Podcast
Family IT Guy Podcast
Hosted by Family IT Guy · EN
Ben Gillenwater helps families protect children from digital dangers, bringing 30 years of cybersecurity expertise to the parenting journey. His background includes working with the NSA and serving as Chief Technologist of a $10 billion IT company, where he built global-scale systems and understood technology's risks at every level.
His mission began when he gave his young son an iPad with "kid-safe" apps—only to discover inappropriate content days later. Despite his deep technical background, Ben realized that if protecting children online was challenging for him, it must be even more difficult for parents without his expertise.
Through Family IT Guy, Ben creates videos and articles that help parents and kids learn how to leverage the positive parts of the internet while avoiding the dangerous and risky parts. His approach bridges the knowledge gap between complex technology and practical family protection, making digital safety accessible to everyone.
34episodes
Episodes
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You’re the Product, Not the Customer (The Paid, Private Internet)
2d ago00:03:11Tap to summarizeThe apps are free, the games are free, email and search and videos are free. But free is not really free. The payment is your family's data, time, and attention. There is another internet where you pay a few dollars and become the customer instead of the product, and here is what it costs and where to start. One question sorts the whole internet: how does a company make its money? If the answer is advertising, the product being sold is your attention, and the app is built to collect as much of it as it can. If the answer is subscriptions, you are the customer, and the company stays in business by keeping you happy. Ben walks through the paid, privacy-respecting options by category: email like Proton or Fastmail for about ten to twenty dollars a month, search like Kagi for about five dollars a month, messaging like Signal, which is free and run by a nonprofit, and paid kids' games without the ads and tracking built into free ones. He also explains how to check a "we're private" claim: open source, which means the app's code is public so outside experts can inspect what it actually does. You do not have to switch everything at once. Start with one, like search, then try getting your close friends and family onto Signal with you. Proton: https://proton.me Fastmail: https://www.fastmail.com Kagi: https://kagi.com Signal: https://signal.org Chapters: 0:00 Free isn't free 0:37 The one question that sorts the internet 1:07 The paid alternatives, category by category 1:47 How to tell honest apps from dishonest ones 2:20 Start with one change Watch the whole series, How the Internet Really Works: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc3jDQHQdQek More in this series: It Started With Bacon (How Free Apps Make Money): https://youtu.be/FQbVOHcQRME The Cloud Is Someone Else's Computer: https://youtu.be/NsYAPKyJhXg Should You Accept or Reject Cookies?: https://youtu.be/EEt33DXh--g You're the Product, Not the Customer: https://youtu.be/UWBA-VcLOGE Family IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication, and the ways AI is making both worse. Ben Gillenwater spent 30 years in cybersecurity, and he teaches this as a parent in the same trenches you are. iPhone Parental Controls Masterclass: https://www.familyitguy.com/iphone-masterclass Website and free guides: https://www.familyitguy.com Listen to the Family IT Guy Podcast: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/family-it-guy-podcast/id1831912044 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72yZUVsOqdDk7en5FS9U8g #parenting #onlinesafety #digitalparenting #kidsonline #cybersecurity #familyitguy
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How to Make Video Games Safe and Actually Good for Your Kids
1w ago00:55:36Tap to summarizeMost parents feel stuck on video games: ban them and your kid feels left out, allow them and you worry about who's on the other end of the chat. Devyn Ricks has spent her whole life in games and now runs Miss Devyn's Video Game Universe, where a team of teachers hosts moderated online gaming clubs for kids. She's also a mom of four. In this conversation she walks through how she decides which games her own kids play, why she's a hard pass on Roblox, the simple signal that tells you a game is doing more harm than good, and how to check whether any game is safe even if you've never picked up a controller. We also get into why a console beats an iPad, which system to buy at each age, and why teaching kids the "why" protects them long after the rules stop working. If gaming is a fight in your house, this one is for you. Chapters: 0:00 Meet Miss Devyn and her video-game clubs 2:14 What the clubs actually do (and why community matters) 13:23 Games are neutral: how you use them is everything 15:16 Why she's a hard pass on Roblox, and reading your kid's cues 18:38 If a game is free, your child is the product: console vs iPad 24:52 How to vet any new game (research, chat settings, observe) 31:03 The hard truth about who's online, and staying involved 34:32 Skills, not rules 38:16 What game system to buy at every age 48:09 The biggest misconception about kids who game 53:49 One piece of advice: play the game with your kid Find Devyn: Miss Devyn's Video Game Universe — missdevyn.com YouTube: @MissDevynsVGU TikTok: @MissDevynGames Classes on Outschool: search "Miss Devyn" Family IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication. Learn the problems, protect your family, start with yourself. Get the iPhone Parental Controls guide: familyitguy.com
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Should You Accept or Reject Cookies? What the Pop-Up Does
1w ago00:03:04Tap to summarizeEvery website asks you to accept or reject cookies, and most of us click Accept just to clear the box. Clicking Reject barely helps either. Here is what the pop-up actually does and the free change that does more for your family's privacy than the button ever will. A cookie is a small file a website saves on your device so it can recognize you. Some cookies are useful, like the one that keeps you logged in or remembers your cart. Tracking cookies are the problem: they follow you from site to site and build a profile of what you read, shop for, and watch, which advertisers pay for. The pop-up is left over from privacy laws the ad industry has already worked around, so even Reject leaves you tracked in other ways. The real fix is a browser that blocks trackers for you on every site. On iPhone, iPad, and Mac, Safari already does this. On Windows or Android, use Firefox instead of Chrome or Edge, and set it as the default on your devices and your kids' devices. Then tell your kids why you changed it. The lesson is bigger than cookies: everything you do on the internet should be treated as public. Chapters: 0:00 The cookie question 0:28 What a cookie actually is 1:03 Why clicking Reject barely helps 1:32 The free fix: a private browser 2:12 What to tell your kids Watch the whole series, How the Internet Really Works: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc3jDQHQdQek More in this series: It Started With Bacon (How Free Apps Make Money): https://youtu.be/FQbVOHcQRME The Cloud Is Someone Else's Computer: https://youtu.be/NsYAPKyJhXg Should You Accept or Reject Cookies?: https://youtu.be/EEt33DXh--g You're the Product, Not the Customer: https://youtu.be/UWBA-VcLOGE Family IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication, and the ways AI is making both worse. Ben Gillenwater spent 30 years in cybersecurity, and he teaches this as a parent in the same trenches you are. iPhone Parental Controls Masterclass: https://www.familyitguy.com/iphone-masterclass Website and free guides: https://www.familyitguy.com Listen to the Family IT Guy Podcast: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/family-it-guy-podcast/id1831912044 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72yZUVsOqdDk7en5FS9U8g #parenting #onlinesafety #digitalparenting #kidsonline #cybersecurity #familyitguy
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The Cloud Is Someone Else’s Computer (Where Your Data Goes)
2w ago00:04:04Tap to summarizeWhen you save something to the cloud, it does not float in the sky. It goes to a real building full of computers that a company owns, and that company can usually read what is stored there. Ben spent years designing and running data centers, including one for the F-18 fighter jet program, so he can show you what "the cloud" actually is: warehouses full of servers in real cities, keeping copies of your photos, messages, and files. You cannot realistically quit the cloud. What you can control is whether the companies holding your data can read it. That comes down to encryption, which means scrambling your files so only a private key can unlock them, and who holds that key. If you hold it, only you can read your files. If a company holds it, they can too. Ben shares the services he pays for and uses himself for this: Proton for email, files, photos, and passwords, and Signal for private messages and calls. Start by moving one thing you care about to a service that hands you the key. Proton: https://proton.me Signal: https://signal.org Chapters: 0:00 Where your data really goes 0:40 What the cloud actually is 1:12 Watch the data leave a computer 2:52 How to keep private things private 3:32 Why this matters for our kids Watch the whole series, How the Internet Really Works: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc3jDQHQdQek More in this series: It Started With Bacon (How Free Apps Make Money): https://youtu.be/FQbVOHcQRME The Cloud Is Someone Else's Computer: https://youtu.be/NsYAPKyJhXg Should You Accept or Reject Cookies?: https://youtu.be/EEt33DXh--g You're the Product, Not the Customer: https://youtu.be/UWBA-VcLOGE Family IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication, and the ways AI is making both worse. Ben Gillenwater spent 30 years in cybersecurity, and he teaches this as a parent in the same trenches you are. iPhone Parental Controls Masterclass: https://www.familyitguy.com/iphone-masterclass Website and free guides: https://www.familyitguy.com Listen to the Family IT Guy Podcast: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/family-it-guy-podcast/id1831912044 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72yZUVsOqdDk7en5FS9U8g #parenting #onlinesafety #digitalparenting #kidsonline #cybersecurity #familyitguy
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It Started With Bacon: How ”Free” Apps Make Money
3w ago00:06:15Tap to summarizeAlmost everything online is free because the internet is a marketing engine, and the fuel it runs on is your family's data, time, and attention. In the 1920s a bacon company hired a man named Edward Bernays to sell more bacon. He got physicians to endorse a big breakfast, newspapers ran their opinions as news, and bacon and eggs became "the American breakfast." That method, borrow a trusted voice, hide who is paying, and make the message look like advice, built the modern advertising industry. For most of the last century it had two limits: advertisers could not see exactly who got their message, and they could not change it per person. The internet removed both. Every tap, every pause while you scroll, every video you half watch is measured, and the message adjusts to you in real time. Ben explains why that makes the internet dangerous for kids. The real problem is not screen time, it is marketing exposure time. Youth suicide is now the second leading cause of death among young people, and for kids aged 10 to 14 the rate tripled between 2007 and 2018. He gives you one question to ask about anything your kids use for free: who is paying for this, and what are they buying? If the answer is advertisers buying attention, that is a red flag, and a lot of the most popular apps fall into that category. Tell your kids the bacon story. Once a kid can spot the hidden sponsor in their breakfast, they start spotting it everywhere. Chapters: 0:00 The bacon story 1:07 The method behind modern advertising 1:42 How the internet changed the game 3:11 Why this is dangerous for kids 5:18 What you can do Sources: Meta's advertising revenue, about 98% of its total: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000162828026003942/meta-20251231.htm Edward Bernays and the Beech-Nut bacon campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays Youth suicide statistics, CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db471.htm Watch the whole series, How the Internet Really Works: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc3jDQHQdQek More in this series: It Started With Bacon (How Free Apps Make Money): https://youtu.be/FQbVOHcQRME The Cloud Is Someone Else's Computer: https://youtu.be/NsYAPKyJhXg Should You Accept or Reject Cookies?: https://youtu.be/EEt33DXh--g You're the Product, Not the Customer: https://youtu.be/UWBA-VcLOGE Family IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication, and the ways AI is making both worse. Ben Gillenwater spent 30 years in cybersecurity, and he teaches this as a parent in the same trenches you are. iPhone Parental Controls Masterclass: https://www.familyitguy.com/iphone-masterclass Website and free guides: https://www.familyitguy.com Listen to the Family IT Guy Podcast: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/family-it-guy-podcast/id1831912044 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72yZUVsOqdDk7en5FS9U8g #parenting #onlinesafety #digitalparenting #kidsonline #cybersecurity #familyitguy
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Bark’s Chief Parenting Officer on Predators, AI, and Keeping Kids Safe Online
Jul 301:14:10Tap to summarizeTitania Jordan is the Chief Parenting Officer at Bark. She sat down with Ben Gillenwater to walk through what she's seeing in how kids actually use their phones, what scares her most, and what you can do about it without being technical. They get into a lot: why the free apps your kid uses aren't really free, why your kid is already using AI and who should be teaching them, the slang and rating systems kids use on each other that most parents have never heard of, and the red flags that an online "friend" is really a predator. They also dig into the parts of Big Tech's parental controls that don't actually work, what good monitoring really does, and one simple thing any parent can do today. A couple of numbers from the conversation: suicide is the second leading cause of death for kids 10 to 14 in the US, behind accidents, according to the CDC. Titania also shares two of Bark's own numbers: about 80% of the time, parents had no idea their kid was struggling until an alert flagged it, and Bark now helps protect around 7.5 million kids. Ben reviewed the Bark Phone earlier this year, and references that review here: https://www.familyitguy.com/bark-phone-review.html The iPhone Parental Controls Masterclass walks you through locking down your kid's iPhone, every setting, step by step: https://courses.familyitguy.com/iphone If you ever find out a child is being targeted or exploited online, you can report it to the NCMEC CyberTipline at https://report.cybertip.org/. If you or someone you love is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is there any time at https://988lifeline.org/. Chapters: 0:00 Intro: Titania Jordan, Chief Parenting Officer of Bark 0:52 How she became a Chief Parenting Officer 5:34 Free isn't free: how platforms monetize your time 6:48 An MBA for kids: teaching them the business model 7:25 Dopamine, frame rate, and overstimulated kids 15:08 Nobody is teaching your kid AI, except you 17:40 Where AI belongs for kids, and where it doesn't 23:16 Why Bark exists: 80% of parents had no idea 28:52 Big Tech's parental controls are theater (Apple, TikTok) 33:21 Apple walked back catching child abuse images 34:45 There's no such thing as a friend in a corporation 36:41 Nobody at Bark reads your kid's texts: how it works 41:05 You're not authoritarian, you're being a parent 42:30 Privacy belongs to your child; you're the steward 47:46 Decoding what your kids are really saying (the slang) 55:15 The phone that won't let a kid take a nude 58:00 The predator playbook: grooming red flags 1:00:41 "Disappearing" messages don't disappear (Snap, screenshots) 1:04:06 No company is your friend, but some still do good 1:06:23 Judge a company by how it measures success 1:09:19 Roblox: who are you actually funding? 1:10:37 The one free thing every parent can do 1:12:28 Close: protecting millions of kids Family IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication, and the ways AI is making both worse. Ben Gillenwater spent 30 years in cybersecurity, and he teaches this as a parent in the same trenches you are. Website and free guides: https://www.familyitguy.com Guest: Titania Jordan, Chief Parenting Officer of Bark. #parenting #onlinesafety #digitalparenting #kidsonline #cybersecurity #familyitguy
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Porn: The Conversation That Protects Your Kids | Chris McKenna
Jun 1801:13:05Tap to summarizeHow do you talk to your kids about pornography before the internet does it for them? Chris McKenna founded Protect Young Eyes to help parents answer exactly that, and his approach surprises most people: the fix is not a better filter. It is a braver and more frequent conversation. Most of us are scared of this talk, so we put it off, and putting it off is the one move that leaves a kid alone with whatever they find. Chris makes the case for the opposite. Make the conversation normal. Start early, keep it casual, have it often, so your kid runs to you when something feels wrong instead of hiding it. Shine light on the topic. We get into the number that stopped me cold. In every child-on-child case the counselors Chris interviewed had handled that year, the child who had harmed another had been exposed to pornography early in childhood. We talk about why a young brain has no "file" for what it is seeing, then we get practical: ten conversations before age 10, the porn talk you can have in the car without ever saying the word "porn", and how to make yourself the person your kid comes to. MORE FROM CHRIS McKENNA Order his book, 5 Habits of the Tech-Ready Family (out June 16 2026): https://www.techreadyfamily.com Protect Young Eyes: https://protectyoungeyes.com Digital parenting coaching, The Table: https://protectyoungeyes.com/the-table The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Routers: https://www.protectyoungeyes.com/devices/the-ultimate-guide-to-understanding-routers CHAPTERS 0:00 Welcome 1:05 How Chris got into this 10:39 The realities of porn today 20:04 Young brains can't process it 21:28 The 100% statistic 24:00 Make Porn the Norm (the reframe) 28:14 10 before 10 30:28 Where kids really see it 35:11 How to actually have the talk 43:42 Porn isn't real sex 57:31 The one fix at Apple SOURCES The 100% figure is from Chris McKenna's interviews with counselors at Children's Assessment Centers, which work with both the child who was harmed and the child who caused harm. More on his research at https://protectyoungeyes.com ABOUT CHRIS McKENNA Chris is the founder of Protect Young Eyes and president of The Better Tech Project. He testified before the U.S. Senate in 2019, co-authored the Child Device Protection Bill that is now law in Utah and Alabama, and is featured in the documentary Childhood 2.0. Publishers Weekly calls his new book "comprehensive," "illuminating," and "an informative resource for parents eager to establish digital safety nets for their children." ABOUT FAMILY IT GUY Ben Gillenwater is a cybersecurity expert and dad who helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication. #digitalparenting #onlinesafety #pornography #raisingkids #parentingtips #protectyoungeyes #screentime #familyitguy
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Apple iOS just made kids’ phones safer.
Jun 900:02:45Tap to summarizeFor years, giving a child their first phone meant starting with a device designed for adults and then trying to lock it down afterward. Apple just announced a major shift. With iOS 27, kids' devices can start as a blank slate—no wide-open access, no endless game of chasing settings and blocking apps after the fact. Parents decide what gets added and when. This is how child-safe technology should work: parental authority first, access second. It's also a reminder that protecting kids online doesn't require invasive age-verification systems or sacrificing privacy. Good design can solve a lot of problems before lawmakers try to. Apple deserves credit for raising the bar on both privacy and parental controls. Would you feel more comfortable giving your child a phone if it started locked down by default? #Apple #iOS27 #OnlineSafety #DigitalParenting #FamilyITGuy
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The Hidden Risk of Instagram’s New Instants Feature
Jun 800:03:37Tap to summarizeMeta's new Instants feature has drawn comparisons to Snapchat for one simple reason: both are built around disappearing photos and messages. For parents, the important question isn't which app your child is using—it's whether they understand how these features actually work. Platforms market disappearing content as temporary, but "disappearing" doesn't mean private. Content can be screenshotted, screen-recorded, photographed with another device, shared, and in many cases retained by the platform itself. The technology may make content less visible, but it doesn't make it disappear from the internet. In this video, I look at why Meta is embracing a Snapchat-style feature despite ongoing concerns about youth safety online, what parents should know about supervision tools, and why digital literacy is a more effective long-term strategy than relying on app settings alone. The most valuable lesson we can teach kids is not which apps to fear, but how to think critically about privacy, permanence, and the business models behind the platforms they use every day. I'm Ben, the Family IT Guy—a dad and cybersecurity expert with 30 years of experience helping families navigate social media, smartphones, AI, parental controls, and online safety. Subscribe for practical advice on raising tech-smart kids in a digital world.
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Age Verification Laws Explained: Why They Won’t Protect Kids
Jun 200:07:49Tap to summarizeAge verification laws are spreading fast, and the "prove your age to use the internet" approach will make every family less safe, not more. Governments across the US and around the world want everyone to prove their identity before going online. In places like California, that's moving down to the operating-system level, so you'd have to verify who you are just to use your own computer. It sounds like a reasonable way to protect kids. It isn't. To check your age online, a company has to collect your ID, verify it, store it, and tie it to what you do. Once that data exists, it lives under whatever the rules happen to be at any given moment, forever. History already showed us how that goes. In 1940 the US Census promised confidentiality; two years later the government canceled that promise, handed over Japanese American families' names and addresses, and sent 120,000 people to internment camps. In 1998, COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) was meant to protect kids online, and instead it gave companies a reason to never build kid-safe products in the first place. So the real fix isn't more databases. It's skills. Parents who understand how the internet works can lead by example and pass that on to their kids. You can't uncollect data, which is exactly why the only real protection is to not collect it in the first place. Read the full Declaration of Principles on the protection of children, families, and freedom in the digital age: https://www.familyitguy.com/declaration-of-principles CHAPTERS 0:00 The age verification laws coming for everyone 0:39 How online age checks work 1:18 What we want for our kids (the Declaration) 2:09 1940: a privacy promise broken (the Census) 3:38 1998: how COPPA backfired 5:31 What actually changes behavior 6:09 The real fix: skills, not surveillance 6:58 You can't uncollect data 7:16 The one question to always ask 7:37 Your turn SOURCES AND FURTHER READING 1940 Census and Japanese internment: - Scientific American, confirmed Census disclosure: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/ - National Archives, Japanese-American Incarceration: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation - The Second War Powers Act (1942), which suspended census confidentiality: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/STATUTE-56/STATUTE-56-Pg176 COPPA: - FTC, Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA): https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule-coppa - FTC, Google/YouTube $170M COPPA settlement: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/09/google-youtube-will-pay-record-170-million-alleged-violations-childrens-privacy-law What actually reduced youth smoking: - CDC, adult cigarette smoking data (42% to 11%): https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/php/data-statistics/adult-data-cigarettes/index.html - Levy et al. (Georgetown), SimSmoke policy analysis: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4801780/ - Farrelly et al., "truth" campaign dose-response: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1449196/ LISTEN TO THE FAMILY IT GUY PODCAST YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe_GB8g05M6PyRj4OLhD1LF1x_6vEK-Lc Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/family-it-guy-podcast/id1831912044 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72yZUVsOqdDk7en5FS9U8g ABOUT I'm Ben, the Family IT Guy. I help parents handle the two biggest digital dangers facing their kids: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication (and the ways AI is making both worse). Website: https://www.familyitguy.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theFamilyITGuy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/family_it_guy/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@family.it.guy #AgeVerification #OnlineSafety #DigitalParenting #KidsOnline #OnlinePrivacy
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