Digital Privacy for Artists - Gather Round: Summer Sessions

Real quick, does anybody want to like one more interactive thing? Do you want to go ahead and raise your hand if you feel like you've started your privacy journey already? Um, if you use a privacy focused browser, if you use a password manager, if you have uh switched anything else. Yeah, Maddie, amazing. Um, go ahead and you can put in the chat maybe what you use right now. If you have favorite tools, go ahead and put those in the chat. The nice thing about this conversation where we are all on the call together is that I do want to hear what strategies you guys are using. I do want to like I'm also going to be learning from you a little bit here. So yeah, amazing. Um I'm excited to see like how you guys are feeling. And I will also say um even if you're not using any tools by coming to this call today, you have now officially um started your privacy journey here. And like the fact that you're thinking about it at all is pretty big. I know a lot more people are thinking about it now, especially this year as some of the um strategies that we're seeing from tech companies and from our government are coming to light and uh getting more uh press coverage. um which is great but it's you know it's also it's a lot of something that I think about a lot as I get into this work as I'm I'm moving through this work uh is that we have been swimming in this uh ocean for a good 20 years now minimum um I would put 20 years as the timeline on um the surveillance capitalism world that we're living in not just the technology itself but when it started to be profitable to spy on people and to collect people's information and um and to encourage people to share their information as widely as possible as well. Um but we're really deep in it. So this is not like a one-stop shop. Um you know, privacy of any kind. You don't uh close your windows once, close your curtains once and call it a day. Like there are times where you want to step out. A lot of the the questions are around this, right? There are times where you want to be out in public. There are times where you want to put yourself out there. There are times where you want to promote your work or talk to your friends or um be in community and uh connected with others, but uh there are also times where you want to be able to control what you're sharing and have agency over what you're sharing. So um that is a part of what we'll be talking to today. Um this most recent chat we're working on the uh meeting captioning needs. I know that's a struggle for this one. Um, and we're curious about how to coach artists and access providers with their use of AI and catch uh privacy allowances that sneak into platforms. Yeah, that's awesome. Um, amazing. So, I before I get too far in a little bit about me and why I do this, um, I said my name is Thea. Uh, pronouns she, her, hers. I grew up in the Bay Area in uh the early 2000s and there was a really big tech boom and a really big tech shift that was happening when I was growing up and I feel in a lot of ways like I grew up with the technology that we use today that it was being built as I was coming of age and so when I started using technology it didn't work 100% of the time and a lot of the um functions of it hadn't been figured out and as I was coming of age I was also watching a lot of these companies figure out how to monetize the tech that they had. So, I remember a time when Google said, "We're never going to spy on anybody. We're never going to run ads. We are a search uh feature and that is our only purpose." And I remember when they took their like don't be evil mission off of their mission statement and off of their website and they stopped committing to that um as profit and Wall Street really became the priority and that was true for um most of these uh companies. Um, and I was a big nerd. So, I loved technology and um I loved, you know, I had big dreams of of flying cars and uh um mind controlled technology and everything that people were uh working on that I was seeing my friends like build computers on the weekends and seeing the the local community run hacker spaces where anyone could come and use the tools and check in and take classes and learn about how to build uh new devices. Um there was a really exciting world for me at the time coming of age. And a couple years ago, um I was I realized that I'd just gotten really disillusioned with the technology that I was using that like I had once loved technology and I'd come to hate it because of what uh the way that it has been built. Um, and so part of why I've gotten into this is really um to to remind myself and to come back to and to help build a world where technology can still be this beautiful and exciting thing because at the end of the day it's a tool. Um, and the question is really how we're using it and how we're building it. And there's a lot of it that is being built in the interest of profit uh and in the interest of social control. And there is also a lot of it that exists. A lot of tools that exist that we'll be talking to today um that aren't uh that aren't built to spy on you, that are in fact built to help you uh not be spied upon, that are uh built to help you have agency over your own uh life and world. And um that uh that is the world that I want to live in. And I want to live in that world where we get to have fun cool technology that helps make our lives better. Um better not nec like sparked me into another another thing that I will another path that I will go down momentarily. Uh technology that will help us make our lives better uh and that we feel good about using and that matches our values. Um, so, uh, that sort of leads to some of the like what we'll be talking about today. We're going to talk about some tools that are functional technology tools that are password managers, that are browsers, that are programs that we're using on our computers that will help us do this. And we're also going to talk a little bit about the ethos. And that's, you know, um, most of the questions that have been asked today that I've heard have multiple answers to them. They have answers that are like, "Oh, you can use this piece of technology. You can use this program to help you do that." And I also want to talk about how how we interact with the technology that we interact with because there are some questions that I don't have absolute answers for. there are some questions where um you know not every uh uh solution is going to fit every person's problem and every person's life. So I also want to help today help you guys build a system that's going to work for you. Um a system that is going to fit into your life. Uh uh an effort towards privacy that's going to work for what you need. And I always compare it to um uh to to you know living a more sustainable life. There was a video when I was in college of this girl who was like I only created one jar of trash all year and everything I do is sustainable and everything I do is like recyclable and she really made an effort to do that and that was really cool. It's not what my life looks like. That is not that does not meet my accessibility needs. I do not have the time or energy to make sure that the only trash I have are the like three little tags on uh plastic tags on the clothing that I buy and everything else I'm pulling my food out of the dirt or whatever. Um not to you know like if you do that that's amazing. That's so cool and I would love your tips. Um and I hope to learn that from you. But um as with that, like I want you to be able to approach this, not take what I'm going to share with you as an absolute like dictatorship uh um you know, complete structure one and done, but as um a menu, a shakurery board of options for you to like try and play with and explore. Um, and as we talk about this, as we get into that, I also want to say that one of the tools that I'm going to introduce is grace. Um, I want us all to have grace with ourselves and with each other and with the world that we live in. Um, because we are again facing 20 years of these capitalist structures that have been created. um 20 years of being, you know, negotiated with and frankly um uh deceived uh uh lied to manipulated um and sometimes just you know muscled into these systems. Um, since the last program that I did on Halaround last year, flock cameras have uh gone up all over the country and a lot more people are familiar with them and seeing them and you know taking them down uh legally or otherwise um going to their uh uh community meetings and speaking out against them, but they were for the most part put up without our acceptance, permission, input. Um, so I want to continually be bringing forward the idea that like um there are tools that we have. There are ways to reclaim our agency. Um, there are there is a new and a better world that we can be building for ourselves and for each other. Um, and it's it's not going to happen it in its complete sense. Uh, it's not going to happen overnight. Um, but that's, you know, that's been the world that we live, we've lived in. That is true of any sort of better world that we build. It's one step at a time. It's one day at a time. It's one small action at a time. And, um, I have a bunch of actions for us to do today, uh, that I think will help build this world. So, um, a lot of what I'm seeing in the chat, which is awesome, is privacy focused browsers. Um, and so I'm going to sort of guide us into some of our work session today. Um, and as we're getting into this, I'm going to put a couple links in the chat for the privacy focused browsers that I recommend, and I'll talk about why. Um, oh, this is the Windows link for this. That's interesting. Let me see if I just put download if that'll work. Um, we're going to start with a couple different options for a couple different reasons when it comes to your browser. Um, now as I'm doing this, I'm I'm going to put these chat these like things in here so you can start downloading them if they feel good and right to you. I recommend Firefox as a browser and I recommend um Molvad. Those are my two top choice browsers to use for two different reasons. I use both in tandem. So, um, your internet browser, you may use Chrome, you may use Safari. I'm seeing people post Brave in here. I'm seeing people post Duck.Go. Those are also great options. Vivaldi, I'll talk about a little bit more about them in a moment. Um, and if you know, if those are what you're using and if those work for you, that's awesome. And please, if you know, don't feel don't feel again don't feel a strong need to upend your life. Um, if you're using my big thing is if you're using something that isn't Google, um, you're probably already one step ahead of the game. Um there are five companies that are the biggest culprits of surveillance capitalism and uh uh ca corporatist oriented technology. Um and they are Google Apple uh Microsoft Amazon and my brain is pulling a total blank on number five. [laughter] Feel free to jump in. My goodness. This is one of those things that I'm like I know it. I don't have to write that down. Um, but I'm going to focus like really on Google uh for today. Um, Google also known as Alphabet because there are a bunch of Oh, Meta Facebook. I'm also going to be focusing on that one. That's the other big important one. Um, because Google is has been built so deeply into our lives uh and so deeply into our processes. um they're most of their stuff is free and there's that sort of line on the internet that is as most things are an oversimp simplication but not wrong that if it's free you're the product. Um and Google they started out as a we're never going to run ads kind of um search engine. and they were like, "We want to organize the knowledge of the world." And it was very cool. And then their shareholders found that they weren't making money fast enough. And so they started running ads and they discovered really that a lot of this extra information that they were gathering, right? It was sort of fun at first to say like, "Oh, this many people googled this thing on this day. Oh, we started using this word more on this day because of this piece of uh uh journalism that came out, this world event, this movie, this song. Like you can organize all of that. But they also started to discover that they were uh cataloging everyone's um uh momentary instincts. They're developing a catalog of the sort of off-hand thoughts that we have whenever you're like, "Oh, I want to look that up. Oh, I want to know what this is." Google has that they are the world's biggest um email provider. And one of the scary things about Google is that they are very concerned with their own privacy, right? You can't break into Google's uh uh servers very easily. Um but they are not super concerned about yours. They have access to um anything that you put into the world of Google, they have access to. And they've said in the past they're going, you know, they've been they've been got out basically like they've said, "We're not reading your emails." And they've been discovered to have scanned emails. And especially as companies are building larger and larger AI uh products, this is something that is becoming more of a concern for me as we're feeding all of this information into them. Um so uh my first first first recommendation is always to move away from Google Chrome because it is a Google product and they are collecting as much information as humanly possible. Um what you know tracking your movement across the internet, tracking any browsers you open, any websites you visit. Um so any way that we can move away from them that's useful. Um, Firefox and Mulvad are the two main browsers that I recommend for two different reasons. Firefox is uh very functional browser um that is owned by uh Mosilla which is a a different company. Now one of the things that we talk about when we get into these things is how much do we trust this company? So I just talked a little bit about Google. How much do we trust Google? For me it's not at all. I don't trust Google. Um, I trust Mozilla more, but there have been moments in the past where they have uh changed various um policies of theirs. But something that's really important for me is usability. And this is where Google always gets us, right? Their products are really easy to use. So something that I am always um weighing in my journey for privacy is can I use this product? Um, and that's why I put up both Firefox and Mul uh Mulvad. Um, Firefox is very usable. I can plug in my uh um password manager into it. It allows plugins. So, I can have my pass password manager built into the browser. So, it's autofilling information for me. And we'll get to password managers in a little bit. Um, but do I comp uh trust the the company Firefox the Mozilla implicitly? not necessarily. Um, and that's where Mulvad comes in. Molvad is a deeply deeply privacyoriented company. They also run one of the best VPNs on the market. Um, they do charge for that VPN, but one of their payment options is that you can mail them cash in an envelope with your uh account information. So, they are like deeply deeply in their practices committed to privacy. The problem with the Mulvette browser is that every time you close it, it deletes all of your information, deletes all of your tabs, deletes all of your history, which is great for privacy. So, the way that I use this, like one um tool option is I use Firefox for a lot of my day-to-day login, email, um uh uh uh Docs, all of that sort of stuff. Firefox is sort of my main player. And then anytime I need to just randomly search something, anytime I'm researching something, anytime I'm opening a website that I don't need to log into, if I'm online shopping, if I'm looking for flights, I do that all in Molvat. So, it's two different things. And that can add like a layer of friction to the day-to-day, but it's become a really simple habit for me that feels really good in um how I go about my uh day-to-day drivers. So, I put the downloads for those in the chat and I'm going to encourage everybody, especially if you're currently running Chrome, um, or even Safari, I'm going to encourage you to download those. Um, and for Firefox, uh, there is a plugin called Ublock Origin, and I'm going to pop the link for that in the chat as well. Um, and this blocks trackers in your browser. Um, Firefox and Mosilla do still have a certain amount of um, you know, keeping an eye on what you're doing. And a lot of websites have the trackers built in. Websites will pay attention to how long you're spending on a page. Amazon knows how long your mouse is hovering over the buy button before you click it. Um, and there are just things like, you know, uh, uh, cookies, which most websites, even with these tracker blockers, will accept so that when you log into them, it remembers what you put in your cart. So, these are things that were created with a a a useful process to begin with. You know, you don't want to have your shopping cart emptied every time you click on a different product if you're trying to do any online shopping. Um, but the sort of secondary uses of it are the things that have become really tricky. Um, so I'm gonna pause there. Um, does anybody want you want to just like let me know in the chat how the downloads are going? If you have any questions about installing these things on your programs, if you're doing it now, if you're not doing it now. Um, I'm just going to pause and just sort of uh I want to check in and see how things are going. I also know that I just talked a lot, but I want to give us a moment to absorb and uh check in. It's a bit of an info down. >> I just want to say out loud that that last link was origin.com just so for future posterity of people watching that that's what that link was. >> Yeah. And for installation, you can go ahead and open that in Firefox. and it it'll give you an option to plug it right in. Um, yeah, I got in the chat. Um, yeah, Kelsey, thank you. I'm glad you're here. Um, are they available on mobile as well? Yes, they are. Um, and that is also something as I'm chatting away because I'm I'm going to be chattering a little bit today. Um, you can put these on the computers that you're using now and you can also pull them up on your phone. Um yeah, taking notes, appreciate appreciating the info. I appreciate you as well for being here. Um yes, absolutely. Please put these things on your phone as well. Um it's it's you know these these these information gatherers are everywhere. They are on our devices. They're on our computers. They're on our phones. They're on our smart TVs. Um these companies are really taking every opportunity to do this. So I, you know, I I, as I'm saying this, I'm always trying to, um, find ways to introduce these ideas, um, talk about what we're up against, help create an understanding of how this technology works because also like we've been rolled out, um, these things and they're they're so easy to use, you can just use them. And now they've been, you know, tested enough for for the most part, obviously not all the time, but for the most part, they just work. Uh, and it's great when they just work. They don't always, but when they do, it's great. Um, but it means that we're re we've really been encouraged to not understand how they work. Um, and so I want to encourage everybody as you're using your technology to be asking yourself like, how does it know this? How does it know what the next word I'm going to type is? How does it know um, you know, what products I might want? Um, and what this gets back to like why we're here today. And I'm, you know, I'm always sort of I can talk about why privacy is important, but I feel like if you're here, you probably have your own ideas of it. Maybe that actually like that'll be my next um check-in question is why is privacy important to you? Um, but but remembering that like these things are are gathering this these this information in all of these little ways. Um, and it doesn't have to be like it the techn the technology worked before these companies rolled out these versions of this. Uh, there are ways for them to create technology that gets to know you and what you like without them storing all of that information on their servers, without them having access to it, without them selling it to other people. Um, this technology has existed in different ways in the past. Um, and so really like what it is for me is that it doesn't have to be this way. Like it doesn't have to be this way. They don't need to collect and sell your information. Um, I said something about friction a little earlier. Um, so just want to keep an eye on the time, make sure we're uh on track. Yeah, we're we're philosophy and work session. Yeah. Um, perfect. Uh I said earlier these these technologies work really smoothly. Now um Google again is one of the big uh um the big companies that has really pushed this um that they are so user friendly that they make things easier for us. Uh, but I always want to ask like what is easy about this? Because what I have found and this is sort of what I was saying about like sometimes it works the way it's supposed to. Uh, is really what they are what their their priority is is to make it really easy for you to give them information. Um, it is a side effect when it makes your life easier, when it makes your day-to-day easier. their priority is to bring you in and help you give up as much information to them as possible. Um, and that's the other thing about it. This information is sure, it's, you know, it might be your name and your birth date and your social security number, but it also might be, as we talked about with search engines earlier, it might be um, you know, oh, should I be worried about this thing? Oh, do I have this disease? Oh, [laughter] should I buy this item or that item? And the um the implications of that knowledge for them, the possibilities of that knowledge, their ability to sell products and their ability to sell stories and their ability to sell narratives to us, their ability to sell politicians to us given that information um is uh uh becomes really quite insidious. Um, and I keep coming back to like there are other possibilities because I think a lot of ah I just I keep going online and seeing like security influencers and um privacy influencers who are like here are eight ways they're trying to steal your thing and like and it's so um uh fearinducing and so much of our social media is built around this like triggering of emotions and triggering of fear. And that is a part that's a part of the machine. Um, and it doesn't have to be that way. Like I'm I'm not saying that the world isn't uh a scary place, but we all knew that. Um, and there are lots of ways that they're working to take our tech take our uh uh uh our information, and there are lots of ways that we can obstruct them. Um, which sort of brings me also two, we're going to do one more technology and then I'll I'll get into the next ethos of it. Um the I have really one um uh search engine that I use. It is start page. Um Ducko is also great. Um this comes I don't want to send that privately. I want to send that to the group. There we go. Startpage.com. And I have the ad start page because if you open that in Firefox, it will automatically make it your default search engine. So you don't have to type it in to the URL line every time. You can just click the way that you would search in Chrome with Google or any anything else the way that it normally defaults to Google. You can switch it over to Start Page. Um Start Page actually uses a lot of the indexing that Google uses, but it hides your information so that they can't connect it to your identity, they can't connect it to anything else. Um, it doesn't have built-in AI, which is great. Uh, Duck.Go does, you can turn it off in Duck.Go. This is the other like tool, one of the tools is use this technology. The other tool is always check the settings. Always check to see if you can turn off AI in the settings. In DuckGo, you can. Um, Duck.Go as a company has not always lived up to their promise of keeping your information safe. So um at this point my main uh recommendation is always start page. It is just as user friendly as Google in my experience and I recommend making that your default. And again yes you can also use this on your phones so I recommend installing it there. Um, I was leading up to uh a conversation about privacy and security. And this gets back a little bit to the conversations we were having or the questions that were coming up around how do we keep ourselves safe and still engage with the world? How do we keep ourselves safe and still use Instagram? How do we keep ourselves safe and still put ourselves out there? And that is um that's one of the places where I don't have a solid answer. Um I think there is or I would caution as we're talking about all of these ways that these companies are trying to take our information. I would caution that it be can become really easy or it was really easy for me to slip into this idea that I have to fully protect myself. I have to lock everything down. I have to be bulletproof. And that is um perfectionism. That's I don't know if any other artists ever experienced perfectionism, but that's something that I struggle with. Um and it's also uh connected to urgency, which um I, you know, as a part of our anti-racist practices. These are two uh qualities of white supremacy that I'm always wrestling against or trying to release rather. I'm not fighting it. I'm breathing through it. Um but a lot of what my priorities are when I come down when it comes down to it, what my priorities are with privacy is to make it harder to gather my information for these companies. We live in a world where it's it's really hard to be absolutely secure. And that is partially the world we've built. That's partially flop cameras. That's partially Ring cameras. That's partially living in a world that is surrounded by cameras at all times. Um, and companies that are profiting off of these images. But it's also partially like if someone were to go at your front door with an axe, what are you that your door is probably made of wood. Not everybody's home has to be a bank account, a bank safe. Um, and that is very normal. Privacy and security are two very different things. You don't need to protect everything the way that you protect maybe your uh credit card number. Um, you don't need like 18 locks on your bathroom door [laughter] for it to serve its purpose. Um, sometimes it's good enough to just speak quietly in a restaurant rather than worrying about um, you know, putting your phone in the refrigerator and turning on the shower like a spy. Um so one of the one of the things that I will encourage you to do as you're going about your life as you're going about um your daytoday is to catch the moments where you're like it's not enough and also look at like what um what the risk like think through what the risks are. Um, this is also a practice of of like anxiety in therapy of going like what is the actual problem that I'm trying to prevent here? Like what is the what is the um end goal or end result that I'm concerned about? What is the threat? Um, in privacy and security, we call this threat modeling of going like, okay, here are the possible attackers. Here was here's what I'm defending against. Here's the value of what I'm protecting. here are the ways that they could access it. Um, and here is how much work I'm willing to put in. Um, which is the like the final thing. And this is why I really like I always start with switching over your browser, switching over your search engine. These are really low lifts that help make it harder for people to access your data, for companies to access your data. Um, they are not tools to make you absolutely and completely anonymous. um that is a different conversation. If you are worried about um being tracked by the government, if you are worried about being stalked, if you are a journalist trying to handle sensitive information, if you're trying to get out of a dangerous relationship, that is a separate conversation. And that is a conversation that we can have, but a lot of what we're looking at right now is just that managing of like, did I say that it's okay for you to access this? And what obstacles can I put up? right now they're just going at the floor with a broom, you know, they're just sweeping everything up that we're leaving behind. Um, so a lot of our our like first steps here that are really meaningful is to just stop leaving the crumbs, start cleaning up our own crumbs. Um, and part of that to sort of come back to the idea of Instagram, part of that is putting less stuff out there, putting fewer crumbs out there. um using our, you know, the scroll function less, spending less time on the app, um posting fewer items, being really careful about what content you're sharing. Um because that, you know, and that is the other thing that's gotten a lot uh more press and a lot more powerful over the last year is this idea of AI scraping. Um that these these in order to build these AI uh um uh generative AI models, these large language models like chatgpt or um claude uh or the you know image generators they are sweeping the internet and pulling whatever they can find whatever is public. Um so I for me that makes me a lot more cautious to post my full script online. That makes me a lot more cautious to post um a lot of pictures of my face from different angles. It makes me a lot more cautious to post the like me 10 years ago to me today kind of content. But I am a writer and I am an actor and I um am engaged with the world and Instagram is currently where our communities live. There are other options. there are places that we can start migrating to, but one of the main tools that they use, I they they the these companies use um is by getting your friends in there. And so part of it is like I I love having everybody on this call today because we are all little nodes that can start to say, "Okay, when somebody says they're ready to jump, we can go with them. We can start pulling our friends. We can start finding ways to like talk to our friends about where are we going to go? What are we going to do? what platforms can we use to do this? But in the meantime, um I haven't deleted my Instagram yet. I'm still on there. I'm still chatting with people. I'm having much less sensitive conversations on Instagram than maybe I used to. I'm being a lot more careful about what my chat looks like. I'm uh yeah, I'm just posting less. Um but it is it is still currently what we have. So finding those making those decisions about what we share here and also when you say hey I'm going to link back to my website and come look at my website. Um I'm going to post a piece of what I'm working on and um you can reach out to me to get to get access to see the whole thing. I'm going to put things behind uh excuse me um I'm gonna put things um behind password protection or create uh you know a portfolio that you have to have a password for or that you have to be shared into. Um thank you. [laughter] Uh in the way that Google Docs you have to share things with specific people. Um there are different share settings. There are a lot of different uh platforms that you can use to put up your portfolio and say okay like I'm going to share this with people if they reach out if they ask to see it, if they want to see it. Um or I'm going to post on my website an image of what the password is so that you can go and type it in on your own. um which has some accessibility questions but uh does also um like is one option for that. So I'm I'm just I'm just talking now. I'm realizing we're going up on our break time. So let's take a minute um if you want to go ahead and um we're going to take five minutes uh to um step away from the computer. I encourage you to get a cup of water, a cup of coffee, stretch, breathe. Um we're yeah this is like like sitting and being on Zoom for a while is a lot and I know I've been just chattering. Um when we come back I'm going to talk about some of the questions, take some more questions and I want to hear from you guys what is um sparking for you. What questions are coming up? What thoughts are coming up? How you're how you're feeling really about this when we come back at 5 after. Okay. >> See you all at 5 after the hour. Take care. Hello and I tried it at the same time. Hey. >> Oh, you know what I did? >> Oh, what's up? >> Oh, sorry. No, sorry. I drank my water and I didn't refill it. Give me one moment. >> Go for it. I was just going to say as we're all getting back um I know a lot of us are staying camera ops maybe just throw like a reaction into the space or like an emoji or something like that noises. Who knew? Beautiful. And then we'll get started in just a second. Oh my gosh. See, I'm learning new things about Kimmy every day. I love that Maddiey's little gift gif showed up also in the in the Zoom box or in the >> so cute. >> Oh my god. >> All right, we are back. I hope everyone has their water. I sure do. >> Yes. [clears throat] >> Um yeah, I'm I've been I've been talking. I've been info dumping. Um this always happens. I'm like I'm going to keep it quick and then there are so many ideas percolating and there's so much information also like my hope is again to like give a foundation of how do we think about technology and also some education on how does it work because this isn't some like we don't we barely had computer classes when I was in school but I don't tr know or trust that uh we are getting a lot of an education in this so I would love if you want to um turn your camera on pop in uh I believe we are still live streaming. So just to flag that if you're comfortable um and would like to yeah just like please feel free to to turn your mic on and um chat with me. We're you know we'll do another little round of of stuff momentarily but um quick check-in. How we feeling? >> I feel really great um hearing all the information. It's kind of comforting to know that, you know, I'm not the only artist who's worried about showing up online um safely, but also not getting trapped in this like potential psychosis of like, oh my god, I have to guard my myself, you know, like like you were saying, make myself bulletproof. It's I don't want to do that either because you can get so like just far gone. Um but I love everything we're talking about and I love the resources. So thank you. >> Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Um, I'm feeling grateful for the way that you're presenting the information because I always feel overwhelmed by the folks in the privacy influencer spectrum that are very like violent about the information and very doomed feeling about it. Um, apocalyptic about it almost. And I feel like you're giving actionable steps to take today. >> That's my goal. I'm I'm so glad it is. You know, it's it's what the technology is built for. And that's sort of the thing that it's so insidious in a lot of ways that they've built um they've specifically designed uh like Instagram in particular, but all of these these scrolling things, they've designed them after uh casinos that they give you just enough of a little bump and they're based on your your emotional response and and feed into your emotional response. And in some ways, you know, it's it's it's it has the potential and the ability to be very sinister or very like intentionally like, ah, they're trying to feed me this thing. But for the most part and for most people, it is just like it's it's profit based. It's how do we get your eyes as much of your eyes as possible in a very like robot neutral kind of way. Um, but unfortunately it's not great for our [laughter] our hearts or our minds or our bodies. Um, yeah. Anyone anyone else? What's up? I want to just repeat an image that you gave before that I think will really stick with me, which was that we don't like armor our homes or at least not every part of our home. And then you were like, we don't necessarily put like 10 locks on our bathroom door. And I was like, wait, because we have the locks on the front door. Like I live in an apartment building. There's a lock on the outside door and there's a second lock on my front door. And if I really wanted to lock the bathroom, I could, right? >> And I'm thinking about that in like an uh a digital privacy space is being like, okay, so like which locks have I provided and like which part of the my digital presence is the bathroom and which part is the front door? I think that's given me a good language of like identifying which steps are actually important. >> Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. It's it's and it's you know it's going to be a process. Something that I really recommend. Um, and I have, you know, I will fully admit I am not as far down my list as I would like to be in my sort of overall migration away from Google as an ecosystem, you know, into more um privacy respecting areas. Um, but I highly recommend like just putting a little thing on your calendar once a month, once every two months even. Just put an hour on your calendar to be like, "Hey, I'm going to take that next step. I'm going to do a little bit of research on this tool that I want. I'm going to come back to uh you know a a pre-exist there are all sorts of checklists out there and I will share a few. Um I'll make sure that they get emailed out afterwards. Um some really great checklists of like further steps to take after this call. Um but you know as always it can be a really long list on a I'm sure you guys already have long lists of things to do in your lives. So, um, just, you know, giving yourself the grace and time to go like, "This is what I'm going to do today. This is what I'm going to do tomorrow, this is what I'm going to do next year." Um, and to keep coming like I encourage you to keep coming back to it. Um, but that that thinking about it differently, thinking about it or or or more intentionally. Um, yeah, the Google email migration is miserable. Um, I'm doing that. I'm seeing that in the chat. Um, it is it's hard. They like they specifically make it really hard to move things uh out of their ecosystem. Um, because they don't want YouTube. Um, but what I you know what I did honestly is I created a new email address. You know what? I'm going to put these links in the chat while we're here. Um, you're welcome to do this now or wait uh and do it later, but you can you'll at least have them. Um, I created a new Oh, I didn't save this link. Of course, I didn't because I didn't think we'd get to this today. Um, you know what? I'll just put down proton. Me. I created a new email uh address with Proton. Uh, the other um recommended privacy focused email is Tuta. Um, their email servers are endtoend encrypted. Now if you're emailing somebody whose email is not encrypted then that is not end to end encrypted but you're if you're emailing other people within the ecosystem then it is um endto-end encryption means that this has been uh encrypted like made private um only between the two people who are it is being sent to like end to end which means that proton is not seeing the content of your emails if you are not allowing them to. Tuta is not seeing the comment content of your emails the way that Google can see as a company can see the content of your emails. Um and external forces are also not looking at the content of your emails. Um I I really I started I created a new email address. I emailed a bunch of friends and said this is my new email address. I set up email forwarding for my old email address. So, anyone who emails me on that one um can still access me. Um and then it's been like a year-long process of going through and every account that I had on the other email I have to switch over. Every um time somebody emails me from the old account, I have a a little note in my um signature that says, "Hey, by the way, I use this email now. This is the this is the correct email. The other one isn't working." And at some point I will turn it off and delete it and and um request that they remove my information from their servers. But uh but it is it's a pain. It is totally a pain. And that's why I'm you know that's why I'm always like make a calendar. Put it on the calendar six months from now. Um make you know make the new email address today and set up email forwarding so that when you're ready to really switch over people know. um or you know make the make the email address next week honestly because uh I think the next thing that I want to talk about is Ashley's question which is a password manager. Um so this is where we do switch over from uh privacy into security a little bit. Your password is how you keep things secure. And I recommend I really really highly recommend that everyone have a password manager. I think it's I think it's required. Um I think it's a necessity. Uh we have so many things. There are so many places that require you to make an account. Um there are so many ways that accounts are being accessed. Um this is where we start to think about, you know, threat modeling with your bank account. somebody might actually try to break into that. Um, and banks are very obviously highly motivated to make that difficult. Um, but you want you want to be careful that like they're they don't have an easy access into your account because your password is password, right? Or because you're using the same password for everything. And I say this again as somebody who was very guilty of this up until really like two years ago. Two years ago, I was like, you know what? We can't do this anymore. And I think with the rise of AI uh uh large language models and agentic AI tools that can be used to do things at a much larger scale, I think we're going to see a lot more um password uh uh related uh leaks and hacks. So pass password manager manages your password. It's super great. I put my two recommendations in Proton Pass and Bit Warden. Um, Proton is a company that they're like really great for switching away from Google because they have email, calendar, docs, uh, photo management. Their photo management isn't great, I will say. Uh, they have a VPN, they have a password manager, and then Bit Warden is, uh, um, an open source, uh, company that also has a really great password manager. I use Bit Word. I I I use Bit Warden. Um, uh, Proton Pass is a little bit more user friendly. Bit Warden is a little bit um more uh basic and so I would say if you're very comfortable with computers, Bit Warden is where I would point you. Um if you want to have something separate from uh your Proton, it's really like it's really a tossup honestly. I would say um either one works great. Um, so I I'm gonna I'm gonna encourage everybody if you don't have a password manager to go ahead and um start installing one of these. If your passwords have been saved by Google Chrome, for example, uh you can import all of your passwords from there. Um, some of these allow you to upload a spreadsheet. Some of them might need to be plugged in individually, but uh this is where if you are in Firefox, both of these programs have a way have a an option to use it as a plug-in in Firefox. So just like um you block Origin, it'll become a little icon on the top right of your bar. Um and that way like I have the Bit Warden one plugged in here. Anytime I go to a new website and plug in a password, it'll ask me if I want to save that password. Um, and that's just a really handy feature. So, it doesn't have to be, you know, you can migrate everything all over at once automatically from something. But there is also the feature of if you don't want to sit there typing in each individual password, you can slowly integrate this into your life just by living your normal life and hitting yes when it says, do you want to save your password? Do you want to update your password? Um it using uh yeah using unique passwords is really important. The longer a password is the harder it is to guess. Sort of the basic rules. The longer a password is the harder it is to guess. Um the more you know uh uh characters it has. And the more random those characters are, the harder it is to guess. Um birthdays uh um unfortunately favorite football teams as well are sort of high on the list of um anything that's sort of uh basic related to you things your the name of your dog are really high on the list of uh common passwords. So very important if you are using those to mix them up with other characters, other letters, other words, add things to make them different. Um, but just so that your brain doesn't have to remember all of the different things that you're using daytoday, um, a password manager will help you organize them. And password managers have, uh, password generators generally built in, which is really, really helpful because I can um, open my password manager and say I want to have a new password for this thing. I'm going to truly like create a new login for KME, for example. I can generate a password and right away it gives me okay it needs to have let's say it needs to have um you know uh a couple of special characters a couple of capital number a capital letters a couple of lowercase letters I'm going to read you what it's given to me because this is not my real password it's immediately given me 840 lowercase w exclamation mark os capital u and capital o r and that's not something that my brain is ever going to retain but it is something that my password generator can retain. And it's something that uh will make sure that my accounts are more secure um and harder to break into and I don't have to worry about forgetting it because all that I have to remember is the password to my password manager. And honestly, that one I write it down in the sticky note. Don't leave your sticky note on your computer. Put your sticky note in a safe place. Um, but having that one password that gives you access to everything else um is a hugely functional solution to uh this increasing like load of having to keep up with all of these different passwords. Um, how are we looking? Is anybody Is anybody doing it? Is any anybody downloading a password manager, putting in their password manager? Ashley's doing it. Hell yeah. Um, please jump in if you have questions, if you're running into weird things with it. Like that's what this time is for. I really I know I'm talking a lot and I'm trying to like provide this um baseline, but I also wanted to create this as a a little bit of time to do the things that we always mean to do, right? To start installing this thing. Even if you just install it and you're like, well, I haven't logged into it yet. I haven't created an account yet. Like, then it's on your computer and you're ready for when you're ready to take the next step. um you're starting to think about it. You're you're putting those things in. And I I should have said this at the beginning, but if you if I'm if you guys are way ahead of me, I'm seeing um a couple things in the chat of of it sounds like some of you guys are are are already well down this road. Um go in and change some of your passwords. Go in and update some of your passwords. Go in and make sure that you have something fresh. Uh do a little audit. Delete some accounts that you've had. um you know the the the best um offense is prevention, right? Like it's always ideal if you just don't make the account in the first place, but if you have to make the account, you want to have this. And the other thing that I love about password managers in Bit Warden um there uh actually in both of these password managers, there is an option for um uh email masking. So the bit warden requires a plugin. I think uh proton pass also you can set up through the program. It has access to what I what I use is simple login is the one that I use. Um and this will create a fake email address for anything you need. So every time if I need to create an account with Bed Bath and Beyond, I don't want to give them my personal email address because again this is something where like these um data companies, data mining companies, whether they're part of uh Google or Facebook or whether they are uh companies that are just gathering and selling data separately. Um they will pay attention to oh this email address has accounts at all of these different places as a part of creating a profile. Um, and so being able to create like a little bit of friction again um before uh between you you and their data collection is really really useful. Um so every every time I log into a new thing, every time I create a new thing, I create a new uh email address for that product. And there are some websites I think eBay doesn't like this. There are some websites especially as AI use increases um and bots become a concern uh or are a concern. Um there are some websites that will resist this and that that is where again it comes back to like not everything has to be hypersecure all of the time. Um there are certain places where I do want to use my real email address. There are certain places where I use a fake email address that I created that I have access to that just doesn't have my name. And it's okay that you know multiple companies have access to this separate profile. Um which also like you know obviously all of this is more work and I know we all have so much to do on any given day. Um and this is where it comes back to like I said about recycling like these are the tools that I have found useful. These are the tools that uh um are serviceable to me. these are the tools that fit into my life. These are the strategies that I've found. And you may find that using email masking is not um a functional part of your life. Or you may find that you actually like uh want to create a fully separate email address like go log up for a new email address each time you log into something else because you like having that control. Um and again, you know, and maybe having a spreadsheet with your passwords is uh your best option. There are self-hosted ways of doing this. Um, it's all it's all about like what works for you in this world. Um, but I wanted to make sure that we have the the password manager in here. Um, I just want to double check as we're doing this. And again, please feel free to pop in the chat or turn on your mic and jump in and say hi and ask questions or go like I'm trying to install this and it's not working. like I'm I'm here to to support. Um and while we're doing this, I just want to look at some of the questions that we looked into. So, password manager, really important. Um one of the questions I we talked a little bit about how to uh navigate using Instagram, using public uh platforms safely. Um, and I'd love to I'd love to hear from you guys what your I feel like I talked a little bit about like what my tools are of using them a little bit less posting a little bit less being more intentional about what I post. I'm curious if you guys have any tools or strategies that you're excited about for that one because it is a it is a trick. Um, it is an interesting thing. It is like I'm I'm finding that I'm like I'm going to see movies and instead of posting about the movie on Instagram, I'm texting the friend that it reminded me of. Um because it's a priority in in my life to be building more uh stronger individual connections. Um but that's different than promotion than putting things out there. That's it's different. So I'm I'm curious about how you're how you're feeling about that one. We can come back to that. Uh what else we had? We had how do I protect my friends and family when I'm putting things out there? How do I and and that was connected. There was another question about how do I maintain my privacy when others can go against it? which comes back to the the community of it, which is I think a lot of why we're here and why I'm so excited that we're here and that we have this. And so I'm actually I'm going to give you one last tool um that is uh connected to this sort of this is adjacent to what I'm about to talk about, but I want to post the link so you can download it while I chat. Um and that is Signal. Signal is a messaging platform. Um I always compare it to WhatsApp. It works almost exactly like WhatsApp except um Signal is endto-end encrypted. Uh it doesn't have access to who you're sending messages to or any of the metadata that Signal has. Signal has access to it may not have access to the messages themselves, but it can see when you sent them and who you sent them to. And journalists have been nabbed over that. Um I really love Signal. Um, it's run by this really amazing woman named Meredith Whitaker, who I think there was a question about what are people concerned about right now. Um, and Meredith Whitaker is one of the people that I that I follow. I follow her her path and her uh, work. And she is very outspoken and I think very grounded and very, I think, not fear-based in her communications about things, which is really cool. And she runs this really amazing organization uh, that creates this really wonderful tool. Um, and the thing that she's talking about right now is agentic AI because these AI assistants as you build them, if you know, um, the example that she always gives is if you want this agentic AI assistant to plan a dinner for you and your friends, then it has to have access to your calendar to be able to plan it. It has to have access to your friends calendars. It has to have access to your group chat and be able to access your messages and access your contacts. It has to be able to get into all of these different things. And so that kind of um access is, you know, and it's a specific concern for Signal as a um as a privacyoriented tool. Uh because Signal's whole thing is that they're completely completely private and nobody can read the messages except um it's really hard to prevent somebody from reading your messages when they're looking over your shoulder. Um and an AI assistant is essentially going in and and looking over your shoulder or rather you know uh engaging as you on this device. So that is something that we're looking at that um that is is a a privacy concern and also comes back to like signal is the most privacy or of all of these tools p signal is the most um I think privacy privacy focused sort of locked down tool there is with the exception of password managers but those are sort of like that's a security tool in many ways anyways um and signal there were some issues this year where uh signal which is is known and relied upon in a lot of circles as a like totally safe secure uh program. Um uh I think it was a there were legal cases where uh they were able to pull signal messages from the uh Apple preview like message preview system. Apple phones iPhone iPhones those have names. uh were saving all of the message previews that they were giving like on your home screen um and therefore we're sharing and saving all of the private um secure messages from Signal. So it's just it's those kinds of like there are workarounds for a lot of these things in in both directions. there are ways for us to make ourselves more private and there are um ways that our our tools and devices and these companies that are running them are also like trying to pivot. So a lot of this is like I always I I always say the everyone this isn't just me I I shouldn't claim this but privacy is an onion and it is a practice like there are many layers to privacy just as you know there are different kinds of shades that you put on your window you can have the blackout curtains or you can have the light ones um there are uh uh the things only work when you use them and there are various ways and things that are you're able to put into practice to use them. So, um yeah. Oh my gosh, I I was like like how am I going to fill all this time and I feel like we've run out um before I was fully done. I have one more link to put in there and then I you know any closing questions uh any last um thoughts. I really want to invite you guys in. This is a Signal group. If you've in downloaded Signal and created a Signal uh account, um there is a group chat that I want to put in for us to use. So you you can always you can continue to reach out to me. we can continue to have these questions. Um, and I hope that as you guys continue your journeys, you will use this chat to support each other as well. Um, but that is just our our first uh uh foray into um this private messaging and privacy journey. >> Thank you, Thea. Um, can I ask you if you have one more recommendation while we're making you spit out links today? Yes, absolutely. >> Do you happen to have a recommendation or a practice that you use uh that is for photo storage? I know you mentioned I think it was for Proton, you're like I'm not that into their photo storage actually. So, I was just wondering as opposed to like a Google photos or something. What have you come across? >> Yes. Um, and I actually thought of this earlier because somebody was talking about how Google was just taking their images and putting them places and that is again it's a part of that like they didn't ask us if I they have not they have intentionally obscured uh our access to have agency over a lot of our uh work but I use NT nte and here's the other thing as I'm talking about these alternatives like proton for email NT for storage Um, I'm assuming that's how that's pronounced. Uh, uh, these some of these products do cost money. This is the other thing as we're moving away. A lot of the really functional, not even functional, a lot of the really smooth um frictionless platforms are free because they are collecting information from us and that is um really we are doing them a service by using their tools in a lot of ways. Um NT I believe you get 10 gigs free of storage and then you have to start paying a fee. And my um budgeting for this always looks like going like if I can spend$10 to $25 on Netflix a month, then I can spend $5 to invest in my privacy. Um to to protect my my photos and my storage, my images. Um and especially as artists, I think this is a really uh really key one. Um Proton also there is a free version. I think you get two gigs of free storage for free. Um, and then you have to start paying. You can pay either like you can just get the email, you can just get the calendar, you can just get the VPN, or you can start or you can get like a package of everything. I think the full package is $15 a month. Um, and I know that budgets are are tight, but again, I like I always compare it I compare it to streaming services. Um, but if I'm if I can pay for a streaming service, honestly, I can go to my friend and be like, "Hey, can I borrow your streaming service? can I pitch in on your streaming service? Um, and uh like we'll go in on this together and then I'm I'm investing my money in in a a tool that I believe in that is aligned with my values that is uh protecting me and my you know identity and myself um in ways that I I'm really excited about. So that's my that's my photo storage entity has been great. Um it's been very very functional and you know and also with all of these things even the the free tools because there are still free tools the um uh uh you can use the free version of proton pass bit warden is free and has a free level um signal is free um the more we use them like signal is a nonprofit and if any anybody has ever worked with a nonprofit you know how important it is to say hey here's how many people we've reached here's how many people um we're supporting that helps you get grants So the more people use these products, the more investment they will get. Um the more people pay what if you can pay a little bit, the more people pay a little something for these products, the more investing, the more investments they get, the better they will get. So even the tools that are um uh uh not as shiny now um I am really excited to uh move towards them, invest in them, invest my time in them, invest my time and sometimes in learning how to use them uh in order to do that. But again it is all according to your your time and your energy and um and your values and what's important [clears throat] to you. Um, I have more lists of I I'll make sure to send out some some like next steps and and everything to make sure that we have that. But yeah, >> we will have like a little bit more questions. We've got a few minutes left. Um, I wanted to just offer one response to a question that Thea asked before. >> It's a little bit of self-interest if everyone will forgive me. Um, but you had asked about like what are we doing about having to promote or post or whatever on meta or feeling compelled in those places and I wanted to offer one small alternative that is halran based. I've been really um like like what is a good word like banging the drum on this for the past few months for on behalf of Hell Round um that people leave the most beautiful supportive or inquisitive or challenging comments on hell content on our Instagram posts about the content and our comment sections on the site itself are are pretty dry. If you go back to a an essay that's like eight years old, you'll see these like threads of everyone talking to each other. Um, and I think I can imagine a lot of reasons why people have stopped doing that. It's a little more friction to go and log into your Holland account, which has like your picture and your bio um, and then post on behalf of your own self. But I just want to encourage folks if you ever feel compelled specifically in a hell round uh way, if you're reading an essay or something like that, you want to go leave a comment, I really welcome it. And I'm sure that there are cognate versions of that for a lot of the other >> sites we engage with that then feel like they need to promote themselves through through Meta, etc. >> Yeah. >> Um, that's my little soap box. I wonder if now would be a good moment for us to close off the stream and that way if there are any more like individual questions that folks have. Um we can use our last few minutes of the call for that. And I'll just say to folks on the stream, thank you so much. I think you got I hope you got a lot out of it. Um independent of whatever this the secret private questions we ask in the next 15 minutes are. So big.