All right. What is your biggest privacy concern?
Well, I have a couple of them. If I'm being completely honest,
this is All Things Secured. My name's Josh,
and today I am answering nine of the most common privacy and security questions
that I receive via email as comments on this YouTube channel via social media,
and hopefully as I answer these questions,
you'll learn a little something along the way as well.
So let's go ahead and dive into this. First question, what do we have?
What privacy software should I use? We are just jumping right in here. Okay.
Well,
I think that that is actually a loaded question because a lot of times what
people are looking for when they ask that, and I get these emails all the time,
should I use this software? What do you think about this?
What privacy software should I use? It ignores the fundamental question of what
your threat profile is. Now,
I think there are certain things that everybody should do, right?
I think that everybody should use a password manager.
I think that everybody should set up two-factor authentication.
I think everybody should do a credit freeze, right?
And then I also think that everybody should probably use a privacy focused
internet browser, although that one is a little less stringent in my opinion.
But everything else is really subjective.
So if you are a journalist or an activist or somebody who feels like they're
actively being surveilled,
then your threat profile is much higher than somebody who's the average internet
citizen who's just doing internet banking and getting online and social media
and stuff like that. An example of this would be, let's say,
I don't necessarily recommend that everybody uses identity
monitoring services paying for those kind of services. I think that most of us
can get by with just freezing our credit. However,
if your threat profile is higher because you've already had your data exposed in
a breach or you've already had your identity stolen, then yes,
it does make sense for you to spend money on identity monitoring.
So the same can be said, do you need a vpn? Do you need to use tour?
Do you need to use open source operating platforms that
are dego and off of Apple?
Do you need to just jump off the grid and delete all of your Facebook and Google
accounts and everything?
All of that is very dependent upon your threat profile and what you are
worried most about.
So I would really think critically about what am I really worried about,
and then what are the solutions that fix that problem or at least protect me as
much as possible from the threats that I feel I face. Let's dive into the
next question. Is your name really Josh?
Ooh, yes it is. Yes it is.
I could have set up a pseudonym.
I probably wasn't smart enough when I got all this started to set up a
pseudonym, but I really think that's beside the point.
I think using my name,
it's my name and there's a lot of information that you could probably try to
find out about me online, but you're not going to find out a lot,
but I didn't figure that hiding my name was going to be something that was super
important. Fair enough. All right, let's go ahead and go to the next question.
How do I get my spouse to use a password manager? I mean,
you could insert any family member, not just spouse.
How do I get my mom to use a password manager?
And you could use any type of software,
but password manager is usually the one that I get asked about a lot,
and I totally understand. Sometimes our family members represent the greatest
threat to our privacy and security. Then anything that we can protect ourselves,
and so getting them set up is a great idea,
but they're not always welcoming to that idea. My wife,
she's a very smart lady,
but she just is not as motivated to use a password manager as I am.
I have a greater motivation than she does, and I recognize that.
So getting her to use the software that I want her to use involves more than
just forcing her to do it. I don't want to force my wife to do something.
I want to create incentives and encourage her to do that.
So what's an example of how I do that? Well,
I have set up the password manager on her devices, on her phone,
on her computer for her.
I kind of want to eliminate a lot of that stress or a lot of that.
Just having to set it all up isn't very fun.
And then I have a shared vault that I put all of the
logins that we would normally use together, our banking, Netflix,
stuff like that. And so now anytime that she asks me for a password,
she'll like, Hey, what's the password for Netflix?
What's the password for our bank? I'll tell her honestly, I don't know.
I don't memorize our passwords. I keep them in the password manager,
and then I show her, okay, here's how you do it When you're logging in,
just press that password button. It'll use your face id,
and it automatically auto-fills. See how easy that is?
I'm not trying to talk down to her.
I'm just using these incentives and encouraging her to use the software.
So my encouragement to you as you're trying to get family to do this is not to
force it down their throats, it's to just try to make it as easy as possible,
overcome some of those hurdles by installing it for them and then making sure
that they have to use it in certain cases in their life,
and maybe that will encourage them to do so. All right,
let's keep it going here. What do we have next?
Do you use VPNs on wifi? Ooh,
this is an interesting question and I think I've got an answer that might
surprise you here. All right, because I've talked about VPNs here a lot.
Even this morning, I was over at Starbucks doing a little bit of work,
and you want to know what? I did not use their public wifi.
I just don't like using public wifi unless I absolutely have to. Instead,
I'm tethering to my phone. Not only is it faster,
it's a faster internet connection anyway,
whether I'm in an airport or a coffee shop, I usually get much faster speeds,
tethering to my phone,
but I also just don't like the idea of using a VPN when I don't absolutely have
to. I really think of a VPN as a privacy software.
It's just more of a convenience tool to hide my IP address or to just access geo
blocked content like Netflix, Spotify,
all these different things while I'm living overseas. So my recommendation to
most people who are asking me this is if you can help it,
don't get on public wifi, and if you have to use public wifi, sure,
log onto to a vpn, but more importantly,
I recommend you don't access sensitive apps and information.
Don't log on to your banking when you're on public wifi.
Don't log into your investments.
Don't send sensitive data to your CPA while you're on a public wifi.
Wait until you get home,
do it on your home wifi or connect via your cellular network and send it that
way because that's going to be a much better, safer way to do it. All right,
next question.
Should I use my mother's maiden name? Oh, man.
Those security questions that we get whenever we're setting up a new account and
they're like, Hey, what was the city you were born in?
What's your mother's maiden name? What was the first car that you drove?
Who else can find that information?
Pretty much anybody who knows how to use Google. I'm serious.
I can find out your mother's maiden name probably faster than you realize,
and that makes that not a secure way to lock up your account.
So my recommendation would be to have an answer for all of these questions that
maybe you use all the time, but that are not the real answer.
I have a maiden name for my mother. That's not her real maiden name,
but it's the one that I always use. I could say, for instance,
that I always grew up in Paris. Well, I didn't actually grow up in Paris,
but that's the answer that I'm going to use anytime that question is asked.
And no, that's not the actual answer that I use,
and there are some people that go the next step and they'd use different answers
for every single time that it's asked,
and then they store those answers securely in a password vault or something like
that. Again,
we're dealing with different threat profiles here,
but I think the most important thing to recognize is that using publicly
available information as a way to secure your accounts is not
secure, so find a different way to do it.
Speaking of information that is publicly available on the internet,
that's one of the reasons why I enjoy using a service like DeleteMe.
You've probably heard me talk about them before. They are sponsoring this video,
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they were supporting this channel because they did such a great job of finding
my data online,
finding the connections I had with different family members that were out online
or finding my address, my phone number,
all of these different pieces of information that were publicly available and
doing removal requests so that they were taken down.
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I love being able to log into my dashboard,
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All right.
Next question.
Your data is already exposed. Why are you even making privacy content? Anyway?
I get this question or this comment a lot from people that just do not
like privacy content creators, and I get it.
We feel like, Hey, we've already been exposed.
My stuff's already on the dark web. I've already been through a data breach.
Google already knows everything about us. And to an extent, maybe that's true,
but listen, all of these apps,
all of this data collection requires a constant stream of new
data, and if you cut that off,
you are actually protecting yourself for the future. And I don't want,
yes,
even though let's say somebody had been hacked and they got all of their
data exposed and all of that,
I still think that there is a lot of value in protecting your privacy and
security going forward so that you know,
whatever you're doing now is protected.
Even if there was a data breach in the past that exposed a lot of your data,
privacy is something that you never realize is important
until it is totally lost, and once you've lost it,
you can't get it back.
So this is not something that you want to be looking back and going, oh,
I wish I had. Privacy is something that you need to maintain now.
Figure out what level of privacy you're comfortable with,
and then work to build and strengthen that level of privacy for yourself.
Next question.
What do we got?
What happens if you lose your two FA key?
Ooh.
I get this question a lot from people who are hesitant to set up two FA because
they're worried that if they lose their two FA key,
they will lose access to all of their online accounts and that scares them,
and I totally get that right, and my answer to this is going to be twofold.
My first to say that, and I've already done a lot of content,
other videos on doing this,
but make sure that you are properly backing up your two A. For me,
that means I have one primary key and one backup key, and then on top of that,
whenever I set up those two FA keys, I'm also being given,
usually it's a backup code or a seed phrase that I can write down or keep
in a safe place that acts as an even another backup on top of
my two key backup. So doing proper backup is the
antidote to losing keys, making sure that you know, okay, if I lose this key,
I'm still going to have access to everything. That's part one of the answer,
but part two is a little more direct. I mean,
are you worried about losing your car keys or your house keys?
Like you're a responsible adult, aren't you?
Why are you so worried about losing a two FFA key?
We need to learn to take responsibility for our own security. For far too long,
we've relied on these big tech companies to hold our security keys for us.
That's why we can ask for a reset password because they're holding the security
keys to whatever we're storing with them. In order to take that control back,
we have to be responsible for our own security,
so be a responsible adult, set up two fa,
and then learn how to have good backup. All right, let's continue on.
What do we got here?
Why don't you use Apple Keychain for passwords? I get that a lot,
whether it's why don't you use Safari or why don't you use whatever it is
software, and usually, especially when we're dealing with stuff with Apple,
I love using Apple software or products,
but what I also want to do is I don't want to put too much trust in one single
company, so I don't want Apple to be my hardware, my operating system,
my Keychain or my password manager, my internet browser.
I don't want it to do everything because I don't want them to have control over
every bit of it. You could say the same thing about Google.
I don't want Google to have control of my email and my calendar and my
maps and all of these things.
I would much prefer to distribute those activities across multiple
dedicated services. That's why I want to find a dedicated
password manager that I trust and use that instead of Apple Keychain.
Safari's a great internet browser,
but I would rather use a dedicated privacy focused browser like Brave or Firefox
instead of allowing more trust into the Apple ecosystem.
So that's why I don't use it. That's one reason.
The second reason has to do with what I consider to be a vulnerability in the
passcode and the usage of passcodes within the Apple ecosystem.
So if I am entering into my phone using a passcode and someone were to be
looking over my shoulder and see that passcode, unfortunately that would give,
if they were to steal my device, they would,
that would give them access not just to my phone,
but now as they open up Apple Keychain,
it would give them access to all of my passwords and potentially so much more on
my device. The passcode is a weak link.
It feels like an Apple security.
It's one of the reasons why I prefer to use biometrics to unlock my device.
I don't want somebody accidentally being able to see my passcode,
but that's also why I don't use things like Apple Key chain to
store all my passwords because that passcode is a weak link and a vulnerability
that I don't want to be a risk for myself. All right.
Last question here.
What is your biggest privacy concern? Well,
I've got a couple concerns. If I'm being honest.
I already talked a little bit about my concern about the privacy of the way that
my family members and my direct network impacts me and my own
privacy, so I can be as secure as I can,
but maybe a breach that happens or a problem that happens with one of my family
members or friends has a downstream effect on me that worries me a
little bit. There's a little bit of that I have no control over,
so I can't do much,
and therefore there's not really a point in worrying about it too much.
But I think that the biggest privacy concern I have is moving forward as we're
looking at the advancements in AI, ChatGPT, all of these things,
what we don't know is how much of what we're doing now will have an
impact on our privacy in the future.
When the internet first came out and MySpace was first a thing,
we were unaware of how that would impact our privacy and how
security would change when all of that technology was coming out.
And I think we're still in the early stages of that with technologies like AI,
ChatGPT, and even quantum computing,
not knowing in the future the advancement of these technologies,
what's it going to do that is going to impact our privacy and what we're doing
now that might need to change. I hope that this q and a was helpful to you.
If you have other questions that I didn't answer here,
you can leave those in the comments below and I'll either try to answer them in
the comments or maybe add them to the next video that I do like this in the
future.