What Does the Internet Know About You?

when I was like twelve or thirteen. I mean I never had it, like I was never a great programmer super into that side of the internet, like I was too busy reading in Carter but right, but sometimes I'd go over to my friend's houses and watched them play with it. And the thing is, you could cause all sorts of chaos with it, Like you could log on for free and uh this is when a L was charging you by the minute, and you could do various pranks.

But one of the least used and most powerful things you could do was create a user name with a O L in it. What do you mean, like you you couldn't use AOL in your name? No, So that was one of the things that AL used to protect itself. But through ao hell, you could sign up as like a O L cop thirteen or a O L Guide twenty six, and you could make yourself to see even like this legit agent of the company, and my friends

used to use this mercilessly. What were they doing, like stealing credit cards or what I mean, we're not thieves, Like my friends would use it for pranks. So so often, like my power would go into a chat room where it was clear that like thirteen year old boys were trading photos of like scantily clad ladies, and and he'd say, this is a O L cop thirteen, You've been busted. And then he'd say, unless you write me a one page apology for your actions, your parents will be notified

and your account will be suspended. And by the end of the by the end of the summer, you have like a binder full of weird apologies from kids saying they'd never trade bikini photos online again and just don't tell their parents because they're supposed to be playing math games. I mean, that is ruthless, I know, but the whole thing did make me wonder, like how much of our history is still online and how much does the internet know about all of us? And that's what today's episode

it's all about. Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always, I'm joined by my good friend Man Gueshow Ticketer, and on the other side of the soundproof glasses our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I don't know if you notice of, but Tristan seems to be smirking today. Why is he so smirky? Smirks? Good job, Tristan, I guess he's in a good mood.

But all right, so it's not Halloween yet, but today we're gonna be exploring a topic that many of us do find pretty creepy, and and that's asking the question, what exactly does the Internet know about us? And so to find out, we've been combing through user agreements just to see what sort of personal information that we willingly sign away. You know, these are two our favorite apps

and websites. And we'll also take a look behind the digital curtain of the ad tracking industry, you know, just to learn a little bit about how much of our online habits reveal about who we are in the real world. And this was actually a topic suggested by a listener after a trip to the grocery store, and she had explained that she had purchased a new type of soft drink and then she'd never heard of this drink before, and she spotted it there, picked it up, bought it,

went home. She had never looked it up on her phone, never looked it up on her computer. But then later she found herself getting ads for this same soft drink, and so she was wondering do these offline purchases somehow connect with what she's seeing online? And so we're gonna be looking into questions like this. But I should take a second to say that if you have a question you'd like us to consider on a future episode, don't forget to reach out to us here. We we'd love

to hear from you. It's part time genius at how stuff works dot com and on our seven fact hot line one eight four four pt genius. It is is still seven right around the clock. That's amazing. There aren't many fact hot lines that seven. It's true, It's true, all right. Well, this is also a special up so because we're teaming up with one of our favorite podcasts to tackle two different but certainly related topics. So that's

that's right. To help us cope with some of the unsettling secrets of online privacy, will be joined by some of our favorite people, Ben Bolan, Noel Brown, and Matt Frederick. They've joined us on the show before, but as a reminder, they're the host of the awesome podcast Stuff they Don't Want You to Know, and and this week the guys did an episode on whether it's possible to wipe your

history from the web. So we'll talk to them and see if they have any tips they can pass along for how to get a little bit of privacy on the Internet. But if you're interested in this topic, be sure to check out today's episode of Stuff they Don't Want You To Know. I love what those guys do. They really are some of our favorite people. I know sometimes we say that, but they actually are some of our favorite people. All them, they're all good guys, all right.

So I thought we could start with just a general overview of what web tracking is and and how it works. And so to cover the first part of that, you know, just just stop and think about the time you've googled something like, you know, things to do in Denver, and then the next time you've used Google, you've got a bunch of ads that that you know, are trying to convince you to book a flight to Denver or something.

Like that. Or maybe you've watched a Star Wars trailer on YouTube and then you sign on to Facebook later that night and your news feed contains a target ad for a brand new Star Wars video game. And I think most of us know by now that those early appropriate ads they aren't by chance, and they're the result of web tracking, which is it's one a series of companies. They work together, they share information, They've compiled all this information on consumers, and this is for the sake of

tailoring advertisements to suit specific people. So, Mango, I know you engab did a bit of digging on this, and so why don't you give us a breakdown on on how all of this works. Sure? Well, there are actually a few different methods that companies used to gather information about people online, and one of them is this process

called canvas fingerprinting. Basically, websites have this feature written into their script so that when you visit the site and asked your browser to draw a hidden line of text or even a three D image, And because of differences between browsers and operating systems and computer hardware, the invisible image that each device draws will be different. So I

guess this is where the fingerprinting part comes in exactly. So, so the sites that use this method can then share these device fingerprints with third party advertising companies and and they in turn can use them to identify when and how often the same user of the same device returns to this site, as well as which other sites they're

visiting in between. All Right, so you're saying that these techniques like canvas fingerprinting, which I've actually never heard that term before, but they allow companies to track your browsing history all across the internet. So it's not just the site where you first have this image drawn, right, Yeah, because the advertisers can see these fingerprints on any site

that allows them. So by looking for which sites the fingerprints show up on, the advertiser can start to get an idea of who this user is and which kinds of products of services they might be most interested in. Actually, I'm curious about this. So these invisible trackers, they're they're hidden on websites, and they kind of sound like web cookies, which we we've all heard of before. Our cookies a form of this same thing. Yeah, so that's why I

thought too. But cookies are these small pieces of data that a website stores on the browser, and then recalls whenever you return to that specific site. So cookies are how your favorite websites remember your name or address, or your password, what's in your shopping cart, like all that stuff. So they're definitely related to gathering and storing information about users, but they aren't directly related to advertising on their own.

But I do remember Gape saying something about that. Advertisers are still interested in cookies today. They find ways to make use of them. There's this other process called cookie sinking. It's a way that lets companies share the information they've gathered about you through cookies, so they can trade notes to come up with a clearer picture of who you are.

All right, So wait, just a method Because all these data companies they collect and they share this information, but it's it's supposed to be anonymous, right, Like, like based on your phone or your computer, they might know where you live, or what town you live in, or maybe even how old you are, but they still don't know your real name or anything too personal out to do they Well, it's anonymous to a point. Like if someone really wanted to, it's entirely possible to connect someone's anonymous

cookie data with their real world identity. I mean, we see this kind of thing all the time with cases of identity theft and hack social media profiles. In fact, it's such a plausible danger that computer scientists don't even use the term anonymous anymore. Instead, they say that companies gather pseudonymous data on their users. Like the whole point is that none of us are even anonymous online anymore.

Like we've really just been given a pseudonym in the form of like these device fingerprints or these assigned numbers or some other kind of digital trace, which is all a little bit creepy. But I mean there's still one thing I don't understand, and that's this connection between online advertising and the spending we do in physical store. So I kind of want to back up to that first question that we asked at the very beginning of this, and that's whether the Internet knew my friend had bought

that pack of soda. I mean, it sort of feels like it had to know this, right, I Mean, otherwise, why after it for the first time, that she suddenly have Facebook ads recommending the same product to her. I know, And honestly, that's a really good question. I want to know. But but before that, I want to know what soda she bought. What's the new I can't remember. We gotta find out. It's gonna be a big one. Hopefully they'll be a sponsor. But it is, you know, I wish

you could say it's for incidence. It's you know, it feels a little strange that she bought the soda for the first time, and and maybe that was the same day that this big marketing push happened. But you know, realistically, the odds were against that. I mean, the major data companies gather an insane amount of information about their users. And most folks know that search engines like Google or Bing or Yahoo like they keep track of what we

search for, but big data's reach goes so much further. So, for instance, like Google not only knows where you've traveled thanks to Google Maps and the GPS tracking functions and Android phones, but they also know how fast you were going on the way there, and the same goes for Apple and their iPhone. Of course, this means they likely know where you live and work too, since those are the places that you're traveling between the most often. You know.

But still, even if my phone and by extension Google or Apple. You know, they knew I was at the grocery store, how would they know what I bought? And then and then how would Facebook find out about that? So Gave did some heavy lifting on this and and uh and in his research on Facebook, it turns out they're actually ahead of the curve in terms of the depth of data they collect on their users, as well

as in how they collect it. And the key to that is an advertising tool called Atlas that the company unveiled back in two thousand fourteen. So, according to the vice president of ad Tech of Facebook, the Atlas system can match the phone numbers and email addresses of Facebook users with the phone numbers and email addresses that consumers

provide in physical stores. All right, So when the stores ask for our email addresses or phone numbers that check out, it's so that they can then sell that information to Facebook. Is that that's the only reason they do this, well kind of, I mean, sometimes that info is used for that particular doors marketing purposes, you know, to email you their monthly newsletter or coupons or whatever. But they're all kinds of data collection companies that act as middlemen between

retail stores and online platforms. So, for instance, Facebook partners with a company called Data Logics to get all its store related info. Okay, so I got it. So I scanned my grocery store club card, or I gave the cashier my email address, and that information, along with the purchase connected to it, was then passed along the Data Logics, who then shared it with Facebook's advertising system, which you've

told us is called Atlas. That's right, exactly, So Atlas knew that the person with your email address purchased a new kind of soda that store, and from there, all I had to do was compare that address with the one you've linked to your Facebook account and presto, Like now Facebook knows just what kind of ad you're likely to respond to in your news feed. After all, you've

already bought that soda once. You know. It's weird because I feel like I'm being clever sometimes when I used this email address that I had never used for like real purposes or whatever, you know, to have to a cashier or to sign up for something account right product you account. But I'm using the same one for all of them, so they're still able to make this connection. It's probably the same one that's on my Facebook account, you know, So I don't know. I guess. I guess.

It is a pretty ingenious system from a marketing perspective, but you know, not something that's going to generate all this enthusiasm or goodwill among the public, at least I wouldn't think. Yeah. But here's the creepous part, and and that's that Facebook can do the same with ads that aren't shown on Facebook. I don't even know what that means.

So Atlas was made to offer ads on all kinds of different websites, not just Facebook, so the company can match real world purchases to any ads source from the Atlas network, no matter which side it appears on. That's not all, though. Facebook can also keep track of its users even when they're logged off of the platform. So anytime you load a web page that features a Facebook like or share button, the company gets in alert about who's looking and where, which is basically like every page

out there internet. It's something I had not thought about. I mean, so many of these tracking things they're not that surprising, but the the depth of it, I think is what's so surprising to me, and that all of this seems to happen under the radar. I mean, I do feel like most of us have this vague awareness of web cookies and targeted advertising and all those sorts of things, But I don't know, it's still a little unsettling when you start to look into the specifics and

just how deep it all goes totally. And it only gets more unnerving when you remember that Facebook doesn't exist in a vacuum. I mean, companies like Twitter and Google like, they've all taken notice and developed their own atlas like approaches, and uh disability to prove the effectiveness of an online ad gives them more bargaining power with potential clients, which means the sale and trade of our data that's only

going to increase from here. All right, Well, well, maybe our friends at Stuff they don't want you to know. I have some ideas for how to shut off the information valves that that are telling these companies so much about our lives. So so why don't we go ahead

and bring them into the studio. Okay, So in this episode we've been talking about all the things the Internet knows about us, and as we mentioned at the beginning of the show, our friends over at Stuff they don't want you to know, are actually talking about how to remove that information off of the web or or wherever it is sitting. And we're joined by two thirds of the crew, Ben Bulling and Matt Frederick. Welcome to Part

Time Genius. Yeah, thanks so much, you guys. We were really excited to explore this, and uh, it's fascinating, if a little bit unsettling, a little bit a lot of it. Thank you, even even hearing just tidbits from you guys as you're talking about putting the episode together. I typically don't consider myself a paranoid person, but it was hard not to go down that path. I think I'm okay. But if you could give us just a little bit of an overview of what you guys have been looking

into for the episode. Sure, we looked at a pretty basic question, or so we thought in the beginning, which was can you delete your online footprint, your your personal data. We we stumbled on the phrase the digital you, because there's there's so much information and so many leavings of all your time brushing through the internet, right Uh, And what we found was that there is no silver bullet, and uh, you must be very very careful with the types of terms that are used by various online entities,

whether they are a private or a public organization. Yeah, specifically terms of services. What been is talking about here, that little thing that you go, yeah, I accept that you scroll through. Maybe maybe it makes you scroll to the bottom of the page, just hit it and go okay. Has anyone ever read an entire terms of service? I mean that's the that's the whole thing, right, Yeah, I did. I did once when my cable was out if pager so you could kind of get through. It wasn't even

in my house, it was at someone else's house. If I had brought a book, I wouldn't have read the terms made for a much smarter digital you. So envious of your digital you. So one of my favorite things that I heard you guys talking about was about your A O L account and Matt, you are actually looking to go back and delete or cancel your ao L account.

I was like, what are we having this conversation? So let's go back to two thousand five six Old Matt Frederick is in a band, and every band at that time, what do they have? My Okay? Well, also my my email since n seven has been through a O L at this time, So for some reason, I just stuck with A O L because my parents had it and

I just kept going with it. Anyway, my my Space page was linked to my A o L account, so in order to like find my old password and reset it for my Space, had to get in my AOL email and then realized this is still here now the

one good thing and my ex girlfriend is still email. Well, the one good thing is that the A o L service, if you have a free account, they disable your account after I think a hundred eighty days of an activity that you you're not getting emails anymore, but it's still there and if anyone wanted to get in there, and my personal information is still inside the profile, which made me super nervous because I haven't looked at it since then. Anyway,

you try and delete the thing. To get rid of the A o L and the my Space my Space relatively easy. But the A O L one they're supposed to be a cancel your account little icon that you can click on in this one specific area. It wasn't there on the three browsers that I attempted to use, and maybe a little nervous, so I called up a o L with my phone? Can you believe that? Yeah, I got ahold of somebody. He officially deleted it, and uh, I can still log in right now, which makes me

super nervous. We'd like to make fun of you for that, but you're looking at two people with a Yahoo and uh stategy. We need to pull that up at some point to see if it still exists. That's pretty great and I'm glad to hear A O L is still up to their old tricks. I remember when you used to try to cancel after you get the free disc and sign up for however many hours, and they were just awful when you would call and say that you're ready to cancel. I remember, I remember like begging a woman.

I was like, I know you're reading off a script, just like please skip to like mine pages almost in tears, and it's very much like a it's it's oddly like a breakup. And in many cases, you know, and uh, the old adage is true, breaking up is hard to do, but in these cases it's um you run into some misleading and pernicious things. Right. It's it's a point that we've made it on our episodes before that your account, your personal information and your use of whatever you know,

page or whatever app. It's highly valuable to these companies. You were talking about it friends, though, One of the things you guys talked about was the fact that even if you don't have a social media profile, if you are in your friends phones or whatever, it may be your your phone number, your address, anything like that, it doesn't mean that you're not out there and that your digital you is still is still out there. So can you talk a little bit about yeah, you're digital. You

will still exist in perhaps somewhat of a less substantial form. So, for instance, if our co host and colleague Noel Brown, uh did not have a Facebook for some reason, he's actually the most likely of the three of us to

have a Facebook. You would agree with if Nol didn't have a Facebook, but Matt or I had the Facebook app on the phone, or one of you guys did have the app on your phone, then depending on your OS or the type of phone you're using, the app will automatically have access to all your contacts, which means every phone number, every email that you or your phone touch, Which means that if any of us knew Noel Brown, then they would already start building sort of a framework

for him. So they would say, Okay, we know there's this guy. His name is Noel Brown, his phone number is you know, five five five whatever, and uh, he also has this email address, and he knows uh Mango, and he knows Will and he knows Matt and he knows Ben and they all work together. Therefore he probably you know what I mean. And this this can come

from different sources. So even if you have somehow resisted social media entirely, if you have, if you have a phone number and or an email address and friends, yeah, then which are fairly easy requirements to meet, then yeah, the odds are overwhelmingly likely that there is some even rudimentary version of you online already without your consent before we let you go. I'm curious. We don't want to give any spoilers because it is a terrific episode and

I hope everyone will will check it out. But do you think you guys will will change your behaviors and anyway based on what you've learned and putting together this episode? Well, here's the thing, um, for a long time now we have changed our behavior is because we've been looking into this kind of stuff for a while. All we can do is encourage everybody else to do your best to just you know, don't give too much away for free.

And when you think, when you think about all of the apps that you use on a daily, weekly, monthly basis that you've got on whatever device you use, most of them ask you for your contacts. Most of them are trying to find out where you're going, what you're doing, Take pictures of yourself and all your friends and your

dog and your family. Just think about it. I did, uh, I I did assiduously go through and remove apps on my phone until you know, you realize at some level you're you become like the kid in the old Dutch fairy tale trying to plug up a damn one hole at a time. There are other avenues for this information exchange, and this means that, uh, for a lot of people and for myself included. When I was removing apps, it hit me and I thought, am I really making a

difference or am I just making myself feel better? You know what I mean? Alright, Well, I hope all of our listeners will hop on over to stuff they don't want you to know and check out this episode. Can you really erase your digital self. But Matt and Ben,

thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Thanks. You're listening to part Time Genius and we're talking about all the creepy things the Internet knows about us, all right, Mega, So before the break, we were talking about how the purchases we make in physical stores can inform advertisements we see later. So there's this blurring of the line between the digital world and I don't know, the real world, I guess, And and it kind of got me thinking, what are some of the other ways that are close

connection to the web affects our offline lives? Right? Because with smartphones, tablets and all the other easy to use recording devices we have now, the people of Live to day are pretty much guaranteed to be the most self documented generation of humans to date, which seems doubly true when you add to that the fact that enormous companies are now tracking and recording our interests and behaviors and

everything else for marketing purposes. And I mean, if widespread personal documentation has never really been done on this level before, you have to assume there will be all kinds of interesting social and psychological outcomes from it. You know, for better or for worse. Yeah, it's true, and not to keep harping on Facebook, but but one of the most interesting examples I found for how these digital platforms affect our lives has to do with the company's memories algorithms.

You know where it where it will pop up, You'll sign on and in your feed you'll see these memories from over the years of the past year or whatever it might have been. And so Facebook, you know, uses this algorithm to select these pictures and post from our past that it then hopes we're most likely to share it, which is how they determined that like my yearine review is best summed up by like when I was stuffing my face with rom in last January, last January, last week,

whenever it was, I think that's pretty much it. And then judging about off and I've seen you at that exact scene, I'm gonna say they're not too off base with them. But you know, but when you share these memories, Facebook selects force. What we're doing is we're helping the algorithm learn a little bit more about our preferences and and then it can play to these more in the future. And do we know at all how this digital memory creation might be affecting us. Well. I did come across

this really interesting articles in Scientific American. It was written by Julie Shaw, and it talks a little bit about the implications of making forms of social media nostalgia like this into a mainstream thing. And here's what she writes. She says, by having Facebook choose which events are presented as the most meaningful in our lives, it's potentially calling

the memories the algorithm ignores. Simultaneously, it's reinforcing the memories it has chosen, potentially making some memories seem more meaningful and memorable than they originally were. Both of these are problematic processes that can distort our personal reality. We may be helping Facebook learn to optimize its features, but the relationship is not symbiotic. Facebook's nostalgia features are messing with our memories, which is interesting. But I feel like the

photos we keep around have always done this. Like have you read Susan Sontag's on photography essay? I haven't, and I only vaguely remember it from college. But but she talked about how the photo you have on your desk from your family road trip is a picture of a family smiling and in a gorgeous place, right, But in capturing that, you're really only showing your most ideal photo.

But like you're forgetting the hours of bickering in the car and and telling your kids to stop fighting, and the boredom and all that arguing that happen, and you're just focusing on this one kind of manufactured pick where everyone's hugging and smiling, right. And it's true. I mean, like we sell select the photos that go up on social media to such a degree that we're already altering our memories, and and Facebook only seems to be putting

that into hyper drive. I don't know about your family, but all we do on our trips this hug and smile and pose together. We're always like one inch apart from each other. I don't know, Maybe you're right, Maybe maybe we're wearing a little too much about this when it comes to Facebook, and especially since it might give us a case of paranoia, which is definitely something else I wanted to talk about, because this is another common

condition that's connected to all this online data tracking. Well, I mean, it's hard not to be paranoid, right, Like this is almost universal feeling that our online movements are being tracked and recorded, and and because the specifics are so hazy, like it's it's just something that like you can't get out of your mind. And and so this is something that came up a lot during my research.

For example, I I I read this report about last year's Consumer Electronics Show and The Guardian, and it talked about how all these companies that make biometrics and tracking gadgets have lately found themselves dealing with an entirely new clientele and and so who would that be. Well, that's the thing. It's like the new customers are ordinary everyday people.

I mean, previously, the people who are most interested in fingerprint scanners for all their like electronic devices and the zinc line cases to shield their phones from like the electric fields, they were really paranoid. And and they're the people that Nellie Bulls of The Guardian refers to as the tinfoil hat Brigade. Right, Okay, I think I get it.

I mean these companies are mostly used by customers who have I don't know, dabbled with conspiracy theory or two, or perhaps they are a bit untrusting of large corporations that monitor them too. Closely. I mean, I think we all have an image of that type, I guess exactly. But now they're finding the general public is starting to feel those same kinds of concerns and and they're taking an interest in the products as well, and that totally

frees these suppliers out. In that Guardian article I mentioned, the author describes all these vendors that are pretty uneasy at the thought of their whereas being mainstream. So listen listen to how the author describes the scene. Quote the Personal Security Department at CS, once a quiet overlooked corner

of the flashy gadget show, was packed and frenzied. This year, it's popularity stirred and internal reckoning for the security gadget makers who are now central to the conversation about privacy and politics. Some longtime sellers are worried about their new buyers. Well, I don't know, and maybe for for good reason. Honestly, what does it say about society that the average Joe is now suddenly taking an interest in these privacy apps and the anti surveillance gadgets and all that kind of

nothing good. It actually makes me think of, you know, this new parenting technology that you see all over. I mean, this is a little bit different, but you've seen this stuff and and it's stuff that I'm kind of glad didn't exist that when we were, you know, when our kids were much younger. But stuff like the smart baby beds and infant heart rate readers that I have to put parents at ease, and you know, it keeps them over informed about every little detail of their little ones health.

I mean, have you heard of this new robot nanny tech? I think Mattel put it out earlier this year, and it's called Aristotle. Call it Aristot be so smart. It's basically this three version of Amazon's Alexa, but for kids. It's got all these high tech features like voice and image recognition and live streaming. But what it also does is it it watches and it listens and it learns

from these babies left under its care. And I don't know, I mean, I guess it could help parents keep track of stuff like diaper changes and feedings, but it could also file away all of that user data for Mattel's future commercial endeavors. Yeah, so that that's definitely something to

keep an eye on for sure. But I mean, I want to make sure we aren't coming across as like ludyte here because I mean, don't get me wrong, they're all kinds of you technologies that can make childcare and other aspects of parenting much much easier, And the same is true for like technologies of for other non kid things. But it's just that, like all this information can make things more complicated and and leave parents more worried than

maybe they should be. Yeah, I mean that's true. And having all the stat at their fingertips can make parents a little paranoid or even obsessed with the things about their child that really are no big deal. I mean, it's just that constant biometric reporting and and these status updates that can make even these minor details seem so much more grim and dire. Again, I'm so glad this stuff didn't exist because I would have totally been that

paranoid parent. Yeah. And then there's another angle on this whole wearable technology smart device trend that that I want to make sure we cover. So I wanted to talk about the Internet of things, and that's the phrase of tech developer named Kevin Ashton came up with to describe the interconnected network of physical devices and vehicles that electronically collect and share data. So I think of everything from

smartphones to smart refrigerators, robotic vacuums. I mean, the list goes on and on, and pretty soon it's going to be like every single product you know. And I feel like most of us started hearing about this, this Internet of things just a few years ago, but it's actually an older term at this point. Right. I was reading about some of this and it goes back to I think the late nineties or so, and this was before

the smart tech boom of recent years. Yeah, so it goes back to I think, and and it was definitely forward looking. And I remember my friend was telling me about it at the time and he said, m I T was developing this table cloth that was gonna be a smart table cloth. And I was like, how can you make a smart table cloth? And he said, basically like if you're putting a drink down, like a glass of wine at a wrong angle, it'll account for that

and catch the glass. And he was also talking about like umbrellas that would tell you it's about to rain and remind you to take him with you. And and this sound crazy, but but like flash forward twenty years and according to the analysts, said Gartner, of the world population is now online and around eight point four billion web connected items are in use. Wow, that's a lot of devices are especially when you consider that both of those numbers they're only going to rise as time goes on.

You know, there's this growing catalog of the Internet of things, and you think about how widespread they are, from cars to household appliances or these health monitoring devices we were talking about security sensors and all of these fitness trackers that everybody seems to be using. And it's not just for them. It's like their dogs and their cats and their cows and their babies and all of these things.

So it's just it's everywhere, and it's led to this level of connectedness that the world has never seen before. And so with that comes this unique brand of paranoia.

That's right. So the Pew Research Center publishing report earlier this year that highlighted the widespread concerns people have about cyber text and account hacking and privacy violations related to all these smart things, and you know, it's interesting, it's it's you know, the very connectedness of the IoT is what makes it seem like a liability, and it is

a liability. Like I was watching this thing on Wired and and they showed how like hackers can hack into a car on the highway and just slow it down to twelve miles per hour. And in fact, I have this one friend who won't buy cars from like after a certain point in not late eighties or something, because

he has that same fear. But so, why do you think so many of us buy into this idea of connecting and monitoring all these different things when you know, we do realize that they could be potentially dangerous or somehow asking for trouble if we do so. So, I

don't know, why do we embrace this so wholeheartedly. Well, it's it's for the same reason most of us don't bother changing our privacy settings on Google or even adjusting the ad preferences on our Facebook accounts, even though we're vaguely aware that they're siphening our personal info for their own game. And that reason is what convenience Okay, I mean, it's it's so much easier to accept that our cool tech comes with like a few unsightly strings attached and

and just move on from there. And I don't know, I mean, I guess that makes sense. I mean, think about how hard it would be for people to disconnect from all these platforms and devices that have become a bigger and bigger part of our lives. I mean, I would think some people would probably trade any amount of privacy just to hold onto that connection. Definitely. And that same Pew report I mentioned earlier, like it basically says

the same thing. They talked over experts and we're able to conclude from their responses that the desire for convenience trump's concerns about safety in most people's minds. And and here's a quote from Lee Rainey, the co author and director of pew's Internet Technology and Science Research Center, The IoT will bring advantages that are useful, that people's desire for convenience will usually prevail over their concerns about risk, and these factors will make it difficult, if not impossible,

for people to opt out of a highly connected life. Wow, alright, well, I mean, I know the Internet of Things is supposed to be this hopeful concept and it points to this, I know, this more conclusive or connected society. But that's a lot to think about it. It's it's pretty crazy, but I don't want to go too far down a paranoia path, because I do have to say that that.

On a funnier note, just looking around it was great stumbling into some of these ridiculous attempts to cash in on this growing IoT market, and I jotted down a few of these, so I kind of want to take a few minutes to share some of the more absurd examples of these so called smart devices. What do you say we do? Yeah? I love that idea, so I'm gonna sorry. A funny one I found is called the roll Scout, but you can go ahead and think of

it as the Internet of toilet paper. We needed an Internet of toilet Basically, it's a toilet paper holder that informs you via text, email or app notification when the role is empty, and each holder costs about sixty I know, but you know. According to the creators, roll Scout is quote especially useful for small businesses such as cafes and restaurants that have public restrooms and are focused on providing

the best customer experience possible. I have to admit I was going to say that was one of the dumbest things I'd heard of, but actually, for a restaurant or a hotel or something like that. I kind of get it. I also kind of want to buy one of these just because it's so stupid, But sixty bucks, I think I'm gonna have to pass on that. All right, Well, here's one of a similar vein of things that we put into this much easier to just check yourself category.

And it's it's a product from Thermos and it's called the Connected Hydration Bottle and it it basically keeps track of how much water you drink and sends your current tally to either your fitbit app or your thermoss own water tracking app. And it costs seven thousand dollars. Actually didn't see how much it costs, but it just still

seemed unnecessary. So I found one called the Eggminder, and it's a trade that fits inside your refrigerator and keeps track with the quantity and freshness of up to fourteen and your favorite eggs. I don't try putting a fifteenth in there. So this is it's kind of like the Internet of egg trays. What is it monitoring? Is it monitoring like for cracks and their shells or something like

that or what? No, in fact, on structural integrity is a little out of their scope, but it will send a wireless signal to your phone to keep your breast. An important develop have beens going on in your egg trays, so things like how many eggs it currently contains and whether any of them are at risk of spoiling. This seems riveting. I mean, I know, we cover a lot of topics on here that seems sort of silly at first glance, and then then they kind of make more

sense once you look into them a bit more. And I have to admit the toilet paper thing was that for me. But I don't know. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the egg minder is not one of those things. Yeah, it's probably the safe bad, but you know, the worthiness of other IoT products and even data tracking as a whole is still something that's up for debate, and chances are we'll be hearing a lot more about both their time saving advantages

and and their privacy infringing drawbacks in the years ahead. Yeah, there's this. There's this quote from a writer and sociology professor named Neil Gross, and it kind of seems fitting for this discussion. I jotted it down here and it goes. It goes like this. It says, um, in the next century, planet Earth will done on electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations.

This is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices, thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors e k g s, electro and cephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies, even our dreams. Wow. So that that's definitely like smart and poetic way to think about the future. But um,

you know what else is smart and poetic? The part time genius fact off. That's right, let's do I can kick us off here, all right. Here's something to add to the already immense list of creepy things Facebook knows about you. And that's whether or not your relationship will last. In a two thousand fourteen study of Facebook data, scientists concluded that, based on activities and status updates, the company can make scarily accurate predictions about whether a couple will

sink or swim. According to his research, being Facebook official really helps your chances. I wanted to congratulate you and Lizzie being Facebook official, but about half of all Facebook relationships that has survived three months are likely to survive four years or longer. Well, speaking of gigantic companies that know way too much information about us, do you know that target can tell if the female customer is pregnant

occasionally even before she knows herself that. I know. So. Back in two thousand two of the statistician named Andrew Pole was hired to help the chain develop a pregnancy prediction model to better advertised as soon to be mothers. And as soon as the model was implemented, Targets Mom and Baby sales have They've skyrocketed, and they've helped to grow Targets revenue by thirteen billion dollars in the same period. God,

that's crazy. All right, Well, how about I Know Where Your Cat Lives dot com a site that helps make the Internet a little more transparent. So using invisible geographic location data embedded in the cat photos we upload to social media or other people do I've never uploaded the cat photos social media. The site presents a sampling of over one million public pictures of cats align with their

real locations on a world map. That sounds terrifying tonight. So, we we've been talking so much about what the Internet knows about us that I thought it'd be smart to turn the tables and mentioned a few cool things we know about the Internet. Yeah. So, so, for for starters, all the moving information contained on the Internet weighs about

as much as a single strawberry. That's a going to a physicist named Russell Sites who determined that the billions of data and motion, like all those moving electrons on the Internet, they only add up to roughly fifty grams or two ounces. And and as for the Internet's data at rest, the five million terrobytes or so of static information and storage like that adds up to even less mass than a grain of sand. Wow. That is incredible,

all right. Well, for for anyone who wants an eerie illustration of web tracking at work, check out the experimental website known as click The Once they are a stream of detailed information, will call out all the info your browser is leaking online, everything from the number of core processors in your computer to where your cursor is currently hovering on the page. If you want to try it out for yourself, go to click click click dot click.

Pretty easy to remember. So here's another dirt we've got on the Internet. Fact, according to an article and news scientists, some researchers now estimate it takes us stunning a hundred fifty two billion kill a lott hours per year simply to power the data centers that allow the Internet to function. So if you were to add that power to the energy used by all the computers and other devices linked to the Net, the total would account for as much as two percent of all the CEO two emissions caused

by humans. And just to give that a little perspective, that two percent will put the Internet on the same level as the entire aviation industry. That's a lot, Okay, Well that I do have to say that large carbon footprint is definitely something we can use to incriminate the Internet should it ever come to this. We'll see if

that happens. But but on that basis alone, I think you get to take home today's title and that's it for today's show, But be sure to hop on over to stuff they don't want you to know to check out their episode on how people are attempting to remove their identity from the Internet. Thanks again to Noel, Ben and Matt for joining us, and thanks so much to all of you for listening. Everybody, Thanks again for listening.

Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. CHRISTA McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Sadam and Eve Jeff Cook gets the

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