My Cybersecurity Expert - Alex Stamos

Summary

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Tosh Show – “My Cybersecurity Expert – Alex Stamos”

Host: Daniel Tosh
Guest: Alex Stamos (Former CSO of Yahoo and Facebook, Stanford lecturer, cybersecurity expert)
Date: September 16, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Daniel Tosh sits down with renowned cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos, delving into the modern realities of digital security, hacking, the power struggles in global cyber warfare, digital privacy, AI’s disruptive force, and parenting in the tech age. The conversation weaves Tosh’s irreverent comedic style with Stamos’s insights, producing a fast-paced, educational, and entertaining discussion that unpacks the very real—and sometimes alarming—issues at the intersection of technology and everyday life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing Alex Stamos & His Background

• Stanford Position:

  • Alex clarifies he’s a “fake professor,” i.e., a lecturer (“They get really pissed if I call myself a professor,” [12:31]).
  • He teaches two classes, one in the fall and one in the spring ([12:52]).

• Upbringing & Family:

  • Grew up in Sacramento, the “Midwest of California”; family roots are Greek, stemming from farming in the Central Valley to moving up the socioeconomic ladder thanks to the GI Bill ([14:35–15:30]).
  • Got into computers early with a Commodore 64 and a 300 baud modem at age eight ([15:38]).

2. Early Hacker Culture vs. Today’s Cybercrime

• The Innocence Is Gone:

  • “Back in those days, hacking was…much more innocent… you couldn’t get into a lot of trouble in the 80s and early 90s.” ([16:25])
  • Early hacking was about removing copy protection to play video games, compared to today’s ransomware and organized cybercrime ([16:25–16:50]).

• Shift to Organized Crime:

  • Modern teenage hackers can end up working for crime syndicates, “knocking over MGM Grand…stealing tens of millions of dollars” ([16:52]).
  • Most cybercrime actors targeting the US operate from Russia, China, or countries that prevent extradition ([17:18]).

3. U.S.-China/Russia Cyberwar & Geopolitics

• Fragile Infrastructure:

  • Stamos: “It’s quite possible. The Chinese have a huge advantage over us than we do over them… There’s a lot of evidence of the Chinese planting backdoors in our infrastructure” ([17:32]).

• How Nation-States Hack:

  • “The people who hack on behalf of the United States are socialists, and the people who hack on behalf of China and Russia are capitalists.” ([18:10])
  • In Russia and China, hackers can profit directly and practice constantly; US hackers are direct government employees ([18:11–19:31]).

• On Cyber Ransom:

  • Ransomware attacks are nearly constant; hackers often ransom companies for exactly what their insurance will pay ([20:02–20:41]).

Quote:
“Often what they’re asking for is how much you’re insured for... ‘Pay us. You have 5 million of insurance. Just pay us the insured amount.’”
—Alex Stamos ([20:15])

4. Consumer Digital Security & Privacy

• Cookies, Tracking & Ad Targeting:

  • Stamos suggests if you care about privacy, use ad blockers; Tosh, typically, “enjoys seeing what they think I might like” but never clicks ads ([20:52–21:34]).
  • “Mark Zuckerberg does not own, like an eighth of Kauai, because nobody clicks on Instagram ads.” ([21:46])

• On Zuckerberg’s Transformation:

  • “Strongly prefer the old Mark. The one I used to know... thoughtful and smart and a really good dad... This new one, I do not know what’s going on.” ([21:56])

5. 2016 Election – Russian Interference & Facebook’s Role

• Acknowledges Missed Cues:

  • Stamos expresses some responsibility for not catching Russian manipulation on Facebook in real time, but pushes back on the idea that “some ads on Facebook is why Trump won” ([22:32–22:57]).
  • “It is a massive simplification to say the Russians are the reason Donald Trump was elected.” ([22:32])

• Hacking vs. Social Manipulation:

  • Russians hacked and leaked Democratic emails, contributing to the “but her emails” scandal ([23:13–25:37]).
  • Interference was more about “stirring up controversy…to get people to fight each other” than just supporting Trump ([23:14]).

6. NSA Mass Surveillance & Edward Snowden

• How It Worked:
  • NSA considered data “not collected” unless a human looked at it—legal backdoor to mass surveillance ([28:02–28:59]).
  • Snowden’s leak had lasting impact: “I have very mixed feelings about what he revealed because there are abuses he revealed the NSA should not have been doing, but he also dumped a bunch of stuff...that was just...the NSA spying on Russia and China because they spy on us.” ([27:27])

7. The State of U.S. Cybersecurity (2025)

• A Decline in Security:
  • Due to political purges and the loss of seasoned experts at CISA, NSA, and FBI, “there’s basically nobody minding the store...we’re on our own again” ([29:04–30:06]).

8. Conspiracy Theories, Competence, and Government

• Conspiracies Overrate Competence:

  • “What’s compelling about conspiracy theories is like, oh, there’s secretly people in charge...Every time I’ve gone actually into the room, I’m like, oh shit. These people have no idea what they’re doing.” ([30:14–30:45])
  • The real “scandal” is often out in the open.

• AI’s ‘Liar’s Dividend’:

  • “If the Access Hollywood tape happened right now, people would just say, ‘That’s not me. That’s AI.’” ([31:45])

9. AI and Code—Promise & Danger

• New Paradigm in Programming:

  • AI tools revolutionize code writing—now engineers act as managers, delegating to several AIs at once ([32:08–33:13]).
  • “Vibe coding” lets non-programmers build full sites with AI, but brings major security risks ([32:01–33:41]).

• On Bitcoin & Ransomware:

  • “If people are transferring bitcoin, the number one use is to pay ransoms. Bitcoin has caused a huge amount of human suffering.” ([34:13])
  • Owning Bitcoin openly makes you a target for criminal kidnapping ([34:29]).

10. Practical Security Advice for Regular People

• Best Devices:

  • Apple products are highly secure; Pixel phones are best among Android devices; for web-only users, a Chromebook is most secure ([35:01–35:33]).

• Home Security Cameras:

  • “Buy...from legit companies...Ring is good, Nest cameras are good...Don’t use super cheap Chinese/Taiwanese cameras with default passwords” ([35:38–36:14]).

• Password Managers > VPNs/LifeLock:

  • “LifeLock is bullshit...The number one thing that people can do for themselves is use a password manager” ([36:19–37:25]).
  • Key risk: reusing the same password, especially for your main email account.

Quote:
“If you use your Gmail…as a password somewhere else…they can take over your entire life and then you’re toast.”
—Alex Stamos ([36:54])

11. AI, Social Impacts & Parenting in a Digital World

• AI Relationships:

  • Not just science fiction—people now routinely forge relationships with AI chatbots, which isn’t always healthy ([38:10–39:24]).
  • Model cards exist for AI risk assessments now, but they struggle to predict these emergent effects ([38:23]).

• Kids and Tech Boundaries:

  • Stamos: “Trust but verify” is the ethos—kids can have phones, but spot checks are a must ([40:01–41:22]).
  • Emphasizes the importance of children knowing they can come to their parents about online problems—predators systematically isolate kids from adults ([41:38–42:37]).

• States of Social Media:

  • Teens are shifting from public social media to private messaging—an overall positive trend ([43:55–44:20]).

• Daniel’s Bribery Parenting Plan:

  • Tosh jokes about denying kids a phone and handing them money at 22 for compliance; Stamos: “You should write a paper and get a PhD in child psych. It’s the ultimate marshmallow test.” ([44:20–44:58])

12. Sports & Hacker Stereotypes

• Hacker Mythbusting:

  • Today’s hackers are highly motivated by money and status—more likely to flaunt on Instagram with a Maserati than hide in their basement ([50:56–51:22]).
  • Capture the Flag (CTF) and competitive hacking teams now exist at both high school and college levels ([52:13–52:46]).

• Alex’s Unlikely Career Transition:

  • Now works at Corridor (founded by his former star students), a company focused on making AI-generated code safe ([52:46–53:52]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

On How Easy It Is To Get Personal Info:

• Alex Stamos: “Extremely easy, unfortunately.” ([13:58])

On Whether the NSA Reads Everything:

• Daniel Tosh: “That’s a hard yes.” ([28:00])

On Facebook’s Role in 2016 Election:

• Daniel Tosh: “Do you take any responsibility for allowing the Russians to manipulate that election?”
• Alex Stamos: “I do take some responsibility…But I also think there’s this…super reductionist idea…that some ads on Facebook is why Trump won.” ([22:26–25:59])

On AI’s Impact on Truth:

• Alex Stamos: “People call it the liar’s dividend. Real videos... people just say, ‘That’s not me, that’s AI.’” ([31:45])

On Parental Controls:

• Alex Stamos: “Trust but verify. The rule: you have to have the code to your kids’ phones…you have to do spot checks.” ([40:01–41:22])

On the State of U.S. Cyber Defense:

• Alex Stamos: “We’re on our own again. Like, the US Government will not be there to help us. That’s the expectation among people in private industry.” ([30:06])

On Hackers’ Motivation:

• Alex Stamos: “A ton of people who do malicious hacking these days…just financially motivated…They are buying Maseratis, they have designer drug problems…It is not like it used to be.” ([50:56])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• NSA’s Collection (27:54–29:04)
• US-China/Russia Cyber War (17:27–19:31)
• Hacking, Ransomware & Insurance (20:02–20:41)
• 2016 Election Interference (22:21–25:59)
• AI’s Liar’s Dividend (31:41–32:01)
• Password Manager Advice (36:19–37:48)
• Parenting and Tech Boundaries (40:01–43:55)
• Hacker Stereotypes and Today’s Reality (50:56–51:22)
• Competitive Hacking as a Sport (52:13–52:46)
• Alex’s Work at Corridor (52:46–53:52)

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Tone & Style

• Tosh: Unfiltered, irreverent, self-deprecating, never missing a chance for a joke at his own or others’ expense.
• Stamos: Good-humored, clear, direct, with a reassuring honesty about what’s actually true and worrisome.

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Memorable Moments

• Daniel on Parenting:
  • “Maybe we become best friends. Does the NSA read everything I send to everyone?” ([01:15])
• Alex on Competency & Conspiracies:
  • “Whenever I get into a corporate boardroom or… government folks…You’re always like, oh man. These are just like normal people who don’t know what they’re doing.” ([30:14])
• Daniel on Risk:
  • “If I own none...Don’t kidnap me. And no one’s going to pay either.” ([35:01])
• Alex, on Gifted RFID Wallet:
  • “Yeah, it’s a wallet that protects your credit cards from being scanned.” ([45:23])
• Stamos on Hacker Image:
  • “You can letter in hacking. Colleges have teams...It’s so much better than it used to be.” ([52:13–52:46])
• Daniel, on Parenting with Bribery:
  • “How about this: You get no phone, you do everything that I say...then...I’ll give you a bunch of money when you’re 22.” ([44:20])

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Summary in a Nutshell

This episode blends Daniel Tosh’s comedic irreverence with Alex Stamos’s expert perspective to shed light on the true state of cybersecurity, privacy, and digital parenting in the 2020s. From the real threats of digital espionage and ransomware, to the best (and worst) ways to protect yourself online, the duo traverse both the humorous and the harrowing, offering accessible advice and clear-eyed context. Stamos’s key advice: use a password manager, don’t trust conspiracy theories, assume nothing online is private, and keep a constant, honest dialogue with your kids about digital risks.

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For anyone who worries about getting hacked, wonders what really happened in 2016, or just wants to survive digital life today—this episode is a must-listen.

Transcript

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[Daniel Tosh]

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[Alex Stamos]

Uh, I don't know.

[Daniel Tosh]

That's a. That's a hard. Yes.

[Alex Stamos]

Conspiracy. So.

[Daniel Tosh]

Posh show. Posh show. Hey, guys, it's me, your friendly neighborhood podcast host, Daniel Tosh. Welcome to Tosh show.

[Alex Stamos]

Never seen it come on like that before.

[Daniel Tosh]

You never seen a switch on. Oh, that's cool. Watch this, watch this.

[Alex Stamos]

What is happening?

[Daniel Tosh]

Watch this, watch this. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? That is magic. That's Lipson. That's a little bit of Lipson. Lipson. Yeah. They doing us right? Hey, Eddie, this will affect you.

[Alex Stamos]

Oh, man.

[Daniel Tosh]

I need to borrow your driveway in Tahoe. Okay, thank you. That's why Eddie's a good friend. Doesn't ask why, just says, okay. Yeah, you need to use my driveway. Fine. All right. I haven't even told him what to do. I'm gonna stick a storage unit and two cars in there for a year. Hey, no, I'm not joking. I'm selling my property in Tahoe. But don't fear, okay? Because I have land in Tahoe that we are building a home on. You and me. No, me and the missus. We're going to build another home. But to do that, I'M being forced against my will by my wife to sell our current property, which is sad because we've lived there for many years. And it's where our children, when they think Christmas, they think that house. When they think summer in Tahoe, they think that house. And that's all coming to an end, thanks to my wife's constant need to downsize. Breaks my heart. Now you say, well, isn't the property that you're building much bigger than that? Yes. Not really downsizing, is it? Well, I just think it's great that one of our listeners can buy my home. And I'm leaving cool stuff there. I told them I'm gonna leave the 100 foot slip and slide. Okay, that tarp's there. I'll help you set it up. The first time you use it, I'll show you how you have to block at the bottom to make sure kids don't go flying into the lake. You say, oh, flying to the lake, that's okay. Now, there's some rocks down there you want to avoid. So you stand down there with a large inflatable and you just got to lean into it because they come in hot. But, yeah, a lot of good memories. But I'm excited to pass those memories on to somebody else and then just come by and be like, hey, I used to live here. You ever go back to your own old house in Omaha?

[Alex Stamos]

I've gone back by where we grew up. Never knocked on the door.

[Daniel Tosh]

St. Louis, I did it.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah.

[Daniel Tosh]

I drove up to a childhood house that we had when I was in the fifth and sixth grade, and I knocked on the door and went inside. Oh, amazing. And I remember going, wow, it seems so small. But as a child, I thought it was the biggest house we'd ever owned because it was two stories. I was like, oh, we have a two story house. Doesn't matter. Hey, this time of the year, they do the Malibu Chili Cook Off. That's the name of it. They have a chili contest. That part of it doesn't mean anything to me. But they have a huge fair. It's nice because I don't take my kids to Disney or any of those things that are way too crowded and would give me diarrhea. But this is my own backyard and it's just cool. Fair for, you know, three days. But this year is the first year they're not doing it because of the wildfires. They've decided the people that put it on, they were just. All their resources were to donate money to victims of the wildfire. Okay. That's good. But you kind of, you kind of ruined my kids tradition. Well, out of nowhere, I see this janky carnival setup on the other side of the canyon here. And I'm like, oh, in Agora. And I'm like, I don't like going over there. It's too hot. If it's 70 in Malibu, it's 94 there. Whatever. They've got a carnival set up in a parking lot. And I'm like, kids, we're doing it. I surprise them, we drive over the hill, they see the carnival, they lose their mind. Oh, it's so fun. But clientele's a little different. Sluts. And when I say sluts, I'm talking 12 year old girls to 15 year old girls. Because if you're 16 and older, I think you move on to, to other things. But for some reason, carnivals attract this, this group of kids that are old enough to go out without their parents. Like their parents drop them off. It's just, it's, it's bizarre. The whole time I'm just like, oh, no, this is what my future is with my daughter. She's gonna be a, a future carnival slut. I don't know, I shouldn't call them sluts right now. I'm. What, what's it called when you.

[LifeLock Advertiser]

Slut shaming.

[Daniel Tosh]

I'm slut shaming. Just because they looked like sluts. Oh. And then my son pulled my bitch card. He wanted me to win him a prize on one of the rigged games. And the guy, I'm like, it's one of those with the back stop where you have to throw the wiffle ball. It has to hit the backstop and fall into the bucket. Yeah, but as soon as it hits that thing, it bounces like fucking. It springs off of it. And he's like standing right next to it, showing you how it does. But, but from the angle that I'm at, and he's like, you can lean way over, man. I don't care. And I'm like, bro, I still can't do it. I shelled out 20 bucks and my son won some sad consolation prize. It's just embarrassing. I have Panda with me and my wife's cousin. I just make her go on with the kids. I'm like, oh, they'll love this. Get on. And she's like getting nauseous.

[Alex Stamos]

Eat any food there?

[Daniel Tosh]

No. Okay, so here's the upside to that. Great question, Eddie. Did I eat food there? I went there preparing to fill my stomach full of carnival food. But it's in a shopping plaza where there's already amazing restaurants in the plaza. So guess what? I got to eat at a great restaurant. There you go. I'll give him a plug. Ate at two Do's, two do's pizza place in Agora. Had myself a nice pizza and a salad. I was like, it's perfect. Then I walked over to the gelato store that's right there. Not giving you a plug. Why? You're a great gelato place. The line was long. I fucking turned around. I'm not going to stand in the line. I just finished leaving a carnival. I'm not going to stand in the line for gelato. Yeah, whatever. And then how about this? Then I'm leaving. You get a bracelet to ride the rides, okay? You're supposed to put the bracelet on. I don't put the bracelet on because I don't want to ride the rides. I want to hand this off to Amanda. So I, I hold the bracelet loose. And the guys that work the carnival, the carnies, they're good about it. They don't care that it's not on you. But I get two bracelets. Unlimited. Unlimited rides. You can just ride it as much as you want. So I'm walking out of the place. I'm leaving. I leave at a respectable hour. 7:30, 7:15, I don't remember what it was. And I find two young people coming in. Not young young, not like those sluts, but like, like some 20 year olds coming in. I go, here you go. Here's two unlimited passes for all the rides.

[Alex Stamos]

Nice.

[Daniel Tosh]

And they go, all right. That's what they did. They go, all right. Like, come on, man. I go, do you want these two? They're unlimited. They go, all right. Not, thank you. Not, oh, thanks nothing. I'm like, that was at least a $50 value, maybe more. I don't know how much they're gonna ride. All right, we'll take them. Oh, good. You really helped me out.

[Alex Stamos]

Give him back.

[Daniel Tosh]

I should have taken them back. The moral of that story is, hey, parents, you're dropping off your 12 to 15 year olds at these carnivals and they're dressing like hoe bags. Today's guest, he's got me a little paranoid about the future and our children's safety. It's a lot. Enjoy. This episode of Tosh show is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Let's map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.

[Alex Stamos]

Honestly, Will, I didn't plan any trips.

[Daniel Tosh]

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[Alex Stamos]

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[Daniel Tosh]

That's not the itinerary we're following.

[Alex Stamos]

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[Daniel Tosh]

Bon voyage.

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[Daniel Tosh]

Paw Show My guest today is answered directly to CEOs, investors, university presidents and congressmen. I'm excited to hear how my questions stack up in comparison. Please welcome the former CSO of both Yahoo and Facebook, as well as the professor at Stanford, cybersecurity expert Alex Fake Professor. What's that?

[Alex Stamos]

I'm a fake professor.

[Daniel Tosh]

What does fake professor mean?

[Alex Stamos]

Well, right? I'm a lecturer. They get really pissed if I call Myself, a professor. I will get a letter.

[Daniel Tosh]

I'm gonna fix it. As well. As a fake professor at Stanford. Thank you, cybersecurity expert. Alex. I got it. So you just lecture there. So. Okay, that's fine. I don't want to upset the actual professors.

[Alex Stamos]

Please.

[Daniel Tosh]

How often are you doing lectures?

[Alex Stamos]

I teach two classes at Stanford right now. One in the fall, one in the spring.

[Daniel Tosh]

But you're not called a professor.

[Alex Stamos]

That's right.

[Daniel Tosh]

I don't care.

[Alex Stamos]

Lecturers actually teach undergraduates. That's. It's a different person's job.

[Daniel Tosh]

What if your students call you professor?

[Alex Stamos]

My students call me professor.

[Daniel Tosh]

You don't correct your students, though. Say, hey, guys, first lesson we're going to learn is I'm not the professor.

[Alex Stamos]

No, yeah, I'm fine with them calling me professor, but I just. If. I will never call myself professor on the outside.

[Daniel Tosh]

Fine. Man, Stanford runs a tight ship.

[Alex Stamos]

They do.

[Daniel Tosh]

Do you enjoy Stanford?

[Alex Stamos]

I do. I love the teaching. I love the students. It keeps me young. And they teach me new words.

[Daniel Tosh]

What about living there? Do you like that?

[Alex Stamos]

Living in Silicon Valley? Living up in Northern California where we have seasons, unlike down here? Yeah, I do.

[Daniel Tosh]

It's beautiful.

[Alex Stamos]

It is.

[Daniel Tosh]

I love it, too. Oh, man. Do you believe in ghosts?

[Alex Stamos]

I do not believe in ghosts.

[Daniel Tosh]

Alex, I want you to know that I didn't write any of these questions, so if something truly offends you during this interview, please disrupt. Eddie over there. That's Eddie Gosling. Two S's in that. Do you need his Social Security number to mess with him or.

[Alex Stamos]

No, I'll find it. Don't worry. Yeah.

[Daniel Tosh]

How easy is it to get everybody's info?

[Alex Stamos]

Extremely easy, unfortunately.

[Daniel Tosh]

Yeah, I'm not worried about it. Should I be?

[Alex Stamos]

It matters what your threat profile is. It just matters who your enemies are. Right?

[Daniel Tosh]

Yeah. I mean, I just don't care. My emails. None of my emails mean anything. You're gonna steal all my credit cards? All that stuff's insured. I mean, am I? Okay, then what are we missing? Yeah, what else am I missing? I mean, I guess they could. People frame me to say that I did something that I didn't.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, that's a problem. Matters who your enemies are. Right?

[Daniel Tosh]

Okay. All right. Now I'm worried again. I didn't think about that. I don't want to go down for something I didn't do. I'm just not ashamed of what I have is what I guess where I was coming with. Where'd you grow up?

[Alex Stamos]

I grew up in beautiful Sacramento, California. The Midwest of California.

[Daniel Tosh]

It really is. Yeah, it's the Midwest of California. You ever spend time in Sacramento?

[Alex Stamos]

I spent a little. Sacktown.

[Daniel Tosh]

Yeah, I used to go up there all the time. Not so much anymore.

[Alex Stamos]

As a teenager, I thought it was boring. And then as I got older, I realized why my parents raised kids there.

[Daniel Tosh]

Did they choose to live there?

[Alex Stamos]

They did, yeah. My mom grew up in the Central Valley. For some reason, lots of Greeks ended up in the Central Valley. Chain migration, right? You end up with one Greek and then all of a sudden you've got thousands.

[Daniel Tosh]

The old saying.

[Alex Stamos]

Well, right. It's where you grow grapes. Right. Like, it's Mediterranean climate and grapes grow well. And my family ended up growing grapes in Lodi and learning English. And GI Bill helped my family go from my grandfather go from being a goat herder to a electrical engineer for the phone company in Sacramento.

[Daniel Tosh]

That's a pretty good ride there.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, it's a pretty good ride. Pretty good change to go from goat herding to engineering.

[Daniel Tosh]

Were you always into computers as a child?

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, When I was 8, I think my parents got me a Commodore 64 with a 300 baud modem, and it was all downhill from there.

[Daniel Tosh]

Did you ever play a sport, or do you only sail?

[Alex Stamos]

Uh, no. Wow. Wow. That. That's violence.

[Daniel Tosh]

Well, come on. Were you a nerd or were you, like, not? I mean, because you don't seem like a complete. Like, like, oh, my goodness.

[Alex Stamos]

I mean, I played a bit of soccer, like, in high school until, like, my knee exploded.

[Daniel Tosh]

And you cared about sports too. You love sports, right?

[Alex Stamos]

I mean, you're saying I'm a nerd? Daniel, I, I was.

[Daniel Tosh]

I'm not the traditional nerd that we're thinking hackers were.

[Alex Stamos]

Right? Right. Because I was, you know, my major was electrical engineering, computer science, and I was in the marching band in college, so I was.

[Daniel Tosh]

You were there.

[Alex Stamos]

Super. With the girls. Love me. I was fighting them off.

[Daniel Tosh]

When did you, like, actually get into, like, I'm going to, to hack into anything.

[Alex Stamos]

Back in those days, hacking was just. It was a much more innocent thing. Right. You, you couldn't get into a lot of trouble in the 80s and, and early 90s. You know, there's a bunch of kids logging into BBS's, you know, these bulletin board systems that you could meet friends and then, you know, the, the way I got into hacking was I didn't have money, so I couldn't afford video games. So I, I, you know, me and a bunch of other teenagers would learn how to remove the copy protection off of Games and then trade them with each other.

[Daniel Tosh]

Pretty impressive, huh?

[Alex Stamos]

These days, like, if you're a teenager and you had those kinds of skills, you could end up working for the mob, stealing bitcoin and, you know, creating ransomware. Right. Things have changed an incredible amount. Right, because now you have these teenagers and young people knocking over MGM grand, right? And. And, you know, stealing tens of millions of dollars.

[Daniel Tosh]

I mean, that's pretty cool too, though.

[Alex Stamos]

It is pretty cool, but like, it's actual harm happening to people. And, you know, especially now, a lot of that's overseas, right?

[Daniel Tosh]

You.

[Alex Stamos]

It's much less likely for it to be being done from inside the United States. Most of these groups are operating out of Russia and other countries where they know they're safe from extradition.

[Daniel Tosh]

Could the US And China obliterate each other's power grid at any moment?

[Alex Stamos]

It's quite possible. It's most likely. The Chinese have a huge advantage over us than we do over them, partially because we have a very high tech and fragile power grid. There's also a lot of evidence of the Chinese planting a lot of backdoors in our infrastructure. There's been really aggressive Chinese moves over the last couple of years. And what's really scary is that the Chinese know that those back doors have a short shelf life. And so it's unclear if the US has been doing the same. It is quite scary where we are right now versus the Chinese from a defensive perspective.

[Daniel Tosh]

Do we have people on the offensive?

[Alex Stamos]

We do. So, like, one of the fascinating things about this is the people who hack on behalf of the United States are socialists, and the people who hack on behalf of China and Russia are capitalists. This is like a hilarious outcome of the post Cold War era. So if, if you're hacking on behalf of the United States, you either work directly for NSA or US Cyber Command. What China and Russia have done is they've created a commercial incentive. It is not legal to hack America's enemies on a normal Tuesday. Right. We don't let you do that in the United States. But China, Chinese entrepreneurs do that all the time. There's rules they have to follow. In Russia, there's a lot less rules. You can do basically anything you want in Russia as long as you don't hack Russian companies. But in China, you can go start a company and you can go hack American pharmaceutical companies and then give that data to Chinese pharmaceutical companies.

[Daniel Tosh]

Can you personally profit off of it?

[Alex Stamos]

Yes, and you can personally profit off of it. You know, there's, there's rules you have to Follow. But you effectively have kind of coverage from the Chinese government. That means that China and Russia have built these huge capabilities that they don't have to pay for themselves. And they're very good because they get to practice every day. Like, you don't get good at playing chess by reading books. Right. You have to play chess every day. These guys get to hack every single day.

[Daniel Tosh]

But forget information. If they hack a company in Russia and they, you know, get a $5 million payout, do they have to give up a portion of that to the government or all of it to the government?

[Alex Stamos]

Well, so, especially in Russia, but I think also in China, you know, it's hard to know exactly how much, but they definitely have to pay people off. Right. It's a whole graph system.

[Daniel Tosh]

Now, I've heard this, and then it's in my head forever. And you could tell me immediately that it's not true, but I have a. That worked at a company, and they were hacked. And by probably, let's just say it's Russians.

[Alex Stamos]

It's a good guess.

[Daniel Tosh]

They're so used to doing this that they. They basically ask for, basically the number that they know that companies will pay because it's cheaper to pay that than to go the other way is that.

[Alex Stamos]

That's happening constantly, every single day. It happens dozens of times. And often what they're asking for is how much you're insured for. So what they'll do is. It's called ransomware. They'll hack in, they'll encrypt your systems, they'll steal your data, and then they'll ransom you for it. And one of the things they look for when they break in and they steal your data is they look for your insurance policy, and they figure out how much insurance you have. And so they'll say, oh, my friend, you have insurance. Pay us. You have 5 million of insurance. Just pay us the insured amount of money.

[Daniel Tosh]

Do you have to do the accent when you do.

[Alex Stamos]

I'm sorry. Yeah. That was really bad. Yeah. I guess when I'm, like, in Hollywood, I shouldn't do accents. No, it plays better in Northern California.

[Daniel Tosh]

Let's talk cookies. I love almost all cookies. Should I be accepting or rejecting them on every website that I visit?

[Alex Stamos]

Oh, God. I mean, those. Those cookie banners. I mean, there's. There are real privacy issues on you being tracked of what you do. And the fact that you have these advertising networks and these data brokers that know about everything you do. If you care about those things, you can download, ad blocker, plugins to your browser that will just block those things.

[Daniel Tosh]

I don't even mind it. I enjoy seeing stuff that they think I might. I have never clicked on anything in my life. There's no ad that's ever popped up that I've been like, well, that's interesting.

[Alex Stamos]

Really? Never? Not even like, Instagram?

[Daniel Tosh]

I don't do Instagram.

[Alex Stamos]

Okay.

[Daniel Tosh]

I've never done it.

[Alex Stamos]

I bet your wife does.

[Daniel Tosh]

Well, I mean, that seems sexist, but she probably has.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah.

[Daniel Tosh]

I don't know. No, I don't do it. I haven't done a lot of those things.

[Alex Stamos]

Look, Mark Zuckerberg does not own, like an eighth of Kawaii because nobody clicks on Instagram ads.

[Daniel Tosh]

Do you prefer early days nerd Zuckerberg or current right wing alpha bro Zuckerberg?

[Alex Stamos]

Oh, God. Strongly prefer the old Mark. The one I used to know. I do not like the new one. I don't know if the new one's real. Right. Like, the new Zuckerberg does not comport at all to the one I used to know. He used to be, like, thoughtful and smart and a really good dad who talked about his kids a lot and asked good questions. And this new one, I do not know what's going on.

[Daniel Tosh]

Is Trump your fault?

[Alex Stamos]

My fault?

[Daniel Tosh]

Personally, yes, because you were at. Where were you at?

[Alex Stamos]

I was at Facebook 2016.

[Daniel Tosh]

You were at Facebook. Do you take any responsibility for allowing the Russians to manipulate that election?

[Alex Stamos]

Wow, that's quite a question. So I would say I do take some responsibility for not catching in real time Russian manipulation of Facebook. I also think it is a massive simplification to say the Russians are the reason Donald Trump was elected. I think everything we've seen since then has indicated that we as Americans need to take some responsibility for what's happened. Right.

[Daniel Tosh]

Because if you're telling me that all the Russians did was manipulate news and blah, blah, but. But didn't actually affect the counts, then I'm like, all right, okay.

[Alex Stamos]

So they definitely didn't affect the counts. Okay. So this is a big issue and I think we should dive into it.

[Daniel Tosh]

Fine, let's do it.

[Alex Stamos]

Okay. First, there are a bunch of different kinds of Russian manipulation of the 2016 election. Several of them are offline. Right. So you have all of the Russian interaction with the Trump campaign that now is being played as that never happened. Right. But they directly interacted with the Trump campaign. There's two major electronic components to the Russian interference. One is the Facebook component. Right. And not just Facebook, it is all the online component. But that is their Activity mostly by private Russian actors, a group of companies that would support Putin through online propaganda. The majority of their propaganda was actually in Russian. Most of that activity was not about supporting Trump. It was about stirring up controversy in the United States to try to get people to fight each other. But I think it's very hard to have any kind of reasonable, empirical, quantitative social science evidence that that activity led to the election of Donald Trump. The other Russian interference was much more aggressive, which is they hacked into the Democratic Party apparatus. So that's the DCCC into the Gmail account of John Podesta, into the, you know, the accounts of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and such. And then they created these fake online Personas and they leaked that to the press, and then the press ran with it and then created the Hillary email server scandal. And then you have, you know, an FBI investigation and. But her emails and all that stuff. Now that did that affect the outcome of the election is very hard to tell. But it helped blunt the Access Hollywood tape, right? So if you roll back the timeline, you have, you know, Trump saying, I hope they hack her. And then all of a sudden that activity happens. You have the Access Hollywood tape, and then you have the leaks immediately afterwards. You have Politico running like a live blog of John Podesta's leaks that possibly had a much bigger impact, especially when you think that only 100,000 votes in three swing states affected the election. Unfortunately, we were not looking for that kind of organized propaganda like our team was looking for traditional cyber. In fact, we saw a bunch of hacking activity and we turned it over to the FBI in the spring of 2016. It turns out they never told the DNC about it. They never did anything about it. We felt like we did our part.

[Daniel Tosh]

All right, I get it. So you're off the hook.

[Alex Stamos]

No, I'm not saying we're off the hook. We screwed up in a bunch of ways. But I also think there's this kind of super reductionist idea that took hold in Democratic circles, that some ads on Facebook is why Trump won. And I think with everything that's happened since then, that's an incredibly simplistic idea.

[Daniel Tosh]

Well, speaking of simplistic, true or false.

[Alex Stamos]

Okay.

[Daniel Tosh]

Have you seen the Trump pee pee tapes?

[Alex Stamos]

False. I'm trying very hard not to end up in El Salvador.

[Daniel Tosh]

Yahoo.

[Alex Stamos]

What went wrong at Yahoo? Overall?

[Daniel Tosh]

Yes.

[Alex Stamos]

Oh, man. I mean, Yahoo is just like a company that lived too long, right? Wow. I mean, a bunch of tech companies, like, become super successful. A bunch of them, like, flame out and die or they get bought, and then Yahoo is kind of like the old man that just was on life support too long. Right. Like, it should have had a dnr, and instead it's like. It's like the company that didn't sign the DNR and it kept on getting revived over and over again. Does that make sense?

[Daniel Tosh]

It does, yeah. DNRs. If you call 9. If you have a DNR, but you call 911, it voids your DNR. Isn't that ridiculous?

[Alex Stamos]

I didn't know that.

[Daniel Tosh]

Yeah, because 911, they don't have time to be like, no, this person. You asked for help, so therefore, that doesn't matter. Wait, wait. When did you work for what years did you work at Yahoo?

[Alex Stamos]

I was at yahoo in, like, 2014, 2015. And so I was there when MrSA Mayer went in. And then they didn't have a CISO for a while, and then the Snowden disclosures came out, and there was an entire slide deck about how the NSA was downloading all of Yahoo's email. In fact, there's a slide in there complaining, asking for more money, because Yahoo had so much spam that the NSA had to, like, store all of Yahoo spam.

[Daniel Tosh]

That's great.

[Alex Stamos]

And so they hired me, a ciso, because they're like, wow, we got to, like, lock the NSA out of our. Our networks.

[Daniel Tosh]

Does Snowden. Does he matter still?

[Alex Stamos]

Well, I mean, personally, I don't think Snowden has, like, any impact anymore. He's, like, chilling in Moscow and, like, tweets things that nobody cares about. But, like, what he did is still having, like, massive impacts. I have very mixed feelings about what he revealed because there are abuses he revealed that the NSA should not have been doing, but he also dumped a bunch of stuff out. It was just like, the things I pay for as a taxpayer. Right? It's like, that was the NSA spying on Russia and China to. Because they spy on us.

[Daniel Tosh]

Does the NSA read everything I send to everyone?

[Alex Stamos]

I don't know.

[Daniel Tosh]

That's a. That's a hard. Yes.

[Alex Stamos]

Conspiracy. So what we found out with the snow and disclosures is that the NSA was gathering up way more data than any of us expected. They basically have a different definition of collection than the rest of us do. What they were doing was collecting huge amounts of data at the place at which American tech companies were moving that data between their data centers. And so the NSA did not consider the data of Americans they were gathering to have actually been collected unless a human being looked at it. This was their kind of legal backdoor to do this, the technical hole has been fixed. Right. So all the major US Tech companies now encrypt all that data. So the NSA shouldn't be able to get to it. They still have the power to request it under a variety of different legal means. But in theory, you should have to be effectively like an agent of a foreign government, or you have to be in conversation with an agent of a foreign government.

[Daniel Tosh]

How much more secure from hacks has the current administration made, America?

[Alex Stamos]

I think we're a way worse shape than we were a couple years ago. Unfortunately, the cisa, which is like the premier defensive cybersecurity agency, has lost a huge number of their best people. They've had political purges, and the director of the nsa, who's the most qualified director in its history, was fired because he was not seen as reliable enough.

[Daniel Tosh]

You mean he wasn't a friend of a friend?

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, no. A prominent Twitter personality attacked him. This is like a lifetime Air Force officer. So this is not like a political appointee from the previous administration. This is a guy who came up in Cyber Command. And a bunch of the good people at FBI have quit. Most of the good people at the National Security Council have quit. There's basically nobody minding the store. And so when I talk to other chief security officers at companies, we're basically like, we're on our own again. Like, the US Government will not be there to help us. And that's the expectation among people in private industry.

[Daniel Tosh]

Conspiracy theories, like, what are some. You've heard crazy ones, I'm sure. Are there any conspiracy theories out there that you're like, oh, that one might be true.

[Alex Stamos]

I know. I mean, the thing always with conspiracy theories is it, like, it always presumes that people are actually really competent. Right. Like, whenever I get into, like, a corporate boardroom or I'm like, some room with government folks, you're always like, oh, man. These are just like normal people who don't know what they're doing. Yes. What's compelling about conspiracy theories is like, oh, there's secretly people in charge. Like, there's actually people who know what they're doing. They just happen to be evil. And every time I've gone actually into the room, I'm like, oh, shit. These people have no idea what they're doing. They're just faking it like everybody else.

[Daniel Tosh]

I feel like that's true when it comes to politicians a lot of times. But then there are other people. I'm like, I might have things figured out.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. I mean, I think the conspiracy theories that are true are the obvious ones. I mean, I think this is, like, one of Trump's powers is that, like, he just does stuff openly, and then because it's not a conspiracy anymore, people just kind of ignore it. He just decides to do things like send National Guard troops to cities, and if he did it secretly, it'd be a scandal. But, like, abuse of power in the open becomes not a conspiracy. And I think, you know, we need to get away from this idea that something has to be a secret to be scandalous.

[Daniel Tosh]

That's fair, because I'm with the conspiracy theories. I've always just been like, in my experience, nobody can keep secrets. Like, everything comes out right.

[Alex Stamos]

Any conspiracy is more than three people never last.

[Daniel Tosh]

Yeah. How is everyone gonna just say AI created that and get out of stuff?

[Alex Stamos]

Oh, yeah. I mean, that's. I think, one of the real impacts that we're already seeing with AI. People call it the liar's dividend.

[Daniel Tosh]

Yes.

[Alex Stamos]

Which is real videos. You know, if the Access Hollywood tape. Right. Like, if that kind of thing happened right now, people just say, oh, that's not me, that's AI. That voice wasn't me.

[Daniel Tosh]

AI, though, I can have AI now. I don't need to learn to write in code. Are you worried about it taking over?

[Alex Stamos]

Oh, yeah. I mean, that is, like, the by far, like, the most useful use.

[Daniel Tosh]

And by useful mean like a positive in some aspects, Right?

[Alex Stamos]

In a lot of ways, positive. There are some interesting outcomes, but, like, the most positive use of AI so far has been for coding. But there's two sides of it. Like, for professional software engineers, it means that you basically have a bunch of interns now, right? So, like, if you watch a professional software engineer now, what they do is instead of writing code themselves, they sit down with their coffee and they use a tool like Cursor Windsurf, Claude code, and they go dispatch three or four interns to go write. They'll say to one of them, go refactor this. Go build this. Go build this. Now, if you're a professional software engineer, you know how the limitations of these things, and you can write the specs so that they stay within their lane. And then we have what's called vibe coding, which is you have no idea what you're doing, and the AI is doing all the work for you. Now, that's still really powerful. And that's like, you start from scratch. You know nothing about coding. You just ask it. Like, let's say you guys wanted to rebuild your website, and you could say, hey, build me a website for a podcast. Great. Now add a login page. Now add a forum. Now add the ability to take money to sell T shirts, and it will do everything for you.

[Daniel Tosh]

Dylan, you're fired.

[Alex Stamos]

But the problem is, is, like, if you don't know what you're doing, then you don't know when it messes up. And that is creating all kinds of security and privacy issues. And what's happened is there's been a bunch of examples of people losing money. So, like, what you really don't want to do there is vibe code, a bitcoin site, right? Because, like. Or do anything where, like, you're taking money, you're taking private data. People have lost private data. They've had a bunch of security vulnerabilities and stuff.

[Daniel Tosh]

How early on did you invest in bitcoin?

[Alex Stamos]

I actually didn't buy, but I was paid in bitcoin very, very early. When it was. I did some consulting for some big. Some of the big bitcoin companies now. I did some of their security consulting, and they paid me in bitcoin and I kind of held onto it for a while. But, like, overall, like, I'm not a huge bitcoin fan because the truth is, the number one use of bitcoin is just to buy it and hold it. It's just as it's digital gold. If people are transferring bitcoin, the number one use is to pay ransoms. Bitcoin has caused a huge amount of human suffering.

[Daniel Tosh]

How does that make you guys feel? The only person here that's never had a single dollar invested into bitcoin. Me. Me too. What's that? I've never invested Not a single dollar. Not a single dollar. I didn't know that, John, because I know all I know. Eddie and all those guys just constantly were bragging. I couldn't figure it out.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. It's also, like, the crazy thing about bitcoin is it's a really hard thing to safely hold by individuals. And what keeps on happening is you'll have these people who will hold their own bitcoin and then advertise it, right? They'll be like, I'm a bitcoin millionaire. And then they're on. They're on X or Instagram with, like, pictures of their Ferrari and stuff, and then they'll get kidnapped. Right?

[Daniel Tosh]

I don't want to be kidnapped ever.

[Alex Stamos]

No. No. It sucks.

[Daniel Tosh]

So what a nightmare.

[Alex Stamos]

So what I would say right now, it sucks. What I would say right now is, like, you own no bitcoin because like.

[Daniel Tosh]

If I own none, you're not going to. Don't kidnap me. And no one's going to pay either. Are Apple products the safest from hacks?

[Alex Stamos]

They're quite good, especially the mobile devices. That being said, Google has really caught up with the Android devices. If you're going to run an Android device, I recommend the Android phones that are made by Google themselves. Right. The Pixel phones, definitely. Mac OS is a lot better than Windows. For the most secure, though, if you're going to have like a laptop, the most secure option is a Chromebook. Right. They're just like super basic. So if all you're going to do is like use the web all day, which is what most people do all day, then I would buy somebody a Chromebook.

[Daniel Tosh]

Should anybody with a security camera in their home be worried about people remote accessing it?

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, that's actually an interesting problem is like people will buy these security cameras and then not secure them and then folks will access them. What you want to do is to buy the security cameras from legit companies where they force you to put a password and you use the cloud service. So like Ring is a pretty good one. And you know, Amazon forces you to have two factor on that Ring as an Amazon product, the Google Nest cameras are good for that. What you don't want to do is like the super cheap, like Taiwanese cameras that you just. Or Chinese cameras that you just throw on your network. Those often have default passwords and people can just scan the Internet and find those and then look inside your house.

[Daniel Tosh]

Is Norton antivirus Bullshit. What about LifeLock?

[Alex Stamos]

Should we all be. LifeLock is bullshit. Yeah.

[Daniel Tosh]

VPN. Should we all be running off of VPN?

[Alex Stamos]

The number one thing that people can do for themselves is use a password manager. Like the number one way people get hacked is they use the same password for everything. Right? So like, yeah, that's the. That's the way people get hacked is like you have one password for your bank and for YouTube and not for you. You would never do this but for a porn site, right? And then the porn site gets hacked.

[Daniel Tosh]

I'm not into porn.

[Alex Stamos]

Great, so this is not for you. But.

[Daniel Tosh]

But I could have the same password for all like the dumb stuff, right? Like the Netflix and all of that.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, but then if you're willing for all the dumb stuff to get hacked, right, but what happens is you use like the same password for everything. And what's especially problematic is if you use your Gmail, your main email is a password that use somewhere else. A website will get Hacked, and then that password will get passed around and get sold. And then the bad guys will take that password, they'll break into your Gmail account, and then with that they can reset all your passwords and they take over your entire life. And then you're toast, right?

[Daniel Tosh]

Am I toast or can I get it fixed pretty quickly?

[Alex Stamos]

No, it sucks. It sucks bad. The number one thing if people are watching this that they can do is get a password manager. And if you're like on one platform, like if you're all Apple, then you can use the built in Apple manager, password manager, that's fine. Most people have like a bit of Windows, a bit of Mac, Android, whatever. Then you have to use something else. So like one password's fine. Last pass is fine.

[Daniel Tosh]

I don't care what happens to people with androids. Is that. Is that bad? Did I open up? Will sex robots ever be quality?

[Alex Stamos]

I have no. I know nothing about sex robots.

[Daniel Tosh]

Well, I'm just. It's got. It's gotta be. I mean, with all the AI that has to be incorporated into this world almost immediately.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. What I will say is, like, I think there's already a really scary and sad movement to people are using AI chatbots as replacements for human relationships. And that's actually a really sad direction.

[Daniel Tosh]

But maybe it talks somebody off a ledge or maybe it pushes.

[Alex Stamos]

No, I mean. I mean, yes, in some cases it talks people off ledges, but there are a bunch of really sad stories of people ending up in kind of psychotic places where they think that AI is real. And this is not something that these systems were designed to foresee. We have these things called model cards. Whenever a new AI model so GPT5 comes out, they'll publish a model card and that will list all the ways that the companies tested it. And it'll be like, oh, can you use this thing to create chemical weapons? Can you use it to design a nuclear weapon and stuff? What's much harder to foresee is can somebody fall in love with this thing? It's just a much harder thing to test.

[Daniel Tosh]

I feel like. Yeah, but I feel like I could have saw that coming.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, well, people have seen it coming, but it's just like a hard thing to prevent or test. Right. Cause it's like, how do you test all of the different ways somebody can have chats with a model over days or weeks or months that then it's. You create a parasocial relationship with this thing?

[Daniel Tosh]

Oh, I can't wait for all these things with my kids as they get older.

[Alex Stamos]

Oh, it's rough.

[Daniel Tosh]

I mean, what was your hard line? Now your youngest is a teenager still, you're all teenagers, right?

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, yeah. So I have 18, 16, 13.

[Daniel Tosh]

Do they all. Obviously the 18 year old has a phone. Does your 13 year old have a phone?

[Alex Stamos]

She does. There's just no way to prevent.

[Daniel Tosh]

Okay, so when did she get her phone?

[Alex Stamos]

She got it at 13. That was her line.

[Daniel Tosh]

That was your line. All right, and what, and I mean, do you, you can handle everything, so you, you just put tons of restrictions on everything or is there.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah.

[Daniel Tosh]

So you just trust her?

[Alex Stamos]

No.

[Daniel Tosh]

You still don't trust her.

[Alex Stamos]

It's trust but verify, right?

[Daniel Tosh]

I love it.

[Alex Stamos]

So I think this is the advice I give to parents. First, like the rule for your kids in the house, while they're in the house is you have to have the code to your kids phones, right?

[Daniel Tosh]

Okay, that's, that's an easy one.

[Alex Stamos]

And you have to do spot checks of. At any moment you can tell your kids, give me your phone. If they ever refuse to give it to you, that's it, it's gone. Having the threat means that the kids know that they have to do that. And what you have to explain the kids is like, this isn't necessarily about your behavior. This is about there are bad people out there. And the example I used to talk at my kids school and give the child safety talk. And so what I'd say to this, you know, this group of like, you know, sixth graders is, has anybody here been like really badly hurt? And a bunch of hands go up. I'm like, okay, were your parents angry? And they think about it. No, like, that's right. If you're really hurt, your parents aren't gonna be angry, they're gonna be scared. And that's what you have to explain to your kids is like, if you make a little mistake, your parents are angry. If you make a big mistake or you're really hurt, your parents are there to help you. And that's like the key thing you have to tell your kids. When I was CSO of Yahoo, and especially at Facebook, you also end up with what's called trust and safety responsibility. And at Facebook, I supervise the child safety team. And you see the real incredible, horrible underside of the Internet and the really bad.

[Daniel Tosh]

I did a show about that for 13 years about the horrible underbelly of the Internet.

[Alex Stamos]

Yes, I watched it. But you didn't do the real underbelly.

[Daniel Tosh]

Well, let me just tell you, our room went to the underbelly. And then we scale back for the show. But yes, yes.

[Alex Stamos]

And so the really horrible outcomes, the worst outcomes for kids happen when kids make a mistake and then feel that they can't tell an adult. And so they double down, triple down on the mistake, and they go deeper and deeper. Those are the kids who end up hurting themselves, committing and the like. What predators know is that if they can trick a kid into making mistakes, they can then create a situation where it's you and me against your parents. And they're very good at that. And I've seen these transcripts, right. I've seen what happens. And the predators know exactly how to play that. And so you have to vaccinate your kids against that. You have to tell them. If somebody tells you not to tell us something because we'll be mad, they're lying to you. And so the key thing here is you have to tell your children if you make a mistake, you can always come to me and I will help you out of it. I will not be angry. I will not punish you. I will help you out of the mistake.

[Daniel Tosh]

Unless they go over the line like, you know, they murder somebody, then I'm gonna fucking be mad.

[Alex Stamos]

Okay? I wouldn't tell them that.

[Daniel Tosh]

I'm not. I'm just. I'm just saying there is a line where you've done something so fucked up that now it's like, oh, I'm not getting you out of this one.

[Alex Stamos]

Don't eat people. Don't eat people. Yes, yes. But in the online safety context, you gotta tell your got it.

[Daniel Tosh]

In the online safety context, you screw.

[Alex Stamos]

Up, I will be there to help you. Like, the basic safety rules are, you know, so, you know, you hold back on giving them phone until they can handle it. You have their code, you do spot checks. There are really good safety features available on modern phones, on, you know, iPhones, which is what I have the most knowledge of, the screen time limits. You know, a key thing is you can't let your kids have their phones at night. Now, that's a basic sleep thing. Teenagers aren't sleeping because they have their phones all night and they text each other all night. Make your kids dock their phone at night, and that's a great time to do spot checks.

[Daniel Tosh]

I got other things to do. I don't want to check their phones. And it's hard. What do I have to do? I got to learn how to go through it and find all the stuff.

[Alex Stamos]

That they're hearing about. And then you have no idea what they're saying to each other. Right? Because it's all like emojis and acronyms, but, like, the fact that they know it will help pull back. And then don't let them have social media until they're ready. And then when they have social media, make sure it's private. That, like, they have Instagram accounts. It's private accounts and such.

[Daniel Tosh]

Social media. Come on. It's gotta be on its way out. Some of it we're getting.

[Alex Stamos]

I think so. It's interesting. This is like a reaction for the kids is they're much more into private communications. Like the chatting apps, like WhatsApp. IMessage is much more in. There's a bunch of these new apps where you do things like you post photos just to your friends and not publicly, like Instagram. And I think that's a really positive. And that's driven from the kids.

[Daniel Tosh]

What do you think about my plan of just straight bribery into being a good person?

[Alex Stamos]

Okay.

[Daniel Tosh]

Like, that's how I think I'm gonna parent. Like, how about this? You get no phone and you do everything that I say for as long. And then, I don't know, I'll give you a bunch of money when you're 22.

[Alex Stamos]

Right. Okay. So it's like a really good marshmallow test.

[Daniel Tosh]

I mean, that's. I swear I'm wrong.

[Alex Stamos]

I mean, I think if you do that, you should write a paper and get like a PhD in child psych. The end. Like, just. It's like the ultimate. Running your kid through a maze. That's perfect.

[Daniel Tosh]

I'm just.

[Alex Stamos]

Congratulations. It's the one thing Dr. Tosh at the end.

[Daniel Tosh]

One thing I might be able to pull off. Everybody gets gifts. Here's some. This first gift. They sent this to me. I haven't even opened it yet. They said people are starting to send stuff to the show. Let's see what this is. You go ahead. And that's your first gift. This is exciting. The name of the company is Ridge. It's a. It's a. Is it a wallet that. Is that what it is?

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. It's a wallet that protects it from, like, your credit cards from being scanned.

[Daniel Tosh]

It's a wallet that protects your credit cards from being scanned.

[Alex Stamos]

Oh, cool. Yeah.

[Daniel Tosh]

Look at this.

[Alex Stamos]

And a cool little keychain.

[Daniel Tosh]

Oh, look at that. And a key. Why would they give you a keychain that just holds your keys? Okay. But what if your keys are bigger than those?

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. And like a super slim wallet. Cool.

[Daniel Tosh]

Oh, man. Well, that's going to protect your. Your stuff.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. Awesome.

[Daniel Tosh]

Here's another gift. This is A drone with a camera. It's not opened. The guy that got me this is my. My wife's cousin. He buys stuff. It's 14 and up. And like, I have a kid that's like six. I'm like, I'm not letting my kid do this. Anyway, I figure you have somebody in your life that wants to spy on somebody. That'll be fun for you.

[Alex Stamos]

That's awesome. Yes. I'll fly that with my kids.

[Daniel Tosh]

I also don't know how to get rid of this. It's not really digital waste, but it's just a bunch of my old specials. I just don't know what to do with them. I can't get myself to throw them away. But I just think you'll like these. It'll be nice.

[Alex Stamos]

This your younger brother? Is that.

[Daniel Tosh]

How dare you, my younger brother? Oh, man, those are great.

[Alex Stamos]

Perfect for my carry on. Appreciate that.

[Daniel Tosh]

Well, you know, we'll get that shit for you. Go ahead, get that on the floor. All of that on the floor. We cannot keep this here. This wallet's nice. You know what? I might keep that. RFID blocking. Is that a thing that I should have been worried about?

[Alex Stamos]

So actually, yeah. So there's some great videos you can find on YouTube. Especially like in. This happens like Colombia and some other Latin American countries where you'll get distracted by one person and somebody else comes and swipes your card and does a payment because, you know. For the touchless payments.

[Daniel Tosh]

Yeah.

[Alex Stamos]

So they can't clone the card. Right. But what they can do is just do a payment and then they claim that you're at a bar or something and that, you know.

[Daniel Tosh]

But everybody. Why is everybody stealing? Can't we all just be nice scammed, Man, Everybody's trying to scam people. Throw that on the floor. You're not gonna love it. You're a big Lakers fan, is that correct?

[Alex Stamos]

I hate the Lakers.

[Daniel Tosh]

You do? Hey, we share that in common.

[Alex Stamos]

I'm a Sacramento Kings fan.

[Daniel Tosh]

Oh, man, that's gotta sting.

[Alex Stamos]

I was actually at game six between the Lakers and the Kings when the refs threw the game and gave it to the Lakers.

[Daniel Tosh]

So that's the conspiracy theory that you do believe in.

[Alex Stamos]

No, it's not a conspiracy theory.

[Daniel Tosh]

Oh, it's fact.

[Alex Stamos]

When it's fact came out, it came out in the investigations.

[Daniel Tosh]

Right.

[Alex Stamos]

Like, Tim, you know, there was actually like, indictments.

[Daniel Tosh]

Did you guys hang the indictments from your rafters? It's gotta sting because it's just so much greatness is so close to you that you could have cheered for your whole life?

[Alex Stamos]

Yes. Golden State wasn't that great. I mean, I like.

[Daniel Tosh]

What about the 49ers? Did you cheer for them?

[Alex Stamos]

I did for the 49ers.

[Daniel Tosh]

Okay.

[Alex Stamos]

And for the Giants. Right. So, like, you know, we don't have baseball. We. We have the River Cats. We don't have Major League Baseball in Sacramento.

[Daniel Tosh]

So you're off the hook in most sports, so you had a great run of football.

[Alex Stamos]

But my two big teams are Sacramento Canes and the University of California Golden Bears. So that's rough, those two.

[Daniel Tosh]

And you've always loved the acc, Is that what you said?

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. Yes, the California Golden Bears. And I teach at Stanford. So Stanford and Cal, traditional rivals, now members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. So I get to go up when Cal redid its stadium was the year I sold a company that year, so I was able to donate. And so I got donor seating. I have 45 years of tickets in the California Memorial Stadium. And so I go up to the rim of California Memorial Stadium, I look out, and you can look past from the stadium at the Golden Gate Bridge, at the edge of the Atlantic Coast Conference, at the Atlantic Ocean, on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. We haven't talked about, like, if we're talking about LA teams, I could talk about usc, how much I hate those guys.

[Daniel Tosh]

USC is kind of the domino that started the whole ACC thing. Yes.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. No, I hate those guys. Okay, so, like, let's talk about USC, because, one, they blew up the PAC12 now, but is the PAC10 for most of my time also. I mean, do you like USC at all? You're from Florida. What's your college team in Florida?

[Daniel Tosh]

Okay. I went. UCF is the team I care about. I care about Miami, I care about the U. I care about everything. South Florida, the Miami Heat, the Dolphins, et cetera. That's my team's for most of sports.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. So, I mean, USC blew up the PAC 10, which now, I mean, I think fortunately, they're kind of being punished. Right. In the Big Ten. But my biggest problem with USC is the whole Trojan thing. Right? Like, you can name yourself after anything. You're choosing your mascots. You're reaching back into antiquity to choose your mascots, and you choose the greatest losers in history. The Trojans lost the Trojan War. Right. And so, like, as a Greek, I just want to point out that the Trojans lost the Trojan War so badly, we still talk about it 3,000 years later.

[Daniel Tosh]

Where do you stand on the condom, Durex, man?

[Alex Stamos]

It's the same thing, right? Like. Cause also, like, for the condom brand, does that mean like the sperm or the Trojan horses?

[Daniel Tosh]

Yes, it does. Yes, it does. Whoa. They don't make it past. But they're in there. They're in there.

[Alex Stamos]

Like, it's not a good metaphor for something that's supposed to be an impermeable barrier.

[Daniel Tosh]

Don't you shit on the Trojan condom. It's a staple.

[Alex Stamos]

It just. It's not a good. Yeah, it's not a good look. I just don't.

[Daniel Tosh]

When you boil it down to its most basic form, are hackers really just a bunch of introverted incels who might have chosen a different path had they just, you know, had a girlfriend in high school?

[Alex Stamos]

No, I mean, a ton of people who do malicious hacking these days are just. They're just financially motivated. They're people who want to make money.

[Daniel Tosh]

It's just money.

[Alex Stamos]

I mean, you look at the guys who get caught, they are buying Maseratis, they have designer drug problems. Some of them are like, they've got Instagram accounts where they're. They're taking pictures with girls at clubs, right? Like, it's, it's. It is not like it used to be. I mean, it's not like nerdy guys like me with our.

[Daniel Tosh]

If you wanted to just started. You think you could hack for money and just make a killing at it.

[Alex Stamos]

Look, I'm a little old for that. Could I build a team to do it? Absolutely. That's nice.

[Daniel Tosh]

Like, you got a new team, you got a new company that you're starting.

[Alex Stamos]

I didn't start it. No? No. So two of my best students from Stanford started this company.

[Daniel Tosh]

Do you have to say your best students? Were they really your best students? One of them's my best all time.

[Alex Stamos]

One of them is my boss now, so he is my best student of all time.

[Daniel Tosh]

Wow. Isn't that neat? Good for him?

[Alex Stamos]

No, he really, like the CEO Jack Cable is legitimately like the most skilled offensive talent I've ever met. Just thank God he's a good guy. So he won the Department of Defense's hacking competition when he was 18 years old and then went to Stanford.

[Daniel Tosh]

Is that televised?

[Alex Stamos]

No, no, it's like an online thing.

[Daniel Tosh]

But it is fun. I mean, it's gotta be.

[Alex Stamos]

This is what's crazy. So when I was coming up, if you wanted to do this stuff, there was nothing legal you could do. Now high school teams have competitive hacking. It's called Capture the flag. They have competitive teams. You can get like letterman jackets, you.

[Daniel Tosh]

Can letter in Hacking.

[Alex Stamos]

You can letter in hacking. Colleges have competitive teams, so a bunch of my students are on like a competitive team at Stanford that does quite well. Jack, you know, our, our founder was on these teams. So our founders, Jack and Ashwin, they're the two founders of this company. Corridor is what I work for.

[Daniel Tosh]

And what, and what does this company work for? The government?

[Alex Stamos]

No, we don't work for the government. What we're doing is you talk about AI code development. We're trying to make AI code development safe. Right. So if you have a AI code developer that makes mistakes, we watch that developer and make it safe. Right, so we're the AI security engineer. So you can use your AI to write code and we'll be right behind fixing those problems for you in real.

[Daniel Tosh]

Time for a fee.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. So that's how you're not just, you're.

[Daniel Tosh]

Not just checking on all people that are using AI. Using AI to make code.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, I mean, this is for companies, right? So enterprises, it's less for the vibe coders that we talked about for people who. It's for companies where, like legitimate companies.

[Daniel Tosh]

Got it. Okay.

[Alex Stamos]

So you're a bank or whatever and you're, you know, you have your engineers and now they're, you know, you have to live up to some kind of standard, right? You're a European bank, you have to follow a bunch of rules. You can't just like use AI code, you know, and all of a sudden you're violating all your privacy laws. Right. But anyway, these guys are incredibly smart and they were on a hacking team at Stanford. But it's totally different now, right? Like if you have these skills and you're 16 years old, you can join a team at high school, you can join a team in college. It's so much better than it used to be.

[Daniel Tosh]

And you prefer the hackers in the acc?

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, it's. Unfortunately we don't do it on those leagues, but yeah, I'd prefer, yes, it would be nice if the Pac 10 hacking league was still together, but yeah. Damn USC.

[Daniel Tosh]

Alex, thank you for everything you do.

[Alex Stamos]

Thank you, Daniel.

[Daniel Tosh]

Appreciate it.

[Alex Stamos]

Okay, time for our weekly stand up comedy wrap up.

[Daniel Tosh]

Alex.

[Alex Stamos]

I didn't get to any stage shows, but I did switch to T Mobile with their new family freedom offer. Okay, I'm waiting for the punchline. Well, my old phone bill with AT&T was a joke, so I'm doing a whole new bit with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones on I gotta work this into my routine.

[T-Mobile Announcer]

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[LifeLock Advertiser]

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[Alex Stamos]

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[Daniel Tosh]

I want to thank Alex for being on the show and forcing me to Change my password. 11:11 Dan no longer going to get me into anything. All right, let's do some plugs. Eddie's tour My tour gonna be performing in Vegas norcal up in San Francisco, Monterey, Santa Cruz. I think I'm heading over to Salt Lake City. Tbd. Salt Lake City tbd. You can buy my house in Tahoe. I mean, it's more of an estate, a legacy Property, a compound. Three structures over 16 acres. It doesn't matter, you know, if you're a fan, buy it. Trying to find love for Amanda still. We're starting to get more promising calls.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah.

[Daniel Tosh]

Feel free at any point to call in. And I'm not talking about Eddie's random fans that are just calling the voicemail just to talk. But if you're interested in potentially becoming a family member of mine, then leave your deets and how to get in touch with you. I gotta do a little background check. Gotta see some photos. I need a few lookers.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. Be nice.

[Daniel Tosh]

All right. Who do you got today, Ed?

[Alex Stamos]

A couple. Here you go.

[Daniel Tosh]

All right. Hi. I'm a software engineer. I'm five, ten and a half. I hate horses. I wouldn't care if they went extinct. Okay, first of all, five, ten and a half, really stretching himself. That's. That's where he starts.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah.

[Daniel Tosh]

And. And then he says he hates horses and wouldn't care if they went extinct. I mean, that's not going to be a good match for her.

[Alex Stamos]

I don't think it seems like the worst match. Yeah.

[Daniel Tosh]

I mean, she loves horses. And you're going to say you hate horse. I think that guy is funny. Maybe that is the opposite. That. That attract that. Maybe that works. She loves horses. You want them to go extinct, not.

[Alex Stamos]

Just doesn't like them.

[Daniel Tosh]

Once I'm off the planet, would that affect our. Our whole system? I never understand how that works. But they're like, oh, if you get rid of. You know, if you got rid of daisies, you know, every kid would get cancer. Yeah. So it's gonna have some type of an effect. Are you sure? I don't know. If we need horses.

[Alex Stamos]

A lot more oats in the world.

[Daniel Tosh]

How are we gonna get our mail?

[Alex Stamos]

Exactly.

[Daniel Tosh]

No, I. I'm. Listen, I'm all for getting rid of horses if it helps Amanda find love.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah. I mean, that is true.

[Daniel Tosh]

All right. Anybody else?

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, here's this.

[Daniel Tosh]

This.

[Alex Stamos]

I guess this is a call.

[Daniel Tosh]

Oh, that's not a good start. Okay.

[Alex Stamos]

You can't.

[Daniel Tosh]

You can't put a phone number up. That's what I've learned. That's what people should do. They should call and just. Was he singing or did he. I think he said Amanda. Then play that last part at the very end again. Yeah, I think he says Amanda right there. Could be. I like it. I like it. I don't know. I don't know what he said about himself, but I think he's a great fit. This sounds like love. That guy sounds in his mid-30s.

[Alex Stamos]

Yeah, yeah, he told you.

[Daniel Tosh]

Oh, good. All right, the calls are getting better. Keep them coming, guys. Play that call again. That's good. All right, we'll see you next week.