Welcome back to Trial by Wire! My name is Denton, and today, we're going to start something a little different. The first few episodes were designed to help you get your feet wet in the world of technology, so go back and give them a listen if you haven't already. Going forward, we're going to start talking about what's going on in the world today! Sometimes, that may mean a dedicated episode on a topic, like we've been doing, but we're also going to be looking at news articles and breaking them down into the important pieces that we need to know. As a reminder, the goal is to number 1, stay safe but number 2, to think more deeply about technology and its effects. If you have an article you want me to look at, feel free to send it in! I might also address it in a short on social media, so make sure to follow us if you haven't already. Without further ado, let's get started!
Today, we're going to be talking about online privacy. Our article comes from Ars Technica, and it was actually featured in an Instagram Reel I did a few weeks ago. Any articles I feature in an episode will be linked in that episode's show notes, so make sure to go check it out to follow along. Let's take a look.
Thousands of phones and routers swept up into proxy service, unbeknownst to users
This episode is actually going to be a two-parter because we have a lot to cover to get up to speed. First things first, and what we're going to focus on today, the article talks about people wanting to "anonymize their illicit activities online". What does that mean? We've talked before about the Internet as a network of computers. But now, let's think about it like a highway system. I live in Dallas, Texas, which is a massive hive of interconnected highways. If I wanted to drive from one suburb, Plano, to another, Grand Prairie, the recommended way for me to go (according to my GPS) is to take the George Bush Turnpike directly there. However, George Bush is a toll road, and the organization that manages the road has placed sensors all along it to ensure that they can accurately charge people who use the road. This means that the organization and its employees know that I drove from Plano to Grand Prairie, as well as anyone who may gain access to their databases or applications.
Now, let's say that I don't necessarily want the world to know that I am traveling from Plano to Grand Prairie. There are a few ways to go about this, and they range from legal to...less than legal. Reminder that this is just an illustration, and I am not encouraging you to perform any illegal activities. Legally, I don't have to take the Turnpike to drive to Grand Prairie. I can take the Central Expressway, otherwise known as Highway 75, south to I-635, head east to I-35E, go south to I-30, then go east to Grand Prairie. I can also take 75 directly south into Dallas, then go east on I-30 if I feel like being stuck in traffic for hours. These are both less direct routes that involve navigating multiple highways, but they will still get me to my destination. In this case, I am still being monitored by any number of cameras, law enforcement officers, and even other drivers as I drive. However, someone would have to piece together records from up to four different highways in different city jurisdictions to understand my full trip. Less legally, I could attempt to fake my identity on the Turnpike by obscuring my license plate somehow to avoid detection (again, not encouraging this).
On the Internet, your activity is monitored in a variety of ways. As you traverse the web, you are identified by something called an IP address. The Internet Protocol, or IP, is the method that different clients and servers on the Internet use to talk. Go listen to Episode 4 if you need a refresher. Think of your IP address like a pin on a map of the Internet - it identifies where you are currently coming from when you visit websites. Your public-facing IP address, or what a website will see, is usually attached to your home Internet router if you're on your home network or a public Internet router if you're out on public Wi-Fi at a coffee shop or an airport. This gets a bit more complicated for cell phones when you're out and about, so we'll skip that for now. However, each of your devices on the network also has what's called a "private IP address", which allows it to individually navigate the Internet (just like how people can address letters to individual members of a household). Unlike a home address, your public IP address changes all the time as you move around and access the Internet from different locations. Even your home Internet router will occasionally get a new IP address from the company which provides your Internet unless you explicitly ask them to give you a "static IP address". You don't really need this unless you're trying to do some more advanced stuff with your network.
Now, if your IP address changes all the time, how can this be used to track you? IP addresses can often be associated with locations. If you don't believe me, grab the device that you're listening to this podcast on and go to www.whatismyipaddress.com. I'll give you a second to do that.
Did the site figure out where you were? It was spot-on to the city for me. Going back to our highway analogy, we took the direct route to the website, so the website was able to tell where we were coming from. And just like how we pass through multiple suburbs to get from Plano to Grand Prairie, we hop through multiple servers out on the Internet from our home network to a website. One notable entity that may take a peek at what you're doing is your Internet Service Provider, or ISP, which is the company that you pay for Internet access. I was one told point-blank by an ISP representative that they kept an eye on users' traffic to make sure people were not accessing things that they shouldn't be accessing.
This seems like a good place to take a pit stop and talk about some ethics, so let's get into it.
Unfortunately, my highway analogy is a bit lacking because it doesn't answer a question that a lot of people have: why would you want to hide your Internet activities? The article uses words like "crooks" and "illicit", and for what is going on here, they're right. People use the Internet for all kinds of things that they may want to hide: piracy, pornography, hacking, black markets, and so on. If you have nothing to hide, why should you hide? I'm going to give you a few reasons to consider and let you decide for yourself.
Point #1: Not everyone who tracks and stores data about you has your best interests at heart. Some data tracking is necessary online in order to perform legitimate business. In our highway analogy, the toll company needs to know how far you drove on the toll road so they can charge you for it. Law enforcement needs to keep an eye out for drivers breaking traffic laws in order to keep everyone else safe. Other drivers need to be able to see you so that they can safely drive around you. However, any party who collects data can overstep their bounds. The toll company can sell data on drivers to third-party companies for targeted advertisements. Law enforcement officers may keep tabs on certain individuals for their own personal gain. There are entire online communities dedicated to embarrassing bad drivers, and if they aren't covered up properly, users can use posted license plates to look up and harass drivers.
Any use of the Internet involves some level of trust. We pay our ISPs and trust that they will deliver Internet service. We pay for Amazon products and trust that they will be delivered to our door. We download apps for our devices and trust that they will function correctly and only in the way that we expect. Unfortunately, that trust is often broken, as we frequently see in news articles. Taking certain measures to protect yourself while operating online is important to prevent yourself from being taken advantage of. Put simply, we lock our doors and close our blinds at night for a reason.
Point #2: Any data stored about you can be used against you. This can be hard to think about because one individual data point doesn't reveal much. The fact that I drove from Plano to Grand Prairie is barely a blip in the toll company's database. But, let's think about this data in bulk. If a hacker was able to get access to the toll company's databases, they could know every time my license plate has ever been scanned on a toll road in Dallas. Combine that with license plate data to get my name, and now you have a profile of at least a portion of my daily life. That's powerful information for targeted phishing scams. The more information you have about a person, the more likely you can trick them and pretend to be them. A hacker could take an educated guess that I have family in Grand Prairie, call me saying that they're in trouble, and convince me to hand over some money to them to keep them safe.
But Denton, you say, surely no hacker would take the time to gather my information, call me individually, and try to trick me when I'm just a nobody? I'm linking an article in the show notes from NPR about a new scam where hackers are using voice clips of relatives and AI callers to trick people. It's insidious, and it happens.
Point #3: You have a desire for privacy. You may have already seen this be humorously addressed online, but let's try adding to our analogy. Let's say that as you drove along the Turnpike, suddenly a toll enforcement official starts following you. She notes how fast you're going, how well you're driving, what kind of bumper stickers you have on your car, what exits you take, what gas stations you use along the access roads, and so on. After you exit the tollway, she writes up a report and sends it off to the toll agency, who then forwards it to law enforcement and cities along the tollway. This continues every time you use the tollway. Any time you surpass the speed limit (which, for Dallas drivers, is often), you get a ticket. Any time you stop at a gas station for snacks, you notice that the cashier starts using slogans related to your interests. Now, your driving is probably going to improve significantly, but this may feel a little creepy.
This point is largely up to your interpretation. You may be comfortable with data-driven personalization online, and you might think the costs outweigh the benefits. The problem is that in this analogy, the source of the tracking is visible and obvious: the toll enforcement official. You can take a pretty promising guess at what information she's reporting about you, and you can choose not to drive on the tollway if you don't want that information about you collected. In real life, information is being collected on you all the time by many, many different sources, most of which you can't see. It can be difficult to assess the full measure of this data collection and the impact it has on your life, which makes it hard for you to make informed decisions. I'm not saying that you aren't smart enough to understand; I'm saying the situation that we're in makes it impossible to understand, even for the most technologically advanced among us.
We just took all of that time, and we only got through the first sentence of the article? Don't worry, we'll finish up next time with some more technical explanations of what's going on. Your homework for today, though, is to think about what your level of comfort with privacy is. Do you feel like your online life is private enough? Do you think you need more privacy? Think on that, and I'll see you next time!
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