Some observations on the possible future of society from a recent trip to the United Arab Emirates.

Observations from the UAE

Since I’ve created the show notes on the road, you’ll have to make do with my handwriting this time.

Handwritten show notes

Producer Feedback

I value your input greatly. If you have any opinions or remarks on the things discussed in this, or previous episodes, or ideas for future ones, please contact me.

Evgeny Kuznetsov writes in response to the previous episode:

Thanks for calling me an insane geek! :)
(I use KeepassXC, and I sync its database between my devices using Syncthing.)

But seriously, thanks for the episode! I was aware of the whole kerfuffle, but I didn’t realize it was a backup of unknown age that was exfiltrated. I stopped using LastPass in 2019 and deleted the vault, so I thought I was not affected. You’ve just prompted me to give my passwords a good revision, especially the old ones.

Fadi Mansour replied:

Thanks for the episode.

I am/was a LastPass user as well, although it seems that I was not burnt as much as you did, my iterations count was 100100.

When I first heard of the issue, the scope of the breach was not known, and I didn’t feel the motivation to change it, as the expectation was that even in the case of a breach, adhering to good practices should keep a user safe. I still believe that I would not be affected, as I have a randomly generated master password. But on further reveals, I also started to lose trust: on one hand, regarding keeping URL data un-encrypted, and the un-justifiable mess with keeping low iteration numbers.

For me, I believe that when LastPass started, it provided state-of-the-art protection, and maybe was one of the pioneers to bring password managers to the masses. But obviously, the landscape has changed, and it seems that it didn’t keep up. So now I’m also making the switch to Bitwarden, which for now seems to be keeping up with the times.

Credits

This podcast is provided free of charge and free of obligations under the value-for-value model. However, as a freelance journalist volunteering my time to produce this show, I need your support. If you like my work and want to make sure The Private Citizen keeps going, please consider joining my Patreon.

Showrunners

  • Sir Galteran

Executive Producers

  • Butterbeans
  • Jaroslav Lichtblau
  • Rizele
  • Sandman616

Supervising Producers

1i11g, avis, Bennett Piater, Dave, ikn, Jackie Plage, Jonathan M. Hethey, krunkle, Michael Mullan-Jensen, Robert Forster

Producers

Andrew Davidson, astralc, Cam, Captain Egghead, David Potter, Dirk Dede, Fadi Mansour, Florian Pigorsch, Joe Poser, Michael Small, Mika, MrAmish, RJ Tracey

Associate Producers

Barry Williams, D, Jonathan, Juhan Sonin, Kai Siers, RikyM, Steve Hoos, Vlad

Thanks to Bytemark, who are providing the hosting and bandwidth for this episode’s audio file.

The show’s theme song is Acoustic Routes by Raúl Cabezalí, licensed via Jamendo Music. This episode’s ending song is Katana by Lofive, licensed via Epidemic Sound.