TechStuff Goes Back To School

Danielle Dixon Thayer. Dnell's being very kind to join the show and talk about concepts like privacy and security, particularly for students who are back in school, and the conversations that parents may want to have with students in order to try and make sure that you know, people are are following best practices when it comes to our Internet behaviors and protecting ourselves and just being good net citizens.

And so I did an interview with Dnnell and you're going to hear that coming up right now with me today. I am so thrilled to have her on the show. I have Dnill Dixon Thayer, the chief legal and business officer over at Mozilla. Danelle, thank you for joining the show. Thank you for having me. Wonderful to be here, Jonathan, wonderful. I have a couple of questions for you as we before we really get into the meat of this. Now, you work with Mozilla for those listeners out there who

may not be familiar with Mozilla. First of all, shame on them because they haven't listened to all of my episodes. I've definitely talked about them. Could you explain what Mozilla does? Yes? Great, thank you for giving me that opportunity. So at Mozilla, we have the Firefox Browser, which is our flagship product that we help users to um figure out their online life and how they want to be online and to use the browser to get there, focusing on privacy and

security and choice and transparency. Mozilla very generally is also about ensuring that the the open Web is sustained and continues to grow. And we're a mission driven organization. We're a nonprofit. We're focused on user centric design, whether that be with respect to our products or the web itself and with respect to education. So we really were unique in terms of how we are and we're in tech.

Obviously we have a product in the technology space, but we're unique in terms of our independence and how we focus on broader issues that don't just impact us. They

impact the world and the web and users. And when I think of Mozilla, this is one of those those cases where I'm really thrilled to have a chance to speak with someone who works with the organization, because I often think Mozilla is an organization that that tries very hard to fulfill what a lot of the the people who worked on our BA net and the early Internet and the Web all had in mind when they were building out this amazing tool, this this piece of technology

that dwarfs anything else that humans have managed to make so far. And a lot of them have this sort of idealistic kind of vision of what how we were supposed to use the Internet, And I feel like Mozilla is really about, well, how can we make that a reality and not just leave it to chance. Uh. Hopefully I'm not being too putting too many words in your mouth in that case, but that's always been sort of the implication I have I have felt from the efforts

from Mozilla. Well, thank you for that. I think that's exactly right. I think it's it's sometimes hard because we're viewed as a company that's the text space, which we love, uh, and we have, you know, three million plus users, and so that's really crucial for us to be able to have that impact globally that we want, and it's not just impact through our product. You're absolutely right that we focus on the Internet and standardization and security, but again

not related just to our browser. We use our browser to help us walk the walk, if you will. UM, we do a lot of talking the talk and trying to get the Internet to be the focus. We look at this the Internet as this amazing and largest globe public asset that we all need to continue to grow. And we have the luxury of having a shareholder that is the Mozilla Foundation, So we have were beholden to that foundation and the mission that that foundation set up.

And so I view us as incredibly unique in the space, not just because of our structure, but because of the focus that every single one of our employees as well as our contributors and our community really want is this. Everybody comes to us for different reasons, but the big picture goal of sustaining this global asset is the most

important thing to all of us. Excellent and and today we're really going to focus on something that I know is of great concern to a lot of my listeners out there, whether you are a student, whether your parents of a student. We're going to talk about the issues around privacy, around security, around protecting yourself or in the case of a parent, making sure that your student is well informed to protect him or herself a against the pitfalls that we could encounter. And things are so different

from when I went to school. I'm old enough not to go into the man when I was your age, But I'm old enough that when I was going to school, the Internet was not publicly accessible. It was something that some research facilities were using, and really in the early days it was our banet. Uh. Some research facilities and some government facilities, some universities, they had access to this kind of network of networks, but the general public did not.

The closest I got was dialing into a bulletin board system on a dial up modem, and that gave me a hint of what the Internet could potentially be, like the tiniest of hints. It wasn't until I was in college when the Internet became sort of this publicly accessible entity that I really dove in. And back in those days it was the wild West. No one was really sure what the implications of this tool we're going to be. Everyone set was going to change the world, but no

one was really sure how that was going to happen. Uh, And there was a limit to the amount of stuff you could do on the Internet things that you could access. Since then, it has changed so dramatically it is a completely different world. I wouldn't have a job if the Internet didn't exist the way it does now. It's a robust, thriving,

evolving infrastructure. And that last word, evolving, I think is perhaps the most important one, because even for the younger parents out there who grew up using the Internet, things change so quickly that it requires kind of a constant

updates for you to understand what the implications are. And I think a lot of people just in general are either unaware or they're only semi aware of issues like privacy, like how hard it can be to protect your privacy if you aren't being cognizant of the various dangers that are out there. In fact, let's talk about that. That is a huge challenge maintaining at least some level of privacy just because of the way that the various things

work with the Internet, including the Web. That would be obviously, I would argue, probably the most uh frequent interface with the Web that people are familiar with, maybe email, or maybe some apps for smartphones, but the Web, I think still is is the king of that and it's tough, right, it is. It is a challenge to use the web in a way where you are also maintaining a relative sense of privacy because you have to be aware of how the web works and what's going on in the background.

Can you speak a little bit to that. Yeah, so, just I think it's really interesting in terms of just to hear your story about your your engagement with the internet, and then of course the web today and the fact that you said you wouldn't have a job. Many of us wouldn't have a job if the web didn't exist in terms of the way it does today and if

the Internet was were built. Uh. And I think that many folks don't understand even in the offline world, the connection we used to call it brick and mortar back in the early days, the connection between the brick and mortar world and uh, the Internet and the web today is so so um so close. And so the way that the Web has opened up just the kinds of jobs and the types of jobs that are out there is so crucial and important for us to remember. And I like to think about the fact that and this

is I don't know the numbers. I'm sitting here and I wish I did. But the Web is nothing more than maybe ten thousand days old, and if you think about it from that standpoint, it's really in its infancy. And so you said wild wild West, and I say, it's still kind of is the wild wild West, and it's so subject to grooming and to protecting and to figuring out how to get there. Privacy is one of the things that I think is um so crucial to

some folks. And depending on where you sit, I personally and not someone who hyper focuses on my own privacy. I understand and how the internet works. I understand how the web connects to that. I understand that there's a lot of use of my data. So and I have a basic knowledge and maybe more than basic of digital literacy, so I get it. Um So for me, I am willing to do that value exchange and to allow my data to be used to be able to provide me

services that I think are very interesting and important. When it comes to my kids, though, I'm much more protective about that data and how that data flows, and so I do take a more active role when it comes to them. And you're right, it is hard. It shouldn't

be quite as hard as it is. Uh, and this is one of the things that we're trying to do Mozilla from the standpoint of focusing on education, not just educating users by the way, which I think is crucial for us to continue to try to do just as technology companies, even though it's hard because some users I

don't want to take the time. The web is a very simple thing to be able to utilize, and so they don't want to necessarily take the time to do that, which is fine and they're right, um, but what we need to do as technology companies is make it easier, more transparent in context for users to understand what's happening with their data so that they're not confused when they subsequently get a notice excuse me, or an ad um or something that they make them you know, kind of

raise our eyebrows and say, well, why am I getting this when I looked at this yesterday and I'm on a completely different website today. These are the kinds of things that we need to figure out how to do in a very innovative and aggressive way to provide in context notifications to to folks about what's happening. There obviously are really good tools out there you know, if you

want to, for example, just use take Firefox. There's private browsing that the folks can use to be able to really protect the flow of their data to third parties and to really know what's happening with that. There's a lot of other add ons that you can attach to our Fox and figure out how you you know, whether it's you're trying to block certain types of content or you really are focused on understanding who's collecting your data,

you can do that better. So there are lots of tools available, but sometimes users feel inundated by tools um and not and not really understanding how to utilize them. And so we as technology companies need to really focus on our ability to provide that in context help for users so that they don't have to spend the time doing that if they don't choose to. So it's hard, it should be easier. I think we're working towards a world where it's going to have to be easier because

users are demanding that. And so I hope that the web we see in the years to come is a more transparent web that offers users the choice and the opportunity to be able to educate themselves and to figure out how they want to approach things. Now, you you touched on so many things that I feel exactly the

same way, very strongly about uh. I As as someone who has a somewhat public facing profile, I came to the conclusion that uh that you know, I'm alright trading off some of this sense of privacy in order to receive not just the benefits that that people would have when browsing the web, you know, getting things like those contextual ads, the ads that are replying to things like they know about my browsers search. I mean, the easy

example we give tends to be Amazon. If you're on Amazon and it just keeps track of what you've been shopping for, so it starts giving you suggestions based upon what other shoppers have purchased. But that, of course is just a tiny little example of something that stretches far beyond just Amazon and across multiple pages, not just a single one. If you've ever browsed a website and you thought this is really weird because I'm looking at ads

for other stuff that I watch. But I don't know why these two companies would have any association with each other. It's because of stuff that's going on in the background, and when you're aware of it, and if you are, if you are comfortable with it, it's not such a

big deal. But another thing you kind of touched on is with privacy being being kind of challenging it it is super challenging in an era where more companies are receiving more information about us that's not directly tied to who we are as human beings, but it's tied to our behaviors, and those behaviors become very indicative of specific types of individuals. And I have often argued that for some companies, at least what your name is isn't really important.

They don't care. But the fact that you're you, you represent a collection of behaviors that they can market to, means that the information surrounding you is incredibly valuable. And the flip side of this is it does not take too many points of data for someone who is determined to figure out the identity of a person to actually

do that. We've seen studies where just with maybe four or five points of data, you could identify eight percent of the people within a specific zip code, and that can be a real eye opener to people who aren't aware that it doesn't take much for for you to have your privacy become a thing of the past, and you weren't weren't even aware of it. You you were unconscious of the whole thing. So clearly, for for parents who are concerned about their their kids who are going

into school, there are a lot of different issues. What are some of the solutions apart from the plugins, like what what are things? Were some conversations that should be happening between parents and students just to make sure that there's kind of a common understanding of what to expect and and sort of kind of the best practices of responsible web citizenship. So that's a great question and one that I have to admit that I asked myself often.

I have three boys. I have a fifteen year old, a twelve year old U thirteen actually can just turned thirteen, and a seven year old, and I am constantly dealing with the issue of how they can get access to this this asset that I think is so amazing, but also understand it so that they understand how they're engaging

with it. And you know, part of it for me is coming from a lot of what I've learned here working with Mozilla and just being a part of this awesome community is so much of it stems from trust, and it's the trust about trusting the web and us being that pillar of you know, making sure that we're doing right by our users so that the users can trust us. I frankly think that that has to be the same way that you try to get your children to engage with the web and frankly with you, um.

And what I mean by that is so much of what kids can do on the web you can't stop them from doing because they're not only going to have access to the computer at your home, they're going to have access at school, They're going to have access to their friends, and also, frankly, most of them have phones

that have access um to the web. And so what I've tried to do with respect to to my kids, which I can't say is that is the right way, but I'm going to say it's the right way for us, is to establish that relationship of trust that they understand that I'm going to try to help them to navigate this world that I mostly understand in terms of the Web in a way that I think is safe for them,

because it's actually just about giving them knowledge. UM so not my kids aren't really big into social media, but my thirteen year old really really wanted to have um an account, a Snapchat account, which I think it's a really interesting product, and I knew of the service myself.

But the way that I did this with them with him when he was really focused on it is I said, Okay, I want you to go and read the top five articles about things that have happened with respect to Snapchat for UM for kids in terms of how they've used it and what are the you know, what kinds of contents have gotten people into trouble. And then I also want you to pull down the privacy policy. I want you to print it out, and I want us to

talk about what these things mean. And so I engaged with him on that level of trying to create that basic web literacy and that understanding about sharing information publicly, sometimes in a public profile, or even privately amongst your social circle, so that you could understand what happens later, What happens if you receive a photo that's technically that maybe has you know, too much skin in it and

could actually be something that violates laws in certain regions. UM, what happens, What happens if you say that photo and you have it on your on your phone. These are things that kids don't think about. And this is what the web offers to us, good and bad, right, And I think so much of it is trying to establish that relationship of having them understand basic information about the web and also giving them the tools to be able

to figure this stuff out for them later. Uh. And so that's how I've engaged with them in terms of this technology debate, and it's been a really good discussion about it. You know, we took what we learned in the offline world about advertising and we put it in the online world in the very early days without a lot of knowledge or or understanding about where the web was going to go. And and now we are to a place where lots of companies have lots of information

about you that you may not know. And certainly my children had no insight or visibility into that. And it's not like a super easy system to understand. And so that's been one of the things that I've also tried to explain to them about how the web works and

the web economy. You know, it's really important to understand that in order for folks like you and others to be able to get content out on the web that's incredibly valuable, we need to be able to, you know, understand that we might be giving a little bit of

ourselves to be able to do that. And that means that it could mean that you're just the fact that you're looking at advertising, or the fact that you know they're getting day to about your browser number too and what that browser number has looked at in various different forms.

And so it's not that different from the offline world of years ago, when I lived in a very small town and I would go to the local store and I would buy something, and then they would be able to call my mom and tell my mom that, you know, Danelle came here and she purchased two lollipops, and I just want you to know that's what she's doing on her way home from school. That actually happened in my small town. And so it's not that different. It's just

on a more massive scale. So that's how I try to have that conversation with them and to give them the tools to understand the system a little bit better. And I think I think it's also important to remember especially for people in my generation. So you know, I grew up before the Internet was really accessible, so it

wasn't an issue for kids. We didn't have to that wasn't something that the parents need to be concerned about because it was a non factor, And it wasn't until after I was in college when I started getting access to this. There. I think there was a bit of an idea around people about my generation, maybe a little bit younger than I was, that the folks who grow up using the tools because they've existed ever since the kid was born, will somehow have a magical affinity and

understand all the ins and outs. Now, the truth of the matter is that a lot of kids can pick up how to use the Internet pretty effectively, maybe in a very narrow way. Actually turns out that you you do need to give guidance to children in order for them to understand really how to use the internet in

in uh productive ways. We've seen so many studies that showed kids who had had access to the internet uh since they were born still aren't the best at doing an Internet search, for example, And that's just one simple example of that. So I think it's very important for people to remember that just because something has been around for a person's entire life does not magically mean that person has a deep understanding of how it works and

the implications of the way it works. So don't take it for granted that someone like even if they seem to be wizards on the web, if you feel like they have completely outpaced you, it does not necessarily mean that they have that understanding, and it is really valuable.

I agree. I think trust is incredibly important. I say that as someone who does not have children, so this is a bit of me just kind of armchair parenting, which I apologize for to all the actual parents out there, but I say that, you know, trust is a big issue, and also just the idea of instilling the value of compassion uh in kids as well, because one of the issues that has been a problem throughout history but has been exacerbated in the age of the Internet obviously, is

the problem of bullying, especially since I think there's certain aspects to internet culture that distant bully from the effects of the bullies actions on a person, and in that so there's some desensitizing going on, there's some there's some distancing, and the actual effects can be devastating. So when it comes to the concepts of bullying and protecting yourself against bullies or making certain that you yourself don't engage in those behaviors, do you have any words of advice on

that subject? Well, yeah, I think that. And that's it's so funny when you think about um back in the day when instant message was new and you found yourself saying things an instant message that you wouldn't necessarily say on a phone call. It's very similar. Right. We suffer from it too as adults, so it's not the same.

It's not any different from children. So I feel like one of the things that I think is crucial, and I've tried to really really instill this in my boys, is the fact that the web and what you put out there remains out there. And and I use examples of and I have these conversations with them, and I want to say, like at the outset of this that this stuff is hard because it's hard to keep up

with the technology. So you kind of have to go to principles because I have to say that I don't know every single service that's out there, and I learned about them every day from you know, just being in the tech sector. But I also can't go deep on them. But my kids have a different sense because their friends are the ones who are talking about these different things. And so I don't want to scare parents into thinking that they need to know all of the technology that exists.

I think starting at that base level principle of okay, the web is different than you know. You can write something down on a piece of paper, and when I was a kid, you wrote that note to one friend, and that note might have circulated around to other friends, but there's a limit to the number of people that it would get to because there's only so many people that are in your social circle. And eventually you can

throw that note away. But that's not what happens on the internet and on the web, And I think that's a really important thing to from a principal standpoint, to tell your children. And I use the idea of going in for a job interview, and one of the things that I do is I and when when folks are going to come an interview for positions on my team, is I do a web search and I see, like what's out there about them? And you know, there's sometimes good and bad and they're sometimes ugly, and you have

to understand that that all exists out there. It's about there out there, about all of us, and it's what we put out is it remains. And so I like my kids to understand that. And I've used, you know, examples like that, so they get that part of it. The other thing that I've done and this isn't gonna last forever, and so I understand this too. But about the bullying thing with my kids is I mostly for them. They only one of them is using social media and

the others. Um my little one doesn't do any of this, but my my older two they do a lot of texting. And so when you take photos of friends that are funny or whatever, I make sure that part of the role of trust that we have about their use of technology is they aren't allowed to share that photo with anyone other than the friend that they took the picture of. Um. It's one of the things that we've just established as this is a core component of your use of this technology.

And it's mostly it protects my children as much as it protects their friends. And it's part of that respect and that trust of the technology and respect of the social circles that you're in. And again, I recognize that there's going to be a limit to that. We have a policy in our home that the phones get checked in at night in my room, and um, the kids know that there could be you know, there are many times when I'm going to take a look at what they've done. I'm not going to talk to them about

it unless it's problematic. I'm going to stay out of their social stuff, and as much as you know they want me to, I'm not going to share it with their the parents of their friends or anything like that. But if I see something I don't like, I'm going to have a conversation with them. It's only had to happen once in the time that my kids have had their their devices. But I think establishing those principles of

hurting others actually comes back to harm you. It's very simple, uh, And and that's how you can approach all your technology discussions so that you don't need to know everything about technology. What you need to do is just establish the base level pieces of those The web exists forever, and what you put out their stays, and that you need to be respectful and have trust and if you want to be trusted and respected. You need to have that same

thing with respect to your friends. It's a great point you make about how it's important to to not have to worry about knowing everything about everything. I mean, it is my job to research and communicate, and there's just no way I could stay up to date on every single thing. That's never going to happen. We live in a world where more than a hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every single minute. That's one example

of how quickly, uh, this this world evolves. And and that's that's similar to all the different apps and services and products that are coming out all the time, all of which are interacting using the internet in various ways. Uh. We're at the dawn of the Internet of Things, which is also poised to change our world in ways that

we can't completely anticipate right now. It would be crazy to tell any any parent, Hey, you need to uh you need to take courses in everything that's on the internet right now so that you're aware that it's an

unrealistic expectation on any person. So I agree entirely the approaching this from a principal standpoint, where you build that foundation of values and behaviors is far more uh far more rewarding, far more effective than trying to go the technical route of Okay, well, this set of services, you can use these because of the various controls that I know are in place here, and these you can't use, and these others I have to research. But for our

we can talk about them. That's that's gonna be a a cascade effect for the rest of your life if you try to go down that road. So don't do that. Uh So what else can you tell me about Mozilla? You know? And they're there. They're various projects two that are in place or are under development to help people, parents, students, people in general, even companies go forward in a responsible

way and tackle some of these problems. Because, like we've said, you know, these are it's it's not just a simple solution of saying to a person, hey, if you do these five things, you're gonna be safe forever. It's actually, uh an approach that has lots of different avenues to it, where we have to address lots of issues with lots

of different players in the space. Right. That's awesome question, and I think part of it from our standpoint is so we have if you go to our website learning dot Mozilla dot org, we have teaching kids there if you go to the I think teaching activities section there, So we have teaching kids for just general web literacy, understanding how the web works, UM, getting a sense for what what kinds of things you're going to encounter. There. We also have things that we create in my policy group.

They're called smart ons UM, so that you can have smart on privacy or smart on encryption, those kinds of things. I find that the more that we get into I actually just had, as a little bit of a side note, I had a couple of months ago a bunch of middle school kids here that I was introducing to web technology, and I asked them about encryption, and I said, what do you guys think about it? What do you know

about it? And they said that they thought it was a bad thing because they see that in James Bond movies all the time, and so it must be something that's not good because the bad guys are using it. So it was really interesting to be able to to use these tools that we've created that are pretty they're good learning tools, are kind of fun. We try to make them so that UM you can actually, you know, look at them and get that kind of thing done in a really short period of time and get just

base level knowledge. I encourage everyone to do that because it doesn't take much time and it just gives you some sense of the areas of strength that you could build with respective technology. So from a user standpoint, from a parent standpoint, from just someone who wants to generally understand the Web, I think that's a great place to start.

We're not the only ones who do this. So obviously web searches are going to pull up other interesting tools out there that you can use to to learn more about it, and I encourage that too from our standpoint. The other thing that we try to do is help to create rules of the road, if you will, for startups, so that startups have some good kind of indications of things that they can do to really start think about thinking about early on in their um in the career

of their their company. And the data privacy principles are things we have developed. We've developed this idea of like, these are practices that you can implement to be able

to you know, really be transparent. We start kind of at the core, collect only what you need in the beginning, you can always expand that, keep it really transparent and clear for your users about what you're doing, anonymize as much data as you can quickly so that you're actually not creating a liability for yourself and you're still assuming that trust with your users. We like to think of trust as being the most important currency on the web. If we don't have trust with our users, we won't

have a user base. And trust is something that you can gain pretty easily, but loose, I mean, it takes a long time to gain, but you can lose it in a second. UM As a company, So these are ideas and and things we try to push out there to the startup community UM. And then of course we actually try to do these things, like I said, walk the walk in our own products. UM. So we try to demonstrate how you can create that transparency and choice for users in our own products, whether that be in

Firefox or our other adjacent products that we have. So I encourage everyone to start it just the basics and to and to go from there, whether you're actually in technology and a startup or whether you're just a user of those tools. Well, thank you Dennell so much for joining the show and talking to us about these subjects. It's a it's a series of topics that I have touched on several times in the past, and I think that it's one of those conversations that you can't just

have the one time and then let it go. You do have to bring this up occasionally, because, as we've said, the Internet is constantly evolving. Our role within it changes, the way our behaviors affected changes. We have to be

aware of this sort of stuff. And I really appreciate organizations like Mozilla that are trying very hard to to decrease the burden of responsibility on the individual user, because as a tool gets really easy to use, it gets harder and harder to convince someone, hey, you need to put in a little extra work to make sure that you're using this in a way that's not going to

impact you in a negative way down the line. Um, when that convenience gets to a certain level, it's it's it's a difficult sell to tell someone, hey, just you need to change these few settings, or you need to think about this before you start browsing, or whatever it may be. That it's it's tough. Um, you know, it's it's very easy to kind of shut your mind off and not worry about the consequences that can happen and instead just concentrate on the reward you get using these

various tools. Uh, and so seeing the work that's being done in order to try and address that in a way that places less of a responsibility on the individual user, not not saying that they're not accountable, but rather saying, let's find a way to improve the experience for everybody. Uh. It's something I greatly appreciate because frankly, it means that further down the road, I won't have to do as

many podcasts where I chastise people for bad web behavior. Well, I'm really appreciative of the fact that you actually do talk about this over and over. That's a really important thing. It's a lot like driving. I'm actually my oldest son is learning how to drive, and so I think as drivers we sort of forget that there are rules that we learned at one point that we need to relearn and re educate ourselves on as we're teaching our children

this stuff. So it's a lot like driving, and the fact that you know there there are hazards around us all the time, and we need to pay attention to them. So it's a nice reminder and I think it's great, and we're going to continue doing what we're doing, and I hope you continue doing what you're doing, and it's just going to make the web a better place for

all of us. I want to thank Danelle again. I know I just thank her in the interview, but I wish to thank her again for taking time to come on the show and have a conversation about these topics. You have heard me say on previous episodes of Tech Stuff that these ideas are very important and that we should make sure that we do have these conversations and remind ourselves of you know, what's actually out there and

what are we comfortable with? What level of revealing of of our privacy are we comfortable doing when we go out there and interact on the web. Some of us have very different thresholds than others. And while I might be fairly cavalier because I have come to that conclusion, at least I'm doing so from an educated standpoint, and I think that's important for all of us. Thank you, guys for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it.

If you have any suggestions for future topics, or anyone you think I should interview on the show, or perhaps a guest host you would like for me to have on the show or have come back to the show. Let me know. Send me a message. My email is text stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook for Twitter, the handle at both of those is text stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon from are on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. M