Prioritizing Digital Privacy in an Online World with Johnathan Steele

James Moffitt (00:01.31)
Hello and welcome to ABC's of Parenting Adult Children podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I'll be your host. Today we have Jonathan Steele joining us. Hey Jonathan, how are you?

Jonathan Steele (00:12.546)
I'm good. Thanks for having me on your show.

James Moffitt (00:14.748)
Yeah, absolutely. So you're up in snow land up in Chicago, Illinois.

Jonathan Steele (00:20.322)
That's right. Today's a little bit more mild than the last week or so, it's we are snow land.

James Moffitt (00:26.302)
How much snow do you normally have?

Jonathan Steele (00:29.464)
You know, some of the winters are mild and then some of them are feet in a day. So it's hard to give you real good approximation of that, but more than I would like.

James Moffitt (00:39.806)
You get tired of shoveling that crap, huh?

Jonathan Steele (00:42.315)
I sure do.

James Moffitt (00:44.788)
I'm sorry. So, introduce yourself to the listening audience, please.

Jonathan Steele (00:51.032)
Sure, I'm a divorce lawyer based in Chicago. I've been doing that as a lawyer for 12 years or so. I also recently started a sort of cyber security and privacy consulting firm named Steel Fortress that gives sort of client dependent, obviously, consulting advice on how to approach different issues that people are facing.

James Moffitt (01:15.412)
Very good. So yeah, you're a little, I'm going to read something from your profile. says, explore the intersection of family law and cybersecurity with Jonathan Steele emphasizing digital privacy protections for families, especially during divorce or custody disputes, offering insight into safeguarding personal information and assets. And, I think that's good information for any of us to have, especially when it comes to family law.

And when it comes to digital protection and privacy, and I, as I'm thinking about it, family law encompasses more than just divorce, right?

Jonathan Steele (01:57.144)
You know, we get a bad rep for being family law lawyers that we're sort of like the joke of our practice. But the reality is to be a divorce lawyer, you need to touch on business law, tax law, sometimes criminal law, property. So you're sort of a jack of all trades to be able to divorce people.

James Moffitt (02:13.266)
Right. You handle wills and stuff like that.

Jonathan Steele (02:20.46)
I personally don't, but there are people within my law firm that do.

James Moffitt (02:24.712)
I got you. I got you. Okay. All right. So, you know, as I told you earlier, we have, you know, our listening audience is probably parents of teenagers, preteens, teenagers, and, and everything up from 18 to 40, right? So, so there's always going to be, I think it's, it's good for us to educate ourselves and to be provided, information from people like you to, help us to, add.

tools to our tool chest in case we ever need those sort of things. And while our parents themselves may not be in a divorce, God forbid, they may know family members that are going through that sort of thing. So what you have to say could certainly be very relevant for them or their family members.

Jonathan Steele (03:17.858)
Yeah, it's an evolving field. It's sort of a game of whack-a-mole, trying to keep kids safe and not stumbling upon something that ends up traumatizing them later in life. So the divorce lawyer hat that I wear allows me to sort of identify a problem and all the different ways that it manifests when somebody's in a divorce case. And then the other cyber security side of me helps to fix that problem as best as possible.

James Moffitt (03:47.188)
All right, so maybe we can focus on the digital privacy aspect of your profession.

You want to talk about that?

Jonathan Steele (04:01.144)
Sure, and you know in the context of kids, know having my own kids is sort of what's spawned this particular passion for family security, family privacy, that sort of thing. But I've also just been running into it in the law practice as well. I have a case right now involving two young teenagers that are there in a stalking case and you know the evidence is tens of thousands of Snapchats that have gone back and forth between the two of them.

And so if I could give a message to listeners, which are people with kids of that age, maybe it's an invasion of their privacy and it's a warranted invasion. And you sort of have a duty to protect your kids from these kinds of situations that they may unknowingly stumble into. And I think it's parenting advice more than legal or tech advice, but I do think it's important that you're sort of...

transparent with them upfront that you you may be a big kid now and I'm giving you a phone but at the end of day it's my phone and I will take it back and I will look at it as I see fit and it's for your own protection and then you know it takes sort of like the sleuth element out of it and you're not spying on them because you're open with them but it is necessary because what they can stumble upon is horrific sometimes.

James Moffitt (05:23.188)
Yeah, and I think, I think, you know, I'm, I'm a child of the seventies and eighties and we didn't, we didn't have internet back then. You know, we had, we had, encyclopedias and the local library, you know, that's where we in papers and that's where we got our information. And, but now, you know, you have kids, teenagers, young adults that they were born with a smartphone in their hand almost, you know, and they, they have.

had access to the World Wide Web and all these different apps that are on the, you like you mentioned Snapchat and TikTok and Facebook and just there's a whole plethora of applications that can be installed on a smartphone or on your computer. And it opens an entirely, well, it opens up a new world to you, you know, and it's the virtual world. And as we both know, there are

predators out there that prey on unsuspecting, and possibly vulnerable youth that are not aware of that. And they may be on lines looking for friendship and looking for support or looking for the wrong things that they should be looking elsewhere for. so it's sex trafficking. That's a...

huge issue in this day and age still, you know, and, um, parents, like parents seem to be, uh, they need to understand that, um, internet access at home is a privilege, you know, it's to me, it's not necessarily a right. It's a privilege, you know, all the things that parents provide for their kids, uh, you know, obviously shelter food, you know, transportation back and forth to school and to the events and

You know, things like that, you know, are probably more of a right than a privilege. But, when it comes to all this extra stuff that, that, we spoil our kids with, you know, that's not necessarily a right. It's more, it's more of a privilege and you, you can, you can manage their access. You know, like I, I know, like I tell people all the time, I'm like, if you're having a hard time setting a boundary with your kids, you're telling them, turn the, turn the devices off at nine o'clock at night and you go to bed.

James Moffitt (07:48.444)
And I don't want to go by it past your room and see the white light under your door. Right. if, if they don't, if they don't honor that boundary, guess what? You can go to your, you can go to your home router and you can, you can actually manage each device on your home network by Mac address and you can block, can block all kinds of apps, you know, and they, they can get online all they want. And obviously, you know, you need to change the admin user ID from admin and get rid of the password. That's password.

Because kids are smart and they'll if you have the default user ID and password on your home router They can very easily hack that and get in there and do whatever they want. So Just buyer beware, know or parent beware, you know practice some common sense safety on your home network

Jonathan Steele (08:37.848)
You know, one of the things that I think gets overlooked is not just the giving access to the World Wide Web, but more so what kids are exposing about themselves to someone they may not even know.

And a lot of people don't seem to understand once I send a picture of myself out there, it's out there, you're never getting it back. So this whole generation of kids now that are sending nude pictures to each other thinking Snapchat auto deletes or I'm good, I'm safe, you're not. If you don't want a picture to show up in your LinkedIn profile or your job application, don't put it out there because you will not be able to get that back. You may be able to get it taken down off of certain sites and

James Moffitt (09:10.867)
Right.

Jonathan Steele (09:22.32)
But there's a way back machine where you can reload old versions of websites and once it's out there. It's out there And you know one of the things you mentioned is that I think shelter shelter is a right that we afford our children I think you're right But I think that extends to protecting them. I view this as I'm sheltering my kids from what's out there and you know

James Moffitt (09:45.213)
Absolutely.

Jonathan Steele (09:45.39)
If I'm putting a phone in my kid's hand, it's not unfettered access to whatever the phone is able to access. I'm going to put belts and suspenders on that before I hand it to my child. that I, to your point, I don't need to monitor the usage because I know that it's monitoring itself and it's cutting off at a certain time and it's allowing certain duration of app usage and certain apps that I've specifically approved. I hear your MAC address filtering and I'm trying to

James Moffitt (10:05.385)
Right.

Jonathan Steele (10:15.344)
as a smart kid that's outsmarting parents now, especially kids that have access to AI. You know, they're gonna go into AI and they're gonna say, okay, my dad set up Mac address filtering on our router, how do I get around that? And most of the large...

James Moffitt (10:31.404)
of course.

Jonathan Steele (10:32.416)
Most of those large language models are going to walk you right through it innocently enough. They're going to tell you here's how you spoof a Mac address and clone a different device's address. So trying to stay ahead of the curve is the parent's nightmare for the duration.

James Moffitt (10:49.374)
Well, that's why it's so important to have a good user ID and password. If you have a password that's alphanumeric and it's that long, right? they're not going to ever guess that they're not going to break that. You know, that's, that's, that's one, that's one door knob. They can rattle all day long and they're not going to get through, but unfortunately, a lot of parents are not very tech savvy and they just go to best buy or they get a hold of Comcast and they tech brings the, you know, the modem out and plugs it in and

They never think twice about changing the user ID and password. And that's the very first thing I do is, and you know, in cybersecurity, you hear all the time, how do, how do hackers break into these corporate enterprise networks? They find devices that have been installed and the user ID and password hasn't been changed. That's the number one thing they look for. And once they, once they get their claws into your network and then they start moving around, they make all kinds of changes and steal PII data and.

all sorts of stuff, right?

Jonathan Steele (11:50.69)
Yeah, every listicle you read nowadays touches on change default passwords. So, you know, to me, it seems like given to change it, given how often I'm coming across these articles where that's still being told to people as like top five advice to hardening yourself, it must very well be the case that not everybody is.

using best practices. sounds like from what I can gather, a lot of people are still using password 123 or they're using admin admin.

James Moffitt (12:22.746)
yeah. Yeah. Or their, or their pet or the child's name and birthday or just, you know, something that's ridiculously easy to, to guess. And, but anyway,

So talk about.

James Moffitt (12:44.766)
Talk about your, I mean, how long have you been a parent?

Jonathan Steele (12:49.73)
Going on six years now, you know, I've looked at that protective role that I assume as a father and I sort of look at it as security in layers. I don't like to just rely on, you know, I put screen time on my kids iPad, I'm good to go.

James Moffitt (12:51.816)
Okay.

Jonathan Steele (13:07.182)
Because often enough I'll come back I left them watching YouTube kids and they were watching Bluey or something and I come back and now they're watching a 50 year old man in his basement unblocking. I'm sorry unpacking Bluey toys and playing with them and maybe there's nothing wrong with that and that's why it's allowable on YouTube kids But I don't particularly find that to be what I want my kids to be watching

James Moffitt (13:33.192)
What? I don't even know what that is. What in the world is that?

Jonathan Steele (13:36.524)
the unboxing videos, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a grown man that doesn't show his face on YouTube opening kids' toys and playing with them. And for whatever reason, kids like that.

James Moffitt (13:38.568)
Yeah, yeah.

James Moffitt (13:52.852)
Okay, that's.

Jonathan Steele (13:53.568)
I think it's a little bit creepy and you so I try to go beyond just the screen time and I'm also trying to think back to my own childhood. I was crafty. I would have found a way around screen time. So I'm trying to think like myself, how would I be trying to get around it? And so now I've got like DNS level filtering on their devices. They're behind a firewall that does filtering when they're at home.

James Moffitt (14:08.325)
sure.

Jonathan Steele (14:16.846)
I have configuration profiles set on their devices so that they can't just go in and change these things. So I'm doing as best I can to avoid that one day where they stumble across an article about here's how to unblock all the things that your parents have blocked.

James Moffitt (14:32.52)
Right. So you use VPN at home.

Jonathan Steele (14:36.718)
I use VPN on my personal devices. For them, for the kids' I just use Next DNS to do DNS level filtering of domains and services that I don't really want them to be using.

James Moffitt (14:47.508)
I got you.

James Moffitt (14:51.828)
I you.

Well, it's good stuff. Very important for parents to take internet security seriously because it's...

Jonathan Steele (15:08.184)
Sounds like Siri is listening to you.

James Moffitt (15:08.681)
Siri just answered. Siri just answered me. Let me turn my phone upside down. She's listening to my conversations. Did you hear that?

Jonathan Steele (15:17.038)
You bet she is. She's listening to you and she's recording you and she's sending it back to Apple.

James Moffitt (15:23.432)
Yeah, probably. You're probably right about that.

Um, how did, I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions here. Uh, how did divorce and cybersecurity intersect in today's digital age?

Jonathan Steele (15:38.582)
A number of different ways. You know, I'm seeing a lot of trackers, whether they be air tags or the Samsung equivalent of it. I'm seeing those being used for surveillance of a spouse or even using kids' devices to surveil the spouse's whereabouts and when they're in certain places. So knowing how to navigate that is an intersection that is unavoidable. And then, you know, being a divorce lawyer, you also try a lot of

order of protection, stalking, no contact, order of cases. And more than you're used to, you're seeing cyber stalking or cyber harassment or online bullying and knowing how to unravel that in a way where you can actually prove the allegations requires a certain skill set that I think most divorce lawyers are lacking.

James Moffitt (16:33.428)
I got you.

What crucial steps protect family privacy amid legal disputes?

Jonathan Steele (16:41.688)
You know, it's a number of different things. think something that I try to push a lot of clients onto is data removal services.

And I think they do a good job of automating what you can do yourself, but just wildly time consuming. so whether you're going to like an easy opt outs or a join, delete me. What they're doing is they're going into all these data broker sites and they're submitting deletion requests on your behalf. like whitepages.com and Radar and all these huge data brokers that sell your information for a dollar. They're going through and deleting these things for you. So I think that's a good first step to try to clean up what's out there. And then.

controlling what you're going to put out there, at least while you're in the middle of your divorce case. If I can't get people to get off of social media, I'll try to help them to button up their privacy settings and try to prune their followers list so that information about travel and expenses that they're incurring during the divorce case aren't being unknowingly sent to the other side.

James Moffitt (17:50.674)
What's funny is, is that law enforcement, they have been using social media to track down criminals. And it's like, I mean, I think that's one of the tools in their tool chest. Investigators, they're looking for somebody. They just get on Facebook and start looking for them or, especially Facebook, because everybody's on Facebook. And it's like, people just put their whole life out on Facebook. You know, it's like,

It's real easy to track people down because they, I'm sure you've seen it too. You see stories where, mean, law enforcement, like here in, in Charleston, Berkeley County Sheriff's department, I've seen them interact with people are looking for, they got warrants for their arrest and they're on Facebook talking smack. And they're like, okay, keeps talking smack. We're going to come get you, know, it is funny.

Jonathan Steele (18:46.72)
You know, I think you're right. think people do put, overshare, they put their whole lives on Facebook.

And some of the aggregating factors is they do it live. So you're, you know, you're away on vacation and you're live streaming to your public audience. I'm not at my home. Now's a good time to break into my home because I'm on vacation. So, you know, I'll at least tell people if you, your heart's set on just posting all these family photos from vacation, wait till you get home. Scrub the metadata. If I can, if I can get you to go above and beyond, remove sort of the camera information, the GPS location.

James Moffitt (18:57.778)
Right.

James Moffitt (19:16.189)
Right.

Jonathan Steele (19:22.135)
from your photos even though I think Madad does a good job doing that now. It gives me peace of mind knowing I did it myself first.

James Moffitt (19:30.098)
Right, exactly. Common sense stuff.

Jonathan Steele (19:33.966)
should be.

James Moffitt (19:38.74)
Can you share a complex case that highlights cyber security's role?

Jonathan Steele (19:45.1)
Yeah, I actually have two right now that have almost identical fact patterns where there's like spyware being installed on one of the spouse's phones and that creates a whole host of problems because

I can't communicate with that client in a way that I feel secure because their spouse is reading it or they have keyloggers on their computers and things. And I'm actually going through this with two clients right now, almost identical facts and...

It required just like a complete reboot of everything, wiping their devices, setting them up a new. One of them actually said, I don't even care if you wipe it, I want to buy a new device entirely. And helping people to unravel that. Sometimes it's just a matter of giving them the peace of mind that maybe you're...

Paranoid is the wrong word because if you're paranoid until you're right, but...

Being able to tell someone I looked at your device. I don't see you know Unknown users that are here. I don't see like SSH keys that allow somebody to Remotely access your machine your firewall is on your privacy settings are fine So you're reasonably secure so sometimes you know people are swatting at ghosts And it just helps to hear from somebody that's a little bit more knowledgeable in the area that you're good But then there are the people that you come across that aren't good

Jonathan Steele (21:18.736)
They do have some version of spyware installed on their devices and most of the time you can you can help them with a Wiping of the device which is inconvenient as can be But you really got to start sort of at the core which is in my view How is it that you're going to communicate with me as your lawyer? So that first things first is like I need you to be on an email provider an email account That's new. You know, if you're a Gmail user for life, God bless you, but let me get you on proton mail

let me get you on to them and lock that down with good two-factor authentication and if that's if only for your communication with me fine I think you should end up using it because it's as good if not better than alternatives but let's set this up you can use that as your lifeline to me then they'll talk about you know do we want to get you on like signal so we can have instant messaging a little bit more secure and then you work out from there and you start trying to get them on password managers and

James Moffitt (21:49.118)
Right, absolutely.

Jonathan Steele (22:17.656)
hardening their financial accounts and retirement and health kind of accounts. But I'm looking at it as triage and I have that, as I mentioned, those two cases where they are actually in need of some pretty comprehensive reboot. So those would be the complex example I can think of.

James Moffitt (22:36.628)
All right, that's very good.

So we've kind of already talked about this a little bit, but how can parents secure digital communication during custody battles?

Jonathan Steele (22:49.102)
It depends on what the platform that we're securing is and who the sort of beneficiary of the protection is. So if we're securing the parents communication or if we're securing the kids communication, I guess they could be one and the same and it's gonna be a similar step by step which is hardening the security settings.

using a recovery email account that you know is an email that only you have control over. Sometimes using a VoIP number is better than tying it to a real cell phone number because cell phones can be SIM swapped. And then really paying attention to the privacy settings. A lot of the apps that we use and our kids use,

by default are pretty invasive when it comes to privacy settings and it's an opt out process rather than an opt in. And every app I install, go through and I pay attention. I'm looking at what I'm giving access to, what I'm agreeing to, and if I have the ability to turn it off, I do, I turn it off. So I think the vast majority of people just, they click through these things. They're called contracts of adhesion for a reason, but I think it makes sense to know what you're signing up for.

James Moffitt (24:04.53)
Right. Very good. Yeah, those things that we agree to online, they're like 15 pages long and you need to be an attorney to even understand what in the world they're talking about. So.

Jonathan Steele (24:16.334)
I don't always understand what they're talking about. So being an attorney is not the all leveling of the playing field there.

James Moffitt (24:23.358)
that's true. You have a better chance at it. Maybe.

Jonathan Steele (24:26.126)
fair.

James Moffitt (24:28.668)
What strategies exist for maintaining digital privacy post divorce?

Jonathan Steele (24:34.655)
It's going to be much of the same and some of that's going to hinge on whether or not you have kids with your spouse or your ex-spouse.

because kids end up being like homing beacons and their devices end up reporting back to the other parent. And so you'll hear things post divorce, like, you you're keeping the kids out too late. Why are you putting them to bed at 10? Well, how do you even know that? And the answer to that question is like, well, I have my child on find my friends and so I can see where they are and when they are there. Or they have an air tag or they have an Apple watch or whatever the devices is

James Moffitt (24:59.134)
Right.

James Moffitt (25:11.39)
Sure.

Jonathan Steele (25:12.272)
hanging home. And so, you know, at least being mindful of the tracking device that you are carrying around, vis-a-vis your child, is a first step. know, knowledge is power. So if you at least know that's happening, then the next step is maybe, depending on what it is, clearer to you. But if you don't even, if you're not even aware of the fact that you're carrying around this tracker, you're not looking for what can I do to mitigate.

James Moffitt (25:40.754)
Right. I never even thought about air tags, now that you mention it.

Jonathan Steele (25:45.602)
Yeah, I mean I've air tagged my kids when we go on vacation. They make like a little rubber band strap that you wear as a watch and you plop the air tag in it and it's a little peace of mind if you're in an airport and you get separated from your kid, it'll help a little bit. And sometimes parents put air tags like in their kids' backpacks or like an umbrella or things like that or a bike. And they can be very helpful in certain circumstances and then they can be a little intrusive in others.

James Moffitt (25:58.76)
Right.

James Moffitt (26:18.142)
All right, what would you, if I gave you five minutes, what would you tell parents? What would you tell the listening audience?

Jonathan Steele (26:24.91)
that it's your job to protect your kids. You're protecting them from physical harms and physical dangers every day. You're providing them shelter. And it's important to understand the landscape nowadays extends beyond physical threats and there are digital threats. There are threats to privacy online. There are threats to cybersecurity. And while it may not interest you as a parent to delve deep into cybersecurity, there are resources that

can help you and it's a duty. So get interested, learn how to do it. And it's not a light switch, right? It's not one day you're secure or one day you're not. It's a journey and there's little things you can do on a daily basis that go a long way.

And so you don't have to look at it as this huge daunting insurmountable task of like, need to turn my kid's iPad into Fort Knox and I need to do it tonight. You know, start with something small, use a different DNS provider, use a VPN, look at the screen time settings.

Learn if you can attach a Google account to your family supervised account. Little things every day is going to end up going a very long way and it's not going to be quite as daunting as trying to sit down and do it all in one fell swoop.

James Moffitt (27:44.446)
Gotcha. Well, Jonathan, I appreciate what you bring to the table and it's a really good information for parents to secure their home networks and, protect their children from online threats. And, I thank you for being on the podcast.

Jonathan Steele (28:01.038)
Thank you. It was pleasure.

James Moffitt (28:03.048)
Yeah. So, to the listening audience, thank you for the privilege of your time. You can listen to this podcast on Spotify. you can actually watch the video on Spotify. and if you go to parentingadultchildren.org that's parentingadultchildren.org, you can go to the website and you can get my contact information. Leave me a voicemail. You can send, you can click on my email account.

Upcoming show schedules are there and it's got a place where you can live or leave a review. So if you watch a podcast episode that you like Click on review and leave me a review. I'd appreciate that You can also listen to the audio version of the podcast on Amazon music. I heart radio Apple podcast and public radio. I think there's a few more two that are out there. I'm not really that aware of I release a new episode every Friday morning at 8 a.m. And thank you for listening and

Y'all have a wonderful day.