Leah Fieger: Let's talk about what you guys do. How do you lock down your cyber security? Do you use a flip phone? What is your cloud storage? Are you only on signal? I'm referencing all these things in the WIRED guide, check it out. where are you guys?
Louis Matsakis: Most of my conversations are on Signal and I have scheduled most of them to be deleted every four weeks. I think this is a good time-scale for normal everyday conversations and then more sensitive conversations sometimes dissipate within a few hours or even a few days. Very rarely have I found it to be inconvenient to my life. Sometimes I'll ask a friend, “Hey, that cool Airbnb you stayed in, I know you've already found the link. Can you re-direct it to me?” But this is a very minor thing-
Leah Fieger: Small price to pay.
Louis Matsakis: Yes, small price to pay. I'm really careful about location tracking and then usually-
Leah Fieger: So you're not active on Find My Friends?
Louis Matsakis: No, although I track my boomer mom.
Leah Fieger: Sure.
Louis Matsakis: Yes. Who wouldn't listen to this podcast, sorry mom, I'm tracking you. She knows this.
Leah Fieger: Big reveal indeed.
Louis Matsakis: Yes, but I don't actually let him do that.
Leah Fieger: This is Lewis Global Surveillance Blog.
Louis Matsakis: Yeah, still don't let him track me back. This is my business. But when you're over 70, your child is allowed to see where you're going.
Leah Fieger: Absolutely, wonderful. Yes.
Louis Matsakis: But I don't use location tracking. I turn off location tracking for most of my apps and then I have a separate empty device and sometimes I turn it on depending on where I'm going, especially when I'm going to mainland China.
Leah Fieger: Yes, I was going to ask, because you report on trips, you have sources all over the place. Are you bringing air gap equipment? Is your work computer coming along?
Louis Matsakis: I usually wouldn't bring my work computer. I will bring a personal computer that doesn't have a lot of information on it and I will bring a blank cell phone. I'll put various Chinese apps on the phone that I don't really want. I really don't want WeChat to be running on my normal device most of the time. But they are well above and beyond the precautions that I don't think the average person needs to take. But I guess I'm just wondering do you really need 30 apps on your phone that know your location? To Andrew's point about all these data brokers, a lot of times they get this location information, not from Google, not from Facebook, not from these big companies that they don't have to sell that information. It's literally often that game that you downloaded and you forgot about. It's like a silly Candy Crush knockoff.