CLASSIC: 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.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, this is our classic episode. We'd like to
say hi, not just to our fellow conspiracy realists, but uh,
hi to your search history. How's that do? How's how's
your search? What's what's weird? Let's be to Daily's eyegeist
about it? Noel, Matt, What's what's something weird from out
our search histories that you feel comfortable disclosing? Let me shick,

(00:23):
let me check my history. Oh wait, it's deactivated. Oh
that's weird. You're you're you're an incognito mode kind of guy. No,
just I've got it turned off, which means just that
you can't see it. That's right exactly. My history is
pretty boring. It's just a bunch of audio nerd stuff currently.
And I've got how many firefighters are pyromaniacs? Legitimately. I

(00:48):
don't know why I added legitimately at the end. There,
I've got a search term here, guys, I did find one.
It just says, ohio accent. I'm not sure why. Perfect.
So we're talking about this because our classic episode today
is about whether or not you can actually delete your

(01:09):
Internet history. You know, we know a lot of people
ran into this when Facebook got caught continually doing really
sketchy things to track people. In this episode, I think
we also collaborate with our pals Mangesh had a couture
and a guy who now is our boss will pierce it. Oh.

(01:31):
I just want to listen for the like, just to
hear those guys. Oh Man, the nostalgiaz flooding through my
system as we speak. From UFOs to psychic powers and
government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can
turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want
you to know. Welcome back to the show. My name

(02:04):
is Matt, my name is no. 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 a team up episode, a collaboration.

(02:29):
If you will, and we hope you do. We are
partnering with our buddies, colleagues, co workers, and friends. Will
end 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 know about you? How much stuff? The personal,

(02:53):
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 already knows about you, and it's it's

(03:16):
a lot. Yeah, it's too much. Really, even if you
think you know, it's way more than you probably bargain 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, if you are listening to this show, it
is almost certain that you have an Internet presence. I mean,

(03:39):
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 a stuff you should know shirt on
somebody in the subway. There are a lot of those. Yeah. Second,
you might be on the Internet via social media of
any sort. And finally, even if you just happen to

(04:02):
be hanging out with some friends 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,
friends to Tumblr, live journal, GeoCities. Yeah, was that a

(04:22):
social media 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 a city. It was the
start of remember they all had they all had like
different neighborhoods. Yeah, depending on your region. Anyway, I digress.
So any of those things you got no interest, never
signed up, never gave them a lick of information, even

(04:45):
if you've never even had an email address. No, several
things are certain. At least a portion of your purchasing
history exists in online record. If you've somehow managed to
just pay cash money for every single thing in your love,
you're one of those um off the grid types. You
are still not safe, and that's because various public records

(05:09):
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 see it.
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,

(05:29):
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 bankery. It was transferring
a check to someone, and they had to verify identities
and they had to find a document that had the
made name of the individual question. But yeah, I know,

(05:53):
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, the motor vehicle records,
voter files, property tax assessments, professional licensees, and of course
court files are all up there in the cloud. And

(06:16):
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, they ask for your contacts in your phone,

(06:37):
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 taken a look at you, just
in case, maybe in the future you make an account,
or they can just take that information and sell it

(06:58):
to somebody else who fits that persona right or a
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 have some sort of Internet presence,

(07:23):
whether consensual or non consensual, even if it's only a
footprint found in various public records. As Null 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 first century, and you, like Walt Whitman,

(07:43):
contain multitudes. 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 you know, you'll
see studies that say image somebody creates or or exhibits

(08:06):
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,

(08:26):
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 mothers.

(08:47):
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 obviouly enough. Well, I
had to. I had it separated so far from the
know my walking around persona. It was so different when
I got that controller in my hand that I this
is so true, and you are like the nicest person Nolan.

(09:08):
I know. Yeah, oh yeah, I have a feeling you're
exaggerating a bit. I bet if we experienced your online bullying,
we'd be like, that is the nicest online Yeah, yeah,
what was it was like, pardon me, I couldn't help
but point out that your mother uned, you got cuned

(09:28):
and your mother is wayward. I would. I would do
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

(09:48):
two different versions of themselves. You listening to this right now,
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 superproducer Tristan McNeill. Sorry I forgot to mention
that at the top man Tristan probably has numerous identities.

(10:10):
For the sake of anonymity. Yeah right, Yeah, he's nodding
has five five or he's waving at us a high five.
In today's episode focuses on these identities and their creation
and their deletion. Today's episode ask what happens when you

(10:31):
want to delete this information? Could you do it? And how?
Or more disturbingly, why not. So let's get into the Internet.
How many users are there in twenty seventeen of this
whold thing called the Worldwide Web and all of its
associated stuff. Well, there's an estimated fifty one percent of

(10:52):
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 at more as like a
human right. Yes, and it's 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

(11:14):
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. It was some kind of loon,
but it was an Internet balloon 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

(11:36):
make this possible because we see it as being so important.
So it's not even looked at as like a luxury
or like a thing for fun. It's allowing you to
be connected 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

(11:56):
in the year two thousand. I remember the first brand
you had that had the Internet and fully understand what
it was at first absolutely, Oh can we get a
sound clip of that dial up modem? Oh, don't do it, Tristan,
don't do it. My brain, Oh, 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

(12:18):
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 in middle school, that you could get images and
print them out and slowly, Yeah, anticipation building as it
goes down. Yes, and Matt to your point, this is

(12:40):
this growth is unexpected, unprecedented in many ways. Because you
said only seven percent of the population had access in
two thousands. Yeah to fifty one 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

(13:02):
of privacy in their lives. What we do. I got
shades on my windows for a reason because I don't
want you looking in at night when I'm doing whatever
it is I'm doing, even if I'm just making a
ham sandwich in the nude. Mom perhaps, Hey, I know
how you roll. I mean, look, nakey time is a
special time. Nay time, nakey time. Yeah, you guys don't
have nakey time is in a k e y Yeah,

(13:26):
nakey time. You'll have kids one day, Ben oh man,
you haven't seen that, Dana Carvey stand up. Yeah, that's
what I was referring to. It's nake time, y'all have
seen it. Know what that sound does. 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 nake though. If he's wearing the diaper, dude, well,

(13:49):
I know, but we come on, he's he would pee everywhere.
And 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 naked time time. Yeah,
there's there's a strict no photos of videos during nakey

(14:10):
time instituted in our house, so according to and he'll
thank you later. Because according to a Few Research Center study,
ninety three percent of adults today say it's important that
they be able to control who can access information about them,
and nine percent also say controlling what information is gathered
about them is also important. Oh, the illusion of control. Yeah,

(14:32):
and also we know that in addition to just generic internet, right,
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

(14:54):
live entirely on you know, 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 to younger
people in the newer generations. It is probably the biggest
draw to be connected for anything, because you're not really
using it for a lot of utility access that maybe

(15:15):
an older adult would do to 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,

(15:37):
because I think that's number two, isn't it. Yeah, I
believe so at this time. And so for a little perspective.
In twenty twelve, Facebook surpassed a billion monthly active users,
and earlier this year, this like monolith of social media
hit two billion monthly active users and co and like What'sapp,

(15:58):
which they own as well as at 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 users of Facebook, now

(16:22):
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'sapp. I
have no idea what it looks like. I guess I
don't understand the appeal. I was turned onto it because
a friend of mine was traveling internationally and apparently it's

(16:45):
an easy way to stay in text kind of communication
with somebody that's international. And it looks all 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 face book has that's a little bit more multifaceted.
What's App seems to me to be a little more
kind of barebones. It's getting it done, man. That's maybe

(17:06):
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'sapp. 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
about you, y metadata, where you're calling, from, what time

(17:29):
you're calling, who is in the conversation with you. Here's
the thing about social media. Each social media site overwhelmingly
is a privately owned entity. The social media platforms that
we most likely use are all privately owned. And unfortunately,
if you are like most of us, by which I
mean the vast majority of us, you did not read

(17:51):
the terms of service before you agreed to have that profile.
I definitely scrolled all the way to the bottom of
the document before it made you do that. Yeah, don't
act like you know the ones that don't make you
do that. You definitely don't do that. Yeah, by you,
I mean like literally everyone general you. Uh. These terms

(18:12):
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 less dr and it
presents in plain language some of the positive and negative

(18:32):
aspects of various social media or Internet organizations. So let's
let's give let's give everybody a couple of examples. Google.
We'll start with the the Goliath, the Giant, the Leviathan.
Google itself keeps your searches and other identifiable user information
for an indefinite period of time. So at their pleasure, yes, yes,

(18:57):
at their at at his man edges these 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 existing and
or future services. Now think think about how much you
pump into Google services right now, Just imagine personally. Calendar

(19:24):
information is in there, email information is in there. I
mean YouTube, think about our our YouTube show, and you
know all that stuff, all your all your weird searches
at three am when you wake up from a strange dream. Yeah,
you know all your What does this animal mean? Why
is it wearing socks? They know your Google Drive, anything

(19:47):
that you're backing up there, oh boy, tracks you on
other websites. And then also there's a YouTube and Google
and YouTube have the right idea. It's like giving people
all this free stuff, and everyone's really they stoked and
grateful at version. 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,

(20:09):
one could argue in terms of like ultimate financial worth.
And it's very true. And we've had our own issues
with the old YT 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

(20:30):
and they don't have to tell you about it. They
can also demonetize your stuff, right I'm telling you. And
if you decide to delete a video YouTube doesn't actually
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

(20:50):
still have it. They still have it. And you know,
not to plug anything on this show. But on this
website it shows duck duck go the search engine. Yeah,
and all it says is no tracking with a little
thumbs ups sign duck dot go is a is a
good alternative for people who don't want Google searches recorded.

(21:11):
Be aware, of course, that your Internet service provider or
your ISP will still be tracking what you do, but
duck dot go is a good way to get around Google.
There was also a thing I haven't visited it in
a while called Scrugle scr o O g l E,
and it does Google searches without the web scraper, he says.

(21:33):
Scrugle dot org is gone forever, says the site owner.
Oh well they mustn't. They 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, it wants bonus for

(21:55):
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 and
a bathroom. It's just listening to you use the restaurant,
dropping a hot mixtape. Let's call it that surf and

(22:18):
read it on your phone, not to be two crass.
And lastly, for examples, 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 anything you've posted through their service, So it doesn't

(22:41):
matter if you've deleted it and it's 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,
this is a good thing, right theoretically, yeah, However, in

(23:02):
practice it's helping intelligence networks take a vacuum cleaner approach
to gathering the stuff. So it ultimately does not matter
whether you are innocent of any suspected crime, right, because
there's this leap frogging. There's this leap frogging system that's

(23:23):
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, for instance, our producer Tristan is an
innocent guy. Look just look at that faces understanding. You know,

(23:45):
if he knows someone who knows someone who knows someone
who's implicated in certain types of crime, right or certain
networks of that, then boom, Tristan's info is up for
grabs too, and he doesn't He may never even know why,

(24:07):
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. Uh,
call him Sam the sham, Sam the sham T Garden. Yeah.
But now now simply because he is at best tangentially related,

(24:31):
his information is now up for grabs. Yeah. 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 a recent case
about UM a group that was anti I think it

(24:56):
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 had ever checked it out.
And it's going through the court system right now to
see constitutionally what can be asked for. So thankfully, the

(25:19):
situation may change depending on the time that you are
hearing this episode. If so, if you're listening in two
thousand and twenty eight or whatever, and we haven't still
be around, send us 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 in

(25:39):
twenty twenty eight. Yeah, now this episode is a time capsule. Well,
we've talked about We've talked about some of these pernicious
at times I would argue purposefully misleading terms of service.
I've talked about what exists around you or what traces
you leave on the Internet, and of course check out
our friends part time I'm genius for more in depth. Look,

(26:01):
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 some pointers. After
a word from our sponsor, and we're back to quote

(26:26):
Mac with no delay. Yes, I don't know why I
love that so much. I don't know why 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
about audio plug ins. Obviously, maybe we need a little delay. Yeah,
can we get a rent? Are you taking away? That's awesome? Yes,

(26:55):
I think we should. I think we should keep that
in our back pockets, for one thing, 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 now. Right,

(27:18):
So we went through and kind of compiled some recommended
steps for removing your various social media accounts. 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. Facebook says that if you don't think

(27:41):
you'll ever use Facebook again, you can request to have
your account permanently deleted. You hear that you can request
request to the language is everything also deleted? Yeah? And
help more like help. 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

(28:04):
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 your account permanently deleted with no option
for recovery. You can log into your account and let
us know. Yeah, exactly, let Facebook. Wait there's more, Yeah,
there's more. So when you delete your account, UM, folks

(28:25):
won't be able to see it on their respective Facebook. Ye.
You're a phrasing here, But it doesn't necessarily go away.
It's just kind of hidden, ye, hidden from other users. Uh.
And it may take up to 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,

(28:48):
like your photos, status updates, any data that's stored in
Facebook's UM surely absurdly gigantic backup systems. 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

(29:09):
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 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

(29:29):
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 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

(29:52):
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,
I don't know. Also, Facebook is I don't want to
derail us, but Facebook is tremendously manipulative, like when you

(30:13):
try to mess with your privacy stuff, your quote unquote privacy.
It has a dinosaur as icon, and then the way
the it steers people with the parameters of what you
can and cannot say. So if you try to remove
a tag the choices you're given, or you know this

(30:33):
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 really yeah, I thought other yea God always
have another would align to let you, but that that
it would be a manipulative tactic though, to like, these

(30:55):
are your choices, and your choices are only these. It's not.
It's not wood it's a hypos is there. This bis
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 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

(31:18):
medias 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 or Spotify or
Twitter or any number. I mean like I did a

(31:38):
sock membership box thing today and it allowed me to
connect to it via Facebook. So ye, it goes pretty deep.
If you do this, though, it will log you back
into your Facebook account and the deactivation slash deletion process
starts all over again. I love the use of the
term deactivation. They don't even call it delete, it's deactivation.

(32:01):
And it reminds me of like I watched Blade Runner
last night or the first time in years, and instead
of murdering replicants, they retire. Yeah you geez. And Instagrams
know better. If you go to the delete your account page,
if you're not logged in, they'll last you log in.

(32:23):
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
even really have a desktop system anymore set up anywhere
in their house. You have to Yeah, you have to

(32:44):
select a option from a drop down menu, so and
re enter your password. So the option to delete the
account only appears after you've selected a reason when you
delete the account. This is at least explicit. When you
delete your account, your prof file, photos, videos, comments, likes,
and followers are permanently removed. And then, just like Facebook,

(33:06):
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? I mean, I don't even
know what did do with it. I deleted mine earlier today.

(33:29):
Liberating it was awesome. I mean, you sorry, LinkedIn, but
you've sent away too much email. Okay, so you can
close your account directly from this one page. Here's the thing.
You won't have access to any of your you know,
any of the information you've collected or people you've connected
to your profile will no longer be invisible on LinkedIn. However,

(33:50):
search engines, we're talking things Yahoo's and probably Googles, 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 premium memberships, which
i is something I've never done. But if you do that,

(34:12):
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 knows you have to wait. You have to do
what you have to resolve the accounts or like your
your pay your pay for LinkedIn accounts before you can

(34:34):
close your basic account. That's the idea. Pretty soon, it's
simple overall. Here's the thing, guys. Did you have my
Space accounts when you were younger? Did I? Ever? Yeah?
I had like the flickering gift background all day, the
MIDI track that would trigger. Yeah. And you have probably

(34:55):
had my Space band accounts too, or some kind of
music accounts that my old band, Uh, my Space is
actually still that everyone's check it out. It's a band
called the Cubists. Nice and our MySpace still stills in
around Hey mine, two Lions and Scissors. Check it out.
But anyway, getting away from the plugs, I wanted to
delete my personal MySpace account, so I tried to go

(35:16):
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 nineteen ninety seven in
my parents' basement. It was awesome for a time. It
really got got me through everything. Anyway, I got you
through everything? Yeah, it really did. Every email I sent
for years was through AOL. You probably loaded it with

(35:38):
like one of those floppies that came in them. I
did you multiple times, right, they gave you the free
upgraded every time every point oo change. So what happened?
What's happening with your AOL account now? Okay, so check
it out. In order to delete the MySpace, go to AOL.
In order to get to AOL, I had to change
my password I logged in. Apparently, if you don't access

(35:59):
in AOL account for one hundred and eighty days, they
deactivate that thing NOL. Yeah, that's kind of nice, right,
deactivate 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 delete that.

(36:21):
I was just on a spree today. Anyway, you can't
delete your AOL account, your free AOL account, at least
I could not. There's supposed to be a place that
says cancel account, and that button was not there on
three different browsers. Well, and you're a tech savvy guy too,
so I mean, can you imagine someone that maybe was less. Yeah,

(36:41):
even attempting to do any of this stuff. I went
through every help center thing that existed on AOL trying
to find it. Ended up calling AOL. I took my
phone and I called AOL 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 guy? Like four guys in a

(37:03):
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 worked for me. So
if you're out there and you've got an AOL account

(37:23):
from nineteen ninety seven, you want to get rid of it,
you can. There's a website you can go to and
you can find their their number, it's one eight hundred
eight two seven six three sixty four. You could do
it right now if you want to do it. And
Steve really wants a friend to talk to you. Yeah,
just give him a call and uh yeah, not Steve

(37:44):
the not Steve our ongoing in sa intern is Steve
the AOL tech support Yeah, yeah, we're pretty Steve rich here.
It's stuff they don't want. You didn't know. I want
to say. His name is Rico, So okay, So just
just call that number, ask for Rico or Steve. Yeah. Yeah,

(38:05):
tell them Matt sent you. They'll know, right, You've got
to be the only Matt they called it in a while. Yeah.
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's Oh my god, there is a
search console help site. But it gets very complicated, very quickly.

(38:26):
Google has its hooks in you, all up inside your
digital you. Oh yeah, that's the thing. It's all about
indexing because Google everything that gets posted everywhere, it indexes,
and you can go and ask Google to remove stuff
and take it out of search results. But ultimately you're
talking about websites that are being hosted. Like let's say

(38:47):
there's a news article written about you that you 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, but probably
wasn't that the voice command for the stupid Google glass
You had to say, hey, hey, glassy Google. Yes, but

(39:11):
probably if that command ever exists, as you're saying, that's
going to be the domain of a very small group
of people. Oh sure, ability of you know, very high
level execs or maybe bankers like Rothchild level stuff. Because
privacy is going to be one of the ultimate luxuries,

(39:34):
as we've explored in past episodes. So we're talking about
we've given some examples about how you can attempt to
remove some of this information from search engines, from social media.
This leads to perhaps the most important query, the most
important question here, the most important interrogative. I'm just thinking

(39:56):
of sending the billion and Ben bucks ask, Okay, 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,

(40:17):
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

(40:38):
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 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 might have

(40:59):
just change the access to the info. So for most
of us, right deletion or a rasuer 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.

(41:19):
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 bin, 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 down then because it literally

(41:40):
has bits of data just kind of strewn willy nilly.
Maybe in any computer scientists out there. Call me a
dummy if I'm not saying it 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 dark art. Yeah.
As shown in some of our earlier examples, the actions

(42:03):
that private entities allow us to take don't actually delete information. Instead,
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 control, 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.

(42:26):
I mean it's done. So whatever whatever they choose to
do with that stuff, you know, you put faith 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

(42:48):
and angel gets its wings, you're not actually killing well,
maybe gets his pizza. Yes, 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

(43:11):
taking it and creating a new version of you. But
it's just a couple more 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

(43:35):
American male twenty five to thirty six or something like that.
And then they know and then that is the new
label for your ghosts. They also learned social networks and preferences.
We don't need to know, Like if we all just
become American male, agx to why or whatever, and we're
all connected with a social network, they don't need to

(43:56):
know our names to influence that social network. This can
also go into aggregate electoral data right or election data right.
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 profile or

(44:22):
Russian hackers. How many caveats 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

(44:48):
I think we already mentioned here, in many cases, information
we share with other people will remain after we attempted
to delete everything else. If 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.
It'll remove the tag. It'll maybe remove Yeah, it'll remove
the tag, but you know, we'll see still see my mug. Yeah,

(45:12):
he was doing the clown face again in a celebration
of it. Did you notice that, right, or as I
like to call it, the Eddie Vedder face. Oh okay,
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 from the Internet. This rarely
meets with success. One example I remember is there was

(45:37):
an unflattering picture of Beyonce Knowles, uh, the R and
B singer entertainer. Yeah, okay, sure, and this, uh, this
picture was funny and it became part of what people
call photoshop battles, and they were changing the background and
they were making funny It was a mean, it's kind
of like in a in a mid squat in like

(45:58):
a like a dance move that obviously if you saw
the whole thing in context, it'd 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 she
hulk a little. Well, they actually that was one of

(46:19):
the photoshop ones. They turned her skin green and she
looks like she's just like, you know, hulking out literally.
But 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 who are spending
their free time on the internet making jokes is, hey, guys,

(46:41):
please don't make a joke about this. Our president actually
did that where there were some unflattering photos of him
that he 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,

(47:03):
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

(47:27):
of control over information dissemination. I do want to say
before we go on, there is one the only example
I can think of someone who is able to keep
a lot of their pictures off the Internet. Gary Larson,
the creator of Farside. You can still find a bunch,
but he wrote this really nice letter to people where

(47:49):
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, is Gary Larson. You
can still see a lot of it on there, you know,
just where someone has obviously taken picture of a of
a comic with their cell phone or something. But that's
the only even partially successful version. There's one more wacky

(48:18):
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 NSA, the National Security Agency.
What are they getting up to this week? Well, it's
formerly a secret government agency we'd like to talk about

(48:39):
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, 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, they're the best in the biz. It's

(48:59):
all so really good at find those loopholes ways around
original mandates. Oh and all of this is in the
name of national security. So longtime fans of the show
and privacy advocates around the world, you guys are hopefully
aware of the NSA's official stance, which is the NSA's
charter limits its powerful surveillance to the rest of the world,

(49:23):
not to US citizens. Okay, I think we're done with
that bit. Okay, but by now most people are at
least you know somewhat aware that the NSA's legal abilities
and real world actions not entirely syncd up. So a
good example would be that up until twenty seventeen, the

(49:44):
NSA was essentially able to surveil domestic sources with a
kind of sketchy interpretation of the seven O two provision
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. You may know it
as FICOP. We love the acronyms here on stuff they
don't want you to know. They searched their massive network

(50:06):
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 suck the data
up into the what like their Internet data rabbit hole
out in the middle of nowhere in Utah, Ah. That's
where that lives. And any reason here literally means any reason.

(50:28):
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 whatever, or trying
to make funny acronyms The good news is that, as

(50:48):
of twenty seventeen, 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 internet communications they're sent directly to or from a
foreign target. That's disturbing because that means before then, if

(51:09):
Matt 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 Bolin, and we were discussing
an episode on said bin Laden. Yeah, yeah, I was like, well,
when I get back from the ancestral home in Romania

(51:33):
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 NSA can't gather information on
you if you are if you live in the US. However,

(51:55):
foreign intelligence agencies can gather that information on you and
then through a network like five Eyes, share it with
the NSA. So the NSA can be like, oh, no,
no harm, no foul, not checking up on you. But Canada.
However over there, he sorry, yeah, it's dodgy. Reminds me
of do you guys remember those the controversy over made

(52:16):
in America tags where it turned out that some stuff
was being made in the atrocious sweatshop conditions in some
islands in the South Pacific. That we're American territories, so
they can still say made in America or assembled in
the USA. So there is more good news. However, once

(52:39):
the NSA ends its bolt 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 in the last
five years, apparently the NSA is not going to allow

(53:00):
it's analyst to look at it. That's nice. Yeah, yeah,
it is. However, technical personnel and that's in quotes. We'll
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
the stuff is right as rain, right, it's it's meeting

(53:21):
the new goals. Also, ongoing court cases surrounding the program
require the NSA to hold onto the data until the
cases are finalized in court. Okay, I yeah, that seems fine.
I'm okay. Well, all above the board, right above the breadbox.
So this is just a brief overview of what happens

(53:45):
when you try to remove your information. And 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 appeal it got a rip? Man?
I agree with you. I can tell you the conclusion. Okay,

(54:05):
you don't even need to try and delete your information.
If it's gone up online. It's up online. If somebody,
if 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 going to stay online. That's the
scariest thing there's Unless you're the wheel of a powerful

(54:27):
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.
Your digital you will most likely survive after the physical
version of you is gone, and like a ghost, gotta

(54:48):
have 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
beat their be some way to construct a real ghost
capable of programmatic responses, and so your children might even

(55:10):
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 say

(55:32):
that if you want to 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 accounts can get hijacked and
all that, and then they have your info, but you know,
play as safe as you can. You can also use

(55:54):
private services to help clean up your online presence. We
strongly suggest you research the 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

(56:16):
you know, pursuing further levels of anonimity or you know,
completely shutting off the information spigot altogether, 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 got to just change your habits. That's right, every day.

(56:38):
And if you want to learn more about that stuff,
you can check out an earlier episode we did on
whether or not it's actually possible to be on the
Internet in any kind of anonymous way. And 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, starters,
you don't let people take picture of you, don't hang

(57:01):
out with friends, don't participate in it with any you know.
I mean there's a lot here, I guess be a hermit,
only take jobs at paying cash, which means that you
would also be on the fringes of I'm 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,

(57:24):
you have to participate in this stuff. I mean, 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, now I'm not doing that.
And I'm like, come on, man, like why and 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

(57:45):
this not being a part of his life. Yeah, I
mean I can understand where he's coming from. Another thing
you could do if you wanted to change your life
still in this way is to get a law degree
in uh contracts and digital 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,

(58:06):
there's this great article in The Guardian about the terms
of service debate and a lot of it. It dealt
with several layers of this, one of which being the
word accept versus join or opt in or whatever that
all matters, and you know they're trying to feed into
this past habit of just click through, you know, don't

(58:29):
even pay it a second glance. But there, you know,
there there's discussion of 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 don't have instant gratification because it's 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

(58:51):
maybe steer people into possibly reading the terms a little
more carefully since there's some really heavy stuff in there.
But this article talked about how it was in The Guardian,
written by David Barrabee. It posed the question of you know,
when you when you go to the doctor, you don't
necessarily sign a contract or agree to the terms of
services of being worked on by a doctor, but you

(59:14):
expect the doctor to uphold their doctorial duty, the 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

(59:35):
parties instantly, you know, there's so much money in it though,
or at least to 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. Do check it out. It's the
idea that you are ultimately the owner of your own death,

(01:00:00):
your own creation. 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? Sure,
and it's fantastic. You can find it if you search
for it. Still not a silver bullet, and if you

(01:00:22):
are listening in the United States, it's not gonna help you.
But 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 and in some

(01:00:46):
to dovetail the point that you and know we're making earlier, Matt,
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 ISPs and
social media platforms. How can we trust the statements of
a government when we're aware of the actions it is

(01:01:06):
taken in the past. 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 a government,
or even an individual willingly giving up all the power
implied in this great amalgamation of fortune. And if you're

(01:01:30):
not prepared to completely divest from the Internet, I mean,
because it is a heck of a lifestyle change that
we were describing here, 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 threats? Absolutely? Yeah, it's going
on your permanent record. This photo of you doing a

(01:01:51):
beer headstand, 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 guy. 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.

(01:02:12):
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're 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

(01:02:34):
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
folks 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

(01:02:56):
the eighteen hundreds when I say stuff, yeah, Vigi gamer 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

(01:03:17):
want to hear your stories about that, and we'd like
to hear any advice that you have for your fellow listeners.
Oh 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 at Google has let us know, yes, and
let your fellow listeners know as well. Speaking of your

(01:03:38):
fellow listeners, that reminds us it's time for god Conna.
But not just your average garden variety shout out corner
ladies and gentlemen. No, not a bit. I don't know why.
Postumatically we're doing a physical shout out. We're gonna shout
toward an actual human face. Yes, that's right. Remember earlier

(01:04:02):
in 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 Pearson here live
on the show in person. Will thank you for coming.
Hey guy, it's great to be here. Will we promise

(01:04:22):
we're not actually going to shout him your fikay? Thank you?
I really really wanted to, just for fun the way, Well,
it's because you're full of rage, Matthew. No, it's I'm
very happy, excited. I'm happy to be here. I may
shout at you guys, just out of enthusiasts. Please my pad,
please direct the shouts the shouts toward me. I'd probably
have the worst hearing of the three of us, so

(01:04:45):
will you. I'm part Time Genius explored a subject that
is kind of a rabbit hole and a fantastic complimentary
exploration to our own that we just had earlier in
this episode, whereas we were asking what can a person

(01:05:06):
delete off the Internet, or if it's possible to do so,
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

(01:05:28):
looked 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. It was 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? And so that's really
what we started exploring more. You know, it's one of
those things that I don't think most people are surprised that,

(01:05:51):
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 data is then exchanged among so many companies,

(01:06:14):
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 phone number,
and all of it's syncd 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
idea of accepting those terms of use right and a

(01:06:36):
lot of that is you basically saying I'm okay with
this right right legally speaking. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, that's
that's one of the things that we talked about as
studies 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 to be connected, and it's pretty nice
to have this convenience. So do we really want to

(01:06:57):
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, So you've provided, you know, the
cashier with your phone number or your email address. And

(01:07:20):
then there are companies and just to give a couple
of examples, like there's a company called Data Logics which
works 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 called Atlas that's very sophisticated, much
more so than I think we even realize. That they

(01:07:41):
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 Facebook like button or share button that they

(01:08:02):
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 a harbor,
or like in that Black Mirror episode where you have
to spend your hard earned credits to skip the ad
because it's actually projecting it constantly in your field of

(01:08:24):
vision and in order to make it go away you
have to spend money or credits, like in the episode
It's Merits is nine million merits or something like that,
which is great, great episode, very very bizarre and impression.
On a bright side though, you know, if we're more
if it's greating on us on how likely we are
to do things. It reminds me of like a global
version of high school superlatives. You know, maybe it's not

(01:08:47):
all bad, you know, maybe it's not all crime. Maybe
I'm like most likely to open for Louis c k whatever,
dream big. So that's what I was gonna definitely maybe
open the door to the bathroom while he's walking in.
All right, Well, well we'll fix this in post right, No, sure,

(01:09:11):
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
just sometimes a lot of toilet paper is necessary. Yeah, yeah,

(01:09:33):
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
informs you via text or email or app when the

(01:09:56):
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, you're 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
on this and know when that toilet papers running out.

(01:10:16):
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 the 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 an order for you for Tied. So it's like,
you know, we participate in this stuff as well, and

(01:10:39):
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 have my info. It's fine. I don't care
if you know how many times I order tied Because
you even search for things on Amazon right and that's

(01:11:00):
are getting served up ads like in your Gmail account.
It's all connected, clearly, and I think that's one of
the things that we talk 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 connected to the broader web, that are

(01:11:21):
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 hundred dollars
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,

(01:11:41):
but it's 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,

(01:12:02):
or 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

(01:12:22):
day it is born until it is able to put
its own pants on. You're 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 a lot? I mean, can you even imagine orderline replaced? Yes? Yeah,
I mean with all of this data there, it's hard
to even imagine how much these jobs in that world

(01:12:44):
of market research have changed in the past ten years.
You know, how much more data and 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 going to do with this,
but we're going to have so much data salivating over that,
by gosh, by golly, do no. One of the questions

(01:13:05):
that occurred to us when we were listening to your
episode was the the concept of whether or not this
is inevitable, you know, the has the zegeist already shifted
or the badgers out of the bag? So speak, what
do you think? Do you think that it's possible that

(01:13:26):
people 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 upsides, you know, the pleasure that's brought to us

(01:13:47):
by having 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 can be. Its means a lot to people,
and I think they're willing to sacrifice a whole lot
just to m to have those things. So I don't know.
I'm sure there's going to continue to be battles over this,

(01:14:09):
and 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
a film, this is it. And as stuff gets better
than 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

(01:14:30):
patterns for Tide 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 there, like Nold Brown, we have delivered your
shipment of Tide and two Ruta bagas. Oh and you

(01:14:55):
sounded just like my wife, which makes it even more creepy.
It just leads and gentlemen, you know on this show
that we always endeavor to not just provide information, but
provide opportunities to act. And with this in mind, will
we were hoping to ask you easier, I stay hoping
to ask. We'll just ask you. Is there is there

(01:15:17):
any like advice or I guess, words of guidance under
or 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

(01:15:39):
amount 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 various
clubs and things that where all of this is exchanged.
But for the most part, it's making that decision for yourself.
Am I comfortable with this information being out there? But
then just being cautious and knowing that any information that

(01:16:01):
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. And as you
guys have discussed, the idea of trying to just completely

(01:16:22):
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
if so, to what extent. I have another question too,
to follow up, because it just occurred to me, are

(01:16:42):
there 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 as having as
having children and you think about I mean, to me,
part of what's scary about that is just more like
when we grew up and you came home from school
and you shut off the rest of the world and

(01:17:04):
you 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

(01:17:27):
there's also 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 this twenty four seventh connection.
It's just not good for anybody's brain, much less at kids.

(01:17:48):
I'm struggling with that with my kid, and I'll have
to just be like, okay, over right, bad time it's done. Yeah,
just let it go late, but I have to right,
you don't right, you don't have to yeah, And it
starts as almost toddlers. She's eight, I mean, you know,
but she's you know, sort of a I don't want
to sound like I'm tu min home it kind of
an advanced eight year old, I suppose, but like, yeah,

(01:18:08):
it's just like it hurts me to 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 the email. 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

(01:18:29):
I'm trying. I'm trying every day as well. But I say,
move to the Blue Ridge Mountains. They have some Greek
communities out there. You can really disconnect. You move to
the quiet zone there you go, Yeah, where there's no
cell phone, no TV, no radio, nothing, just banges. Yeah,
just rocks and sticks. No problems out there. Yeah. Yeah.

(01:18:50):
Also the most stable people that's right in to congregate
there too. And that is a story for another day, Kitty.
You can check it out right now because we did
an episode on our dare I say, Misadventures in the
Quiet Zone? And before you do that, will we want

(01:19:11):
to thank you so much for collaborating on the show
and for coming in lending your expertise to our friends
and neighbors in the audience. 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.

(01:19:31):
So where can folks go find the full meal. Hey,
this was our brand new episode over part time genius.
Come check us out then we hope you enjoy it
wherever you get your podcasts. Right, Hey, it's nicely done, Matt, Yes,
nicely done. That's the line. And this concludes ours but
not our show. Matt, Noel, Tristan and I will return

(01:19:55):
next week 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 to trying to quit
social media and you know you're still using the Internet
to listen to the show just feels so hypocritical. I

(01:20:16):
wish I knew how to quit you right. Yes, although
it does it does sound a little bit hypocritical and contradictory.
I think it's kind of funny that we're saying at
this point you could you could find that you could
totally find us on Facebook and it's all up on
the internet all over it. Well, what a bunch of roobs. Yeah,

(01:20:37):
you can find is work Conspiracy Stuff, Work Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram. And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three

(01:20:57):
std w y t K. If you don't want to
do you that, you can send us a good old
fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff
they Don't want you to Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.