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This week, comedian Rosie Tran tells you how there's a stalker in your driveway, and it's not a human. She also explains why you want to pick up a Microphone Blocker. Then, we have not one but two book excerpts from BJ Mendelson's first book on Privacy, "Privacy: And How We Get It Back" to share with you. Come get your show notes, and learn more about how creepy your car is, at https://www.stupidsexyprivacy.com
Creators and Guests
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 —or Friday morning if you're nasty — at 12 am EST to catch the next episode.
Transcript of Today’s Episode, Lightly Edited
DuckDuckGo Commercial:
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Two: the built-in search engine is like Google, but it never tracks your searches. And it has ad tracker and cookie blocking protection. Search and browse with ease with fewer annoying ads and pop-ups.
Three: the DuckDuckGo browser is free. We make money from privacy-respecting ads, not by exploiting your data. Download the free DuckDuckGo browser today and see for yourself why it has thousands of five-star reviews. Visit DuckDuckGo.com or wherever you get your apps.
Show Introduction
Rosie Tran, Host: Welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy, a podcast miniseries sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. I'm your host, Rosie Tran. You may have seen me on Chime TV's A Brand New Yay or on season two of Peacock's Comedy InVASION. Aside from organizing with your friends and neighbors, laughter is one of the best weapons we have to fight fascists and weirdos. So if you need a good laugh, check out my episode of Comedy InVASIAN, which is called “the Hanoi Honey,” After you're done listening to today's episode.
[Reader Note: On Peacock, the episode is titled The Saigon Honey.]
Clyde The Duck: Quack!
Andrew VanVoorhis, Producer: He doesn't like self-promotion.
Rosie: I mean, Clyde is a duck. He doesn't like a lot of things. Hawks, the scent of lemon oil and people who try to give him bread.
Clyde The Duck: Quack! Quack!
Rosie: I'm not trying to give you bread!
Clyde The Duck: Quack! Quack!
Rosie: Andrew, can you inform this duck that if I don't tell our listeners who I am, then I'm just some random person on the Internet. That means there's no human connection and they're not going to care about what we have to say. I might as well be an AI. And if that's the case … Is he seriously looking at a stopwatch right now?
Andrew: Clyde's gotten super into time management.
Rosie Tran: This is what happens when BJ gets depressed for like two years and puts a literal duck in charge of the show …
Speaking of BJ, over the course of this series, we're going to offer you short, actionable tips to protect your data, your privacy, and yourself from fascists and weirdos. These tips were sourced by our fearless leader, He really hates when we call him that, BJ Mendelson.
Episodes 1 through 24 were written a couple of years ago. We're re-airing them now because most of that advice still holds. Everything you hear after episode 24 is going to be brand new, including this introduction.
Andrew: And anything we need to update from the original episodes can be found at StupidSexyPrivacy.com.
Rosie: That's right. So make sure you visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and subscribe to the newsletter.
Now, for those of you who don't know, BJ is the author of the book “Privacy and How We Get It Back”, alongside Amanda King, who you'll also hear from in this series. BJ is writing a sequel called “How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos.” So everything we're going to present comes from two actual humans who research and study this stuff for a living.
Clyde The Duck: Quack! Quack!
Rosie: OK, OK, two actual humans and one super-intelligent duck.
Although I don't know how intelligent that duck really is … Especially when he keeps forwarding Andrew and I emails with a subject line that says “1986's Howard the Duck is good actually.”
Clyde The Duck: Quack! Quack!
Rosie: It's a bad movie and you know it.
Andrew: Okay, I gotta separate these two. Remember to visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and let's get to today's privacy tip.
This Week’s Privacy Tip
Rosie Tran: Let's talk about your car. You know, the thing in your driveway that goes vroom vroom? If you own a car that was made before 2012, you're fine. Mostly. It's only after 2012 that car manufacturers started to get creepy. So if you own a car that came out after 2012, or you're renting one, it's important not to sync your smartphone to your car. Now I know some of you may have already done this. That's okay, as long as you remember to do just one thing.
Get out your privacy notebook and make a note about what cars you've synced your device to.
Always make sure to clear your data, regardless of if you're renting or buying, before returning your vehicle.
And when you're clearing that data, don't forget to remove stuff like the code for your garage door. You don't want anyone breaking into your garage. That's where your Christmas decorations live.
These days, it seems like everything wants you to sync your phone to it. Try to avoid doing this as much as you can. One trick is to buy a used phone, get a SIM card from Mint Mobile, and then use that phone to sync to these devices.
This way you can listen to your music or favorite podcasts on the cheap.
But another solution would be to do this: The most secure phone you can own is the one with a headphone jack. There are two reasons for this. One, you can then use an auxiliary cable, which is super cheap on eBay, by the way, to plug your phone into most car entertainment systems.
And as a fun bonus tip, connecting your phone to your car stereo through an auxiliary cable will provide much better sound than you'd get from Bluetooth.
Smartphones with a headphone jack also have fewer microphones, meaning you can purchase a mic lock, plug that directly into your phone, and turn your microphone off when you're not using it.
This will keep hackers and tech companies from eavesdropping on your conversations.
We'll include a link in today's show notes for where you can purchase a mic lock.
https://mic-lock.com/collections/mic-lock-microphone-blockers
Book Excerpt Introduction From BJ
BJ Mendelson, Co-Producer: Hey everyone, it's BJ Mendelson, your time-traveling co-producer, checking in from the totally normal and not at all frightening year of 2025. This week, we've got a bit more nostalgia coming your way than my fellow producer Andrew and I had initially planned.
So just a quick recap. Last week, when we aired part two of Tracy Chou's interview, we decided to pull the book excerpt that originally ran back in 2022 with episode three. But fear not, my friends, because this week we're doubling down on the alleged literary goodness. That's because you're getting not one, but two excerpts from my first book on privacy, which was called “Privacy and How We Get It Back.” And who better to bring those words to life than the one and only Broadway actor, Roger Wayne?
We absolutely loved Roger's performance on this book, and we're hoping to collaborate with him again on Amanda King and my upcoming book, called “How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos”, which we're currently working on, and I think you might agree, is very timely.
So this week, we'll kick things off with a book excerpt that originally aired in episode three, back in 2022. And after that, we'll take a quick commercial break, and when we return, we'll dive into this week's originally scheduled book excerpt. I'll catch you soon, and don't forget to visit us at StupidSexyPrivacy.com for the latest news, tips, and updates on this awesome project.
Book Excerpt #1
Roger Wayne: We, as people, tend to forget about things that don't have ramifications on our day-to-day lives. This is not a new phenomenon. In the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, Holmes admonishes Watson for telling him that the Earth revolves around the sun, the opposite of what Holmes believed. Holmes didn't care what the truth was. The fact that the Earth revolves around the sun was irrelevant to his day-to-day life. And as far as the detective was concerned, this useless information would make it harder for him to access more important things in his mind when he needed them.
We're a lot like Sherlock Holmes as it relates to the whole privacy thing. If it doesn't affect you in a noticeable way, who cares? We should care, but don't. This attitude makes any privacy discussion difficult to have without people's eyes glazing over or them responding to it by shouting, I have nothing to hide. Over and over again, like a mischievous child who clearly does have something to hide. You totally do, by the way. Have something to hide. Otherwise, you'd give me your email password without hesitation and let me follow you into the bathroom.
We all have something to hide. Even if it's a secret love for the worst video game film ever made, 1994's Double Dragon. It's fine. But let's just all agree that the I have nothing to hide argument in any privacy discussion needs to be kicked into a volcano somewhere take its rightful place among the ashes.
You either care or you don't because you're getting free entertainment in exchange for your data.
Although, this is a short tangent, but it's an important one. There's no such thing as free. So if Spotify is giving you free music in exchange for running targeted advertisements on you based on your data, that's a great arrangement for you and Spotify. But this arrangement sucks for artists because it devalues their music. (More Perfect Union Video)
People come to expect their music to cost them nothing or close to nothing. That in turn means fewer people are able to pursue a career as a musician or in the music industry. It also makes music an easy target for alleged public school reformers looking to cut the arts because they think science, technology, engineering, and math, STEM, is the way of the future. But it's the other way around. When automation really kicks in over the next 10 to 20 years for our society, the people flipping burgers are going to be the STEM majors whose technical prowess can easily be replicated by machines.
Anyway, the point is, free isn't really free. Someone is losing on that transaction. It might be the musicians or the music industry, or it could be you and your privacy. As Jaron Lanier points out, the music might be free, but it's no coincidence your smartphone bill keeps going up as well. Their music might be free for you, but if the musician's only source of income is from touring constantly, what happens when they get sick or have other obligations that prevent them from doing so?
Thankfully, my generation seems to get that they need to pay for things on the internet. But there's a whole lot of people out there we need to educate and train on this as well. Of course, we're all concerned about who is accessing our data and what they're doing with it. But we also don't care that much. That's the twist.
Not in the sense that most Americans plan to do anything about it anyway. Data from the Research Center supports this notion. Pew is a nonpartisan think tank that produces a lot of studies about the habits of Americans, particularly when it comes to demographic trends. They're pretty great, fairly reliable, and the odds are good that most media outlets that you enjoy visiting rely on them heavily. A Pew study confirmed what I'm saying here: By showing that an overwhelming majority of Americans care about their privacy and who has access to their data. But at the same time, an overwhelming majority of Americans have no confidence in their data remaining private. Fewer still take actions to protect their data. It's also interesting to note that people with higher incomes and college degrees tend to use social media, according to Pew, which would make them ideal targets that companies should pay extra for in exchange for reaching directly through a micropayment to that user rather than to some intermediary like Google.
So why bother writing yet another book about privacy at all, right? Here's another potential answer. To educate you, sure. I said that already. But also to advocate for stronger protection of your data on the state level. And maybe even the development of some kind of system where you can actively sell or conceal your data from these companies after a certain period of time.
If someone's going to profit off your personal information, it might as well be you, you know? Your data. Your choice. I'm not the only one who thinks so, as this idea was the core of Lanier's book, Who Owns the Future? I mean, for all their talk about a universal basic income, the tech titans of the world don't seem to be forthcoming about ways for the government to pay for such a thing.
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Amanda King, Stupid Sexy Privacy Co-Host: Hey everyone, this is Amanda King and I'm one of the co-hosts of Stupid Sexy Privacy.
These days, I spend most of my time speaking to businesses and audiences about search engine optimization, but I do want to take a minute to tell you about a book I co-authored with BJ Mendelson. It's called How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos, and the title tells you everything you need to know about what's inside. Now, thanks to our friends at DuckDuckGo, BJ and I are actually releasing this book for free in February 2026.
And if you want a DRM-free PDF copy, you can have one or Maybe you want a DRM free mp3 of the new audiobook? You can have that too. All you need to do is visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Again, that website is StupidSexyPrivacy.com and we'll send you both the PDF and the mp3 as soon as they're ready.
Now, I gotta get out of here before Clyde shows up. He doesn't think SEO is still a thing and I don't have the time to argue with him because I got a book to finish.
Book Excerpt #2
Big trouble in little data.
Roger Wayne: Big data, meta data, raw data, and data processed by autonomous machines employing machine learning. By the time you read this, there will be more data-related buzzwords than I can list, especially as it relates to the use of your data by artificial intelligence. Since this is not a book on AI, we won't get into that topic here, but I will share with you this.
There's a running joke in the artificial intelligence industry that anything that hasn't been invented yet is referred to as AI. Everything else that actually develops from that field, like machine learning, which does involve your data and privacy, has its own name. And in some cases, the technology behind it is many decades old. Where machine learning is concerned, the thing to keep in the back of your mind is that the information we're entering into Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other platforms is being used to make better recipes, or algorithms, with more data. So, in another instance where free isn't necessarily free, the smarter we make those systems, the more likely we are to further the speed of automation. And that means fewer jobs and opportunities for our fellow humans, based on the data we're constantly providing without any compensation. That aside, the thing to understand here is that your data is incredibly valuable as it relates to non-government entities. Period. Full stop.
Because of this, your privacy has the potential to be violated in a number of ways, by multiple parties, in order to fulfill various business interests. This will increasingly involve things like machine learning. We're not just talking about data collected from your smartphones, smartwatches, and laptops. If you use a voice-activated assistant like a Google Assistant or an Amazon Alexa, or if you're reading this inside an autonomous vehicle, there are some major issues surrounding your data involving those respective products as well. Amazon's new Alexa Spot basically puts a camera in your bedroom. A lot of self-driving car software systems keep track of everywhere you go to make the best recommendations about how you can get there in the future. But the fact that you keep going to that one Adam and Eve's location in Columbus, Ohio, also gets noticed. Those visits get shared with other parties by the software powering your self-driving car.
Other parties who may start sending you targeted messaging about coupons and deals you can use at Adam and Eve on Wonder Woman costumes for your significant other to wear in the bedroom.
There's often a lot of confusion about the kind of data being collected by these companies through their sites, devices, and apps. So what I'd like to do here is explain the different kinds of data these companies are collecting about you, and then discuss why it's valuable in the first place. Just a note, though. What data that is, and how it's collected changes often. So consider the information below to be a good starting point for discussions on privacy, but not the last word.
Disparate data. In recent years, the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, has pushed Congress to force the businesses behind many apps and internet-enabled platforms to be clearer and honest about the type of data they're collecting from their users.
The FTC breaks that data down into 12 unique groups. One, identifying data, your name, address, phone numbers, and emails. Two, sensitive identifying data, your social security number, driver's license number, and birthday. Three, demographic data, your height, race, religion, and marital status. Four, Court and public records data, bankruptcies, judgments, liens, and your political party affiliation. Five, social media and technology data, your platform of choice and how much you use it, how many friends you are connected with, your internet service provider, and how much you use the internet. Six, home and neighborhood data, how much you pay in rent. how much you pay on your mortgage, the value of your home. Seven, general interest data how much gambling you might do, the type of clothes you like to buy, the shows you watch, the kind of awesome pets you own. Eight, vehicle data, whether you own a car, what car you own, your car preference, and your car buying habits.
And with autonomous vehicles, you can expect this category to expand greatly in the next few decades. Nine, financial data. Your credit, the loans you have, the type of credit cards you may own. Ten, travel data. Your preferred hotel, your preferred airline, the kind of vacations you take. Eleven, purchase behavior data. How much you spend, the type of things you buy and your preference in terms of how and where you buy your stuff. 12. Health data. Your prescriptions, whether or not you have allergies, and whether or not you wear glasses. In other words, the kind of things only your doctors should know.
Mo data, mo problems.
Everything in this book and most of the debate concerning privacy not pertaining to the government rests on one key fact. Your data is worth a fortune. And every day, regardless of what internet-enabled device you choose to use, you create more and more of it for someone else to profit from. Did you pick up your phone first thing in the morning to text your sex kitten using iMessage? You created more data. Did you ask Alexa what the weather is like this morning? You created more data. Did you send some email? Data. Did your self-driving car take you somewhere? Data. Have I mentioned yet that Facebook has the largest data set of faces in the world and doesn't even need to see your face at this point to identify you in pictures that get uploaded to their system? Yeah, they totally do. All with the goal of selling that information to advertisers so they can target you based on your emotions. Remember that the next time you're feeling sad and Facebook starts serving you nothing but Ben and Jerry's ads. The list goes on. But I think you're getting the picture.
[Reader note: The sequel, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos” will talk more about the government’s utilization of data.]
If you do something with an internet-enabled device, you're creating valuable data that everyone wants a piece of. Whether or not the data is worth a damn for advertising purposes is a different story entirely, and really irrelevant after a certain point because you can't suddenly stand up and go, all of this is bullshit, and expect multiple multi-billion dollar industries to change their policies and actions all at once. Believe me, I tried.
Your data makes money for data brokers and data providers like Axiom, Datalogics, Epsilon, Experian, Equifax, Oracle, WPP, and TransUnion. The Fair Credit Reporting Act only protects you from three of those companies, by the way, and most of this data is passed around without first being encrypted, making your data easy to find and way less secure than it should be on these servers.
Facebook purchases data from these and other companies to recommend products and run advertisements in your feed, as well as make other suggestions. Facebook then turns around to large companies, some of whom now have Facebook and Google employees embedded within their marketing departments, to sell them on investing more money into Google and Facebook's platforms because of how well they can target you. WPP is the world's largest advertising holding company, and there is a revolving door between them and Facebook and Google.
As NYU professor Scott Galloway points out, there have been around 2,000 employees of WPP thus far who have migrated to Facebook and Google. Advertisers and other parties can also upload the emails they purchase from these companies and then specifically target you on platforms like Facebook. This is what the Russian operatives did in battleground states during the 2016 U.S. presidential election after allegedly breaking into voter registration systems operated by a company called VR systems.
DuckDuckGo Live Read
Rosie Tran: You know, it used to be that we would recommend you use a virtual private network or VPN only for specific circumstances. Like say, if you can't access certain content because of the state or country you live in. But these days we feel a VPN has gone from a nice to have to a must have. And while it's true your circumstances may dictate what specific VPN you need, for most people in most cases, we recommend the one offered by DuckDuckGo. Here are three quick reasons why.
First, this VPN is fast and secure, connecting to the server that's nearest to you, so you should experience minimal lag. And if you want to adjust what server you're connected to, you can do that at any time.
Second, if your VPN connection gets interrupted, DuckDuckGo will attempt to reconnect automatically, all while preventing data leaks. So there's no need to constantly monitor your VPN connection.
Finally, DuckDuckGo's VPN is easy to install. There's no additional software required. All you have to do is sign up for DuckDuckGo subscription plan and install the VPN right within their browser. From there, you can activate or deactivate your VPN with just one click.
Here's an example of when you may need to do that. Sometimes you may encounter a website that doesn't like to cooperate with the VPN. For example, some banking and government websites. In those cases, your identity is known to them, so there's no reason to hide it. And using a VPN may keep them from working properly. If you run into that problem, you can quickly deactivate DuckDuckGo's VPN. Do what you gotta do. Then turn the VPN back on. No harm, no foul.
Clyde The Duck: Quack!
Rosie Tran: I've seen the adult websites you visit, Claude. You definitely wanna use a VPN.
So, if you're like Clyde, or if you just want to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos, you can sign up for the DuckDuckGo 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. The DuckDuckGo subscription is currently available to residents of the U.S., U.K., E.U., and Canada. Feature availability may vary by region. So make sure you check the website for further information.
Show Outro
Rosie Tran: Today's episode of Stupid Sexy Privacy was recorded at the DuckDuckGo podcast studio in Los Angeles, California. It was written by BJ Mendelson, produced by Andrew VanVooris, and hosted by me, Rosie Tran.
Before we go, I want to give a shout out to our other co-host, Amanda King, and our sponsor, DuckDuckGo. If you enjoy the show, we hope you'll take a moment to leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you may be listening.
This won't take more than two minutes of your time. You see, we have this crazy goal and we need your help to achieve it. We want 5 % of Americans to be 1 % better at protecting themselves from fascists and weirdos. Leaving us a review can help make that happen. Because your review will help other people find the show. So please take a moment to leave us a review and we'll see you next Thursday at midnight.
Right after you watch my episode of Comedy Invasion on Peacock, right?