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Bella ciao. Things aren't looking good out there in America right now, are they? Well, that's why this show exists. To help protect you from fascists and weirdos. So today we're joined by Rainey Reitman, author of the book Transaction Denied and president of the board of Freedom of the Press Foundation. It's important to know all the ways the fascists can get at you, and this week's episode involves your money. So listen closely.
Creators and Guests
Host
Host
Rosie Tran
Rosie Tran is one of the fastest rising stars in the entertainment business! Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, she moved to Hollywood to pursue her career as a professional entertainer. The stand up comedian, writer, podcast personality, and actress has toured internationally, at comedy clubs, colleges, and overseas for the USO in Europe and the Middle East.
Editor
Andrew
I am the Editor of all things on the Stupid Sexy Privacy Podcast.
What is Stupid Sexy Privacy?
Stupid Sexy Privacy is a miniseries about how to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos. Your host is comedian Rosie Tran, and the show is written by information privacy expert B.J. Mendelson. Every episode is sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. Tune in every Thursday night βor Friday morning if you're nasty β at 12 am EST to catch the next episode.
00:00
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00:30
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00:59
Welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy, a podcast mini series sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. I'm your host, Rosie Tran. You may have seen me on Rosie Tran Presents, which is now available on Amazon Prime. And I'm your co-producer, Andrew VanVoorst. With us, as always, is Bonzo the Snow Monkey. I'm pretty sure that's not what a Japanese Macau sounds like. Oh, it's not. Not even close.
01:28
Let's hope there aren't any zoologists listening. Okay, I'm also pretty sure that's not what a snow monkey sounds like. Over the course of this mini-series, we're going to offer you short, actionable tips to protect your data, your privacy, and yourself from fascists and weirdos.
01:56
These tips were sourced by our fearless leader. He really hates when we call him that, PJ Mendelson. Episodes 1 through 33 were written a couple of years ago, but since a lot of that advice is still relevant, we thought it would be worth sharing again for those who missed it. And if you have heard these episodes before, you should know we've gone back and updated a bunch of them, even adding some brand new interviews and privacy tips along the way.
02:20
That's right. So before we get into today's episode, make sure you visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and subscribe to our newsletter. This way you can get updates on the show and be the first to know when new episodes are released in 2026. And if you sign up for the newsletter, you'll also get a free PDF and mp3 copy of BJ and Amanda King's new book, How to Protect Yourself from Vashists and Weirdos. All you have to do is visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com. StupidSexyPrivacy.com.
02:49
That's what I just said. Stupid, sexy, privacy dot com. I know, but repetition is key to success. You know what else is? What? Bonzo, eat your pablum like a good boy and pretty soon you'll grow up to be a big, strong, handsome man just like your daddy. Then you'll have Swedish pancake too. I'm really glad this show isn't on YouTube because they pull it down like immediately. I know. Google sucks. And on that note...
03:18
Let's get to today's privacy tip. Rady Reitman is the president of the board of directors of the Freedom of Press Foundation, a nonprofit we fully endorse and encourage you to check out. She was also the activism director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of the new book Transaction Denied. We read it and recommend you do as well. There's not enough attention being paid to a chilling form of censorship that's right under all of our noses.
03:46
and Rainey documents the situation exhaustively in her book. It's a great read. And now let's get to the interview. Rainey, would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself to our audience? Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. And my name is Rainey Reitman. I'm a writer and a civil liberties activist. I have a new book out called Transaction Denied from Beacon Press. it's Transaction Denied.
04:12
big finances power to punish speech. So it's the product of about 10 years of research on and off that I did on my own. And also while I was working at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and kind of pulling together stories of people ah who lost their financial services in connection to some type of speech, and then talking about the laws and policies around that and what might be a better way forward. Yeah, the book.
04:41
couldn't be more timely ah given the regime's attacks on not-for-profits. And I suspect we might get into some of that ah when I ask you about John Boateng. But before we get there, um I've tried to, so I really enjoyed the book. You're actually the first person who pitched us that we said, ah we need to have them on ah because I.
05:07
You had gotten in touch with us just at the right time because we were finishing How to Protect Yourself from Fascist Weirdos and things with regime targeting not-for-profits. I was like, okay, this is perfect. So can you, I guess let's start with the very basics for people. Can you help us define what financial censorship is? Yeah, that's a great question. So financial censorship refers to when someone, maybe a disfavored speaker,
05:37
loses access to a financial service like a credit card or an online payment services, and it's in connection to a form of speech that they were engaged in. And these are about oh lawful speakers. So this isn't about people who are on the sanctions list on purpose. This is people who are losing their PayPal account or losing their Stripe account or losing MasterCard or Visa or as we saw most recently in the last
06:05
a couple weeks losing access to donations through Vanguard or Fidelity Charitable. And it's not related to them violating any laws or doing anything wrong, but rather a way for the financial company to distance themselves from the speaker reputationally or position themselves in particular way or because the financial company had a set of terms that said, we don't let these types of speakers on our platforms.
06:35
So uh it flares up every so often in the news, but my book was really designed to kind of bring together the larger pattern and talk about the larger uh philosophical issues at heart.
06:51
Yeah, I can't, I can't express enough how disappointed I am in Vanguard. uh we spent years telling people to invest in the BTSA index fund. And, I still think that's good financial advice, but man, I, we've, we've now completely put a, put a stop to that, uh, given what's been going on with them. So to that point, if you, if you're an organization, you get kicked off of something like Vanguard. Um, does that mean you could be banned from other financial institutions as well?
07:21
Yeah, that's a good question. um what happens a lot of the time is we, you know, as I document in the book, a lot of people will lose access to one financial service, and it can create a cascading effect where they are then locked out of other financial services. um And it doesn't always happen that way. But I definitely had a lot of interviews with people who
07:46
ah We're kind of going from financial service to financial service trying to find someone who, for example, would allow them to process online payments. And there are some data sharing mechanisms that these financial companies have. ah MasterCard has a list called the match list, which is specifically around ah merchant accounts. So less consumer accounts, more merchant accounts. And we certainly are all very well aware of
08:14
for example, credit scores, right? If you have an account closed, like a credit card account, it's gonna affect your credit score, it's gonna affect your ability to get other credit cards or other types of accounts. So there is some back and forth, but it's not one-to-one. It's not necessarily going to result in you not being able to get a different financial service. So many times people will lose a financial account.
08:43
try to find another financial account, get one set up, and then they don't want to talk about what happened because they're afraid of saying anything publicly that could jeopardize the one financial account that they've managed to get set up for their organization. Right. And this is something, my dad had asked me about your book. He saw me reading it. I wanted to know what it was about. And I was explaining to him that it's about financial censorship. And if you're an independent journalist like me, if Stripe wants to turn off your account for whatever reason, they just could.
09:13
and not have not given you an explanation. And he told me the story about uh after Hurricane Sandy, he couldn't live at his home for about two weeks because they didn't have power. So they were using the American Express to basically just finance living at a motel until there was power. And uh after the two weeks were over, he got a letter from American Express saying, yeah, we're closing your account with no explanation. So it just kind of struck me as. Is it true that these these financial companies could just
09:42
not answer you if they close your account for whatever reason? Yeah, that's a great question. So a lot of people think like, you you might think, oh, well, I have a right to a bank account or I have a right to a credit card. If I didn't do anything wrong, have to have, you know, they can't just shut, they can't just deny me access to an account. And that's not the case at all. Right. These are private companies who, for the most part, with some exceptions, do get to decide who they do and do not do business with.
10:10
And that means that they can end their services to uh folks, even if that person hasn't done anything wrong. And these companies are not required to explain themselves. So for example, if a company decides that they just don't want to do business with certain types of political activists, nonprofits, they might not. uh They might shatter all those accounts and then they might not say anything about why that decision was made. um
10:40
One of the things I tried to track in my book, and which I felt was really important, was trying to get evidence where the financial companies did say something. So for one specific example, there's um a activist who was protesting in Atlanta as part of the Stop Cop City protests and got arrested and had an uh article written about her in the Daily Mail. It was a very disparaging article.
11:09
called her, I think it was part of the Atlanta Cell of Antifa or something like that. It was really just an over the top article. So then Chase closed her account, which she'd had for years, Chase Bank did. And then they closed the bank account of her therapy group. She was a therapist, but she was a signer on the account. And so she got a lawyer to ask all these questions. And normally Chase wouldn't say anything. Like they don't have to tell you why they closed their account.
11:37
But the lawyer actually managed to get them to respond and put it in writing and share the letter with me where they said the reason was negative media, that she had this article written about her basically, and that was enough to lose her bank account. So I think that's a particularly powerful story. And I have several throughout the book where you can get the financial companies to say, especially if it's in writing, why the account was closed.
12:07
but I would say that's the exception because most of the time it's easier for those companies to offer a zero explanation and they're not required to do so. Yeah. And so that kind of brings me into, I touched on a little bit at the start, is what is jawboning? Cause I feel like we're seeing a lot of it right now. Yeah. So jawboning is this really fantastic word, which I think is just, is just really encapsulates this larger issue.
12:35
which is when you have a government official using sort of uh pressure uh to influence private businesses or organizations to do what they want without passing any laws or using the formal legislative process. So they're kind of um pressuring the companies to act on their behalf. And I have several examples of it in the books. um One example that I think
13:05
was really interesting was a sheriff wanted to stop Visa and MasterCard from providing credit card services for the website Backpage.com. And so the sheriff wrote a letter to Visa and MasterCard on official sheriff letterhead and said, you know, as a sheriff and as a father and as a concerned citizen, I'm asking you to stop doing this.
13:35
That was really, it was a lot more than if just a regular person were to send a letter to Visa or MasterCard. This is about somebody who is using their office to try to push for a policy goal without, you know, without passing a law or engaging in the public policy process. So that's job owning. It sounds very, there's a great term in the book, uh banksters.
14:04
Thanks, Sturrs. this, know, like the way you described John Boatman kind of reminded me, this feels very gangsterish, right? Like this feels like, yeah, you have a nice shop here, it'd be shame if something happened. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think, you know, I try to be so careful in the book and be very specific about what I'm talking about. But whenever I get somebody with a really, who is speaking very
14:31
in a way that is very evocative, I tried to quote it. And so I quoted somebody who used the term banksters tying together banker and gangsters. And I was like, yeah, banksters. Right. It's really. I just think about like, you know, I've worked with adult content creators in the past and ah they've told me these stories of uh just entire genres of clips that they've put out and being wiped out.
14:58
for no other reason other than, know, Visa just decided, hey, ah we don't like anything wrestling related. That's not going to be a thing that we're going to. And it just wipes out their business. ah I know that that's, that that's sort of a, you talk a lot about like, you the impacts on adult content creators in the book, which I was really appreciative of because I feel like that doesn't get discussed enough, but it really goes back to feeling like these banks and government officials just sort of.
15:28
censor things without actually censoring them through these banks and financial institutions? Oh, absolutely. I mean, there were so many examples that I didn't include. I have a chapter about sexual speech and it was originally two chapters and it could have been a whole book, to be completely honest. Like there was enough content that I could have just written a book. And I think it's so interesting because there are actually really vital, important, societally important issues connected to
15:57
ah how people are engaged in policing online sexual speech that are not talked about and it's because people are embarrassed or they're puritanical or it's wrapped up in some sort of morality debate and so we're not having conversations about it. But one of the best interviews I got in the book was talking to someone in the adult content space who described how ah if you are running an adult content website, uh
16:26
you're typically giving your uh login credentials to your bank and some person at the bank is logging in and reviewing all of the content on your site for free and then giving you editorial feedback on it. Like literally going through and saying, I don't like that video, I don't like that video, you can't use this word here, you can't use this word there. And that you might end up with a different banker next time who has totally different feedback.
16:56
And that the adult content websites are literally making massive changes based on just some random person that got assigned to their case that time. it's, to me, that was so eye-opening because it's a level of censorship. It's a granularity I think people don't understand is happening. And it's a conversation that I think is totally missing from our discussions of what online censorship looks like today.
17:24
Yeah, I mean, I took it as being very anti-woman. Yeah. I have to imagine that a lot of these bankers are men and a lot of adult content creators happen to be women. And it just feels like, you know, having written scripts and things, you you kind of get used to having standards and practices. That this is part of the, it's just part of the deal of having something produced as you know, someone's going to provide legal, legal explanations for why you can't say certain things, but.
17:53
ah My mind was blown at this concept of just random people working for a banker or doing exactly that ah for adult content creators. Yeah, and I just I like I like to emphasize how bad financial service companies are at figuring out speech issues. Like there's a lot of really complicated and important free speech issues that like constitutional lawyers and judges have been debating for years and artists and
18:22
Like these are complicated and important issues and the idea that we should be asking financial companies to weigh in on this and then it's just some person that got assigned to it and probably has no background in it and that the impact is that some speech isn't going to be available online is it's really eye opening and I think it's important for us to be having that conversation.
18:46
Hey everyone, this is Amanda King, one of the co-hosts of Stupid Sexy Privacy. These days I spend most of my time talking to businesses and clients about search engine optimization, but...
18:58
That's not what this is about. I wanted to tell you a little bit about a book I've co-authored with BJ Mendelsohn called How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos. And the title tells you pretty much everything you would want to know about what's in the book. And thanks to our friends at DuckDuckGo, we'll actually be able to give you this book for free in 2026.
19:21
All you need to do is go to the website stupidsexyprivacy.com and sign up to our newsletter. Again, that website is stupidsexyprivacy.com and then put your name in the box and sign up for a newsletter. We'll let you know when the book and the audiobook is ready because if you want a PDF copy that's DRM free, it's yours. And if you want an MP3 of the new audiobook, also DRM free, you can get that.
19:51
Now, I gotta get out of here before Bonzo corners me because he doesn't think that SEO is real and I don't have the patience to argue with him because I got a book to finish. Absolutely. And so a lot of the questions I have for you are about what do we do? I mean, so the first is, could you explain to us what is a common carrier and how does changing the status of let's say, let's just pick on PayPal.
20:19
Hypothetically, as an example, what would the change be in PayPal status if they went from a non-common carrier to a common carrier? Yeah, so the law has this really special place for companies that transmit messages, goods, and people. They're called common carriers. And basically, common carriers have an affirmative obligation that they have to serve everybody, right? And they have to treat all their customers the same. um
20:49
That's why a taxi cab, which is a uh carrier of people, um they have to pick up everybody, whether they want to or not. They're like, well, we don't get to decide that we're going to not pick Republicans up, or we're going to not pick investigative journalists up. It's like, no, everybody gets to use the taxi services, right? And that makes a lot of sense to us. could see how we wouldn't want a taxi service that only served certain echelons of society and not other ones, that that could
21:18
quickly become extremely problematic. Well, I would argue that it turns out financial services, getting to pick and choose which parts of society to serve is also very problematic. And I tried to really showcase this in my book while talking about journalists and activists losing their financial services. So what I said in my book is that to date, um services like PayPal aren't considered common carriers, right? They're just not.
21:47
the law has not gone there. And I did not get into what would it look like if they were, but I did kind of leave that question open in the hopes that the reader like you would ask that question and be like, well, why wouldn't they be? It seems like they would be just as important to society being neutral as something like, you know, a taxi cab. So yeah, so if they were common carriers, and I think there's a lot of...
22:14
uh specifics about what that would look like, it would mean that they would have to serve everybody, right? And then they wouldn't be able to say, well, we're not going to deal with people who are disfavored or unpopular speakers or who are not aligned with our political goals. oh We would just be a neutral, accessible financial system that everybody could use. Right. You know, it blows my mind that
22:41
That's not how it already is. I should know better having, you know, being a amateur historian, right? Like, you in American history, especially with the banks. But it was still kind of shocking. Yeah, part of my goal with the book was to help people understand what it felt like to lose financial services in connection to speech. And so I have a lot of very uh
23:08
of stories of different people. I try and whenever I interviewed somebody, I had them say, I would ask them, like, what did it feel like? Tell me about the moment when you lost your banking services. Walk me through that. And then I try to put that in the book so that the reader could feel what that felt like, could read about it and imagine it for themselves. Because I don't want this to feel like a distant policy topic. Like, well, you know, that's a just that's happening to other people. But to actually get it into people's minds of like, oh,
23:36
wouldn't this be offensive and inappropriate if it happened to me? And that would help them really understand the larger issues at play. Yeah, I think you did a fantastic job with that. Thank you. Definitely one of the big takeaways from the book was you took ah any time that I get a privacy, security, anything in that space, right? I'm always like, OK, is this going to be sort of a nice overview of what's going on? Or is it going to be ah more academic? Or is it going to be more legal? ah
24:05
I wasn't sure what to expect when the book came in, but as I was reading it, was like, oh, wow, okay, this is incredibly grounded to the point where you had very specific examples. And so that kind of brings me to this thing I wanted to ask you, which is what do people do when they wake up and, oh crap, I can't access my bank account. And they're a, let's say they're a not-for-profit. uh In our book, we talk about abortion providers or people who provide educational.
24:34
material considering abortion, know, finding themselves without an account or access to money. Is it crypto? Is it like what do you what do do in a situation like that? Yeah, that's a good question. I kind of have different case studies in the book of people who dealt with it in different ways. And I actually had a chapter both I had a chapter about cash and I had a chapter about crypto.
24:58
And my chapter about cash was like, yes, this is a very privacy friendly, censorship resistant technology, but it's really not very good for online payments. And it gets quite bulky in large quantities and it's under attack. There's a lot of people who want to literally eliminate uh large cash bills, including potentially as low as the $20 bill. um And so that's a reckoning that's happening in our society right now. And then on the crypto front,
25:28
You know, I talked a lot specifically about Bitcoin and I was like, look, if we look at the Bitcoin protocol, is it pretty censorship resistant? And the protocol itself, and I did talk about some like, you know, somewhat more theoretical, you know, ways that you could make it, you know, that you could potentially challenge this. But in general, the protocol is pretty censorship resistant. But most people's experience of Bitcoin is not just wallet to wallet, you know,
25:57
transactions. Many people are either taining their Bitcoin or holding it or trading it or sending it to others through an intermediary, a custodial company that is holding their Bitcoin on their behalf. And then you have just recreated the same power dynamic that you have with Chase or Bank of America, right? It's not a revolutionary technology if all your crypto is being held by Coinbase.
26:27
um So then I really talked about, uh you know, policy mechanisms and I talked about sort of some ideas for how we could fix the law and what companies could do differently. But as far as like what a nonprofit would do, I would say that I didn't give suggestions, like individual suggestions, like, oh, here's what you should do if this happens to you. But I did point to the fact that that publicity campaigns have been pretty effective in several situations, like
26:56
where there was enough outrage and heat and attention that the company that was denying somebody financial services caved and changed their mind and reinstated the accounts. that worked more often than you would think it would. Yeah. It's sort of crazy to me because basically the solution is everyone should find someone to do PR for them. And that's like a very general, like, you know, I'm being funny and
27:25
generalizing a bit, it almost seems like ah that's the lever that you've pointed out that we have to pull is pointing out and saying, OK, let's say. Oh, yeah. Well, just because if you think about it, these companies, uh they don't want a lot of pushback. They're not looking for a fight. They want this to just go away. And part of the reason they shutter accounts is to avoid complexity and uh dealing with
27:55
um difficult decisions. And so if it becomes a difficult decision for them to have shuttered an account, they are like, oh, well, great. How do we make this problem go away? We don't want to have our name showing up in a Google news search result in a disparaging way. So like, what can we do to stop this now? ah So that's what I think is, you know, the companies, it's, it's generally easier for them to shutter an account than to
28:22
figure out what's going on with a particular account. It's not worth it to them unless that account is causing them negative news themselves. And then they are like, oh no, what can we do to stop this? Let me ask you about a possible solution. like we, in the book, we talk about using cash. We talked about the postal service offering, basic checking, basic credit, I'm sorry, basic savings accounts. But you talk about uh inclusive and neutral banking.
28:50
which I think is also really important for people to understand on like a legislative level. So was hoping you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah. I mean, this is part of this larger idea that I think is sort of one of the big points of my book, which is that, you know, there've been so many examples that I can point to in the book and in other places where activists thought, well, what if we change the financial system so our enemies don't have access to it? Wouldn't that be a great idea? And, um,
29:20
And legislators have also been like, wow, the financial system, what a great way to regulate the internet. What a powerful way to shutter online speech that I am concerned about. And I think the argument that I'm making in my book is that especially today, given how modern financial systems work and how dependent we are and being able to access online payments just to exist in society, that we really need to think about the value of having
29:48
a neutral and accessible financial system. And that means that kind of, you know, law abiding people should be able to get access to banking services and payment services and that they should be, uh you know, not penalized for, you know, legal lawful speech. um And I'm not saying anything about like, you know, if there is fraud or if there are um
30:16
credit worthiness issues that are resulting in account being shut down, that's an entirely different issue, right? Like that is, know, that's nobody's saying like, you have to continue to provide services to someone who's like constantly overdrawing their accounts. But like, for example, I talked about this voting rights nonprofit in the first chapter of my book, who, you know, they got the bank, uh you know, they had an email exchange with the bank and they were like, sorry, we're not doing
30:46
political accounts anymore. And they had the word political in the email. And she was like, my nonprofit is recognized by the IRS. We serve everybody. We're a voting rights organization. We just help people register to vote. And we're not politically oriented one way or another. We help everybody register to vote. And the banker was like, I brought that up. But the bank decided it was too political for them.
31:16
And I think that's like, that's the kind of thing that I think is offensive. And I really wanted to tell that story so people could imagine like, wow, this is offensive and it can be very disruptive to advocacy and to speech. It's frightening. Like, to me, it's frightening in the world that currently exists for anyone to have that kind of power. I wanted you to speak to, this was the last question I had for you, which is,
31:44
When in having this discussion, people are going to say stupid things, right? they might say something like. This is part of life. Yes, is life. But oh there's one in particular that you mentioned at the end that we've encountered quite a bit as we researched our book, which is people I don't like shouldn't have access to financial services. And I was hoping you can kind of just address that one point that's going to, I think, come up quite a bit.
32:14
Yeah, that's a great question. So I had a whole, the whole last chapter, the conclusion is just addressing some of the like, well, what if people say that sort of the misguided objections to having a neutral and accessible financial system. And one of the big objections is people try to carve, people can say, well, sure, I want the financial system to be accessible, but not for the people I don't like. I think it'd be great if they didn't, their bank accounts got closed. I hate them.
32:44
And what I tried to argue in my book, and I think is so true, is that that is short-sighted. That we have to remember that the people who have power today are not the people who are going to have power tomorrow. And so if you're giving the system, if you're putting the systems in place that allow a financial company to rip away oh services to people you disagree with now,
33:09
I promise you one day those same tools will be used to rip away services to the people you do agree with and that the tool itself is inappropriate at this stage in our use of finance and in our kind of integrated system of online payments and how financial worlds have developed. That isn't the right tool to make available. And then frankly, the systems often don't work well.
33:38
You know, I give a lot of examples in my book of people who really hadn't done anything wrong and somehow just ended up getting swept up in a system within the financial world that like accidentally should close their account. And then they weren't able to appeal it and get it reinstated. And it became a huge hassle for them, or it took a very long time. So for example, I have a
34:06
A story of uh a young man who teaches uh poetry online and he teaches Farsi poetry and he's also a Farsi teacher. Well, because he's teaching classes about Persian poetry and Farsi, he's constantly getting accidentally hit with uh sanctions enforcement freezes uh because of the sanctions against Iran. This guy is from Detroit. He lives in New York. He is
34:35
American and he is teaching classes about a language which is not illegal and when he can appeal it, he can often get it resolved, but it's such a hassle for him and it has resulted in him getting his online accounts frozen repeatedly. He's constantly having to deal with the appeals process and he's had accounts closed and the result is that and what I think is so powerful about that is that nobody would think
35:02
that he is the subject of sanctions or the target of sanctions, and yet he's still getting uh hit with this over-enforcement mechanism. And so in addition to the fact that the winds will shift and the people you agree with will no longer be in power, uh also, they're going to end up closing a whole bunch of accounts that are totally inappropriate to close. Maybe you think,
35:28
uh certain types of disfavored speakers shouldn't have access to accounts. Well, guess what? People who are academics studying those type of disfavored speakers could also get caught up in a crackdown. So that's kind of some of the arguments I lay out. And I think it's an important question to ask and to address really directly. Yeah, it's why I'm thankful that books like yours exist, because I don't think we can change the situation so more people talk about it.
35:54
ah Thank you for writing something that covered this in such an accessible and grounded way. ah Where can we find the book? How do we support you? How do we check out your other work? Absolutely. So I want to flag that uh half of the proceeds of the book go to support the fantastic nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation. And you can find out about them through freedom.press. And you can find out about the creation of that organization by reading my book. oh
36:23
If you just go to anywhere books are sold and look for Transaction Denied by Rainey Reitman, they will have it. But if you are like, wow, I don't know where books are sold, don't worry, because I also have a website, financialcensorship.org, and there is buttons there. You can click and buy the book and find out about my upcoming book docs.
36:46
When your friends at Stupid Sexy Privacy are out in the world, we often hear two things that we want to address. The first is, I don't want to sound like a Karen because I'm concerned about my privacy. You're not a Karen if you're concerned about privacy. Privacy is a fundamental human right. So if you care about privacy, you care about other people. That makes you the complete opposite of a Karen.
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The second thing we hear is, all my stuff is out there already and there's nothing I can do about it, so why bother? And I totally get that feeling. Most of us are burnt out working multiple jobs taking care of kids or elderly parents. Or both.
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Managing our information can feel like just one more thing to add to that list. The good news is managing your privacy is not an all or nothing thing. You can do a little at a time and still take back control of your privacy, security, and anonymity. The easiest place to start is by cleaning up the data that's out there. This is especially important so that it can't be used to deny your health insurance claims or make you pay more for rent. Here's how that works.
37:46
Data brokers collect and sell personal data, which they aggregate from public records, internet trackers, and other sources. Many of these sites will display some amount of your personal information for free. And if a human can see this data, so can the bots and scrapers, many of whom use that data to render adverse financial decisions about you without you ever knowing. That, my friends, is why you should always appeal a health insurance denial when you get one. But we'll talk about that in a future episode.
38:13
For now, our friends at DuckDuckGo offer a solution that we want you to know about. As part of the DuckDuckGo subscription plan, they offer personal information removal services. The kind that can help find and remove your personal information, such as your name and address, from data broker sites that store and sell it. This helps to combat identity theft, spam, access to personal information removal comes with the DuckDuckGo subscription plan. And here's the best part.
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There are lot of data removal services available. The thing is, you often have to give them personal information, including your driver's license, which they then store on their servers. DuckDuckGo doesn't do that. All of the information you provide them is stored locally on your device. This includes the monitoring and processing of removal requests. It then scans your site on a regular schedule to minimize the risk of your information reappearing.
38:59
After the initial scan, you can track the progress of ongoing removals, keep tabs on the total number of records that have been removed, and see the site's scanning schedule on your personal dashboard in the DuckDuckGo browser. While it doesn't cover all the data broker websites out there, DuckDuckGo monitors over 50 of those websites, with more being considered. You can sign up for the subscription via the Settings menu in the DuckDuckGo browser available on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows, or via the DuckDuckGo subscription website, duckduckgo.com slash subscriptions.
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This is currently only available in the United States and on Desknot.
39:40
This episode of Stupid Sexy Privacy was recorded in Hollywood, California. It was written by B.J. Mendelsohn, produced by Andrew Van Voorst, and hosted by me, Rosie Tran. And of course, our program is sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. If you enjoy the show, I hope you'll take a moment to leave us a review on PocketCast, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you may be listening. This won't take more than two minutes of your time, and leaving us a review will help other people find it.
40:05
We have a crazy goal of helping 5 % of Americans get 1 % better at protecting themselves from fascists and weirdo. Your reviews can help us reach that goal, since Leaving One makes our show easier to find. So please take a moment to leave us a review and I'll see you right back here next Thursday at midnight. After you watch Rosie Tran Presents on Amazon Prime, right? Bonzo, I wish that you'll have many more birthdays just like this one. With those you love and trust around you always to share your happiness.
40:35
And I wish that you'll get a chance very soon to prove that being loved and looked after like a human being has made you feel like a human being. And that if love can do that to you, then it ought to be able to make some other human beings human beings.