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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With

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Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. This podcast

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Speaker 1: is brought to you by Going to Meeting, the best

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Speaker 1: way to hold meetings over the Internet, reduce travel expenses,

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Speaker 1: saves time. Just told an online meeting with go to Meeting,

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Speaker 1: Try it free? Is it go to meeting dot com

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Speaker 1: slash tech Stuff. Hi to everybody, Welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: My name is Chris Boulett. I'm an editor here at

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Speaker 1: how Stuff Works. And next to me, as usual, is

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Speaker 1: our senior writer, Jonathan Strickland. Hey there everyone, Actually I

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Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have revealed that. Oh yeah, you've you've violated

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Speaker 1: my privacy. Yeah, yeah, but I violated my own first,

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Speaker 1: so I guess it's okay, right, And and we're online,

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Speaker 1: so we're talking about online privacy. Hey you know what

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Speaker 1: that seguys right into what we were going to talk

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Speaker 1: about today, right, funny that. Yeah, so we're gonna talk

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Speaker 1: about is your greatest threat to your to your privacy online?

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Speaker 1: Clowns Now that that's just your the greatest threat to

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Speaker 1: your sanity online or otherwise? Um no, we're talking about

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Speaker 1: actually two big contenders. So if if you'll just permit

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Speaker 1: me a little a little uh net cast magic, do

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Speaker 1: we do? We need to ring the here we go,

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Speaker 1: here we go and this corner we have weighing in

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Speaker 1: and who knows how much Internet service providers and their

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Speaker 1: opponent in the other corner or in the red trunks

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Speaker 1: we've got Google. Yeah, those are the two begins. Wouldn't

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Speaker 1: they be like the red and yellow and green and

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Speaker 1: blue trunks? Yeah? Pretty much, But I just didn't. I

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Speaker 1: kind of wanted to cut it short. I know people

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Speaker 1: don't like the hooky stuff so much as I do,

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Speaker 1: But so, yeah, those are the two begins. I think

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Speaker 1: most people agree that the two major potential threats to

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Speaker 1: your online privacy are your internet service provider or internet

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Speaker 1: service providers in general and M and Google and other

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Speaker 1: advertising agencies online as well. So not just Google. It

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Speaker 1: could be Yahoo or but really a double click is

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Speaker 1: a big one. But but since Google is kind of

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Speaker 1: the dominant uh web advertising company out there right now,

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Speaker 1: I mean when we think Google, we think Search, wrote you,

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Speaker 1: and I might not just think Search because we work

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Speaker 1: on so many other projects that involve Google. But in general,

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Speaker 1: you think Google Search, but what companies often think is

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Speaker 1: Google ad Sense add words. I mean, it's this online

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Speaker 1: advertising that's related to search. That is a very powerful

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Speaker 1: tool in the advertising world. Um, but it has some

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Speaker 1: pretty serious implications as to the average users privacy. So,

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Speaker 1: and if you if you're one of those who only

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Speaker 1: thinks of Google is search, and you use something like Gmail,

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Speaker 1: if you look to the right of your screen, to

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Speaker 1: the right of your email, you'll see ads um and uh,

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Speaker 1: that's pretty much the same can be said for a

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Speaker 1: lot of their services. Right, you know their texts, so

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Speaker 1: they don't you know, capture your eye always, but you

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Speaker 1: know they're they are. Yeah, And and here's where the

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Speaker 1: privacy thing comes in. Google can track where you go,

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Speaker 1: especially when you're using Search. They can see what you're

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Speaker 1: searching too. If you're using Google Chrome, they can check

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Speaker 1: pretty much everything you're doing, including everything you type into

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Speaker 1: the right right exactly. That's how the omnibar knows what

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Speaker 1: you're doing, right, I mean, other otherwise it's just magic.

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Speaker 1: And we don't cover that in this podcast. We just

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Speaker 1: concentrate in the science and texts. So you've got Google

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Speaker 1: where they're they're tracking where you're going. And it's not

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Speaker 1: necessarily for some sort of you know, nefarious purpose, but

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Speaker 1: but it is a concern, I mean it, and it

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Speaker 1: what it allows advertisers to do is or actually Google

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Speaker 1: itself to do, is to target you for very specific advertising.

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Speaker 1: So let's say, if you were like me, um, then

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Speaker 1: you may go to a lot of movie related websites.

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Speaker 1: Happens to be one of the things I like to

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Speaker 1: check out on almost a daily basis, So I tend

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Speaker 1: to go to a lot of um, not just the

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Speaker 1: Internet Movie Database, but things like chud and aint it

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Speaker 1: cool News and dark Horizons and all these other movie

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Speaker 1: news sites because I'm a movie news junkie. Well, if

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Speaker 1: Google's checking that out, then they can start targeting ads

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Speaker 1: to me that specifically relate back to my my apparent

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Speaker 1: uh love of movies. So it might be things like

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Speaker 1: uh ads for certain DVDs or or even movie clubs

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Speaker 1: or whatever. And this again doesn't necessarily sound nefarious, but

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Speaker 1: it does mean that what they're doing is they're looking

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Speaker 1: at my behavior and they're they're targeting me because of that.

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Speaker 1: So there that raises some warning flags. Right, Well, that's true.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you've ever been one of those people

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Speaker 1: who looks up at the the banner at at the

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Speaker 1: top of the screen and go, wait a minute, that's

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Speaker 1: for something in my town. How does it know where

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Speaker 1: I am? Right? Well, they can. They can tell from

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Speaker 1: your Internet protocol address. They can tell a lot of

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Speaker 1: things about you simply by you know, just you're using

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Speaker 1: the Internet from where where the because it has to

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Speaker 1: send traffic back to you, so they know where you

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Speaker 1: are sent right just by being there. And and Google

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Speaker 1: tries to frame this as a good thing and that

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Speaker 1: what they're doing is they're they're tailoring your search results

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Speaker 1: so that they're more relevant to you. And that sounds great.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I love the idea of if I'm going

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Speaker 1: to search for something, it's gonna really bring back the

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Speaker 1: things that I most likely really want to see. But

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Speaker 1: that also means that Google knows more about me than

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Speaker 1: most of my close friends. I mean, And and there

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Speaker 1: comes a point where you say, well, what happens if

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Speaker 1: they start to use the information in other ways? The

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Speaker 1: whole issue about the putting your your medical records up online,

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's a that's got a big can of

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Speaker 1: worms there. What happens if an insurance company gets to

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Speaker 1: access your medical records, sees that you have some sort

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Speaker 1: of family history of something, and then decides to hike

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Speaker 1: up your rates because of it or drop your coverage

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Speaker 1: because of it. UM. I mean, these are just some

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Speaker 1: of many privacy issues that that you really have to

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Speaker 1: think about. And the Internet has just kind of made

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Speaker 1: this a whole new problem, you know. I mean it's

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Speaker 1: it's a huge issue that isn't easily tackled. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: that's true. UM. Other search engines have tried to to

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Speaker 1: do that. Ask dot Com in fact, UM, not too

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Speaker 1: long ago. I guess a few months ago now offered

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Speaker 1: a way to erase your tracks um as you searched.

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Speaker 1: That's that's sort of a help. You could go into

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Speaker 1: your web browser and clear your your cookies out, which

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Speaker 1: will help. Those are basically cookies are are basically little

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Speaker 1: pieces of text that are stored on your computer that

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Speaker 1: that help UM. Advertisers and websites track where people are going. UM.

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Speaker 1: For example, if you went to the New York Times website,

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Speaker 1: they would want to know if you were going to

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Speaker 1: the Washington Post, the l A Times, CNN to look

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Speaker 1: at other UH companies. They might want to know if

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Speaker 1: you shop on Amazon dot com. You know, those kinds

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Speaker 1: of information gets sent back to uh the New York

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Speaker 1: Times or whomever it is that that's putting that cookie

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Speaker 1: on your computer, so you can you can kind of

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Speaker 1: do you know, raise your own tracks. So your web

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Speaker 1: browser UM and UH Google Chrome their browser and the

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Speaker 1: new version of Internet Explorer are offering, uh offering a

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Speaker 1: sort of a privacy shroud so that you're searching and

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Speaker 1: anonymously theoretically, so UM yeah, so that you can sort

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Speaker 1: of mask what you're doing. UM. It's it's similar, I

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Speaker 1: guess in a way to uh to tour, which is

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Speaker 1: a UM sort of a it's kind of hard to

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Speaker 1: explain it, and redirects your certain your traffic, your web

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Speaker 1: traffic through servers in other parts of the world to

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Speaker 1: sort of hide your tracks. UM. So you know, those

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Speaker 1: things are things that you can do, uh to do that.

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Speaker 1: But you know, the question is are the sites able

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Speaker 1: to track you from that information? And right? And in general,

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Speaker 1: cookies don't really let sites track everything you do. UM.

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Speaker 1: Cookies mainly allow a website to see how often you

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Speaker 1: visit UM, and it allows you to store certain information

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Speaker 1: on your computer that makes it easier to load up

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Speaker 1: a page. UM, they're not really used to track everywhere

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Speaker 1: you go. Although there's a caveat to this. UM. Services

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Speaker 1: like double Click, which isn't a web advertising service. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they have ads all over the net. And if you

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Speaker 1: get a cookie for a double click add on one

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Speaker 1: site and then you go to a different site that

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Speaker 1: also has double click, then theoretically double click can see

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Speaker 1: both of those sites that you've visited, and they can

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Speaker 1: actually start to piece together information about a user, you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of profile a user based on the multiple visits. UM.

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Speaker 1: Whether or not they bothered to do that is another

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Speaker 1: question because you have to remember, uh, not everyone's using

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Speaker 1: the exact same computer all the time. Like if you're

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Speaker 1: talking about say a computer in a computer lab like

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Speaker 1: a library or something, you have multiple users all using

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Speaker 1: that computer. You can't really build a comprehensive profile on

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Speaker 1: someone if it's really you know, a hundred different individuals

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Speaker 1: who are using that computer throughout the course of a week.

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Speaker 1: So uh so cookie tracking, I mean you it is

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Speaker 1: a good idea to clear out your cookies regularly, UM,

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Speaker 1: if you want to try and protect your online privacy. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's probably not the most important factor to take into consideration.

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Speaker 1: But it's definitely something that you have control over yourself.

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Speaker 1: So that's a that's a positive and if nothing else,

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Speaker 1: there's nothing worse than stale cookies. Right, let's let's move

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Speaker 1: on to Internet service providers. Um, this is kind of

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Speaker 1: just really quickly. I mean, well, well, there are several

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Speaker 1: things we need to touch on in this discussion, but

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Speaker 1: we've already we've already kind of bashed Google a lot.

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Speaker 1: And uh and I like, I like to say, I'm, I,

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Speaker 1: for one, welcome our Google overlords. But well, the reason

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Speaker 1: the reason we uh sort of pick on Google is

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Speaker 1: simply because they are uh, somebody that you will be

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Speaker 1: familiar with as a listener and uh, I mean certainly, um,

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Speaker 1: but also because they are so involved in the advertising world.

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Speaker 1: Um to yeah, yeah, I mean they're they're just big

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Speaker 1: enough so that you know, they are able to offer

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Speaker 1: a lot of advertising and a lot of search and

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Speaker 1: a lot of different kinds of products that you will

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Speaker 1: be interested in. But basically it's it's anybody of that

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Speaker 1: size that offers those services to you. Um, you know,

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Speaker 1: toolbars that you plug in your browser. Basically, these things

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Speaker 1: are all ways for them to help get more demographic

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Speaker 1: information for their subscribers. So it's not just Google. So no,

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Speaker 1: that's just the easiest target in that bunch. But for

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Speaker 1: Internet service providers, UM, right, there are a lot of those. Recently,

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Speaker 1: an associate professor of law at Colorado Law School UM

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Speaker 1: named Paul Ohm mentioned that he believed he actually published

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Speaker 1: I think a seventy page something page document on the

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Speaker 1: issue that he believed the Internet service providers uh constitute

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Speaker 1: the greatest threat to our online privacy. And um, it's

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Speaker 1: because they can see everything that we're doing. Because technologies

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Speaker 1: now exist they allow i sp s to do deep

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Speaker 1: packet inspections on their users. Deep packet inspection it's pretty

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Speaker 1: creepy stuff actually, so they can really take a good

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Speaker 1: look at what you're doing where you're going online. Um.

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Speaker 1: And and technically you would call it spying. They could

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Speaker 1: spy on you, now do they, Well, that's another matter.

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Speaker 1: The point is that they have that capability at this point. Yeah. Now, UM,

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Speaker 1: for the uninitiated, a packet is the way that information

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Speaker 1: gets sent around the internet. Uh. It may not seem

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Speaker 1: like that to you, but in the background, UH, to

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Speaker 1: send information on the Internet, a computer requests uh something

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Speaker 1: from another computer, and that computer sends it back. Now

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Speaker 1: how does it do that, Well, it breaks it into

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Speaker 1: lots and lots of tiny pieces. Um I think Mike

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Speaker 1: TV on Willy Wonka if you will, But lots of

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Speaker 1: little chunks of information called packets, and the uh, the

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Speaker 1: computer send that information to one another on various different

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Speaker 1: pieces of the Internet. UM, so that you know, if

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Speaker 1: it finds that one computer in between is down, it

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Speaker 1: can reroute the traffic to another computer. And that's how

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Speaker 1: you know, stuff gets from point A to point B

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Speaker 1: and back to point A on the Internet. Well, deep

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Speaker 1: pack and inspection. We're talking about the Internet service providers

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Speaker 1: ability to look at those chunks of information and this,

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Speaker 1: you know, can meet anything that you send, any key stroke, UM,

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Speaker 1: any password, emails, anything that's going across the Internet, they

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Speaker 1: can take a look at and and uh if they

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Speaker 1: really wanted to um. And there are many reasons they

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Speaker 1: might do this, one being again kind of selling information

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Speaker 1: to advertisers so that advertisers can target consumers. So sort

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Speaker 1: of the same thing Google is doing in that sense.

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Speaker 1: And uh. The question is whether the I s p

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Speaker 1: s view advertising as a major source of revenue or

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Speaker 1: if they consider it themselves just to be Internet service providers,

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Speaker 1: like they're just selling access to the Internet. Uh, that's true.

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Speaker 1: I mean in March two thousand seven, UH, Compete Incorporated

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Speaker 1: Chief Technology Officer UM David Cancel said that i sp

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Speaker 1: s are selling their click streams. Uh, your customers click

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Speaker 1: streams too, different people for revenue, so you know, service provider. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I mean there there are hundreds of I s

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Speaker 1: p s out there and of all different sizes, so

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Speaker 1: it's we can't really paint them all with the same brush.

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Speaker 1: But the point is that they have the capability. Whether

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Speaker 1: or not they have the motivation is another matter. I guess, well,

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Speaker 1: they do have other reasons for doing Deep packet inspection

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Speaker 1: allows an I s P to see, um where traffic

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Speaker 1: is coming from. They can kind of get an idea.

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Speaker 1: They I sps can monitor the system traffic and if

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Speaker 1: all of a sudden there's a big spike in traffic

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Speaker 1: coming from one place, they might, you know, take a

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Speaker 1: look at the packets to see what's going on. And

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Speaker 1: if it turns out that someone has gotten a you know,

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Speaker 1: downloaded a trojan horse and their computer is now part

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Speaker 1: of a bot net and ascending out spam uh, as

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Speaker 1: part of a denial of service attack, they can shut

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Speaker 1: it down, right, so there's there's a good reason to

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Speaker 1: do it. They can they can tell exactly what what

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Speaker 1: program is used to do that. Um, so you know,

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Speaker 1: if you are downloading torrents. Yeah, actually that's only aware

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Speaker 1: of that. It's one of the issues that Professor own

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Speaker 1: was was talking about these about things like organizations like

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Speaker 1: the m p A A or the r I double A. Uh,

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Speaker 1: that would be the Motion Pictures Association American Good Old

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Speaker 1: Record Industry. Right. So yeah, these guys, they have a

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Speaker 1: vested interest in making sure that that they're that intellectual

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Speaker 1: property isn't being freely distributed across the Internet without you know,

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Speaker 1: the actual without people actually buying it. So they're they

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Speaker 1: they've been known to put pressure on I s p

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Speaker 1: s to look into that sort of thing. Um. Actually,

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Speaker 1: they've been known to put pressure on just about everybody.

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Speaker 1: They're kind of like the the mafia of the corporate

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Speaker 1: world and in the United States at any rate. So

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Speaker 1: they've they've put pressure, both political pressure and corporate pressure

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Speaker 1: on these kinds of organizations, um, to try and detect

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Speaker 1: this This digital theft essentially is what it is. And

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Speaker 1: to cut it off at the source. UM. So that

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Speaker 1: constitutes a privacy concern. Um. And of course there's always

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Speaker 1: the concern that the government could put pressure on I

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Speaker 1: s p s to reveal information about users. Um. And

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Speaker 1: you know, they may have reasons that sound perfectly legitimate,

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Speaker 1: like trying to battle terrorism, but it still means that

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Speaker 1: they're violating your privacy, which is one of those things

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Speaker 1: that the Supreme Court said, ages and ages and ages ago.

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Speaker 1: It was something that we pretty much have a right to.

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Speaker 1: We have the right to be let alone well against

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Speaker 1: unreasonable search, unreasonable search and seizure being a big one.

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Speaker 1: That would be the fourth Amendment that would be right there.

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Speaker 1: What's funny that you should mention the government because an

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Speaker 1: article wired on August fifteen, UH, A T and T

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Speaker 1: said that Google was more troublesome than their uh, their

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Speaker 1: program to install eavesdropping equipment on their network. Um yeah,

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Speaker 1: they said Google's advertising is much more serious than anything

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Speaker 1: that that we would do and the eavesdropping network. Now,

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Speaker 1: of course, A T and T is the UH the

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Speaker 1: target of a class action lawsuit for helping the n

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Speaker 1: s A and wire tapping wortless wire tapping issues. So

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Speaker 1: so yeah, you guys take it with a grain of

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Speaker 1: salt um and uh in um. In August two thousand eight,

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Speaker 1: it turns out everyone's getting on the Google's worse than

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Speaker 1: we are a bandwagon. And this is not an i

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Speaker 1: sp but Microsoft said that, uh, they're actually the Peter Cullen,

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Speaker 1: the chief privacy strategists, said that Google's privacy standards are

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Speaker 1: not up to part There may be seven to ten

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Speaker 1: years behind Microsoft's own. According to an article in zd

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Speaker 1: Net Australia. So and and just in case you guys

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Speaker 1: think that we in the United States have it rough,

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Speaker 1: assuming that you know, for those of them, for those

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Speaker 1: of you listeners who are in the US, and you're like, wow,

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Speaker 1: this is really tough, keep in mind. In June of

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Speaker 1: this year over in Sweden, Swedish parliament passed a law,

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Speaker 1: very controversial law that allows a government organization to monitor

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Speaker 1: and intercept all online traffic that crosses the Swedish border.

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Speaker 1: So anything that's going across the border, this this agency

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Speaker 1: can intercept and read and track back to whomever sent

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Speaker 1: it or received it. And there's also the fear that

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Speaker 1: perhaps this agency may even expand its capabilities beyond that

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Speaker 1: and be able to monitor all traffic within Sweden, whether

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Speaker 1: it crosses the border or not. So it's it's rough here,

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Speaker 1: it could be worse. The important thing is to keep

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Speaker 1: an eye on it to make sure it doesn't get worse.

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Speaker 1: That's true. And the other thing to to remember as

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Speaker 1: far as your privacy goes online is people don't really

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Speaker 1: have time to read all this stuff. So honestly, you know,

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Speaker 1: before you turn off the computer and and you know

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Speaker 1: throw it away and you know, freak out because your

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Speaker 1: privacy is being violated, it's probably not unless somebody has

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Speaker 1: real reason to. Uh. You know, people at I sps

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Speaker 1: and and search engines and advertising companies, they really don't

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Speaker 1: have time to look at your personal information. They're more interested,

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Speaker 1: they're more interested in you and as a number, um

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Speaker 1: than as as a person in your personal info. So

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Speaker 1: you're probably not seriously under suspicion and to jump off

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Speaker 1: the grid yet. No, but don't forget. Basically, anything you

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Speaker 1: do can be looked at. So you know, if you

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Speaker 1: are concerned about something that might be for it or

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Speaker 1: intercepted and might be embarrassing to you, maybe you're better

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Speaker 1: off leaving it offline. Right And if you're interested in

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Speaker 1: organ zations that that are very much focused on this issue,

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Speaker 1: I recommend visiting either the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has

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Speaker 1: some good information on this subject, or the Electronic Privacy

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Speaker 1: Information Center also known as EPIC. Both of those have

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Speaker 1: a lot of articles and documents on this reports. Um,

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Speaker 1: if you feel like you need to get involved, they

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Speaker 1: have information where you can look into doing that as well. So, UM,

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Speaker 1: it's really up to you. It's better to I think

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Speaker 1: better to be informed than not just in general. Well,

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Speaker 1: I guess that that pretty much wraps up our our

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Speaker 1: cheerful conversation on online privacy. UM as to whose worst

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Speaker 1: Google or the I s p S, I think time

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Speaker 1: will tell. Right now, it looks like Google's in the lead,

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Speaker 1: but uh, I s p S seem to have a

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Speaker 1: pretty good potential for UM for mass chaos down the road,

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Speaker 1: So cheer up. The world's about the end, right Well,

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Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take a little break. When

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Speaker 1: we come back, I'll tell you about a special place.

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Speaker 1: Special place that one might think only exists in fairy tales,

359
00:21:09,480 --> 00:21:14,480
Speaker 1: but in fact is reality. On this podcast is brought

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Speaker 1: to you by Go to Meeting, the web based tool

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Speaker 1: that lets you hold instant online meetings from your office,

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Speaker 1: confidence trim or home office with people anywhere in the world,

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Speaker 1: tech stuff. Okay, so what is this special place. Well,

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Speaker 1: the special place would be the headquarters of Google, the

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Speaker 1: Google Plex. And what makes it so special, Well, it's

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Speaker 1: it's got some pretty amazing amenities. Uhwer of them than before,

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Speaker 1: Fewer than before, but still pretty pretty amazing. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: Google might be violating your privacy, but they're letting their

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Speaker 1: their employees swim in in infinity pools. So and some

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Speaker 1: free food, some free food. So if you want to

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Speaker 1: learn all about google Plex and see where these evil

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Speaker 1: geniuses work, you can read How the google Plex Works.

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Speaker 1: That's by Hey, it's by me jovin Strickland, and that's

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Speaker 1: live at how stuff Works dot com. Right now, we'll

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Speaker 1: pause you again, really sick. Let us know what you think.

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Speaker 1: Send an email to podcasts and how Stuff Works dot

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Speaker 1: Com brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready, are you