Your Smart TV Is Spying On You—And It's Not Even Sorry

Block Part's Tracy Chou returns to talk with BJ Mendelson about the fight against privacy nihilism and how to get the most out of Block Party. Rosie Trans covers the creepy world of Smart TVs.

Your Smart TV Is Spying On You—And It's Not Even Sorry
Photo by Santiago Avila Caro / Unsplash

Hey.

Welcome to another edition of our educational — and hopefully funny — podcast miniseries about how to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos.

It's called Stupid Sexy Privacy, and it's available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and where all good podcasts can be found. You can also listen to today's episode right here:

If you are a subscriber to StupidSexyPrivacy.com — it costs you nothing to sign-up! — you will be able to access the full transcript for today's episode. That can be found below the show notes listed below.

We do this to keep bots and other AI related data scrapers from stealing our content.

This week, I am still screwing around with the show notes template.

For episode one, we used the original 2022 format.

Last week we tried a shorter, newer format.

This week, we're going to try an AI-driven format. I wrote the content, but using Duck.AI, I generated the format to use. It's not bad. I'm still deeply uncomfortable using AI, but now I can say we at least tried it for possible templates.

If you're a subscriber, you can email us and let me know which format you prefer.

It's still early days here, so you'll see a lot shift around over our first month or so. Now that the podcast has returned.

-BJ

Stupid Sexy Privacy, Episode #3

Episode Title: Smart TVs Doing Dumb Things

Guest: Tray Chou, Founder and CEO of Block Party.

Episode Summary:

In this week's episode, Rosie Tran explores the creepy world of Smart TVs. She also talks about something you've thought about, but probably haven't done anything about yet: Securing your cameras.

Key Points:

  1. Smart TV Privacy: A study by Hub Entertainment Research claims 79% of Americans own a SmartTV, which here means an Internet-connected TV
  2. If you haven't already done so, you should disable Automated Content Recognition (ACR) to prevent your TV from tracking your viewing habits and sharing data with companies like Nielsen, InScape, and Roku. Consumer Reports has a very good, step-by-step breakdown of how to turn off ACR for a variety of devices that we recommend you review here.
  3. Camera Privacy: Use Silent Pockets’ reusable Privacy Stickers to block the selfie camera on your smartphone. The stickers are reusable and re-stickable. So when you need your camera, you can just take it off and put it back on.
  4. Here at StupidSexyPrivacy.com, we're going to revisit the topic of SmartTVs and all the different ways they creep on you. For now, the big thing is making sure ACR is off, and covering up any cameras it may have when you're not using it.

Remember:

-Covering the front-facing camera is usually sufficient for most people.

-Always keep your laptop's web camera covered when not in use.

-Make it a habit to cover the camera on any new internet-connected device, like a SmartTV.

Interview Summary:

In this insightful interview, Tracy Chou, the founder and CEO of Block Party, highlights how Block Party helps users manage their online presence and protect their data across various platforms.

Takeaways:

  1. Ease of Use: Block Party simplifies the process of managing privacy settings across multiple platforms, making it easier for users to control their data without feeling overwhelmed.
  2. Automated Content Removal: Block Party recently added a feature to delete old LinkedIn posts, addressing the need for users to clean up their digital history. BJ was super excited about this.
  3. Transparency and Trust: Block Party emphasizes transparency in how data is used and handled, building trust with its users.
  4. Generational Burnout: Tracy acknowledges the fatigue many users feel when trying to manage their online privacy, and Block Party aims to alleviate this by automating many of these time consuming, but necessary tasks.
  5. Progressive Privacy: Tracy emphasizes that privacy and security are not all-or-nothing propositions. Customers can make incremental progress in protecting their data without feeling overwhelmed. It's not too late. Don't be a Privacy Nihilist. That's how the fascists and weirdos win.

Credits:

SFX for this week’s episode were provided by:

  1. Struggle between two people.aif by jsburgh -- https://freesound.org/s/235681/ License: Attribution 4.0
  2. SFX for the Ring Bell Provided by ZapSpalt 

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Note: The following transcript was lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

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Show Start

Rosie Tran: Welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy,  a podcast miniseries sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. I'm your host, Rosie Tran. You may have seen me on Chime TV's A Brand New Yay or on season two of Peacock's Comedy InvAsian. Aside from organizing with your friends and neighbors, laughter is one of the best weapons we have to fight fascists and weirdos. So if you need a good laugh, check out my episode of Comedy InvAsian, which is called The Saigon Honey, after you're done listening to today's episode.

Clyde: Quack!

Andrew VanVaoorhis: He doesn't like self-promotion.

Rosie:  I mean, Clyde is a duck.  He doesn't like a lot of things.  Hawks, the scent of lemon oil  and people who try to give him bread.  

Clyde: Quack!

Rosie: I'm not trying to give you bread!  Andrew, can you inform this duck that if I don't tell our listeners who I am, then I'm just some random person on the Internet. That means there's no human connection and they're not going to care about what we have to say. I might as well be an AI.  And if that's the case, is he seriously looking at a stopwatch right now? 

Andrew: Clyde's gotten super into time management. 

Rosie: This is what happens when BJ gets depressed for like two years and puts a literal duck in charge of the show.  

Speaking of BJ,  over the course of this series, we're going to offer you short, actionable tips to protect your data, your privacy and yourself from fascist and weirdos.  These tips were sourced by our fearless leader — He really hates when we call him that — BJ Mendelson. 

Episodes 1 through 24 were written a couple of years ago. We're re-airing them now because most of that advice still holds. Everything you hear after episode 24 is going to be brand new, including this introduction. 

Andrew: And anything we need to update from the original episodes can be found at StupidSexyPrivacy.com. 

Rosie: That's right. So make sure you visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and subscribe to the newsletter. 

Now, for those of you who don't know,  BJ is the author of the book “Privacy and How We Get It Back.”  Alongside Amanda King, who you'll also hear from in this series. BJ is writing a sequel called “How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos.”  So  everything we're going to present comes from two actual humans who research and study this stuff for a living.  

Clyde: Quack!

Rosie: OK, OK, two actual humans and one super intelligent duck. Although I don't know how intelligent that duck really is. Especially when he keeps forwarding Andrew and I emails with a subject line that says 1986's Howard the Duck is good actually. 

Clyde: Quack! 

Rosie: It's a bad movie and you know it.

Andrew: Okay,  I gotta separate these two.  Remember to visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com  and let's get to today's privacy tip.

This Week’s Privacy Tip

Rosie Tran: This week we're going to talk about your Smart TV and why you should cover up your cameras.  First, let's start with your Smart TV.  If you own a Smart TV and if you're in the United States, almost half of you do, and you will need to log into your settings and disable ACR.  

ACR stands for Automated Content Recognition.  But really, that's just a fancy way of saying your TV tracks everything you watch and that data is then shared with companies like Nielsen, InScape, and Roku.

So if you've been watching reruns of “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” objectively the best, worst television show ever made,  and you suddenly start seeing ads for the show, this is why. 

How to turn off ACR is going to differ depending on your smart TV manufacturer.  So we've left a link in the show notes that'll help you find the steps you need to disable ACR for your specific smart TV.  

Next, we're going to talk real quick about cameras,  specifically the ones on your laptop and smartphone.

Use Silent Pockets’s reusable stickers to block the selfie camera on your smartphone.  You may also want to cover up all of the cameras on your phone, but for most people, just covering up the front-facing camera is fine.  

This will provide a comfortable level of privacy without sacrificing the fun and functionality of that smartphone you paid $1,300 for.  

And like BJ said in his first book on privacy, when it comes to your laptop's web camera, you always want to keep that covered until you need it.

This is also true for any internet connected device.  

Your best option is to always cover up the camera.  

Make this a habit anytime you get a new device.  

Does it have a camera? Then cover that shit up!  Remember, if someone wants to watch you go to the bathroom while you play on your smartphone? They should pay for that privilege, not watch her free by hacking into your phone.

Interview With Tracy Chou, CEO and Founder of Block Party

BJ Mendelson: Hey everybody, it's BJ Mendelson, your friendly neighborhood co-producer and  … what else do I do around here? Oh yes, I update the website.  

So just real quick, this is the second part of our 2025 interview with Tracy Chou. Tracy is the founder and CEO of Block Party. If you missed our write-up on Block Party, we have it linked  in today's show notes. And if you missed the first part of the interview, it's back in Episode Two.  So we hope you enjoyed the interview.  We had a great time speaking with Tracy. And like I said last week, we don't recommend products unless we use them ourselves. So in the case of Block Party, this isn't an affiliate thing. This isn't an advertising thing. This isn't an influencer thing. This is … I personally am a customer of Block Party. It's something that I've been using for a long time. It's something that I recommend listeners of Stupid Sexy Privacy use. And in this part of the interview with Tracy, we're going to get into a bit more detail on how to utilize Block Party. 

So  I hope you stay tuned and enjoy, and we will see you soon.  

BJ Mendelson, Stupid Sexy Privacy co-producer: Yeah, you know,  it's something that we struggled with too, right? In launching the website and podcasts in, it's a newsletter. So we're still collecting people's email addresses, even though we're privacy focused.

Tracy Chou, Founder and CEO of Block Party: Right.

BJ:  I mean, we're telling people to disguise their emails before they sign up, but even that we can still intuit  enough information based on … 

We use Plausible Analytics, for example, and even that, you know,  it's anonymized … pardon me. I can't talk all of a sudden … But I, but what I like is that you actually have these discussions and that you [Block Party] are forthright about them. 

Because I think, you know, thinking about the academic side where they have said there's very little of a world where you can't not share data. Right? So discussion is going to be, how is that data used and is the company trustworthy and … I think transparency and the fact that you think about these things demonstrates that Block Party is trustworthy. 

So let me ask you, like, in terms of communication, this is something that I highlighted when I did my write up on Block Party. Sometimes with Facebook … Facebook does not want to cooperate with having data removed. That's not a Block Party thing. That's a Facebook thing. 

And I'm just curious about how, when you run into instances like that, where you have a company that's like,”No, we're not going to let you remove data.” How do you communicate that to the audience and let them know we're doing the best we can within these parameters? 

Tracy: I mean, I think it's exactly that. As it sounds like we just try to tell people we are doing the best that we can. We try to find workarounds wherever possible. Try to communicate to folks like what we're doing is automating things that you would be doing on your own slowly if it weren't for us. But if there are things that you cannot do that are not possible with the platform, unfortunately we can't do magic.

BJ: Right.  

Tracy: So, if a platform is not going to delete your data because they're holding onto it for AI model trading and they refuse to do that, like we don't have a magic wand that we can wave that will go remove it from their databases. So. Sometimes it is just that practical, like we're doing the best we can to support you however is possible. But sometimes people really care about it. They write in, and we’re like, go talk to your elected representatives 

BJ: Yes.

Tracy: … And let them know that maybe we need some regulatory change too. 

BJ: Yeah. I mean, that's the thing that I've started to communicate. Like when we do our follow-ups on Block Party, one of the things that I can talk about is CCPA [The California Consumer Privacy Act], right? 

So if you run into an instance where, and for people who are listening but haven't read the post, what I basically said was, Block Party does like 99% of the things you need to do when it comes to Facebook. 

It's great at allowing you to tweak your settings so that you can control who sees what. But where I ran into a hiccup was specifically in content removal. And it seems like the solution, as you pointed out, isn't Block Party. It's if you live in California utilizing the CCPA.  And  then the interesting thing is that people don't realize what the CCPA is.  What I'm finding is like they don't realize that we do have these privacy laws. I think there's like five or six states that have them.  And then on my part, it's just educating people and saying, okay, well, if you run into this problem with Block Party … If you live in California, these are the specific steps that you take. 

Have you thought about messaging at all? If someone runs into an issue and they write in saying, here's like a template that you can copy and paste for a CCPA to take care of that for you. 

Tracy: That's a great idea. We have not discussed it explicitly internally. We do have a lot of users who are not in California.  I would personally love to see better federal legislation. So it's not this patchwork across all the states, but maybe we'll draft up some FAQs that can point people in that direction. 

BJ: Yeah. I mean, like  the thing that we're going to say throughout this podcast is we want federal legislation. We just don't believe in the current climate that's happening.  

Tracy: Fair.

BJ: So yes, we're doing our best to like say, if you live in New York State, here's the Privacy Act that's sitting in committee. Here's what you can do to move it out of committee. And if you live in California, here are these templates that you can copy and paste. 

But let's talk about content that can be removed, because this is something I was really excited about. People particularly like, I don't know, we might be close in age. People in the millennial generation have been on, let's say, LinkedIn for a really long time. And until  recently, it's been really difficult to go back and actually remove all your old LinkedIn posts. And then after I had done my post, where I was like, Block Party doesn't remove LinkedIn,

Serendipity like you guys release that feature. 

Tracy: Just released it!

BJ: So let's take a moment to talk about that because I think that's huge. tI hink that LinkedIn has become the “normal people” platform. It's the one that most people still use. They use it for job searches. So I think it's important to just talk about what Block Party is doing in terms of being able to remove that old content. 

Tracy: Yeah. So just on a pure functional level, hopefully it's very simple. If you have Block Party installed as an extension on your, say, your Chrome browser, and you go to LinkedIn, and Block Party is living in that little sidebar … You click over to the Content tab, and there's a card that says, “Delete your posts.” You can specify a time frame if you want.

If not, if you want to delete everything, just hit the button that says, your posts and BlockParty goes and deletes all of them. 

So, hopefully that is simple enough. But to speak a little bit more to the inspiration for this and like what we were hearing from people; and why we wanted to build this … Beyond the general, you should just have more control over your data and it should be easy to do these things. We were specifically hearing from folks that they have accumulated these long histories that may not be practical for the current day. Whether it is a political environment type of thing. So there are people who … Not to get too political, but people who have Diversity and Inclusion on their LinkedIn profiles that were getting targeted for that. 

And maybe you want to make a statement and you want to be out there, or maybe that's a distraction for you and you just want to focus on what you're working on right now and clear that up. 

There's other people we spoke with who had said, maybe they had pivoted in their careers and so they used to do l don't know, more with engineering, they used to be more infrastructure focused and they wanted to be more product now. And they used to post about a certain type of thing and that gave an image, an impression to viewers of their profile that they cared about a certain set of things, but they wanted to shift that digital presence for themselves. They just wanted to clean up all the old stuff so they could mold their current online presence to what made sense for them now. 

It just felt like an obvious thing to do to give people that control to go delete things en masse from the past. 

I think in general,  I've been online for a long time. 

BJ: Yeah.

Tracy:  I don't read all that stuff from...

BJ: Right. 

Tracy: Even like five years ago, I don't know that it really needs to be there, but really like 10, 15 years ago, I mean, I wasn't posting on LinkedIn when I was an intern, but I could imagine if I had been posting on LinkedIn as an intern, I might not still want all of those things still up there. 

BJ: I think it's, again for the millennial generation, I feel like Gen Z and the generation behind them were probably a little smarter about what not to post. Whereas the millennial generation in particular, we… We were like primed for social media, right? We were constantly being told post, post, post, build your persona, build you soapbox. And so I feel like for, and I'm not speaking for every one of my generation, right? But I feel like there's a not insignificant number of us that have these incredibly long tails of just old content …

Tracy: And I think also we didn't know all the ways in which this data might end up getting used against us. 

BJ: Yes. That's right.

Tracy: In the early days, it's just like share. Like there's no downsides. Maybe you connect with some people who really resonate with what you've posted and you establish your credibility. That's all great. And it turns out, as more and more has ended up out there, bad actors, or maybe it's not even bad actors, it's just people misinterpret or use your data in ways you didn't expect. 

Advertising Break

Amanda King, Co-Host, Stupid Sexy Privacy: Hey everyone, this is Amanda King and I'm one of the co-hosts of Stupid Sexy Privacy. These days … I spend most of my time speaking to businesses and audiences about search engine optimization, but I do want to take a minute to tell you about a book I co-authored with BJ Mendelson.  

It's called How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos, and the title tells you everything you need to know about what's inside.  

Now, thanks to our friends at DuckDuckGo,  BJ and I are actually releasing this book for free  in February 2026. 

And if you want a DRM-free PDF copy,  you can have one.

Or maybe you want a DRM free MP3 of the new audiobook,  you can have that too.  

All you need to do is visit stupidsexyprivacy.com and subscribe to our newsletter.  Again,  that website is stupidsexyprivacy.com  and we'll send you both the PDF and the MP3 as soon as they're ready.  

Now,  I gotta get out of here before Clyde shows up.  He doesn't think SEO is still a thing, and I don't have the time to argue with him because I got a book to finish.


Interview With Tracy Chou, CEO and Founder of Block Party, Continued

BJ Mendelson, Co-Producer, Stupid Sexy Privacy: Absolutely. I mean, we never …  I mean chatbots and LLMs are, it's not a new technology, right? I think about ELIZA in the 1960s. So it's not that that stuff wasn't out there, but I mean, certainly we were not talking about all of our data being hoovered up. Right?

Tracy Chou, Founder and CEO of Block Party: Yeah.  Well, Eliza wasn't downloading all of your posts to train on. 

BJ: That's right. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. Let me ask you real quick. 

For us, know, we're more top of the fall, right? Like we're much more, you should install Block Party and you should use the DuckDuckGo browser or you should use Firefox. 

We're not very like specific and in the weeds. So for us,  I did want to touch on this for people that are listening. Let's say you're an older adult and you haven't switched from Google Chrome. I very much want you to switch from Google Chrome, but you have it. I just want to ask you to highlight, you know, how easy it is to install Block Party into  Chrome or Firefox as an extension. 

Tracy: Yeah. On Chrome or Firefox, you would go to the web store, find the extension, and then just hit install or add to Chrome or add to Firefox. It's quite similar to, on your mobile phone. If you want to install an application, you go to the app store, find the listing, and then hit install or download or whatever that verb is. Same principle, but just like a little add-on to your browser. 

BJ: So you'll have to do anything extra. Like that's... 

Tracy: Yeah.

BJ: Sometimes, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about was generational burnout. And so there's this challenge of getting people to download something extra, getting people to switch browsers from Chrome to DuckDuckGo or from DuckDuckGo to Firefox, which is the progression we recommend. 

One of the things that stood out to me, and I think we were talking about this book, “Can’t Even” about the Millennial Generation, we're sort of like tasked to death.

We’re buried under all these to-do lists of things since we were children of you have to do this and you have to do this.  And what I like about Block Party is that you made it so simple where I don't have to sit and go, okay, Facebook, tweak this setting, tweak this setting. 

So I was curious about, if you could speak to sort of how Block Party helps alleviate that pressure. What we found is the more we suggest, there's always inertia. There's always, I don't want to do one more thing, but Block Party kind of alleviates that. 

Tracy Chou: Yeah. I mean, just… first plus one on the sort of fatigue and burnout of all the things that we're supposed to do. And that is a way that companies can sort of like “win” by just making it so tiresome for you to do anything different. 

We've tried very hard with Block Party to make it so that that user experience is easy and ideally even delightful so that it's not a burden. But what we are doing saves you the time and energy in a few different ways. One is Block Party does the work is Block Party being the expert and figuring out what the better defaults would be, understanding the potential threats, summarizing those, and then presenting them to you. 

We have automations that  scan your current setting to let you know how you stand and where you might have risks that should be fixed. And then there's also automations that remediate those risks for you. So it is one click, all these settings get flipped for you.

Instead of you having to go search for them. I personally had the experience of going in circles with settings, trying to find the one thing I'm trying to turn off, but just not knowing where the platform has put it. 

What's really nice with BlockParty is that all those potential settings are summarized for you. Do you want to flip them? And then you click a button and it knows where to go.  

And then the last thing is sort of the staying up to date on all of this is also a big task.

And so Block Party is because it is what we do, staying on top of the news and also checking those settings for you on a regular basis. So we've heard all of these things as the exhaustion of users if they don't have something like Block Party. Like I've talked to the parents, for example, who want their, who want to support their kids going online and like having a social life in a digital space, but not wanting to do the work of figuring out for a new platform.  What are the risks?  What are all the settings I should have? Then setting aside a day or half a day to go through all the settings with them and then talk through the settings with their kids. It's just so much work, that experience of trying to figure out where the setting lives.

I mean, I still have it for various other things I'm trying to do all the time.  

BJ: Yeah. Absolutely.

Tracy: Like “oh, okay. Then I’m going to go search, like, it's settings, it's privacy, it's security, it's click, click, click.”  And then just like staying on top of the news is exhausting. 

LinkedIn, was … I think about half a year ago, they turned on this AI model training setting where if you didn't opt out of it, then your data would be slurped up and used to build their content models. But if you're not on LinkedIn all the time, checking your settings all the time, you would not have known that this new setting had appeared and it was defaulted to on for you. 

Instagram recently introduced a new feature, Maps, where if you are very online, you would see it, but if you're not very online, it might be a little bit of a surprise that all your posts are now showing up in a map view. That makes it easier to identify where you might be. 

It's just exhausting to stay on top of all those things and Block Party is specialized and trying to make it easy for you so that you don't have to do all this work. 

BJ: Before we run out of time, the one thing that I really wanted to highlight are the Block Party Protection Reports. 

Because one of the things we do is, in our recommendations, is you should run Blockparty once a week. It's Friday. It's 11 a.m. It’s time to run Block Party. That's personally what I do is, I have it scanned, I check everything.  

I found the protection reports to be remarkably helpful because as you said, things are constantly changing. 

What's something you want to highlight about those? I mean, we mentioned the news is a great example, let's say you're new to Block Party, what's something that the protection report can highlight for you that you might not have thought about? 

Tracy: Yeah, the protection reports are meant to give you an overall view of how you're doing. And so you can see like, I'm doing pretty well or I'm not, so just kind of like calibrate. And then they break down these different categories of protection that you may care about. And I also do want to call out  that everybody has a different threat model and has different sets of concerns that they're balancing.  And so when we break it out, you can understand a little better how you're doing against maybe more security and privacy concerns versus digital wellness or data protection.  And then it gives you a little bit more of a sense of, “Oh, if I want to spend a little bit of time doing some cleanup and protecting myself a little better, here's where there's a bigger opportunity.” 

So we wanted to give folks that so it's not so overwhelming. You can kind of see actually if you are set up, there are some people who come in feeling like, I think I'm already pretty protective, but I just want to validate that. And it's nice to have that validation or sometimes there's surprises of like, I thought I was really well protected, but I didn't realize there were so many of these gaps. 

And so. That is meant to give people that better understanding and calibration of where they are and where the opportunities are. 

BJ: Yeah, I have to say, I was caught unaware on a lot of the things. I have old Reddit accounts I don't use anymore, for example. And I just hadn't thought about them in like five, six years. But Block Party was like, hey, you might want to go check this out. 

So even for people who talk about this stuff for a living, I want to stress that the other thing we talk about in terms of getting conned is, when you think you're the person who can't get conned, you're the one that's going to get tricked. 

Tracy: Yeah.

BJ: So even for us, who talk about privacy and security, there are always things that you don't realize. And that's why I was so thrilled to talk to you about this and highlight some of the features of Block Party. 

Before we go, I want to ask you, is there anything that I didn't ask that you just thought was important to highlight? 

Tracy: Maybe not about Blockparty in particular, but I just wanted to put it out there that privacy and security is not all or nothing. 

And you don't need to be overwhelmed by thinking like, oh, some of my data is already out there  and it's too much work to clean up. So like, I'm just going to give up on all of it. You can make progress without it being everything at once. 

And ultimately you should be able to live a good life and do the things you want to do and think about the things that make sense for you in terms of the trade-offs. 

BJ: Yeah. And to be an advocate, don't shy away from using these platforms because of the climate that we live in. You can protect yourself.  That's something we talk about a lot is the activism and how to defeat fascists and weirdos, not just protect yourself from them. And so to me, Block Party is definitely a tool in that toolbox.

DuckDuckGo Live Read with Rosie Tran

Rosie Tran:  You know, it used to be would recommend you use a virtual private network or VPN only for specific circumstances.  Like say, if you're out in public and you're using an unfamiliar Wi-Fi network.  That's a great reason to use a VPN.  But these days, we feel a VPN has gone from a nice to have to a must have.  For example, let's say there's a fascist out there with a lot of power.  And that power could be used to force your internet service provider to turn over information about you.

Like say your download history or all the websites you visit.  Our goal at Stupid Sexy Privacy is to teach you how to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos.  So, these days we feel everyone should be using a VPN.  The thing is the VPN space is really scammy.  Some of the loudest advertisers have the worst track record when it comes to protecting your data.  That means you could lose money on a company promising you protection and offering you none.

Everyone is in a different situation when it comes to protecting their privacy and their anonymity.  But for most people, in most cases, what they need is a simple VPN solution that just works,  and they should be able to trust the company providing that service.  That brings us to our friends at DuckDuckGo.  As part of their subscription plan, DuckDuckGo offers a VPN built for speed, security, and simplicity. It installs right into the DuckDuckGo browser, and you don't need to download anything extra.

And unlike a lot of VPN companies out there, DuckDuckGo doesn't log or store any data that can connect you to your online activity. You can sign up for the DuckDuckGo subscription via the settings menu in the DuckDuckGo browser,  available on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows,  or via the DuckDuckGo subscription website,  DuckDuckGo.com/subscriptions . The DuckDuckGo subscription is currently available to residents of the US, UK, EU, and Canada. Feature availability may vary by region, so make sure you check the website for further information.

Show Outro

Rosie Tran: Today's episode of Stupid Sexy Privacy was recorded at the Duck Duck Go podcast studio in Los Angeles, California.  It was written by BJ Mendelson, produced by Andrew VanVooris, and hosted by me, Rosie Tran.  Before we go, I want to give a shout out to our other co-host, Amanda King, and our sponsor, Duck Duck Go!  

If you enjoy the show, we hope you'll take a moment to leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you may be listening.

This won't take more than two minutes of your time.  

You see, we have this crazy goal and we need your help to achieve it.  We want 5% of Americans to be 1% better at protecting themselves from fascists and weirdos.  

Leaving us a review can help make that happen because your review will help other people find the show.  

So please take a moment to leave us a review and we'll see you next Thursday at midnight.  

Right after you watch my episode of Comedy InvASIAN on Peacock, right?

Clyde: Quack!