Inside the Data Broker Industry: Privacy Risks and Realities

In this episode of Unspoken Security, host AJ Nash dives into the shadowy world of data brokers with guest Lawrence Gentilello, CEO of Optery. They begin by exploring what data brokers are, revealing how these companies collect, buy, and sell personal information—from dating app details to home addresses—to virtually anyone with a credit card. The conversation sheds light on the breadth of the industry and its impact on individual privacy, especially in the context of emerging technologies.

Lawrence discusses the challenges of protecting personal data, detailing common security risks posed by apps, social media, and open web data. The episode emphasizes the need for proactive steps, like using password managers, enabling multi-factor authentication, and reducing one’s digital footprint to minimize exposure to these vast data exchanges.

In the final segment, AJ and Lawrence address legislative measures around data privacy, including state-level laws and the evolving role of AI in data brokering. Lawrence shares how Optery’s automated data removal service helps individuals regain control over their personal information, reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing digital security. This episode is essential listening for anyone looking to better understand data privacy and protect their personal information.

Transcript

Inside the Data Broker Industry: Privacy, Risks, and Realities

Lawrence Gentilello: [00:00:00] If you're looking for extreme privacy and security, there's a lot of costs and the cost really is just time.

It's just very, it's a lot of work. It's like why we have big cybersecurity teams because it takes a lot of effort, a lot of expertise. Um, but something is better than nothing and you kind of can just start somewhere and get better and better at it. But I think there's just a lot of the typical things that you would look online and do some kind of like basic research, like ways to protect yourself.

I think 1 to start with is just like, the is just don't recycle passwords, you know, and use a password manager. And don't make it so that you're using the same password for 50 different websites and you can find one of those in a breach and then they can log into your LinkedIn and your Facebook and your bank, etc

AJ Nash: [00:01:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of Unspoken Security. I'm your host, AJ Nash. I've spent 19 years in the intelligence community, mostly at NSA. I've been building and maturing intelligence programs in the private sector for about eight years. I'm passionate about intelligence, security, public speaking, mentoring, and teaching.

I also have a master's degree in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University. Go Zags! And I continue to be deeply committed to servant leadership. This podcast brings all of these elements together with some incredible guests to have authentic, unfiltered conversations on a wide range of challenging topics.

This is not going to be the typical polished [00:02:00] podcast. My dog makes occasional appearances. She's, she's not around today, I don't think. Who knows how the day goes. People argue, we debate, we can even swear here. I'm certainly going to do my fair share. I'm sure. Uh, and that's all okay. Uh, think of this podcast more like a conversation you'd overhear at a bar after a long day at one of the larger cybersecurity conferences that most of us go to, these are the conversations we usually have when nobody's listening.

Now, today I'm joined by Lawrence Gentilello, founder and CEO of Optery. Optery is a company that automatically removes customer data from hundreds of data brokers, posting and selling your information online. Lawrence presented Optery at TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield in 2022 and as a finalist at South by Southwest Pitch in 2023.

Hundreds of thousands of people use Optery to prevent attacks and keep their personal information off the internet. Prior to founding Optery, Lawrence led Accenture's data management platforms practice in North America. And prior to that, he was Product Management and Technical Consulting Leader at Oracle and BlueKai, who was acquired by Oracle.

So, this is Gary's background, or this is, uh, I apologize, this is [00:03:00] Lawrence's background. I'm off to a great start this morning. So this is Lawrence's background. Uh, this is what he knows best, and all of us are affected, in my opinion, uh, by data brokers, whether we know it or not. That being said, Lawrence, anything you want to add to your profile that I missed?

Lawrence No, I think that's great. Um, I think you captured it. Well, I think just maybe on a personal level. I live in the San Francisco Bay area, uh, in the East Bay for those that are familiar with it. And, uh, really excited to talk today. Thanks for the generous intro.

AJ: Yeah, absolutely not. Thanks for coming on. I mean, I this is a really interesting topic. I think most people, frankly, maybe all people, but most people are affected by data brokers, whether they know it or not. You know, if you're getting spam emails, if you're getting spam text messages, it If you're getting almost anything sent to you that you don't want, there's a good chance there's a data broker involved at some point, um, you know, above and beyond that, there's obviously a lot of criminal activity that's tied to a lot of these things.

Right? So I think it's important to talk, to make sure everybody understands who we, who we're talking about when we say data brokers, you know, whether these are, we're talking [00:04:00] about criminals or we're talking about something that's legal. So, you know, I think, you know, Talking to you as an expert, Lawrence, I think the easiest question to open with that everybody should be on the same page is what are data brokers when we talk about them, you know, what are we saying and why do we care?

Why should we care about these data brokers?

Lawrence Yeah, definitely a great question to kind of start off the conversation. Yeah. So the data broker industry is vast, uh, tens of billions of dollars change hands, uh, by, uh, the, the buying and selling of consumers data, uh, by data brokers. And data brokers as defined are companies that buy and sell people's information that they don't have a direct relationship with.

So for example, a lot of, uh, online dating apps are data brokers, uh, sorry, data sellers. And they might sell the information that they have about the people that sign up for their free dating apps. And then data brokers buy that information and sell it. So the data broker is the one that buys the information for the data dating apps.

And they might sell it to, uh, an e commerce company that [00:05:00] might be looking to sell you a new clothes because you, they know you're in the market for dating and they want to send you, sell you more, more stylish clothes, or maybe, uh, for gym memberships to say, okay, this person is, um, actively dating. And so they might be interested in.

Staying physically fit. So the data broker would purchase information from the dating app, and then it would sell it to typically marketers. But the data broker industry goes beyond just marketing, although that's probably like the core of what it is. Data brokers sell data to politicians for their, for their, uh, political campaigns, um, for analytics and all types of things for like everything out of the sun.

Uh, but that's what data brokers are, is companies that sell, uh, information that they don't have a direct relationship with.

AJ: So it's interesting. So you mentioned dating, uh, dating profiles, right? So, um, and you know, I, I think we've all probably heard this at some point, at least a lot of people have. Right. If something's free, it's probably not free, right? Uh, you know, the old story with, with apps, with software, you know, with any sort of thing is if, if the product is free, then you're the product, uh, you know, whether it's social, a lot of it, social media [00:06:00] platforms, right.

Facebook's free and Twitter used to be free. Now, I guess it is to a point, but they've changed their policies a bit. But, uh, if, if it's free, it's because they're getting something else, right? They're either, it's either to build a, uh, a base so they can advertise, uh, and, or it's to. Buy, sell, trade, use your data.

So, uh, but it's interesting. You talk about dating websites. I'm not sure a lot of people think too much about that, you know, and, and you already made some connections that are, are actually a little more advanced in that it's not just about buying the, the user information from the, from the website. But what it can be turned into, you know, not, it's not just about spam on, on irrelevant things.

But again, if somebody is dating, if they have a new profile, you know, yeah, they probably want to look and feel better. Right. And they're going to work out. They're going to, they're going to wear new clothes. They're going to, I don't know, buy a new car maybe, or perfume or whatever it is that's going to make them more attractive.

Right. That's the idea. So, um, you know, it's, it's interesting. So, but if I'm hearing you correctly, what you're saying is all these companies, all these platforms. Uh, that are building, you know, environments for us to join to be communities. Um, they're not necessarily the ones that are the direct sellers. It sounds like the data [00:07:00] brokers, if I'm hearing you correctly, they're getting the data from all of these different platforms and then they're correlating that into one larger database, which it seems like could make all sorts of interesting connections then.

So it's, it's, I've got a new job. Uh, I've got a new relationship or I'm thinking of starting one. Maybe I'm ending a relationship or getting divorced or I'm moving. There's a whole lot of, uh, pattern of life. We used to say in the Intel community, there's a lot of pattern of life you can develop if you have all of this different data.

Uh, you know, that's, that's correlated. Uh, is that something also that data brokers are involved in when they're selling or they're just selling credentials and, you know, uh, usernames and some basic things where they selling these more advanced correlated, uh, data sets.

Lawrence Yeah, it's really everything under the sun. Data brokers themselves get a lot of their data from public records databases. So real estate transactions, uh, where somebody lives or whether or not they own a home, the value of that home. Is that home worth 200, 000? Is it worth 500, 000? 2 million. Is it worth 20 million with zip code?

Do you live in, do you live in a zip code? That is, um, you know, [00:08:00] maybe primarily families. Is it primarily retirees? Is it, you know, young urban professionals, et cetera. Um, so real, real estate, uh, and public records databases is one big, uh, input to data broker datasets. Other one is just what's available on the open web.

So us, you know, one of the things that we can do for ourselves to protect ourselves is. To limit the amount of information that's just sort of like publicly out there on the open web. If it's on the open web, you can kind of just consider it fair game for data brokers to scrape and collect most people leave their LinkedIn profiles.

For example, just open. They have the where anybody even without a LinkedIn profile can find out where you work and where you used to work and what your title is. Data brokers are constantly hoovering up that information, um, they're hoovering up pictures that might be on the public open web, um, so just kind of like open web stuff, stuff that maybe other people posted about you, and maybe stuff that you've posted yourself, typically through social media.

Another big source is like, we talked about the dating apps, but like, A lot of the apps that are popular in app stores and that we [00:09:00] use in our phones are common sources of data. So, um, even like a lot of the weather apps that like the fancy flashlight apps on your phone. Oftentimes they're selling what your location is so they you have that flashlight app on your phone that you download.

That does not native onto your phone. Um, they will be looking at your GPS coordinates and sending that out. To somebody and they're going to know they're going to match that up to which stores that you enter. Did you enter a Volvo dealership, a Toyota dealership, a Honda dealership? That information, you know, gets sold by data brokers that specialize in location data.

Those are a few examples that the list is vast. It's just, it's kind of touches every aspect of our lives.

AJ: And, and this is legal, right? I mean, data brokering is a legal business. You can acquire this information from the apps. And I think a lot of people don't realize, you know, you mentioned the flashlights, a good example, right? I think most people don't realize how many apps are on their phone. First of all, how many they just downloaded, right?

We get lots of [00:10:00] free apps and what the terms are that go with those apps, right? There's so many apps and you go back and look, and I've had previous conversations, uh, here and other places where I've said, you got to go back and check. The, the permissions you've given when you've downloaded an app, cause you'll find out there's an app like a flashlight.

Okay. I want a flashlight app because I want to be able to see better. I guess it doesn't need to have access to my pictures or my contact information or my geo, you know, uh, geo, uh, positioning, right. It doesn't need access to these things. I just wanted to turn on and show something in a different color.

Uh, I guess, I don't know. I don't actually have one of these, but it's, it's interesting. I think people don't realize when they download things, how much How much security, how much privacy they just give away. Like they just, they just, they don't read the terms. They just click things and get whatever it is they want.

And then this is all again, perfectly legal, right? These companies are able to pull this stuff together and then sell it to. Now, here's the question. Do they sell it to just anybody? Like, can anybody walk in and buy it? Do I have to have a license? Do I have to have proof I'm a valid business? Can anybody get ahold of a data broker and just be like, Hey, I want to buy, you know, all the data on an individual or a [00:11:00] group of individuals or geography.

I mean, how does that work?

Lawrence Yeah, pretty much anybody can buy this data. There's been some laws recently, I think, that are restricting. The sale of information on people in the military and the people in the government, because there was certainly some examples where, you know, nation states are just sort of buying up lists of people and information on people that are in the military.

I don't know if that's passed or not, but I think there was a law that was somewhat recently passed that restricted the sale of that information. But everything else, it's like pretty, pretty much just like open for business. Um, one of the, there's a lot of different categories of data brokers. Um, one of the ways that we categorize data brokers is, is people search sites.

So people search sites are like, if you, um, you know, uh, perform a, uh, uh, a search engine search for someone's name and address, you might be able to see, okay, there's a profile about them. It's got their home address. It's got their Family members names and maybe some like information about them. Um, some of the big names [00:12:00] there is like instant checkmate, white pages.

com, Spokio, SpyDialer. Um, stuff like that. Those companies, you just can go and buy background kind of reports on anybody. There's no restriction. You have a credit card. You have a PayPal account. They'll sell it to you. It doesn't matter where you where you live and who you are. Um, so there's that. And then there's a big category is, you know, we refer to as B2B prospecting databases.

So this would be like ZoomInfo, Apollo, Rocketreach, Clearbit, ContactOut. Um, and the, that data is typically used for, um, cold outbound email campaigns and like text message and phone campaigns. So typically you have a lot of B2B SaaS vendors that buy, you know, lists of cybersecurity decision makers, or maybe Like, um, you know, I T decision makers and HR professionals and then they'll, you know, queue up, you know, a list of 400, 000 people and batch and blast them into email sequences.

Again, there's no restrictions on who can buy that information. A lot of [00:13:00] those companies have free tiers where you can get like your first hundred contacts for free. Really just anybody can get them and you can just sort of like create an account and just sort of use the free tier and really just anybody in the world can do that.

Again, I do believe there's now being some restrictions put in place for military and public officials, but, uh, Probably pretty easy to script those things, uh, if you wanted to.

AJ: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm familiar with some of the websites you mentioned. Listen, there's valid reasons for these websites to, you know, uh, people use them. Skip tracers, uh, certainly use them. Some people who are bill collectors, people who are tracking down, you know, legal bounty hunters, you know, skip tracing, uh, it's, it's a valid set of databases that's needed.

Right. I do a lot of OSINT work. A lot of Intel folks do. Um, and so I, I. You know, I admit I've got accounts at a couple of these websites you mentioned. So I'm familiar with that and they're very, very useful. They're also, frankly, in the private world, kind of useful. If your friend is dating some new person, it's nice to go do a little background information and check on them and see, you know, if they have a criminal record or, or if they are who they say they are, if they live what they say [00:14:00] they live, if they're married, those kinds of things.

Um, so there's valid uses for these, but you know, it does open up for a lot of abuse. And, and I think it's a thing people need to understand is just how, how readily available this data is and that it's legal. Um, and a lot of it is because. We're the ones as consumers who are making this happen, right?

We're, we're giving our information away. Now, as you said, you know, LinkedIn profile open to everybody, which mine is too, and sort of has to be, it's the whole point of networking is you have to be open to people. If you're only networking with people, you already know, it's very hard to create a larger network.

Uh, but then you got to be careful on what you're posting, uh, and all their social media, whether it's Facebook or Twitter, or, you know, take your pick and certainly the dating sites. So, uh, I think it's interesting that this is such a vast. Industry. That has spawned another industry, right? I mean, industry where you exist, where Optery is, right?

So there's so much of this going on that now we have a whole nother industry that's combating the problem, uh, that, that grew out of this, you know, this ability to collect all this information, um, and, and sell it and, and, and make money off of it and possibly put people at risk. So with that in mind, you know, you've been doing this for a while now.

What do you [00:15:00] see as growing trends or the threats in this space? Now we know this is legal. We know that people can pull this stuff together. Um, and as you said, there's, there's some laws in place maybe to try to protect. A segment at least of society, government officials, military, whether that's a factor or not hard to say, but what do you see as growing trends and threats you know, in this space, when it comes to personal information being collected and consolidated and sold and used.

Lawrence Yeah, definitely. And even, um, just to respond quickly to something that you mentioned is that by and large, this is legal. And data that data brokers sell provide a tremendous amount of liquidity into our economy and our society. So, uh, Some data brokers are, uh, the credit, uh, uh, um, the credit bureaus like TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.

They, they sell, buy and sell data that we don't give to them directly, but they help you where if you're going to buy a car and you need a loan and you can, you know, they'll be able to provide a credit score if you need to take a credit card, you need to purchase a home. So there's a lot of liquidity that these, that these data brokers provide.

Also, you mentioned, you know, real estate, uh, [00:16:00] you know, um, Landlords often will use them to say, hey, is this is this person that, you know, a kind of about this person before I rent rent a home to them. So, there's, there's definitely a lot of value that they provide into the system. And I think that's 1 of the reasons that it's been really challenging to get federal privacy laws passed.

And even, like, the laws that we have at the state level are often a little bit watered down because I think politicians are a little bit worried and scared that it will seize up, you know, Pieces of the economy. If those data sets just go away. But to your question around the trends, I think one of the big things, and actually, so when I started OP3, With my co-founders in 2020.

Um, that was when California had just, um, the California Consumer Privacy Act, which was the first US, uh, consumer privacy law that went into effect. Now we have, I think like around 10 that are in effect. Texas has a law, Oregon has a law, Connecticut, Colorado, Utah, you know, and, and a few others. Um, which is really exciting for us and just like [00:17:00] for me personally.

But at the time, uh, that was really groundbreaking and, and kind of like, uh. You know, really revolutionary that California passed the law. And one of the biggest trends I think today is kind of like the haves and the have nots in the world of privacy rights. There's become a divide in this country of who has rights to privacy and who does not.

So if you live in one of the approximately 10 states that has a privacy law, you actually do have tangible rights, rights to tell a company, delete my data, do not sell my data. But if you do not live in a state that has a privacy law, you literally have no rights. And so we, when we, um, submit opt out and data deletion and data removal requests for our customers, the effectiveness of our requests is much higher.

When our customers live in in those states that have privacy laws, and it's a little bit lower in for our customers that don't live in states without privacy laws. So there's definitely a divide that is happening. [00:18:00] And as the pressure has been put more, um, firmly on data brokers, they're now kind of, um, treating people differently based on what state they live in.

And so you have all these different divides in societies. And this is a divide that is really happening here in the United States, is if there's a privacy law that you have backed by or not. That's one I'll just pause there, but that's one,

AJ: Well, I mean, I think, I think it's interesting, you know, it's, it's one of the challenges we have in the country about a lot of laws, right? Is, is the difference of federal law and, and state protections, right? So I know it's a big in the news right now over a whole lot of other issues as to, you know, one states have different laws in other states.

And, and we'll save that for a different conversation. I don't want to 

Lawrence Yeah, 

AJ: but I do think it's interesting that, that As consumers, that means we have to know the laws in our own states. You know, uh, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, uh, personal responsibility. Uh, that gets put on this. It sounds like you need to know what companies can and can't do with your data.

I'm assuming you want to protect yourself, I guess. And, you know, put in the effort is understanding what companies can and can't do with our data. And it is different by [00:19:00] state. And, and listen, I'm gonna be honest. I live in Minnesota. I have no idea right now having this conversation today. I have no idea what laws we have on the books.

Uh, I'll, I'll probably be reading up on this now afterwards. Um, I know earlier this year, and I imagine you know about this. I don't mean to put you on the spot. We didn't talk about it in preparation, but I know there had been a protecting America's data from foreign adversaries act, right? Uh, that was signed into law earlier this year, right?

Uh, President Biden signed something in January. April, it sounds like, um, that was supposed to take effect in June. How does that work in all of this? Assuming you're very familiar with one. If you're not, I apologize. And I'll probably just cut this out at that point. So nobody knows, but is this a law that, that protects us better since it is at the federal level or is there a lot more work still beyond that?

Lawrence I don't know the details, but I think that's the law that I was referring to that protects people in the military. So I think that that is like, intended for, you know, foreign adversaries from easily just purchasing information on our [00:20:00] military personnel. I think that's what it is. I'm not 100 percent positive.

AJ: Okay. I, um, I listen, I'm cheating for anybody who's not watching. If you're watching, you're probably seeing it. If you're listening, you're not, I'm cheating. I'm actually Googling this. This is something I've said I would do in the show and I rarely do it. Uh, but this is such an interesting topic that I wanted to Google this one.

Um, so I'm actually going to read a bit, a bit of it, uh, it's, uh, PADFA, the Protecting Americans, what does it say now? I've already lost track, Protecting Americans Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024, the PADFA Act, for anybody who wants to know. So, according to this, actually, this is a little more protection, theoretically, the Act establishes new restrictions as unfair or deceptive acts regulated by the FTC on transfers of certain personally identifiable persons.

Uh, sensitive data to foreign adversary countries. Um, apparently it seems to protect all Americans. In this case, it says, uh, Padfoot prohibits data brokers to sell, license, rent, trade, transfer, release, disclose, provide access to, or otherwise make available PII. Uh, personally identified a diaphragm sensible.

Personally identifiable sensitive data of a U S individual to any foreign adversary country or any entity controlled by a [00:21:00] foreign adversary country. Now the countries listed here are just China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. So it is still somewhat limited. Um, so that's, I, this sounds like good news in that at least the government is looking, it's a segment, right?

It's a very small piece. This was signed in June that says these data brokers can't sell any Americans information to these four nations. Now. I assume there's third party cutouts. There's a whole lot of ways still to get around this. Uh, but at least there's some encouraging information that the federal government is looking at this, but it still sounds like from what you're saying, there's a long way to go.

States have their own laws and we probably have to get ourselves smart on this, uh, because the government is, is trying to catch up. It doesn't sound like we're, we're there yet, uh, from what I'm seeing. So, um, anyway, that's a new law. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. Um, and

Lawrence that's great. I

think, uh, yeah, it's probably mixing it up with with a different law, but that's great to hear. Okay. Yeah. And

AJ: And I'll look up the other one too.

Lawrence yeah, yeah, that's about Minnesota. So, Minnesota, I believe that law has passed, but it doesn't go into effect in July of 2025. So, usually the law passes, and then they give day brokers [00:22:00] a year, 6 months, 18 months, 2 years.

So you kind of get their affairs in order for that state and to start to comply. So. In I think it was in July of this year, 2024, Texas and Oregon went into effect. I think just this month, Montana went into effect. Maybe that was last month in September. It was either last month or this month. And, uh, there's a bunch of more States that go into effect next year.

Minnesota, I believe is, uh, July of next year. So there's a big backlog that I've done them every few months, more and more go live.

AJ: Is there, as we're going down this, this rabbit hole a little bit, do you know, offhand, and again, if you don't, uh, it sounds like we have to do our own research as consumers. So I'm just curious, like, is there a database that's helping right now and say, Hey, here's the laws by state or are you guys, are you having to piecemeal this stuff together?

I mean, maybe you guys wrote a blog on it. I know it's your business, but is there a place where I could go and say, okay, let me look up the laws for my state, or do I actually have to go Google each state, you know, and find it out for myself?

Lawrence Yeah, it's a great question. And this is one of the challenges for consumers for businesses really for everybody is that we have a patchwork of [00:23:00] state privacy laws. We don't have anything consistent at the federal level. And the place that I go to, I have a page bookmarked, um, Uh, at, on the, the ia PPS website is the US State Privacy Law Legislation tracker.

You could, uh, search for that, uh, on the web and it's got like an up-to-date listing of the different laws that have passed and when they're going into effect, if they haven't gone into effect. And then you can like click on the state and then you could go and get a detail like, what, what's, what's happening in that state?

So that's usually like. My starting place to kind of just get a quick sense. Okay. Like, well, I can't remember is Minnesota live or not. I'll just go there really quickly. And you can get a sent in the also has some PDFs you can download that have these matrix grids that say, you know, have all the different, like, typical attributes of a privacy law and whether or not it's it's valid in that state or not. So that's my go to, but any web search, you'd probably be able to find [00:24:00] some trackers, privacy, a lot of legislation trackers.

AJ: This is actually really good. So, uh, again, I'm taking more advantage of Google today than usual. Uh, I've looked this up while you were talking, the IAPP, and I will. So in our show notes for the show. I'll provide that link, uh, to, to folks who've listened or watched. Uh, so you don't have to go look for it.

It's IAPP. org with a whole bunch of words after it. Don't worry. Uh, but I will actually drop this link. And I think this is really interesting because it does have this chart and I'm looking through it and like Minnesota's is HF 4757, I guess, is the law going into effect here, July, 2025, for instance. So, um, really interesting stuff.

I'm going to, uh, I'll add this link into our show notes for this episode. Uh, so people can have that because it is. Difficult, isn't this? It's hard to keep track of these laws, and it's important that we know how to protect ourselves. So, um, so thanks. I was a little detour. We didn't plan for an advance. So I put Lawrence on the spot.

But, uh, you know, as as any expert would, he did a great job, obviously. And thanks for helping us with that. So, uh, So finishing up where we were, because I've sort of derailed a little bit to talk about the laws, but the, the trends that we're seeing, right, with these, these attackers in these groups, uh, is there anything more you wanted to [00:25:00] add to that as far as, you know, things that we're seeing that are, are most dangerous, you know, things, you know, generative AI getting involved in some of this stuff and some of the other things that, that we should be knowing about, even if we can't do anything about it necessarily, but things we need to be aware of, of how this data is being used and, and what you're seeing as trends, or even what you're seeing as potential things that you're looking for on the horizon that maybe haven't happened quite yet.

Lawrence Yeah, definitely. I mean, you, you know, in today's day and age, you, uh, there's always like, what's the AI angle, right? Like what's the AI angle here. And certainly like there's an AI angle here. Um, and that's a big trend. Um, one is the use of AI by data brokers. So, um, data brokers are almost by definition, typically pretty innovative in terms of their handling.

Data sets with hundreds of millions of people. And then, you know, each of those individuals, they might have, uh, dozens or hundreds or even thousands of attributes about those people, you know, maybe past purchases that they've made, um, past places that they've lived people that are associated with. I mean, this just goes on forever.

So, um, data brokers as a, as a kind of a category [00:26:00] are typically pretty skilled with big data and like, large data sets and manipulating and. Um, drawing the kind of insights inferences from data. And so it would only stand to reason that they would begin to leverage the latest technologies in AI. And so definitely, um, one of the things that we're seeing right now is kind of like a new class of data brokers that's emerging, that's kind of like AI native in a way where, um, they're not just sort of like using older kind of just.

Standard database technologies, but they're using AI to, um, determine kind of like the different, um, Likelihoods of things that you might do, like, you know, based on all of this past information about you, like, here's a greater like, likelihoods that you might perform future actions. Also, just kind of the creation of more intelligence, intelligent audience segments, for example, and even just housing.

Um, consumer data in AI systems. So that's like a big, a big factor is kind of like more like AI native data brokers and then just the utilization of AI [00:27:00] technology by data brokers. So that's a, um, a really big trend. That we're, we're seeing. So that's like, okay, pretty, pretty key. Uh, and then the next question is sort of like, well, what, what can you do to protect yourself from that?

And 1 is limiting the amount of information that you kind of like, voluntarily or inadvertently. relinquish out into the world for those companies to potentially use against you by minimizing your online, your digital footprint and being really careful about what apps you install on your, on your phone.

And, you know, just their, your data, um, the data trail that you leave behind. But those would be a couple of big trends that we're seeing.

AJ: Yeah, that's interesting because obviously, as you mentioned, you know, now there isn't a topic that the question is going to be, well, where does AI fit in, right? AI is everywhere. It's everything. It's going to solve problems or cause problems or save the world or ruin the world, depending on who you ask.

And so it all fits in there. But you know, one of the things I'm looking at a lot of times is, is missed this and now information, uh, you know, generative AI, you know, creating false, uh, false personas, false impressions, false [00:28:00] messaging all the way across the board to things like, um, Uh, extortion campaigns and things of that nature, right?

So it would seem to me, uh, the more information you have on somebody, uh, the better profile you can build on them. Uh, the more convincing, uh, scams you're gonna be able to pull, right? Uh, you know, whether it's something as simple as, again, having the right Uh, phishing email or, or, you know, smishing, uh, text message that hits somebody at the right time, the right place, because, you know, they're selling a home or because they're, you know, in a new relationship because they're in a specific town or whatever it might be, but also the more, more nefarious pieces of being able to use information combined with generative AI, uh, for some of the scams, like, uh, phone calls that impersonate a child in danger, um, or, you know, the boss, uh, demanding money or, you know, Or any of these things.

Um, you know, is it reasonable to think that the, the data brokers, uh, unintentionally it's not, it's not their responsibility, but is it reasonable to think that by selling data to anybody, essentially, that they are probably helping criminals, uh, to build better campaigns for these kinds of scams.

Lawrence Yeah, definitely. That's a, another big trend of what you just, you [00:29:00] know, identified is just the increasing sophistication of attackers. Uh, so attackers and attacks are becoming more data driven, uh, so they're utilizing data about individuals to more kind of personalized and customize and And, um, craft attacks to make them more effective.

And so, um, also, I guess the other piece of AI is attackers are using generative AI to impersonate voices, as you mentioned, even like physical attributes and video avatars. Um, and then leveraging data that you might kind of have put out there to, uh, inform the things that your avatar or your, your, your fake voice is saying.

So the sophistication of attackers and leveraging of data is absolutely a huge trend. Uh, I constantly, uh, remind my, my mother, who's not quite as tech savvy to be on the lookout for anything. And I've sent her, I've, Played around with cloning my voice like with an AI tool, [00:30:00] and I've sent her like audio clips to show me like talking and basically saying you might get a phone call from somebody that sounds a lot like me asking you to wire you money, asking you to wire me money because I'm in some kind of a dangerous situation.

Don't do that, you know, right away so that those types of risks and. You know, attackers might start to assemble information like, what are your parents name? What are your kids names? Um, what are images of them? Can we get them on audio? We can clone their voice. And then not only that, but just increasing the scale of the attack.

So, if it's more kind of manual and kludgy, you can only, you can do one of these a day, but with AI and technology, you might be able to do hundreds or thousands of these a day. So it's, uh, you know, our data can be used for us, but it can also be used against us.

AJ: Yeah, it's interesting. You talk about the discussion with your mother. I just recently had a similar conversation with the family. Um, because, because we're seeing this right. And so I've had this [00:31:00] chat about if any of us in the family receive a call from anybody else, you know, in the family, you know, I'm in trouble.

I'm in need, et cetera, you know, to be wary of that. Um, I spoke recently at a conference here in Minneapolis and, uh, and the guest speakers, uh, friends of mine, uh, actually, uh, asked permission because they were going to have a demonstration on generative AI and, and, and some of these things as it, as it applies to physical red teaming.

And they asked permission to, to use me. And I said, sure, go ahead. And remember there's audio and video out there, feel free. Uh, and they put something together and I sat in the back row while they gave their presentation and they had what appeared to be a live phone conversation with me. Uh, they had, and, and they were asking questions.

The AI was answering in my voice. Uh, and had a full conversation going with an AI that was suggesting they were in danger, in trouble, they needed help, et cetera. And I'm in the back row sitting there and I had to, of course, let people know this was not staged. This was not done in advance. I did not record this.

Um, and, and I, to be honest, they didn't put that much effort into it. It wasn't great. It was really sound, I think. Uh, but they said that we didn't put much effort into it. So, um, I recently had this conversation with my own family and said, Hey, listen, we've got to be aware of this. Um, it's [00:32:00] hard because people are going to do this in stressful situations.

We've just had a car accident, we're in jail, you know, things where you just don't want to question. People just want to help them. And in our case, frankly, you know, we're, we've got a family password, basically, um, something that isn't posted anywhere. It's random. And it was like, you know, no matter how horrible the situation is, if the person can't remember the password, we've got to question it.

And I don't know if that's where we can hold up under duress, if I'm being honest, uh, you know, if somebody You know, claim some horrible medical issue, and they can't think straight, and they just need something. I'm not sure if any one of us will honestly hold ourselves accountable to the password, but but it's the only thing I come up with, you know, on short notice to say, Hey, we're going to have something because these things are coming and they're not coming for just the rich and the famous and the most important people.

They're going to come for all of us, right? Um, so I think it's interesting that you mentioned it as having talked to your mother about some of the same things because the less tech savvy. Certainly are going to be less aware of this threat, at least. Um, and I don't know that there's much we can do, but I'm going to ask, I guess, the next question really was to talk about like, all right.

We've talked about the risk. We've talked about the threat. We talked about the fact this is legal, mostly when there's some new laws coming out. [00:33:00] How do people protect themselves against this? Like individuals. I mean, we'll talk about the company you optory. I actually, I'm really interested. I rarely, and people know who watch most of the show.

I rarely talk too much about the company, uh, the employees or the guest works with, but this is an interesting topic. I actually, I'm going to ask a bit about optory specifically, but before we get into that, like individuals, you know, you and I not in tech, our family, our friends. Like, what do we do to, to lower the risk here, lower the threat, to protect ourselves, to help people protect themselves from, you know, having their information out everywhere?

Lawrence Yeah, definitely. And everybody has their own kind of like threat model and risk profile in terms of what they're comfortable with. And maybe just the costs involved with maintaining their privacy and security. If you're looking for extreme privacy and security, there's a lot of costs and the cost really is just time.

It's just very, it's a lot of work. It's like why we have big cybersecurity teams because it takes a lot of effort, a lot of expertise. Um, but something is better than nothing and you kind of can just start somewhere and get better and [00:34:00] better at it. But I think there's just a lot of the typical things that you would look online and do some kind of like basic research, like ways to protect yourself.

I think 1 to start with is just like, the 8020 is just don't recycle passwords, you know, and use a password manager. And don't make it so that you're using the same password for 50 different websites and you can find one of those in a breach and then they can log into your LinkedIn and your Facebook and your bank, etc.

So don't recycle passwords. That's just, you know, it's it's it's funny. It's oftentimes very easy for people to forget that or just to serve like a. Almost like a, a layer of sophistication where there's so many people that don't do that, if they can just do that, they can kind of jump over into a different realm of, of security.

So that's obviously like a, a must. The other one is just MFA and kind of 2FA everywhere, especially with sensitive accounts, anything like banking or financial, financial, uh, related. So those are, that's another big thing to just three of you restricting the information that you're putting out there, [00:35:00] you know, being really cautious about.

Um, keeping, uh, social media profiles closed and, you know, being really cautious about information that you just allow out there, um, on the web, because that is being scraped and crawled and, and hoovered up by, uh, data brokers and nation states, et cetera. So, being really cautious about what you allow out there is big.

Another 1 that's kind of not intuitive is being really careful about the apps that you install on your, on your phone. There's some percentage of them that are, um, you know, that are, have been compromised or that, that are just have bad policies to them. So I, I, the policy I use is just, is the minimum number of apps that possible, like absolute minimum.

Don't just hurt, you know, some new app you hear about, are you really, really confident in that app before you install it? So that's pretty, pretty key to just kind of restricting the amount of information of yours that gets out there. Um, and then, you know, just, um, the business that, that I'm in and our company is in is Is, um, sending opt out requests and data removal requests to data companies.

So this is something that people can do on their own, [00:36:00] or they can use a service like what opt three provides. And so doing it on your own entails kind of like searching for data brokers. And it's going to the bottom of the page and finding the opt out link and then going and usually you're entering your name and your email.

Um, if you're adding the link of where you found yourself on the site, clicking submit, you'll typically get an email verification, kind of some back and forth and there's services out there like ours opt three, which automates that for you. So we have kind of referred to as an automated bot that automatically automatically.

Goes out and submits the opt out requests and handles all all that we cover around 600 data brokers. So a lot of people use us because they say, hey, like, it's just intractable for me to keep track of 600 data brokers and do all this. We do scans, um, we have, uh, like a, like a search engine. It's like a patented search engine where we go.

We search hundreds of data broker websites, and then we have matching algorithms to determine if our customer's there or not. And if our customer is there. We take a screenshot of that, and [00:37:00] then we actually send that to the customer. We typically find 100, 100 exposed profiles just out on the web listing home address, phone number, email address.

You know, family members names, and we do that monthly. So we have these monthly scanning and removals. So every month we go out, we do these crawl scrape scans for attack surface management attack surface intelligence. And then we have this a bot that submits the opt out requests on an ongoing basis. And so.

We, the reports we provide to customers show initially, you know, 120 exposures. And then over time that whittles down to like near zero, um, the platforms are not perfect. You know, it's a constant game of whack a mole and cat and mouse with the data brokers, but they absolutely dramatically reduced the digital footprint of information that's out there by data brokers.

And then the last thing I'll just say about about Optree and just the space is that these companies are not necessarily interchangeable. So, Consumer Reports recently did a study of maybe 7 or 8 companies in our space and Optree was the number 1 [00:38:00] most effective after the end of the 4 month study. We've won the PC mag editor's choice award the last three years in a row as the most outstanding product in the market.

And some of the products, the products, if you look at the consumer report study do almost nothing and others do quite a lot. And so anybody that's looking at this stuff, I wouldn't think that the products out there just sort of like interchangeable, they have dramatically different efficacies.

AJ: Interesting. And so a couple of things I want to dig in on. I mean, first of all, you said there were 600 some odd data brokers out there. Like, I mean, we just, you know, we named off a few as we started talking. Right. You know, a handful of five, six, eight, 10, something like that. 600 data brokers out there. I mean, I had, I, it's a, it's a number that's just.

I mean, it blows my mind. Are these, are these all America based companies? Are these just worldwide companies? I, I, I'm just stunned. There's that many, I guess, like is, how is there a big enough market for 600 companies? That's amazing.

Lawrence Yeah, it's actually, that's even, that's only what we cover. There's actually more. So the, one of the barometers of what's out there is California has something called the California. Privacy Protection Agency, [00:39:00] and they have a list and it's a, it's a data broker registry and by law, data brokers are required to disclose themselves.

And you can find a great thing for show notes is that you can. You know google it in california, uh data

AJ: it up right now. I've got, I've got it right now as we're talking, I'm pulling out, but I'll go in the show notes too.

Lawrence Yeah, I don't know the exact number there off the top of my head right now But but last I checked it was around 500 And so that's 500 data brokers that have gone and disclosed themselves and said hey i'm a data broker I'm selling buying some information on California consumers, so that's sort of like 1 barometer for the number of data brokers that are out there.

Um, that said, a lot of data brokers don't disclose themselves. They're required to, but for the CPA that has limited resources, like, they aren't necessarily taking all of those to task. We cover around 600, but there's probably closer to like 1000 and there's I've certainly seen some lists out there that like have this big long tail where there's even like maybe a couple thousand.

Some of them are really small kind of [00:40:00] like, um, operations. Others. It kind of depends on how you. define it. Some people might classify that dating site that's selling your information as a data broker, but others might not because they have a direct relationship with you. Um, and so in any case, we're constantly increasing the number that we cover.

And this is like one of the things that we do. We have a team of people. It's like we call it our testing team, and they're constantly testing. New data brokers, scouring the web for data brokers. A lot of our customers submit them. So we have something called customer removals, which basically says if you're a customer and you find a data broker that we don't cover, you can submit that to us, we'll make a best effort to remove you from there and that's how we.

Kind of like do the testing to productize new data brokers. So we start getting the same data broker requested by a few people. We say, okay, well, let's get that productized and cover it standard. Um, we probably would feel, um, really good. Once we hit like a thousand, I was like, we're really comprehensive, but even at 600, that's quite, um, quite a lot.[00:41:00] 

AJ: Yeah, it's amazing. I just pulled that database from California by the 550 as of today, uh, is what their database is showing. You can download a CSV file, a spreadsheet. Um, so yeah, that's a link I'll also provide and show notes. That's really interesting. I think this is, we have a lot of interesting discussions around here about different topics, but this is one that seems to require the most self service from, from consumers, frankly.

So I think it's, it's, uh, It's going to require more links than I normally don't provide a lot of this stuff, frankly, and showing us because I'm sort of lazy, but, uh, but in this case, I think, I think we need it. I think there's a lot here and that people are going to have to prepare themselves. So a couple of things you had mentioned that I wanted to dig in on MFA and 2FA for those who don't know multifactor authentication, two factor authentication.

Um, you know, everybody should be using that almost everywhere, whether it's a text message, whether it's a two factor authentication app, um, you know, an email texting emails are less secure for those who are aware. I'm sure, you know, but it's better than nothing. And for some people, that's all people have now, but you also mentioned password managers.

And this year I've been getting a lot of flack. A lot of people saying, well, yeah. You know, password managers have been hacked. They're not [00:42:00] safe either. Um, listen, I, I use a password manager. Uh, you know, I still do. It's actually one of the more popular ones that also showed up. The news is having been attacked.

Um, it's, they're, they're pretty good tools overall, especially if you want to have very complicated passwords. Um, and one thing I, uh, We've all been told, you know, randomize your passwords. Don't use the same one over and over again, which is really valuable, by the way, somebody would spend a lot of time, you know, watching cyber criminals operate, uh, it's amazing how often somebody has one password for everything.

And all they have to do is compromise whatever the weakest system, your password is in your, your, your gym membership or, you know, the local Starbucks or whatever it is. Right. And now they've got access to your bank account, to your mortgage, to you. It's a terrible idea. So please, you know, separate your passwords and make them complicated, but unlike what we've been telling people for a long time, don't necessarily change them.

If you have a really complicated, secure password and no reason to believe it's been compromised, don't change it. Like it makes things a little bit easier for us. I have randomized, terrible passwords. My family hates me. If they want to share my Netflix account or whatever, don't tell Netflix. Uh, they all hate me because I, I haven't, I haven't, I haven't, I haven't Terrible passwords and I have been known to change them occasionally.

Um, but I don't change them as [00:43:00] often as I used to. Uh, so a couple things you mentioned. I think another one you'd, uh, I don't know if you actually mentioned this one or not. And we talked about a pre show, but, uh, you know, locking down your credit, um, is, is a big piece, right? So if somebody does get access to you, still being able to get into your credit and use it.

Now, I will tell you, having done this, uh, it's great. It's also inconvenient or can be. I bought a car recently. Uh, and, uh, my credit was locked, so they couldn't check my credit score, and then I couldn't remember the damn password, so I couldn't get it unlocked, and I had to deal with the, the credit agency the next day to get it resolved, but, but at least it was nice to know that somebody couldn't steal my information, go in and buy a car under my name, because they needed the credit report that was locked.

So, you know, it's good to know there are some things we can do to protect ourselves. And then, of course, from the business standpoint, as you mentioned, Optery and some of the things you guys do, um, and that there are a lot of companies in this space, but it doesn't sound like they're all equal. So, um, you know, we're doing the investigating on that to find out if this is a service that could be useful, whether it's for a business or whether it's for an individual.

I know you guys have a bunch of different pricing. This is not a sales pitch, so we won't go down that path. Optery. com if you guys want to know more about these guys. I think Lawrence does really good work with this team, and it's hard to do this stuff yourself, so it might be worth, you know, looking into that.

So, um, Anyway, so with all [00:44:00] that said, and I appreciate that, uh, you know, we're getting near the end of the show. So I kind of want to jump in the last question. I always ask people, you know, the name of the show is unspoken security. So, you know, with that in mind, I always ask the guest, uh, you know, tell me something you've ever told anybody before something that's been unspoken.

Lawrence Yeah. Um, one thing that's sort of a bit unspoken in my, um, in my life is I, I kind of have like two lives. Cause I have. My optory life, you know, I'm CEO of this company and we have, you know, over a hundred people and we've got You know, hundreds of thousands of people using the product and it's, it's, um, quite a, um, quite a, quite an endeavor.

Um, it's, it's, it's fun and exciting. I love it. Um, but I have another life where I have four kids and one of the things I kind of try and keep a secret often in my professional life. is that I coach a lot of their sports teams. So throughout the spring, I was a head coach of four sports teams for my kids.

And right now I'm assistant coach. I kind of like, uh, it was a little, maybe a little more than I bit off than what I could chew, uh, assistant coach for three, for three teams. And I [00:45:00] felt like I've oftentimes, um, been a little bit like shy to share that in professional context, because I think people might think like, wait a minute, how do you have time to do that?

I remember I had a job interview before I started Optery, and I was going through the job interviews and the hiring manager basically was like, We work pretty hard here. Don't think you're going to be coaching any sports teams for your kids around here. You know, you know, we don't do that here. Um, and I think that's great.

I have nothing against that. But I was like, that's probably not the right place for me to be. So it's definitely something that like, if I talk to investors or something, I probably wouldn't necessarily like share out of the gate that I spend that much time. But right now I spend five days a week on the sports field with my kids.

Yeah. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, Sunday. So, you know, uh, it's maybe something that's like not something I would typically share. So I know there you go.

AJ: yeah. And that's, and that's awesome. So I'm curious, first of all, how old are the kids? What ages are [00:46:00] we talking about?

Lawrence Yeah.

So, 

AJ: if you want to share that, like, I don't want to give you too much detail about your personal life to the world either, but if you're comfortable sharing how old they are, roughly.

Lawrence yeah. So one is just about to turn eight. Um, one is just about to turn six. Um, one is just about to turn four and then 11 months. So, um,

AJ: All right. The 11th month old, I'm guessing not in a lot of sports yet, perhaps,

Lawrence Well, no, no, yeah, yeah,

AJ: at least you know that so

Lawrence Not yet. Yeah.

AJ: and what sports are you coaching?

Lawrence Uh, softball, baseball and soccer. So, uh,

AJ: Wow. That's, I mean, that's incredible. I, uh, you know, I think most people know me. No, I coached high school football for a while. Um, yeah, for, uh, for a handful of years, um, while working, I was in the military and then I was in defense contractors before I was in the private sector and it's an incredible undertaking.

It's a ton of work, uh, to do that. I, I would love to, I, I thought about going back for a few years back. I had some interviews actually was offered an opportunity and then I had to have a gut check in my case. I said, I don't think I can do this. Because I don't think I can give the kids enough time because my calendar wasn't going to allow it, um, you know, with work.

So I'm impressed that you're able to make the time to do that. Um, you know, it's, it's, I think it's awesome though. You know, it's unfortunate. I think that we, we [00:47:00] have a situation where we have people who, who want to be able to do this, you know, they want to, they want to have a career and a life, but they also want to be with their family and take care of things and give back.

I mean, what you're doing is good for your kids. And, and I'm sure for a lot of other kids, um, you know, it's a shame that it's something that, Has to go unspoken. Good news for you is like 12 people that listen to this show. So I don't think it's going to mess anything up with your investors. Uh, you're probably still safe, but I, you know, personally, I think if it were at me, it's not, but, uh, I don't have that kind of money, but if it were at me, I'd consider it a positive, I mean, here's somebody who wants to give back and, and, you know, be involved, right.

It's, it can't all be work if we're all working all the time. We're probably pretty miserable. Um, I know I, some of the best ideas I got were when I was doing something else, you know, I was thinking about football and then something came up for work or I was thinking about work and then something came up that I had to write down because it was related to the, to football or leadership or the team or something.

So, you know, I think it probably feeds, um, I don't want to speak for you. I'll ask, I guess, but whether it feeds your, your mind in a different way or feeds your, your, uh, soul for like a little bit of work, I guess, you know, feeds you in a different way. It gives you more energy. And do you think this actually benefits you and makes you a better, a better leader, you know, for the company and for the people?

Lawrence Yeah, definitely [00:48:00] do. Um, so what I think it's definitely, it's amazing that you were coaching in high school football. Definitely totally different commitment level coaching high school football at this age. My kids at this age. My kids is basically like practice Tuesday night and game on saturday. You know, it's like, it's like, You know, pretty much it.

So it's, it's, it's definitely not like the kind of commitment that you'd have at the high school level. For example, I don't think I'd be able to do the vault the number as they get older. But for now, it's like, pretty manageable. But absolutely. To your point, I think it's, it definitely can have its benefits.

I know that in the spring. when soccer and softball season ended and it was in the summer, I felt like a little bit, um, you know, rudderless in a way, whereas before I had like every day, it was like work. Boom, boom, boom. And like, you know, soccer field or baseball field. And then, um, this it ended and it was like kind of a summer break.

And I was. Tell my wife, Mike, I feel like I, I'm like, uh, lost a little bit of direction here. So in sports pick [00:49:00] back up in the fall, but I definitely think there's something, at least for me, I grew up on a sports field. I just was playing sports my whole life. I think so for most of my life, I just sort of was like.

hitting the books for school and then like out on a sports field running around and um, like as my kids have got a little bit older just to be back out on the sports field running around it feels like my soul is like, is like, um, complete or something. So I think it's like, there's a lot of things that, that you can do that are good for you beyond just like working, meditation, exercise, spending time with family, watching a movie, reading a book, whatever it is.

And For me, being out on a sports field kind of running around is like, you know, it's like really enriching and I think gives me a lot of energy. So for me, it's been a big, a big positive. And then on top of that, it's like, um, I always think when I'm doing it that I didn't really realize that when I do it now, I'm always like, oh, yeah, like, there were people out there, coaches, coaches.

That were like leaving work early or like waking up early on a Saturday morning to make sure that I had the experience to be [00:50:00] out on the field like with the chalk rolled and like the, you know, you know, calling, calling the players, like people made that possible for me. And so it's like really cool bill to make that possible for other, you know, other kids.

So that's, that's like pretty rewarding. And then, um, I definitely think there's a lot of leadership skills that you can gain from. Coaching kids, you know, like, there's a lot of similar things like, maybe, uh, you know, dealing with a team at work or isn't dealing with the team on a field, like a lot of similarities.

So it's definitely a good thing. I think.

AJ: Yeah. You definitely learn patience. . At least I did. Now, I'll, I'll be honest, I, I, again, I coach high school. Um, I wouldn't be necessarily the right person to coach smaller children. I think, I think there's a, there's a right price person and the right place and the right time, right? You have the right demeanor and the right temperament.

I probably don't, I don't know that I'm gentle or patient enough. Frankly, for smaller children, I would be the coach. Kids shouldn't have, 'cause they. Want to grow up happy and want to like the sport. I'll probably ruin it. That's not how I built. Unfortunately, even at high school, I could be a little intense, but I did learn patience, right?

And like I said, you know, [00:51:00] teamwork and building, but also listening, you know, you gotta, it's different, right? Kids, kids aren't us. They speak differently. They communicate differently and learning different communication styles and trying to find new ways to bridge gaps in communication. And, you know, the art of persuasion takes on a whole new meaning.

a whole new, uh, thought process when you're dealing with kids, especially kids that aren't your, your kids, because ultimately they don't have to listen to you necessarily. Um, and so, you know, yeah, for me, I found, you know, it was pretty rewarding, uh, and, and giving back. You know, I think it's, it's, it's a good point.

You mentioned it. I played sports growing up and, uh, and also didn't realize, you know, as a kid, you don't know. As an adult, you realize just how hard it is for these adults who are going to have their full lives and their careers and their own families. And then they're going to take time away to go do this other thing, uh, that almost certainly isn't paid, uh, or is paid incredibly low.

Um, and they do it because they want to give back. Right. So I think, you know, you get a new, I, I got a new, newfound respect, I think, uh, for all the people that helped me along the way to become the super mediocre athlete that I did become as a result of all their hard work and efforts. Uh, I'm sure everybody's very proud of the time they put into making me Almost everything on sports, uh, but, but I, I appreciate it.

So, um, yeah, I [00:52:00] think it's great, man. I think the fact you're spending that time with the family and with other kids also, you know, anything that gets us out of the house, you know, I spend most of my time under artificial lights at this desk, um, you know, gets you out in this, in the sunshine and the weather.

And I think it's awesome. I'm, I'm. It's unfortunate. I think it's less spoken, but I'm glad it's not unspoken anymore. I hope people see it as a positive because I do. I think it's, it makes you a more well rounded person and, and somebody I'd be more likely to want to do business with at least. Um, so hopefully the 12 people that do hear this, uh, we'll, we'll say, well, Lawrence is great.

Now I really want to check out Optery cause he's also a good guy, you know? So, uh, so maybe that'll be beneficial. Um, all right, listen, so we're wrapping up here. First of all, I want to thank you. For taking the time to come on to talk about, uh, data brokers. Uh, I think it's a topic that doesn't get talked about enough.

As I said at the opening, I think it's, it's something that impacts pretty much everybody, frankly, whether we like it or not, our data is out there. Um, so understanding that it's legal, understanding the processes, understanding the threats, the risks, you know, what's coming next and what we can do about it, whether it's ourselves or with companies like, like Omtree, you know, I really appreciate you taking the time, uh, to come and talk about it before I do wrap up.

Is there any. Anything you want to add? Any last thoughts? Anything we missed? Anything I [00:53:00] skipped because sometimes I run fast and I miss questions we were supposed to talk about? Is there anything you want to add as any last thoughts before we wrap up?

Lawrence No, I think this is I don't have anything to add to thank you for helping kind of bring awareness to just. Knowing this topic, but the host of topics that you cover and I know it also like coaching. It takes time. It's a, you know, and ultimately I think you're helping people. I've listened to several episodes and I always learn something.

So, you know, we're kind of like, you know, now coaching high school baseball, but you're, you're kind of like helping. Disseminate information. It's helpful to people and I appreciate the opportunity and appreciate what you do. So I'm really excited for the opportunity. And, you know, thank you for the time together.

AJ: Yeah. Well, thanks. I appreciate it. I'm going to say now I have 13 people that listen because I know you do. So, um, you know, so it's, it's going, growing up one at a time. It's fantastic. Hopefully more will, will, will join the force. Um, all right. So with that, listen, I am going to wrap it up. Thank you again for being on Lawrence, uh, for talking about.

Data Brokers and Optery. Thanks everybody for listening and watching. However, as you consume this today, I [00:54:00] appreciate it. If you like the show, please do, you know, like it and recommend it and bookmark it and, and subscribe and, and all those things. If you don't like the show, please don't tell anybody that, uh, but feel free to tell me and I'll see if I can make it better.

Um, but again, until the next time, thank you very much for listening and watching. This has been another episode of Unspoken Security.