WEBVTT - Tech Guards Our Digital Memories, Until It Doesn’t 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:02.840 In March, I got an email from a guy named 0:00:02.840 --> 0:00:07.520 Andrew Friedman. It said, Brett, I am desperately trying to 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:10.160 get in touch with Jonathan Kaplan of The Melt and 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:13.480 more importantly, Flip Video fame. To make a long and 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:16.599 bizarre story very short, I have a flip video cam 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:18.880 that I believe has on it a video of my 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.320 late father in law playing with my son. Without boring 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:25.120 you with too much detail, the camera, the flip Video 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:28.520 it was a small, simple video recorder that was pretty 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:32.080 popular in the mid two thousand's. I had a few myself, 0:00:32.400 --> 0:00:34.920 and I remember using it to film my kids taking 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:40.200 their very first steps. Good Daddy is dad? He needs 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:53.200 to talk on the phone. Go Izzy. I vaguely remember 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:55.920 the flip video. Most people called it the flip Cam. 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.520 It was good for shooting home videos. But the company 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.480 shut down a while ago, right, and that's why Andrew 0:01:01.560 --> 0:01:04.240 was writing. His camera was broken and he was having 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:08.480 trouble fixing it. Three data recovery companies told me today 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:11.160 that they don't deal with Flip Video. I can't tell 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:14.280 you how difficult it is to get reliable intel about 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:18.399 a product that, by tech standards is prehistoric. Andrew had 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:21.479 a cherished video stuck on his device, and he didn't 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:24.240 have a way to get it back. As a last resort, 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:27.640 Andrew decided he needed to find the flip cam founder, 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:32.039 Jonathan Caplin, and that's why he emailed me. I'm hoping 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.120 you might be able to help me out. Either give 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:37.560 me a way to contact him, forward this email to him, 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:42.760 anything if he's willing to contact Thanks Andrew. I've written 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:45.880 an article on Jonathan Caplan a few years ago. I 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.640 still had some contacts I could try to call, so 0:01:49.120 --> 0:02:02.600 we decided to help. I'm Brad Stone and I'm Christy 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.000 Westgard and this week under cryptod we're on a mission 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:09.720 to get Andrews video back. This season, we're exploring the 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:14.119 unintended consequences of technology. Our story today takes a look 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:17.080 at the tech industry's constant race for the next big 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:20.320 thing and how that sometimes comes at a hidden cost 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.800 to you and me, the consumers of technology. Just as 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:26.240 we get used to one set of apps and gadgets, 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:29.200 we find out that the industry has moved on, leaving 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:38.400 us stuck. Stay with us. Andrew lives in New Jersey 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:42.320 with his wife, Ginger, and their two young children. One evening, 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:46.200 Andrew and Ginger were watching a popular NBC family drama, 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.760 This is Us, like they do every week. It might 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:51.960 have been the super Bowl. In the post super Bowl 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:56.120 episode in which one of the characters was thinking about 0:02:56.880 --> 0:03:00.480 her dad's passing and on the anniverse three of her 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:04.000 dad's testing Every year watches a video tape that her 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:07.560 dad made of her when she was a kid. Um 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:11.440 and in this particular episode, the VHS tape got destroyed 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:15.399 in an in an old fashioned dcr Um and her 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:18.760 fiance went to sort of great pains to try to 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.560 get the tape restored and find somebody who could school 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:23.600 it back together like everybody used to have to do 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:28.160 on VAJ tapes. Ginger's father had passed away just about 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:32.640 five years ago, and watching that episode gave Andrew an idea. 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:34.720 He went upstairs to look in the corner of a 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:38.000 closet for a flip cam he hadn't used for many years. 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:40.360 He wanted to find a video of Ginger and her 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:43.080 dad they had filmed around the time when their first 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.520 child was born all these years later. Andrew was a 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:49.360 little fuzzy on exactly what was in the video, but 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:54.000 he said Ginger remembered. Her memory of this tape is 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:58.200 that we made it. Probably I shot it um in 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.560 when we were in the hospital while she was in 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:06.120 labor with my son, who is now six years old. 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.560 You know, it was exciting to be there while we 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:11.360 were about to have our first son. But also there 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.080 were certainly a tone of sadness in the room. That's 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:17.800 because Ginger's father was battling cancer. The family knew he 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:22.599 didn't have much time left. Um, would you mind telling 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:31.440 me a little bit about your father in law? Sure? Um, Sorry, 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:35.839 that was the one question I wasn't quite ready for it. Um. 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:41.080 He died a few months asked, maybe even a month 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:47.760 after his seventieth birthday. Um. He was a wonderful father, 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:54.000 a wonderful human, a wonderful man, a wonderful everything. It 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:58.960 is impossible to overstate how important my wife's father was 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:02.960 to my wife and what he meant to her. If 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:05.200 this flip cam could bring a little bit of that 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:08.080 man back to the family, Andrew would try to salvage it. 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:18.119 Almost immediately, things got complicated. Andrew hadn't used his camera 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:21.680 for years, and it wouldn't turn on, and flip cams 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.560 hadn't been in production for over seven years. In two 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:30.080 thousand nine, Cisco, the giant technology company, bought Pure Digital Technologies, 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:33.080 the company that made the flip cam. But two years 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:36.839 later in Cisco's broader consumer unit was having trouble, so 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:40.559 Cisco killed the flip camp and they laid off fifty people. 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:44.920 That minute, stopped manufacturing the flip cam, and it also 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.560 stopped all the customer service support to This kind of 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:51.640 thing is more common than you might think. What happened 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.640 to the geo cities, the friends, Stirr's, the my spaces, 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:59.440 all of those are where our digital library are digital 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:05.080 memories live, and we're a little stuck. That's Brewster Kale. 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.679 He runs a nonprofit called the Internet Archive. They hope 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:14.080 to catalog every web page, old computer, game, piece of software, song, video, book, 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.000 and more, you name it, and they're trying to get 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:19.320 their hands on it. Brewster says, this problem Andrew was 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:22.799 facing happens to people all the time, and we're increasingly 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:25.440 vulnerable to it as we keep more and more of 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:29.440 our memories and our data online. And now we have 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:31.640 even more of a problem because a lot of our 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:37.680 memories are on Facebook, Twitter, um, YouTube, Flicker, and those 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.359 are naming the ones that are still alive. Yet those 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:45.120 companies go away or they just change direction. Apple Computer, Um, 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:49.000 they had mobile Me that was their web hosting platform. 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:52.600 It was two terabytes of other people's stuff, but they 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:54.360 just said we're going to turn it off. And when 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:55.880 they said they're going to turn it off, it just 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.520 went away. Apple replaced mobile Me with the now ubiquitous 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:02.000 I Class out. The company did warn that it would 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:04.440 be switching over to give users time to jump ship, 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:09.840 but on June two twelve, everything left was deleted. And 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.200 if it could happen to Apple customers, it could happen 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:14.560 to anyone. I mean, I personally like to use Google 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:16.560 Photos to back up all of my images when I 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:19.200 don't have enough space on my iPhone, and I can't 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:21.560 really imagine what I do if that platform were to 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:24.000 just go down. Yeah, and just think of what losing 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:26.600 I Cloud would mean. I mean, that service can store 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.480 up to two terabytes of information for every single one 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:36.840 of its hundreds of millions of active customers. So, with 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:40.520 no customer service number to call, Andrew tried online forums 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:45.360 to revive his dead flip cam. Started googling online um 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:50.720 things like flip video instruction Flip Video Manual, how to 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:55.520 reset flip video flip video camera won't power on. Andrew 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:57.840 tried a few of the tips, but none of them worked. 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:00.720 Finally came across one that no did that there was 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:05.080 a little pin prick reset button built into the camera. 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.680 Looked and found that, but was afraid, for sort of 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:11.840 the obvious reason too, to trigger it, not knowing if 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:14.920 it would wipe out the memory of the camera. After 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:16.840 a couple of days of trying to fix the flip 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:20.440 cam on his own, Andrew started calling data recovery experts. 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.680 I mean I called three data recovery companies. One was 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.239 what are you talking about? Two We're sorry, we don't 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:31.720 do that click more or less. Um. None of them 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:34.240 were willing to go near this. All said that they 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:39.120 dealt only with external storage devices. What I sort of 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:42.600 expected to happen was someone would say to me, sure, 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:46.280 bringing your camera for two hundred bucks, three hundred bucks, 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:49.120 we can do it. And figured they would take the camera, 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:51.760 they would do three minutes of work, they would get 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:54.240 the video. They would charge me three for three minutes 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:56.679 of work. And I was signed with that, Like I 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:58.520 was willing to be suckered on this one. If I 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:02.080 could get the video. I called two of the data 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:06.640 recovery companies that Andrew remembered, using right with you, please 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:11.040 hold both on site and in lab twenty four hours 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:13.880 a day, seven days per week, so if you suffer 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:20.240 data loss, don't panic, we can help. One said it 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:24.560 would run me anywhere from five hundred dollars. They warned 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:27.360 that the video might be lost since their specialists were 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:31.760 not experts in internal data recovery. Internal data is tricky 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:34.520 because it requires the device itself to be functioning in 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:36.920 order to get at the memory, so if the device 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:39.960 is dead, you can't really get to the data. In 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.080 other words, Andrews still wasn't any closer to getting his 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:50.280 videos back. That's when I got Andrew's email. It was 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:53.400 in March. Jonathan is an entrepreneur and part of his 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:56.760 work requires lots of travel, so it took some time 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.920 to get in touch, but eventually he did agree to help, 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.079 and over a three months or so of email ping pong, 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:06.840 we followed Jonathan through China and sailing across the Atlantic, 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.160 all these off the grid places all right, And finally 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:12.880 in May I got word that Andrew's camera was in 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:16.320 the hands of someone named Taylor Libby. He'd been part 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:19.680 of the original flip cam engineering team, and Jonathan said 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:22.680 he was doing a more serious intervention on the camera. 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.480 Taylor is an old college friend of Jonathan's, and after 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:29.480 the flip cam unit folded, Taylor worked at Apple for 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:32.360 six years. Now, he's a full time dad two kids 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.760 a little younger than Andrew's son. Jonathan and Taylor still 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.800 casually stay in touch, so he agreed to help salvage 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:44.559 Andrew's videos. So I got these two cameras UM from 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:50.800 John and they both appeared dead or or bricked. UM 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:53.320 the same utility as a brick. They can prop us 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:57.160 in the door. But Taylor's first challenge was to charge 0:10:57.200 --> 0:11:00.600 up the battery. When batteries are too depleted, an interesting 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:03.840 thing happens. They can kind of get into a catch 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.439 twenty two spain where they don't they don't even have 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:10.680 enough battery available to charge the battery. Taylor plugged the 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.000 camera into a USB port that measures currents to see 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.680 if the slightest tremor could be detected. The recipe there 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:20.800 as you would have to charge it for a few 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:25.880 minutes and then unplug it, reset it, and then and 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:28.960 then charge it again. Taylor did this several times, over 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:33.079 charging and resetting, but no dice. It was behaving in 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.920 a way that didn't look familiar to me, so I 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:38.439 kind of was worried about that. One didn't didn't think 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:41.640 that camera was going to be salvageable. So what did Tailor, 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:44.440 the computer engineer who had helped build the flip cam, 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:47.319 end up doing. Just like the rest of us, He 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:51.480 googled it. So I found a video where someone had 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:56.720 opened up a camera um similar model, and that kind 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.160 of gave me a confidence and had can probably open 0:11:59.200 --> 0:12:01.760 this up without breaking any thing. Taylor dug up a 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:04.560 flipcam of his own to practice on, and then cracked 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:08.440 into Andrew's device. After moved a couple of boards and 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:10.360 got down into where the batteries could see that the 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:15.160 battery was swollen. This is the same thing that happened 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.360 to those exploiting Samsung batteries a few years back, which 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:22.720 were banned from airplanes. A swollen battery can be pretty dangerous, 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.000 I'm sure. So Taylor switched out that shot battery with 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:29.320 a replacement from Amazon. After a few cycles of charges, 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:33.360 the flipcam was back online and the memory was intact. 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:36.960 So six months later and we could finally bring Andrew 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:51.320 his videos. On a morning in June, I went up 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.640 the elevator of a nondescript office in the Financial District 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.560 to meet Andrew for the first time in person. We 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:00.840 walked across as open plan office floor to a comfortably 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:04.240 furnished meeting room where I set up my computer. How's 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:11.240 how's everything going good? Curious? How sorry this took so 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:19.240 so long? Hot Journey. Taylor sent us the videos via dropbox. 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:21.640 I opened the shared folder and let Andrew kind of 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:25.800 click through immediately. He was looking for something specific, the 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.080 video of his father in law and his newborn son. Okay, 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:33.760 so these were three let's see here, three our files. 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:40.760 But thank god, that's Ginger home. That's my apartment on 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:44.559 my old apartment on NY six straight at first video 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:48.439 show Ginger sitting in a chair holding her swaddled baby boy, 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:53.880 just got a hospital personal, Good morning, Simmy, and today's 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.000 day of life. Three. We haven't done a ton of 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:00.160 recording because we've just been so busy. Love in you, 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.680 yup um, and you're very cute and you're doing very well, 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.520 and Ginger is beaming into the camera. You have a 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:16.520 visitor though, Okay, we're gonna positive video, sorry for Andrew 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:19.040 was on the edge of his seat. He was certain 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:22.240 that the visitors they were about to receive were generous parents. 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:24.720 Maybe the next file would be the video he was 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:31.840 after today your visitors for Arial who sometimes cs by Jessica. 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:34.800 The next video of Ginger was a few hours later, 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:44.320 and Dad's best friend Adam and Nana and Papa. But 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:48.360 it was filmed after the grandparents had finished their visit. 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:51.720 So we had the videos from before and after, but 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:56.120 nothing from the visit itself. So where the hell is it? Queen? 0:14:56.880 --> 0:15:00.160 Before and then the after that was like the one 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:07.160 in between is maybe it's somewheres. Andrew spent the next 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.120 moments clicking through the folder, making sure he hadn't missed 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:14.000 a file. He scrutinized the time codes. The two videos 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:17.400 had been filmed eight hours apart. It's so funny. My 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:22.040 biggest fear has been that like they got the video 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:25.000 off the cameras and there was nothing from the hospital, 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:27.880 or it was like video of watching paint drive or whatever. 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:31.520 The notion of actually finding the videos from the hospital, 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:34.720 but just that one not being there never crossed my mind. 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.200 After that meeting with Andrew, I asked Taylor if it 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:46.520 was possible that the file was lost during the extraction. 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:53.880 It's not impossible that the file, yeah, but it's it's 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.640 extremely unlikely that Christine's because because one set swapped out 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:03.120 the battery, that camera behave flow slee and um, there's 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:09.640 no indication of any type of vile corruption or anything else. 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:13.720 Taylor did offer one last idea, though, He said that 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.040 now the camera was running again, we might be able 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.400 to see whether the video had accidentally gotten deleted. So 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:22.120 let's say you had five videos on there, right, and 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:25.640 you deleted one of them, and now it looks like 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.280 there's four on there. Well, you didn't actually change what's 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:30.240 in the memory. All you did was change the table 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:33.160 of contents. But this video is still there. We had 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:35.920 our doubts about that. How could such an important video 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.320 just to be accidentally erased? What were the chances that, 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:41.680 of all the videos on the camera, that was the 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:44.760 one to vanish? But we had to exhaust all of 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:47.840 our options. So I called back that data company with 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:51.080 let's call it memorable hold music. So if you stuffer 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:55.080 data loss, don't panic. We can help. And I started 0:16:55.080 --> 0:17:00.560 a new case the Data Recovery Company as a short 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:03.440 walk from the office. Um it was Nestla between the 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:06.919 luxury boutiques of Fifth Avenue. I went into the glass 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:18.280 entryway of an unmarked skyscraper and up twenty or so floors. I, um, 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:20.560 I'm here to just drop off that camera. I have 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:23.639 a case number now. I handed over the camera to 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:26.119 this receptionist. He was a heavy setman, and he was 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:30.359 juggling several ringing phones all the while. So then do 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:39.480 I just wait for someone to kind of reach out? Okay? Okay? 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:44.080 And how long does that normally take? Okay? Sounds good. 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:47.760 Within a week we got our answer. The technician had 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:51.040 run multiple scans for residual data on the camera. He 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:54.000 did find a fifth file, but it was badly corrupted 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:57.120 and only appeared to be seven seconds long. This might 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.440 have been seven seconds of Ginger's father or us seven 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:03.400 seconds of blank video. Christie, do you do you think 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:05.879 it's possible that Andrew made a mistake and there never 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:08.800 was a video of his father in law. It's definitely 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:12.159 a possibility. Andrew told me in our first conversations together 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.320 that he and Ginger couldn't remember the exact details of 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:19.680 the video, but they did distinctly recall making and watching 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:22.919 the video all those years ago. Christie, this story is 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:25.679 so familiar to me. I mean, I myself have so 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:29.640 many challenges keeping track of all the photographs and videos 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:35.240 of my family across services and technologies and devices and phones. 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:40.800 It feels like in the ever increasing advancement of technology, 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:43.960 we've lost some stability, Like it's hard to keep the 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:47.520 perhaps coint a phrase, you know, good digital hygiene. Things 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:51.199 end up getting spread everywhere. Yeah, I mean I was 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:54.960 talking with friends and family about Andrew's situation and it 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:58.120 was amazing they all had a similar story. It really 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:00.760 is an unintended consequence of deck achnology. I mean, we 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.000 value the new thing, but then it's really it's hard 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:06.919 to go rescue and organize the old things. I was 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.560 looking for my flip cam videos as we were organizing 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:13.040 this story. I couldn't find them. I mean, it was 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:15.520 actually lucky that I had posted a few to YouTube. 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:17.320 And it actually does sort of highlight a role that 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:20.600 social media can play. Right when we publish videos, they 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.920 become easier to find. Yeah, but then on on the 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:27.240 flip side of that, we are kind of desensitized to 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:32.720 ranking the importance of what we post online because we're 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:35.880 so used to posting everything. Yeah, that's true. And there's 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:40.320 the same obsolescence challenge, uh, with with apps and online 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:43.159 as there is with devices like the flip cam, right, 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.560 like such a small percentage of apps actually go on 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:49.840 to succeed and thrive, and those that do shut down, 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:51.960 you know, we end up losing that content that we've 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.280 been relying on it to catalog our memories. So now 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:57.760 that Andrew has his videos, perhaps not the one that 0:19:57.800 --> 0:19:59.800 he was looking for, but some of the other ones, 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:03.720 uh that chronicle the birth of his first child, do 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:06.760 you know is he conducting his digital hygiene differently? Is 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:09.760 he backing up and storing them differently? Well? I gave 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:12.439 Andrew a call a few days ago. I wanted to 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:18.120 ask him just that, how is everything going on your end? Good? Yeah, 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:21.320 London down, summer. I know, it's kind of After some 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:24.040 pleasant tries, I cut to the chase. Do you back 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.640 up your videos? Now? Have you put Have you put 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:29.600 the videos that we got for you on another hard 0:20:29.680 --> 0:20:33.520 drive or whatnot? Yes? Well, I mean they're on a 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:37.160 hard drive there on a cloud there, they're in two 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:41.320 or three places. You know, a couple of different um places, 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:44.600 so that should one get lost again, that we will 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:47.639 have it somewhere else in theory and not need to 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:52.520 um implore you guys to help us go to the 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:57.359 ends of here. Oh that's good to hear. I'm glad 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:02.520 that you've you've taken the ures to his les and learn. 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:16.200 And that's it for this week's Decrypted. Thanks for listening. 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:19.840 Do you have a story about digital memories lost and found? 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:22.040 We want to hear from you. You can email us 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:25.480 at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net or I'm on Twitter 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:29.320 at Christy Westgard and I'm at brad Stone. Please subscribe 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:31.960 to Decrypted wherever you like to listen, and if you 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:35.080 haven't already, leave us a rating in the review. It 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:38.960 helps new listeners find the show. This episode was produced 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:42.399 by Pia Godkari and Liz Smith and edited by brad Stone. 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:46.600 Thanks also to Aki Itto, Emily Busso and Vandermy Magnus 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:51.000 Hendrickson to for Foreheads, and Austin Weinstein. Francesca Levi as 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:53.680 head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week.