, that's not what they're going to do. And the fact is, like, you know, if we have, like, big government agency, right? Like, there's a NSA, FBI, CIA task force coming to get you. Man, there's nothing you can do, right? They're going to figure this out. But the fact is

they're not going like, oh, abortion medication was like purchased by somebody on the Panera Wi-Fi at this time. So let's go get the security footage, like some CSI nonsense. Like that's not most of what we're dealing with. It's like your neighbor found out you got an abortion and they're going to do the Texas civil suit thing to get their $10,000 and turn you in. What's going to make it easier? So I like to give solutions, what's going to get you 50% more protection? Like delete that search history. It's going to help. Is it perfect? No. But if you do that and you know, you use a gift card to buy it and you don't take your phone if you're going to like planned parenthood so you can't get tracked. Like, we know people are tracking that. Like, these are all really simple steps that

anybody can do. They don't cost you a lot of money. It's just kind of changing your habits and being aware. And I think having that, like one, people are more likely to do it. It's accessible to more people. And it's going to give a good amount of protection, even if it's not perfect. Nobody, like, the perfect solution's stupid and hard and nobody wants it. Otherwise, we'd be doing it already with everything. Yeah, exactly. You know, one of the tips that you've give that I love is that, you know, if people don't have the abilities, you're like, go buy a burner phone. If you don't, if you can't buy a burner phone, go to a library. And you talk about how public libraries are this bastion of privacy protection. Can you tell us? So I love that.

Shout out to librarians. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah. I mean, if you go back to like the George W. Bush administration, so we're looking like post-9-11, I think one of the 9-11 hijackers may have looked something up in a library once or at least part of this whole terrorism panic around then was like, oh, people in libraries are going to be doing terrorism there. So we want to be able to access all the books that people have checked out. Like, I'm worried about Jen doing a terrorism. I want to see everything that she's checked out and everything that she's done. And the librarians were like, no, we're not doing that. If we have to throw away all of our records of books that people have checked out, we will do that before we'll turn them over. And I think the George W. Bush quote was

radical militant librarians. Right? So this, you know, we can kind of go back to then and librarians are like, no, like people should just be able to come here and get information. Like that's their job. I mean, the department that I'm in, information studies at Maryland, we have the library science program. So professional librarians, among other professionals, come out of our school. They're very committed to helping people find the information they want and giving them protection for that. So like on one hand, your librarian is likely not going to be a digital security expert who will be able to talk you through how to prevent being tracked. But on a lot of those computers, for all sorts of reasons, they'll like automatically delete your search history and they're not

going to collect a lot of information about you because, you know, if you go on the library computer before me, they don't want me looking through all of your history, right? There's a good reason to keep that private. And they have this history of not turning over that information. And in having a lot of legal protection from turning that information over to the government. And so while they're not going to give you necessarily a ton of great advice on how to keep your phone from being tracked, they will show you how to access information and use the internet in a way that's likely to be safe for you. And it's free and it's a great resource. And librarians love helping people find information. So, you know, always your mileage may very

be cautious about if you're telling them you're searching for abortion-related information, depending on where you are, right? But if you just want a private search window, they absolutely should be able to help you set that up. Such good advice. I love librarians. It's like every time I hear more about the times of public resources that they offer to the community,

it's like we need to be talking more about the amazing resource that we have available to us in public libraries. Yeah, like they need a master's degree to be a librarian. And if your experience with librarians is only like, it's where I checked out books as a kid, and then I return the books. You go like, what do they need? a master's degree for. But it's because they have all this expertise on lots of other topics,

many of which are related to kind of community relations and management because that's a big part of their life. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odin Kirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs. Bantor. 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 IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans

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And we're back. In the wake of the Supreme Court, Court striking down Roe, I heard lots of well-meaning people say things like, well, don't worry, because we've been here before. But that's not actually true, because the last time abortion was illegal in the United States, in the days before Roe became the law of the land in 1973, we did not have the vast infrastructure of digital surveillance, tracking, and data sharing and selling like we do now. We didn't all carry GPS devices in our pockets. We did not all create digital paper trails of all the information we've ever accessed,

and we certainly didn't have companies selling and sharing that information with third parties, including law enforcement. We did not create digital logs of the most sensitive information about our bodies, like our periods, onto apps who then go on to share it with God knows who. For instance, the popular period tracking app flow

faced a lawsuit last year for sharing people's personal information, including, quote, intimate details about sexual health and menstrual cycles with third parties like Facebook, Facebook and Google, despite public assurances that it would not. And they did this because data is, quote, vital to their business, according to the lawsuit. Add in laws like SB8 in Texas that deputize ordinary citizens to turn in anyone they suspect of having an abortion or aiding and abetting an abortion for a $10,000 reward, and you can start to see the scope of the situation that we're currently facing.

So I want to set the stage a little bit. I feel like there's probably people listening who are like, this is, I'm learning a lot about the state of play as it pertains to digital security and what is really at stake with the information that I, you know, put on the internet and that technology has about me. And so people, you know, you might, I guess you might be thinking like things like when we have our periods and, you know, the goings on of our, of our reproductive health. That's probably like protected by HIPAA or like common decency, right? But that is not the case. So what, so. what is the reality around, you know, our information and how it can be accessed and perhaps used against us? Yeah. So HIPAA has really gotten a lot of attention between like COVID and vaccines and certainly now with this. So HIPAA is a law that just provides, just applies to your

health care providers. So your doctor's office, your pharmacy, they're not allowed to give away your records. That said, interestingly, so my dog, I have a bunch of rescue golden retrievers that have a variety of issues. And one of my dogs has very serious anxiety. And he's on Prozac. So he takes Prozac every day. And he's on my like CBS family account. And I got a text from CVS like, hey, Chief Brody, just you know, May is is National Mental Health Awareness Month. And it's like, they're sending kind of marketing emails or texts to my dog because he's on an antidepressant, which, you know, sort of a show like they're, you know, they're following HIPAA rules for the dog, even if they don't have to,

but they can still use it internally for things, right? So HIPAA is not, it doesn't have anything to do with privacy, really. It has to do with how your medical records are sent around and that they can't be released. You do get some privacy from that, but not anything relating to apps, the internet people, just your doctor and your pharmacy, basically. So ignore HIPA. It doesn't apply to anything that we're worried about, essentially. Common decency also does not exist in. So, surveillance capitalism, just in case anybody's worried about that. If they can make money on it, they do not care how evil it is. And that is a pretty universal lesson. I am an optimist, and I keep going, yeah, but they wouldn't do that. And like, yeah, they totally would. They are. They have been for 10

years. Like, you're just not going to get a lot of protection. What we've seen with like period tracking apps is that a lot of them were sharing information. And they do it in a variety of ways. So some full on released your period data and your health data to Facebook and Google. They got in big trouble for doing that. So that can totally happen. Some of it is a little more passive, right? So they might use a third party to do like analytics. So I want to know like, does Jen come to the app other than when she's logging her symptoms or her cycle info?

So do I come to it in the middle of the month and look for anything? Do I use it for anything other than just like putting stuff in? So that could be interesting for them to know, and it may help them develop new features or, you know, decide things. But writing code to do those sorts of analytics is pretty heavy duty. There's plenty of third parties who will do it for you. So they might partner with a third party to do analytics. But that third party then necessarily gets access to some of their data.

So it might not be every single thing that I've logged in the app, but there's a lot that they can infer. There's a lot that they're going to collect and save. And so your information can be leaking out in ways that even the app may not necessarily intend. And those analytics parties absolutely could use it for marketing, right? They may show ads in the app to help pay for it. So it's a free app, but we'll show you like little banner ads at the bottom. It might be coming from there.

So there's a ton of ways that even not being hacked, which is the thing we could talk about, your data can get shared with third parties by those apps. And if we're looking then at places like Texas, for example, where there's a $10,000 incentive for me to find out anybody who got an abortion, that's data that would be really interesting for me as an evil person to try to find a way to track down through data brokers, online advertisers that may be incorporating it into their background. Wow, I'm so glad that you brought up the, like, quote, like bounty hunter policies in states like Texas, because I do think that highlights the, just the real world stakes of what we're talking about and how important it is that we really understand what we're doing when we give in for, like, what we might be doing when we give our information to these apps. I guess this, I mean, I don't know, maybe this is too black and white of a question, but would you say that people, in the wake of Roe v. Wade being struck down, should folks be thinking about deleting period tracker apps? Should they be, like, is that too black and white

or simplistic of a way to even be framing it? Or what do you think? I mean, I think it's a really useful framing. Whether or not you do, you know, it's going to depend on, frankly, where you are, what kind of support you have, what level of worry you have, right? So, you know, I mentioned I had my tubes tied,

so I'm not going to get pregnant. I guess it could fail. And if I got pregnant, man, I'm like a well-off white woman, right? I could go to Canada. If I couldn't get an abortion in the U.S., I could go to Canada. I know how to cover my tracks. I mean, I have all the resources and privilege and money necessary to get an abortion if I wanted one. If I were in a kind of rural, really Bible-belty anti-abortion place, and I'm a younger woman without a lot of financial resources, so I couldn't travel. by myself to a state that could do an abortion for me. Maybe I'm too young. I don't have the money for it. My parents would catch me, that kind of thing. And you know that people around you are really excited about bounty hunting people who get abortions. Then, yeah, like maybe start tracking that on paper like I did in high school, right, had little red dots in my planner. Yeah, you know, I don't think it's going to be the main place people go to. You always can lie, right? Like, oh, yes, I did have my period last month and you just find however many days and you plunk it in there and you've got a record

that that makes it look like you weren't pregnant even if you were. But, you know, if you're worried about people like checking in on that, right, somebody gets a hold of your phone, are they going to go look at it to see when you had your last period? I don't think it's a bad idea. And look, generally, I think everyone should be wary about logging any kind of personal information like this in any app, even if there's not a law that would get in the way of your health care, because it's almost always going to be monetized and sold to advertisers. I mean, you earlier today, or earlier, I think it was this week, you were posting on TikTok about elevated access, you know, the pilots who, you know, will, they take donations and they'll

fly people, every, all of the, like, everywhere in the United States, other than Alaska and Hawaii to get abortions, like abortion care or gender affirming care, what do you make of the fact that we're in this place where we have to have pilots taking donations to shuttle people to get health care, where we have to be deleting our period tracker apps, you know, so we don't get criminalized for abortion care. Like, what do you make of the fact that we're in this place where these kinds of things, they sound so wild, but they are very necessary? Yeah. I mean, I have kind of the pessimistic view and the optimistic view together. So the pessimistic view is that this seems to me a pretty linear path towards authoritarianism that started in like

2015-2016, right? We certainly saw this with like the rise of Trump and his rallies and chance for people to be arrested and chance to, you know, take people down and physical violence in those spaces. And we saw steady increases in that and kind of normalization of that kind of hate and language and violence over the course of the Trump administration. And this kind of othering, right? And we're seeing it, you know, Roby wait, I mean, this has been a very, long battle for the anti-abortion camp. So I don't like they maybe are in a position to achieve it now, but they've been trying to do that for a long time. But you especially look at like right now, like the anti-trans and anti-gay measures. You know, I'm in Florida. Man, stuff is a nightmare here,

right? Where, you know, you're having like gay teachers quitting their jobs because they're not even allowed, like students found out that they were married to somebody of the same gender. And, and they're like, so I'm going to get fired for that, right? I mean, that's happening in Florida now. That kind of othering, right, who is the enemy? And let's start doing stuff against them. I mean, it's such textbook authoritarianism. And so we've really seen, I think, a ramping up of that. Not that things were great for women seeking abortions or trans people or gay people, but we've seen progress, right? Things have kind of been progressing. And now we've seen a really aggressive backlash to that and some success with that backlash. So that's really upsetting. But I'm not surprised. I mean, it seems like a path that we have been on, you know, for the better part of the last decade. And hopefully we get out of that, but I don't know, right? I mean, I think the next couple elections, the midterms in the next presidential election, maybe we'll give us an insight of how much staying power that has. The optimistic side that I have is, man, are a lot of people trying to do something about it. So the elevated access, I mean, is these pilots getting together? Like, how awesome is it?

that there's this like network of pilots that are like, we will pick you up in Texas if you need gender affirming care and we will take you to Colorado and you can get it there. You need an abortion. Like, we'll come get you. Somebody else will pay for it and we'll take you somewhere. You know, my TikTok series is a little cheap free thing, but it's like I've spent two decades building this knowledge

and I'm going to drop it to you in one minute segments for as long as I have to to kind of protect that. And there's great resources in the abortion space that are like, tell us what states you're in. We're going to tell you how you can get abortion medication or see a provider. Well, here's what your legal options are. And if we have to send you to a pharmacy in India, we have vetted them. We know that it's trustworthy. There's a lot of people. I mean, first, the majority of people want abortion access to be a thing, right? And a lot of people are willing to take action. And frankly, this is another great thing that I see from social media is that it allows us

to kind of organize those movements nationwide from people who are like sitting at home and just want to help. So I'm optimistic in that space that there's going to be a lot of people working at the grassroots level to fight this kind of legal authoritarianism that, you know, I hope we see our way out of, but I think it's going to be a little while. Oh, my God. I mean, I have been in the like abortion space for a long time. And it's truly the only thing that gives me hope is that the space of abortion providers, abortion advocates, and their allies, it is such a, a space filled with dynamic creative people who want to fucking help. And, you know, I hear things all the time where it'll be like, oh, a bunch of teens in Texas took down the bounty hunter tip line website, you know, by organizing on TikTok.

Like, I'll hear these things and it's like, I don't know. I don't have a lot of faith in our elected officials to have our back. But I believe in us. Like, I believe in, you know, the power of the people who care. And we're the majority. Like, I'm so glad that you brought that up. I think for so long, we've allowed anti-abortion folks to set the narrative of how we talk about abortion.

And the reality is 80% of Americans support abortion access and want it to be protected. And so people who are out of step with that, they are the extremists. And there's not two, there's not both sides to it. There's not two sides about it. We need to make sure that we're making that very clear. when we talk about abortion, that the majority of the country, there's not a pocket anywhere where the majority of people are against abortion access. It is popular. We all, we've decided, and so people who are fighting against it, they are the ones that are the extremists, not us.

I also obviously am like a huge supporter of abortion access. And what we've sort of seen in the last few weeks, right, since we got this leaked decision is, one, states where abortion is, is already legal and not really threatened are making it easier to get an abortion, right? So we've actually a liberalizing of abortion access in those states, which I think is awesome. The other thing that we're seeing, you know, on one hand, you look at like Oklahoma, right? So they just pass this bill today, yesterday, defining like human life at fertilization. And, I mean, ghoulish, right? Is absolutely, like, unscientific. Nobody understands the implications of what they've just done. And I think people are going to start to see it because those of us who are in favor of not just,

abortion access, but like women's health care access go. So no more IVF then, for example, in Oklahoma. So, man, even if you're against abortion and you want to have a family, if you do IVF, well, all those frozen embryos that you haven't used, what are you going to do about them? Because those are now human lives that you're in charge of. And even the people who think there should be limits on abortion, the percentage who think ectopic pregnancies should not be allowed to be aborted. that you have to try to move that inviable like ball of cells into the uterus where it never can implant, but you have to do that extra medical procedure. No, I mean, the number of people who think that's a good idea are just infinitesimal. And yet we're seeing it legislatively. And so the hope is

that what this will do is really open the eyes of a lot of people to, it's not these things that you're seeing on the posters. It's like people trying to have IVF, people who have completely inviable pregnancies, people who, you know, find out six or eight weeks into their pregnancy that they're pregnant and you're not giving them any options, you know, I think it's going to galvanize a lot of people who maybe haven't thought this was an issue that affected them that much because they're like, they had kids, they're fine having more kids, they maybe have a religious position. You know, I think it's going to bring this community together and get things seen by people who don't normally think about the issue. More after a quick break.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L'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.

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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 the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers while he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time.

You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a perimenopausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Riva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden I'd had hanginess happening. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be.

Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How high can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard. Well, that's lighting. 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. So, you know, you were talking earlier about apps and how anything that can be for sale will be for sale. I'm in this day and age in my life, I am like a fairly parent way to person when it comes to this stuff. Like, I own an iPhone, but other than that, I don't have any kind of, quote, smart devices in my home.

But that was a journey. I went from, like, thinking it was so cool that I could come into my apartment and be like, hey, Google, play Madonna, and it would start playing. And then, you know, now I don't have any of that stuff. And I guess there's probably people who are listening right now who are thinking, like, wow, I, you know, have never really thought about digital security. And this all feels super overwhelming and hard. you know, what do you say to those people who are just sort of starting to think about the implications of the technology that we use and they're like, gee, this is a lot.

Yeah, I mean, I guess two points there. One is, so I also don't have any of those technologies. I call them in-home surveillance devices, because that's like 100% what they are. It's work, man. Like when we bought this house that I'm in now, we had to buy a TV. Like we bought it fresh, so we had to buy everything to go in it. We didn't move stuff to it. Finding a TV that doesn't have voice control, right?

Because if you look at the terms of service on those TVs, they're like, don't have sensitive conversations in front of your TV because we can't guarantee your privacy. And I was like, no, if I have to, I will get in there with a soldering iron and pick that microphone out if I have to. It was a little bit of a challenge. So, yeah. So on one hand, like obviously a lot of the tradeoff we talk about with all of this is like there's convenience on one side, right? It's easy to do the thing that lets you be surveilled by design, right? And then it's harder to do things that protect your privacy. So you want to think about where you fall on the scale. I also have an iPhone. It would be more secure if I just had a flip phone. And there's just like too many things I would not be able to do if I didn't have that. But you want to think about what is the most evil thing that a person could do with what I'm doing with my current digital setup.

So, for example, your internet search history or the history of websites that you go visit, I think the first law that was signed into effect when Trump became president was blocking an Obama administration regulation. that said, your internet service provider, so Comcast or Xfinity or AT&T, whoever gets you your internet to your house, Obama put in a regulation that said they can't look at your search history, your web browsing history, and use that for advertising for monetization. And then the very first law that the Trump administration signed into effect was removing that regulation. Now, this was a rule that was supported by like 98% of Americans. We're like, yeah, internet service providers shouldn't be able to snoop on what I'm doing. And they overrode that rule anyway and said, go ahead and do that, right? So think about everything you do online. And it's

worse than you think, like, go back and look at your search history, right? It's like cringe-worthy, awful stuff. Like, why did I search for like kangaroo sex? Like, oh, you know, there's like a commercial that came up. Could people twist that and use it in a way that makes you look bad? They totally can, right? All of that, everything you do online, everything you buy, everything you search for, every website you go to, every action you do on it is being aggregated on the back end and used to target you. Everywhere you move with your phone on is being used to target you and understand where you are. Be creative about how evil it can be because that's happening. And if we look at abortion, for example, before any of this Roe v. Wade stuff over the last couple weeks, we know, for example,

that there's anti-abortion groups that we're setting up geo-fenced advertising. So basically, you can draw a little map and say, anytime anybody walks into this space, I want to start sending them ads. And they would draw it in a one block radius around planned parenthoods or abortion providers. And then if you crossed into that space, you would start being targeted for months with anti-abortion advertising. We know that they're doing that. And they can collect data from our phones if we engage with any of that content. And so your privacy or anonymity goes away. So as you think about the convenience that you get from bringing your phone to your doctor's office, a thing you should totally be able to do, you want to think about if you

should. That said, the onus should not be on individuals for this, right? It's a thing that should make us push really hard for better privacy protections. They have it in Europe, right? None of this stuff would be legal in Europe in the way that it is here. They have it in California to a certain extent. We really need much better federal privacy laws, and that will resolve a lot of these issues. And it's a thing that people should be pushing for. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a great place to go look. It's eFF.org. They have a whole lot. legislative section so you can see on the local, state, federal level, what legislation's being in place and, like, write some letters if you care about it. Oh, I'm so glad that you mentioned them.

I love EFF. Shout out to them. So, you know, you've mentioned a couple of, like, really great tips for folks if you're, you know, looking for abortion pills and you want to do it, you know, in a way that you're going to be less likely to be tracked, you know, using a tour browser, using incognito mode when you search, using public Wi-Fi. Are there other tips that you want to share? And you want to out for folks if they might need this information? So that's all important stuff. I would say for sure, the most important one is that you are not paying with a credit card or a debit card connected to your name. So figure out how much your medication is going to cost. Use cash by like a Visa Vanilla gift card, which you can get

anywhere for that amount, and then pay with the Visa Vanilla gift card. So much of how we're tracked is through credit card number. So definitely do that. And, other way that we're really easily tracked is through email address. So set up a fresh email address that you are only using to buy this abortion medication. Proton Mail is the one site that I've recommended for this. It's free. It's encrypted. It's really good and secure. You can just set up a email address. Use it to buy your medicine. Don't use it for anything else. If you do that gift card, fresh email address on something like Proton Mail. I love Gmail. I use it, right? But they track the hell out of you on Gmail. So Proton Mail email address, vanilla gift card.

you get 80% of the protection from tracking just from those two measures. So, you know, that's easy and accessible to anybody. Definitely do that. That's really helpful. And I guess, you know, one of my last questions for you, I usually ask folks who are doing tough work, whether it's digital surveillance or, you know, abortion, like fighting for abortion access, I usually ask, like, what keeps you you grounded and happy in this work? And I feel like I might know for you, you know, you're just like Just from looking you up online, I know that you're like a really cool person. Like you're an ultramarathoner. Like you have a whole dynamic list of really incredible interests. You also run Golden Ratio, a nonprofit that helps dogs. Yes. So I grew up with the golden retrievers.

And I had a couple dogs that I got as puppies. And when they died, you know, 10 years ago, you know, I had been wanting to rescue and just wasn't sure how to do it. You know, I got my first dog, like as I was moving out of the dorms, right? So I didn't like quite know how to adult with a dog. But, you know, at that point, I was like, okay, like, let's start doing rescue. So we started fostering and then kind of fell into this space of rescuing senior dogs and then dogs with special medical conditions. So we're kind of like the island of misfit toys.

We have, we just lost one this week, actually, one of our epileptic dogs. So he was number six. So we have five right now, but we have a blind diabetic. We have a tripod. We have the one on Prozac who also has really bad allergies. So all the dogs basically that nobody else wants to deal with because they're like way too much work. They come to us and we share them online because they are both like super joyful just existing, but also the transformations that these dogs make.

You know, Remy, who's our blind diabetic, we got him last July. He was on a chain in a backyard for five years. He had never been to the vet. He had a perfect rectangle of ball. between his shoulder blades where the chain connected to his collar and had just rubbed the fur off. He had Lyme disease or Lycia. He had never had his diabetes treated. He was blind. No training, obviously. No house breaking. And they're like, here, have this dog. And, you know, his fur had fallen out. Like, he was just a mess. And now he is, like, he comes up and he, like, rest his chin on my chest.

And he's this fluffy monster. And his, like, vision is coming back. And he plays with all the other dogs and to watch that transformation of these dogs who have had like, you know, some have had like okay, slightly neglectful backgrounds and some have come from like really profound abuse. To come here, you know, especially when we're in Florida, they like can go into the ocean in our backyard and swim around and we get to see that transformation and then we share it with people online. It's been a really, it's kind of an amazing thing. So there are a lot of work, but like how, how much happier does it get than like sixth golden retrievers just. just really wanting to love on you all the time.

It's a top-notch balance against all this bad stuff on the internet. While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the United States. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24th. Abortion is a basic health care need

for millions of people who can become pregnant, and everyone should have the freedom to decide what's best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion care, threatens the health and independence of all Americans,

even if you live in a state where abortion rights are upheld. Access to safe medical procedures shouldn't be determined by location, and it should not be the privilege of a small few. You can help by donating to local abortion funds. To find out where to donate, for each state, visit Donations forabortion.com. That's the number four. And if you or someone you know needs help or you want to get more involved, here are five resources. One, shout your abortion as a campaign to normalize abortion.

Two, don't ban equality as a campaign for companies to take a stand against abortion restrictions. Three, abortion.cafe has information about where to find clinics. Four, plancpills.org provides early at-home abortion pills. that you can keep in your medicine cabinet. And five, choice.cr.cr.co has a collection of these resources and more. I encourage all of y'all to speak up, take care, and spread the word. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.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 I-Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer. and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Dodd.

If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from Iheart Radio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 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 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. 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 hiring.

You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come in to, 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 Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Ashanti Plummer from Fud Around and Find Out. This week, Azy Fudd and I sat down with Step and Curry. Step talks pressure, confidence, and what it really takes to stay great. There's different categories, I guess, so I'm like conditioning, shooting drills, where you try to simulate kind of games. Look at her face. We have a love-hate relationship with those because you know you're getting something out of it.

You don't look forward to those days. Listen to Futter Around and Find out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro.

And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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