Can You Really Delete Your Internet History?

Even without a Facebook profile, the average internet or smartphone user leaves a massive trail of digital breadcrumbs, from publicly available records to purchasing history, forum posts and GPS data -- so what happens when you try to delete this info? Join the guys as they collaborate with Part-Time Genius to explore the ins and outs of your online identity, as well as what you can -- or cannot -- actually delete from the internet.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome

(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is They call me Ben. You are you? And that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. However,
this is not your ordinary episode of stuff they don't
want you to know. Actually, you know what, We should
change that language, you guys, because we I don't know
if we've ever done an ordinary episode. Have we never?
We have never, and we won't start now. This is

(00:47):
a team up episode, a collaboration if you will, and
we uh we hope you do. We are partnering with
our buddies, colleagues, co workers, and friends, Will and Mango
from Part Time Genius to explore some of the most important, pertinent,
and pressing questions about the online world. The most important
question that they are asking is what does the Internet

(01:10):
know about you? How much stuff? The personal, the really personal,
the things that you wouldn't share with anybody else, you know,
just talking to somebody on the street. How much does
the Internet know about you? And where does it live? Yes,
so immediately after checking out this episode, head on over
to Part Time Genius to learn exactly what the Internet

(01:33):
already knows about you, and it's it's a lot. Yeah,
it's too much, even if you think you know, it's
way more than you probably bargained for. Before we begin
answering our question and launching our exploration today, let's fill
in some context. First things. First, oh, friends and neighbors,

(01:55):
if you are listening to this show, it is almost
certain that you have an Internet presence. I mean, obviously
you're listening to podcast. Yeah, how would you know what
a podcast is if you were not connected to the Internet.
I guess there are shirts. Now, maybe you just randomly
saw the stuff you should know shirt on somebody in
the subway. There are a lot of those. Yeah. Second,

(02:15):
you might be uh on the Internet via social media
of any sort. And finally, even if you just happened
to be hanging out with some friends, uh and one
of them happens to turn on our show just while
you were in the room, and you never once logged
in or signed up for any social media Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram,

(02:37):
friends to Tumbler, live journal, geo cities, MySpace. Was yeah,
was that a social media. It was your own page,
and you could connect other pages to your page. Wasn't
it just kind of like a rudimentary like web hosting. Yeah,
but come on, man, it's the it's the stars, the city,
it was the start of Remember, they all had they
all had like different neighborhoods depending on your region. Anyway,

(03:00):
I digress. So any of those things you've got no interest,
never signed up, never gave them a lick of information,
even if you've never even had an email address, several
things are certain. At least a portion of your purchasing
history exists in online record. Uh. If you've somehow managed
to just pay cash money for every single thing in

(03:21):
your life, you're one of those um off the grid types.
You are still not safe. And that's because various public
records of your life are digitized. You guys. I was
at the bank recently trying to do some bankery, and
it came up on their screen, pages and pages of
my personal documents. I just happened to be able to

(03:42):
see it, and I was like, Oh, that's my marriage certificate.
Oh that's that's my mortgage. You know all of this stuff,
And I understand that when you submit that stuff you know,
into the public record. It's somewhere. But I was a
little bit taken aback at how easily they were able
to just boot pop it up on their screen. Was
this routine bankery, It was routine bank care. It was
transferring a check to someone, and they had to verify identities, um,

(04:06):
and they had to find a document that had the
maiden name of the individual question. But yeah, I was
just kind of a little bit taken aback by how
quickly that stuff popped up on the screen. So all
of that stuff exists. You got court and government agencies
that have been posting public records online since like the nineties, right, Ben, Yeah,
motor vehicle records, voter files, property tax assessments, professional licensees. Uh,

(04:32):
and of course court files are all up there in
the cloud. And and just to pump the brakes really quick,
just to the social media thing. We skipped over something
really important here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what happens if you
don't have a social media profile, Yeah, it doesn't matter
because maybe your friends do. And guess what. Most of
these social media platforms or apps that you end up downloading,

(04:55):
they ask for your contacts in your phone, especially if
you're on your phone, and if your number happens to
be in your friends phone, your email address, your address,
your physical address. All of that stuff is accessible by
these apps and by these social media So maybe the
platforms are taking a look at you, just in case,
maybe in the future you make an account, or they

(05:17):
can just take that information and sell it to somebody
else who fits that persona right or construction persona. Okay, yes,
these are this is the background of the grand painting. Right,
So it's obvious that meeting one of these exceptions would
be pretty uncommon, right, Meeting all of them would be
downright extraordinary, on the level with a superpower. Most people

(05:42):
have some sort of Internet presence, whether consensual or non consensual,
even if it's only a footprint found in various public records,
as Nul mentioned. And for this episode, let's call this
series of ones and zeros the digital you. So here,
you are, Here, we are. It's the twenty one century,

(06:03):
and you, like Walt Whitman, contain multitudes. I love it.
Several several compelling studies indicate that our online personas often
contradict our physical personas in a number of ways, and
one great example of this is um you know, you'll
see studies that say the image somebody creates or or

(06:26):
exhibits on Instagram or Facebook is a little bit more
happy or cool than the image they project in real life.
It's like curating your life, you know, and how people
perceive you. It's sort of cultivating an image that you
see as being the best you, putting your best foot forward,

(06:47):
even though we're all sad, sad sacks of waste. M Well, yeah,
I can remember specifically my Xbox Persona. For a long time,
I was avid into the first person shooters, and I
was not very nice. I went through a time where
I was not very nice as a kid playing people's

(07:08):
mother's Oh I so did. I talked to so much.
I was. I wasn't a troll, but I was intense
and very competitive. I could. I could see this obviously enough.
Well I had to. I had it separated so far
from the you know, my walking around persona. It was
so different when I got that controller in my hand,
that I this is so true. You were like the
nicest person, Nolan. I know, yeah, oh yeah, I have

(07:31):
a feeling you're exaggerating a bit. I bet if we
experienced your online bullying, we'd be like, that is the
nicest what was it was like, pardon me, I couldn't
help but point out that your mother you got cuned
and your mother is wayward. I would I would do

(07:52):
accents a lot of the time. That was quite a
bit of fun to do accents. I really appreciate you
playing this out, Matt, because you are right, there is
a There is a difference, and this difference can grow
over time, so that from some perspectives, people become almost
two different versions of themselves. You listening to this right now,

(08:13):
you are almost two different people. Perhaps more than that,
you might even have online personalities that you strive to
keep entirely separate from your physical life, or multiple identities,
like our super producer Tristan McNeil. Sorry, I forgot to
mention that at the top, man Uh, Tristan probably has
numerous identities for the sake of anonymity. Right, YEA has five?

(08:38):
Or he's waving at us uh. In today's episode focuses
on these identities and their creation and their deletion. Today's
episode asks what happens when you want to delete this information?
Could you do it? And how? Or more disturbingly, why not?

(09:01):
So let's get into the Internet. How many users are
there in seventeen of this whole thing called the World
Wide Web and all of its associated stuff. Well, there's
an estimated fifty one of the world's population that has
some kind of access to the Internet, roughly three point
eight nine billion human beings. It's begun to become looked

(09:22):
at more as like a human right, yes, and it
is considered that in a lot of places, and the
United Nations is actively well. Factions in the United Nations
are actively pursuing it to be listed as a human right,
along with clean water and shelter and food and safety
from harm. Remember the Google loon, not the Google loon,

(09:42):
it was some kind of loon, but it was an
Internet balloon that that would be an access point that
would go over more rural, hard to reach, densely jungled areas.
And yeah, so I mean like we're coming up with
all kinds of wacky inventions to make this possible because
we see it as being so important, and so it's
not even looked at as like a luxury or like
a thing for fun. It's allowing you to be connected

(10:04):
in a way that is, you know, very important. We're
evolving you guys, think about it, in only seventeen years
since the year or two thousand, we've increased this by
so much. Seven percent of the population had access in
the year two thousand. Remember the first friend you had
that had the Internet and you didn't fully understand what
it was at first. Absolutely, can we get a sound
clip of that dial up modem? Oh, don't do it, Tristan,

(10:27):
don't do it. My brain so many different I had
a friend who's both mom and dad were like high
level surgeons or doctors, and they had Prodigy, which was
like an early service provider, and it was all like
message boards and stuff in those days. And it wasn't
until years later when I was like a teenager, like

(10:48):
in middle school, that you could get images and print
them out. And yeah, anticipation building, it goes down. Yes,
and Matt, to your point, this is this growth is unexpected,
unprecedented in many ways. Because you said only seven percent

(11:08):
of the population had access in two thousands to seventeen
years later, that's crazy. And you know, here's the thing.
People have, you know, up until the year two thousand,
had a certain expectation of privacy in their lives. What
we do I got shades on my windows for a reason,
because I don't want you to looking in at night

(11:29):
when I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing, even if
I'm just making a ham sandwich in the nude. Perhaps, Hi,
I know how you roll. I mean, look, nakey time
is a special time, key time. Nakey time. Yeah, you
guys don't have nakey time is in a k e
y Yeah, nakey time. You'll have kids one day, Ben

(11:51):
oh man, you haven't seen that Dana Carvey stand up.
That's what I was referring to. It's Nike time. Well,
it's a healthy thing to have naked baby time in
our house where my son gets to run around just
in his diaper and just really feel the world against
his skin. That's not nakee though. If he's wearing the diaper,
well I know, but we come on, he's he would

(12:12):
pee everywhere, and in uh, in a few decades, he's
probably going to look back and say, hey, I don't
want videos of young me running around being and having
uh naked time time. Yeah, there's there's a strict no
photos of videos during nakey time instituted in our house.

(12:33):
So according to and he'll thank you later, because according
to a few Research Center study of adults today say
it's important that they be able to control who can
access information about them, and also say controlling what information
is gathered about them is also important. Ah, the illusion
of control. Yeah, and also we know that in addition

(12:56):
to just generic internet, right, uh, one of the biggest
avenues of encountering online society or just the online world
is social media, sometimes to the exclusion of other Internet points.
Like there's some people who live entirely on you know,

(13:17):
Facebook or Twitter or something like that. Well, here's the thing, Yeah,
like you're saying, Ben, I think social media ends up
at least two younger people in the newer generations. It
is probably the biggest draw to be connected, uh for anything,
because you're not really using it for a lot of
utility access that maybe an older adult would do to

(13:38):
check on finances or do any of that kind of stuff.
You're getting on there so you can connect to your
friends and you know, Facebook is still the largest company
in the social media field, however not so much for
the younger generation. You get things like what's App. There
are a lot of other by the way, What's app
owned by Facebook, so great job, because I think that's

(13:59):
number two, isn't it. Yeah, I believe so at this
time and so for a little perspective, and twelve, Facebook
surpassed a billion monthly active users, and earlier this year
the this uh like monolith of social media hit two
billion monthly active users and counting, and like What's App,

(14:19):
which they own as well as you can add this
to their portfolio, is sporting little more than half of
that at one point two billion. So even you know,
at second place, it's it's, you know, pales and comparison
to the Facebook numbers, which is insane, especially when we
consider if we look at countries by population, if the

(14:42):
users of Facebook, now we're a country, they would be
the most populous country in the world, and What's App
would be number four, So it would be Facebook, China, India,
What'sapp and just by a little bit as a number four.
I have a little confession, guys, I've never actually seen
What's App. I have no idea. It looks like I
guess I don't understand the appeal. I was turned onto

(15:03):
it because a friend of mine was traveling internationally and
apparently it's an easy way to stay in text kind
of communication with somebody that's international. And it looks like
just a text chat app. And I think it has
video chat. That's great, but it's a really basic thing.
It doesn't really have any of the bells and whistles
that like a Facebook has that's a little bit more multifaceted.

(15:23):
What's App seems to me to be a little more
kind of barebones. It's getting it done, man. That's maybe
why it's popular, because it's it does a job, and
it does it well. And I know a lot of
people even use it professionally in chat groups and stuff.
So yeah, let's get on What's App. This is not advertisement.
And still, whether or not it has bells and whistles,
it's doing the most important thing, which is aggregating data

(15:46):
about you. Metadata, where you're calling, from, what time you're calling,
who is in the conversation with you. Here's the thing
about social media. Each social media site overwhelmingly is a
vidly owned identity. The social media platforms that we most
likely use are all privately owned. And unfortunately, if you

(16:07):
are like most of us, by which I mean the
vast majority of us, you did not read the terms
of service before you agreed to have that profile. I
definitely scrolled all the way to the bottom of the document.
Do that. Don't act like that? You know, the ones
that don't make you do that? You definitely don't do that. Yeah,

(16:28):
by you, I mean like literally everyone general you. Uh.
These terms of service agreements can have some perfidious stuff inside.
Obviously if you are listening to stuff, then once you know,
you're familiar with it. But we found a great website
called terms of Service. Didn't read the less dr and

(16:48):
it presents in plain language some of the positive and
negative aspects of various social media or Internet organizations. So
let's let's give let's give everybody a couple of examples.
Google will start with the goliath, the Giant, the Leviathan.
Google itself keeps your searches and other identifiable user information

(17:12):
for an indefinite period of time. Oh that's nice, so
at at their pleasure? Yes, yes, that there at at
his Majesty's pleasures. Well, and they can also share that
information with other parties like they that's in the terms
of service. We can do whatever we want with this information, yes,
and can use all your content for all of their

(17:32):
existing and or future services. Now, think think about how
much you pump into Google services right now, just imagine personally,
calendar information is in their email information is in there.
I mean YouTube, think about our our YouTube show and

(17:52):
you know all that stuff, all your all your weird
u searches at three am when you wake up from
a strange dream, you know, all your what does this
animal mean? Why is it wearing socks? Your Google Drive,
anything that you're backing up there? Oh tracks you on
other websites. And then also there's a YouTube and Google

(18:15):
and YouTube have the right idea. It's like giving people
all this free stuff and everyone's really stoked and grateful
at first. It's like Google YouTube, thank you so much
for these this free services, but you're giving them something
way more valuable in their giving you. I mean, what
could argue in terms of like ultimate financial um worth?

(18:37):
And it's very true. And we've had our own issues
with the old y T and you know, some of
their terms are a bit strange, and they have it
written in the terms that they can change them at
any time, and they can also remove your content at
any time and they don't have to tell you about it.
They can also demonetize your stuff right telling you. And
if you decide to delete a video YouTube doesn't actually

(19:02):
delete it. We will get into the surprising gray area
of what it means to delete something. Even if they
remove it for one reason or another, they still they
still have it. They still have it, and you know
not to not to plug anything on this show. But
on this website it shows duck duck go the search
engine yah, and all it says is no tracking. With

(19:24):
a little thumbs ups sign duck duck go is a
is a good alternative for people who don't want Google
searches recorded. Be aware, of course, that your Internet service
provider or your I s P will still be tracking
what you do, but duck dot goes a good way
to get around Google. There was also a thing I
haven't visited it in a while called scrowgle s c

(19:47):
r O O g l E and it does Google
searches without the web scraper. He says. Scrowgle dot org
is gone forever, says the site owner. Oh well, they mustn't.
Must have got popped by the man. Facebook tracks you
on other websites, automatically shares your data with many other servers,
uses your data Shakira style whenever, wherever, and Additionally, however,

(20:14):
it wants bonus for all you Android app users out there.
It can record sound and video from your phone at
any time without your consent. I remember when we learned
about this. Think about all the times you've been in
a stall, in a bathroom. It's just listening to dropping

(20:35):
a hot mixtape. Let's call it that surf and read
it on your phone, not to be too crass. And lastly,
for examples in Twitter, right, oh yeah, so Twitter, Let's
say you're gonna cancel your account on Twitter, It's gonna
keep Twitter in the service is gonna keep a lot
of that information. It keeps at least the rights to

(20:57):
anything you've posted through their service, so it doesn't matter
if you're deleted it and it has gone there. Maybe
they still have it on a server. Maybe they can
use it for you know, anything in the future. And additionally,
evidence indicates that all social media entities will cooperate with
law enforcement for information request Right at the most basic level,

(21:19):
this is a good thing, right theoretically, Yeah, However, in practice,
it's helping intelligence networks take a vacuum cleaner approach to
gathering this stuff. So it ultimately does not matter whether
you are innocent, uh of any suspected crime, right, because

(21:39):
there's this leap frogg gaing. Um, there's this leap frogging
system that's in play. And you know the game six
Degrees of Kevin Bacon or whatever. I don't know enough
about celebrities to play it, but this is like a
sith version of that. So it for instance, our producer
Tristan is innocent. Guy. Look just look at that face upstanding.

(22:04):
You know, if he knows someone who knows someone who
knows someone who's implicated in certain types of crime generally right,
or certain networks of that, then boom, Tristan's info is
up for grabs too, and he doesn't he may never

(22:26):
even know why. He may have never met, um, what's
a good what's a good name that sounds like a
criminals name, Sam T Garden. He may have never met.
They may have never met uha, the sham Sam, the
sham T Garden. But now now simply because he is

(22:50):
at best tangentially related, his information is now up for grabs.
So well. We we do know that there have been
a lot of historic cases going through the court system
of the United States looking at what the you know
what law enforcement can get how much they can actually
ask you to pull out of their website. There's that

(23:12):
recent case about um A, a group that was anti
I think it was an anti Trump website that was
organizing a bunch of protests and stuff, and the FBI
was looking to get access to pretty much every user
that had ever been on that website, anybody who would
ever checked it out. And it's going through the court

(23:34):
system right now to see constitutionally what can be asked for.
So thankfully, the situation may change depending on the time
that you are hearing this episode. If so, if you're
listening in two thousand twenty eight or whatever and we
have to still be around, uh, send us, send us

(23:54):
an email and ask us for an update if Big
Brother allows you to do so. And also what social
media is hot right now? Yeah, now, this episode is
a time capsule. Well, we've talked about We've talked about
some of these uh pernicious at times, I would argue
purposefully misleading terms of service, talked about what exists around

(24:15):
you or what what traces you leave on the Internet,
and of course check out our friends part Time Genius
for more in depth. Look, but we haven't yet talked
about how to remove this information or attempt to do so.
Removing information is unfortunately not a silver bullet kind of scenario.
It's a case by case basis. And we'll give you

(24:37):
some pointers after a word from our sponsor, and we're
back to quote mac with no delay. Yes, I don't
know why I love that so much. You said it
one time, you said one time you said, we're back
with no delay, and the way you said it, that
just made me happy in my heart. Well, i'm talking

(24:59):
about audio play gets. Obviously, maybe we need a little delay,
can we get I don't know if I like this area.
That's awesome. I think we should. I think we should
keep that in our back pockets, you know, when things

(25:19):
get a little dull. You know, this is something I'm
happy with the Internet knowing about me that I'm a
fan of these sorts of effects. Yeah, we just want
to punch it up a little bit, you know. So
how can you get rid of your Internet presence? That's
where we're at right right, So we went through and
kind of compiled some recommended steps for removing your various

(25:45):
social media accounts, and we'll start there and then we'll
get a little more granular as we go on. But
this these all came from the various help centers of
these different social media sites. So here we go. Uh.
Facebook says that if you don't think you'll ever use
Facebook again, you can request to have your account permanently deleted.
Do you hear that you can request? Request? The language

(26:09):
is everything also deleted and help um more like help um,
so it says here, I'm going back to the quote.
Please keep in mind that you won't be able to
reactivate your account or retrieve anything that you've added. But
before you do this, you may want to download a
copy of your info from Facebook. Then, if you'd like

(26:30):
your account permanently deleted with no option for recovery, you
can log into your account and let us know exactly
let Facebook. Oh wait, there's more. Yeah, there's more. So
when you delete your account, um, folks won't be able
to see it on their respective Facebook phrasing here, But

(26:52):
it doesn't necessarily go away. It's just kind of hidden,
hidden from other users. Uh. And it may take up
to the again from the from the article here, ninety
days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete
all of the things you've posted, like your photos, status, updates,
any data that's stored in Facebook's um surely absurdly gigantic

(27:17):
backup systems. Uh. And while you're deleting this information, it
is inaccessible to other people using Facebook. Again, more of
a hiding feature than an actual deletion. So some of
the things you do on Facebook aren't actually stored on
your account. And now this is true. You can think
about this in terms of like messenger, Facebook messages or

(27:39):
even I would be interested to double check this, but
I would imagine if you delete your account, do comments
you've made on other threads and other people's pages disappear?
Or does it just like it still lives there, but
your picture maybe goes away or something like that. I
honestly don't know, but I think your comments would probably
go away and then they go away. Okay, well that'd
be cool. I think you own your comments because you're

(28:01):
able to go through an individually delete them. That's true,
and you can also set them to you can. Now
you can't really set comments to be private. Yeah, I don't.
I don't know about that, but I do know when
you send a message to somebody else, it's received by
the other person and it's in their inbox. It's kind
of like entangled information has two owners, which is why, um,

(28:25):
I don't know. Also, Facebook is I don't want to
jurrail us, but Facebook is tremendously manipulative, like when you
try to mess with your privacy stuff, your quote unquote privacy. Uh.
It has a dinosaur as icon, and then the way
the it steers people with the parameters of what you

(28:46):
can and cannot say. So if you try to remove
a tag, the choices you're given, or you know this
is offensive or it's mislead blah blah blah, you know
you can't. There's no option to say just remove it.
That's called other. Is there still another? I don't know.
I don't. I think no. In several cases they took
away other. Yeah, I thought other. Yeah, gotta always have another.

(29:09):
But that would align to let you but MA that
that it would be a manipulative tactic though, to like,
these are your choices, and your choices are only these.
It's not it's not wood, it's not hypothetical. It's there.
This is pretty interesting though, because, as we know, because
of I guess largely laziness, you connect to other apps
using your Facebook. It gives you that lovely little option

(29:30):
where it's like, hey, you don't want to make an account,
just give us access to your Facebook information. Yeah, because
those those social media's or apps are paying Facebook to
do that so that they gather they have all that
other information attached to Facebook within their system. Yeah. But
if you delete your Facebook account and then you accidentally
log into one of these Facebook connected accounts like Instagram

(29:52):
or Spotify or Twitter or any number. I mean like
I did a sock membership by thing today and it
allowed me to connect to it via Facebook, So it
goes pretty deep. If you do this, though, it will
log you back into your Facebook account and the de
activation slash deletion process uh starts all over again. I

(30:15):
love the the use of the term de activation. They
don't even call it deletion. It's de activation, and it's
it reminds me of like I watched Blade Runner last
night or the first time in years, and instead of
murdering replicants, they retire you know, geez. And Instagram's no better.
If you go to the delete your account page, if

(30:37):
you're not logged in, they'll last you log in. Um,
you have to go on your desktop. You can't. You
can't do it from the app. And also, which is weird,
because you can't really use Instagram on the desktop exactly.
How strange is that? And I can only imagine that
there are a lot of people out there who don't

(30:58):
even really have a desktop system anymore set up anywhere
in their house. You have to Yeah, you have to
select a option from a drop down menu, so and
re enter your passwords. So the option to delete the
account only appears after you've selected a reason when you
delete the account, and this is at least explicit. When
you delete your account, your profile, photos, videos, comments, likes,

(31:21):
and followers are permanently removed. And then, just like Facebook,
you can temporarily disable your account. But I'm gonna go
ahead and say I don't trust it. Yeah, oh man.
And then we get to one of my absolute favorite
pseudo social media's LinkedIn. Do you guys still have them
LinkedIn accounts? Professional LinkedIn accounts? Yeah? I don't even know

(31:43):
what to do with that. I deleted mine earlier today.
Liberating it was awesome. I mean, you sorry, LinkedIn, but
you sent away too much email. Okay, So you can
close your account directly from this one page. Um, here's
the thing. You won't have access to any of your
you know, any of the information you've collected or people

(32:05):
you've connected to your profile will no longer be visible
on LinkedIn. However, search engines we're talking bings, Yahoo's in,
probably Google's, they might still display your information temporarily because
you're talking about information that's cashed, that's just sitting there,
and you can find it still through search results. And
the one thing with LinkedIn though, apparently people pay for

(32:27):
premium memberships, which i is something I've never done. But
if you do that, you have to change up your
premium account license and resolve that whole thing before actually
closing your account, which makes sense because it's probably there's
probably a payment involved. Who who knows? You have to wait,
you have to do what you have to resolve the

(32:48):
accounts like your your pay your pay for LinkedIn accounts
before you can close your basic account. That's the idea.
Pretty soon, it's simple overall. Uh, here's what the guys.
Did you have my Space accounts when you were younger?
Did I? Ever? Yeah? I had like the flickering give
background all day, the MIDI track that would trigger Yeah,

(33:14):
and you have probably had my Space band accounts to
or some kind of music that my my old band, Uh,
my space is actually still that anyone's check it out.
It's a band called the Cubists And are my Space
still still around? Hey? Mine, two Lions and scissors. Check
it out. But anyway, getting away from the plugs, I
wanted to delete my personal my Space account, so I

(33:35):
tried to go and do that today and found out
that it was linked up to my old AOL email address.
That I I got that email address in my parents basement.
It was awesome for a time. I really got got
me through everything. Anyway, I got you through everything? Yeah,
I really did. Every email I sent for years was

(33:55):
through a o L. You probably loaded it with like
one of those floppies that came in them. I did
you multiple times, right, they gave you the free have
created every time every point? Oh oh change? So so
what happened? What's happening with your AOL account? Now? Okay?
So checking out? In order to delete the my Space
go to AOL. In order to get to a o L,
I had to change my password I logged in. Apparently,

(34:17):
if you don't access an AOL account for eight days,
they deactivate that thing NOL, And that's kind of nice, right,
de activate your account if you're not using it. But
I was really nervous because my personal information is still
in that thing from all those years ago, and if
anyone wanted to hack it or easily get into it,
it's there. It's just sitting there. So I tried to

(34:39):
delete that. I was just on a spree today. Anyway,
you can't delete your ao L account, your free ao
L account, at least I could not. There's there's supposed
to be a place that says cancel account, and that
button was not there on three different browsers. When you're
a tech savvy guy too, So I mean, can you
imagine someone that maybe was less Yeah, even attempting to

(35:02):
do any of this stuff. I went through every help
center thing that existed on a well trying to find it.
Ended up calling a o L. I took my phone
and I called a o L and talked to somebody
who walked me through all the security steps and he
said he deleted my account. Sorry, you called AOL. Does
their phone number still work? Their phone number works for
customer service? Was it just some guys, like four guys

(35:22):
in a call center and who knows? Was it just
one guy at his house? I have to say they
picked up my call really fast because they didn't have
anything else to do. Well, you know, I who's to
say how many people are working there and how many
you know what their call volume is? Probably that guy.
You could have asked him, well, well it it worked
for me. So if you're out there and you've got
an a L account from you want to get rid

(35:44):
of it, you can. There's a website you can go
to and you can find their their number. It's one
eight eight to seven six three six four. You could
do it right now. If you want to do it.
And Steve really wants a friend to talk to, just
give him and uh not Steve the not Steve our

(36:05):
ongoing in essay interns, Steve the a O L Tech support. Yeah, yeah,
we're pretty Steve Rich here A's stuff they don't want
you to know. I want to say. His name is Rico,
So okay, uh so, uh just just call that number
asked for Rico or Steve tell him Matt saying they'll

(36:26):
know You've got to be the only Matt they called
it in a while. There's another thing that's should be
an episode all its own that we may have to
explore in the future, and that is Google. There's there's
a search console help site, but it gets very complicated
very quickly. Google has its hooks in you all up

(36:49):
inside your digital you. Yeah, that's the thing. It's all
about indexing because Google everything that gets posted everywhere in indexes,
and you can go and ask Google to remove of
stuff and take it out of search results. But ultimately
you're talking about websites that are being hosted. Like let's
say there's a news article written about you that you

(37:09):
object to. There's really no way to get Google to
do anything. You got to go to the people who
posted the thing. Now you just say, hey, Google, delete
my Internet presence. Right one day, that might be a thing, uh,
but probably wasn't. The voice command for the stupid Google
glass you had to say, hey, hey glassy Google. But

(37:30):
but probably um if that command ever exists, as you're saying,
that's going to be the domain of a very uh
small group of people, ability of you know, very high
level exacts or maybe bankers like rothschild level stuff. Because
privacy is going to be one of the ultimate luxuries.

(37:54):
As we've explored past episodes, so we're talking about We've
given some examples about how you an attempt to remove
some of this information from search engines, from social media.
And this leads to perhaps the most important query, the
most important question here, the most important interrogative. I'm just

(38:15):
thinking of sending the billion Ben bucks ask does any
of this actually work? We'll answer that question after a
word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. So, Ben,

(38:36):
it looks like I'm going to delete my Internet history right. No, no, no,
you fool a penguin, You silly boy. It's not gonna happen.
You've gotten too far right. At this point, there is

(38:58):
virtually no chance that you, Matt, will be able to
completely erase all of your data from the Internet. And
don't take out hard uh. There's no chance that I
would be able to, or Noel would be able to,
or Tristan would be able to. Even if it seems
that we have deleted information from a particular part of
the Internet, the owners of that site or that organization

(39:18):
might have just changed the access to the info. So
for most of us, right deletion or or racier means
just that they complete irreversible removal of a given thing. Ah,
Yet we know from our recycling bins on our computers
that when you delete something, it just goes somewhere else temporarily.

(39:39):
And then you know, there are programs that are specifically
designed to like write ones and zeros over that data.
But when you just do a right click delete empty
recycled band, it just kind of scatters the little fragments
of it all over. That's why I think Apple machines
do it automatically. But you know with PCs you have
to defragment your hard drive now and then because it
literally has bits of data just kind of strewn willy nilly.

(40:03):
Maybe in any computer scientists out there, call me a
dummy if I'm not saying right, but that's my understanding
of it. And then you get into data recovery stuff,
which it is possible to go back in time on
that hard drive. Data forensics. Yeah, it's like a dark art. Yeah.
As shown in some of our earlier examples, the actions
that private entities allow us to take don't actually delete information. Instead,

(40:28):
they make it so that you can no longer see
your info and other people might not be able to
see it as easily. The illusion of controls, the illusion
of controls. Once you've accepted those terms, you're kind of
accepting them in perpetuity, aren't you. Yeah, you're up the creek.
I mean it's done. So whatever whatever they choose to
do with that stuff, you know, you you put faith

(40:51):
in them not doing anything nefarious. But you're taking a
bit of a leap there, if we're being honest. But yeah,
I mean you're kind of kidding yourself and thinking that
information is just vanished and that you're the one who
decided to make that happen. You know what it is
every time you delete a part of your digital self
and you're not actually killing well maybe gets his pizza. Yes,

(41:13):
it's for sure that one. But you're not actually deleting
anything or killing anything. You're just making a ghost because
you're that ghost is then able to go through you know,
some kind of data aggregation thing through whatever service you
were using, and then they're taking it and creating a
new version of you. But it's just a couple more

(41:34):
ones and zeros, right, and this the remains of your
digital self. I like this ghost analogy, Matt. Your ethereal
digital self will be used for various purposes, targeting for
ad campaigns, right, then they may not know Matt Frederick anymore,
but they certainly know American male five to thirty six

(41:57):
or something, and then they know and then that is
the new label for your ghosts. Uh. They also learned
social networks and preferences. We don't need to know, like
if if we all just become American male agx to
why or whatever, uh, and we're all connected with a
social network, they don't need to know our names to
influence that social network. And this can also go into

(42:20):
aggregate electoral data right or election data right. This This
makes it dangerous in the real world because it ties
into public sphere influence. And we have a great example
of that in recent history, right, like the whole Russia
Facebook thing. Yeah, where Russia created these uh profile Russian hackers.

(42:44):
How many caveats do we have to I'll play the game. Allegedly,
Russian affiliated hackers went into Facebook and created bought personas,
and bought or false front organizations to plant news stories
and sway people's political decisions. Additionally, as I think we

(43:08):
already mentioned here, in many cases, information we share with
other people will remain after we attempted to delete everything
else if um if Noel has a picture of me
and it's under his profile, and I delete my profile.
It's not going to remove that photo of me, remove
the tag. It will maybe remove yeah, remove the tag,

(43:28):
but you know we'll see still see my uh mug. Yeah,
he was doing the clown face again in a celebration
of it. Did you notice that? Whereas I like to
call it the Eddie Vetter face? Thank you, Thank you
about the one. One great example of this. In the past,
celebrities have tasked their PR teams with removing unflattering photos

(43:49):
from the Internet. This rarely meets with success. One example
I remember is there was an unflattering picture of Beyonce Knowles,
the the R and B singer entertainer. Okay, sure, and
uh this uh, this picture was funny and it became
part of what people call photoshop battles, and they were

(44:12):
changing the background, they were making funny. It was a meaning.
It's kind of like in a in a mid squat
in like a like a dance move that obviously, if
you saw the whole thing in context, would be super badass.
But it's one of those like mid face squat things
where it's just just the right moment to make a
very obviously gorgeous woman, appear kind of smanish, kind of

(44:36):
she hold a little she well they actually that was
one of the photoshop ones. They turned her skin green
and she looks like she's just like, you know, hulking
out literally, but um yeah. And then her people took
issue with this and attempted to have it scrubbed from
the internet. But as we know, that's a little harder
than it sounds. The worst thing you can tell people

(44:56):
who are spending their free time on the internet making
jokes is, hey, guys, please don't make a joke about this.
Actually did that where there were some unflattering photos of
him that he uh did not want to be making
the rounds, and you know, the internet collectively laughed at him. Yeah,
and rightly, So I think if you, I think, unfortunately, um,

(45:22):
if anybody is out of touch enough to ask for
that deletion without the power to enforce it, I wonder
if the executive branch would have the power to enforce it.
In other countries, governments do have the power to prevent
images from being outside of you know, being out in
the public sphere, but those countries have a different manner

(45:46):
of control over information dissemination. I do want to say
before we go on, there is one, uh, the only
example I can think of of someone who is able
to keep a lot of their pictures off the Internet.
Gary Larson, the creator of far Side. You can still
find a bunch, but he wrote this really nice letter

(46:07):
to people where he said, hey, guys, I just kind
of want to keep it in the books if that's okay.
And he's super humble, super funny, of course he's Gary Larson.
You can still see a lot of it on their
um you know, just where someone is obviously taken a
picture of a of a comic with their cell phone
or something. Um. But that's the only even partially successful version.

(46:30):
There's one more wacky neighbor type character we haven't covered
in the ongoing sitcom known as Your Digital Self on
the Internet. That is the government. Oh it's that wacky
n essay, the National Security Agency. What are they getting
up to this week? Well, it's formerly a secret government

(46:52):
agency we'd like to talk about on this show. We
even have an intern from there that hangs out with
us and listens to every little thing we do. Big up, Steve,
If you'll get through that chemistry class, they collect data
signal intelligence. Oh that sounds good. It's very very good.
Here's the thing they're great at it so great that

(47:12):
they're the best in the biz. It's also really good
at find those loopholes ways around original mandates. Oh and
all of this is in the name of national security.
So long time fans of the show and privacy advocates
around the world, you guys are hopefully aware of the
NSA's official stance, which is the NSAS Charter limits it's

(47:35):
powerful surveillance to the rest of the world, not to
US citizens. Ok. I think we're done with that bit. Okay,
but by now most people are at least, you know,
somewhat aware that the n s AS legal abilities and
real world actions and not entirely syncd up. So a

(47:56):
good example would be up until the n s A
was a actually able to surveil domestic sources with a
kind of sketchy interpretation of the seven or two provision
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. You may know it
as FETOP. We love the acronyms here on stuff they
don't want you to know. They searched their massive network

(48:20):
of wire taps for keywords, which they called selectors and
if any part of that communication passed outside of the
US for any reason whatsoever, Boom, they sucked the data
up into the what like there Internet data rabbit hole
out in the middle of nowhere in Utah. That's where
that lives. And any reason here literally means any reason.

(48:42):
So you made a lame terrorist joke and it passed
through a server in any other country counting Canada, Boom,
You're up for grabs. And no, it does not matter.
We checked. It does not matter if it was you
and another American working on puns or or whatever, or
trying to make any acronyms. Uh. The good news is that,

(49:02):
as of seen, the New York Times reports that the
agency will no longer collect certain Internet communications that merely
mention a foreign intelligence target, and will instead limit such
collection to Internet communications that are sent directly to or
from a foreign target. That's disturbing because that means before then,

(49:22):
if Natt had sent a text about Osama bin Laden,
that's the target. I'm mentioning a target for the sake
of argument, right, And it was to one of his
friends who was in say, let's say Ben Bolan, Uh,
and we were discussing an episode on said bin Laden. Yeah, yeah,

(49:42):
I was like, well, when I get back from the
ancestral home in Romania and then we'll do an episode
on isis or something. That would mean that everything on
those phones is now subject to search for time immemorial.
There's another wrinkle in the plot here. So the n
s A can't gather information on you if you are

(50:06):
if you live in the US. However, for an intelligence
agencies can gather that information on you and then through
a network like five Eyes, share it with the n
s A. So the n s A can be like, no,
no harm, no foul, not checking up on you. But Canada,
however over there he sorry, yes, it's dodgy. Reminds me

(50:28):
of do you guys remember those UM the controversy over
Made in America tags where it turned out that some
stuff was being made in the atrocious sweatshop conditions in
um some islands in the South Pacific that we're American territories,
so they can still say made in America or assembled

(50:49):
in the USA. So there is more good news. However,
once the n s A ends its BOLK collection and
storage of millions of Americans phone records later this year,
it will also it says eliminate analyst access to five
years worth of old info. So anything you did dodgy

(51:10):
in the last five years, Apparently the n s A
is not going to allow it's analysts to look at it. Yeah, yeah,
it is. However, technical personnel and that's in quotes will
be able to access it for another three months to
verify the records produced under the new system. Yeah, okay,
it seems above board. They're just going to verify all

(51:32):
the stuff is right as rain right, it's it's meeting
the new goals. Also, ongoing court cases surrounding the program
require the n s A to hold onto the data
until the cases are finalized in court. Okay, I yeah,
above the board, right above the bread box. So this

(51:55):
is uh just a brief overview of what happens when
you try to remove your information. And um, we we
have a couple of conclusions, and I guess the first one.
I don't know. Are you guys rip the band aid
off people or slowly peel it? I gotta rip it, man,
I agree with you. I can. I can tell you

(52:17):
the conclusion. Okay, you don't even need to try and
delete your information if it's gone up online it's up online.
If somebody one of your friends has a camera phone
and a Facebook account, there's probably pictures of you, and
you probably got tagged, even if you don't have an account,
and there's nothing you can do about it, and your
public records are probably gonna stay online. That's the scariest

(52:38):
thing there's Unless you're the wheel of a powerful intelligence
agency or some organization that we don't know about, with
abilities that we don't understand, there's virtually no way you'll
be able to delete your online presence entirely. The digital
you will not only survive your efforts to delete it.
You are digital, you will most likely survive after the

(52:59):
physic sical version of you is gone, and like a ghost,
got a legacy haunt it. Yeah, it's a very black mirror, right,
and it will probably remain after your children are gone
as well. You know, in the near future, you may
be there may be some way to construct a real
ghost capable of programmatic responses, and so your children might

(53:24):
even be able to talk to you, or talk to
some version of you. You can, however, delete at least
some of your data and make more of it increasingly
difficult to find, so much so that only the very
committed or connected people will be able to learn more
than the most basic facts about you. Privacy settings are
your friend on everything you use. I just have to

(53:46):
say that if you wanna still use social media and
connect to friends, just amp up those privacy settings so
you're only talking to people you have directly connected to
and purposefully said okay, I know this person. Even then
it's a little dangerous because account is gonna get hijacked
and all that, and then they have your info, but
you know, play as safe as you can. You can
also use private services to help clean up your online presence.

(54:12):
We strongly suggest you research these thoroughly before choosing one,
and also understand that they do not have the power
to force other website owners to remove anything, especially when
those sites are in countries with relaxed rules on consumer protection.
Very great point. And if you're really feeling strongly about
you know, pursuing further levels of anonimity or you know,

(54:35):
completely shutting off the information uh spiggott altogether. Um, you're
really going to have to change your lifestyle. You know.
It's like what they say about losing weight and all
that stuff. You can't just there's no magic way to
do it. You've got to just change your habits. That's right,
every day. And if you want to learn more about
that stuff, you can check out an earlier episode we

(54:57):
did on whether or not it's actually possible to be
on the internet in any kind of anonymous way. What
does that lifestyle look like, guys, I mean, like it
would just it would kind of be like not leaving
your apartment. No, you just won't. You don't have a
cell phone, you don't let people take pictures of you,
don't hang out with friends, don't participate in it with

(55:17):
any you know. I mean there's a lot, I guess,
be your hermit, only take jobs at pay in cash,
which means that, um, you would also be on the
fringes of IM saying you'd be like a pariah kind of.
I mean, this is like the lowest of the low.
Our society has evolved into a place where you have
to have this technology, you have to participate in this stuff.

(55:39):
And I have a friend who has chosen to not
be on Facebook, and he's always astonished when I find
out something that he hasn't found out, and I'm like, dude,
just get on Facebook. He's like, yeah, No, I'm not
doing that, And I'm like, come on, man, like why
He's like, I just I just don't want to do it.
I don't want to be that guy. And he's older,
but like he you know, feels very strongly about like
just is not being a part of his life. Yeah,

(56:02):
I mean, I can understand where he's coming from. Another
thing you could do if you wanted to change your
life style in this way is to get a law
degree in UH contracts and digital UH agreements. That way
you can actually read the terms of service every time
and then decide maybe I don't want that. But here's
the thing too. Um. There's this great article in The
Guardian about the terms of service debate and a lot

(56:26):
of it uh it dealt with several layers of this,
one of which being the word except versus join or
opt in or whatever that all matters. And you know
they're trying to feed into this past um habit of
just click through, you know, don't even pay it a
second glance, but there, you know, there there's discussion of

(56:48):
like should we change where the terms fall in the
process of signing up for a service? Should it be
right up front so before you know you you don't
have instant gratification because always at that point, right before
you get the thing, you click it because you're just
like ready to have the things, so you don't even
think about it. So, you know, trying to maybe steer
people into possibly reading the terms a little more carefully

(57:08):
since there's some really heavy stuff in there. But this
article talked about how it was in The Guardian, written
by David barrabi Um. It posed the question of you know,
when you when you go to the doctor, you you
don't necessarily sign a contract or agree to the terms
of services of being worked on by a doctor, but
you expect the doctor to uphold their doctoral duty, the

(57:33):
hippocratic oath or whatever, and not, you know, screw you over.
And it's almost like this article suggested that maybe society
could almost influence some of these companies to be a
little more responsible and not sell your stuff to third
parties instantly. You know, there's so or at least to

(57:53):
be good better stewards of your information. And there is
some good news if you live in some countries, if
you live in the European Union, you may be able
to take advantage of something called the right to be forgotten.
Uh do check it out. It's the idea that you
are ultimately the owner of your own data, your own creation.

(58:15):
There's a fantastic fact sheet Bend that you posted here
for us, that you can find online from the European Commission,
and it goes through all of these different rules like
what kind of has to be met for you to
take on this right to be forgotten? And it's it's
fantastic you you can find it if you search for it.
Still not a silver bullet, and if you are listening

(58:37):
in the United States, it's not gonna help you, but
you I guess we would be remiss, as we're drawing
towards the end here, we would be remiss if we
didn't point out there are also advantages to having information
online in the cloud, locating loved ones and emergencies, arguably
convenience and of course medical processes right um and in

(59:00):
some to dovetail the point that um, you know we're
making earlier met this does all come down to a
matter of trust. Indeed, as we said earlier faith, how
can you trust but verify the claims of private companies
such as i sp s and social media platforms. How
can we trust the statements of a government when we're
aware of the actions that is taken in the past.

(59:22):
Spoiler and this is just my opinion, you cannot. I
think arguments based on faith are not the strongest. It's
tough to imagine a company or government, or even an
individual willingly giving up all the power implied in this uh,
this great amalgamation of fortune. And if you're not prepared

(59:45):
to completely divest from the Internet, I mean, because it
is a heck of a lifestyle change that we were
describing here, um, then perhaps your best bet is to
treat everything you post online, no matter how ephemeral and
arbitrary it may seem, as part of your permanent record.
Do you guys remember those threat Absolutely, Yeah, it's going
on your permanent record. This photo of you doing a

(01:00:05):
beer headstand, I thought I felt like that was something
that was just like in like Nickelodeon shows about you know,
being in high school. That's going on, yeah, permanent. I
can assure you all you kids listening out there, that
permanent record is very real and anything you do is
going directly on it. So be on your best behavior.

(01:00:27):
Your kid doesn't listen to the show Man, not yet,
we hope that you have enjoyed this episode. I know
we went a little longer than usual as we were
exploring this stuff. We want to hear from you. Are
you a person who has been contemplating hopping off the grid.
Do you have a weird story about some internet voodoo

(01:00:49):
that occurred to you, or are you a person who
came in from the cold where you formerly off the grid?
Did you have the kind of parents who never gave
you a Social Security number? I know a couple of
full like that in the crowd. If so, what has
your experience been. I got creeped out recently. I got
a video gaming system, which I sound like I'm in

(01:01:10):
the eighteen hundreds when I say stuff system. Yeah, I
have a PlayStation and just the built in erosion of
privacy stuff there. You know that there's a button just
to automatically share things out? Yeah, to start streaming? Yeah? Yeah,
I don't know. It's a different world, right, But we

(01:01:31):
want to hear your stories about that, and we'd like
to hear any advice that you have for your fellow listeners. Yeah.
Have you tried to delete something? Did you find a
really great way to do it or a way to
get through the the Google webs, all the spider webs
that Google has let us know, yes, and let your
fellow listeners know as well. Speaking of your fellow listeners,

(01:01:54):
that reminds us it's time for good at Conner. But
not just your average garden variety shout out corner ladies
and gentlemen. No, not a bit. I don't know why. Costumatically,
we're doing a physical shout out. We're gonna shout toward
an actual human face. Yes, that's right. Remember earlier in

(01:02:16):
the show we mentioned that this episode is a team up,
a collaboration with our colleagues over at Part Time Genius.
We are lucky enough to have one of the host
of Part Time Genius, Will Pierson, here live on the
show in person. Will thank you for coming. Hey, guys,
it's great to be here. Will we promise we're not

(01:02:37):
actually going to shout him your I really really wanted to,
just for fun the way, Well, it's because you're full
of rage, Matthew. No, it's very happy, excited. I'm happy
to be here. I may shout at you guys, just
out of enthusiasts my path. Please direct the shouts, the
shouts towards me. I probably have the worst hearing of

(01:02:57):
the three of us, So well you on Part Time
Genius explored a subject that is kind of a rabbit
hole and and a fantastic complementary exploration to our own
that we just had earlier in this episode, whereas we
were asking, um, what can a person delete off the

(01:03:21):
Internet or if it's possible to do so? Uh, you
and your co host Mango were exploring what information actually
exists about a person online? Right right? And this idea
for us came about because one of our listeners wrote
in after having an experience being at a grocery store
buying a product, going home and despite having never looked

(01:03:43):
up that product, on looking up that product online, they
started being targeted with ads about that product and it
was not a common thing with some sort of independent
soda or something like that, and they thought, this is weird,
like is this coincidence or am I actually being targeted
in some way? It's that's really what we started exploring more.
You know, It's one of those things that I don't

(01:04:03):
think most people are surprised that, you know, they're being
tracked online when they visit a website and that then
maybe they're targeted with ads because of that behavior online.
I think what most people don't fully recognize and that
we didn't even fully appreciate, was the fact that all
of your interactions, even in the real space, you go
to a grocery store, you go to any other kind
of store, you swipe that membership card, the way that

(01:04:26):
data is then exchanged among so many companies, so you're
you're making a purchase there, that email address, that phone
number is matched up with what Facebook or some other
property has as your email and phone you know, phone number,
and all of it sync and they know that much
more about you, and it's that much easier for them
to try to target you with products and things. And
in our episode, we talked a good bit about the

(01:04:47):
idea of accepting those terms of use, and a lot
of that is you basically saying I'm okay with this
legally speaking, Yeah, absolutely, I mean, that's that's one of
the things that we we talked about is budies that
are showing that, yes, we know that this information is
all out there and that they know this information about us.
But at the same time, you know, it's pretty nice

(01:05:07):
to be connected, and it's pretty nice to have this
convenience so do we really want to give that up?
And most of us say no. Would you would you say,
for the uninitiated in this strange web of info bartering,
would you say that maybe your common brick and mortar
loyalty cards are symptomatic or part of this network. Absolutely,

(01:05:30):
so you've provided, you know, the cashier with your phone number,
your email address. And then there are companies, and just
to give a couple of examples, like there's a company
called Data Logics which works with these with these grocery
stores or other brick and mortar they're purchasing this data.
They're then turning around and selling it to a place
like Facebook. And so Facebook has this ad programming division

(01:05:50):
called Atlas that's very sophisticated, much more so than I
think we even realize. That they then have this data
and when that information is syncd up, they knew that
that friend purchased that can of soda because they had
to either swipe their card or given their phone number,
or that it was likely to be them. And that's
how they knew to target them with ads not only
on Facebook, but any site, any page that has a

(01:06:14):
Facebook like button or share button that they have the
opportunity to show ads on those those pages as well,
So it's definitely part of that. I can't wait for
the Augmented Reality Minority Report add placements like that when
you're just walking through the bus station and it's giving
you all the stuff you bought it, or like in
that Black Mirror episode where you have to spend your
hard earned credits to skip the ad because it's actually

(01:06:37):
projecting it constantly in your field of vision and in
order to make it go away you have to spend
money or credits, like in the episode its merits, sive
million merits or something like that, which is great, great episode,
very very bizarre and impression on a on a bright
side though, you know, if we're more if it's great,
you know us on how likely we are to do things.
It reminds me of like a global version of high

(01:06:59):
school relatives. You know, maybe it's not all bad, you know,
maybe it's not all crime. Maybe I'm like, uh most
most likely to uh open for Luis c k whatever,
dream big, That's what I was gonna say. Definitely maybe
opened the door to the bathroom while he's walking in.

(01:07:21):
All right, we'll we'll, we'll fix this in post right now.
So speaking of bathrooms, um, I noticed, you know, we
have an office. We work out of an office here
and it's a shared restroom with everybody on the floor.
And right, I couldn't help but notice this is a
complete side note. By the way, the toilet paper was
out again. And you know, nothing against staff here, it's

(01:07:43):
just sometimes a lot of toilet paper is necessary. Yeah,
and uh, well, I think maybe you found a solution. Well,
we've got good news for you here. I mean, we
know that there are over eight billion items out there
connected to the web, and we've been looking into all
of these different types of devices and there is something
which is kind of like the Internet of toilet paper.
And it's this new product called roll Scout, and it

(01:08:06):
informs you via text or email or app when the
toilet paper is low or out. And I have to
admit I made fun of this product when Mango mentioned
it on our episode, and then as I thought about
it more and I thought, you know, you're a business owner,
you're a cafe owner or something like that. I mean,
this is something that really ticks off a customer, right,
And so for sixty bucks, you can then keep tabs

(01:08:28):
on this and know when that toilet paper is running out.
So I'm kind of all in on this thing. Have
you seen those Amazon buttons that you can get. It's
like a button that specifically tied to a product like
Tied or something like that, and you stick it to
your washing machine, and when you notice that you're getting
low on Tied, you jam that button and it automatically
places in order for you for Tied. So it's like,

(01:08:50):
you know, we participate in this stuff as well, and
and then like these apps and things like that in
the button are almost like complicit versions of this tracking
stuff where we're like, we're kind of participating in this process.
And it's like for people, you know, this argument that
it's worth it my info, it's fine. I don't care
if you know how many times that were retired because

(01:09:11):
you even search for things on Amazon and started getting
served up ads like in your Gmail account. It's all connected, clearly,
And I think that that's one of the things that
we talked about in the episode as well. As you know,
we focus so much on what are the websites we're
visiting and what are we doing on social media, and
we're not stopping to think about all of the products
that are integrated into our everyday lives, which are now

(01:09:33):
connected to the broader web that are providing data and
other information to these companies as well. There was one
that kind of made me laugh at first, and then
it scared me. It's this product called Aristotle from Mattel.
It's basically like this three dollar version of Alexa, but
for little ones. And so you have it in your
room with a baby or a toddler, and it not
only has the facial recognition and voice recognition, but it's

(01:09:56):
a machine that's in this room that is able to
track pretty much everything that's happening there. So every time
a diaper has changed, every time of feeding is occurring,
and so from day one, these lives are being tracked
and at some point this data is then available to
Mattel to do whatever with right to decide how we
need to be you know, retargeted in some way, or

(01:10:17):
how products need to be customized for us, so you know,
maybe not used in a scary way. But at the
same time, it's just so odd to think that from
this first day of a baby's life, all of this
data is available. It's not it's not scary at all. Well,
it's it's the only way we'll be able to make
the first real super AI. We have to know exactly
what a human is like from the day it is

(01:10:37):
born until it is able to put its own pants on. Right,
And it's called Aristotle, which sounds very smart. It must
be fine. Do you think all this stuff has affected
the field of market research? I mean, can you even
imagine borderline read? Yes? Yeah, I mean with all of
this data there, I it's hard to even imagine how
much these jobs in that world of market research have

(01:10:59):
changed in the past ten years. You know, how much
more data in an overwhelming amount of data that's there,
and what to do with it. So it's probably one
of those things at this point that even the company's
coming up with it. They're like, we don't know what
we're gonna do with this, but we're going to have
so much data and just salivating over that. Gosh, by golly,
do know one of the questions that occurred to us

(01:11:21):
when we were listening to your episode was the the
concept of whether or not this is inevitable? You know,
has the has the zygeist already shifted? As are the
badgers out of the bag? So speak? What what do
you think, do you think that it's possible that people

(01:11:41):
would somehow rebel against this or is it at this point?
Has it already reached what Malcolm Gladwell would call the
tipping point? I mean, you have to feel like this
has already past a certain point where again because of
the upsides, or what we would perceive as the upside,
you know, the pleasure that's brought to us by having

(01:12:02):
this constant connection with other friends, and what people are
getting out of that, and the ease that it's you know,
the fact that I can go get my tide just
by pressing that button or whatever it is. I mean
that convenience means a lot to people, and I think
they're willing to sacrifice a whole lot just to um
to have those things. So I don't know. I'm sure
there's going to continue to be battles over this and

(01:12:23):
more and more battles over this, But it also feels
like we're only seeing the beginning of this complete connectedness
in a way, we're in the prequel. If this were filled,
this is it, And as stuff gets better, the AI
gets more advanced, maybe we won't even have to push
the button. It'll just know that we're out of tide.
Based on our habits and our purchasing patterns for Tide

(01:12:46):
or some product, it will automatically know what to send
us when, so that we never run out of you know,
American craft singles or even stuff that you didn't know
you wanted. It will it'll be like just they're like, no, Brown,
we have delivered your shipment of tide and to route
to Vegas and you sounded just like my wife, which

(01:13:10):
makes it even more creepy. Leadies and gentlemen, you know
on this show that we always endeavor to um not
just provide information, but provide opportunities to act. And with
this in mind, will we were hoping to ask you
is there? I say, hoping to ask We'll just ask
you is there? UM? Is there any like advice or

(01:13:33):
I guess, words of guidance and were words of warning
that you could give to our listeners when it comes
to their online presence. I think, honestly, it's really just
about being aware that this is happening and trying to
know what your comfort level is with this. You know,
if this is not something that you're comfortable with, these
companies having all of this data and a certain amount

(01:13:54):
of this is inevitable, right, But if you don't want
that data to be shared, you know, you probably need
to avoid signing up for these memberships of you know,
various clubs and things that where all of this is exchanged.
But for the most part, is it it's making that
decision for yourself. Am I comfortable with this information being
out there? But then just being cautious and knowing that

(01:14:15):
any information that you're providing to one company is going
to be shared with several others and anything, any activity
that you're participating in online is available to so many
others out there as well. So I don't think there's
any sort of like magic thing that you can do.
Um And and as you guys have discussed, the idea

(01:14:35):
of trying to just completely wipe the web of your
existence is pretty much impossible, right. So I think it's
just deciding whether we're willing to participate in the digital
world as it is now, and and if so, to
what extent. I I have another question to to follow
up because it just occurred to me, Um, are there

(01:14:57):
any concerns that parents should have now that they're raising
children in an entirely connected world? Right? I almost don't
even want to get into that is having as having
children and you think about I mean, to me, part
of what's scary about that is just more unlike when
we grew up and you came home from school and
you shut off the rest of the world and you

(01:15:19):
played and you were just kind of in this other world.
There is this need for children now by the time
they're in middle school, to be constantly connected, and their
brains are almost aren't ready for this are capable of
managing that, and so that is one of my concerns.
It's of course there's all the concerns about what information
you're sharing and how exposed you are and making sure
that you protect yourself in that sense, but there's also

(01:15:42):
the sense of just helping our children have that necessary
break from the outside world and just existing in a
world of two or three friends and their family. To me,
that's one of the most important parts about this is
not having them feel from such an early age that
they have to have connection. It's just not good for
anybody's brain, much less at kids. I'm struggling with that

(01:16:03):
with my kid, and I'll have to just be like okay,
over at that time it is done. Yeah, just let
it go, like but I have to, you don't. You
don't have to, and it starts as almost toddlers, she's
I mean, you know, but she's you know, sort of
I don't want to sound like I'm tute my home.
It kind of an advanced eight year old, I suppose,
but like, yeah, it's just like it hurts me to

(01:16:24):
see her almost falling into these kind of addictive behavior
cycles where I'm just like, stop, stop your obsessed, and
we're saying stop as we're also peeking off to them
or whatever it is. I'm the worst and I set
the worst example. And it's like the classic do as
I say, not as I do, which I just feel
like a total hypocritical jerk. But I'm trying. I'm trying

(01:16:45):
every day as well. But I say, move to the
Blue Ridge Mountains. They have some Greek communities out there.
You can really disconnect if you move to the quiet zone. There.
You go where there's no cell phone, no TV, no radio, nothing,
just banges. Yeah, just uh, rocks and sticks. No problems
out there. Yeah yeah. Also the most stable people that's

(01:17:07):
right in to congregate there too. Uh And that is
a story for another day. Kidding you can check it
out right now because we did an episode on our
dare I say, Misadventures in the Quiet Zone? Uh? And
before you do that, well, we want to thank you
so much for collaborating on the show and for coming

(01:17:29):
in lending your expertise to our friends and neighbors in
the audience. So this has been a lot of fun.
I'm a longtime fan of the show here, so it's
really been a blast getting on to work on this together.
Unless we forget that this was but a taste of
the part time Genius perspective on this subject. So where
can folks go find the full meal? Hey, this was

(01:17:49):
our brand new episode over part time Genius. Come check
us out then. We hope you enjoy it wherever you
get your podcast. That's right, nicely done, Yes, nicely done.
That's the line. And this can duds our but not
our show. Matt Noel Tristan. I will return next week

(01:18:10):
with something, hopefully, I mean to say, equally fascinating but
maybe a little less disturbing, you know what I mean? Yeah,
I'd be okay with that. In the meantime, if if
we have not talked to him too trying to quit
social media and you know you're still using the Internet
to listen to the show. Just feels so hypocritical. I

(01:18:30):
wish I knew how to quit you right. Yes, Uh,
although it does it does sound a little bit uh
hypocritical and contradictory. I think it's kind of funny that
we're saying at this point you could you can find that.
You can totally find us on Facebook and it's all
up on the internet, all over it. WHOA, what a
bunch of roots. Yeah, you can find a work Conspiracy

(01:18:52):
Stuff Work Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram. Um. Again, you
are the most important part of this show. We appreciate
your time. Please do also, before you hop off the
grid forever, check out our friends Will and Mango over
at Part Time Genius. And if you have an idea

(01:19:13):
for an upcoming episode, we would love to hear it.
You can email us directly. We are conspiracy at how
Stuff Works dot com.