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Remember those Facebook quizzes that made the rounds during the pandemic lockdowns? They’d ask for things like the street you grew up on or the name of your first pet, and everyone treated it as a fun way to get to know each other. I spent a good chunk of that time telling my family to stop answering them, because those are the same questions banks and websites use to verify who you are. My family mostly thought I was making a big deal out of nothing, and in fairness, each of those details is pretty harmless by itself. They just don’t stay by themselves for very long.
Ron Zayas, CEO and founder of Ironwall, joins me on this episode of the TechSpective Podcast to talk about how those pieces get stitched together and what you can do about it. Ironwall started about 15 years ago by removing personal information for judges, and it has since expanded to protect executives and other people in the public eye. The company is now part of Incogni.
Your Address and Phone Number Tie It All Together
A couple of years ago, I had a call with a different company that sells privacy services to executives and wealthy clients. They ran a quick scan on me before we talked and opened the call by telling me where I’d lived and where my kids live, and they’d already connected me to my parents. It was impressive and a little unnerving, but I also pushed back, because a lot of that is public record and most people don’t buy their house through an LLC to keep their name off the deed.
Ron’s view is that your home address is exactly where to draw the line, and there are ways to protect it that don’t involve setting up a shell company. Data brokers are where all those scattered bits come together, and the details that tie them back to a specific person are usually your home address and your mobile number. Think about how many times you’ve moved in the last ten years compared to how many times you’ve changed your cell number. As Ron put it, “We just need to break the things that tie us to everything else.”
You don’t have to be a judge or a celebrity for this to matter, either. People get doxxed now for posting an unpopular opinion, and someone who’s angry enough will go looking for your employer or your house. “We’re all one interaction away from somebody wanting to hurt us,” Ron declared.
AI Does the Legwork Now
Connecting those dots used to take some effort. An attacker needed several databases and the patience to cross-reference them and figure out which details went with which person. AI is very good at that kind of pattern matching, so the same old data is a lot more useful to someone who wants to impersonate you or find you than it was a few years ago. Ron also raises concerns about government agencies buying commercially available data they’d otherwise need a warrant to collect.
Be Harder to Find Than the Next Person
I’m a little cynical about some of this. My name, my birth date, and the other details that never change have been exposed in enough breaches that I assume they’re out there for good, and when another breach notice shows up I barely look at it. Ron doesn’t claim you can scrub everything, though. His point is that making yourself harder to find still pays off, because if someone has a hundred pieces of information on you and twenty on the next person, you’re the one they’ll go after.
That’s the same advice I gave years ago, when people figured out WEP encryption on Wi-Fi could be cracked in about a minute. If you couldn’t upgrade, I said to leave WEP turned on anyway, because the neighbor with an open network was still the easier target.
You’re not going to disappear from the internet, and Ron isn’t suggesting you try, but there’s no reason to make it easy. He wraps up the episode with a few inexpensive steps that are worth the effort.
Watch or listen to the full episode.
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