Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons Podcast

It's that time of year again: tax time! And that means it's also time for tax scams. I'll give you some tips on how to avoid them, and also help you find the real "Free File" versions of your favorite online tax filing software. In other news: a German man fooled Google Maps with a wagon full of phones; Hue smart bulbs patched a serious vulnerability; Ring doorbell offers more security and privacy controls; a nasty Android Bluetooth vulnerability found and fixed; extracting data from a computer using screen brightness; and the US government's use of third-party location trackers. Further Info ProPublica interview on history of Free File: http://podcast.firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2020/01/13/why-free-file-isnt-free/Free File: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/how-to-really-free-file-your-taxes/Avoid tax scams: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/preventing-tax-return-fraud/Winston Privacy: https://winstonprivacy.com/

We install antivirus software to protect us, not exploit us. Like a bodyguard, AV programs needs full, unfettered access to everything in order to properly do the job. That requires complete and absolute trust. And probably a non-disclosure agreement. Unfortunately, antivirus software doesn't offer you an NDA promise. Avast, the maker of one of the top five AV software applications, has recently been shown to collect and sell entensive customer information to third parties. While they claim to anonymize the data, it's often easy to re-identify people when correlating this data with other databases. Thanks to some reporting by Vice and PCMag, Avast is shutting down this lucrative side business after a serious backlash. I'll tell you how you can mitigate your exposure to rampant data sharing. In other news, Sonos angers many long-time customers by declaring an end to supporting older devices; over 250M customer records have been exposed on five public servers with zero protections for about 14 years; Clearview, the company boasting a database of 3B face photos, has come under fire from social media companies and the US Congress; iOS 13 and Android 10 location privacy restrictions have dropped location tracking by nearly 70%; and Mozilla has banned almost 200 plugins for tracking users and violating its malware policies.

Happy Data Privacy Day! My guest today is none other than Bruce Schneier: world renowned security guru and author of several great books, including the Data and Goliath and Click Here to Kill Everybody! Bruce and I discuss the current state of data privacy and what it's going to take to rein in the corporations that are buying and selling our data with abandon. Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist Bruce Schneier has authored over one dozen books--most recently Click Here to Kill Everybody--and hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His influential newsletter Crypto-Gram and his blog Schneier on Security are read by over 250,000 people. Further Information: Transcript of my interview with Bruce Schneier: http://podcast.firewallsdontstopdragons.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Ep100-interview.txtData Privacy Day Checklist: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/data-privacy-day-checklist/

A small company has amassed over 3 billion online photos from social media and other public sources, creating perhaps the largest facial database in existence - far larger than even the FBI's database. The images are often connected to a person's full name, address, and people they know. The company, called Clearview, has sold access to this database to over 600 law enforcement agencies, allowing them to quickly identify someone from a single picture. While this has allowed them to solve several cases, it also means that we have basically lost the ability to be anonymous in public. There are no rules around this - but there need to be. In other news, if you haven't updated Windows in the last week, you need to do it right now; same goes for Internet Explorer (though you should really just switch to Firefox); Apple and FBI are once again facing off over iPhone encryption; the vast majority of modern cable modems are vulnerable to a devastating hack; and for at least this year, you shouldn't abbreviate with just "20" on anything important. Further Info: NY Times article on Clearview: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html Sandboxie: https://www.sandboxie.com/ VirtualBox: https://www.virtualbox.org/ CableHaunt: https://cablehaunt.com/

The IRS already knows what I made, what taxes I've paid, and even what my mortgage interest was last year. Why do I have to fill out tax forms? Turns out there's a very specific reason, and you're not going to like it. At the turn of the century, tax preparers like TurboTax and H&R Block negotiated a deal with the US government that prevented this very thing. In exchange, these tax companies agreed to offer a "Free File" online tax program for most tax filers. But while perhaps honoring the letter of that agreement, they used dark patterns and other subtle psychological tricks to push tax payers into pricey, unnecessary tax applications. Justin Elliott from ProPublica will explain the sordid history of "free" online tax preparation and the cat-and-mouse game companies like Intuit (maker of TurboTax) have been playing with regulators. Justin Elliott has been a reporter since 2012 with ProPublica, where he has covered money and influence in the Obama and Trump administrations, the American Red Cross and TurboTax maker Intuit. He has produced stories for outlets including The New York Times and National Public Radio, and his work has spurred congressional investigations and changes to federal legislation. Further Info: ProPublica Free File stories: https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap IRS official Free FIle site: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free How to file for free: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-to-file-state-federal-taxes-free-2020

It's not too late! You can still snag a free upgrade to Windows 10 from Microsoft. If you're still running Windows 7, it's time to avail yourself of this offer. Microsoft is ending support for Windows 7 on January 24, 2020. That means that you will no longer get software updates - in particular, security fixes. The official offer to upgrade to Windows 10 at no cost supposedly ended in July 2016, but Microsoft still offers a legitimate way to upgrade for free. I'll tell you how. In other news, cybersecurity experts are on the alert following our lethal attack on a senior Iranian military figure, Facebook was again caught using your two-factor authentication mobile number for non-security purposes, there's another massive leak of Facebook user data, Amazon blames its customers for Ring device hacks, a bug in GPS watches allows anyone to track your location, and the new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) goes into effect. Further Info: Spread the Word: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/spread-the-word/ New Year's Resolutions: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2020-new-years-resolutions/ Upgrade to Win10 for free: https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/ Protect Your Privacy on Windows 10: https://spreadprivacy.com/windows-10-privacy-tips/

2019 has come and gone, and 2020 is upon us! You know what that means: New Years Resolutions! I've put together a Top Ten list of suggestions that will significantly improve your computer security and online privacy! Some of these are easy and some are going to require some effort... but you have a whole year to do them! This will also be a great episode to forward to friends and family, introduce them to the show and help build up our "herd immunity". Further Info 2020 New Years Resolutions blog: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2020-new-year's-resolutions/Give Thanks and Donate: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/give-thanks-donate/Key resources: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/resources/Terms and Conditions May Apply: http://tacma.net/tacma.php Support me! https://www.patreon.com/FirewallsDontStopDragons

We know that we're tracked, but what remains largely invisible is the massive economy working behind the scenes (or "mirror") to buy, sell, trade and bid on you and your data. I've seen estimates that claim there are up to 4000 data brokers in the US alone. And what's worse is that they are largely unregulated, making the data market a total free-for-all. What can you do to curb this tracking and selling of data? We'll discuss that in the conclusion of my interview with the EFF's Bennett Cyphers. Bennett Cyphers is a staff technologist on the Tech Projects team at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). He contributes to a variety of different projects within EFF, most of them tied to privacy and competition. In the past year, he's worked on the tracker-blocking browser extension Privacy Badger, provided technical advice to lawyers and activists, and read and re-read the California Consumer Privacy Act. Before coming to EFF, he was a policy intern at Access Now and earned a Master's degree for work on privacy-preserving machine learning. In his spare time he designs t-shirts for fake punk rock bands. Further Info EFF’s Behind the One-Way Mirror: https://www.eff.org/wp/behind-the-one-way-mirror Setting Apple ID to zero (“limit ad tracking”): https://blog.tenjin.com/idfa-sends-all-zeros-on-ios-10-devices-2/Best & Worst Gifts for 2019: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/best-worst-gifts-2019/ The Scoring of America: https://www.worldprivacyforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/WPF_Scoring_of_America_April2014_fs.pdfCorporate Surveillance in Everyday Life: https://crackedlabs.org/en/corporate-surveillance

If you've listened to even a handful of my shows, you are well aware that you're being tracked around the web. But even I was surprised by some of the things I learned in the recent white paper from the Electronic Frontier Foundation entitled "Behind the One-Way Mirror: A Deep Dive Into the Technology of Corporate Surveillance". One of the prime authors of this report, Bennett Cyphers, came on my show to walk us through the myriad and shocking ways that ad tech companies have found to identity us as we surf the web, use our smartphones, and even walk around the real world. Bennett Cyphers is a staff technologist on the Tech Projects team at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). He contributes to a variety of different projects within EFF, most of them tied to privacy and competition. In the past year, he's worked on the tracker-blocking browser extension Privacy Badger, provided technical advice to lawyers and activists, and read and re-read the California Consumer Privacy Act. Before coming to EFF, he was a policy intern at Access Now and earned a Master's degree for work on privacy-preserving machine learning. In his spare time he designs t-shirts for fake punk rock bands. Further Info EFF’s Behind the One-Way Mirror: https://www.eff.org/wp/behind-the-one-way-mirror Setting Apple ID to zero (“limit ad tracking”): https://blog.tenjin.com/idfa-sends-all-zeros-on-ios-10-devices-2/Best & Worst Gifts for 2019: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/best-worst-gifts-2019/

We don't often think about the security and privacy of our regular old "snail mail", but we need to. According to recent activity observed by researchers of the dark web, the bad guys have been regaining interest in identity theft schemes involving physical letters. And in many cases, they can steal your mail without ever opening your mailbox. I'll tell you what you can do to reduce your risk. In other news, thousands of Disney+ accounts were hacked on the first day, a massive data breach exposed over a billion user records, PayPal is set to acquire shopping platform Honey for $4B, and Avast and AVG browser extensions are spying on Chrome and Firefox users.