Hello everybody, this is our classic episode. We'd like to say hi, not just to our fellow conspiracy realists, but uh, hi to your search history. How's that do? How's how's your search? What's what's weird? Let's be to Daily's eyegeist about it? Noel, Matt, What's what's something weird from out our search histories that you feel comfortable disclosing? Let me shick, let me check my history. Oh wait, it's deactivated. Oh that's weird. You're you're you're an incognito mode kind of guy. No, just I've got it turned off, which means just that you can't see it. That's right exactly. My history is pretty boring. It's just a bunch of audio nerd stuff currently. And I've got how many firefighters are pyromaniacs? Legitimately. I don't know why I added legitimately at the end. There, I've got a search term here, guys, I did find one. It just says, ohio accent. I'm not sure why. Perfect. So we're talking about this because our classic episode today is about whether or not you can actually delete your Internet history. You know, we know a lot of people ran into this when Facebook got caught continually doing really sketchy things to track people. In this episode, I think we also collaborate with our pals Mangesh had a couture and a guy who now is our boss will pierce it. Oh. I just want to listen for the like, just to hear those guys. Oh Man, the nostalgiaz flooding through my system as we speak. From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is no. They call me Ben. You are you? And that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. However, this is not your ordinary episode of stuff they don't want you to know. Actually, you know what, We should change that language, you guys, because we I don't know if we've ever done an ordinary episode. Have we never? We have never, and we won't start now. This is a team up episode, a collaboration. If you will, and we hope you do. We are partnering with our buddies, colleagues, co workers, and friends. Will end Mango from Part Time Genius to explore some of the most important, pertinent and pressing questions about the online world. The most important question that they are asking is what does the Internet know about you? How much stuff? The personal, the really personal, the things that you wouldn't share with anybody else, you know, just talking to somebody on the street. How much does the Internet know about you? And where does it live? Yes, so, immediately after checking out this episode, head on over to Part Time Genius to learn exactly what the Internet already knows about you, and it's it's a lot. Yeah, it's too much. Really, even if you think you know, it's way more than you probably bargain for. Before we begin answering our question and launching our exploration today, let's fill in some context. First things First, oh, friends and neighbors, if you are listening to this show, it is almost certain that you have an Internet presence. I mean, obviously you're listening to podcast. Yeah, how would you know what a podcast is if you were not connected to the Internet. I guess there are shirts. Now, maybe you just randomly saw a stuff you should know shirt on somebody in the subway. There are a lot of those. Yeah. Second, you might be on the Internet via social media of any sort. And finally, even if you just happen to be hanging out with some friends and one of them happens to turn on our show just while you were in the room, and you never once logged in or signed up for any social media Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, friends to Tumblr, live journal, GeoCities. Yeah, was that a social media your own page and you could connect other pages to your page. Wasn't it just kind of like a rudimentary like web hosting. Yeah, but come on, man, it's the it's the stars a city. It was the start of remember they all had they all had like different neighborhoods. Yeah, depending on your region. Anyway, I digress. So any of those things you got no interest, never signed up, never gave them a lick of information, even if you've never even had an email address. No, several things are certain. At least a portion of your purchasing history exists in online record. If you've somehow managed to just pay cash money for every single thing in your love, you're one of those um off the grid types. You are still not safe, and that's because various public records of your life are digitized. You guys, I was at the bank recently trying to do some bankery, and it came up on their screen, pages and pages of my personal documents. I just happened to be able to see it. I was like, Oh, that's my marriage certificate. Oh that's that's my mortgage, you know, all of this stuff. And I understand that when you submit that stuff, you know, into the public record, it's somewhere. But I was a little bit taken aback at how easily they were able to just boot pop it up on their screen. Was this routine bankery. It was routine bankery. It was transferring a check to someone, and they had to verify identities and they had to find a document that had the made name of the individual question. But yeah, I know, I was just kind of a little bit taken aback by how quickly that stuff popped up on the screen. So all of that stuff exists. You got court and government agencies that have been posting public records online since like the nineties, right, Ben, Yeah, the motor vehicle records, voter files, property tax assessments, professional licensees, and of course court files are all up there in the cloud. And just to pump the brakes really quick, just to the social media thing, we skipped over something really important here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what happens if you don't have a social media profile, Yeah, it doesn't matter, because maybe your friends do. And guess what. Most of these social media platforms or apps that you end up downloading, they ask for your contacts in your phone, especially if you're on your phone, and if your number happens to be in your friends phone, your email address, your address, your physical address, all of that stuff is accessible by these apps and by these social media So maybe the platforms are taken a look at you, just in case, maybe in the future you make an account, or they can just take that information and sell it to somebody else who fits that persona right or a construction persona. Okay, yes, these are this is the background of the Grand painting. Right, So it's obvious that meeting one of these exceptions would be pretty uncommon, right, Meeting all of them would be downright extraordinary, on the level with a superpower. Most people have some sort of Internet presence, whether consensual or non consensual, even if it's only a footprint found in various public records. As Null mentioned, And for this episode, let's call this series of ones and zeros the digital you so here, you are, here, we are, It's the twenty first century, and you, like Walt Whitman, contain multitudes. Several several compelling studies indicate that our online personas often contradict our physical personas in a number of ways. And one great example of this is you know, you'll see studies that say image somebody creates or or exhibits on Instagram or Facebook is a little bit more happy or cool than the image they project in real life. It's like curating your life, you know, and how people perceive you. It's sort of cultivating an image that you see as being the best you, putting your best foot forward, even though we're all sad, sad sacks of waste. M Well, yeah, I can remember specifically my Xbox Persona. For a long time, I was avid into the first person shooters, and I was not very nice. I went through a time where I was not very nice as a kid, playing people's mothers. Oh I so did I talked to so much? I was. I wasn't a troll, but I was intense and very competitive. I could I could see this obviouly enough. Well, I had to. I had it separated so far from the know my walking around persona. It was so different when I got that controller in my hand that I this is so true, and you are like the nicest person Nolan. I know. Yeah, oh yeah, I have a feeling you're exaggerating a bit. I bet if we experienced your online bullying, we'd be like, that is the nicest online Yeah, yeah, what was it was like, pardon me, I couldn't help but point out that your mother uned, you got cuned and your mother is wayward. I would. I would do accents a lot of the time. That was quite a bit of fun to do accents. I really appreciate you playing this out, Matt, because you are right, there is a There is a difference, and this difference can grow over time, so that from some perspectives, people become almost two different versions of themselves. You listening to this right now, you are almost two different people. Perhaps more than that, you might even have online personalities that you strive to keep entirely separate from your physical life, or multiple identities, like our superproducer Tristan McNeill. Sorry I forgot to mention that at the top man Tristan probably has numerous identities. For the sake of anonymity. Yeah right, Yeah, he's nodding has five five or he's waving at us a high five. In today's episode focuses on these identities and their creation and their deletion. Today's episode ask what happens when you want to delete this information? Could you do it? And how? Or more disturbingly, why not. So let's get into the Internet. How many users are there in twenty seventeen of this whold thing called the Worldwide Web and all of its associated stuff. Well, there's an estimated fifty one percent of the world's population that has some kind of access to the Internet, roughly three point eight nine billion human beings. It's begun to become looked at more as like a human right. Yes, and it's considered that in a lot of places, and the United Nations is actively well. Factions in the United Nations are actively pursuing it to be listed as a human right, along with clean water and shelter and food and safety from harm. Remember the Google loon, not the Google loon. It was some kind of loon, but it was an Internet balloon that would be an access point that would go over more rural, hard to reach densely jungled areas and yeah, so I mean like we're coming up with all kinds of wacky inventions to make this possible because we see it as being so important. So it's not even looked at as like a luxury or like a thing for fun. It's allowing you to be connected in a way that is, you know, very important. We're evolving, you guys. Think about it. In only seventeen years since the year or two thousand, we've increased this by so much. Seven percent of the population had access in the year two thousand. I remember the first brand you had that had the Internet and fully understand what it was at first absolutely, Oh can we get a sound clip of that dial up modem? Oh, don't do it, Tristan, don't do it. My brain, Oh, so many different I had a friend who's both mom and dad were like high level surgeons or doctors, and they had Prodigy, which was like an early service provider, and it was all like message boards and stuff in those days. And it wasn't until years later when I was like a teenager, like in middle school, that you could get images and print them out and slowly, Yeah, anticipation building as it goes down. Yes, and Matt to your point, this is this growth is unexpected, unprecedented in many ways. Because you said only seven percent of the population had access in two thousands. Yeah to fifty one seventeen years later. That's crazy. And you know, here's the thing. People have, you know, up until the year two thousand, had a certain expectation of privacy in their lives. What we do. I got shades on my windows for a reason because I don't want you looking in at night when I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing, even if I'm just making a ham sandwich in the nude. Mom perhaps, Hey, I know how you roll. I mean, look, nakey time is a special time. Nay time, nakey time. Yeah, you guys don't have nakey time is in a k e y Yeah, nakey time. You'll have kids one day, Ben oh man, you haven't seen that, Dana Carvey stand up. Yeah, that's what I was referring to. It's nake time, y'all have seen it. Know what that sound does. Well, it's a healthy thing to have naked baby time in our house where my son gets to run around just in his diaper and just really feel the world against his skin. That's not nake though. If he's wearing the diaper, dude, well, I know, but we come on, he's he would pee everywhere. And in a few decades he's probably going to look back and say, hey, I don't want videos of young me running around being and having naked time time. Yeah, there's there's a strict no photos of videos during nakey time instituted in our house, so according to and he'll thank you later. Because according to a Few Research Center study, ninety three percent of adults today say it's important that they be able to control who can access information about them, and nine percent also say controlling what information is gathered about them is also important. Oh, the illusion of control. Yeah, and also we know that in addition to just generic internet, right, one of the biggest avenues of encountering online society or just the online world is social media, sometimes to the exclusion of other Internet points. Like there's some people who live entirely on you know, Facebook or Twitter or something like that. Well, here's the thing. Yeah, like you're saying, Ben, I think social media ends up at least to younger people in the newer generations. It is probably the biggest draw to be connected for anything, because you're not really using it for a lot of utility access that maybe an older adult would do to check on finances or do any of that kind of stuff. You're getting on there so you can connect to your friends. And you know, Facebook is still the largest company in the social media field, however not so much for the younger generation. You get things like What's App. There are a lot of other by the way, What's App owned by Facebook, So great job, because I think that's number two, isn't it. Yeah, I believe so at this time. And so for a little perspective. In twenty twelve, Facebook surpassed a billion monthly active users, and earlier this year, this like monolith of social media hit two billion monthly active users and co and like What'sapp, which they own as well as at this to their portfolio is sporting little more than half of that at one point two billion. So even you know, at second place, it's it's you know, pales and comparison to the Facebook numbers, which is insane, especially when we consider if we look at countries by population, if the users of Facebook, now we're a country, they would be the most populous country in the world, and What's App would be number four, so it would be Facebook, China, India, What'sapp and just by a little bit as a number four. I have a little confession, guys, I've never actually seen What'sapp. I have no idea what it looks like. I guess I don't understand the appeal. I was turned onto it because a friend of mine was traveling internationally and apparently it's an easy way to stay in text kind of communication with somebody that's international. And it looks all like just a text chat app. And I think it has video chat. That's great, but it's a really basic thing. It doesn't really have any of the bells and whistles that like a face book has that's a little bit more multifaceted. What's App seems to me to be a little more kind of barebones. It's getting it done, man. That's maybe why it's popular, because it's it does a job, and it does it well. And I know a lot of people even use it professionally in chat groups and stuff. So yeah, let's get on What'sapp. This is not advertisement. And still, whether or not it has bells and whistles, it's doing the most important thing, which is aggregating data about you, y metadata, where you're calling, from, what time you're calling, who is in the conversation with you. Here's the thing about social media. Each social media site overwhelmingly is a privately owned entity. The social media platforms that we most likely use are all privately owned. And unfortunately, if you are like most of us, by which I mean the vast majority of us, you did not read the terms of service before you agreed to have that profile. I definitely scrolled all the way to the bottom of the document before it made you do that. Yeah, don't act like you know the ones that don't make you do that. You definitely don't do that. Yeah, by you, I mean like literally everyone general you. Uh. These terms of service agreements can have some perfidious stuff inside. Obviously if you are listening to stuff, then once you know, you're familiar with it. But we found a great website called terms of Service Didn't Read less dr and it presents in plain language some of the positive and negative aspects of various social media or Internet organizations. So let's let's give let's give everybody a couple of examples. Google. We'll start with the the Goliath, the Giant, the Leviathan. Google itself keeps your searches and other identifiable user information for an indefinite period of time. So at their pleasure, yes, yes, at their at at his man edges these pleasures well. And they can also share that information with other parties like they that's in the terms of service. We can do whatever we want with this information. Yes, and can use all your content for all of their existing and or future services. Now think think about how much you pump into Google services right now, Just imagine personally. Calendar information is in there, email information is in there. I mean YouTube, think about our our YouTube show, and you know all that stuff, all your all your weird searches at three am when you wake up from a strange dream. Yeah, you know all your What does this animal mean? Why is it wearing socks? They know your Google Drive, anything that you're backing up there, oh boy, tracks you on other websites. And then also there's a YouTube and Google and YouTube have the right idea. It's like giving people all this free stuff, and everyone's really they stoked and grateful at version. It's like Google YouTube, thank you so much for these this free services. But you're giving them something way more valuable in their giving you. I mean, one could argue in terms of like ultimate financial worth. And it's very true. And we've had our own issues with the old YT and you know, some of their terms are a bit strange, and they have it written in the terms that they can change them at any time, and they can also remove your content at any time and they don't have to tell you about it. They can also demonetize your stuff, right I'm telling you. And if you decide to delete a video YouTube doesn't actually delete it. We will get into the surprising gray area of what it means to delete something. Even if they remove it for one reason or another, they still they still have it. They still have it. And you know, not to plug anything on this show. But on this website it shows duck duck go the search engine. Yeah, and all it says is no tracking with a little thumbs ups sign duck dot go is a is a good alternative for people who don't want Google searches recorded. Be aware, of course, that your Internet service provider or your ISP will still be tracking what you do, but duck dot go is a good way to get around Google. There was also a thing I haven't visited it in a while called Scrugle scr o O g l E, and it does Google searches without the web scraper, he says. Scrugle dot org is gone forever, says the site owner. Oh well they mustn't. They must have got popped by the man. Facebook tracks you on other websites, automatically shares your data with many other servers, uses your data Shakira style whenever, wherever. And additionally, however, it wants bonus for all you Android app users out there. It can record sound and video from your phone at any time without your consent. I remember when we learned about this. Think about all the times you've been in a stall and a bathroom. It's just listening to you use the restaurant, dropping a hot mixtape. Let's call it that surf and read it on your phone, not to be two crass. And lastly, for examples, Twitter, right, Oh yeah, so Twitter. Let's say you're gonna cancel your account on Twitter. It's gonna keep Twitter in. The service, is gonna keep a lot of that information. It keeps at least the rights to anything you've posted through their service, So it doesn't matter if you've deleted it and it's gone there, maybe they still have it on a server. Maybe they can use it for you know, anything in the future. And additionally, evidence indicates that all social media entities will cooperate with law enforcement for information request. Right at the most basic level, this is a good thing, right theoretically, yeah, However, in practice it's helping intelligence networks take a vacuum cleaner approach to gathering the stuff. So it ultimately does not matter whether you are innocent of any suspected crime, right, because there's this leap frogging. There's this leap frogging system that's in play, and you know, the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon or whatever. I don't know enough about celebrities to play it, but this is like a sith version of that. So, for instance, our producer Tristan is an innocent guy. Look just look at that faces understanding. You know, if he knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who's implicated in certain types of crime, right or certain networks of that, then boom, Tristan's info is up for grabs too, and he doesn't He may never even know why, He may have never met um, what's a good what's a good name that sounds like a criminals name. Sam T. Garden he may have never met, They may have never met. Uh, call him Sam the sham, Sam the sham T Garden. Yeah. But now now simply because he is at best tangentially related, his information is now up for grabs. Yeah. So well, we we do know that there have been a lot of historic cases going through the court system of the United States looking at what the you know, what law enforcement can get, how much they can actually ask you to pull out of their website. There's a recent case about UM a group that was anti I think it was an anti Trump website that was organizing a bunch of protests and stuff, and the FBI was looking to get access to pretty much every user that had ever been on that website, anybody who had ever checked it out. And it's going through the court system right now to see constitutionally what can be asked for. So thankfully, the situation may change depending on the time that you are hearing this episode. If so, if you're listening in two thousand and twenty eight or whatever, and we haven't still be around, send us an email and ask us for an update if Big Brother allows you to do so, and also what social media is hot right now in twenty twenty eight. Yeah, now this episode is a time capsule. Well, we've talked about We've talked about some of these pernicious at times I would argue purposefully misleading terms of service. I've talked about what exists around you or what traces you leave on the Internet, and of course check out our friends part time I'm genius for more in depth. Look, but we haven't yet talked about how to remove this information or attempt to do so. Removing information is unfortunately not a silver bullet kind of scenario. It's a case by case basis. And we'll give you some pointers. After a word from our sponsor, and we're back to quote Mac with no delay. Yes, I don't know why I love that so much. I don't know why you said it. One time you said one time you said we're back with no delay, and the way you said it that just made me happy in my heart. Well, i'm talking about audio plug ins. Obviously, maybe we need a little delay. Yeah, can we get a rent? Are you taking away? That's awesome? Yes, I think we should. I think we should keep that in our back pockets, for one thing, get a little dull. You know, this is something I'm happy with the Internet knowing about me that I'm a fan of these sorts of effects. Yeah, we just want to punch it up a little bit, you know. So how can you get rid of your Internet presence? That's where we're at right now. Right, So we went through and kind of compiled some recommended steps for removing your various social media accounts. We'll start there and then we'll get a little more granular as we go on. But this these all came from the various help centers of these different social media sites. So here we go. Facebook says that if you don't think you'll ever use Facebook again, you can request to have your account permanently deleted. You hear that you can request request to the language is everything also deleted? Yeah? And help more like help. So it says here, I'm going back to the quote. Please keep in mind that you won't be able to reactivate your account or retrieve anything that you've added. But before you do this, you may want to download a copy of your info from Facebook. Then, if you'd like your account permanently deleted with no option for recovery. You can log into your account and let us know. Yeah, exactly, let Facebook. Wait there's more, Yeah, there's more. So when you delete your account, UM, folks won't be able to see it on their respective Facebook. Ye. You're a phrasing here, But it doesn't necessarily go away. It's just kind of hidden, ye, hidden from other users. Uh. And it may take up to again from the from the article here, ninety days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete all of the things you've posted, like your photos, status updates, any data that's stored in Facebook's UM surely absurdly gigantic backup systems. And while you're deleting this information, it is inaccessible to other people using Facebook. Again, more of a hiding feature than an actual deletion. So some of the things you do on Facebook aren't actually stored on your account. And now this is true. You can think about this in terms of like messenger, Facebook messages or even I would be interested to double check this, but I would imagine if you delete your account, do comments you've made on other threads and other people's pages disappear or does it just like it still lives there, but your picture maybe goes away or something like that. I honestly don't know, but I think your comments would probably go away and then they go away. Okay, well that'd be cool. I think you own your comments because you're able to go through an individually delete them. That's true, and you can also set them to you can. Now you can't really set comments to be private. Yeah, I don't know about that, but I do know when you send a message to somebody else, it's received by the other person and it's in their inbox. It's kind of like entangled information has two owners, which is why, um, I don't know. Also, Facebook is I don't want to derail us, but Facebook is tremendously manipulative, like when you try to mess with your privacy stuff, your quote unquote privacy. It has a dinosaur as icon, and then the way the it steers people with the parameters of what you can and cannot say. So if you try to remove a tag the choices you're given, or you know this is offensive or it's mislead blah blah blah, you know you can't. There's no option to say just remove it. That's called other. Is there still another I don't know. I don't. I think No. In several cases they took away other really yeah, I thought other yea God always have another would align to let you, but that that it would be a manipulative tactic though, to like, these are your choices, and your choices are only these. It's not. It's not wood it's a hypos is there. This bis pretty interesting though, because, as we know, because of I guess largely laziness, you connect to other apps using your Facebook. It gives you that lovely little option where it's like, hey, you don't want to make an account, just give us access to your Facebook information. Yeah, because those those social medias or apps are paying Facebook to do that so that they gather they have all that other information attached to Facebook within their system. Yeah. But if you delete your Facebook account and then you accidentally log into one of these Facebook connected accounts like Instagram or Spotify or Twitter or any number. I mean like I did a sock membership box thing today and it allowed me to connect to it via Facebook. So ye, it goes pretty deep. If you do this, though, it will log you back into your Facebook account and the deactivation slash deletion process starts all over again. I love the use of the term deactivation. They don't even call it delete, it's deactivation. And it reminds me of like I watched Blade Runner last night or the first time in years, and instead of murdering replicants, they retire. Yeah you geez. And Instagrams know better. If you go to the delete your account page, if you're not logged in, they'll last you log in. You have to go on your desktop. You can't. You can't do it from the app. And also, which is weird, because you can't really use Instagram on the desktop exactly. How strange is that? And I can only imagine that there are a lot of people out there who don't even really have a desktop system anymore set up anywhere in their house. You have to Yeah, you have to select a option from a drop down menu, so and re enter your password. So the option to delete the account only appears after you've selected a reason when you delete the account. This is at least explicit. When you delete your account, your prof file, photos, videos, comments, likes, and followers are permanently removed. And then, just like Facebook, you can temporarily disable your account. But I'm gonna go ahead and say I don't trust it. Yeah, oh man. And then we get to one of my absolute favorite pseudo social media's LinkedIn. Do you guys still have them? LinkedIn accounts? Professional LinkedIn accounts? I mean, I don't even know what did do with it. I deleted mine earlier today. Liberating it was awesome. I mean, you sorry, LinkedIn, but you've sent away too much email. Okay, so you can close your account directly from this one page. Here's the thing. You won't have access to any of your you know, any of the information you've collected or people you've connected to your profile will no longer be invisible on LinkedIn. However, search engines, we're talking things Yahoo's and probably Googles, they might still display your information temporarily, because you're talking about information that's cashed, that's just sitting there, and you can find it still through search results. And the one thing with LinkedIn, though apparently people pay for premium memberships, which i is something I've never done. But if you do that, you have to change up your premium account license and resolve that whole thing before actually closing your account, which makes sense because it's probably there's probably a payment involved. Who knows you have to wait. You have to do what you have to resolve the accounts or like your your pay your pay for LinkedIn accounts before you can close your basic account. That's the idea. Pretty soon, it's simple overall. Here's the thing, guys. Did you have my Space accounts when you were younger? Did I? Ever? Yeah? I had like the flickering gift background all day, the MIDI track that would trigger. Yeah. And you have probably had my Space band accounts too, or some kind of music accounts that my old band, Uh, my Space is actually still that everyone's check it out. It's a band called the Cubists. Nice and our MySpace still stills in around Hey mine, two Lions and Scissors. Check it out. But anyway, getting away from the plugs, I wanted to delete my personal MySpace account, so I tried to go and do that today and found out that it was linked up to my old AOL email address that I I got that email address in nineteen ninety seven in my parents' basement. It was awesome for a time. It really got got me through everything. Anyway, I got you through everything? Yeah, it really did. Every email I sent for years was through AOL. You probably loaded it with like one of those floppies that came in them. I did you multiple times, right, they gave you the free upgraded every time every point oo change. So what happened? What's happening with your AOL account now? Okay, so check it out. In order to delete the MySpace, go to AOL. In order to get to AOL, I had to change my password I logged in. Apparently, if you don't access in AOL account for one hundred and eighty days, they deactivate that thing NOL. Yeah, that's kind of nice, right, deactivate your account if you're not using it. But I was really nervous because my personal information is still in that thing from all those years ago, and if anyone wanted to hack it or easily get into it, it's there. It's just sitting there. So I tried to delete that. I was just on a spree today. Anyway, you can't delete your AOL account, your free AOL account, at least I could not. There's supposed to be a place that says cancel account, and that button was not there on three different browsers. Well, and you're a tech savvy guy too, so I mean, can you imagine someone that maybe was less. Yeah, even attempting to do any of this stuff. I went through every help center thing that existed on AOL trying to find it. Ended up calling AOL. I took my phone and I called AOL and talked to somebody who walked me through all the security steps and he said he deleted my account. Sorry, you called AOL? Does their phone number still work? Their phone number works for customer service? Was it just some guy? Like four guys in a call center and who knows? Was it just one guy at his house? I have to say they picked up my call really fast because they didn't have anything else to do. Well, you know, I who's to say how many people are working there and how many you know what their call volume is? Probably that guy you could have asked him, well, well it worked for me. So if you're out there and you've got an AOL account from nineteen ninety seven, you want to get rid of it, you can. There's a website you can go to and you can find their their number, it's one eight hundred eight two seven six three sixty four. You could do it right now if you want to do it. And Steve really wants a friend to talk to you. Yeah, just give him a call and uh yeah, not Steve the not Steve our ongoing in sa intern is Steve the AOL tech support Yeah, yeah, we're pretty Steve rich here. It's stuff they don't want. You didn't know. I want to say. His name is Rico, So okay, So just just call that number, ask for Rico or Steve. Yeah. Yeah, tell them Matt sent you. They'll know, right, You've got to be the only Matt they called it in a while. Yeah. There's another thing that's should be an episode all its own that we may have to explore in the future, and that is Google's Oh my god, there is a search console help site. But it gets very complicated, very quickly. Google has its hooks in you, all up inside your digital you. Oh yeah, that's the thing. It's all about indexing because Google everything that gets posted everywhere, it indexes, and you can go and ask Google to remove stuff and take it out of search results. But ultimately you're talking about websites that are being hosted. Like let's say there's a news article written about you that you object to. There's really no way to get Google to do anything. You got to go to the people who posted the thing. Now you just say, hey, Google, delete my Internet presence right one day? That might be a thing, but probably wasn't that the voice command for the stupid Google glass You had to say, hey, hey, glassy Google. Yes, but probably if that command ever exists, as you're saying, that's going to be the domain of a very small group of people. Oh sure, ability of you know, very high level execs or maybe bankers like Rothchild level stuff. Because privacy is going to be one of the ultimate luxuries, as we've explored in past episodes. So we're talking about we've given some examples about how you can attempt to remove some of this information from search engines, from social media. This leads to perhaps the most important query, the most important question here, the most important interrogative. I'm just thinking of sending the billion and Ben bucks ask, Okay, does any of this actually work? We'll answer that question after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. So, Ben, it looks like I'm going to delete my Internet history. Right. No, no, no, you fool a penguin, You silly boy. It's not gonna happen. You've gotten too far. Right. At this point, there is virtually no chance that you, Matt, will be able to completely erase all of your data from the Internet, and don't take out hard There's no chance that I would be able to, or Noel would be able to, or Tristan would be able to. Even if it seems that we have deleted information from a particular part of the Internet, the owners of that site or that organization might have just change the access to the info. So for most of us, right deletion or a rasuer means just that they complete irreversible removal of a given thing. Ah Yet we know from our recycling bins on our computers that when you delete something, it just goes somewhere else temporarily. And then you know, there are programs that are specifically designed to like write ones and zeros over that data. But when you just do a right click delete empty recycled bin, it just kind of scatters the little fragments of it all over. That's why I think Apple machines do it automatically. But you know with PCs you have to defragment your hard drive down then because it literally has bits of data just kind of strewn willy nilly. Maybe in any computer scientists out there. Call me a dummy if I'm not saying it right, but that's my understanding of it. And then you get into data recovery stuff, which it is possible to go back in time on that hard drive. Data forensics. Yeah, it's dark art. Yeah. As shown in some of our earlier examples, the actions that private entities allow us to take don't actually delete information. Instead, they make it so that you can no longer see your info and other people might not be able to see it as easily. The illusion of control, the illusion of controls. Once you've accepted those terms, you're kind of accepting them in perpetuity, aren't you. Yeah, you're up the creek. I mean it's done. So whatever whatever they choose to do with that stuff, you know, you put faith in them not doing anything nefarious. But you're taking a bit of a leap there, if we're being honest. But yeah, I mean you're kind of kidding yourself and thinking that information is just vanished and that you're the one who decided to make that happen. You know what it is? Every time you delete a part of your digital self and angel gets its wings, you're not actually killing well, maybe gets his pizza. Yes, for sure that one. But you're not actually deleting anything or killing anything. You're just making a ghost because you're that ghost is then able to go through you know, some kind of data aggregation thing through whatever service you were using, and then they're taking it and creating a new version of you. But it's just a couple more ones and zeros, right, and this the remains of your digital self. I like this ghost analogy, Matt, your ethereal digital self will be used for various purposes, targeting for ad campaigns. Right. Then they may not know Matt Frederick anymore, but they certainly know American male twenty five to thirty six or something like that. And then they know and then that is the new label for your ghosts. They also learned social networks and preferences. We don't need to know, Like if we all just become American male, agx to why or whatever, and we're all connected with a social network, they don't need to know our names to influence that social network. This can also go into aggregate electoral data right or election data right. This makes it dangerous in the real world because it ties into public sphere influence and we have a great example of that in recent history, right, like the whole Russia Facebook thing. Yeah, where Russia created these profile or Russian hackers. How many caveats we have to I'll play the game. Allegedly, Russian affiliated hackers went into Facebook and created bought personas, and bought or false front organizations to plant news stories and sway people's political decisions. Additionally, as I think we already mentioned here, in many cases, information we share with other people will remain after we attempted to delete everything else. If if Noel has a picture of me and it's under his profile and I delete my profile, it's not going to remove that photo of me. It'll remove the tag. It'll maybe remove Yeah, it'll remove the tag, but you know, we'll see still see my mug. Yeah, he was doing the clown face again in a celebration of it. Did you notice that, right, or as I like to call it, the Eddie Vedder face. Oh okay, thank you, thank you about the one. One great example of this. In the past, celebrities have tasked their PR teams with removing unflattering photos from the Internet. This rarely meets with success. One example I remember is there was an unflattering picture of Beyonce Knowles, uh, the R and B singer entertainer. Yeah, okay, sure, and this, uh, this picture was funny and it became part of what people call photoshop battles, and they were changing the background and they were making funny It was a mean, it's kind of like in a in a mid squat in like a like a dance move that obviously if you saw the whole thing in context, it'd be super badass, but it's one of those like mid face squat things where it's just just the right moment to make a very obviously gorgeous woman appear kind of smanish, kind of she hulk a little. Well, they actually that was one of the photoshop ones. They turned her skin green and she looks like she's just like, you know, hulking out literally. But yeah, and then her people took issue with this and attempted to have it scrubbed from the internet, but as we know, that's a little harder than it sounds. The worst thing you can tell people who are spending their free time on the internet making jokes is, hey, guys, please don't make a joke about this. Our president actually did that where there were some unflattering photos of him that he did not want to be making the rounds, and you know, the Internet collectively laughed at him. Yeah, and rightly so I think if you, I think, unfortunately, if anybody is out of touch enough to ask for that deletion without the power to enforce it, I wonder if the executive branch would have the power to enforce it. In other countries, governments do have the power to prevent images from being outside of you know, being out in the public sphere, but those countries have a different manner of control over information dissemination. I do want to say before we go on, there is one the only example I can think of someone who is able to keep a lot of their pictures off the Internet. Gary Larson, the creator of Farside. You can still find a bunch, but he wrote this really nice letter to people where he said, hey, guys, I just kind of want to keep it in the books if that's okay. And he's super humble, super funny, of course, is Gary Larson. You can still see a lot of it on there, you know, just where someone has obviously taken picture of a of a comic with their cell phone or something. But that's the only even partially successful version. There's one more wacky neighbor type character we haven't covered in the ongoing sitcom known as Your Digital Self on the Internet. That is the government. Oh it's that wacky NSA, the National Security Agency. What are they getting up to this week? Well, it's formerly a secret government agency we'd like to talk about on this show. We even have an intern from there that hangs out with us and listens to every little thing we do. Big up, Steve, you'll get through that chemistry class. They collect data signal intelligence. Oh that sounds good. It's very very good. Here's the thing. They're great at it so great, they're the best in the biz. It's all so really good at find those loopholes ways around original mandates. Oh and all of this is in the name of national security. So longtime fans of the show and privacy advocates around the world, you guys are hopefully aware of the NSA's official stance, which is the NSA's charter limits its powerful surveillance to the rest of the world, not to US citizens. Okay, I think we're done with that bit. Okay, but by now most people are at least you know somewhat aware that the NSA's legal abilities and real world actions not entirely syncd up. So a good example would be that up until twenty seventeen, the NSA was essentially able to surveil domestic sources with a kind of sketchy interpretation of the seven O two provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. You may know it as FICOP. We love the acronyms here on stuff they don't want you to know. They searched their massive network of wire taps for keywords, which they called selectors, and if any part of that communication passed outside of the US for any reason whatsoever, boom, they suck the data up into the what like their Internet data rabbit hole out in the middle of nowhere in Utah, Ah. That's where that lives. And any reason here literally means any reason. So you made a lame terrorist joke and it passed through a server in any other country counting Canada, boom, You're up for grabs. And no, it does not matter. We checked. It does not matter if it was you and another American working on puns or whatever, or trying to make funny acronyms The good news is that, as of twenty seventeen, the New York Times reports that the agency will no longer collect certain Internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target, and will instead limit such collection internet communications they're sent directly to or from a foreign target. That's disturbing because that means before then, if Matt had sent a text about Osama bin Laden, that's the target. I'm mentioning a target for the sake of argument, right, And it was to one of his friends who was in say, let's say Ben Bolin, and we were discussing an episode on said bin Laden. Yeah, yeah, I was like, well, when I get back from the ancestral home in Romania and then we'll do an episode on isis or something. That would mean that everything on those phones is now subject to search for time immemorial. There's another wrinkle in the plot here. So the NSA can't gather information on you if you are if you live in the US. However, foreign intelligence agencies can gather that information on you and then through a network like five Eyes, share it with the NSA. So the NSA can be like, oh, no, no harm, no foul, not checking up on you. But Canada. However over there, he sorry, yeah, it's dodgy. Reminds me of do you guys remember those the controversy over made in America tags where it turned out that some stuff was being made in the atrocious sweatshop conditions in some islands in the South Pacific. That we're American territories, so they can still say made in America or assembled in the USA. So there is more good news. However, once the NSA ends its bolt collection and storage of millions of Americans phone records later this year, it will also, it says, eliminate analyst access to five years worth of old info. So anything you did dodgy in the last five years, apparently the NSA is not going to allow it's analyst to look at it. That's nice. Yeah, yeah, it is. However, technical personnel and that's in quotes. We'll be able to access it for another three months to verify the records produced under the new system. Yeah, okay, it seems above board. They're just going to verify all the stuff is right as rain, right, it's it's meeting the new goals. Also, ongoing court cases surrounding the program require the NSA to hold onto the data until the cases are finalized in court. Okay, I yeah, that seems fine. I'm okay. Well, all above the board, right above the breadbox. So this is just a brief overview of what happens when you try to remove your information. And we we have a couple of conclusions, and I guess the first one I don't know. Are you guys rip the band aid off people or slowly appeal it got a rip? Man? I agree with you. I can tell you the conclusion. Okay, you don't even need to try and delete your information. If it's gone up online. It's up online. If somebody, if one of your friends has a camera phone and a Facebook account, there's probably pictures of you, and you probably got tagged, even if you don't have an account, and there's nothing you can do about it, and your public records are probably going to stay online. That's the scariest thing there's Unless you're the wheel of a powerful intelligence agency or some organization that we don't know about, with abilities that we don't understand, there's virtually no way you'll be able to delete your online presence entirely. The digital you will not only survive your efforts to delete it. Your digital you will most likely survive after the physical version of you is gone, and like a ghost, gotta have a legacy haunt it. Yeah, it's a very black mirror, right, and it will probably remain after your children are gone as well. You know, in the near future you may beat their be some way to construct a real ghost capable of programmatic responses, and so your children might even be able to talk to you, or talk to some version of you. You can, however, delete at least some of your data and make more of it increasingly difficult to find, so much so that only the very committed or connected people will be able to learn more than the most basic facts about you. Privacy settings are your friend on everything you use. I just have to say that if you want to still use social media and connect to friends, just amp up those privacy settings so you're only talking to people you have directly connected to and purposefully said okay, I know this person. Even then, it's a little dangerous because accounts can get hijacked and all that, and then they have your info, but you know, play as safe as you can. You can also use private services to help clean up your online presence. We strongly suggest you research the thoroughly before choosing one, and also understand that they do not have the power to force other website owners to remove anything, especially when those sites are in countries with relaxed rules on consumer protection. Very great point. And if you're really feeling strongly about you know, pursuing further levels of anonimity or you know, completely shutting off the information spigot altogether, you're really going to have to change your lifestyle. You know. It's like what they say about losing weight and all that stuff. You can't just there's no magic way to do it. You got to just change your habits. That's right, every day. And if you want to learn more about that stuff, you can check out an earlier episode we did on whether or not it's actually possible to be on the Internet in any kind of anonymous way. And what does that lifestyle look like, guys? I mean, like it would just it would kind of be like not leaving your apartment. No, you just won't. You don't have a cell phone, starters, you don't let people take picture of you, don't hang out with friends, don't participate in it with any you know. I mean there's a lot here, I guess be a hermit, only take jobs at paying cash, which means that you would also be on the fringes of I'm saying you'd be like a pariah kind of. I mean, this is like the lowest of the low. Our society has evolved into a place where you have to have this technology, you have to participate in this stuff. I mean, I have a friend who has chosen to not be on Facebook, and he's always astonished when I find out something that he hasn't found out, and I'm like, dude, just get on Facebook. He's like, yeah, now I'm not doing that. And I'm like, come on, man, like why and he's like, I just I just don't want to do it. I don't want to be that guy. And he's older, but like he you know, feels very strongly about like just this not being a part of his life. Yeah, I mean I can understand where he's coming from. Another thing you could do if you wanted to change your life still in this way is to get a law degree in uh contracts and digital agreements. That way you can actually read the terms of service every time and then decide maybe I don't want that. But here's the thing too, there's this great article in The Guardian about the terms of service debate and a lot of it. It dealt with several layers of this, one of which being the word accept versus join or opt in or whatever that all matters, and you know they're trying to feed into this past habit of just click through, you know, don't even pay it a second glance. But there, you know, there there's discussion of like, should we change where the terms fall in the process of signing up for a service. Should it be right up front so before you know, you don't have instant gratification because it's always at that point, right before you get the thing, you click it because you're just like ready to have the things so you don't even think about it. So, you know, trying to maybe steer people into possibly reading the terms a little more carefully since there's some really heavy stuff in there. But this article talked about how it was in The Guardian, written by David Barrabee. It posed the question of you know, when you when you go to the doctor, you don't necessarily sign a contract or agree to the terms of services of being worked on by a doctor, but you expect the doctor to uphold their doctorial duty, the hippocratic oath or whatever and not you know, screw you over. And it's almost like this article suggested that maybe society could almost influence some of these companies to be a little more responsible and not sell your stuff to third parties instantly, you know, there's so much money in it though, or at least to be good better stewards of your information. And there is some good news if you live in some countries, if you live in the European Union, you may be able to take advantage of something called the right to be forgotten. Do check it out. It's the idea that you are ultimately the owner of your own death, your own creation. There's a fantastic fact sheet Bend that you posted here for us, that you can find online from the European Commission, and it goes through all of these different rules like what kind of has to be met for you to take on this right to be forgotten? Sure, and it's fantastic. You can find it if you search for it. Still not a silver bullet, and if you are listening in the United States, it's not gonna help you. But I guess we would be remiss as we're drawing towards the end here, we would be remiss if we didn't point out there are also advantages to having information online in the cloud, locating loved ones and emergencies, arguably convenience and of course medical processes. Right and in some to dovetail the point that you and know we're making earlier, Matt, this does all come down to a matter of trust. Indeed, as we said earlier, faith. How can you trust but verify the claims of private companies such as ISPs and social media platforms. How can we trust the statements of a government when we're aware of the actions it is taken in the past. Spoiler And this is just my opinion, you cannot. I think arguments based on faith are not the strongest. It's tough to imagine a company, or a government, or even an individual willingly giving up all the power implied in this great amalgamation of fortune. And if you're not prepared to completely divest from the Internet, I mean, because it is a heck of a lifestyle change that we were describing here, then perhaps your best bet is to treat everything you post online, no matter how ephemeral and arbitrary it may seem, as part of your permanent record. Do you guys remember those threats? Absolutely? Yeah, it's going on your permanent record. This photo of you doing a beer headstand, I felt like that was something that was just like in like Nickelodeon shows about you know, being in high school. That's going on, yeah, permanent guy. I can assure you all you kids listening out there, that permanent record is very real and anything you do is going directly on it. So be on your best behavior. Your kid doesn't listen to the show man. Not yet. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode. I know we went a little longer than usual. As we're exploring this stuff, we want to hear from you. Are you a person who has been contemplating hopping off the grid? Do you have a weird story about some internet voodoo that occurred to you? Or are you a person who came in from the cold where you formerly off the grid? Did you have the kind of parents who never gave you a Social Security number? I know a couple of folks like that in the crowd. If so, what has your experience been. I got creeped out recently. I got a video gaming system, which I sound like I'm in the eighteen hundreds when I say stuff, yeah, Vigi gamer system, Yeah, I have a PlayStation and just the built in erosion of privacy stuff there. You know that there's a button just to automatically share things out, Yeah, to start streaming? Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's a different world, right, But we want to hear your stories about that, and we'd like to hear any advice that you have for your fellow listeners. Oh yeah, have you tried to delete something? Did you find a really great way to do it or a way to get through the the Google webs all the spider webs at Google has let us know, yes, and let your fellow listeners know as well. Speaking of your fellow listeners, that reminds us it's time for god Conna. But not just your average garden variety shout out corner ladies and gentlemen. No, not a bit. I don't know why. Postumatically we're doing a physical shout out. We're gonna shout toward an actual human face. Yes, that's right. Remember earlier in the show we mentioned that this episode is a team up, a collaboration with our colleagues over at Part Time Genius. We are lucky enough to have one of the host of Part Time Genius, Will Pearson here live on the show in person. Will thank you for coming. Hey guy, it's great to be here. Will we promise we're not actually going to shout him your fikay? Thank you? I really really wanted to, just for fun the way, Well, it's because you're full of rage, Matthew. No, it's I'm very happy, excited. I'm happy to be here. I may shout at you guys, just out of enthusiasts. Please my pad, please direct the shouts the shouts toward me. I'd probably have the worst hearing of the three of us, so will you. I'm part Time Genius explored a subject that is kind of a rabbit hole and a fantastic complimentary exploration to our own that we just had earlier in this episode, whereas we were asking what can a person delete off the Internet, or if it's possible to do so, you and your co host Mango were exploring what information actually exists about a person online? Right right? And this idea for us came about because one of our listeners wrote in after having an experience being at a grocery store buying a product going home and despite having never looked up that product, on looking up that product online, they started being targeted with ads about that product. And it was not a common thing. It was some sort of independent soda or something like that, and they thought, this is weird, like is this coincidence or am I actually being targeted in some way? And so that's really what we started exploring more. You know, it's one of those things that I don't think most people are surprised that, you know, they're being tracked online when they visit a website and that then maybe they're targeted with ads because of that behavior online. I think what most people don't fully recognize and that we didn't even fully appreciate, was the fact that all of your interactions, even in the real space, you go to a grocery store, you go to any other kind of store, you swipe that membership card. The way that data is then exchanged among so many companies, so you're you're making a purchase there, that email address, that phone number is matched up with what Facebook or some other property has as your email and phone phone number, and all of it's syncd and they know that much more about you, and it's that much easier for them to try to target you with products and things. And in our episode we talked a good bit about the idea of accepting those terms of use right and a lot of that is you basically saying I'm okay with this right right legally speaking. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, that's that's one of the things that we talked about as studies that are showing that, yes, we know that this information is all out there and that they know this information about us. But at the same time, you know, it's pretty nice to be connected, and it's pretty nice to have this convenience. So do we really want to give that up? And most of us say no, would you would you say, for the uninitiated in this strange web of info bartering, would you say that maybe your common brick and mortar loyalty cards are symptomatic or part of this network. Absolutely, So you've provided, you know, the cashier with your phone number or your email address. And then there are companies and just to give a couple of examples, like there's a company called Data Logics which works with these grocery stores or other brick and mortar they're purchasing this data. They're then turning around and selling it to a place like Facebook. And so Facebook has this ad programming division called Atlas that's very sophisticated, much more so than I think we even realize. That they then have this data and when that information is SYNCD up, they knew that that friend purchased that can of soda because they had to either swipe their card or given their phone number, or that it was likely to be them, and that's how they knew to target them with ads not only on Facebook, but any site, any page that has a Facebook like button or share button that they have the opportunity to show ads on those those pages as well. So it's definitely part of that. I can't wait for the Augmented Reality Minority Report add placements like that when you're just walking through the bus station and it's giving you all the stuff you bought a harbor, or like in that Black Mirror episode where you have to spend your hard earned credits to skip the ad because it's actually projecting it constantly in your field of vision and in order to make it go away you have to spend money or credits, like in the episode It's Merits is nine million merits or something like that, which is great, great episode, very very bizarre and impression. On a bright side though, you know, if we're more if it's greating on us on how likely we are to do things. It reminds me of like a global version of high school superlatives. You know, maybe it's not all bad, you know, maybe it's not all crime. Maybe I'm like most likely to open for Louis c k whatever, dream big. So that's what I was gonna definitely maybe open the door to the bathroom while he's walking in. All right, Well, well we'll fix this in post right, No, sure, So speaking of bathrooms, um, I noticed, you know, we have an office. We work out of an office here and it's a shared restroom with everybody on the floor and right, I couldn't help but notice this is a complete side note. By the way, the toilet paper was out again, and you know, nothing against staff here, it's just sometimes a lot of toilet paper is necessary. Yeah, yeah, and uh, well I think maybe you found a solution. Well we've got good news for you here. I mean, we know that there are over eight billion items out there connected to the web, and we've been looking into all of these different types of devices, And there is something which is kind of like the Internet of toilet paper, and it's this new product called roll Scout, and it informs you via text or email or app when the toilet paper is low or out. And I have to admit I made fun of this product when Mango mentioned it on our episode, and then as I thought about it more and I thought, you know, you're a business owner, you're a cafe owner, you're something like that. I mean, this is something that really ticks off a customer, right, And so for sixty bucks, you can then keep tabs on this and know when that toilet papers running out. So I'm kind of all in on this thing. Have you seen those Amazon buttons that you can get. It's like a button the specifically tied to a product like Tied or something like that, and you stick it to your washing machine and when you notice that you're getting low on Tied, you jam that button and it automatically places an order for you for Tied. So it's like, you know, we participate in this stuff as well, and like these apps and things like that in the button are almost like complicit versions of this tracking stuff where we're like we're kind of participating in this process. And it's like for people, you know, this argument that it's worth it have my info. It's fine. I don't care if you know how many times I order tied Because you even search for things on Amazon right and that's are getting served up ads like in your Gmail account. It's all connected, clearly, and I think that's one of the things that we talk about in the episode as well. As you know, we focus so much on what are the websites we're visiting and what are we doing on social media, and we're not stopping to think about all of the products that are integrated into our everyday lives, which are now connected to the broader web, that are providing data and other information to these companies as well. There was one that kind of made me laugh at first and then it scared me. It's this product called Aristotle from Mattel. It's basically like this three hundred dollars version of Alexa, but for little ones. And so you have it in your room with a baby or a toddler, and it not only has the facial recognition and voice recognition, but it's a machine that's in this room that is able to track pretty much everything that's happening there. So every time a diaper has changed, every time of feeding is occurring, and so from day one, these lives are being tracked, and at some point this data is then available to Mattel to do whatever with right, to decide how we need to be you know, retargeted in some way, or how products need to be customized for us. So, you know, maybe not used in a scary way. But at the same time, it's just so odd to think that from this first day of a baby's life, all of this data is available. It's not it's not scary at all. Well, it's it's the only way we'll be able to make the first real super AI. We have to know exactly what a human is like from the day it is born until it is able to put its own pants on. You're right, and it's called Aristotle, which sounds very smart. It must be fine. Do you think all this stuff has affected the field of market research a lot? I mean, can you even imagine orderline replaced? Yes? Yeah, I mean with all of this data there, it's hard to even imagine how much these jobs in that world of market research have changed in the past ten years. You know, how much more data and an overwhelming amount of data that's there and what to do with it. So it's probably one of those things at this point that even the company's coming up with it, they're like, we don't know what we're going to do with this, but we're going to have so much data salivating over that, by gosh, by golly, do no. One of the questions that occurred to us when we were listening to your episode was the the concept of whether or not this is inevitable, you know, the has the zegeist already shifted or the badgers out of the bag? So speak, what do you think? Do you think that it's possible that people would somehow rebel against this or is it at this point has it already reached what Malcolm Gladwell would call the tipping point? I mean, you have to feel like this has already past a certain point where again because of the upsides, or what we would perceive as the upsides, you know, the pleasure that's brought to us by having this constant connection with other friends and what people are getting out of that, and the ease that it's you know the fact that I can go get my tide just by pressing that button or whatever it is. I mean that can be. Its means a lot to people, and I think they're willing to sacrifice a whole lot just to m to have those things. So I don't know. I'm sure there's going to continue to be battles over this, and more and more battles over this, But it also feels like we're only seeing the beginning of this complete connectedness. In a way, we're in the prequel. If this were a film, this is it. And as stuff gets better than the AI gets more advanced, maybe we won't even have to push the button. It'll just know that we're out of Tide. Based on our habits and our purchasing patterns for Tide or some product, it will automatically know what to send us when, so that we never run out of you know, American craft singles, or even stuff that you didn't know you wanted. It will It'll be like just there, like Nold Brown, we have delivered your shipment of Tide and two Ruta bagas. Oh and you sounded just like my wife, which makes it even more creepy. It just leads and gentlemen, you know on this show that we always endeavor to not just provide information, but provide opportunities to act. And with this in mind, will we were hoping to ask you easier, I stay hoping to ask. We'll just ask you. Is there is there any like advice or I guess, words of guidance under or words of warning that you could give to our listeners when it comes to their online presence. I think, honestly, it's really just about being aware that this is happening and trying to know what your comfort level is with this. You know, if this is not something that you're comfortable with, these companies having all of this data and a certain amount of this is inevitable, right, But if you don't want that data to be shared, you know, you probably need to avoid signing up for these memberships of various clubs and things that where all of this is exchanged. But for the most part, it's making that decision for yourself. Am I comfortable with this information being out there? But then just being cautious and knowing that any information that you're providing to one company is going to be shared with several others, and anything any activity that you're participating in online is available to so many others out there. As well. So I don't think there's any sort of like magic thing that you can do. And as you guys have discussed, the idea of trying to just completely wipe the web of your existence is pretty much impossible, right. So I think it's just deciding whether we're willing to participate in the digital world as it is now, and if so, to what extent. I have another question too, to follow up, because it just occurred to me, are there any concerns that parents should have now that they're raising children in an entirely connected world? Right? I almost don't even want to get into that as having as having children and you think about I mean, to me, part of what's scary about that is just more like when we grew up and you came home from school and you shut off the rest of the world and you played and you were just kind of in this other world. There is this need for children now by the time they're in middle school, to be constantly connected, and their brains are almost aren't ready for this are capable of managing that, and so that is one of my concerns. It's, of course, there's all the concerns about what information you're sharing and how exposed you are and making sure that you protect yourself in that sense, but there's also the sense of just helping our children have that necessary break from the outside world and just existing in a world of two or three friends and their family. To me, that's one of the most important parts about this is not having them feel from such an early age that they have to have this twenty four seventh connection. It's just not good for anybody's brain, much less at kids. I'm struggling with that with my kid, and I'll have to just be like, okay, over right, bad time it's done. Yeah, just let it go late, but I have to right, you don't right, you don't have to yeah, And it starts as almost toddlers. She's eight, I mean, you know, but she's you know, sort of a I don't want to sound like I'm tu min home it kind of an advanced eight year old, I suppose, but like, yeah, it's just like it hurts me to see her almost falling into these kind of addictive behavior cycles where I'm just like stop, stop your obsessed, and we're saying stop as we're also peeking off to the email. Is I'm the worst and I set the worst example. And it's like the classic do as I say, not as I do, which I just feel like a total hypocritical jerk. But I'm trying. I'm trying every day as well. But I say, move to the Blue Ridge Mountains. They have some Greek communities out there. You can really disconnect. You move to the quiet zone there you go, Yeah, where there's no cell phone, no TV, no radio, nothing, just banges. Yeah, just rocks and sticks. No problems out there. Yeah. Yeah. Also the most stable people that's right in to congregate there too. And that is a story for another day, Kitty. You can check it out right now because we did an episode on our dare I say, Misadventures in the Quiet Zone? And before you do that, will we want to thank you so much for collaborating on the show and for coming in lending your expertise to our friends and neighbors in the audience. This has been a lot of fun. I'm a longtime fan of the show here, so it's really been a blast getting on to work on this together. Unless we forget that this was but a taste of the part time genius perspective on this subject. So where can folks go find the full meal. Hey, this was our brand new episode over part time genius. Come check us out then we hope you enjoy it wherever you get your podcasts. Right, Hey, it's nicely done, Matt, Yes, nicely done. That's the line. And this concludes ours but not our show. Matt, Noel, Tristan and I will return next week with something, hopefully, I mean to say, equally fascinating, but maybe a little less disturbing, you know what I mean? Yeah, I'd be okay with that. In the meantime, if if we have not talked to him to trying to quit social media and you know you're still using the Internet to listen to the show just feels so hypocritical. I wish I knew how to quit you right. Yes, although it does it does sound a little bit hypocritical and contradictory. I think it's kind of funny that we're saying at this point you could you could find that you could totally find us on Facebook and it's all up on the internet all over it. Well, what a bunch of roobs. Yeah, you can find is work Conspiracy Stuff, Work Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram. And that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three std w y t K. If you don't want to do you that, you can send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. 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