Welcome!

Loose Leaf Security is an independently produced podcast from Liz Denys and Geoffrey Thomas about making good computer security practice for everyone. We believe you don't need to be a software engineer or security professional to understand how to keep your devices and data safe. In every episode, we break down complex digital security and privacy topics into accessible primers and practical takeaways.

You can find Loose Leaf Security on many podcast clients or stream our episodes in your web browser. You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

In addition to podcast episodes, we'll also be covering some security- and privacy-related topics in blog-style articles, where we can go into more detail than we could in an episode. We also send out a weekly newsletter that includes a practical tip about improving your personal digital security, short summaries of relevant security news, and any thought-provoking articles we've seen about digital privacy and security.

If you're new to Loose Leaf Security, you might want to check out our archives for some suggestions on where to start and a complete list of our episodes, articles, and reference materials.

Our latest episode:

Covering your webcams

Podcast episode, August 22, 2019

Liz and Geoffrey take a look at how attackers compromise webcams and discuss why it's worth physically covering them. Malware and alleged threats of malware are only some of the avenues attackers take to access other people's webcams; vulnerabilities in legitimate software, like the recent Zoom security flaw, can also be exploited. Additionally, sharing ownership of your devices with another party like your school district or workplace may leave you and your webcams exposed. In the news, the FTC fines Facebook, weaknesses in Apple's iMessage and Visual Voicemail, and U2F support added to Firefox for Android.

Covering your webcams episode art

Continue reading for the show notes and complete transcript…

Other recent episodes:

  • Password managers: how they should work and when they didn't: Liz and Geoffrey discuss password manager extensions in depth: everything from how they keep your passwords safe from malicious websites to how they sync your passwords between your devices to how they've made mistakes in the past. If you haven't… (June 27, 2019)
  • Two-factor tidying: With a wide variety of possible two-factor authentication methods, it's difficult to keep track of which ones you're using - and which ones you could be using. Liz and Geoffrey talk about their personal strategies and how to handle difficult cases… (May 16, 2019)
  • Using a password manager effectively: In a deeper exploration of password manager browser extensions and features for sharing as well as a survey of alternatives to password managers, Liz and Geoffrey go back to the topic of Loose Leaf Security's very first episode and discuss how… (March 20, 2019)

See all of our episodes sorted by release date, most recent first.

Our latest article:

Loose Leaf Security Weekly, Issue 30

Article, May 18, 2020

It's been a bit since our last newsletter, sorry - we're both doing well, but just about everything's been disrupted. If you've been applying software updates regularly, you've got about half of what we were going to talk about, but read on for the other half of all the security news from the last few weeks.

If someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up yourself at https://looseleafsecurity.com/newsletter.

Tip of the week

If you have any automatic payments or saved payment methods for any of your accounts, it's worth keeping track of which payment methods are connected to which accounts. That way, when one of those accounts is breached, you can both contact the issuers for any associated payment methods and also quickly switch payment methods on any other accounts that used that one so you don't accidentally forget to pay a bill or renew a service you rely on. Since breaches are unfortunately a matter of "when," not "if," it's a lot easier to not have to track down all accounts that rely on a payment method that's involved in a breach. This is also helpful if one of your credit or debit card numbers is …

Continue reading…

Other recent articles:

  • Loose Leaf Security Weekly, Issue 29: Today's newsletter has a new section: "We are once again asking you to take software updates." A lot of our news stories are primarily straightforward reminders to take these important software updates ASAP because they're a vital part of keeping… (April 21, 2020)
  • Loose Leaf Security Weekly, Issue 28: Happy April! Though the world around us seems to be on hold in many ways, security and privacy news isn't slowing down - we're pretty happy to see lots of media attention on Zoom, which we discuss in detail in this newsletter. Also, attackers and… (April 5, 2020)
  • Loose Leaf Security Weekly, Issue 27: Hello again! We hope you're staying safe and healthy, wherever you are. If someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up yourself at https://looseleafsecurity.com/newsletter. Tip of the week Many of us are starting to do our work over… (March 27, 2020)

See all of our articles sorted by release date, most recent first.