Holiday Helpings

I’ve got a little smorgasbord of info for you this week… a virtual charcuterie board of tips, tricks and treats!

Choice Cuts of Content

If you haven’t tried my podcast yet, now is a great time to dive in – which I’ll explain shortly. I put a lot of time and effort into my podcast. It’s chock full of useful info, delivered in an entertaining and accessible format. If you’ve never listened to any podcast before, it’s dirt simple to do – just get a free podcast app like Pocket Casts, search for “Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons”, and subscribe. As of this writing, I’ve published 404 episodes! And it’s all free. You can also listen on Spotify and several other outlets, or just using a web browser.

My show comes out each week on Monday morning (Eastern Time), each one lasting a little over an hour. I alternate between news and interviews:

• News shows: I pull some of the top security and privacy stories, and explain what they mean to regular people. I always define the jargon and highlight the lessons we should learn. I usually end with a “Tip of the Week” based on my newsletter/blog post for that week.
• Interview shows: I talk to interesting experts about important security and privacy topics. I’ve interviewed CEOs, cryptographers, journalists, authors, and hackers.

So why are the holidays a good time to start listening? Well, I usually take December off – and I do that by putting out several “best of” episodes. They contain highlights from the top interviews of past year and probably one classic interview from the vault. And this year, I just had two amazing interviews that you can listen to right now: Ep400 with world-renowned security guru Bruce Schneier and Ep404 with Carissa Véliz, author of the amazing book Privacy is Power.

Membership Has Its Privileges

If you really like the podcast, then you’ll definitely want to consider becoming a patron. Patrons get access to bonus podcast content, including extra Q&A with my guests. For higher level patrons, I have a special bonus podcast I call Merlin’s Musings that dives into more technical topics, but with the same goal of making it accessible to non-technical people. There are well over 150 episodes at this point – all accessible once you sign up.

But there are other reasons to become a patron, too:

• You can join our private Discord server, where you can chat directly with me (and the other patrons)
• You get a monthly newsletter with behind-the-scenes info including a look ahead at upcoming interviews, promotions, etc.
• You’ll get a preview of next week’s podcast, a couple days before everyone else
• You can join our InfoSec book club, focused on security and privacy books that are fun to read
• You will be supporting what I do here and have the opportunity to influence future content
• I do an annual video call with my patrons around New Years where I take questions and we can talk about whatever is on your mind!

Note that I have an ongoing Treasure Chest promotion for top tier patrons. I worked with some top security and privacy companies like Proton, Malwarebytes and Safing (Portmaster) to donate annual subscription coupons for their products. If you become an annual subscriber, you can choose a coupon from the ‘treasure chest’, which will basically subsidize your membership – and you can dip into the chest each time you re-subscribe.

Holiday Gift Guide

Black Friday has turned into a multi-day (multi-week?) shopping bonanza. If you’re going to get someone a new smart gadget or cloud-connected device for the holidays, you should do your best to avoid giving them something that will mine their data or make them vulnerable to hacking. You could also replace a crappy device with a good one. Every year I compile a gift guide focused on privacy and security – things to buy and things to avoid. And I just updated this guide for 2024.

Give the Gift of Security & Privacy

Consumerism is alive and well here in the US! People love to buy stuff… things… material goods. Manufacturers are adding AI and internet to their products, hoping to convince us to upgrade our ‘dumb’ versions (that work just fine). But you don’t have to give physical gifts or even spend money on virtual ones – you can give the gift of your time. Give these ‘dragon coupons’ to your loved ones – a promise to help them do things like set up a password manager, two-factor authentication, secure their network and devices, and much more. (You can also use these coupons to request services from your more tech-savvy loved ones!)