Big Tech vs. Your Privacy in 2026

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

The Amber Mac Show on Canada Talks.

Amber Mac (0:04)

This week's episode is powered by Uber. Here is a quick tip. RideCheck proactively services tools riders and drivers may need when it detects that something may have gone wrong, such as a possible crash or an unexpected long stop. Every trip is GPS tracked, so Uber knows where and when you're riding and who's behind the wheel. This helps power safety features like RideCheck. RideCheck can help detect unexpected stops or route deviations. If there's an unexpected stop, a potential crash, or even just a delay or a detour during your trip, the app can check in with you to make sure everything is okay and offer tools if you need help.

Here's how it works. When a RideCheck is initiated, both the rider and the driver receive a notification asking whether everything is okay.

From there, they can take actions like using the emergency button or reporting the issue to Uber Safety Team. Uber Safety Team can also follow up by phone when appropriate. Thank you so much to Uber for supporting The Amber Mac Show.

SPEAKER_1 (1:08)

Safety matters.

Amber Mac (1:10)

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month and we have an extra special episode of The Amber Mac Show for you this week, with a couple of really interesting interviews, including what one of the Internet's most popular privacy-focused search engine companies thinks of Meta's smartglasses. And spoiler alert, it is not good. We also speak with privacy lawyer David Fraser about what's next in digital lawmaking in Canada and why you should care.

Plus, we filled the show with a few quick cybersecurity tips to help you stay safer online. So Jeff, why don't you get us started?

Jeff MacArthur (1:46)

Sure thing. So our first tip is around passwords. Now, we all know the longer the password, the better, and that we shouldn't reuse passwords. But we also know how hard it can be to remember those kinds of passwords as well. One thing that can really help with this is to leverage combinations of words that you aren't likely to forget and then rely on a simple formula to create a password from them. For example, say you're a Beatles fan and you're looking for a password for your online music account. Well, as far as I can tell, one of the longest popular song names in history is everybody has got something to hide except me and my monkey. So you can make a very solid password by just using the first letter of each word in that title, namely E-G-S-T-H-E-M-A-M-M.

That gets you a 10 letter password, which is great. And it's easy to add a number, say four for the number of Beatles and a special character, say an exclamation mark because the Beatles are so awesome, to that to create an even stronger password that will comply with stricter password requirements on some sites.

Or if you're lucky enough to have a big family, try creating a password based on the first and last letters of everyone's middle names from oldest to youngest, or something similar. The trick is to decide on a formula that you can reliably remember and apply it to something you know by heart so that you don't ever have to write it down.

We'll have some more tips like that later on in the show. But first, DuckDuckGo is a well-known internet company that focuses on privacy. Their free browser protects your personal information, allowing you to search, browse and use AI privately, keeping your information to yourself and away from hackers, scammers and privacy-invasive companies. And unlike others, DuckDuckGo's AI features are optional. Amber spoke to the company's Chief Product Officer, Beah Burger-Lenehan at the North Festival in Toronto. Here's their conversation.

SPEAKER_1 (3:36)

Talking tech.

Amber Mac (3:37)

So, I wanted to talk about, to start off, this growing trend in tech, where companies seem to be designing what investors want.

They seem to have forgotten, I think, what were the good old days of technology, when these companies would chase what consumers wanted. And consumers ended up being the ones who would get the features that they wanted in the first place. And that doesn't happen so much more. Talk a little bit about how your company is different.

Beah Burger-Lenehan (4:07)

Sure, yeah, so, I mean, the irony, of course, of all of this is that companies like Google and Meta are like gobbling up consumer personal data under the veil of wanting to improve their products, but when people are just rationally articulating their wants and desires, like they can't hear them, you know, fingers in the ears.

So yeah, it's not a good state, and it doesn't have to be that way. I think it reflects Cory Doctorow coined the term and shitification to describe the way that once companies grow beyond a certain point, they get all kinds of lock-in and their users can't easily fire them, so they can do whatever they want. But I don't know, personally, like, it's not even that fun to build product for investors. I think building for users is way more fun, way more satisfying. DuckDuckGo was built on feedback loops around user feedback, like, you know, I'm still reading our subreddit, somebody's, like, complaining about something not working the way they expect it to, I can go to our teams and we can fix it that day, and I can get back to that user and say, thanks for the feedback. Like, that's a really gratifying experience. And I think we need more of it.