Free Cookies and our Increasingly Digital Lives - Creative Futurism

Creative Futurism

In this episode, John and Kevin traverse the breakneck changes of the digital landscape and how they are affecting our society. Join us to explore the future of digital identity far beyond the dreaded password, the growing polarization of our news consumption, and learn about the Squatty Potty that stalked John through the entire internet.

Relevant links:

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Pre-buy John’s book “Breaking Digital Gridlock”

Buy Kevin’s latest book “Tastes Like Chicken”

Transcript:

Kevin:

Hello, and welcome to the Creative Futurism podcast. This is Kevin J. Anderson.

John:

And this is John Best.

Kevin:

And we’re going to be talking about the future and creativity and business and everything you need to know to survive until tomorrow when something’s going to change. John and I got together because we have wildly different interests and wildly similar interests. And we have interesting approaches to our world. I’m a best-selling writer. John’s a financial tech guru. And together we’re looking toward the future. And so today we’ve got just the two of us talking about things that bug us. And one of the things that-this is after the Equifax breach and all that. It’s data being taken and wondering well what do people do with all that stuff and how do you ensure your privacy? And we don’t want to sound like we’re survivalists living in a bunker somewhere. But these are issues that we need to deal with that we never needed to deal with before.

John:

Well, they’re modern issues, right? They’re issues that now-that were never a big- because in the past when you had your passport or something like that you would share it with someone who would then validate it and give it back to you. But they wouldn’t sort of snapshot that information and then store it somewhere. Now that was the difference. And here we live in a world where when you share information with somebody it then becomes part of their archive. And then that’s something that becomes a weakness or a threat to you later on if someone gets their hands on it.

Kevin:

Well, the biggest security issue that I used to have to deal with was making sure that the bully down the hall didn’t get my high school locker combination. I mean the high school locker-the bicycle locker combination, those were the things that we used to have to remember. My grandfather never had to worry about somebody stealing his password or his social security.

John:

And if he did have a password it might be one. Not 400 of them.

Kevin:

Well, and I was realizing the tipping point where at one point I used to know all of my passwords because you only had a handful of them. And then it started to get so many passwords that of course you had to write them all down. And of course you wrote them all down and taped them on the inside of the drawer in your desk. So that any idiot could come in and find your passwords and put them in. And then it got to the point where there are so many passwords everywhere. Then they would be-Safari would generate the password for you. Which is an unbreakable password. But it’s also anybody can remember. So therefore, you have to store it somewhere. So, we have this thing called One Password which is a locker of all of our passwords that has a master password.

John:

And you’re not the only one.

Kevin:

And we use it all-it’s got all our credit card numbers in it, everything into it. And of course, the thing that we have to remember is the master password to get into it. Well, that I can remember because we chose that one. But if somebody hacked and got my master password to that locker of passwords.

John:

You’re just moving the cheese, you know? Just a little more away. But you know what’s interesting? One thing I’m going to share that just happens to be my background from being a security person is let me give you a methodology that you should think about. And everybody who’s listening should think about passwords. There’s a friend of mine, he’s kind of famous too, if you watch LifeLock commercials on Sunday, he’s on there. His name’s Jim Stickley. We’re going to have him on this podcast. He’s a security expert. He’s been on the Today Show, all those kinds of morning shows. And one thing he’ll tell you is if you’re going to use like a password, let’s say you have a master password. It’s the KJ @ sign is so cool, with two zeros. Come up with some way, like maybe for example, maybe you pick something about that site. It’s always the third word on the page. And then you tag that onto the end of it. And then a couple special characters. Something that deviates with every site. But something that you would remember. Something that would be easy to go, okay I always start from the top. And the third word there happens to be books and so that’s what goes on the end. And that way you can create sort of a metamorphous on it. But let’s talk about Equifax. I want to tell you what happened. I want to know about where you are and what really happened.

Kevin:

We talked little bit but I’m sure a lot of the listeners don’t-my fans come from the book end and they don’t know about the Equifax end.

John:

Sure. So, Equifax is one of the three major credit bureaus in the United States. There’s Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Those three companies are basically-when you go to buy a home, when you go to get a credit card, wherever it is, the financial institution that gives you that-makes a decision to take a risk on you and give you credit, whatever it is. They use one of these three bureaus to determine your credit worthiness. And so, the way they do that is every time you make a good payment the financial institutions are required to transmit this information to the bureaus. So they say, ‘Kevin just made a payment on his card and it was on time.’ So, we’ll put that into his record for forever and ever.

Kevin:

So, he’s blessed. He did a good thing. He helped an old lady cross the street.

John:

But if he was 30 days late we’ll mark that down too. Which then becomes sort of a thing on your report. And these are called trade lines. Each one of these-everything that you do is a trade line. Now, if someone comes out and says, ‘Well you know what? Kevin owes me money. He never paid this credit card off.’ Well, that’s going to wind up on your credit report. So that’s what Equifax is, it’s about credit reports. And they confirmed recently that almost 143 million customer records-let me give you some perspective on that Kevin.

Kevin:

143 million.

John:

143 million, let me give you some perspective on that. There are as of the census that was done in 2013, as far as I know, 148 million adults over 18 in the United States.

Kevin:

So, that was everybody’s record.

John:

In theory, because the only way that you would have a record in there you would have to be over 18 and credit worthy. I don’t even know how you wouldn’t have a record in there if you were human unless you were really off the grid. I mean really off the grid. Like you’d never bought a home, never got a credit card from anyone ever.

Kevin:

When I was 18 my dad got me like a gas company credit card so I could buy gas and start building up my own thing. And when I first got married we made a very special point of making sure that half of the things were in my wife’s name as well as in mine. Because in my dad’s generation a lot of the wives had no credit because everything was in the husbands name.

John:

And then one day they died.

Kevin:

And the wife has no credit.

John:

Yeah. So, they got breached by hackers. And this started in mid-May and continued. And here’s the thing people don’t know, like the TJ Maxx hack, which we’ll talk about in a minute. The hackers got in in May. They were in there all the way through July. Just having their way.

Kevin:

In Equifax?

John:

Yes. So that’s one thing people think. They think it’s like a burglary. Like where they break in and they run off with the stuff, right? It’s not how this works. As a digital gridlock. I do scenario planning for security. And one of the things I say is that I’ve known a lot of CTO’s and that stands for Chief Technology Officers, Chief Information Officers. People in charge of technology and therefore usually in charge of security at financial institutions and even other industries. That when things start to happen they start to freak out, ‘Oh we’re being hacked.’ And I tell them, ‘You know what? Don’t worry about it. As a matter of fact, that’s the best time. Because a really good hacker, the last thing they’re going to do is set off all your alarms.’ If you think about it, I’m not afraid of the burglar that’s knocking down stuff out the door that I can hear my dogs barking at.

Kevin:

You still don’t want that.

John:

I don’t want him. But trust me, he’s a lot easier to deal with than the guy who doesn’t do anything. So a good example is the TJ Maxx hacker. It was a guru. He got in through Wi-Fi, right? And he was in there for so long that he was running in their systems. And when their systems would have problems he wouldn’t want people to come looking and poking around in his area.

Kevin:

So, he fixed the problems?

John:

So, TJ Maxx probably thought they had the best running system ever. I tell people be more worried when things magically fix themselves. That’s a bigger thing. So, these people were in their from mid-May until July. And it included names, birthdays, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, physical addresses, credit card numbers, dispute documents, personal identifying information. Basically, all the credit reports is what it sounds like. Now, let me ask you a question Kevin. Have you ever gone to a website and they say, ‘I want to identify that you’re Kevin J. Anderson. Kevin J. Anderson, can you tell me which one of these is your mortgage payment?’ Have you ever seen that one?

Kevin:

Well, I’ve had the which one of these is an old address or something like that.

John:

And that’s called out of wallet. That’s the name for that. It’s an app, out of the wallet. And the reason we do that is because if someone stole your wallet then we don’t want them to be you. So, we’re trying to do something we call out of wallet. So that we can confirm you’re you. That I couldn’t steal your wallet and get your information.

Kevin:

Sometimes I’ve had trouble with those because I look at it and go I don’t remember if I was at that address or not.

John:

But that’s being old. That’s just dementia. You’re 55, right?

Kevin:

Rebecca just had one of those where they came up with it and she just went, ‘It was asking her for like her high school locker combination. Like how did they even get the correct answer for that?

John:

How could you possibly know?

Kevin:

But as long as it’s like the catcha things because half of them you can’t read anyway. As long as I can toggle to some other question that I might know I’m cool with that.

John:

So, what this is is that this is where that data came from was companies like Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. They have your old mortgage payment. They have your old address. That’s where we get this data. That’s the out of wallet. So you see the implication here. The data that we were using to keep everyone safe we now can’t use anymore. Because it’s out there. And here’s the thing. You would think oh well, gee where’s this big run of hacks? What’s been the outcome of this? Now, I’ll cover a share of what we see on our side as far as financial institutions, right? And I want to talk about Uber for a second. So Uber got hacked last year by a group who got in, stole a bunch of information, demanded a ransom. Uber paid it. And surprisingly. And it turned out they weren’t honorable thieves. I mean isn’t that weird? I would’ve thought they would have kept their word. And it still got leaked out into the dark web. Which is where we put this stuff if we want to go have people use it. It took a year to tell us that. Now, as a financial institution, what we start to see is hm, it appears that we’ve got this sort of vain of fraud happening. And we can’t figure out kind of what the common thing is. Like why is Kevin getting hit? And why is John getting hit? And why is Susie getting hit? And then one day it clicks. Oh, we figured it out. Every one of them uses Uber. And so that helps us to narrow it down. And so there’s always been suspicions but until Uber comes out and says it happened you’ve got no recourses as a financial institution. And you have to pay the fraud. I mean, have you ever had to pay for any of the fraud that’s hit you?

Kevin:

No. We’ve had like our credit card numbers stolen several times. But I think we never had to pay. Even it used to be like a $300 limit or something.

John:

But somebody had to pay.

Kevin:

But we didn’t pay it. We had one where we were traveling to Australia. And we flew through Frankfurt or something like that. So anyway, so we’re in Australia and we’re getting called by our credit card company saying that somebody’s buying medical equipment in Indonesia with your credit card. Is this authorized or not? And we’re like, ‘Um, no.’ And so, my wife was on the phone for like an hour trying to get all of our credit cards cancelled, everything changed. Because somebody had skimmed our number in the airport in Frankfurt or wherever it was. But here is the real problem. So then that makes all of our credit cards not valid. And as we’re getting off the plane in Australia-

John:

-And how much Australian cash did you have on you?

Kevin:

About $100.

John:

Oh yeah, you could live off that for a week. You’d be fine.

Kevin:

Sure. That’s one of these things, the repercussions of when these things happen. Even when the checks and balances are in place it still takes a long time. Now, what we talked about before we started recording is I’m hearing these commercials about the Equifax hack or that your data’s not secure. And I’m hearing these commercials on the radio where they will offer you like mortgage title security protection. Because there are people who will get your data and they will secretly go in and recreate your identity and then refinance your house. Now I listen to that because this is the same radio that has the testosterone supplement thing and our blackberry pill will cure diabetes and everything. And then I get this thing. And my eyes kind of rolled. Like how could that possibly be true? Because I’m living in my house and I’m obviously me. And if somebody refinances and takes all the equity I, Kevin, can’t possibly be responsible for that, right? And I just tell them, ‘No it’s a mistake.’ And somebody else takes care of it, right? But what I’m asking you John, am I correct or am I being naïve?

John:

You’re being naïve. So, here’s what happens. So, one of the things they do is they prey on the elderly.

Kevin:

Well yeah. The older people I’ve heard so many times of this is your niece Sarah. And she’s stuck in Bangladesh and you’ve got to wire us $5,000. I’ve known several people who have fallen for that.

John:

Or older people who get this screen that opens up and says, ‘Your computer is locked. You need to pay this to have us fix it.’ Oh man, I chased one of those groups down because they did that to somebody once. I found them in Vegas. I shut down everything they had. You know why? Because that is just it’s despicable. You can find really cool YouTube videos of guys just attacking these guys on the web. It’s fun. But the point is it’s not naïve.

Kevin:

My mother in law had a guy 11:00 at night, ‘Hi, I’m from Microsoft and there’s a bug in your computer. I need to know all of your passwords.’ And she was like typing them in for somebody.

John:

And that’s what they do is they prey on the elderly. And the elderly is a going to open every one of those messages. Or maybe somebody else is responsible. And if you have an elderly family member who has an amount of money or what not, my suggestion would be you can actually go to most of the states, including Colorado where we live. And they have legal folks that will get involved if they’re old enough that will manage their funds. And what I like about that is that you don’t have like you and your brother and your sister, and somebody’s got to track the-it’s someone who is indiscriminate of that. Whose taking care of this for them. And will answer those questions. Because we’ve seen it over and over again. It’s so easy to bamboozle these folks because they’re not tech savvy and they’re very trusting.

Kevin:

The Nigerian prince really does want to transfer diamonds through.

John:

You know, it’s the most exciting thing that happened in that day. So, but going back to this idea of privacy, right? So, let me ask you a question. Here’s something that happened to me the other day. So, I was driving around and I was listening to Howard Stern. Sorry Howard, I’m not a huge fan. But my friend Ed called me and he said, ‘Hey John, David Lee Ross is going to be on Howard Stern.’ And anytime Ross is on I want to know when Van Halen is going back on tour. I’m a huge Van Halen nut. So, I get on, I’m listening. And in the mean time he’s doing these-I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to Howard Stern. But he’s doing these testimonials for something called Squatty Potty. You know what this is?

Kevin:

Yes, we have one.

John:

Well there you go. I do not. I did not know what it was. So, I’m listening. So, my interest has peaked. I’m listening to him talk. I get to work and I put Squatty Potty in Google.

Kevin:

They have a beautiful video of a unicorn.

John:

It’s all very very wonderful. But I click on the Amazon one. And how you really at the time-this was some time ago. One of the ways that they were advertising Squatty Potty was to put someone on the toilet in the picture. Where you can just see him outside of it on the thing. So you could see the mechanism of how it works. For those of you who don’t know it’s simply a stool. Apparently you put your feet up on that helps things . .

Kevin:

It straightens out your colon.

John:

So, the challenge is and I’m sure this has happened to you-

Kevin:

-We are not sponsored by Squatty Potty.

John:

We are not sponsored by Squatty Potty. Squatty Potty give us a call. So, what ended up happening was now everywhere I go, every website I go, there’s the guy in the toilet. Because Amazon believes I have interest. And so what they’ve done is in my browser they put a super cookie down. And because I use Google, and so Google perpetuates to the different systems I use. Now as you know, I’m a speaker. I am very likely to get up on a stage and bring up a site like Facebook. I can randomly pull it up in front of hundreds-

Kevin:

-You’ve got Squatty Potty pictures all over it.

John:

I finally named it. I’m like this is Pete everybody. Meet my Squatty Potty friend. But that’s a problem. Because not only are they doing that but they’re tracking everywhere you go. Once you go into a site, you’re really kind of leaving a trail behind, a digital trail. So in Europe there’s this new thing called the General Protection Data Regulation, GPDR. Actually, I think it’s GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation.

Kevin:

Where you can erase yourself, right?

John:

Right. You have the right to be forgotten. So, let’s say that one day you were having a bad day. You were like, ‘I just can’t keep up with this writing stuff. I want to join ISIS.’ And so, we can’t help it. Kevin puts how do you join ISIS into Google. You’re regretting that now. You’re thinking, ‘Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have done that.’ Now in Europe, you can call. You can go online and you can say, ‘I don’t want anything about me out there.’ And they will have to erase that.

Kevin:

But it’s not selective. They have to-it’s all or nothing?

John:

I think it’s all or nothing.

Kevin:

I can’t say, ‘You know, I was drunk and I really got pissed off at my boss and so I posted-

John:

-I want it all gone. It’s more about your search engine inquiries. But yeah, you can’t delete that. But what’s interesting too is what happens if the data crosses boundaries in the United States where the laws are different?

Kevin:

Well, because once it gets over here you’re never going to erase it. Ask the people who have had their sex videos leaked or something like that.

John:

We create petabytes of data every day. We’re creating more data than anything we’ve ever done before.

Kevin:

Well, but there’s also we’re both of the generation where-I was just talking about this to a friend. And I was telling him I’ve had a couple of kooky stalkers and a lot of other writers who’ve had some stalkers, some actors who have had some stalkers. And we were brought up that your privacy meant that you could request an unlisted phone number and nobody would ever know. I mean if you had an unlisted phone number that was your level of privacy. And no one would ever call you. And if somebody did happen to call you with a sales call on your unlisted phone number boy would we get pissed. And we would send like, ‘How did you get this number?’ And of course they were just a random generated number or something. But now I think the attitude is more changed where it’s a generational thing where nobody expects any kind of privacy. Which I find is a scary thing. And similar to-well, not quite similar to Squatty Potty thing. But I went to-there was a big fantasy novel that-this was a year ago. Big fantasy novel that was coming out that I wanted to know when the release date was. So, I looked it up on Amazon and I saw here’s the book, here’s the author, here’s when it’s coming out. And then I went on Facebook which isn’t even owned by Amazon. And low and behold there’s an ad for the book that I just looked at on Amazon appearing on the side of my Facebook page. And it took me a second or two to realize wait a second, that shouldn’t be here. How does this entirely separate social media company know about what I looked at?

John:

That’s because of those super cookies.

Kevin:

I’m going to sort of juggle with a couple of different things there. Like one, we used to get so much junk mail. And I would be really annoyed because the junk mail I would get had no relevance. I mean one out of a hundred would even be something I’d be interested in. So, I as a consumer sort of like the fact that there are filters out there so that the junk mail that I get is a higher quality junk mail. In that, maybe they really are sending me Batman collectibles that I might be interested in. Or I get ads for TV shows that are coming up like oh I didn’t know about that one and stuff. What I don’t want is sports memorabilia. I have no interest in that. But when they would scatter shot junk mail out, they had to mail it to every household. And now you can actually get, I think it’s a good thing that they can actually sort out and give you stuff that you might want to look at. On the other hand, if I buy diapers for my grandson because my daughter in law asked me to order it because I was ordering something else, then suddenly my Squatty Potty gets in there. My diapers get in there, whatever. And I get bridal shower stuff and baby toy stuff and all kinds of things that isn’t relevant to me. And I wish there would be sort of a separate category where this is a one-time only thing. And this is what I’m really interested in.

John:

Let me tell you what we’re headed to. So, what we’re headed to is really cool. I believe with something called self-sovereign identity, which we’re really going to dig into in another episode with a couple different people. But this idea of self-sovereign identity means that you have an identity that only you own. We’re back to that whole I don’t give anybody my passport. I just show it to the people at the passport that want to have it to see it and then bring it back. And so, one of the things that I think we’re going to blow up everything with is that that industry you’re talking about where that ad followed you to Facebook and might have followed you over to Twitter and might have followed you over to Reddit and so forth and so on. That is a bazillion dollar industry that’s going to get up ended. And the way to switch it around which is very interesting, and I’m going to blow your mind here a little bit. But what if you could opt in-and I’ll give you my example, what if you could opt in to advertising and you get paid to get it? So for example, Musician’s Friend, as you know I’m a musician. I have a small guitar problem. Uh, I have gotten rid of most of them and that but I do keep buying them. I don’t mind getting advertisements about the new Paul Reid Smith that’s coming out. Or the new Gibson whatever. And so, I might tell Musician’s Friend, yes it’s okay for you to send me your deals. And by the way, the quid pro quo for that is hey, we were spending money with someone else to put these out there. We’re just going to spend money directly with someone that we’re interested in to bring that to you. And so, if that were to bring you value and you were able to do that-

Kevin:

-Explain that. Who is actually spending-

John:

Musician’s Friend would pay you.

Kevin:

Pay me in actual money or in discounts and something that I actually-

John:

-Depends. It could be a couple different ways. It could be cryptocurrency. It could be Bitcoin, it could be actual money. It could be a discount of some sort. It could be-it’s an exchange of value. What that value is-

Kevin:

-Because I was thinking something like that if I got a free subscription to something that I would have paid for or whatever.

John:

Right. So, what you’re trying to trade and what you’re marketing, right? Which is hey, here’s a free book of Dan Shambles. What I really want is to be able to continue to tell you about my Dan Shamble series, right? And so, that’s one thing that’s going on. But there’s a great book out, it’s called The Power of Habit. And it’s by a guy named Charles Duhigg. And in The Power of Habit he tells the story, and you may have heard this story, but I’m not sure if everybody knows the full story. So, I’ll be quick about it. It’s about Target. So, some time ago, a couple years ago, the store-target the store, there was this big deal where a father of a teenage child suddenly got this big advertisement of all kinds of baby stuff. And it was all addressed to his daughter who happened to have a red card. So the red card is Target’s little card that they give you that they give you a percentage off of. And so what had happened was is that Target had started working very early and very smartly on data analytics as related to Target marketing. And so, they were using a function that’s like machine learning. And let me explain that real fast. And I know you’re a physicist so you probably get this faster than I do, but if I was going to program a computer to recognize a cat I would sit down and go whiskers, tail, and I would give it details. But the way that you do it now is you say, ‘Tell me, here’s a million cats. Look through all these pictures come up with your own attributes. And then oh by the way, here’s some foxes. I want you to be able to differentiate those too, right? So you let the computer decide the attributes. So in this situation what they wanted to do, their number one consumer, Target’s real big play is once you get a new mom, she’s going to come to Target and buy everything. Because she doesn’t want to go anywhere else. It’s a pain. You get a new mom in a super Target and you’ve got the golden ticket.

Kevin:

So our new sponsors are Squatty Potty and Target.

John:

C’mon Target. Well, Target may not like this but I’m actually going to tell the story in a good way. So what they did was, here’s a bunch of women who are now pregnant. Let’s see what the buy, right? And it turned out like things that our human minds could never comprehend. So, there were certain vitamins. They weren’t pre-natal vitamins. They were just vitamins, particular ones. But after a while they figured out that there was some article somewhere that said, ‘These are vitamins you need to take if you’re a conscientious mother doing your pre-natal.’ And so that was a big thing. The big story is did she buy a pregnancy test? And that was what clued them in. So anyways, father goes to Target and just reams out the manager. ‘C’mon, you sent out my 15-year-old daughter baby stuff,’ whatever. Comes back later and goes, ‘I’m really sorry. There’s a situation in our family I was not aware of.’ So Target correctly predicted.

Kevin:

So she was.

John:

Yeah, absolutely was. Now, what was interesting was the mistake they made there was-and this is where I want to get your impact, was they hit her with all this baby stuff, right? So, later on they figured it out. People don’t like to know they’re being targeted. So, what they do is-did you know that every Target like mailer that you get is pretty much specifically for you. But what they do is I want to sell you some baby goods. But I’m also going to put a grill over here. It’s not related but what it does is-

Kevin:

-Camouflage.

John:

Is camouflage, exactly. So, what are your thoughts on that?

Kevin:

Well, I would be more likely to buy a grill than baby stuff.

John:

Okay, if they want to sell you the grill they’re going to put the baby stuff on the other side.

Kevin:

See, I don’t mind that so much because I’m not a monolithic person. I’m not a binary person. Because I might actually buy a grill and baby stuff. So, I don’t mind having other stuff-

John:

-It’s the point of the camouflage though. I mean, is that to you deception?

Kevin:

But all advertising is deception in a certain way. I mean, advertising should be information. As in we’re telling you about something that if it really was as good as we say it was then you would want to buy it because you should have it. I think it’s-the computers filled with taking all this data and finding patterns that know humans. There was a while early on when I got my first Safeway card. Which tracks all the groceries that I buy.

John:

The secret trick where you can save $30 by-otherwise you’re spending an extra $30. Also, Kohl’s cash is a scam.

Kevin:

But the other thing was is do I really want-if I swipe my card then they know that I’m this individual who was buying this brand of whatever. And if I buy too many anti-acids does it think that I have digestive problems. All of these things. And I’ve switched over to the point where I like the fact as a consumer that it knows who I am as a consumer. So that it gives me offers not for baby food. Because I don’t care about baby food. It gives me offers on bacon or stuff that I would buy.

John:

Dog food is a classic example, right? You could pretty easily figure out if somebody has a pet or several pets, right? So that’s a good deal to where-but what’s interesting about what you just talked about is when they start connecting those dots and you’re okay with it, do you know what Google’s like I guess it’s their internal philosophy, what they tell people? It used to be very simple, don’t be evil, right? And so that was their whole deal. So, I think that your point is well taken that anybody can do what they want with data if it’s on behalf of you. Like, what about if they’re selling that to Faizer? What if they’re selling the Faizer that based on all the things that they’re buying here-and maybe they don’t give out your personal information. But they give enough that you become a profile that they say, ‘Kevin’s one of the people that we believe is at risk for Chron’s. I’m just making this up. I don’t know what I’m talking about. And they sell that off to Faizer because Faizer needs that kind of data to determine what the next pill they go after is. How do you feel about that?

Kevin:

Well, that I don’t mind either. Because if I’m actually one of these victims of a certain kind of disease-

John:

-But should they tell you that you’re at risk of Chron’s? Do you want an email from Safeway that says based on your buying habits we think you’ve got Chron’s?

Kevin:

I’m sorry but I’d like to know that. Because I probably would-

John:

-Don’t be sorry about it.

Kevin:

But that’s my health. If by them tracking my life patterns that they figured out that I’m in the top 5% at risk for pancreatic cancer, I want to know that. And I think parents that have a high risk of having a down syndrome baby or something like that, I’m fine with that sort of stuff.

John:

But what if they sell it to Faizer and Faizer sells it to your publisher? Who says, ‘Oh my God, we better Kevin.’ And then something went wrong.

Kevin:

Okay, but getting to this building your profile. I don’t care if Safeway realizes that I buy a lot of bacon and eggs so they’re going to send me bacon coupons. Well, cool. Then I’ll save money. See, that kind of stuff is fine. But let’s get much more insidious because we shy away from politics. But the day that we’re recording this is the day that the Alabama senate is happening on, right now. Okay, so without getting into the actual politics part, if they’re building your profile, and this is happening right now, what they’re also doing is they are selecting what kind of news stories you see. Because they know you like this kind of stuff or you agree with this kind of stuff and you disagree with this kind of stuff. So, that will polarize our politics even more. Because what they will do is they will only show-if they determine that you’re an ultra-conservative, they will only show you stuff that you will agree with as an ultra-conservative. Or the same goes for ultra-liberal stuff. Which I find that horrifying.

John:

I thought you were going to say that people who vote for Roy Moore that okay, these are all sympathizers or not sympathizers to women’s rights. So, okay here’s a list of people that-

Kevin:

-But let’s go that way then. Of course we hope that they don’t find out who you vote for. But let’s just say that they had a way to find the names of the people who voted for Roy Moore. And again, we’re being careful with the politics. But let’s just say the person who votes for Roy Moore probably fits within a certain profile.

John:

Just like the person who votes for the other guy fits in a certain profile.

Kevin:

Although I would say less so. I think there’s a lot for Doug Jones. I think the people who vote for Doug Jones are a lot more scattered as to what their identity is compared to-the people who vote for Roy Moore we know what that sort of person is. So, if you get information on that then you start sending them political ads. Then you start sending them the fake news. It’s exactly what the Russians did.

John:

And with Facebook and everything else. Because you can manipulate the public with that.

Kevin:

So, that’s where I get scared because I’m moving the target as we’re talking. Because I don’t mind if Safeway wants to give me a coupon for the brand of bacon that I buy. And in fact, If I am secretly at risk of having a stroke and I don’t know about it and somebody tells me, ‘Go see a doctor just in case.’ I’m okay with that. But if it comes to the we’re going to start filtering the news that you’re allowed to see-and let’s face it. A lot of these people who live in the bubble like living in the bubble. Because it’s uncomfortable for them to listen to news that disproves their core beliefs.

John:

I feel it myself when I hear it. Like just recently, I’m pretty democratic and we just recently-some of the news sources were very wrong. And very clearly wrong and Trump correctly pointed that out. And it doesn’t make-the source doesn’t make it any less right or wrong. If it’s right or wrong. But here’s something I wanted to point out. This is interesting. So, you’re a science fiction writer, well known science fiction writer, I’m going to go back to this book I’m in the middle of. So, there’s this great scene in Ready Player One where he joins what’s called the IOI. And in the IOI he goes through-so in this future if it is that you owe them money for their credit card they come get you and turn you into an indent. Which is an indentured servant until you pay it off. So, he goes down there. He does it on purpose to put himself inside there. And so he uses it to hack in. And he finds out that like how much these people know about everybody. Which is supposed to be the whole purpose of that oasis product is to be anonymous. What if we found out tomorrow or the next day that Twitter just wasn’t anonymous. And that Facebook wasn’t anonymous. Or Gmail wasn’t anonymous. What if we found out that big thing. But the other side of it that I thought was interesting was the technology. If you remember he has a call with some guy. It’s a call center call. It’s a hilarious little moment in the book. I hope they put it in the movie where some guy’s got a sword that won’t work for the level of avatar he is. And he calls them an effing moron. But the software completely translates that and removes it. What was it called? The sensitivity-the customer sensitivity software. And so, he could say whatever he wants and the thing would just make it say something nice. So, what does that look like from a fake news standpoint? I mean, at some point we’re going to be able to manipulate the story’s tone at a level that-you’re going to have to set a whole different story.

Kevin:

Well, but what we’re getting into then, and this is a way way longer discussion, but so during the last election there were a lot of the various ads going on. And many of the claims in ads, political ads against their opponent, were demonstrably untrue. Like this guy has a mansion in Barbados or something. No, he doesn’t. It was demonstrably factually false. And I was thinking why isn’t there some sort of law or regulation that you have to tell the truth in an ad. Or if you are caught telling a lie you have to disavow it. But apparently anything is fair game in political ads. You can say whatever you want no matter-you could say Roy Moore is a pedophile. Although it hasn’t been proved. But you can say that.

John:

Allegedly.

Kevin:

Well, you don’t have to say allegedly.

John:

Right. You could say whatever you want.

Kevin:

Well . . But my thing is, if you say, ‘Wait a minute, this is fake news,’ who is the innocent arbiter who actually says what this is is fake news, this is not fake news. Because that’s what’s scaring me.

John:

Well, let me bring this full circle. Let me scare the real crap out of you. Okay, so let’s take it all the way back to the beginning. So, I am now in possession of Kevin J. Anderson’s identity. I have his Equifax credit report. I have his credit card. I have his social security number. I can also tell you the last four plane trips he’s taken. I can tell you which hotels he stayed in because I was able to get in there.

Kevin:

Which brand of bacon he buys.

John:

I’ve been in his email. I know who he’s talking to. But here’s why I’m interested in Kevin. Kevin is what I call an influencer. Okay, so if Kevin comes out on his Facebook and says, ‘I believe XYZ senator or XYZ candidate has been falsely accused of this or that.’ well, you mentioned yourself, you have 25,000 likes on Facebook. You have 25,000 people in that space. How many of those people that trust you because you’re an influencer, who have read your books and believe that Kevin’s a good guy, are going to maybe base an opinion based on that, right? And so, that’s where this whole thing takes a spin. So, there are a lot of people who are really worried about identity theft. And really, that’s thugs in crime rings. What I’m fearful of is state actors. We got a lot of people really angry at those. And you know what the great equalizer is? Is cyber warfare. So for example, North Korea is some of the most sophisticated actors in the universe right now. Syria like five years ago started a computer army, a hacker army that they’ve been using. And so, these groups get together and now they have these identities, right? Maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s an Air Force general. Maybe it’s someone else. And maybe they go somewhere where you would never think to look. You know what, Kevin J. Anderson does not-I’m just making this up. Does not have a Reddit account maybe. I don’t know. So, that’s a place that you’re not really watching.

Kevin:

So, they can make up an account in my name and start posting all kinds of stuff.

John:

Posting stuff that would be influential. So, this idea of influencers, which by the way is not hard to figure out, it’s very easy to sort of find influencers in this sea of data. This idea of influencers is very interesting because that’s the next high-level manipulation beyond the vacuum. And if people don’t start thinking for themselves, and just looking and questioning everything, and just doing a little digging-

Kevin:

How can there be a child porn pizza ring in the basement of a pizza place that doesn’t have a basement?

John:

Right? I mean at least that. It doesn’t mean that there’s not something there, but let’s not take it at face value. Let’s do our own research. Let’s do a little critical-let’s get Dan Shambles on it and do a little critical thinking.

Kevin:

What I’m afraid that we’re going to do, and this is what I’m seeing right now, is you get so much of this stuff, the fake news all over the place, that I’m seeing people who just go, ‘I don’t believe any of it anymore. I don’t pay attention anymore. I just don’t believe any of it.’ When I was a kid we watched like Tom Brokaw on the NBC nightly news. And it never occurred to any of us that what was on the NBC nightly news wasn’t real.

John:

But here’s the interesting concept with that is-now I’m going to flip you another switch. So, there’s this kind of thing going on and it started with a podcast called Serial. And what Serial was about was a guy named Adnon who everybody kind of believed was falsely accused, right? And this was about killing a girl or something. But long story short, these sleuths on the web were able to find out so much stuff that called in and questioned the verdict and everything else. And so, if you can go out and take-and now it’s all over. You find it all the time. There’s sites dedicated to it where people just go online and try to help exonerate people if they believe they’re innocent. If they find out they’re guilty then they’ll send that over too. And they can go and find this stuff on the web. You can find the crime photo pictures. You can find the people that you want to talk to. And these amateur sleuths are getting people off for false-

Kevin:

-Like the justice version of SETI.

John:

Yes, exactly.

Kevin:

SETI was the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. There was a network I think Carl Sagan set it up where everybody used-they couldn’t afford giant super computers. So, it was a network of everybody’s PCP nuts and Apple 2E’s and everything else. When they went to bed at night they let their computers run.

John:

When the screensaver was running it was processing from that big dish all the sounds that they collected from the universe to look for-

Kevin:

So, this is like an army of people combing through massive amounts of data looking for stuff.

John:

Yeah, so what that means is, and I’ll take you all the way back to the X-files, the truth is out there.

Kevin:

But finding it’s the hard part.

John:

Let’s end with that.

Kevin:

Well, let’s wrap up with now letting everybody’s data get out we both want to if you can be interested in signing up for our newsletter at creativefuturism.com. But also, I’ve got my-if you’re interested in some of my books, if you go to wordfire.com. And it’ll also be on the futurism website. If you sign up for my reading group we won’t sell it anywhere else. But you will get a free copy of my Dan Shamble story collection Working Stiff. And sneak previews of books that I’ve got coming out. It’s all about just trying to find the people that buy that brand of bacon. Only we’re trying to find the people who read Kevin Anderson books so that we can keep in touch.

John:

Speaking of Kevin Anderson books, all of this identity stuff and all of this security stuff and then I know it’s not a complete sell, but will be in my forthcoming book out in early February at this point Breaking Digital Gridlock, which you can pre-order now on Amazon.

Kevin:

We will have to have a podcast on that when it comes out.

John:

Yeah, I’m really excited. I’m excited for you to read it. I have no idea what’s going to happen. I never read my book in my life.

Kevin:

My new book is called Tastes Like Chicken. It’s a Dan Shamble book. It’s completely different from John’s book.

John:

Breaking Digital Chicken, something like that.

Kevin:

Anyway, we will have some more thought provoking or anger provoking stuff in our next episode. So we hope you’ll listen. This is Kevin J. Anderson.

John:

This is John Best.

Kevin:

And we’re signing off for the week. Thank you all.