This week, we hang out with Secure Secrets business owner, Carter Woetzel and have a grand old time discussing a bit about the history of data privacy, Cambridge Analytica, The Social Dilemma, and what you can do to protect your data. If you’ve ever wondered about the industry of data brokers and digital advertising, this may be a fun listen for you.
Welcome to Business Talk Sister Gawk! I’m Bekkah and I’m Ruthie and today’s episode title is “Why Data Privacy Matters” and with us today we have Carter Woetzel who is one of the founders of Secure Secrets and he also wrote a book and Ruthie’s going to tell us a little bit about it!
Ruthie: It’s called “Building Confidence in Blockchain” he wrote it over the course of three years. He has his own podcast which is very interesting and has a lot of information about blockchain! He interviews a lot of other people who are really invested in blockchain and have just kind of pioneered a lot of that which has been really cool to learn from!
Bekkah: If you’re wondering more about that you can go listen to our other episode on “What is Blockchain?” where we talked to him about that. We had such a great time that we wanted to have him back! So thanks so much for being here with us today!
Carter: Yeah! Thanks for having me, guys! It’s always fun to talk data privacy. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart just working with some amazing people that are really trying to make the internet a better place, trying to kind of redefine like Web 3.0 as we know it. Data privacy is at the center of that discussion. Happy to chat about it!
Ruthie: Yeah so we’ll kick it off with the first question here which is –
Why Is Data Privacy Important to You?
Bekkah: Why is data privacy important to you?
Carter: Yeah, I would first want to start with data privacy and the way we define it just for people listening in. Data privacy is a set of rights a user or person has about how their data is governed. How is it collected? How is it shared? How is it used? Every person has information that’s unique to them and I think the instant we stop fighting for the right to have sovereign control over how the information that describes us and makes us human is collected, shared, and used is the instant we kind of relinquish our uniqueness, our humanity, our liberty. Honestly, in the face of blatant manipulation via mass data harvesting. I always like to ask people, “Have you ever sang in the shower? Have you ever danced in front of a mirror alone?” I think privacy is intimately tied to creativity. A human being that’s watched ultimately, do you have that fight-or-flight sense subtly activated? Privacy and creativity can’t really be separated in my mind in some ways.
Bekkah: Yeah,m one of my mentors actually, I recently sent this to Ruthie as a quote I was like, “This is a good one!” He says, “If you take people away from art, there will not be innovation and if you take people away from innovation that’s taking away our freedom.” I was like, “, Wow! That’s so interesting because art truly does help people create new things!” It feels like you can’t do that if you can’t express yourself because somebody might be judging you or something with that. Can we back up to what would you describe or define data privacy as?
What Is The Definition of Data Privacy?
Carter: Yeah, I would specifically say data privacy is this massive concept of what level of control do you get over how your data is collected, shared, and used – Sorry I’ll hand them out
Bekkah: Just tapping on the table.
Carter: Dah dah dah! Oh man, are we still rolling?
Bekkah: Yeah you go ahead!
Carter: That’s where I start with it. It’s really about kind of sovereignty of your own data. To be honest, we don’t have much sovereignty over that data. We have a lot of powerful entities out there that claim that data collection is out there it’s to protect you, but I find that the scope of the argument is like super alarming. As if like they can’t already filter through and target high-risk portions of the web. Why don’t we just put a webcam in every room, right? To make everyone safer. Like clearly there’s a line in there somewhere and I think for whatever reason we’ve, as a society, have not been very informed or alarmed about kind of data privacy as a set of rights.
Ruthie: Okay, so let’s talk about what people can do with your data. I know Bekkah and I have kind of looked into this a lot and we were talking about Target and how in 2012 there was this dad that came forward and was furious that his daughter had received a bunch of ads for babies and stuff like that and a bunch of –
Bekkah: It was like addressed to her specifically.
Ruthie: Yeah, at their house and he came in and was like chewing out the managers like. “Why did my daughter get sent this?” and then they called the manager called back a couple of weeks later and said, “We’re so sorry!” and he was like, “Actually, she’s pregnant. I just found out that there were things happening in my house that I didn’t know about.” Then people started looking into it more and found that Target had been tracking like when women were in their first, second, and third trimesters and what they would be buying.
Bekkah: On a probability. It was like 86% probability if you bought cotton balls and copious amounts of unscented lotion then we’re going to start sending you these ads because the likeliness of you being pregnant is very high.
Ruthie: Yeah, right so basically they were tracking your purchasing patterns to be able to send you more customized mailers and then after people started figuring that out then they would like sprinkle in other things like they’d throw a grill next to pampers and things like that so that it wasn’t as –
Bekkah: Obvious or creepy.
Carter: Wow! Wow, wow, wow.
What Can People Do With Your Data?
Ruthie: Yeah, anyways! What can people do with your data? That’s one of them! Purchasing patterns.
Carter: I feel like as a starting point of the question “what can people do with your data” It’s essentially the more data people collect on you the more likely and the better they’ll be able to essentially manipulate you for some desired outcome. Examples of this as we’re seeing in financial services they’re collecting and exploiting massive amounts of data to make financial judgments about us – our creditworthiness. What if the websites you visit, the places you go, somehow make you a more risk-averse person or less risk-averse person. Do you want every single component of you to be out there such that they can exactly profile you into a certain level of risk so that they can charge you a certain amount? That to me is just crazy that they can do that.
Bekkah: So it’s like if you keep looking at motorcycles on Craigslist, they’re like, “Yeah, we’re going to charge you more for insurance just in general.”
Carter: Right! And it’s totally automated. It’s totally AI just parsing through like an insane amount of data and they’re doing that on a mass scale. One really interesting thing is too is that more often than not exploitation of data facilitates and exacerbates already existing inequalities in society without us knowing that it occurs. As in, data exploitation disproportionately affects the poorest people of society, believe it or not.
Bekkah: Okay, dig into that more because that’s really interesting! How does that happen?
Without Data Privacy, You Can Be Influenced Financially
Carter: Yeah, just think about people have habits. Financial habits, purchasing habits, search habits, that are harder to escape. People tend to – the most vulnerable people in society are more likely to fall into addictive behavior patterns and so there are people out there that know that and the more data they can collect the more they can dictate those people’s behavior and get them trapped into micro-purchasing services. Any sort of like product purchasing, same with the credit-related thing. There are just a million different small things out there that are preying on people that don’t have a lot of financial wisdom and don’t necessarily know what they’re up against. People don’t realize every time you open up Google you’re up against an insane amount of computational power that’s trying to make you click certain things, buy certain things, and yeah that’s kind of how I would describe it. Impoverished individuals are more prone to that manipulation. From what I’ve learned about and read about. I’d have to do a little bit more research to be honest.
Bekkah: Yeah, well, I think so one example of this would be those fast cash payment services where it’s like you can cash your paycheck here early we’ll give you an advancement on your paycheck before you even get it. Then when you get your paycheck, we get that paycheck plus interest, Because for some people who’ve grown up that way, immediate gratification is all they’ve ever known. Honestly, if you have a cognitive issue with your frontal cortex or if you’re a young person that hasn’t fully developed that can totally the logic behind that is like, “Well, why would I not want my money now?” But they don’t realize the ramifications of what that means in terms of the long-term payback of how much money they’re actually spending to get that two weeks earlier.
Carter: Exactly.
Bekkah: Yeah, and that was something that Facebook had. I know that there was a big deal with them where they had to shut down a lot of targeted specific ads for those things to people because they’re like, “Oh, these are going to be more likely people to take this product.” Which totally is, I think, just unfortunate because you’re just taking advantage of people at that point.
Carter: Right! And that’s an excellent example and I think there are lots of examples like that that we just don’t know about. And they’re out there and that’s the scary part.
Bekkah: Yeah!
Lack of Data Privacy Fuels Algorithms to Push Information That You Will Be Most Likely To React To
Carter: Yeah! That’s just one example! That’s financial services! I mean another great example, obviously, is political campaigns have turned into these very sophisticated data operations. For those of you who’ve seen “The Social Dilemma”, it’s like we’re entering into an era where there’s so much control over people’s behavior even though people don’t like that idea! Everyone believes that they’re kind of in control of themselves and their habits. I think there is some pride wrapped up into that, but at the end of the day political campaigns are having ads and putting out content that will attempt to polarize and get people to vote a certain way. It’s not necessarily about being having an informed and balanced view anymore. It’s about polarizing people creating emotional responses and they know exactly how to do that because they have all your data. They know what you react to. They’ve seen you react to. It’s AB testing on a massive scale. That’s scary.
Bekkah: Yeah, and even on a regular level of, like you know, what I don’t – there are certain people within my Facebook that I’m like, “Ignorance is bliss for me.” If somebody’s like, “Oh, this is what I’m like doing with my life!” or whatever I’m like, “Oh, I didn’t know that!” And I can genuinely have a conversation with them where like I don’t want to find out about that from them on Facebook. So I specifically have put settings for certain people just saying I don’t want to see stuff from them.
Carter: Right.
Bekkah: But then when something significant happens that Facebook wants me to either get back into creeping on them or saying, “Hey, this is something that we’re pushing you to be more like this person,” that will show in my feed even though I’ve specifically asked them not to show posts from that person. And I’m like that is totally inappropriate to me, I feel!
Because I notice it on like a slower level, “Oh, this!” And it’s really not that big of a deal but like if I was somebody who had like a major fight with somebody else or whatever, it’s almost like Facebook is fueling drama purposefully!
Carter: Because you’re more likely to use the app. You’re more likely to give them attention.
Bekkah: Yeah! And you kind of mentioned “The Social Dilemma”, and we did not cover that enough so if you guys have not watched that movie you need to go and watch it. Because I feel like it is the best representation of what algorithms do to a person who knows nothing about technology.
Ruthie: Just take it with a grain of salt because they do try to personify what Facebook and other algorithms do and it’s not necessarily actually what’s happening. It’s just like a personification of what’s happening but it is happening. So that’s just something to keep in mind but, also, plan to do something fun after you watch it. Because you can get really sad and freaked out.
Bekkah: No, I watched it right before the last election I was like, “Whoa! this explains so much about what’s happening right now!” But it helped me! It helped me realize you know what? People are actually like wanting to do the right thing! It’s just that they’re getting fed stuff that maybe they’re more apt to react to and that’s why they’re looking at other people like, “I can’t believe you would respond this way after reading the same information,” but the reality is they’re not reading the same information. That’s the issue.
Ruthie: Like we were talking about with the polarization they talked about in The Social Dilemma of how it knows what you want to see so it’ll feed you things that are in line with what you already believe. Then you start kind of creating this mentality of “everybody thinks like me” then when you meet someone who doesn’t it’s almost like you just have this shocking moment of like, “Oh, my word! There are people out there who think like this!” I don’t know that’s just weird how they’ve used your data to feed you a specific narrative. Yeah! Okay! Next question!
How Algorithms Work to Collect Your Data
Carter: I would just speak to give a really quick example because people always are like, “All these algorithms! How do they work?” I’ll give you a super condensed simple example.
Ruthie: Please do.
Carter: You’re scrolling on Facebook you pause on a photo for six seconds, right? It knows that it’s measuring that, “Oh, this person stops scrolling!” And the photo they’re looking at has tags “food” and “fitness” attached to it. “Great.” It takes note of that. You’re scrolling again. You’re passing by all these other photos with tags attached to it and then pauses again at one that’s “food” and this time let’s say “adventure” and it’s like, “Oh, it liked food twice! This person paused for six seconds on food twice. They must really like food guess what I’m gonna start servicing up to them more – food.” And does this over and over and over again. That’s a very just simple example of how they’re measuring attention and how it relates to tags and how they’re going to serve content to you. I just want to throw that in there because people are like, “What does it mean that like – how is it actually doing that?”
Bekkah: And I think maybe like I’m also surrounded by people that know a little bit more about this because I talk about – right now I’ve been training Facebook to notify me every time a baby is born! I’ll go through and like anyone was a baby I’m like, “Like, comment.” And I will like and comment every single time, because then as soon as somebody has a baby it pops in my feed right away because Facebook’s like, “Ooh, she really likes this!”
What Is a Data Broker and How Do They Work?
Ruthie: Yeah, big life events. So you gave us a really cool example of how algorithms work can you explain briefly how data brokers work?
Carter: Yeah, so essentially data brokers are these massive data silos. It’s a company and if you a picture like farm – farming and they collect all the wheat all that. Picture that except data. They’re mass harvesting your data into these silos and they essentially are pawning off your data to the highest bidder. Now why do these bidders want your money? Why are people purchasing your data? We kind of talked about earlier, but essentially the more data that’s available the better these AI models that can be made that will ultimately predict your behavior, anticipate it, and finally control it for a desired outcome in the real world. So that’s what data silos are. That’s what data brokers are. They’re these middlemen. They’re not necessarily like the Facebooks of the world. There’s these other companies more in the shadows and I believe it’s like a 200 billion dollar industry like it’s massive.
Bekkah: Wow!
Carter: And it’s just a whole market of trading your data.
Ruthie: Like Cambridge Analytica would be one?
Carter: Yup. Yeah and people don’t know about it! It’s just every day.
Bekkah: Wait, wait, wait. You mentioned Cambridge Analytica so we should probably talk about that really quick and Carter I don’t know if you know a ton about this-
Carter: I don’t have as much, I do not have – I know the context but I don’t have any depth here so feel free to dive in on that.
Bekkah: Okay, let me just like – I followed this when it was happening. Now there’s like a movie on Netflix out about it too but I haven’t watched it and I’m willing to bet that it’s super politically slanted so I’m a little nervous too sure. But like okay, so when this originally happened there was an app out on Facebook that you could – I don’t know it’s something like My Digital Life or something or Ruthie had like some notes on that but basically what was happening is this app developer would say, “Okay, I’m gonna predict what your digital life is so I need to be able to access all of your likes interests and then also your friends list and all of their likes and interests.” But people were saying, “Okay, yes!” because there was a loophole in Facebook that would allow you to do that. Facebook had that open where you could actually collect data on people’s friends if that person who wanted that done pressed the accept button to the terms and conditions. Basically, what was happening yeah “This Is Your Digital Life”, that’s what it’s called. Sorry. So, basically, that data was then used to say, “Okay, this is who you are basically online.” And it was some kind of fun quiz like “Which Disney Princess Are You?” but
Ruthie: Not quite like that, but yeah.
Bekkah: Not quite like that but you know! Anyway!
Carter: Wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Bekkah: That data was then pulled by that app company that then sold it to I think was it Global Science Research or were they the people – No, they developed – Global Science Research developed Your Digital Life and they had that information that they sold to other people. So Cambridge Analytica was more of like a marketing agency that’s like, “Oh, well, we’ll just get these user profiles!”
Because back in the day – now there’s like lots of changes in how you can target Facebook ads but back then what you could do is you could basically upload like an actual spreadsheet of people and their interest or whatever and say, “This is who we want to target based on their interest.” You could bring your own data in and upload it to match profiles. If you know anything about like Facebook pixels it’s kind of like the H-tag that you put in your website to basically track anyone who goes on your website.
Facebook tracks basically what’s happening on people’s phones a lot sure without you knowing it. If you go on a website and then it has a pixel and you go back on your Facebook it correlates those interactions, right? Then you could basically create this bucket of people for re-marketing. The same way you could upload your own lists. As that was happening, they basically segmented by people’s political leanings and then started serving them ads which everyone was like, “Oh, Cambridge Analytica! They’re like a horrible person for doing all this!”
And okay, maybe they are. I can’t say yes or no to that because, honestly, everybody was doing it! It wasn’t just them! And it wasn’t like just like buying data from one company or another it was all companies were doing it. Even when we were looking into that 2012 article about Target, it was a key phrase in there using your purchase data and data they purchased from others to create a full user profile. It’s like yeah they’re purchasing! Everybody’s doing it.
Carter: And that was a decade ago imagine how much better they are now.
Bekkah: That’s what I’m saying!
Ruthie: Literally her exact thought process!
Bekkah: I literally said that! I was like that was like nine years ago! Can you imagine what kind of data they have on me? But when I started looking into this originally, Cambridge Analytica all this stuff going on a lot of news reporters were like, “You guys!” Especially, in the tech industry they’re like, “You realize credit cards have been doing this to you for years and nobody’s cared about that!”
Carter: Yeah.
Selling Your Profile Data Has Been Around For Years
Bekkah: Because credit card companies that’s how they actually make their money. It’s not really – I mean, yeah. They get like a bonus on like if you don’t pay and then they charge you fees, but most of it is they sell your purchase data to other people. Most people have no idea when they sign up for a credit card that that’s what they’re doing. I see that happen to me where, I was telling Ruthie I was like, “Oh, yeah, for the first time I can tell somebody has sold my data because for the first time ever I received a back to school ad in my mailbox.” I was like, “Wow! Somebody knows that I have children! Nobody knew that before.”
Cater: Wow!
Bekkah: But I’ve never like posted a lot about that or whatever and so how is it that they’re pulling this data on me?
Carter: Yeah.
Bekkah: Right? And it’s just so interesting to know that and it’s kind of scary at the same time.
Does Collecting My Data Just Give Me a Better Experience or Is There a Bad Side?
Carter: Right, right, and I feel like one of the common things you hear is, “Oh, all they’re ever trying to do is just like sell you more stuff. It can’t be that bad!” But for me it’s like what about all the malicious individuals out there? The people that get access to those data silos and are trying to control your like – are just sheer agents of chaos? That’s the part that really scares me and I think that’s why the political side of things is particularly contentious. It’s just because there’s a lot more risk wrapped up in people using data to polarize. You know, versus “I’m trying to sell you this product.” It’s like I can understand that. I don’t like it. It crosses the line, but I’m worried about the malicious actors that have amazing AI and can change reality as we know it because we’ve just given them reality in some ways with that data.
What Tools You Can Use To Protect Your Data’s Privacy
Ruthie: Tell us about specific tools that people can be using to protect themselves from things like that.
Carter: Yeah, so for me the biggest thing you can possibly do initially is your browser. Whenever we talk about tools just know that you’re not going to be perfect but you can start with improvements. I think raising the next generation of kids to be more conscientious of the stuff is like the long-term solution, but short-term! Browser is a really big one. I use Brave Browser. Huge fan of them. Co-founder Mozilla Firefox left and was like, “Yeah, we need to do something about the privacy side of things.” I won’t go into their model, but I think they’re fantastic. They’re totally privacy preserving.
Duckduckgo, people have heard some of these other ones. They’re not perfect. None of these are perfect but they’re better than Google. Whatever you can do to at least attempt to migrate away from like Google is a great first step. Get rid of apps you don’t need. There are so many apps on people’s phones that they don’t know are just harvesting data. They don’t even use the app so get rid of stuff you’re not using. Turn off permissions on your phone for like you can see what on your phone what certain apps have permissions to and just get rid of the stuff that you don’t need.
There are apps that want your location data, that want access to your photos, and all these different things. People don’t know that your photos have like metadata on it. It’s like they’re not literally looking at your photo they’re looking at the data attached to your photos. Some people talk about VPNs. I look at VPNs as like the cherry on top. VPNs for those who don’t know what that is it’s a “Virtual Private Network”. Essentially, it randomizes where your searches appear to be coming from. I think they’re pretty cool but it’s not as fundamental as changing your browser, removing apps on your phone that you don’t need, and then I would here’s the next big one: replacing G-suite apps.
For instance, instead of Gmail I use Protonmail. Still have to use Gmail for as a student, but in terms of work and I’m in the privacy sector, Protonmail’s go-to. It’s Gmail but with privacy. It’s amazing. Telegram end-to-end message encryption has over half a billion downloads at this point. Countries hate it, to be honest. During the Hong-Kong like a lot of different contentious riots all over the place even during the elections like Telegram has just been massively downloaded. It’s the only messaging app that has end-to-end encryption that I know of and the people that spun it up like they got nodes all over the world so like I’m not worried about it ever going down. They’ve already openly stated that it’s not for profit. Like they can’t even really earn a profit from it which I think is fascinating. The infrastructure has been set up for idealistic purposes, you can question you know how people will use it but at the end of the day it’s privacy preserving so I’m a fan of it.
Google Drive try Dropbox not a perfect solution still better than Google Drive. And finally like go out there and fight for your ask. Ask your politicians about it. Make it a a bigger deal. We need legislation that protects protects us like GDPR over in the EU. Yeah that would be my quick list!
Ruthie: Wow! Okay, Carter, thank you so much for joining us and telling us all of your wisdom and you want to just let people know where they can find you and then we’re going to transition into our sister gawk.
Carter: Yeah! You can find me on Twitter L_Woetzel. Lots of blockchain tweets. A lot of content that goes out. You can also follow my company’s youtube channel Secure Secrets and yeah those would be the two big kind of places to find me. Feel free to connect on LinkedIn. Always happy to chat!
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