Defend Your Digital Life w/ Nathan Bartram #1025

Summary

How to Money — Episode #1025: Defend Your Digital Life w/ Nathan Bartram
August 20, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, co-host Joel digs deep into digital privacy and security for everyday people with Nathan Bartram, founder of TheNewOil.org. Together, they demystify digital money vulnerabilities, explore why privacy is still relevant even after a lifetime of data leaks, and offer practical, actionable steps listeners can take to lock down their digital lives without going off the grid. The episode is jargon-free, accessible, and full of relatable anecdotes—a toolkit for defending your digital footprint without becoming a tech hermit.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Privacy Still Matters

• People often feel it's too late to protect their data, assuming the "genie is out of the bottle."
  • Nate emphasizes that data loses relevance over time but retaining control over your information is always worth it, both practically and philosophically ([06:39]).
  • "Over time, that data that they’ve collected about you will grow stale and grow old… but once you know how to do better, you should change what you’re doing." — Nate Bartram ([06:39])
• “I’ve got nothing to hide” isn’t valid.
  • Everyone has something they wish to keep private—your bank logins, personal conversations, financial situations ([08:04]).
  • "If you think you have nothing to hide...please send us your bank account login. Right?" — Nate ([08:21])

2. Understanding the Privacy Spectrum

• Privacy is not all-or-nothing but a spectrum—like financial independence, small steps reap outsized benefits ([13:15]).
• Pareto principle applies: 20% of effort can yield 80% protection.
• There is no “one-size-fits-all”—tailor defenses to your needs, which in privacy is called your “threat model” ([13:15], [19:33]).

3. High-Impact, Low-Effort Moves (“The 80/20”)

Nate’s top recommendations for quick, meaningful boosts:

• Use unique, strong passwords with a password manager ([15:25]).
• Set up two-factor authentication (2FA) wherever possible—ideally something beyond SMS ([54:57]).
• Remove unnecessary apps from your phone. Fewer apps = less tracking, less risk ([26:33]).
• Switch to privacy-oriented browsers like Brave or Firefox ([41:42]).
• Freeze your credit with major bureaus. Fraud alerts are an extra “2FA” for your credit ([45:53], [47:19]).

4. Tools & Services for Privacy

• Password Managers
  • Recommended: Bitwarden (free), Proton Pass (by ProtonMail), 1Password ([15:25]).
  • "There’s a surprising amount of moves you can make in privacy without spending money." — Nate ([16:20])
• VPNs
  • Useful, but not the panacea: They change your IP, but tracking still occurs ([16:46]).
  • Nate ranks them as one of the least important tools for most.
• Virtual Cards
  • Privacy.com (US-centric) and some banks’ virtual card features lock debit/credit numbers to a merchant, minimizing risks from data breaches ([19:33]).
• Email Aliases
  • Use services like SimpleLogin or Addy.io to create unique emails for each service, minimizing spam and tracking ([20:50], [21:05]).

5. Beyond Tools—Changing Daily Habits

• Delete social and shopping apps (like Amazon, Reddit): Less tracking, fewer spontaneous purchases, improved finances ([26:33]).
• Ad/Tracker Blockers
  • uBlock Origin is highly recommended; blocks both ads and analytics trackers ([24:50]).
  • "Ads are the biggest privacy invasion right now, feeding their own ecosystem." — Nate ([25:27])
• Minimize “smart” device usage.
  • Smart TVs, newer cars, and many IoT devices collect and share surprising amounts of personal data ([34:09], [36:46]).
  • Not all trade-offs are clear—manufacturers often hide what they’re collecting.

6. Real-World Scenarios & Decision-Making

• Shopping Online
  • Stick to reputable merchants; use virtual cards and alias emails ([19:33]).
  • Be aware of surveillance pricing: Retailers may offer different prices based on your data, location, or shopping history ([59:22]).
  • "If you go to a Target parking lot and check their website, the price on the item is going to be a little bit higher than if you checked it at home." — Nate ([59:45])
• Smart Devices and Cars
  • Many smart TVs will shut off key features unless you accept all their terms ([34:13]).
  • New cars have embedded connectivity; harder to avoid or opt out of data collection ([36:46]).
• Terms of Service
  • Use resources like TOS;DR to quickly see what rights you're sacrificing ([38:33]).
  • Explore alternativeTo.net for privacy-respecting digital product alternatives ([39:51]).

7. Money & Privacy Intersection

• Credit Freezes: The gold standard for blocking identity theft, free and easy ([45:53], [47:19]).
• Surveillance Pricing & Financial Penalties: Retailers and institutions may punish/charge you more based on shopping habits and device data ([59:22], [61:06]).
• Credit cards offer more fraud protection than debit; using privacy.com (or similar tools) for cards further shields you ([58:19]).
• Sharing payment info publicly (e.g., Venmo) can leak social and financial data; check/limit who can see your transactions ([57:21]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Data Value:
  "Privacy…is having that control over what you want to share and who you want to share it with."
  — Nate Bartram ([08:22])

• On Practical Steps:
  "There's a surprising amount of moves you can make in privacy without spending money…password managers, 2FA, switching browsers, those things don't cost money unless you need some of the more advanced features, which most people don't."
  — Nate Bartram ([16:20])

• On VPN Hype:
  "I compared it to like changing the paint on your car. You've still got the same license plate…so it doesn’t really help that much."
  — Nate ([16:46])

• On Smart Devices:
  "I could disagree to the terms of service, but guess what happens when I do? [...] It’s not a smart TV anymore."
  — Nate ([34:37])

• On Surveillance Pricing:
  "…companies to surveil us and then use that data against us when it comes to what they charge us for things is becoming more pervasive and it's just improving…when it comes to protecting our data, I think the stakes are only ramping up…"
  — Joel ([62:28], outro recap)

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• [02:26] — Joel introduces Nathan Bartram, personal privacy mission, and context of today’s digital risks
• [06:39] — “Is the genie out of the bottle?” and why privacy still matters
• [13:15] — Privacy as a spectrum; Pareto principle’s application
• [15:25] — Password managers and starter tools
• [16:46] — VPNs: Myths, realities, and real value
• [19:33] — Online shopping privacy: payment cards, threat modeling
• [24:50] — Digital ads, ad/tracker blockers, deleting habitual apps
• [34:09] — Smart TVs & IoT device privacy risks
• [36:46] — Car data collection and the shrinking window for “older” tech
• [38:33] — Terms of service you don’t read: resources for clearer understanding
• [41:42] — Browsers (Chrome, Brave, Firefox) for privacy
• [45:53] — Credit freezes vs. monitoring products (Lifelock, etc); 2FA for your credit
• [53:31] — The “starter list” for newbies: what to do first
• [58:19] — Protecting financial transactions: credit cards, cash, surveillance pricing
• [61:11] — Surveillance pricing and “creepy” financial penalties from data
• [62:28] — Host recap and top takeaways

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Resource List (as mentioned by Nate)

• Main Site: TheNewOil.org
• Password Managers: Bitwarden, Proton Pass, 1Password
• Email Aliasing: SimpleLogin, Addy.io
• Virtual Payments: Privacy.com, select bank-issued virtual card features
• Browsers: Brave, Firefox (with uBlock Origin)
• Search Engines: DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, Startpage, Kagi
• TOS Analysis: tosdr.org
• Privacy-Preserving Product Discovery: alternativeto.net

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Tone & Final Thoughts

The episode is friendly, practical, and uses approachable language and humor to soften often-intimidating privacy topics. Nate and Joel both agree: You don’t have to be perfect—just taking the first steps makes you safer, less vulnerable, and often, less manipulated by prices and ad targeting in the digital world.

“If you’re being chased by a lion, you don’t have to outrun the lion. You have to outrun your best friend.”
— Joel ([62:28], end recap). In privacy, you just need to be a bit more vigilant than average!

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For more resources and weekly privacy news, check out Nathan's site or his podcast "Surveillance Report."

Transcript

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[Matt]

Hey, it's Matt and Joel from How To Money.

[Joel]

Joel, I feel like you've always got.

[Matt]

A cool trip in the works. What's next on your travel radar?

[Joel]

All right, well, my dad and I were planning hoping to hike the Camino de Santiago in Spain next year. I mean, not the full thing because that would be insane. That'd be really long. But at least a portion of it. It's been on our bucket list for a while and I think we're finally gonna make it happen.

[Matt]

I love it, man. Yeah, it's gonna be such a great memory. It's also a really long hike, so I hope you are building up to it. You getting the miles in?

[Joel]

Yes, for sure. Good. I started getting my body ready. And if you're planning a big trip too, it might be the perfect time to let your home work for you. That's true.

[Matt]

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[Joel]

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[Joel]

I'm Joel, and today we're talking about defending your digital life with Nathan Bartram. I know I'm not talking to a bunch of dummies, but I categorize my technology as mid as the kids say. At best, I'm at that point in my life where my 12 year old can figure out new gadgets and faster than I can. It's kind of humiliating to admit that right now, but for those of you out there who might feel like me using tech regularly but not feeling like a pro, maybe you're worried about your privacy. You're worried about passwords and data as you navigate the online world that has been around for many, many years now. So me calling it the online world makes me sound old. But this episode is for you. Nathan Bartram founded the site TheNew Oil.org back in 2018 to help average folks feel equipped with the information they need to navigate this world of online reality with confidence. So, Nate, can I call you Nate?

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, of course.

[Joel]

All right, thank you for joining me today.

[Nate Bartram]

Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

[Joel]

Of course. And Nate, you have been a listener to the show for many, many years. We have emailed back and forth and you have often offered suggestions as we have covered topics about on many of these subjects like privacy, passwords and data. And you write about them eloquently. Have been for many, many years now. First question though. What is your craft beer equivalent? What do you like to splurge on, my friend? I'm super curious to hear while you're saving for the future, what are you splurging on in the meantime?

[Nate Bartram]

Oh man, this is going to be a really boring answer actually. But I've been thinking about this question and I think my answer is going to be privacy and security stuff. And I know that sounds like a cop out because that's what I do at the New oil, right? But the thing is that's what I was doing before the New oil. Like that's kind of what led me to starting the New oil is I was experimenting with all this stuff, and I wanted to play, I wanted to share my journey and my experience. And so even if the new oil wasn't a thing, if, you know, nobody was reading it and it was just me by myself again, that's still what I'd be doing is, you know, different subscriptions and tools and sometimes hardware.

[Joel]

So can you give me an example of something you've spent recently on in that category? And people might be like, all right, I never even thought to do that.

[Nate Bartram]

Okay, not recent, but a few years ago, I spent about $600 on a router.

[Joel]

Okay.

[Nate Bartram]

And yeah, that's a lot of money for a router.

[Joel]

Is it, Is it vastly superior than the ones you get from the Internet companies or that I could buy on, you know, a random tech website like Best Buy or something?

[Nate Bartram]

You could probably find it on Best Buy, but it is vastly superior. And the reason I bought it is because it's compatible with an open source firmware called ddwrt, which allows you to do all kinds of things that, honestly, I'm probably not even using 80% of what this router can do, but it unlocks all kinds of really cool privacy and security abilities, which some you can get on a typical router, but some are definitely a little more advanced and the ability to, like, segment the network so you can kind of like. I know we're diving in a little bit, but one common piece of advice is you. One common piece of advice is to put all your. Your smart devices on like a guest network, so that way if any of them get compromised, it doesn't spread to the rest of your network. You can kind of do that without having to create a guest network. So just really, really advanced things like that.

[Joel]

One of the things I appreciate about your tact, and I mentioned this in the bio, is that you're kind of attempting not to speak to the techies in the space or super nerds who care about privacy at this incredibly granular level. But you're trying to speak to people like me who want to improve their. Their privacy, but probably aren't going to buy a $600 router. Right. So that's like, that's your audience. So what would you say? I guess maybe the first question. A lot of people assume genie's out of the bottle at this point. I remember that Equipax data breach in 2018, and there's, you know, I assume I've signed up for a Facebook account at this point. They. They know everything about me. What would you say to those People who are like, I guess my data is public, genie's out of the bottle. Do I still need to care about privacy?

[Nate Bartram]

I, uh. Biased answer, of course, but yes. And it's funny. I actually wrote a blog post about this. It's. I think it's called why to care about privacy after so many years, or something like that. And there's. There's the practical reason and the philosophical reason, and the practical reason is that data gets old, you know, over time. You move, you change interests, you become a different person. Like most of us over our lives, we don't dramatically become different people, but we do change enough that, you know, you look back on yourself 10 years ago, and you're like, man, I was a totally different person back then. And over time, that data that they've collected about you will grow stale and grow old. The philosophical reason is, the example I gave in the blog post was if you're driving somewhere that you go all the time, like a friend's house, and you're kind of on autopilot, and you realize all of a sudden you took a wrong turn, you went left instead of right, you don't just keep going left. Like, once you know how to do better, you're like, oh, okay, I should change what I'm doing. And so that's a. I guess that one kind of assumes that you. You do value your privacy. But yeah, once you realize, like, oh, there are options and I don't have to keep doing this, in my opinion, it seems a little silly to just keep going the wrong way on the road, so to speak.

[Joel]

Should we value our privacy? And in what ways is our privacy being violated? How does that impact us? I guess because some people might say, yeah, I've heard that excuse from some folks. I've got nothing to hide, so why does it matter if they know my address, my name, my birthday, my firstborn child's name? Like, who cares?

[Nate Bartram]

I was really hoping you'd bring that up. So the answer is, everyone does have something to hide, and what it is varies from person to person. And the example I was thinking of in my head is, especially for this audience, if you think you have nothing to hide, don't actually do this, but please send us your. Your bank account login. Right?

[Joel]

Yeah.

[Nate Bartram]

Because with that information, even if you don't have a lot of money, you maybe you need that money to pay your groceries. So we all do have something to hide. And the way that I define privacy, there's a lot of different ways to define it, but I define it as having that control over what you want to share and who you want to share it with. So privacy. A lot of people confuse privacy and anonymity when they hear privacy. They think, oh, I'm going to go live in a cabin in the woods and I'm never going to have a phone and nobody's going to know who I am. But really, it's just, it's the same as you would at your day job. You know, when, when you go to work on Monday, you're not going to tell your boss about the fight you had with your spouse. And that's, that's privacy. You have that ability to say, I, I don't want this person to know this thing.

[Joel]

Yeah.

[Nate Bartram]

And I think we should care because a lot of the time we're not being given that choice from tech companies.

[Joel]

That. Yeah, no, that's true. And that's essentially what the business model is based on with a lot of these tech companies is right when it's a free product, we are the product. And I saw the other day that, what, Pinterest makes $3 a year from the average user, but Facebook makes like 26, $27 a year from the average user. So they would rather you not pay them and just, and just continue to keep you engaged because they're making money off of you in other ways. So is part of. And is there any remedy to the fact that we're doing business with companies who profit in this way from us using their product without actually paying them a dime? It seems like. It seems like we're making out, Scott, Clean. Right. I get Gmail and I don't pay Google anything. And, and it's super helpful to me to use all of those Google assets that they provided. But what am I losing in the process?

[Nate Bartram]

I think, in answer to your first question, I think there are ways to use a lot of the common services in ways that are less privacy invasive. So one of the really big examples I give, you mentioned Facebook. You can use Facebook in the browser, even on your phone, and that browser is going to offer you a lot more protection than it would if you were using the app. Because the thing about phone apps, especially mobile apps, is they, they get a lot of permission, and Google and Apple are doing a lot better about giving users more control over that. But for now, they still get a lot of permission and they can access a lot more data than you would normally expect. Like, I don't know if this is still true, but at one point, the Facebook app was using the sensors on your phone like the gyroscope to figure out if you were like on a bus or if you were walking down the street and things like that. So things like using it in a browser, especially like a privacy protecting browser will really mitigate a lot of that risk you mentioned. Like you're, what are you giving up by using Google It? Again, it really depends on the person and what they value because there are a lot of really good privacy protecting services. Like a really Popular one is ProtonMail. And yeah, yeah, I'm sure you've heard of that one. It's a privacy, it's an encrypted email provider and it's definitely missing some things that Google has, but it's building out its suite and it's trying to be like a Google competitor and it's a pretty polished service. But at the same time there are still a lot of people who use Gmail. Like I've, I've signed up for things that don't accept ProtonMail for some reason or another and I have to use a Gmail or you know, you need a Gmail account to post on YouTube and things like that. So I think that is a really good question though actually is what are you gaining from using some of these services? Does it outweigh what you're losing in terms of privacy? And are there any ways you can mitigate that if you need that service?

[Joel]

Sure, trade offs are kind of the reality throughout all of life. But I mean, if it wasn't for Gmail, Google Calendar like my life would be, I'd be on the side of the road in a ditch somewhere. It's, it's, it's. Yeah, I remember trying to get organized when I was a youngster and it just wasn't happening. And then finally Google came along and I was like, oh, okay, this actually works for my life. But yeah, you are giving things up in the process. I'm also curious too. You are. And I want to talk more about some of the products that you mentioned and just other products that some are free, some cost money, but they can help on the privacy front instead of just going with the tried and true brands that maybe you initially think of. So we'll get to some questions on that in a bit. But you talk on your, on the blog about how privacy exists on a spectrum. We had re released an episode recently about how financial independence exists on a spectrum and for a lot of people think it's one or the other. It's like I'm not or I am not true. Well, the same thing is true with privacy. Right. So it's not like I'm fully private or my goodness, I've exposed everything that people know about me. It's all public now. So how do you think about that? And I guess the only way to get like fully private, even in today's age, it would be kind of like to never sign up for these services in the first place and then move to the backwoods of Maine, which most people aren't going to do. Plus I hear the bugs are horrendous in the summer. So what's, how do you think about that spectrum and how you help people think about, well, this is like a reasonable step to take. And then this is maybe unreasonable, even though it does give you added layers of privacy in your life.

[Nate Bartram]

Well, I think that's a question that everyone has to ask for themselves. I really do believe there's no like one size fits all in privacy. I think there's certain things like best practices, just like personal finance, there's best practices that everyone should do, you know, like putting away at least 10% of their income and stuff like that. And with privacy, it's very similar things like using a password manager and two factor authentication whenever possible. But yeah, I mean, there's a really famous quote that I'm definitely not going to get right here, but it was a really famous computer scientist said something along the lines of no system is truly unhackable unless it's unplugged. The battery is removed, it's buried six feet underground and surrounded in lead. And even then I'm not sure. And he's absolutely correct because we see all kinds of crazy research come out, especially this time of year. There's a really big hacker convention that just ended this past weekend. And these are the people who are always announcing like, oh, we can use the, the WI fi waves from your router to figure out who's in the room through the wall. Like that's an actual thing. That's an actual thing. But I mean those are so high level. What's that?

[Joel]

Blows my mind.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah. Yeah. But you know, it's like you said, I mean it's. I'm certainly not gonna go live in the woods and forsake my phone and all that kind of stuff. So it's, it's really about people coming up with what is a realistic threat and what are the realistic defenses against it. Because you can't defend against everything. It's just not possible. But I think people will find that it's actually, what do they call that Like Pareto's rule or something. You can get like 80% of the stuff with 20% of the effort.

[Joel]

Yeah. And then at that point, the extra effort is only going to. It's going to be smaller, more incremental gains. That might not be the juice, might not be worth the squeeze. You mentioned passwords, and my guess is most people listening have. And most sites force you to have a reasonable password at this point in time. Right. They're like, you got to have uppercase, lowercase, you got to have a couple. You have like an exclamation mark or, you know, you have to. You have to. It can't just be password all in lowercase anymore. And so even my grandma had to update her password. I'm sure it was, which is good. Good for her. But you mentioned password managers. Do you have suggestions on which ones might be best to use? Some of them cost money, others don't. And how much protection do they offer?

[Nate Bartram]

Sure. So I do have. With almost all of the tools we're going to talk about, I do actually list my recommendations on the website. And for the record, just because I don't list something on the website doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. Like, I don't list Dashlane, but I would rather people use Dashlane than not use a password manager. But some of my favorites, I've been using Bit Warden for years. I've got most of my family on that one. Proton, we've mentioned ProtonMail. They recently rolled out their own password manager that my podcast co host loves. He uses it for all his stuff. I think there's a couple others. One password is really popular. That one costs about a dollar a year. But the first two are free, so there's actually a lot. There's a surprising amount of moves you can make in privacy without spending money. There's a lot of things you can do that are free, like password managers. Two factor switching browsers. Those things don't cost money unless you need some of the more advanced features, which most people don't. So that's the good news.

[Joel]

I'm hearing more ads for VPNs and which, you know, allow people maybe to either watch Netflix content they otherwise wouldn't be able to, that exists in other countries or something like that. Not that I'm condoning it. I don't personally do that. But how. How much. How secure do VPNs make you? And how big of a. How important is that maybe in the digital ecosystem of protecting your privacy?

[Nate Bartram]

So on my website, I organize everything in order of most important to least important. And that's a little bit subjective. I've had some people disagree with my, my ordering there, but I put VPNs on the last page. They do offer you some protection, but yeah, a lot of the advertising is seriously overrated. So what I always tell people is VPNs do two things. They change your IP address and they establish a secure connection between you and the VPN server. And so, in other words, by changing the IP address, like you said, you look like you're coming from somewhere else. So you could maybe stream Netflix in the UK or something like that, or I think a BBC iPlayer is a really common one and that is a useful use case. But in terms of privacy, your IP address is a very small portion of how companies track you online. So it's definitely something. But I wouldn't really. I think one time I compared it to like changing the pain on your car. You've still got the same license plate, you still got the same vin, you've still got all these other identifying features. So it doesn't really help that much. And in terms of security, we do sometimes see apps that are unencrypted, but for the most part, last time I checked, Google said that somewhere around 95% of the Internet is encrypted. Now, and that's a really complicated thing that I don't want to go too far into because that could turn into a whole explanation. But basically, when I say encrypted, I mean between your device and their server. So when you connect to Facebook, anybody in between your phone and Facebook, they might be able to see you're connected to Facebook, but they can't really see any of the content or the messages or anything. Facebook can, of course, but so VPNs don't really change that. There is a use case if you're in a place where you have a reason to believe that maybe the router you're using is compromised. But I personally have never seen that. Even again, there's a common example is like using it in public WI fi. Your connection is encrypted at your device. So it would be a fairly advanced attack for the router to be malicious like that. But I would say if it makes you feel better and you have the money, you certainly can get a vpn. They do help some, but they're definitely not the panacea that advertisers make them out to be.

[Joel]

Yeah, those ads make it sound like it's the best thing since sliced bread.

[Nate Bartram]

Oh, yeah.

[Joel]

And.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, Hacker proof, Anonymous and. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joel]

Okay, well, so you published a guide on your site about staying safe while you're shopping online. And I'm curious, especially as that is one of the things that probably, how do money listeners care about is like, okay, what am I giving over when I'm shopping with a unique vendor or with the. Or with a website that I place orders from regularly? One of the things you tell people to do, which is impossible to do online but possible to do in real life, is to use cash more often when you're buying stuff, just to anonymize those purchases. But, yeah, how do you think about staying safe when shopping online? Do you have any tips in particular in regards to that?

[Earnin Advertiser]

Sure.

[Nate Bartram]

It depends on what you're trying to stay safe from. If you're trying to. And that's. That's kind of a reoccurring theme with privacy. We call it a threat model. So if anybody goes to the website, you'll see a page about that. It's just a fancy way of saying, what are you trying to protect and who are you trying to protect it from? If your goal is to, like, not get your credit card number stolen, you probably want to stick with reputable vendors. Like, you want to go straight to the store like Walmart or Target or. I'm not a huge fan of Amazon, but there is something to be said that we all know who Amazon is. We can probably trust their security fairly well. Here in America, we have access to a service called privacy.com that I'm a huge fan of. It allows you to create virtual debit cards that lock to that vendor. So, for example, if you create one for, let's say, your Netflix account, it can only ever be used at Netflix. So if Netflix has a data breach, that card is useless to the people who stole it. It can't be used anywhere except Netflix.

[Joel]

And there are other. There are banks who have created products that go alongside their credit cards, too. Like Capital One has one of those two that creates virtual cards. So it's. Yeah, that's a. That's a real helpful tool to where. Yeah, that anonymized card is only available to be spent. You can only use it at that vendor.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, definitely. If you live outside the US or for some reason don't want to use privacy.com, definitely check with your bank. It is. It's not a super common feature, but it's becoming more common. I'm seeing it a lot more for sure.

[Joel]

Yeah.

[Nate Bartram]

There's also things like using they're called alias emails. So services like simple login, Addie, IO, these, basically you can create an email address that still forwards to your inbox. So you can manage it all from one place. And it's really convenient.

[Joel]

But.

[Nate Bartram]

But it really helps with like spam. If you shop online and they start spamming you, you can just turn off the email address or in terms of privacy, it also helps. It kind of breaks up your profile a little bit so you're not using the same email address across multiple services and that helps protect your privacy.

[Joel]

That sounds nice because unsubscribing can be like a full time job these days.

[Nate Bartram]

Oh yes.

[Joel]

Sometimes, Nate, I don't know how this happens. I guess it's cookies. But you'll visit a site, you won't do a darn thing. Maybe you like literally looked at one item and you'll get an email in your inbox 10 minutes later and they'll be like, are you still shopping? You're sure you didn't want to buy that thing? And I'm like, how did you, how did that happen? How did you get in my inbox? I didn't submit anything to you. It's kind of creepy.

[Nate Bartram]

That is interesting. I haven't heard that one. Yeah, I would say cookies would probably be the primary offender there. I'd have to do some digging. I'm not sure, but it's probably because.

[Joel]

I have an account there and I'm logged in and I'm looking at something that must be it. Maybe it's not fully anonymous. It's a site I've done business at before and so they know it's me coming back. But I'm sure that's not. I can't imagine how that'd be possible at a website that I've never spent a dollar at before or never created an account at. You, you kind of just briefly mentioned how much you loathe Amazon and Yeah, I'm curious. You kind of would love for people to use Amazon a lot less, I think, myself included from. I think most people. It's just this knee jerk response. It's like, I think I might need that thing. One click buy, it's there the next day or two days later. And so people have just gotten used to spending money when they otherwise would have come up with a more creative solution in years past. So what's your reason for getting people off the Amazon train?

[Nate Bartram]

Oh, gosh, there's a lot of them and some of them are kind of political. So I don't want to go too deep into that because I know you guys aren't really a super political podcast, but there's a just to kind of very briefly brush over this and I do have a recent blog post about this. I republish it every time Prime Week rolls around. They have teamed up with police to give police access to ring doorbell footage. So if I'm just walking past somebody's house, police can see me. Even if I'm not on a list, I'm not suspected of anything.

[Joel]

You look like a threat to me, Nate. That's all I'm going to say. I think you belong behind bars.

[Nate Bartram]

It's the tattoos. But yeah, there's also, they, they're just very anti worker. Like workers in. I believe this was in Alabama. Workers tried to unionize and Amazon tried to get a camera above the ballot box to ensure election integrity. And definitely not to know who voted yes and no.

[Joel]

Of course not.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, of course they would never. It's just they just do a lot of really shady things like that. And you could also make the argument that they, they're crushing out a lot of smaller businesses and making competition harder. So I think there's a lot of reasons to, to avoid them just from the idea of like centralization and trying to ensure healthy competition. And like you said, I want to make it clear that I understand sometimes you need to buy on Amazon. Like I buy things from there about two or three times a year. But like you said, what I want people to avoid is the knee jerk reaction of like, oh, I need something one click buy. When you know, maybe you could run down to your local store and buy it and sometimes that's even cheaper and you get it faster. And yeah, so it's just kind of challenging that, that instinct of going straight to Amazon I think would benefit a lot of people.

[Joel]

I'm curious about the ads that we see online. They're highly tailored now, right? Matt's talked about seeing Instagram ads online for stuff that just like you're shocked. How, how does it know me so well? It knows me better than like my wife never would have bought this awesome gift for me. She doesn' that well. And so yeah, when it comes to the ads we're seeing, is that all just based on places we're stopping? Is there a way that's also kind of creepy for a lot of people? Is there a way to. Is it ad blockers? What's the, what's the way to kind of make sure that ads aren't, you know, so incredibly detailed as, as they Serve up, you know, before our eyeballs in a way that feels uncomfortable or maybe that we're giving away too much information.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, that's a great question. There is. The answer is there's a lot of ways that they track you. And fortunately that also means there's a lot of ways you can fight back. So ad blockers are a good one. My personal favorite is called Ublock Origin. I do mention that one on my website. And that one blocks more than just ads. It also blocks a lot of common trackers like Google Analytics and stuff like that, which I know is for the people who have a website. I know that's not great because that does damage your analytics, but unfortunately that's kind of the situation. I guess there's also better for the.

[Joel]

Individual and that's kind of who we're speaking to. Right.

[Nate Bartram]

Well, and I guess I will say on that note, if you're. You can choose to whitelist certain sites. So if you're say you're on YouTube and you're like, well, I want to support the creators, you can tell UBlock origin not to work on YouTube and see the ads. But there's also apps, especially apps with ads in them. Ads. Ironically, ads are right now, to my knowledge, like the biggest privacy invasion that are feeding its own ecosystem because they use a system called real time bidding, which again, that's a whole thing. But basically every time you see an ad, there is a within nanoseconds there is an auction that goes on and your information is sent out to everyone who might be interested in that ad space. So even if they don't purchase the ad, they still basically get a copy of all your data. So one of the things I tell people is just remove as many apps as you can on your phone, things that you don't use very often. And this can have like, you know, personal finance benefits. We just talked about Amazon. If you take the Amazon app off your phone, you're not as likely to just instinctually open it and click one click. Buy. Yeah, and you're also getting that privacy benefit. Things like Reddit. You know, Reddit is littered with ads. Taking those things off your phone will reduce the amount of data that's getting sent back to advertisers.

[Joel]

So it's like a big win just to take some of those apps that you're man, even just think about the habitual nature of like. Yet you press your finger to the thing because you know exactly where it is on your screen. Just taking it off there. You're gonna like hit that space and you're like, what's happening now? Like, yeah, there's. There is something to the habitual nature, but then also to protecting your privacy, protecting your finances. That taking those apps off the phone can be. It can. It can be a serious move to help on all those fronts. All right, I want to get to more with you, Nate. In particular, you're not a fan of smart TVs, so. But I'm guessing most of the population out there has one, loves it, so let's. We'll throw you in the fire on that one in just a second with the audience. We'll be right back.

[Matt]

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[Joel]

Yeah.

[Matt]

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[Joel]

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Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money. Use code how to [e-mail] in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monimal money.com with code how to Money all right, we're back. Still talking with Nate Bartram about defending your digital life and privacy and all of that stuff. And there's just a lot more to get to. Nate, I'm not sure if you've read the book. One of my favorite books of like kind of on this topic was Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

[Nate Bartram]

Yes, that's a great book. I love it.

[Joel]

So good. And I just love the way he thinks about just the way we have include technology in our lives. I think for a lot of people it's just this assumption that more technology is good and let's adopt everything that comes out and then maybe at some point we'll discard it. But he's very intentional from the get go about what he Imports. And then. And. And what? He. And he, like, has never opened a social media account in his life. I don't think so.

[Nate Bartram]

He's.

[Joel]

He's one of those rare birds. But, yeah, you. You're not just doing it for productivity reasons or for attention reasons, which seem to be kind of Cal's main motivation. Like, hey, I'm going to keep this digital minimalism going because I realize it's going to distract me from those other things I want to accomplish. So why do you fall into that camp?

[Nate Bartram]

I'm glad you brought that up. The thing I've noticed about privacy, and for the record, I will admit maybe this is a bias. Like you say, like, when you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

[Joel]

Yeah.

[Nate Bartram]

But the more I do the privacy thing, the more I notice that there are all of these, like, peripheral benefits, that maybe privacy isn't, like, central to that, but there are little things. So, I mean, really, there's a lot of them. Like, for example, I'm. Thankfully, I am not visually impaired, but I'm told that advertising is chaos for, like, visually impaired people, like screen readers. And so ad blockers can, like, make the screen a lot cleaner. That's like an example of a peripheral benefit for people. And I think I've noticed since getting into privacy that it really does clear up a lot of bandwidth. You know, a lot of the. The flash in the pan news stories and the memes, the ones that don't really matter, that they're kind of out of the news cycle within a couple of days. I tend to miss a lot of those. And it just frees up a lot of bandwidth. I tend to miss a lot of, not to sound like arrogant or anything, but just a lot of petty little drama that happens on social media. I found a lot of my interactions with people have gotten a lot more meaningful, even if they're the same interactions. Like, you know, my. My sister might send me a photo of my knee or, excuse me, a photo of my nephew. And, you know, it's the same photo she might post on Facebook. But the fact that she took time out of her day to send it directly to me, like, really feels a lot more meaningful. I feel like there's just so many peripheral benefits. There's the peace of mind. There's just more mental bandwidth for not looking at ads, having that healthier relationship with technology. When I get frustrated, I can just turn off my computer and walk away, and I'm disconnected.

[Joel]

And I want to say there was you a study that just dropped, like, last week or something about just how our brains have become rewired in short order from our use of social media. And it is that we, we all know this intuitively as individuals and as a society. When you look around, you're like, what are people doing when they get a down moment? Boom, the phone. Right, Boom. The earbuds, whatever. And so, yeah, I think our attention spans truly have plummeted and it impacts our relationships, it impacts a whole bunch of things in our lives. The downstream effects are real. So with that in mind, I'm curious. I mentioned the smart TV thing. How much you hate smart TVs, why do you hate them? What's the alternative for people who want to watch streaming content?

[Nate Bartram]

I don't, to be honest, I don't think I. Hate is a strong word.

[Joel]

Okay, all right. I put words in your mouth.

[Nate Bartram]

Sorry. No, you're good, you're good. I actually, I will admit I do have a smart TV because my wife enjoys streaming. I think my issue with a lot of smart devices in general is that we have so little control over them. You know, you can go into the settings. Okay, actually, this is a really good example. I was playing around with my smart TV and I noticed that in the menu, I could disagree to the terms of service, but guess what happens when I do?

[Joel]

They shut off the smart feature.

[Nate Bartram]

Exactly. It's not a smart TV anymore. So I can either agree to all of their terms of service wholesale, full stop, no argument, or I can just have a dumb tv, which is great if I want a dumb tv, but I don't. There's things we use that for.

[Joel]

I want to say, years ago, Vizio was recording people's viewing habits and they were selling the data on what people were watching.

[Nate Bartram]

I think a lot of people are still doing that, actually, a lot of manufacturers.

[Joel]

So that's one of those things where, again, it's a trade off. It's like, you better know that that's happening because it seems like it seems like, oh, well, great, I got this product and now I can watch whatever I want to watch at my fingertips, and it's super easy. But if you don't realize that part of that bargain is the fact that you are giving up the data on your viewing habits to Samsung or Vizio or whoever it is, then you're not making that choice with all the data on the table.

[Nate Bartram]

Exactly. And like you were saying earlier, that's, that's by design is they go out of their way to hide those things or they like to dress it up in really fancy. Like, if you check a privacy policy, a lot of the time they'll say, oh, we collect this data to make your experience better.

[Joel]

Yeah.

[Nate Bartram]

And what they really mean by that is targeted advertiser.

[Joel]

Yeah.

[Nate Bartram]

We're going to tailor the ads to you.

[Joel]

We're seeing it more, too, in the car space. Now, I'm curious how much you know or care about that. Like, and that's. I'm not going to say that this is my whole reason for driving old cars, but it makes me less inclined to upgrade my 06 Toyota when I realized that the new one is not only going to have more computerized parts that are more likely to break, it's going to be harder to repair newer vehicles, and they're just more expensive to buy and own. But then on top of that, when you think about the privacy concerns of newer cars, the fact that they're connected to the Internet wherever they go. Yeah, that seems like a plus. So you can listen. You can stream the new Taylor Swift album when it drops. Right. But then there's other. There's other things that come with that. With that bargain.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah. There's a reporter. Her name is Kashmir Hill. K A S H M I R. If you look her up, she's done several pieces, I believe, for New York Times that have kind of really brought this issue to the mainstream, which I'm really grateful for. I think you guys have actually mentioned her on one of your Friday flights, and it's. Yeah, it's really tough because on the one hand, for now, that is an option. You could drive an older car, which also saves you a lot of money, as you pointed out. But there's also. My last car was a 2010, and I don't want to say what. What model it was, but it was a very, very common model. Like, I just saw one the other day, still making these cars, and the last time I went into AutoZone, and I was like, hey, I need a headlight. And they're like, oh, we don't carry that anymore for a 2010.

[Joel]

It's too old.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, exactly. And I'm like, it's a headlight for a 2010. What do you mean?

[Joel]

In their defense, it was a Ferrari, Nate. We all know it.

[Nate Bartram]

I wish I made that kind of money. But, yeah, no, it's. It's. That's. That's the challenge we're gonna face as things go forward is maybe right now you can find vehicles, or maybe I could have ordered it online, but it's gonna become harder to find parts and it's gonna become more of a thing where you have to get creative or know somebody who's a mechanic. And. And it's. Unfortunately, I don't really have any good solutions in that space, and I don't think anybody does. There is a good organization called Privacy for Cars who is doing a lot of research into this and trying to lobby for better consumer rights. But I mean, right now it's, you know, again, like I said, companies do it on purpose. They want you to dig through pages and pages of legalese to find the email address, to email them and opt out. And of course, nobody has time for that. So. So it's a really difficult thing.

[Joel]

So what are you doing when you're signing up for something new? The terms of service, of course, are. I mean, it's laughable how long they are, how small the type is, and how 99.9 plus percent of people quickly use the scrolly thing on their mouse to jump to the bottom and click, okay, but what are we signing when we say yes, when we hit accept? And what is there a different tact we should take?

[Nate Bartram]

Good question. So there's a. There's another website called Terms of Service. Didn't read TOSDR for short. Kind of like the. What's the abbreviation? Tldr.

[Joel]

Tldr?

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah. They list a surprising number of websites and they explain the terms of service in plain English and like bullet points.

[Joel]

Okay.

[Nate Bartram]

I will be honest. I think some of the stuff that they cover is a little bit pedantic, but I do appreciate that they give you that level of information and that'll kind of tell you. And some of it is kind of common. Like, I'm not saying this makes it right, but a lot of websites like Instagram, for example, when you sign up for Instagram, they basically say, we can use your photos for anything. So if you see one of your photos in an Instagram ad, you don't get royalties because you sign that away with the terms of service. So that's a really good website for maybe helping to vet some of the terms of service and understand what you're signing away. In terms of alternatives, I mean, there's a few options there in. There's a really good website called alternative2alternative2.net and it is exactly what it says. Like you can type in Instagram and it'll give you all the different alternatives to Instagram and you can filter it by Android, iPhone, if it's free, if it's paid, all kinds of things. And they have all kinds of websites and services. So I would say maybe start with that because it really depends what you're talking about with these different services. But yeah, there's, honestly, there usually is a good alternative out there in my experience.

[Joel]

Okay, are you Apple or Android? I know, at least in the marketing, Apple seems to be better on the privacy front. How true is that? And which one do you prefer?

[Nate Bartram]

So I'm cheating. I use Android, but I'm using a custom version of Android that has had all the googly parts removed, or as many as possible, I should say. So Apple, if we're talking about normal Android, like the kind you would buy over the counter versus Apple, I would make the argument that Apple is more private and secure. But I also make the argument on my website that there are a lot of things you can do like changing the settings in the phone, replacing the stock apps with more privacy respecting apps. And I think if you do all of that and you practice, I call it good Internet hygiene. Like again, we talked about not keeping every app on your phone, being careful what links you click, the kind of basic stuff I think between all of that, the difference is really minimal at the end of the day. And so I think depending on how you use it, I mean if you get an iPhone and you download every sketchy app from the app store and you never change the settings, like I'm pretty sure I can make an Android much more private than that. But depending on how you use it, I think they can both be, I think they're both a good choice.

[Joel]

Apple seems to do a better job of prompting you to ask you questions about whether or not you want to share certain information on the reg with certain apps. But you're right, it's all about settings, the apps that you're using. And you can make either one of those phones incredibly intrusive, allowing people access to all sorts of data that you didn't intend to depending on how you use it. What about web browsers? We've already talked about email providers and ProtonMail being a good option. What about web browsers? And like Brave is typically recommended as one of those browsers that's better for, for people who care about their privacy. And then yeah, what. How much information are we giving away if we're using one of the stock or one of the more well known browsers?

[Nate Bartram]

So Chrome is definitely the worst. I'm sorry to all the Google fans out there. Chrome is missing a lot of basic privacy protections that other browsers have already implemented because it's run by an ad company. I've also heard that it uses a lot of device resources like some of the hardware, memory and stuff like that. Brave is my typical recommendation for most people because it's based on the same trying to figure out how to put this in a not super techy way. So the basic code of Chrome is open source. Anybody can use it and make their own version of Chrome and that's basically what Brave did. But they've added on all kinds of really cool on by default privacy preserving features that the average person would never even know is there. It also includes an ad blocker and a tracker blocker by default which is based on UBlock origin that I mentioned earlier. So Brave, I think for most people it's going to feel like Chrome. It's going to be able to use all the same extensions as Chrome. It's just going to work right out of the box. You don't need to mess with it a whole bunch. There is like a built in like cryptocurrency wallet that you can disable in the settings. So I just, I do want to be upfront about that. There is some stuff that most people don't have a use for. The other one that's commonly recommended is Firefox and Firefox is just, it's great as well. The only thing I would give with that is that one you do have to do a little bit more tinkering to get the same level of protection. Like you have to Go manually add UBlock origin and it's based on a different set of source codes. So they're, it's rare but you may find a couple of extensions that aren't really compatible. But either of those I think are going to be a huge step up from something like Chrome or Safari even.

[Joel]

Okay, I was thinking search engines like Google became the de facto word for doing a search for a reason.

[Nate Bartram]

Yes.

[Joel]

And yet there were other alternatives. DuckDuckGo being like what it seems like is the best for privacy. But now I'm thinking with, with, with AI op AI that you know, going to chat GPT has become more common for especially younger folks instead of using traditional search engines. So how do you think about your security when doing search on the web whether it's with an AI tool or with a, a service like DuckDuckGo or Google.

[Nate Bartram]

So there are a number of privacy preserving search engines which again I do list those on my website. I think they're under the like miscellaneous habits section. There's a few different search engines because like DuckDuckGo for example, they're technically really just a proxy of Bing. They're not building their own search engine, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's a couple other, like Start Page does the same thing with Google. There are some providers like Brave. Brave has their own search engine now and they're actually doing their own indexing. So you're not using, for the most part you're not using Google or Bing or anything. There's another one called Kagi. I think I'm pronouncing that wrong. It's Kagi. I think they give you like 100 free queries a month but otherwise it's a paid service. And a lot of those same providers actually are starting to offer alternatives to AI. So Brave has an AI summary in the search engine. They also have in the Brave browser their own AI called leo which you can use. Same thing. The free version has like a limited number of queries but there is a paid version if you get a lot of value out of that. And it's, it's kind of a proxying your queries back to mistral or chat GPT or whoever. DuckDuckGo also has one called Duck AI. Kagi has. I don't know if they have the actual LLM, but they do have the search summary like I just mentioned and I think you can even disable that one if you want to. So yeah, there's actually. And again on that note, I did actually, I think a couple weeks ago I added another section to the bottom of that same page where the search engines are about privacy preserving AI.

[Joel]

So okay, okay.

[Nate Bartram]

There's a, there's plenty of options out. There's a growing number of options out there for this kind of stuff.

[Joel]

Well, it seems like Brave is a good solution that kind of encompasses a few different places where your privacy is at risk. And with Brave it seems like a one stop solution for at least a few parts of that. I'm curious, what about protecting our credit? And Matt and I, we've talked about credit freezes on the show and how the credit lock products are inferior and they cost money and it's just a waste of your time and money to do that. Credit freeze, fortunately now federally is available to everyone for free. So what's your take on credit freeze? Is, is that good enough? Do we need additional services on the front? What are your thoughts?

[Nate Bartram]

So yeah, I smile every time you guys mentioned that because I agree 100% credit freezes are the way to go. They're free in America. There's no point in paying. I know it's relatively cheap. It's like 100 bucks a year or something. But there's no need to waste that money on something like Lifelock or whatever. If you want to add a little extra protection. I. There's. Oh, gosh, what do they call it? Fraud alerts. Is that what they call? Yeah, yeah. So the only drawback with fraud alerts is they do need to be renewed every year. I know you probably know this, but for listeners, they do need to be renewed every year. So set yourself a little reminder in your calendar. But the nice thing is you only need to place them with one agency and then they kind of pass it around to the others. So that the way I describe it. And these do work. I actually have a quick story about this. I call it 2fa for your credit, two factor authentication. Because even if you unfreeze your credit. And two stories, now that I think about it. So a few years ago, we went to buy a car. We unfroze my credit, we went to the dealership, and while I was sitting in. I know I took out a loan. I know that's not great. But while I was sitting in the dealership, my phone rang. And when I answered it, they were like, hey, this is so and so from, you know, Experian or whoever. We're just making sure this is a legitimate credit poll. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm sitting in the dealership right now. Like, please do it. I really appreciate the call. And then about a year or two ago, I had the exact opposite where I was at work and my phone rang and I picked it up and they're like, hey, somebody's trying to unfreeze your credit. And I'm like, nope, not me. Don't do that. So it's really effective. I highly recommend that it's less like.

[Joel]

Lockdown protectionary, which is what the credit freeze is, but it's more like a heads up, which can help prevent you getting into trouble also.

[Nate Bartram]

Exactly.

[Joel]

Yeah, it's super awesome. Okay. Love it. I'm curious. You mentioned crypto recently. The crypto wallet and the Brave browser. What are your thoughts on crypto? And is that especially as crypto becomes more mainstream, is that a way to protect yourself when, let's say you're considering it not just as. And that's what makes crypto so hard to talk about sometimes is like, it's a speculative asset, but it's also a potential way to buy things. So it just depends on what websites accept it. And it is becoming more common. So what Are your thoughts on that as a privacy mechanism using cryptocurrency to, to facilitate some of your transactions as a privacy mechanism?

[Nate Bartram]

I think the only real comment I have is I want people to know that Bitcoin is not anonymous. That's. You typically hear those words together like the anonymous cryptocurrency bitcoin. Bitcoin by default does not have a name attached to the wallet. However, most people buy Bitcoin through an exchange such as Coinbase or crypto.com, and when you do that you have to, you have to submit ID for the whole anti money laundering they call them KYC or know your customer laws. And once you do that, Bitcoin is very easily traced. So once you buy Bitcoin that is attached to you and they can very. There's a company called Chain Analysis. This is their whole job. They can trace where all that Bitcoin goes and where you spend it. And it's. It can be anonymized, but it's incredibly difficult to do. There are other cryptocurrencies like Monero or zcash that are privacy by default or more privacy respecting. Monero is my personal favorite. The thing I like about Monero specifically is that it's also a lot faster. I've tried to buy things with Bitcoin before and I end up sitting there for like, you know, 20 minutes waiting for the transaction to go through. Whereas with Monero it's like you know, 5 or 10. I actually just renewed one of my VPN subscriptions with Monero kind of just to see how to do it. I don't know. Honestly is, it's. It's something I don't really have strong opinions about. I think it's something that. But if you're interested in it and you're willing to dive into it, I don't have any issues with it. Definitely be aware that it is not anonymous like I just said and don't. I wouldn't recommend going all in on cryptocurrency by any means, but I think if it's something you want to dabble in, I think it's a really cool technology and it's certainly fun, I guess.

[Joel]

All right, a few more questions to get to with you, Nate and I want to specifically kind of get back to that spectrum question and talk about maybe low hanging fruit, maybe the first things that people should tackle on this privacy list. We'll talk about that right after this.

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[Joel]

We're back with Nate Bartram talking about your digital life. And Nate, I mentioned low hanging fruit. Just what when you're talking and we talked about the spectrum thing and hey there's trade offs but if you're like younger sister came to you now I don't even know if you have one but she's like 18 and she's embarked, she's going to college and she's like from the get go like what, what are like the three to five things I should be doing that are going to have the most bang for my buck. Talking about the 80 20, what is that 20% of things that's going to have the 80% impact. What few things would you put on that to do list?

[Nate Bartram]

I think first and foremost would be passwords. I think it's something that most of us agree like I use the same password everywhere or you know, we know we can do better.

[Joel]

And is that also by the way because if one password gets hacked and you're using that password on 100 websites that like your whole digital life could be upended.

[Nate Bartram]

So yes, actually there is an attack. It's called credential stuffing which is where the attackers get your username and password and they just plug it into every website and see where you have an account. So they'll check Amazon, they'll check Netflix, they'll check Gmail if it's a Gmail username. And this does happen in 2019, Facebook was caught storing passwords in plain text, which is basically like your password in a readable format was stored on their servers, which should never ever, ever, ever happen ever. But especially not for a company as big as Facebook. Like I can't stress that enough. Yeah we've had a number of serious data breaches happen because of credential stuffing. And one of the examples I like to give people is your email. If I can get into your email, I can issue password resets all day and I can get into everything else.

[Joel]

On that front then is is there you talked about two factor authentication just a little bit when it comes to banks and investment sites. How important is that and is the email the best way to go or there now with certain phones. Right. That's like it'll only the app will Only open if with facial facial recognition. So what's, what's the best way to go about that?

[Nate Bartram]

I think so the one you want to try to avoid is the text message where they text you a code. If at all possible, you should try to avoid that. But if that's all they offer, then, I mean, it's better than nothing when it comes to the phones. I would argue that it really depends because, for example, right now we're seeing this thing called passkeys, which I'm sure you've heard about, which I do highly recommend. But right now there's the issue of portability. It's really hard to export your passkeys. And so let's say you guys are listening to this and you say, okay, cool, I want to go get a password manager. If you have all your passkeys in your Android phone or your iPhone, it might be possible. I'm not sure. I haven't checked in in a while, but I know when they first came out, there were no plans to be able to export your passkeys and move them to another password manager. So now you're locked into that phone. So if you decide one day, well, I think I'm going to switch to whatever the other phone is, Android or iPhone. You may have to, like, disable all those passkeys and recreate them all over again.

[Joel]

Okay.

[Nate Bartram]

But that depends. If your bank is doing it through their app, you probably won't have that problem. But if it's like, based on your phone, that's something to consider. But at the same time, if you know that you're always going to be an iPhone person, then, I mean, that's a pretty good level of security, I would argue.

[Joel]

Okay, going back to that list for your sister. Sorry, I diverted us a little bit. No, you're good. What else would you say? So, passwords.

[Nate Bartram]

So password managers. And closely related to that is the two factor. You mentioned going to the website settings or the app settings and seeing if they offer two factor. Definitely switching browsers. I mentioned, like, switching to Brave or something like that. And the thing about a lot of these privacy tools is there's things that they seem like a lot of work, but they're not. So, like, for example, switching to Brave, when you download Brave and you install it, and this is true of Firefox as well. For the record, when you're setting it up, it asks you, hey, do you want to import all your bookmarks and your, your history and your. All that stuff from your old browser? So it's really not that hard to switch. It just sounds like it's hard. But then there's things like switching to a password manager. Ideally, when you make that switch, you should also be upgrading your passwords to be unique and secure. And so that might take weeks or months to kind of go through those. So there's. There's kind of a sliding scale there of how difficult some of these things are. But password managers, browsers. I think we mentioned removing apps off your phone, checking the settings, making sure that the settings are, you know, you've got the two factor enabled. You're not. Your profile's not public or something. Real quick. Actually, Venmo, I think you guys have mentioned this on Friday flight, but Venmo by default has all your transactions public, which may not be a huge deal. But also.

[Joel]

Maybe it's weird.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, it's definitely weird.

[Joel]

When I go in there and I'm like, why is this social media for who we're sending money to? Like, this makes. That makes no sense. And I. Yeah.

[Nate Bartram]

And people put little inside jokes on the memo and just.

[Joel]

Yeah, I don't want people seeing that about me.

[Nate Bartram]

Exactly. So just checking and knowing what are your options and what data is being shared and can you do anything about it? I think those would probably be my main things. But then there's also things we mentioned, email aliasing, encrypted email, all that kind of stuff. That's all on the website, for sure.

[Joel]

Is there anything else specifically on the personal finance front? You're a personal finance nerd. You also are a data and privacy nerd. Those things. And sorry to refer to you as a nerd. Include myself in that category, though. But with those things overlap. Is there anything specifically in the personal finance space where. Because you're talking to an audience who probably overlaps with us, at least on one of those things. Right. What are the biggest privacy moves to make when it comes to protecting our money?

[Nate Bartram]

We already mentioned freezing your credit. I think that's probably the biggest thing for most people, especially the fraud alert is an extra layer of protection that takes a couple minutes. Definitely the mass credit card thing or paying in cash whenever possible. And I think there's also something to be said for just because I know that kind of contradicts some of the advice you guys give about, like, using credit cards. And I think credit cards are a good way to go too, because of the protections you've mentioned and the fact that, like, if somebody maxes out your credit card, you still have your debit account, you know, as opposed to if somebody maxes out your debit card, you're up a creek.

[Joel]

Yeah. I mean, they're just fewer federal protections if someone abuses your debit card than if they abuse your credit card.

[Nate Bartram]

Exactly. But I think, yeah, there's a lot of, like I said, there's a lot of peripheral things that overlap like the, the ads and the ad blocking and the tracker blocking really helps with reducing targeted ads. And something we actually haven't mentioned that viewers should definitely look up when they get a minute is this concept of surveillance pricing, which I'm not sure how prevalent it is, but I know for sure Target is doing it where basically they will use your data to try and tailor the price to you.

[Joel]

You.

[Nate Bartram]

And of course that means they're going to try and get the most amount out of you. And one example they, that I read a story about, I believe from the markup is if you go to a Target parking lot and you check their website, the price on the item is going to be a little bit higher than if you checked it at home. Because their reasoning is you're already in the parking lot, you're probably not going to drive somewhere else, so they may as well charge you a little bit more interesting.

[Joel]

So, yeah, that's when it comes to then, hey, is your location data sharing with that app on or not? And, and you're right. This really is a new dynamic pricing has been around for a while, but even that it's like, hey, Nate and Joel get offered the same price when we're looking at a flight to Phoenix on Tuesday at 10:00am but it might change for both of us. Tuesday at 8pm but that's dynamic pricing. But now there's all this talk of more surveillance pricing where it's tailored to your search habits and specific information that retailers know about you, which opens up another can of worms. And I think that probably makes some of this privacy stuff even more important as we move forward into a world where our data is being used against us, is being wielded in new ways that we hadn't even suspected.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, just a lot of the privacy stuff can be used to help cut down on that data that they can then use for this kind of surveillance pricing. Or even just a lot of financial decisions now are not just taking into account your credit score, but a lot of other data as well. There's another story that I list on my website where I believe it was American Express lowered somebody's credit limit because he shops at Walmart a lot. And typically people who shop at Walmart are Not always great about repaying their. Their loans, which is ridiculous. Right. Because it's like you would shop at Walmart to save money. They're inexpensive.

[Joel]

Yeah.

[Nate Bartram]

So it's. It's almost like penalizing people for having, you know, thrifty habits.

[Joel]

And it's based on too much surveillance.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, exactly. So. But yeah, I mean, as far as the staples, I think, like I said, the password managers, freezing credit, those are things that will come in immediately. Helpful. Real quick story. I bought a concert ticket one time, and then about six months later, I got the email that they're like, oh, no, we had a data breach. And I'm like, well, I used a privacy.com card, so I'll just go shut off that card now. I don't care if my data was stolen.

[Joel]

Yeah, yeah. Just a simple way to protect yourself on the front end so that you're not dealing with cleaning up the mess on the back end, which is time and annoyance for sure. So, Nate, thanks so much for joining. Joining us today on the show. Where can how to money crowd find out more about you and what you're up to?

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, so like you mentioned, my website is thenew oil.org like data is the new oil. That's where the phrase comes from. The website is kind of the main focus. I do some blogging. I do a weekly current events podcast called Surveillance Report. If anybody, you know, it's podcast. So if anybody wants to listen to that. But definitely check it out. If anybody has any questions, shoot me an email. I try to respond to them as. As best I can. And especially if you see any room for improvement on the website, like, I don't claim to be perfect, so if something isn't making sense or you have any questions, that that means there's room for improvement. And I'm definitely open to that feedback.

[Joel]

Awesome. Nate, thanks so much for joining me today, man. Appreciate it.

[Nate Bartram]

Yeah, thank you for having me.

[Joel]

All right. Always nice for a novice like me to learn more about a subject that I don't feel well versed in. And I think Nate did a good job covering a lot of helpful news. You can use information about how to protect your privacy online. I think my big takeaway from that conversation was kind of really what we were talking about at the end. And I haven't really known how to think about in some ways, some of the AI persuaded pricing and the surveillance pricing that seems to be becoming more common. And then when companies are accused of it, they run away with their hands up saying, no, no, no. That's not what we were doing. What are you talking about? I'm referring to Delta specifically in this case where they're like AI pricing. No, we're not doing that. But I think the tools at the disposal of companies to surveil us and then use that data against us when it comes to what they charge us for things is becoming more pervasive and it's just improving. So when it comes to protecting our data, I think the stakes are only ramping up. Not just as far as like scams, people breaking into our accounts if we don't have enough protections, but in as far as literally what we pay for things. So I think it's becoming more important to at least do the 20% that's going to give the 80% impact. Some of the things that Nate mentioned today, and I think he's wise to say you don't have to because it's going to be hard to persuade people to go 100% all in privacy to the max. But I think it should be fairly easy to persuade us to just change our browser, which can have a big impact or just use a password protector. Like a couple of these things can have high impact. And it's kind of one of those things where if you're being chased by a lion and your friends next to you, you don't have to outrun the lion, you have to outrun your best friend. And sorry Matt, if that means you get mauled by the lion in this scenario, but I think it's similar to that right, where we don't have to be a million percent buttoned up on privacy. But if we can do a few of these things, not only will it help make us more secure, I think it'll help save us money by being less just influenced by technology in general, less enamored with our screens, but that digital minimalism kind of thing. But at the same time we'll also just be more secure than the average person out there, which means we're less likely to experience the brunt of the full time or part time job that can exist if our privacy is breached. So I hope this episode was helpful to you. Please share it with a friend if you think it would be helpful to them. And thanks as always for listening. There's more money saving information up on the [e-mail] until next time. Best friend Out.

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