Naomi Brockwell
Appearances
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
I'm Naomi Brockwell. I run a media platform called MBTV Media, and we focus on helping people protect their privacy online.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
I think we give away all of this data voluntarily online. I think we're incredibly lax with how we don't protect our data these days. I interviewed someone recently, it was an interesting story. He bought a new car, it was a used car actually,
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
And just by looking through the details in the car, he was able to find out the name of the previous owner, that the previous owner had two daughters, where they went to school, that she was a breast cancer survivor. All of this stuff was literally just the data that the car itself was collecting. So now if you zoom out and look at
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
all of the information that we're posting on social media of our own volition just handing it over all the personal details about our lives it's incredible how much information we are just giving away online it's incredibly easy for anyone to find out anything they want about us these days and that's mainly our fault it's mainly because we are really not thinking about how to protect our data online i think we need a major mind shift
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
in this digital age. And we need to really start to be aware of how much information we're putting out there.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
That's definitely part of it. But I do think that individuals do have to take some responsibility for how they navigate their digital lives. I think we need to stop being naive. I mean, it's 2023. We've had computers for a long time now. We've had the internet for a long time now.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
And, you know, I don't want to blame people for not being aware that their data is being collected by every corner of the Internet. There's, you know, third-party trackers everywhere. There are data brokers scraping all of our financial data, all of our, you know, legal records, all of our social media posts. I mean, there are...
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
nefarious actors out there who want to collect our data there are non-nefarious actors who just want to monetize our data and so i i don't think that it's our fault but i also don't think that we need to be passive victims i don't think that it's
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
okay for people in 2023 to say, you know, oh, well, you know, I'm putting all this information out there publicly, but I didn't think someone would use it against me because clearly this is being used against people all the time. If we just zoom out, like not even talk about scammers, if we just think about the
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
hundred billion dollar industry or potentially trillion dollar industry that is the data brokerage industry. It's incredible. They are making so much obscene amounts of money just from collecting our data, from scraping social media, from ingesting data breaches that are out there, from scraping our financial records. I mean, our banks are selling all of our records, right? We know this.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
They tell us when we sign up, they literally say, you are giving us permission to hand over all your financial data to third parties.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
There are a lot of laws that have been passed that basically say, listen, your data is not your data anymore. It is something that you voluntarily handed over to this third party and they're allowed to do with it what they want. And financial data used to be this sanctuary and you have famous places like Switzerland where, you know, they'd have these banking laws and you'd have this private
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
contract with your financial institution there and you'd think that everything you did was just between you and the bank. And that's just not the way of the world. Not only has the US actually broken the Swiss banking system, but they've completely undermined those laws in the US as well. So now we're in a situation where due to things like the third party doctrine,
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
The government says that if you hand over your data to a third party, you no longer have any reasonable expectation of privacy with that data. And that includes financial institutions because governments want that data as well. And so it's not in their interest to create laws that are going to protect your data.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
It's in their best interest to make it as easy as possible for these organizations to not have liability for handing over your data. So that's the way that the arrangement goes.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
Yeah, everyone says it. It's very naive. I think that... people haven't quite adjusted to the digital world, right? We're used to nefarious actors maybe being there in person, someone who's going to hold you up at gunpoint. They're physically there. We understand the threat model. It's a person they need. They want to steal your handbag or whatever.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
But we live in the digital age where the people who are attacking us are not next to us. They're sometimes over the other side of the world. And sometimes they're just completely indiscriminate. about who they target. So when someone says no one's gonna target me, I'm unimportant.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
I think that it is naive to underestimate your digital significance in today's world, because the current situation is that scammers are not targeting you, They're indiscriminate with how they attack victims. They are casting a giant wide net that you will inevitably fall into. And this is just the current reality. It doesn't matter whether you think you're important or not.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
It doesn't matter whether you think that you're a worthy target, whether you're rich or anything, whether you have status. you're going to be targeted because you will be inevitably captured in this very wide net. That's just how scammers work. The reason they do this is because there's a very low cost to them casting this wide net and there is a potential big payoff.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
Even if a tiny fraction of people fall for their scams, there's a huge potential payoff.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
There are lots of things that you can do to make a big impact on your digital privacy. First of all, be mindful of the companies, the services that you're using. Start using tools and services online that don't collect your data. Your email provider, think about which email provider you're using.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
Are they a company that is capturing the contents of every one of your emails and they're analyzing it and adding it to a profile about you and selling it? Maybe stop using that. Maybe start using a company that respects the individual's privacy and takes that data out of their own reach. The same thing with private messaging apps.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
Start to choose apps that protect your privacy and don't actually access the contents of your messages. You can start using other privacy tools online. All of this stuff goes a really long way to helping you protect your digital identity because the more careless you are with putting your data out into the wild, allowing these companies to collect it, the easier it is for scammers to target you.
Darknet Diaries
138: The Mimics of Punjab
So you need to start being mindful of that and making smarter choices in your digital life.