00:00 Hello, I'm Seth Simmons and welcome to season one, episode five of Opt Out. Opt Out is a show where I sit down with passionate people to learn why privacy matters to them, the tools and techniques they found and leveraged, and where we encourage and inspire others towards personal privacy and data sovereignty. Wondering how you can contribute to FOSS projects without being able to code, or why privacy needs to be the default option and tools you use?

This episode, we're sitting down with Justin Ehrenhofer to chat about contributing to FOSS projects as a non-dev, why privacy by default matters, and where Monero fits into his toolkit. Welcome on to Opt Out, Justin. It's great to finally be able to get you on for an episode. Hey, Seth, I'm happy to be here. I saw you starting this off and was instantly a fan. Yeah, yeah, we've definitely known each other for, I don't know, at this point, probably a couple years at least, but I've seen all of the work that you do in and around Monero and just really excited for my listeners to get to meet you, learn a little bit more about what you do and your thoughts around privacy and FOSS in general.

And for those of my listeners that haven't interacted with you in the past or aren't familiar with who you are, do you mind telling them a little bit about yourself? Sure, so I kind of do everything. I've been a contributor to the Monero projects in 2016. That's probably most relevant for this podcast. I learned about Monero in 2015, but it really took me some time to warm up to start contributing. I'm best known for co-founding the Monero community and Monero space work groups and being a host of the Breaking Monero series, which goes through a lot of Monero's limitations.

Other odd ends I do is, you know, publishing things like Mastery Monero, producing Monero means money, all sorts of miscellaneous Monero related projects over the years. I'm also a moderator of the cryptocurrency subreddit, which is one of the largest cryptocurrency communities, if anything, since 2017. I'm a cryptocurrency village organizer at DEF CON, which is the largest cybersecurity conference. And for my normal work, the past two years I've been working in cryptocurrency compliance, mostly on the anti-money laundering side, but I'm transitioning more to work on general cryptocurrency operations over the next few months.

So I'll be broadening my role a bit. So that's my background and, you know, what I do with Monero and cryptocurrencies in particular. Awesome. Thanks for that. Let's go ahead and dive in. What was it that woke you up to the need for personal privacy? So I want to take a small step back and set the stage for like the type of high school student I was, right? So I was a high school student and I didn't have a cell phone to begin with. I had only a Samsung Galaxy Player 5.0, which is sort of where my pseudonyms, Samsung Galaxy Player came from on Reddit because I was too lazy when making an account.

So I just kind of went with the name of the device I was using at the time. But I had seen everyone in middle school have the jailbroken iPhones. I thought it was the coolest thing as a kid when, you know, you were able to change the stupid, like, scroll animation when you're going through the apps on the iPhone. You know, it was a simpler time back then. And I was like, you know what? Instead of getting an iPod Touch like all the other people have, I wanted to get the Android version in order to just have greater customization.

So I specifically got the Samsung, like day two, I rooted it and started flashing custom ROMs on it. There was a time I was just wiping my phone several times a month, or I guess it wasn't a phone, but you get the point. Several times a month in order to install custom ROMs on this. I also was hosting my own Minecraft server and Mumble servers on, you know, an Ubuntu thing. That's the whole reason I got interested in learning how to even use Linux is because I just wanted to make Minecraft and Mumble servers.

So I had this background of kind of, you know, being the kid that was willing to go around and test, you know, a bunch of crazy things to begin with. I noticed FOSS software, or at least the first time I noticeably realized I was using FOSS software was when I was trying to better manage my music. There's this one open source music player called Tomahawk. And, you know, it's a dead project at this point, sadly, but I thought it was the coolest thing as a kid.

It was really fun to follow the updates. And I felt really excited to be supporting a project that wasn't like, you know, held by a company or anything. It was just some people doing this with their own free time. And I was sharing it with all my friends. I was excitedly following the updates, tracking things on GitHub. I just thought it was really, really cool to be able to do that. So, you know, the first time I was involved in something like FOSS.

But jumping more into the specific privacy aspect, now that I've set the stage a little bit. So, and this is going to get slightly personal here. So around the age of 14 and 15, I started suspecting that I was gay. I didn't know until that point. This is around 2013. And my parents didn't intend to do this with the way that they did the internet. But the internet at home was quite restricted. I didn't have, you know, a cell plan for a phone or anything.

So I was reliant on using this. And I wanted to, and I was, you know, not 16 yet. So I couldn't drive myself around. So I was relying on the internet mostly to be able to learn things. And I wanted to, you know, do some research on my own before talking to anyone about it. You know, it was very personal to me. And I want to actually understand the implications before I, you know, started talking to people. So in 2013, I started looking at Tor, I2P, and Freenet.

And I was able to, you know, use them. I mean, mostly use Tor because that's what, you know, has better access to the ClearNet. But I was using those in 2013 just to, you know, to get around, you know, the filter that we had at my parents' house. And so that was kind of my introduction to why I cared about privacy is because I just didn't want to talk to anyone about these sort of things yet. I wanted to make sure I understood myself first. And so I wanted to research and learn more.

And so I guess jumping quickly to, you know, how that applies to the Bitcoin side of things. But I learned a Bitcoin later that year in the Colbert Report. That was still, you know, mid-early 2013. I didn't use Bitcoin at that point. I was using Tor far more than I was using Bitcoin. And then in late 2014, it was my introduction to, like, private payments where I, you know, since I was then able to drive, I drove to Walmart and used cash to buy a Walmart gift card to use for VPN.

So, you know, I was into private payments before I knew that, you know, Bitcoin, sorry, Monero existed. It was, you know, using cash like I guess everyone else. In 2015, I learned a Monero. I was more just a fan for a few years. I tried mining before going to college. And I started using Telegram, which was obviously a mistake. But it was the first, when I searched private messenger, it was one of the first things that came up. And so I tried that.

I also tried Threema and Signal in early 2015. And then in 2016, the Monero community started having a stack exchange where you can, you know, ask and answer questions about Monero in particular. And so that really pushed me to get more involved in the privacy side of things. I started using Monero for class projects. You know, they're like, pick something that's interested you. Do this. I almost always started picking Monero at that point. And I started mining in student housing.

And then in 2017, I studied abroad in Europe. And I started giving talks about Monero. This is the first time I ever tied myself to my pseudonym. And I just kept going. I really never stopped at that point. So, you know, it was a long process, I guess. So it was a very personal need that I wanted to understand before talking to others that really drew the need for personal privacy. And as a part of that, it drew me into private payments specifically because I just needed some way to buy a VPN.

So that was in the form of a gift card. And then once I learned about Bitcoin, I just knew at that point, like, I wanted something that had better or I wanted to contribute to something that had better privacy baked into the protocol level. So I found Monero and, you know, I still maintain an open mind, but I haven't exactly left. I've kind of stayed there because I've enjoyed contributing there. Yeah, it's been cool to hear from each guest that we've had on the podcast so far, just kind of what personal need it was that drove them to think about privacy.

And usually that doesn't start with privacy. It kind of starts in FOSS or Linux or just like hosting something for friends. So it's cool to hear that crossover and just to see that those tools allowed you to kind of choose what to reveal about yourself to the world and when. And what is it about privacy that makes it such an important topic for you today? Well, I just think it's something that's important for everyone to have. I mean, no one should have to opt, you know, into being private.

I think that that should be as the greatest extent possible, just the standard state that you don't have to divulge a bunch of information to everyone in the world who shares it with everyone else in the world. I just think it's it is important that by default, you don't have to reveal all this information about yourself. And, you know, there are so many different ways you do that nowadays. And I think it's just important that we support the best practices where, sure, you're not going to tell people, OK, there are going to be some people that are like, never use a phone and, you know, never use the Internet, never do this or that, you know, live in a forest.

But I mean, and all the power to those people who end up doing that. But by and large, people aren't going to switch their habits. So I just think that it's important to build in to the extent possible as many privacy respecting best practices as possible.

10:00 possible for people to have the qualities in life that they want. So it's something that I think people are increasingly concerned about, at least are increasingly conscious about, that they're sharing information. I would say a few years ago, like in 2014, when Monero launched, I think it launched in an atmosphere where largely nobody really cared. And at least now you have, at least a more widespread talking point, people discussing these things. But I mean, I think that this is going to be a constant battle for people to actually need to continuously care about privacy.

And we need to build systems that provide privacy assumptions that I think are just best practice where people don't need to worry about actually sharing information. With others, default is if someone thinks it's not being shared with someone, we need to make sure that the reality is meeting the expectations as far as possible. Yeah, that's a world that would be so much better and so much simpler, is if all of the tools that we used and just the normal tools that people used chose to implement privacy by default. That's just the way you use the tool. There's not really another choice, or there's a choice to opt out if you want to. But unfortunately, that's not true of most tools today. I mean, a lot of the stuff that we've talked about on the podcast and stuff we'll talk about today takes that privacy by default stance. But that's not true of a lot of software. So it's, it's really important that people are aware of that and that people who are developing, contributing to tools have that privacy by default mentality going into it. And what's a common myth

about personal privacy that you've run into? I mean, you kind of run into all of them, honestly. So I mean, among most of the close friends, I just think it's mostly just that you don't hear people too often say that they don't have anything to hide. But I think it's kind of manifested instead of, it's just not worth their time to go about hiding it. Right? Like people will get a new credit card in the mail, and it comes with that little sheet that says, you know, can you limit sharing? And for most of the things are no, but there's a few where you say, yeah, it says yes. And I just don't think anybody bothers calling or, you know, emailing or whatever it is in order to opt out. I just don't think they just don't see it as worth their time. And I encourage people to rethink their assumption a little bit. For things that are easy, you know, if you went through all the, you know, hassle of, of, you know, applying for a credit card, for example, you can call an automated number and click a button to opt out, I think. Or if you can install an app on your phone to

communicate with someone, you know, Clubhouse is the next big thing. And everyone's on Clubhouse, because, you know, that's what you do. You can download some other privacy apps. So I do hope that people, you know, weigh it a little bit more. But then again, I do ironically also think that we can't rely on people to weigh it heavily. Because if you if you start relying on people to go through like big hoops and stuff, I think we're we've already lost on user experience. So I kind of go back and forth on myself on that a bit. But I guess, just I think that people underestimate the importance of their own privacy. And I don't think it's worth our time to necessarily try and convince everyone of that. But it is a myth that, you know, is at the core of why people aren't actually putting in a lot of their effort to use something else to host something else to use a different app to use anything that would better protect their privacy.

Is there a specific way that you kind of go about talking to people or motivating people to help them get past that roadblock of not realizing the value or not not wanting to put the time in? I mean, you can try. I mean, the best thing is for you to talk to your friend groups, right? Like so, so I got went to college and everyone was using Snapchat, for example, Snapchat is still still something a lot of young people use Snapchat and Instagram, for example. And I was like, Hey, let's let's use signal or whatever, right. And I was successful getting people to switch over. And you know, some of those people have still used it as their daily messenger, so to speak. But for most people, it is just a separate app on their phone, and they continue to use like Google messages or iMessage or anything else. So I think that it's, I think with with your friends, it's definitely worth it. But if you're talking about like, why isn't all of society, you know, caring more about privacy? I mean, sure,

widespread ad campaigns are certainly useful to help get people to notice. But I think it does take more than just informing people. Like, I do think the core is a user experience issue rather than just people not caring issue. I would love if people cared. But I, it, I think it's more than just getting people to care. Do you think that the the user experience part of that is that more just an easy user experience? Or is that more applications choosing to make privacy the default and that just being something that people do without thinking about it?

I mean, this kind of, in my opinion, like this kind of jumps ahead to what actually motivates people actually care about using privacy, right? Because, you know, if you have two options, you have the non privacy respecting option and the privacy respecting option, if they were literally equal, and they had the same, you know, their friends were on both, I think most people would choose the latter. But you have all this other real life, you can call them roadblocks, you can call them, you know, other things that are in people's way, that are preventing people from doing that. So I think you need to make it so that the private option is the most convenient option more than just educate. So, I mean, we've seen that in the Monero space all the time, where we will go out and be like, well, you care about privacy. And they're like, well, maybe Bitcoin mixing is enough, like people jump through substantial hoops to try and justify their existing behavior.

So, I think that in order for you to actually get people past the roadblock, it needs to be the most convenient option to actually use the privacy feature. So that, that means, you know, ultimately making this privacy preserving, respecting, whatever you want to call it tool, the best tool for whatever job they have, you know, if their goal is to communicate with a friend, their friends need to be on this tool, if their goal is to, it needs to be more reliable, it needs to have better functionality.

So, you need to make it like the best tool for the job, or you need to make it trendy, or you need to actually force companies to change your regulation. I mean, you have all different ways to get people past the roadblock, and education is part of it, so that people even know to weigh it. But they're weighing it among a bunch of other things in practice, where I think most people are just going to be pragmatic about where their friends are on, and they're just going to, you know, sort of pray that their privacy is respected enough while they're, while they're following the, the real behaviors they want to do.

Yeah, that network effect, and just the concept of I have to install another app to be able to chat with you, or I have to install another app to be able to be private. Those two are, they can be really tricky to get past. And it can, it can require a lot of convincing. I think, I mean, network effect is a hard one, because it will never be overcome as a whole, unless people just take the steps necessary and start to shift friends and family over. But it's definitely a hard one for especially the early entrance to the space to kind of drag their, drag their friends kicking and screaming, or just convince people around them to start using something until like, it gains that network effect. And then you don't have to say like, oh, yeah, all of my friends, I need you all to get on this new app and sign up and get familiar with the interface and get used to it. But if people start, start using it, you know, it's a hard one.

But if people start, start using these things, it really can have that that snowball effect where more and more people join just because their friends are on it, and they don't care that it's private, they don't, maybe they don't even think about signal as being in 10 encrypted or have any idea what that means. But just use it because it's a nice, simple chat app that their friends are on. Right. I mean, I think it's, it's, you know, we talk about network effect a lot in the privacy community, even just the broader foster community. And I think it's more than just getting, well, I think you need more in most cases, at least than just privacy to get people to like over the roadblock to start using more privacy respecting tech. If you really wanted people to use privacy respecting tech, you would create an application that was, you know, privacy respecting, but then you'd add a feature that people really wanted to use that wasn't available somewhere else. And people are going to be like, well, you know, I

don't want to install an extra app, but I'm going to install it because I want to be able to do this cool new thing or I want to be able to do this or, you know, and, and, and that'll get everybody on it. And then it'll, you know, everyone's privacy will be respected. But I don't think that privacy on its own is a great way to get, you know, the masses on, I think, I think most people are content with, you know, trying to, you know, give up their privacy if it means that they get to use some other feature that they want to use somewhere else. And I think companies know that.

Yeah, that's a good point. We kind of need privacy tools to get that, get that clubhouse effect where everybody just feels like they have to jump on board because everyone else is or something is tantalizing or new about it that that pulls them in. It's definitely something that I mean, that's, that's difficult. It's difficult for even funded VC capital funded companies to, to create much less fast communities or, or even privacy respecting companies, which are normally on the smaller side.

Um, and last kind of curveball question, but what's something that you feel like almost no one agrees with you on? Um, so it's okay. So two of them come to mind. Um, so first, you know, dealing with a lot of the cryptocurrency space, there are definitely some people that say regulations are completely irrelevant. We don't need to bother talking to any of these people. We want to give people the privacy and, you know, autonomy, like, uh,

20:00 self-autonomy tech that people deserve. And I agree with that view, but I also want to say, well, if you had the option to have a cooperative government in there too, wouldn't that be a little bit easier too? So I do think that adding privacy laws where we can advocate for them is important. So I think that it doesn't solve the problem, right? It doesn't prevent someone from trying to hack you. It doesn't prevent someone who has your data from sharing it.

But it does mean that you have better recourse in the case that someone does do something that's immoral, right? If it is illegal. So it does help curb some of this immoral activity. And I mean, we can go back and forth around whether the GDPR is good in Europe or not. But ultimately, they do have better in-paper laws, and they do have an ability to punish better companies that do things that are considered immoral or illegal. And so I do think it is, I mean, it's not something you need to rely upon. But I do think it is worth everybody's time to still make sure that the representatives know that privacy is very important to them. And it's not just something that, you know, is that way we can push back around the narrative of, you know, privacy is just something criminals care about or whatever. Like, there is still a political element to it, I feel. And so obviously, building better tools that can out, you know, out compete, the, you know, legacy ones is ideal, but you're going to have a bunch of, you know, a bunch of either lobbying, you're going to have a

bunch of other factors at play to try and get people to use some non privacy respecting tool. And I think that, you know, I just see regulation as one potential way to actually help matters. I mean, granted, it can definitely hurt matters. But I think that it is worth the privacy community's time to vocally, you know, express their support for privacy regulations. And then I think secondly, and this is very different, in terms of things that a lot of people don't agree with me on, I actually don't like encouraging everyone to be their own system administrator. So it's not that I don't, you know, in terms of self hosting things for preserving their privacy. It's, it's not that on paper, you know, if someone did versus didn't, I mean, sure, someone's going to have better privacy if they do host their own stuff. But I think this needs to be like a, like a way down the list, you know, tier 100 type, this person is really going through great lengths to protect their privacy, as opposed to, oh, welcome to privacy, host your own Nextcloud as a start, right? Like,

I don't like putting that so high up in the list. I think it makes the barrier to entry into privacy preserving technologies too steep. I think most people don't even know how to do backups to begin with. And I think as long as we're going to keep pushing people in the direction, like, you know, the sysadmin standard type direction, I think we're actually running, in the wrong direction on user experience, we're going to lose a lot of people far earlier.

So I like the idea of federated services. And you know, the more I've become familiar with matrix and things like Pleroma, you know, I've really become more and more sold on it where most users aren't going to self host to their own thing, right? They're going to use some trusted friends server, or they're going to pay for access or even, oh, goodness, they're going to use some, you know, free service that's provided with ads, right? But at the end of the day, people can still go through and more easily choose these privacy respecting services. And if someone really cares about it, then it's far easier for someone who does actually want to go through the lengths of self hosting their own thing to still plug into the own, you know, to the existing system and everyone else, and then everything is compatible. And I think that this is actually becoming more and more easy to sell people on because, you know, in the past, it used to be, do you want to use this free Google service or even this free Microsoft service, or something, you know, it's usually a paid Microsoft

service, but you know, they've been walking back their free services lately. So it's easier to tell people, well, pay for this privacy preserving service as opposed to this lesser, you know, privacy preserving service, right? Wouldn't you rather pay someone who has a history of preserving privacy to a far greater extent to host this infrastructure? You really want to use like a word processor or an online cloud storage or whatever, where it's all encrypted, as opposed to services that, you know, aren't encrypted on their end. So I do think as you know, people start walking back some of these free services, it's an easier sell to say, hey, give your $10 a month here instead of there. But I think if we start assuming that people self host or at least eat or even pretty early push people in that direction, we're going to lose out on user experience about 95% or more of the time. And so, we're going to lose people in the privacy battle early. I think it's good to make people familiar with the easy route, you know, get people to start using matrix, for example, through something they

don't need to pay for, they don't need to host for, they just become familiar with it. And they already are getting far better privacy because they have encrypted chats and the like, right? And then once people feel comfortable with it, then they'll go through great lengths to make their own user experience better. Maybe like, they'll just want better reliability, or they'll become more comfortable with it and want to make sure that it always works for them. I mean, think about the great lengths people will go to, to continue using something that they prefer to use, so that they don't need to change to something else, as opposed to trying to convince someone to switch, right?

Like, people, like, suppose everybody was using matrix.org today, for their own chat messaging service. And then they're like, well, we're going to close this, but everyone was already familiar with it. You know, people are going to go through far greater lengths to try and self host their own servers at that point, as opposed to getting people to switch initially. So I do think it is important to push as many people as possible into something that competes on user experience first, and then, you know, go through all the intricacies of how do we tweak this to make it better second, because the level of effort is significantly greater in the second case. And I think that if we don't recognize that as much as possible, I think we're, we're actually doing ourselves like a net disservice.

So I weight user experience very, very heavily, and getting people to actually use new systems. There's a lot to get to there. I have a lot of thoughts on those topics. But I'll start with self hosting, and then kind of jump back to regulation. I definitely agree with you. I think that's, it's kind of a focus that I've taken with this podcast to hit the niche of the people that are interested in privacy, but they're not, most of them at least, I'm sure there are people listening who are more advanced and do their own sysadm work and self host. But a lot of the people that I'm hoping are listening are the people who are interested in privacy, but aren't quite there. And I, I think a lot of the privacy education and the privacy content out there pushes people like from zero to 100. That's like, oh, you need to be completely anonymous, you need to, like cease to exist in the in any kind of system, you need to stop using the internet, and it pushes people way too far.

And so they never end up taking a good step down the journey towards privacy. So it's something I'm really trying to find that, that balance of that nuance here and self hosting is a, is a really good point, that it's not necessarily for everyone immediately. It is definitely more for the technically savvy, which isn't everyone. I think even a lot of people who think they're technically savvy when it comes to getting into self hosting, it can be, it can be daunting. And there's definitely the risks that we talked about, also on the podcast about, I mean, losing data or something like that, if you're responsible for everything, rather than some company that you trust or something like that, it can be a, can be a downside. And I think another thing that a lot of people forget is a lot of people do assume that, like, everything needs to be self hosted, or else you're trusting other companies, which is just the worst thing you can possibly do. Or you're trusting someone else with your data, which is just the worst

thing you can possibly do. And I brought this up on Twitter the other day to kind of a bad marketing take that I saw on there. But a lot of tools don't have to be self hosted to be good privacy solutions, or even to be good secure solutions. Because if the tools are built well, they will, they will work with the assumption that you don't trust the person who's actually running the server. And that's why internet encryption can be really important. That's why how a application, especially like chat apps, how they handle metadata. That's why that's so important, because you you shouldn't have to self host to get a reasonable level privacy or reasonable level of security. And so there's a lot of apps out there like Signal, I think is a great example. People kind of freak out about the idea that Signal runs the servers that you chat through. But what a lot of people don't realize is that the chat is encrypted by default, and even Signal themselves, they can't see the chat messages, they also can't

see a lot of the metadata, they can't see who is sending things or where things are going. There's a lot of information that's hidden from them. So even though they're running the central servers, it provides really strong privacy and security to the people chatting on the platform, regardless. And so there's a lot of tools that just if they're done properly, you don't really have to worry about self hosting. Now, having said that, I am a huge advocate of self hosting, I love doing it myself, I host things for other people in the community. I definitely I've written about that quite a bit on my blog. And we talked about it a lot.

30:00 a lot on the podcast. So I definitely do see the value. And for those people who are technically savvy or who have some extra time and just kind of want to play around, there are a lot of great tools that they can self-host. And we've talked about a lot of those in the past, but it's definitely something that, like you said, I think it's not, it shouldn't be your first step. Like start to get your, start to get your feet wet, start to play around with, with privacy tools, security tools, password managers, things like that. Get familiar with those, maybe use a friends self-hosted version. If it's something like matrix get familiar with how the tool works on board people that way, and then focus on self-hosting the future. And once you are proficient with that and you understand how those things work, it can be a really cool way for you to help the people around you is to self-host those tools and let them use the tools that you're self-hosting.

Like the Monero community runs the monero.social matrix server. And so people can join that server. They don't have to worry about hosting it, but they know that the people who are hosting it are if, if they're in the Monero community, they'll know that the people who are hosting it are generally known to be trustworthy, competent. So it gives them a good way to opt out of the normal matrix.org server without just using some random federated server. So people who are more tech savvy can kind of jump into that. Any thoughts around that before I jump into the regulation side?

No, I mean, I totally agree. I think that there's always going to be some type of incentive to self-host. I mean, just, you know, if you're, if you're joining a friend group and you're like, I'm not joining from a standard server. I'm joining from my own server. You know, I'm not joining with an at Gmail address. I'm joining from my own custom domain, right? You just have all these things where, you know, people are going to feel good if they self-host later down the line. And I think letting people realize that later is, you know, almost the later, the better, which, which I know sounds odd because it's definitely better to do those sorts of things, things. But just, I don't know, get it as far out of the user intake process, I would say, as possible is probably good. And make sure that that's something people, you know, don't feel intimidated by. So yeah, it's hard. It's a hard balance because you do still want to say like, yes, you do want to still do this sort of, you know, host all these things if you can,

but also don't put that off, you know, put, put that, um, don't let that put you off from jumping in to begin with because you're going to capture 90% of the privacy benefits to begin with. Right. So yeah, don't let it, don't let it be a roadblock, but definitely understand that it's, it's usually an option when you're using privacy tools. And it's something that there are different people out there putting out educational content, putting out blog posts, putting out videos on how to do it. Um, and something I've mentioned to people on the podcast before is just, if you do go through the process of learning how to self host something and you, you see some issues in the content that's already out there, you see some issues in the guides that are out there, either help the people who make those, fix those issues and make those, those resources a little bit better, or just go ahead and write up your own, share those as, as broadly as you can. So other people can more easily self-host in the future. But yeah, I think don't let it be a roadblock to,

to kind of work on your way down the privacy journey. Um, and then, as for regulation, so this one's definitely, it's always an interesting topic in the privacy space, in the cryptocurrency space. I mean, I really kind of in, in these circles, it can be a lot more of a, a tricky topic, um, because there's a lot more kind of, uh, anarchy or libertarian or crypto anarchy mindsets that a lot of people bring to these things. Um, and I think, uh, like me and you have gone back and forth on this a lot in the past. I know there's been a lot of chats throughout the Monero community about the role that regulation should play and, and how much time and energy and money we should dedicate towards, uh, fighting for pro privacy regulation. And, um, I think my, my kind of overall thought in my personal approach is I definitely see that there can be value in pro privacy regulation.

Um, but I think my general distrust in the, the ability for government to do good enough through that makes it to where I don't view it as something that's important enough for me to focus my time on. Um, but I definitely, I don't take the stance that like anyone fighting for good pro privacy regulation, and I think a caveat is not compromising the tools or services in order to get better regulation. Um, but just fighting for good pro privacy regulation. Um, and kind of on the side or not really on the side, but I guess the core focus of mine is building tools or educating people on how to use tools that negate the need for regulation and not the, again, not that regulation necessarily bad or that it can't bring good or that can't be a good net positive benefit to the space. But I think that to me, it's really important that we build tools that will survive, that will thrive, that can onboard new users, that will protect people's privacy, that will keep people's data secure with or without positive regulation.

Um, so I think those are, those are bigger focuses for me. It's, it's always, it's always a hot topic. Um, and it's one I, I try to keep up with and learn a little bit more about here and there, but it's definitely not a focus for me, but I know you've, you've done a lot of work in that space. And, um, it's been interesting to keep up with and just kind of see your, your focus around that. Yeah. I took for what's with, I a hundred percent agree with you. I think you do need to make sure that these technologies force people's hands, right? Because if you give the option for people to, you know, say, oh, well, there has to be a back door in this, or there has to be this. And if that is able to be enforced, I mean, then you, you failed, right? You, you haven't built resilient technology and you need those sorts of things. Um, so you really need to build technologies that don't allow people to be able to do that sort of thing. I guess very quickly, my, my main point is like, if you did care about preserving the privacy as an individual, would you rather live in the EU or do

you, would you rather live in Australia? Right. And I would prefer for people to live in, in regimes that had strong advocates for privacy and had greater rights for individuals. So I don't think it's something most people need to worry about, but there's a reason why companies go through great lengths to hire lobbyists and the like it's because they get their money's worth. Right. And so it doesn't mean that in the privacy loving space, we need to, you know, pay a bunch of money for things, but it does mean that in my view, I think it's important that if people are willing to like write letters and stuff, the representative saying like, no, this actually is important to me. I, it still is a net positive of, I feel so that's, I guess that's the perspective I'm coming from. Yeah. I think, I think you brought up a really good point there too, that I hadn't thought about as much as like, I still care about the regulation and the place that I live. Obviously I'm in the US and there's a lot of

kind of turmoil about things constantly, especially in the past six months, but I care about that. And like, I definitely see the value and the risk in poor anti-privacy or anti-security or pro-censorship laws, those kinds of things being passed. But at the same time, I want to make sure that we have tools that make it so that even when someone lives in a, in a regime or in a country that has totalitarian authority or that has a terrible, terrible regulation, they still have access to those tools to be able to opt out. So it's definitely, it's an intense crossover. Absolutely. Like it is not a good privacy policy to beg people to not, you know, interfere with your affairs when they have the ability to, right. You need to make it so that they can't. Right. So, um, yeah.

Please don't look at this as usually not going to be a good method of encryption pretty much anywhere you live. Um, so let's, let's shift gears a little bit here. I want to jump into, into Monero a bit. Um, and obviously I'm deep into the Monero community, into the Monero ecosystem. And I've, I've done a lot of work and education around that and, um, learned a lot myself, but for those who are, are less familiar with Monero and, uh, kind of what it does, how it works. Um, would you mind just introing people into, into how Monero works and why it's an important part of your toolkit?

Sure. So Monero is a cryptocurrency that really goes all in on the implementation of privacy. So Monero hides the sender receiver and amount for all transactions, uh, from the public. You can optionally share a separate key out of band. And by that, I mean, not put it on the blockchain, but give it to like a friend privately, and they can then use this to decrypt the information on chain and make sense of it. Um, but by and large Monero transactions hide this information and it's just the case for every single transaction. So, um, Monero is really the only coin where speculators and miners look the same as people who are opting in to use privacy technologies. You know, if you compare that on Bitcoin, where people who do care about privacy are trying to go through these tools and it's usually observable that they are trying to use these privacy tools. So they are standing out.

Um, they look very different than a market maker who is sending coins as fast, you know, as quickly and as cheaply as possible between exchanges and miners who are, you know, as efficiently as possible selling their coins because it's the low margin business. So, or, you know, in theory, in an efficient market, it's a low margin business. So, um, I think Monero really does sort of take the really, you know, really sensible privacy technologies and implement them in ways where people are actually able to take advantage of the privacy benefits. So Monero is, you know, Monero offers privacy to more users, um, than all other cryptocurrencies combined, including, you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Mixed,

40:00 scene and the like. Just because you have all the speculators who typically don't care about privacy, they're all part of the privacy crowd because they all are using fungible money as well. So it makes the group of users quite large and accepts the fact by side effect that most people in the cryptocurrency space are just in there to try and make money. So we use that, we turn it on its head and we say, okay, well, you're going to contribute to everyone's privacy and it works out pretty well. So Monero is one of the most trusted financial tools for sending money, you know, permissionless with substantial privacy. And also it is fungible in the sense that you can receive Monero, send Monero without worrying too much about, you know, what your counterparty is doing.

That's really not the case for every other cryptocurrency out there. And even with Monero, there are some caveats, but we are as close as you can possibly get in that direction at the moment. So it has really captured my interest because I think it's a tool that people are actually using and people are very passionate about maintaining their ability to use this tool at this point. So I think that's just a testament to just how much people actually care about being able to use a tool like Monero is because they actually do care about the privacy and fungibility properties that it brings.

And they do like having this crowd to hide among. So Monero is, you know, sometimes people refer to some coins as quote unquote privacy coins. When people talk about those sorts of things, Monero is really the privacy coin. And we're kind of unapologetic about the fact that it does obfuscate information from the public when you create these transactions, because that's frankly the way it should be in my view and most Monero supporters views. Yeah. And it's, I think the way that I like to describe it to people who maybe aren't as familiar with the cryptocurrency space is that it's the closest thing we have to digital cash. And obviously cash is just a, it's a great way to anonymously pay for things.

But that the drawback is it's physical. There's, there's no way to pay for something online with cash. Maybe you can mail it to the person or that kind of thing, but obviously there's lots of risks involved there and it takes time. But Monero is as close as we, as we can get today to digital cash, which is a tool that I mean, it's really immensely powerful. Yeah, like he doesn't want to use cash. Like you got, everybody wants to use cash, right? And I mean, it's interesting, like, especially for me and my generation, I know that a lot of older people are more familiar with cash and have used it more on a regular basis. I think I, I really never was like that.

And so I didn't really understand how valuable cash was until I got into Monero, which is a really weird way. I don't think many people have kind of come that roundabout way to realize the value of cash. But once I started learning how Monero worked and how it protected my privacy by default and how I could send it to someone and not worry about anything, about people surveilling the chain, about people seeing the person I'm sending money to or how much, anything like that, cash started to make sense to me as a powerful tool as well.

Which was an, it was an interesting roundabout way to come to it. But I'm, I'm glad that there's a tool like Monero so that I can have digital cash today. And, and as we move more and more away from cash focused societies and towards most likely cash-free societies, societies that use either central bank digital currencies or just use kind of regular digital dollars, that kind of thing, tools like Monero are going to be more and more important. I think you bring up a good point though, that I, I, I'm guilty of this where, you know, you're, you're sitting at a store, right?

And do you want to pay in cash and then get all those changed and like pennies that you don't actually want, or at least I don't want them, right? Um, or are you going to pay the same amount with a credit card and get cash back? Right. And most people just think of it that way. I feel, and as a kid, I definitely, and even to some extent now to be completely frank, right? Like, you know, well, yeah, if I'm not going to get a reward in paying in cash, I'm just going to pay on credit card.

Right. And I think that, uh, I don't know, without trying to open the discussion to go through a whole, you know, cash for credit card thing. And if people are going to really defend the right to cash anymore, um, it does make it so that we are able to have a lot of the benefits of cash, um, and bring them into the digital realm where there are just more conveniences. When, you know, sending money digitally, you can send it across the world in a minute, right.

As opposed to just, you know, to someone who's in the physical same location as you. And you still get the same privacy or, you know, similar degrees of privacy. Um, so I hope that it does help move us in the direction of people being more willing to use, uh, you know, uh, privacy or private or privacy preserving technologies, as opposed to just giving it up because of convenience or cash back or whatever it is. Yeah, that's definitely, I'm sure that's a tricky one for a lot of people to get over.

Um, but I've talked about this on Twitter, but for me using Monero to pay for things is incredibly freeing. Um, not, not only because I know that my privacy is preserved, but also just, uh, having that censorship resistance and having the ability to transact without having to worry about a middleman or, uh, just worry about chargebacks or anything like that. There's a lot of power in using it. So I definitely hope that, that more people will start to start to think about financial privacy in a new way.

Um, and, and realize that there are tools out there like Monero that are, are really valuable ways for, for them to protect their, their personal financial privacy. Um, and you mentioned earlier that you've been helping out with Monero since 2015, I think you said, um, but what was it that drew you into, to want to contribute and want to spend so much time working on Monero? Maybe to some extent it was just free time. I don't know. Um, in 2016, so I, I didn't really start contributing in like, uh, you know, written meaningful ways beyond just being a fan probably until 2016.

Um, but in 2016 I had, I had a job that was, uh, not fantastic. I was just working in a warehouse and I, I, you know, was bored most of the day and at home I still had free time. So, um, I spent a lot of the time just wanting to do other things. And so I think to a large extent, it was just, I had free time and was interested in contributing. It was what I thought was cool at the time. Um, I don't, I, I just have always thought it was cool. Like the ability to build like a censorship resistant private money.

I just think was cool. So I guess if I didn't think it was cool, I wouldn't have cared, but it was cool enough. And I had the free time that I just kind of committed to it and, um, never really slowed down. I would say it did help in 2015. I went to a, a Bitcoin meetup in Minneapolis. Um, and I expected no one, this is very shortly after Monero was added to Alpha Bay and Oasis. So, you know, it was, it was a good time to be a Monero community member in some ways, bad time for some optics reasons, but for price reasons too, it was doing really well.

At the time. So I went to a meetup, I expected no one there to know anything about Monero. It was, you know, pretty far down the list on coins, even in 20, even at that time. Um, and there were like five, five people there total, including me. And the other individual there was like very knowledgeable about Monero too. So like, it was just really nice to be able to talk to someone. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this person like knows all the same stuff I do.

They've been following Monero as closely as I have. This is fantastic. So it was a really cool moment that just helped be like, oh yeah, there are other people around. It's not just me. Um, it's not just me and fluffy pony, right? It was probably the only, uh, person who was, uh, uh, like a face at the time in the Monero community. So, um, I don't know. I, I just, I just sort of felt on a personal level that was very important and I thought it was really cool.

I thought I could have a meaningful impact because there weren't a lot of people doing what I want, like a non-development work on Monero. It was really all development work. And I just, I, I just thought it was a good use of my time. I suppose. Yeah. Let's get, let's get into that a little bit more. Something that both you and I have done for a while is, is contributing to Monero and, uh, to other projects in a non-developer way. I mean, I'm not writing code for Monero.

Um, as far as I know you aren't either. What, what ways do you think that people who are not developers can contribute to false projects that they, that they use or, or love? I think false projects really need all the non-developer and developer, of course, but all the non-developer help they can get, whether the maintainers really know it or not, or the community really knows it or not. Right. You ultimately are trying to make tools that people use.

Right. So there's always a need to actually talk to real users. Right. Um, especially when you're talking about something that you want to be widely implemented, if you're making a privacy tool that you want to change the world, because people actually use the privacy tool as opposed to just being like, oh yeah, that's cool. And sure. It's cool for this person, but like, I'm going to keep using something else. I mean, that hasn't exactly changed the world.

It's just made someone have a fun pet project, which is fun. It's fun for the individual's sake, but it's different, right? It's just a different thing. So you do need passionate people who are there championing the project, getting the word out, making videos about how it works and about why you should use it.

50:00 user guides, leaving good reviews, making comments about how you can better improve the user experience. Now, the one thing I will say, and this is increasingly a gripe in the FOSS space, I guess it has been a gripe for a while, is that you have a lot of people that will show up and be like, well, I've used this for one day and I don't like it, or I've used this for one day and I wish it could do this. And they're like, okay, well, how about you help? And they're like, no, sorry, I can't, got to run. So make sure you're not doing just that. Pick out a small project for yourself with very, very achievable goals. It doesn't take much effort of yours, but make sure that it does have a sort of specific lasting impact. Try to make it something more than I'll just start commenting on, or go the step further than just subscribing to someone on YouTube or a subreddit or following someone on Twitter. And do more than just comment there. Start contributing by actually writing a blog post or making a video or, you know, do some more specific tangible thing, I think.

Make that your next goalpost to your goal to get to. And I think you're going to start to see that you really are making a substantially greater impact to the community because you have something that people, like something specific that people can talk about and contribute to or comment about. So I think it really is about making privacy tools have the proper user experience. And that requires users. It requires good user experiences. I noticed Diego, for example, Rarar in the Monero community has been very vocal about why user experience is super, super important. And I think that we do, like the Monero community is lucky to have several designers who are very competent. And I think that, you know, other projects need as many of these as possible. And it's, it really isn't just about the dev work. Like I know it's easy to focus on just, oh, well, we need more dev work for this or for that.

So, um, there are infinitely ways there, there are infinite ways for you to contribute to these projects. You can come out with wonderful ideas out of nowhere. You can really do, you know, do really cool marketing campaigns. We talk about the network effect, right? So make it a camp, you know, there's infinite space for someone to come up with like a, you know, quote unquote viral campaign to get people interested. So, um, you know, you can make a number one, number two movie in the U S about, about a project, right? So it's, um, it's, there, there are always really interesting ways for people to, who are non developers, to contribute. And sometimes they require you to be a little bit more creative. Um, most of the maintainers of these FOSS projects, because they do require coding are going to be the developer types. And so that's what they're going to see as the biggest need, because that's, you know, they're like, I want to work on this project, but I don't have time. So I need someone to work on this, but that's not the only way you can help a project. There are so many different ways out there for people to run meetings or, you know, volunteer their time to specifically show up at certain times.

And oftentimes like the sky really is the limit. And I do encourage people to be very creative and they don't need someone else's permission to be creative. It's, you know, and oftentimes there is no one in the space of being creative and doing, you know, one of these small projects that gets the word out there and just continuing from there. And many times you need to be the first person to do that. But the rewards are usually quite substantial. And people are like you, the listener are listening to this podcast, right? So clearly Seth is doing something right here in terms of, of getting something that people will actually listen to. So go out and get something out there because it does actually matter a lot.

Yeah. And I mean, even like Monero is a comparatively large FOSS community, a pretty large FOSS project compared to a lot of, a lot of the things that are out there. And even in Monero, there are so many ways all the time around the clock that people can and should contribute to the project. I mean, there's, it can be anything from, like you mentioned, it can be, it can be just contributing in chat rooms. Um, like you mentioned, not just naysaying and shooting down ideas or, or saying that all of these things need to be done, but not actually doing them, but, um, being somebody who's consistent and shares good feedback and has good input and can take the next step or, or just, uh, kind of maybe gather ideas and put them down into a better format that people can look at and actually pick things out.

to do themselves. Um, or it could be, you use the software or you use the app or use the tool and you find a bug or an issue. And instead of just complaining about it on Reddit or something, you, you go into GitHub, you open an issue, you put in as much detail as you possibly can. You ask the developers, how else can I provide detail or input? Um, a lot of it can just be that just simply being a, a nice human and interacting well and sharing good detail when necessary. Um, but yeah, I think like you mentioned, just marketing and education are two ways that non-developer types can, can really dive in and do so much good. And that's where I've, I've really seen a lot of, uh, good done in the mineral space and the cryptocurrency space. And in the privacy spaces is people just taking it on themselves to say like, Hey, I'm just a user, but what can I do as a user.

Um, to, to, to help the project or to help the ecosystem as a whole. And a lot of that comes down to making blog posts and just detailing. This is what I'm doing, or this is how I'm using the app. And these are the things that I like and don't like, and the issues that I see. And. And the things that I'm doing to try to help. And a lot of it can just be kind of sharing your thoughts around that and, and helping to educate other people around you on, on how those, those tools work.

Yep. Absolutely. Like, I mean, don't get me wrong. Complaining where it's appropriate to complain is fine as long as you do it in a polite way. But I do encourage everyone to at least pick one project that they're actively working on and are, you know, it's reasonable for them to put it out there that way that they are, you know, putting pen to paper and actually getting something out there that does help everybody. Then you, then, then you sort of are going to be seen as someone who's actually directly contributing with some really cool thing and everyone's going to be better off.

And people are going to be listening to your feedback much more, I would say. Absolutely. So we've, we've chatted about Monero quite a bit and just kind of curious, what are some of the other tools that you use regularly to opt out that you'd recommend listeners to take a look at and why? Sure. So, um, whenever I do any of the like Monero meets or really any recording we have to do, um, I use OBS a lot. We use this for the Monero Conferenco, for example, in order to live stream everything and our live streams were immaculate, right? OBS is to thank for that.

And, and, and, and, and, and, and you know, stuff full extent. I remember a few years ago when, when live streaming was new ish and OBS wasn't widely available or what wasn't really out or people that know about it, there are some combinations of things. And everyone had to use these like proprietary tools that were far worse, but now OBS is just, everyone takes it for granted and it's an open source tool, right? And it's, it's just the best tool available.

So it's fantastic. Um, I use, I personally use key pass XC. I think if there's a single thing that you need to do to improve your privacy, it's not, I mean, I do encourage everyone to, you know, use signal or whatever, but using a password manager should be like literally number one for everybody. I do think that people need to learn as soon as possible, how to make unique passwords, how to record them somewhere and to, you know, take back, you know, allowing everyone access to all their stuff by using weak passwords.

Right. Like the best way to preserve your privacy is to make sure that other people can't just walk in the front door. Um, bit warning is also pretty nice, especially if you work with like a group. Um, I'm on the board of a, a cryptocurrency focused nonprofit called, uh, magic, um, at magic grants.org. But with our board members, we use bit warden and it works pretty well. So, um, that one's also open source. So if you want something that's maybe on the slightly easier to use side, bit warden's good, but I don't think key pass XC.

It's difficult. And you just put that in like your Nextcloud or something and you can then access it on your phone or whatever. Like it, it actually syncs far better than most people think at this point. So I do, you know, if you're not using a password manager, do use a password manager. And my friend was talking about how last week, um, how his access to last pass was down as a lot of the internet sites went down. Um, so definitely, you know, speaks to the importance of having an offline copy.

I'm going to have a copy of that too with the, you know, FOSS project. It isn't entirely web-based. Um, I've recently become a huge fan of matrix. I use matrix first in like early 2017, I would say. And it was really not my favorite. Um, at the time I did like that. I use it at the time just as a bridge to IRC because I don't want to use IRC because I only started using IRC because of Monero. Um, but now it, it really is a competitive software. I, I am a big fan of element and, and matrix.

I think it is fantastic. I encourage everybody to use it. Um, and I still do encourage for people you already are willing to share your phone number with signals. Fantastic. Um, I've used three month for a few years. I think that it was ahead of its time and like 2016 and user experience, but I think now it's kind of the same as everything else. so I don't know if there's a

1:00:00 huge reason to use Threema anymore over Matrix, but it's cool to use if you have other friends that use it. For Monero Space, we use Flarem for our forum software. I think that's pretty cool. That's not something that most people are going to self-host, but I think it is pretty cool. An example of where you're looking around, you're like, hey, we have this forum of people who talk about Monero stuff. Is there a way that we can not be entirely reliant on Reddit, for example, for hosting these sorts of things? Nextcloud is an example of if you can get that, you definitely should do that. I'm sure there are some paid services out there that will host Nextcloud for you. It's going to be better for you to encrypt and use Nextcloud than to use any of the main providers if you can help it. Then going back to the whole using a paid service that respects your privacy is better than using a paid service that isn't respecting your privacy.

I know this isn't exactly a FOSS tool, but it is a tool that helps you opt out. Using ProtonMail and their paid service is still probably better than using a big company's paid service. I do encourage everyone to just think, was FOSS an option today? Was there a FOSS tool you could have tried to use and would it have worked? I think just having that mindset is useful, but start with the basics. Use key pass or Bitwarden and use matrix and OBS and signal on the basics.

Sadly, I don't really have a wonderful out of left field tool to recommend to people. I still think most people need to start with the basics. If they already have done the basics, they already have a good mindset to look at other stuff. Yeah. I think there's going to be a lot of crossover between the different tools that people recommend to opt out. But I think there's a lot of value in people seeing that guests from all different walks of life and all different communities are all choosing to use these same tools. That probably says a lot about the tool itself. And a really quick note on ProtonMail. So the apps themselves are open source and there is a free version. So it does technically count as FOSS.

But you can pay. I pay. And I know a lot of other people who use ProtonMail do pay for the more advanced features. But there's a free option. That makes it similar to Google then where you can get your free Gmail, but you got to pay for like extra storage or like them to not be annoying all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Except with ProtonMail, you're not paying with your data. If you use the free option, you just, if you do use the free option, you're essentially piggybacking off of the people who are choosing to pay. Which there's not anything wrong with that if you can't pay or don't want to for some reason. But I think there's a lot of value in paying for the good privacy preserving open source tools that are out there and supporting the companies that are behind them. They're valuable. And if they don't have money, they're probably going to cease to stick around.

Yeah. Think about how much you're already paying for like office or whatever else. So yeah, absolutely. And last question I had for you is what advice would you give to someone who's just starting to realize the need for personal privacy? I guess I don't have anything unique here. I would just say everybody needs to start somewhere, start with the basics and start asking questions. And I guess do talk to friends and see like if they would be okay switching to something like Signal even instead of like, I know most of people use Snapchat or Facebook Messenger or whatever. Like why? Why do they use that? Right? Just be like, hey, can you use this? Or maybe iMessage. That actually is what everybody uses. At least a lot of people I know that use iMessage, which is still better than a lot of the others. But I would just say, just start with the basics and start asking questions about what you're sharing, like what data you're sharing and why. And if you don't like, there usually are better privacy preserving ways to do

the same exact thing that you're doing. For example, you can still use a credit card without, I mean, sure, you're not going to have nearly as good privacy as if you're using cash or if you're using Monero, but you can still call and opt out from them sharing it, so on and so forth. And then when they inevitably do still share it, so on and so forth, then you would potentially be able to at least get money from that, right? Because they're still going to screw up, I assume. But just be privacy minded and start with the basics and be open to trying new privacy tools and to give them a shot. Because most of the time, you're going to actually have a pretty good user experience. So if you are willing to be the type of user who's willing to give these things a shot and switch over, do explain to users what advantages that these have, not just on the privacy front, but to be like, hey, I use this tool because it's better in these ways. Oh, and it's also privacy preserving. Make sure you have some other besides

privacy reason to get most other users captured in, I would say. But sorry, I obviously went a little off in the one direction there. But it's okay to start somewhere and just do what you can to get your friends interested. And I know that there are so many ways you can contribute to privacy preserving projects that don't require you to be a developer or anything. It's about picking a small project about something you care about, and writing about it, whatever it is for you to empower it is fantastic for everybody involved. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Justin. It was great to be able to sit down and record this for the listeners and just hear a little bit more about your thoughts behind privacy in general. A lot of stuff that I didn't even know, even though we've been chatting back and forth for a good long while now. So thanks again for coming on. And where's the best place for listeners to find more about you or communicate with you in the future? Yeah, so you can, my email

is justin@erinhofer.org. You're gonna have to look at the show notes about how to spell that, I'm just assuming. But that'll be there. My Threma and Matrix are on my Twitter bio, at least at the time of the episode. My matrix is SGP underscore colon Monero dot social. Or you can just search Justin and you'll find me. So yeah, you can, I have taken the sacrifice to install all these apps on, you know, so I'm reachable through 3000 different means. So you can use whatever tool you prefer, and I will still probably be able to receive it. So, you know, or you can ask Seth and he'll put me in. I'm sure that he would direct it my way. Awesome. Well, yeah, that's how I feel too. Every time I say how people can reach out to me, I just point him to the page that's on my blog, because there's just too many methods at this point.

It's too many to list. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on again, Justin. Yeah, thanks, Seth. You're a fantastic contributor in the FOSS privacy and Monero spaces. So this is a lot of fun. Glad to be able to do it. Thanks for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of Opt Out. If you did, please take a moment and subscribe to the podcast. Or if you're already subscribed, share it with one friend or family member this week. As always, you can check out the links to Justin's content and contact info, as well as links to all of the tools we discussed in today's episode. Now get out there and opt out this week.

While it's not necessarily a tool for privacy as much as security, this week's project to help you opt out is Bitwarden, an open source password manager. Bitwarden greatly simplifies the process of keeping passwords unique and up to date across all of your accounts and identities online with excellent cross-platform apps and browser plugins to make saving and autofilling credentials very straightforward. I hope many of you are already using a password manager, but if not, or if you're using something else, I'd highly recommend taking a look at Bitwarden. For those who are a bit more advanced, you can also run the backend server yourself, something that I'll link to in the show notes.