SpiderBytes: the SpiderOak Podcast

Today’s guest is Michael Filipsen. Michael is an expert in cloud migration and helping enterprises move services to public clouds. He’s also a privacy advocate and judo practitioner. Listen in for some great thoughts on how privacy and social media intersect with families and society in general.

Show Notes

Today’s guest is Michael Filipsen. Michael is an expert in cloud migration and helping enterprises move services to public clouds. He’s also a privacy advocate and judo practitioner. Listen in for some great thoughts on how privacy and social media intersect with families and society in general.

What is SpiderBytes: the SpiderOak Podcast?

Online security and privacy aren't very sexy, but they are important. SpiderBytes is a podcast where normal people from many different fields discuss the tools and techniques they use to be more secure and maintain their privacy. Hosted by Adam Tervort. Guests from across the SpiderOak community.

Adam Tervort (00:05):
Hello world. And welcome back to another episode of SpiderBytes. From SpiderOak, I am your host, Adam Tervort. Well, we've made it, it's 2022. I apologize that we've had a bit of a gap between episodes, but I'm excited to be back and to share another new episode with you. Today we're talking with Michael Filipsen. Michael is from Denmark and he works for a company that helps enterprises and other organizations transition to the cloud. And he has really interesting insights of about security in the cloud, as well as for personal use, things we can do in our families and in our personal life to maintain both security and privacy. This is a really great episode. I hope you'll stick around for it. We'll get right in with Michael Filipsen right after these messages.
This podcast is sponsored by SpiderOak. At SpiderOak we believe security is important and it's our mission to secure the world's data from secure data compartments for collaboration and data storage, to protecting your backups with end-to-end encryption or even protecting communications in space. We want to be part of your plan to protect your most important data. Learn more spideroak.com.
Welcome back to another episode of SpiderBytes. I'm Adam Tervort, and this is the SpiderOak podcast. I am excited today to be joined by Michael Filipsen. Michael, welcome.

Michael Filipsen (01:40):
Thank you, Adam.

Adam Tervort (01:42):
So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Michael Filipsen (01:46):
Well, a little bit about myself. I'm a self employed engineer working with advising companies for how they best utilized features and services in cloud post or cloud native services for also for migrating existing applications and services. On the other side and my private side, I have a wife and a son and I love doing judo, that's a hobby of mine.

Adam Tervort (02:19):
Oh, wow. Yeah, I really enjoyed the Olympics this summer watching judo. That's a pretty fascinating sport.

Michael Filipsen (02:29):
Yeah, I think so too.

Adam Tervort (02:32):
Well, tell us a little bit more about in your line of work, what are the security and privacy concerns or the security and privacy problems that you focus on and some of the ways that you try and address those problems?

Michael Filipsen (02:51):
Well, I see a lot of companies that doesn't really adhere to GDPR, so that's the Danish privacy statement. A lot of websites you visit, they don't even adhere to GDPR. So it's not the best thing because they could be fined and it's an expensive fine to receive. And it can hurt a company very bad, but also I've been working with different types of regulatory compliance, both within PCI and GDPR and [NIST 00:03:35] and FDA.
ISO I've been working with and helping companies with that as well. But I think what I see more as an issue in relations to privacy is the lack of knowledge or... how should I put it? Maybe it's not the lack of knowledge, but the lack of understanding of what it actually means when you share your data. And I see a lot of people don't give it any second thought and just click yes to accepting anything. Personally, I only use LinkedIn. I don't have any social media besides that because I cannot accept the terms.
And LinkedIn, that's why I get my business. So I need to be there, but also in schools, at least in Denmark, in my son's class, they asked this teacher to assign some of the parents to be representing the class. And they have created the Facebook groups for that, where they're sharing everything and then they say, "Well, it's a private group." Yeah. That's true. But that doesn't matter if you upload a picture. Well, you have the rights for that picture, but Facebook, they also have the right to use it anyway they want and anywhere else, and do some AI on face recognition and stuff like that for all the pictures.

Adam Tervort (05:11):
Yeah. And that's something I think about a lot too. I have three children who are school aged and it just amazes me how often the school district will upload pictures to social media that include my children, but other children as well. And I worry about that. I worry about images of my kids out on the wider internet that they don't know about and didn't give permission for. I worry that that's going to be a problem for this younger generation.

Michael Filipsen (05:47):
Yeah. I also think about that a lot. Also in relation to there's a lot of parents that's constantly snapping or on Twitter or Facebook or whatever they use of social media, and they're sharing those pictures constantly of the children. And I've also saw a program about this and the force was very much on that these kids, if you don't ask them and you just do it, you're actually breaking the rights, because they own themself and they should be entitled to decide if mom and dad can upload pictures of them to any social media they want. And also the fact that people, they say like, "Well, it's not affecting me. I have nothing to hide." But their private data can actually impact other people. And maybe they don't think about that as well.
And personalization is something they use very strong on social media. And it's dividing people in some way, because if you belong to a certain segment of that personalization that's put upon you, based on your private data, you only see one side of the story. And if you belong to another group, you see another side of the story. So I don't like that in general. Actually, I like reading a newspaper I disagree with politically, so I'm challenging myself. So I think that's a good habit.

Adam Tervort (07:35):
Yeah. And it's not only on social media. A lot of people don't realize that one term for this concept is the filter bubble. So if you have looked at a certain type of political story on social media, you'll see many more stories like that and more posts, but the same thing happens with search results. And people think when they Google something, they're getting the pure results of the search. But that's absolutely not true if you're using Google, and especially if you're signed in. Google is creating that bubble around you to show you things that will encourage you to click rather than showing you the unfiltered version.

Michael Filipsen (08:24):
That's correct. That's another side of the story. And that's also why I always recommend DuckDuckGo, or Ecosia for people, for search engines. And I don't use Google Chrome. I use spray Firefox with LD and [inaudible 00:08:42] process, but I basically don't go on the internet without using a VPN. I have that everywhere. I don't have anything to hide when it comes to that, but it's... yeah, for me, it's more about, I don't understand why people don't think about what it is actually they do and what impact it can on them and other people. But I think it comes down to whenever you accept anything, you have to read 10 pages. And even if you are a lawyer, you can maybe by mistake read something that shouldn't be understood that way or something like that, because it's very technical. So it's not easy for normal people to understand what is it actually I'm signing on here? Or what am I missing if I'm not accepting these terms?

Adam Tervort (09:47):
So what are your suggestions for normal people, for people who care about this, but aren't sure what to do about it? What would you tell... Give us a few suggestions that the average person can do that will help to protect them?

Michael Filipsen (10:05):
Well, I would say I once saw an expert on the Danish television. Actually, I think it's five years ago or something. And she came with some very good advice and I can't remember her name, but I can remember her advice. Don't use your real name. That's one. Don't ever access the social media without being on a VPN. That's basically that. And whenever you use your social media, well, don't install the app on your phone. Use your browser, and don't have your localization enabled while you do that. They were some of the general advice she gave if you would use social media.

Adam Tervort (11:02):
That's interesting. So I'm curious, do you follow those rules when you... Well, you mentioned that you're not on Facebook or Twitter, so I guess that's another approach. You don't need to use a false name if you're not on them.

Michael Filipsen (11:20):
That's true. I've actually considered creating a profile on Facebook. I actually signed onto Facebook in 2007 and was there until, was it 2000 and... I can't remember, I think it was 16 or something. I stopped using Facebook because it became too much. I couldn't accept it. But I've considered creating a new profile and following her advice on that, just so I can actually see and follow what happens on these groups that for instance, these parents in my son's school have created.
But also sport, also the judo club I joined up, and they also sharing everything on Facebook. And I know some of my son's friends, they play soccer and it's the same, they share information and everything is going through social media. I'm a little scared of that development. It's because humans, we are dead lazy, so it's just the easiest thing to do. And it's very hard to find people in Denmark that's not on Facebook anyway.

Adam Tervort (12:53):
Yeah. I think it's this same in the United States and probably in almost every other country in the world.

Michael Filipsen (12:58):
Yeah.

Adam Tervort (13:01):
Well, let me ask you then, in terms of your family, do you have any specific suggestions for us in how you protect your family or ideas around digital security and privacy within a family to protect your children, or I think also something that many people want to know, how do I help those less tech savvy members of my family?

Michael Filipsen (13:31):
Well, I can share you how I do it at least. I use a team viewer to control my mom and my dad's PC, they're plus 70. So they're not young and they don't understand a lot of what's going on. And so they're actually, they have an account, a user account, without adding products on their own computer. I have tried many times during the years to give them a normal admin user, like anybody else have on a computer, but then it's just creates so much work for me that I stop doing that and say, so now you can install anything prior to Windows 10, when they didn't have the store, you couldn't install anything. You have everything you need now, if you find something else you need, let me know, I'll help you with that. But that was basically how it is. And today you can allow them to install programs from a Windows store. So that they can actually do.
I can't convince my dad to stop using Chrome. I just can't, that's just how it is. And if the popup anything says, do you accept, he always click yes. It's just the thing about passwords. Why do I need password? It's like, so you don't leave your home without locking your door, do you? "Well, that's not the same", he then says. It's like yeah, but this could actually be worse, because it's your digital identity. It could be stolen from you. And we've seen a lot of cases in Denmark where they actually steal people's identity and create loans in their names. And then all of a sudden they're contacted by this company saying, "Hey, you owe me money. You've created this loan with this bank", or whatever company it is they have taken this loan on. And then the people they're like, "No, I didn't." "Well, we have all the legal terms in place for this and everything is done correct." And then the ball starts rolling and they find out that somebody has stolen their identity online.

Adam Tervort (15:53):
Yeah. My younger brother actually has been dealing with this for years. When he was in high school somebody stole his identity and has done exactly what you mentioned.

Michael Filipsen (16:03):
Yeah. And even though I tell that to my mom, she listen and she knows that it's serious and she doesn't want that to happen. It's a little harder with my dad though. He says, "I have nothing they can steal." I say, "Well, they can create a loan in your name. And then you owe some money." "Ah, they cannot do that. That's not..." Okay. If you say that's how it is, then it's hard to argue, because he's so un-tech as you could be probably.
Yeah. He thinks when he turn on his computer, that's when he access the internet, goes to Facebook or something like that. He doesn't know what a browser is. It's just something he clicked to go to Facebook. He's very unfamiliar with all this. That's also scary that the door is open for something. And this come back to understanding actually what impact does it have, could it potentially have on me and others, that I just give away all my data? But he doesn't understand anything about it. And even though I tried to tell him I think a million times, it doesn't seem to help.

Adam Tervort (17:37):
And I think all of us who care about security and privacy know that feeling because we all have people that we've talked to about this, who either they don't understand it, or they're just not interested. I think one of the important things is the fact that you've mentioned it, you've talked to him about it and you never know, you never know what's going to happen. Maybe there will be a moment in the future that he hesitates just a little bit before clicking something that would install malware on his computer because he remembers something you said once. It's just hard to know what the impact will be.

Michael Filipsen (18:16):
But we've already been there. That happened more than once. So I don't think that... The only thing stopping him from that is that he's not an admin on his computer. He not install any external programs, only things from Windows store.

Adam Tervort (18:32):
And by the way, that is excellent advice. Not just for non-tech savvy people. I think that's great general advice for everybody who uses a computer.

Michael Filipsen (18:43):
Yeah. You should have a user profile that you use on your computer and don't use the standard admin user.

Adam Tervort (18:50):
Yep, absolutely. That just saves all of us from all kinds of privilege escalation and all kinds of threats and nobody can be totally aware of what's going on on their computer all the time. We use our computers to get things done not to monitor processors. So yeah, that is a piece of advice that I think everybody should implement.

Michael Filipsen (19:20):
Yeah. But I've always used it also for some friends I have that I help with their computer, it's just so much easier to help them. And also they don't feel the difference anyway. Especially not with Windows 10 around because they can install everything in the app store anyway.

Adam Tervort (19:39):
Yeah. I agree. Well, thank you so much for all of the great advice and thoughts that you shared with us. We love to end these interviews with a favorite quote. Do you have a favorite quote that you like to share with us?

Michael Filipsen (19:59):
Well, I have one I like that sets the standard for my work on a daily basis. I like to come in and help businesses, I don't like to do... I actually became a consultant because I see a lot of consultant that just do whatever they're told because that pays their check. I would rather teach them how to do it the best way so they can carry it themselves and going forward. So my favorite quote is, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

Adam Tervort (20:40):
Yeah. That's one of my favorites as well. That's great. Well, Michael Filipsen thank you so much for all that you've shared with us today.

Michael Filipsen (20:51):
Sure. It was my pleasure, Adam.

Adam Tervort (20:54):
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Thanks again for listening for all of us at SpiderOak, I'm Adam Tervort. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please consider subscribing. If you're interested in joining us as a guest on SpiderBytes, send me an email at podcast@spideroak-inc.com. We'd like to thank Mel Graves for our theme music, Ear Shop. We'd also like to extend a special thanks to our law firm Dewey, Cheetham & Howe, our business forecaster, Luigi Board, our director of computer services Dot Matrix and our staffing agency, Click and Clack. Thanks everyone.