Manipulative Politics and the Power of Data

Another day, another data breach, am I right? Companies including AT&T, Ticketmaster, and UnitedHealth have all made headlines recently after hackers left millions of customers’ data vulnerable. Lily Hay Newman, a writer covering information security, digital privacy and hacking for Wired, says data breaches like these have been a growing issue for more than a decade. On the show today, Newman explains steps you can take after you’ve been impacted by a breach (beyond signing up for free credit monitoring) and what you can do proactively to protect your data. Plus, what cybercriminals actually do with your data and how cyberattacks have evolved.

Then, we’ll get into how a PAC funded by Elon Musk is collecting information on would-be voters. Plus, we’ll workshop a name for Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic platform and hear about Olympic speed climbing.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• “The Sweeping Danger of the AT&T Phone Records Breach” from Wired
• “Ticketmaster Confirms Data Breach. Here’s What to Know.” from The New York Times
• “AT&T says criminals stole phone records of ‘nearly all’ customers in new data breach” from TechCrunch
• “What’s Behind the Increase in Data Breaches?” from The Wall Street Journal
• “Here’s how much your personal information is worth to cybercriminals – and what they do with it” from The Conversation
• “How an Elon Musk PAC is using voter data to help Trump beat Harris in 2024 election” from CNBC
• “Forget Apple, the biggest loser in the Google search ruling could be Mozilla and its Firefox web browser” from Fortune
• “U.S. climber Sam Watson smashes men’s speed world record with 4.75-second qualification run” from NBC Olympics

Make Me Smart is headed to Boston! You can find details about the live event and how to get early bird tickets here.