Stupid Sexy Privacy

This week on Stupid Sexy Privacy: Killer Bosses. 120,000 workers die each year in the United States because of bad workplace management. With the popularity of Remote Work, "Bossware" lets your boss spy on you while you're at home and drive you crazy without you having to go to the office.

Sound crazy? Talk to the Truck Drivers. Their Hell is our Future. If you work remotely, this episode is for you.

This Week's Privacy Tip

Working from home can be a great opportunity, but you need to take steps to protect both yourself and your employer from Ransomware and other shady attacks. In addition to following the steps explained in previous episodes of the show — You've listened to the other episodes, right? — We recommend keeping your hardware for work entirely separated from your hardware for life, running a VPN, and regularly running software updates. As far as the bigger issue goes with your boss spying on you at home, the United States doesn't have clear regulations (at this time) to stop them. But. You CAN (and should) talk to your Human Resources Director about what the company policy is about Remote Work, what data they're going to see and collect, and who that data gets shared with.

Do you really trust Microsoft to be a good protector of your data? '90s Kids know better.

Our Guest Is ...

Dr. Karen Levy, associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University and author of the new book, "Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance."*

We recommend listening to our friends at Smashing Security for more news and tips concerning how to maintain your privacy and security after this miniseries concludes. 

*You don’t need to use the affiliate links above. They don’t cost you anything extra. But. If you do use these links, it’ll kick a couple of dollars our way to help support this project.

**BJ's first book on privacy, "The End of Privacy" is badly dated in a few sections; however, it's still very funny and the rest of the book is still (sadly) current. We've included most of the book, for free, in this podcast miniseries. If you'd like to buy the unabridged version, you can do so here.

BJ Mendelson and Amanda King are the authors of the upcoming book, "How to Protect Yourself From Fascists and Weirdos." They are designing an online video-based course around the topics discussed in the book and on this show. So, if you want more information on how to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos, complete with step-by-step details and tutorials, we recommend reserving a seat for the course.

All you need to do is email us at BJMendelson@Duck.com with "Privacy Course" in the subject line.

We'll make sure to let you know when this on-demand course becomes available for purchase.

P.S. '90s kids also had to call collect on a payphone in order to get picked up from school. What a scam.

Photo Courtesy of Andrea Piacquadio