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In this episode we’ll be talking to Teacher, activist, and privacy software engineer Greg Stromire.
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Hi, I'm Craig,
welcome to the Treehouse Show.
0:00
The Treehouse Show is our weekly
conversation with the Treehouse community.
0:02
[SOUND] In this episode,
we'll talk with the Treehouse teacher,
0:05
activist, and security fanatic,
Greg Stromire.
0:11
Thank you for being on the show, Greg.
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>> Yeah, sure, no problem.
0:17
>> I have a question for you.
0:18
How did you get started in technology?
0:18
>> Well,
I was the youngest in my family, so
0:23
I just sort of default
became the IT person.
0:26
>> [LAUGH] That's cute.
0:29
>> So yeah, this was around
the time of AOL instant messaging.
0:32
They'd send those America Online free
trial disks were around for everything.
0:37
So yeah, I just did that, and also,
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I remember having a pretty cool
computer science class in high school.
0:44
And my teacher, his name was Craig, and
0:51
one of our assignments was to
create a Prince translator.
0:54
>> Prince like the-
>> Prince like the artist
0:58
formerly known as.
1:00
>> Okay, right, awesome.
1:01
>> So we take this English,
sort of prose text, and
1:03
then run it through this translator.
1:06
And it would take the Y-O-U and
turn it into capital U.
1:09
>> [LAUGH]
>> And the F-O-R into the number four.
1:13
>> Like I would die.
1:17
>> I would die for you.
1:18
>> Nice.
>> That's his song.
1:18
>> Awesome.
1:20
>> And I just remember being super
impressed at how fast it was, and
1:22
of course, it didn't make any mistakes.
1:25
And just this concept of learning
a language that also did stuff,
1:27
I thought it was really cool.
1:31
>> Yeah, nice, awesome.
1:32
So that inspired you to go on.
1:34
And now you're here teaching a course for
us.
1:37
Can you talk about what
it is that you teach?
1:39
>> Yeah, so I teach a computer literacy,
or a security literacy course.
1:41
And it's really a little bit different
than the other TreeHouse courses,
1:45
where it's not really any programming.
1:50
It's really just how to be safe,
secure, and
1:52
private while you're doing online things.
1:56
>> So when I think of that stuff, well,
kind of what I think about is like,
1:59
do you change your password a lot?
2:01
>> Right, so there's this website that I
talk about in my class that you can go to,
2:03
is called haveibeenpwned.com.
2:08
And you just go there and
you enter your email address.
2:10
And then it'll show you if that email
address has been part of known breaches.
2:13
So there's lots of examples
of email services or
2:20
other music streaming services that
have had their databases breached or
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their info leaked or otherwise hacked.
2:29
And so if your email shows up there,
you'll want to go and
2:32
change your password immediately for
that service.
2:37
>> Well, that's awesome,
that's cool that they put that out.
2:41
[LAUGH] That would make me feel at ease.
2:43
>> Yeah, and really, I've gone there and
I saw that mine's been hacked.
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It really happens to almost everyone,
and it's really not even your fault.
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Their system got hacked.
2:56
But it just means that you put
in a little extra effort, and
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then you can get to be way more secure.
3:00
>> Okay, awesome.
3:03
>> It's important to have
really strong passwords and
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have unique passwords for
each site that you use.
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You don't wanna reuse passwords.
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And you don't wanna use weak passwords,
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where there's only my name plus 123,
or something like that.
3:15
>> Okay, right, so I keep that
in passwords.txt on my desktop.
3:19
>> There's different levels of security.
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There's great tools out there, like
password managers that can really help.
3:27
They can generate strong passwords,
they can store your passwords.
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So you really just have to
remember maybe one password, and
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then the rest of them are stored for you.
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And you never have to
think about it again.
3:40
>> Okay, cool.
>> That's really helpful like that.
3:42
>> Do you talk about that in the course?
3:43
>> I do, yeah.
>> Okay,
3:45
cool, what sorts of other
things are in there?
3:45
Just a teaser.
3:49
>> Yeah, sure, so it's all around,
3:49
you wanna look for
HTTPS when you're sort of browsing online.
3:53
And that's just the little
prefix to it in the address bar.
3:58
And that can kind of signal
that your browsing is secure.
4:02
>> I actually saw a website recently
that said should my site use HTTPS.
4:06
And it seems like it's one of those things
where you go to it and it says whether or
4:11
not, but you just go to yes.
4:14
[LAUGH]
>> Yeah, [LAUGH] nice,
4:16
it's a pretty clear thing and there's some
great tools out there for programmers, for
4:17
developers that are creating their
sites to use things like Let's Encrypt.
4:22
Which makes it super easy to get
set up with SSL and HTTPS, so
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it's really sort of a we should
be all getting there point.
4:31
>> Okay, cool, so,
if I'm going to a website, and
4:35
it doesn't have an s at the end of it,
what's happening there?
4:38
>> So, basically, a lot of your traffic,
lot of your communication back and
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forth is sort of in the clear, and
other people can sort of view it.
4:47
And this may not be a big deal.
4:52
If you're just going
to a sports website or
4:54
just looking at movie times, you're not
really passing sensitive information.
4:59
But if you log in for anything, if you're
trying to purchase anything, that stuff
5:04
can get really sensitive, and you'll
wanna make sure that that is protected.
5:08
>> Yeah, and that's interesting,
we're at a time, I think,
5:13
where we're using our laptop
out in public more, right?
5:15
>> Absolutely, yeah.
>> So I'm at a coffee shop,
5:18
an unnamed coffee shop.
5:20
>> Sure.
>> And I'm sending my data, somebody
5:22
sitting there at the coffee shop could be-
>> Absolutely, yeah.
5:25
>> While I look at my movie times.
5:30
>> That's right, that's exactly
what I talk about in my course,
5:31
so-
>> Cool.
5:34
>> Yeah.
5:35
>> I have a question that
the students wanna know.
5:36
What's something that they might not know
about you from just watching your courses?
5:38
>> Well, I got started with this course
because I was doing a workshop called
5:44
Data Privacy for Activists.
5:49
So, I've had a little bit of
background in activism and
5:51
sort of education around anti-racism and
sexual violence prevention.
5:55
>> Cool.
6:01
>> And I also became an engineer.
6:01
And those kind of seem sort
of separate parts of me, and
6:04
I always kind of wanted to bring
those together in some way.
6:06
>> Like a Venn diagram sort of thing.
6:09
>> Yeah, and
they were completely separate, and
6:11
I was like,
how can I smash those together?
6:13
>> Nice.
>> So I was doing this workshop, and
6:15
some people from Treehouse came and
said, hey, we can do a course with you,
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and I was like, that'd be great.
6:23
>> Awesome.
>> And security's kind of cool in
6:25
this way, because it does sort of
address a lot of the same issues.
6:29
You get to talk about security
in the context of consent
6:33
and justice and making sure
people are able to live freely.
6:38
>> Wow, that's awesome, man.
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I love that combination of those skills.
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>> Yeah,
the Venn diagram is looking better.
6:46
>> Yeah, cool man, and
thanks for sharing that with us.
6:48
>> Yeah, totally.
>> Thanks a lot.
6:50
[MUSIC]
6:51
Thanks for watching the Treehouse Show.
6:56
To get in touch with the show,
6:58
reach out to me on Twitter, or
hit us up in the Treehouse community.
6:59
See you next time.
7:01
I don't know about you, but
I'm gonna go change all my passwords.
7:03
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