Transcript:

Hey friends, it’s time to have a conversation about audacity. And frankly, what we should really be talking about, which is privacy. This is the Gritty Birds Media Show. And I am  Jeni Wren Stottrup. We are here having conversations about messaging, technology, and voice so that you can create better content. We’re going to dive in right in your listening to the gritty birds media show.

[00:00:22] And everybody calls me,Jeni Wren. This video has a few updates. Since I posted to Grittybirds.com, I’ll let you know the sections that are updated. I’m going to start off with a disclaimer that this is purely my opinion. I’m not arguing with anyone. In fact, I am stating what I know about data and technology from the perspective of what we should be taking away from this and how we should be protecting ourselves in the future.

[00:00:49] And I want to add some of this is a bit stressful, so. Just remember, it’s all going to be okay. In the end. We are both going to be affirming things that you’re feeling about audacity and also raising some questions about the safety that you have in your homes, on your computers already. So here’s, what’s going on.

[00:01:09] If you’re not in the loop, audacity is a free where open source DAW. So digital audio workstation, and that is where you edit your audio. You take your clips, you go in there and then you publish and it’s been free and an open source world. Part of that. Having the ethics of having things be free and available without sharing information.

[00:01:30] So, first of all, this is a huge red flag for anyone who is part of the open source revolution that is out there in the internet space. And the idea with open-source is that everyone has access to the code for audacity, and anyone can really make the program if they have. So this actually leaves up some options for what folks can do in the future and programs that might already be out there.

[00:01:52] So let’s go forward. The next thing to know is that audacity was bought out last year by a company called muse. They run ultimate guitar. And from what I’m understanding is they also have their headquarters in Russia. This is something that’s bringing up a lot of the red flags. The next thing to know about is that since that time muse wants to make money off of audacity, right?

[00:02:14] They have up till now, not gone ahead and actually shared information. And sometimes this has been to the detriment of audacity in anyone who is a Mac user and experienced how long it took audacity to get the update, to make it useful for Catalina. Would be able to see where being able to get data would be very helpful for this particular app to be able to grow.

[00:02:37] But it also is one of the only platforms out there that isn’t data collecting. So muse of course, wants to be able to use it to profit. They want to be able to sell this information in certain ways and have this data collection so that they can profit and actually make money off of the investment that they made an audacity.

[00:02:57] Right. Audacity users had already been upset back in April. Muse had announced that they wanted to take a step back from something called basic telementory, which apparently is now back on and is getting tested over these couple of days in the fourth and fifth. And they also tried to add in Google indexing and something called Yandex to be able to get more information.

[00:03:20] And after that people were upset enough that they rolled back on that and said, okay, we’re not going to do that anymore. Now that was until yesterday, when they finally shared this information and said, Hey, we are going to be doing this and let’s dive in before we do anything. Let’s take a look at this agreement.

[00:03:39] Now it’s really, really long, but there’s a few things that kind of stand out that we want to take a look at. First, it takes things like data crashes, OSTP types, uh, data necessary for law enforcement litigation and authorities requests, if any, and then it calls it personal data, as it talks about the people that shares with the last two statements are ones that are really concerning because sure.

[00:04:02] Data for crashes, et cetera. But what does it mean by personal information? What kind of data is necessary for law enforcement, let’s really abroad term. And when it’s really broad, it’s something that’s very concerning, right? That is one of the things that’s really concerning. And then the other part is that they’re sending it to Russia and that it’s Russia where this information is kept and that sets off a lot of alarms.

[00:04:24] And later on, I’m going to go deeper into this because I do think that there is legitimate concerns with this element of it. Not quite the depth with the rest of the statement. Let’s move forward.

[00:04:38] This is an updated section. Hey, huge note audacity is going to change the privacy policy. Keep your eyes out.

[00:04:47] Here’s what their response was. The company did attempt to clear up a few things. And it admitted that it had unclear phrasing and its privacy policy. It also clarified that it’ll only share data in a court of jurisdiction where it operates and not just hand it over to law enforcement.

[00:05:05] They said, we do understand the unclear phrasing of the privacy policy and lack of context regarding introduction has led to major concerns about how we use in store.

[00:05:14] The very limited data we collect muse group’s head of strategy. Daniel Ray wrote on GitHub. They’re working on a clear version right now.

[00:05:26] They also said that the updated privacy policy does not apply to offline use of the application. So if you block Audacity’s access to the internet, it won’t be an issue.

[00:05:37] See, the policy will come into force with the next version of the software. So if you’ve already updated, now you are not having this be applicable. So I would say right now is the moment to download audacity or to update it. And so 3.0 0.3 is when you’re going to be hitting any issues. Current and older versions don’t have any networking features and they won’t collect any data.

[00:06:04] All these changes have not been put in place yet. They’re happening in 3.0 0.3. So you do not need to delete Audacity off of your computer. You actually can download audacity right now before they make these changes and still have audacity and just not. So consider those things. You do not need to delete audacity from your computer.

[00:06:27] Paul Licamelli has posted a few things to the audacity Facebook group, and I’m going to mention a couple things that he found out about this particular update that are really, really good. So with this new version, it is going to be connecting to the internet. That’s something that’s different than before.

[00:06:43] And the idea on this is that eventually, I guess they do want to have a cloud version, and this is something that you may pay a subscription for. This does not affect any of our open source, created audacity programs at all. The other reason is to check for updates and apparently audacity is considering.

[00:07:01] Having that become optional because of this, the legal department determined that it needs to comply now with the general data protection regulation of the European union, which considers IP address as a personal data point. As I mentioned(will mention), our data is not protected everywhere, but it is protected by the European union.

[00:07:20] So thanks to European Union. Yeah. In the United States, they also considered the children’s online privacy protection act, which is why there is a 13 and under notice about use of the program, which I didn’t mention, because I don’t have a lot of under 13 users, even though I’m giving a workshop on it. Cause I don’t, I didn’t mention this because I don’t have a whole lot of under 13 users.

[00:07:44] This does, this does raise questions where their audacity can be used in schools. However, so we’ll have to see what happens there. Now, before you run off, the point of this video is not whether you should use audacity.

[00:07:56] The point of this video has a lot to do with our data security and you should keep watching because there’s a lot of really important information that you should know about protecting your computers, how IPS work, et cetera, to remind you where we were, you were stressed out because you had a lot of questions.

[00:08:13] So imagine that you are. Asking yourself, a lot of questions right now had just found out about identities issues. Well, this is where we’re heading now. And then I will share with you about why you are right to be really stressed about this, but you shouldn’t have been just stressed about audacity to get into it.

[00:08:32] How are they getting this information? What does this mean? How do they find the space? What kind of data are they getting? You know, like your brain is story. Like, why do I understand this particular agreement? Why is this so confusing? Right.

[00:08:45] We’re going to start off by taking a look at how we’re tracking online, what we send out in the world and what is an IP address, right.

[00:08:50] We’re going to start off with that. And the IP address is what is kind of like our address for where we are in the world right now. So this is telling me where I am particular in my city at the moment.

[00:09:02] So how does an IP work let’s. Uh, look at this particular example. I want you to imagine that it’s back in the eighties, we didn’t have the internet and we wanted to go on a trip to a Ruba lie.

[00:09:14] Yeah, that sounds fun. Let’s lighten it up. We’re going to Aruba and we have to go to a travel agent. So I’m the computer and the travel agent. Is our internet service provider. I S P Our computer.

[00:09:29] So I have an address and that is my IP address. That is the exact location where my computer is. And this changes if I’m at the coffee shop or if I’m in an airport or my parents’ house, or wherever you go, that’s going to be slightly different based on where your computer is located at that exact same time.

[00:09:45] So as I’m sending letters to my travel agent saying, Hey, I want you to book this hotel then. My address is on the letter that goes back and forth. Right? And then we communicate. So every time I said it has a signature, it says my IP address. And then my ISP, my internet service provider, they contact Aruba and they give their IP address.

[00:10:08] That is a general one for everybody who is in this area. So it’ll say instead of like that I’m in Portland is going to say exactly where I’m in. Portland’s going to say where I am generally. So I’m in Portland, right? It’s going to give like that nice broad statement of where I am, and this is what’s happening on the internet.

[00:10:25] It’s giving information back and forth. And every time that you go to a website, It is getting that addressed, but general address, every time you go somewhere, all of that information is getting shared. Now, some websites, you might sign something that says cookies, it’s going to track certain things, right.

[00:10:42] It’s going to have those pieces that it’s going to follow. Uh, if you have apple, it’s going to ask for crash data. It’s going to say, will you allow us to blink? And you’re going to click. Yes. Right. You’ve clicked. Yes. To so many things. And you’ve said yes to so many agreements. Do you know, what is out there?

[00:10:59] Oh my gosh. Every time this information is getting passed back and forth. I mean, I don’t blame you for being legitimately concerned. I mean, The thing we need to accept right here, though, is that our IP is constantly being shared constantly. Before you say, how dare you audacity. I want you to ask whether you’re upset that you went to check your email and that they also took that.

[00:11:28] Now I realize that I’m stretching here because we don’t really know what they mean by. Data or personal, like what information are they really sharing? Obviously we want to know more answers there, but I want you to think about how this is happening right now. Right. We’re not done right now. There is an F and we’ll get to that in a little bit.

[00:11:44] So I guess then the question is, is what kind of data can they collect? Can they do this legally? So the IP is really the gateway of information, right. And. It’s not something that you want hackers to get ahold of. I mean, it’s very concerning if they have that, however, it’s really not hard for them to find.

[00:12:02] And it’s kind of one of those things that, unless we do the things I’m going to show you how to do later, you’re going to have that be possible for people to find. Now, what it is hard to do is collect your audio. And I want you to follow me here. Here’s what. If you have used a DAW or frankly, if you’ve had a program on your phone that you can’t access because you’ve offloaded it, you have to download it.

[00:12:32] But if you don’t have internet, then you can’t access that file. Same thing with the DAW. So if I was recording in it and I saved to a file and then I moved that file to another place. Access that audio at all. Like it doesn’t go into the doll. Now, what that means for audacity is that they don’t have access to the files on your computer.

[00:12:54] They do not have an ability to have the download of that particular file because they’re not a cloud-based company. So if you’re concerned that they’re going to take your information from your audio, They don’t have access to your computer because of the cloud to do so. And I think that’s something that we need to understand is that audacity.

[00:13:21] It isn’t a cloud-based app. So if they have access to audacity that doesn’t extend to the file that is being kept in and run inside of audacity, audacity itself is not holding that program. The file is still being held. Offline. That’s not connected to, uh, Udacity is cloud. They can’t access that because they just don’t have information for it.

[00:13:46] Frankly. It’s too much data that being said, it’s still may feel uncomfortable to have audacity having all of this information, especially without having really clear guidelines about what personal and data means and you know, the Russia connection. So, so let’s take a look at what other companies are doing is audacity alone in bed.

[00:14:07] No first, is it legal for companies to be doing this? Yes. Is it isolated? No, not at all. In fact, discourt has nearly an identical statement that discloses information to law authorities, like almost exactly the same. And as you go through all these different. Companies, they all have very similar agreements that are saying how long they’re holding your information for how they’re storing it and who gets to see it.

[00:14:38] There actually lead to the game. As I mentioned earlier, muse wants to be able to make some kind of profit off of this. And the way that programs make money is by sharing data and using that for a future sale. And that’s one of the people that it says that it’ll share too, is if they’re interested in having a, is buying this out, then they can share that information, right.

[00:14:58] So audacity, it goes into how it stores it and that it uses a data encryption called salt. And so it’s going to keep that little piece of information, which is you data encrypted, just that piece that says you live in Portland, it’s going to keep that. And it’s going to solve, like, have a salt, which kind of breaks it up.

[00:15:15] And then in that they keep a whole bunch of salts together in something called a hat. The assaults is kept for one day and the hash is kept for one year. These policies are really long. They’re extremely convoluted. And in fact, the New York times, they did a really extensive in-depth report on this. And in the article that you can go to on my website, that goes pretty much with what I’m saying right now is.

[00:15:37] You, they called it a vast majority that were beyond a college level that they don’t totally make sense. It’s really hard and not easy to interpret. And when we look at state to state laws, even they are not far enough, we don’t have enough. Protection of our data in general right now, like your information unfortunately, is not protected as much as you’d like, and most states do not have the kind of protection that you would like to have.

[00:16:03] So there are concerns legitimately about our data safety and what we have online and the privacy that extends forward. There’s no question that this is the case. So at this point you’re probably feeling pretty uncomfortable because from discord to Amazon, from audacity to. Service provider is sharing that IP.

[00:16:24] They have a lot more access than you even have any idea. And, and what the heck are we going to do about this? Now? That leaves one little piece is that there was an article that went out and it stated. This is spyware and ever since then, that article has gotten reshared and reshared and reshared, and it’s important to know what spyware is.

[00:16:45] And spyware is by definition, a program that is put on your computer without permission to be able to call your data. Now that is not okay. Is being explained in these terms of use. In fact, audacity has said that if you’d like to see all the data that they have on you, if you’d really like to take a look or if you’d like to be removed from that, they will honor that and do that for you.

[00:17:10] So you can actually contact them and remove this information, which I think is a sign of good faith. However, Again, you’re still kind of concerned. So what the heck are we going to do? It’s not spyware. Okay. Um, they have a lot more information. We, everyone has her information. Ah, which finally brings me down to why is it that we should be paying attention to this?

[00:17:35] Is it because I want you to keep audacity forever? No, of course not. That’s up to you and I’m gonna make my call and that’s my opinion. My opinion, this time also is going to have a few caveats and a warning. So should you save it or should you keep it now, if you love audacity and this is your program and you’ve been using it all along and you absolutely want to keep it, go for it.

[00:18:03] I say, save it. I don’t think that we should automatically trash it and. I think that we should be paying attention to a few things, and you’ve got a few options if you choose to save it and here they are, first of all, you can just suck it up, buttercup and accept that they’re taking all your information and there’s nothing you can do about it.

[00:18:24] And darn it. We just. Don’t do that, but you can. The second one is that because audacity is an open source program, we have other options. You can download other programs like dark audacity, or there are a lot of conversations about creating an essentially a fork in audacity. So there would be the program up till right now where they’ve changed the policy.

[00:18:50] All the folks can still have access to that free there, because again, it’s a free where this is an open source program. And then there’s the one that’s essentially owned by muse that allows for the data collection and that for can exist because it’s legal. It’s how open-source works. And I think that’s going to be looking really nice.

[00:19:08] Right. That seems like a good option. The third thing is that you don’t update your current version. You just live where you’re at. Don’t accept the new terms of service and live in there until it doesn’t want to. You can totally do that. Our next option is that we can start trying other doors. I know that it’s easy to stay in our tried and true, but there are so many amazing tools to learn in both pay does and free Daws programs like Ableton, light, and pro tools light as well as garage band.

[00:19:41] And then there’s Reaper, which is one of the best deals in the market as a fantastic da. One of my friends, he actually only records albums for his clients on Reaper, and it comes in with a lifetime license for under a hundred dollars, such a good deal. So you’re not with all of these options. You don’t have excuses not to be able to look into other programs and to start experimenting with your work.

[00:20:08] The next option is our most key one. That is really the big takeaway that I think that you need to know is that. The only way to protect yourself from audacity and from all of these other programs that are taking our information to really truly protect ourselves from hackers or from Russian intelligence or whoever else is to be setting up VPNs, to be setting up.

[00:20:34] Things that hide our IP to be setting up firewalls and our computers so that people do not have access. Now, this will mean that some web functionality will have issues. You know, cookies are part of this. Like you won’t have certain functions on programs or on websites that maybe you want to have, but you are going to have your information protected.

[00:20:55] And I’ve got a link on the website that you can go ahead. I see that gives you a few of these options. They know this better than me. Again, I’m not a data security expert, but I know enough about how to protect ourselves in our computers that I can, I feel comfortable sharing this. The last option is that you can just quit the internet.

[00:21:17] I say this tongue in cheek, but if you want to be on the internet, these are things we need to consider. Do you protect yourself or do you leave yourself open to attack and. Try to leave every program that goes ahead and shares information. Yes. Some of them are more concerning than others. There’s no question around that, but we have to be taking a look at our data security before making the call to cancel programs, to cancel this or that because they’re stealing our information.

[00:21:48] We actually have the ability to protect ourselves. We are not. Damsels in distress in this situation, we have options. And I want to empower you to take a look at those and to start protecting yourself online. Now, below all of those to me is trashing on Udacity and saying we’re never using this again because frankly, if I was concerned about that, I wouldn’t go onto Google and I have to check my email.

[00:22:16] My clients need me now. I want us to just take a second and breathe. This is a lot of information and honestly it is kind of stressful, but it isn’t the end of the world. If anything, now, you know, cyber attacks are something we’re going to be living with. And that’s the huge takeaway here. We need to be able to empower ourselves and we can’t fault audacity for asking what everybody else was, which was data.

[00:22:46] And. Obviously time will tell whether audacity comes back and says, oh, sorry, we don’t want to do that. Or if in fact they are a spyware and they are in fact breaking rules, et cetera, et cetera. Time’s going to tell though, and we’ll see, but if you’re just focusing on being frustrated with audacity and not taking the time to protect your computer, you’re missing a huge takeaway that you can be growing from today.

[00:23:12] Okay. Now, a warning. The one thing I do have concerns about is the ties to Russia. After our election scandals that have come up and obvious tampering that came from Russia, there is no question that it is a party that we, we do want to watch, and this is not a political blog, so I’m not going to go too much farther than that.

[00:23:34] But if that’s the reason why you want to leave audacity, that’s completely legitimate, like go for it. But I want you to do that. And protect your computer. Now, let’s end on a positive note today because there are wonderful things happening in open source. And we’re going to take a look from our pod father, Adam Curry for freedom and RSS.

[00:23:53] So if you want to join the podcast index, which allows you to still have downloadable RSS from many different platforms, go to thepodcasthost.com. Hm. Join the movement friends. Don’t let friends that alone. So if you are out there and wants to have more community and podcasting, come on over to the podcasters forum on Facebook.

[00:24:15] That’s facebook.com/groups/thepodcastersforum the podcasters forum, lots of conversation of other content creators and some back videos on different topics that you’re going to want to know about from how to book shows to getting sponsors. So I will be back again next week, talking about the same secu to you. I’d love to have you here.

[00:24:37] That is the most popular video I’ve had this on this channel so far, and this is our new show. The Gritty Birds Media Show. If you want to get a look at our first trailer, Check it out. I just posted it as, this is a brand new show. Thanks again. And I will see you later. I am Jeni Wren.  stay inspired and keep creating great intense