HMRC to finally erase five million voice records it collected without permission

HMRC to finally erase five million voice records it collected without permission

Back in June 2018 it was revealed that the UK’s tax authority, HMRC, had collected the voiceprints of 5.1 million taxpayers into a gigantic database.

The biometric voice data had been collected without explicit consent from people calling the HMRC’s telephone hotline for advice.

That breach of privacy rules means that HMRC has now been ordered to delete the data it collected, within the next five weeks.

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Security news, advice, and tips.

As we discussed at the time on the “Smashing Security” podcast, callers were asked to repeat the phrase “My voice is my password” before being able to access HMRC services.

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TranscriptThis transcript was generated automatically, probably contains mistakes, and has not been manually verified.
Carole Theriault

And it all started when someone noticed that an increasing number of people were calling help hotlines convinced they were going crazy. And when these callers were being pressed for more information, the caller would say things like, "The doorbell keeps ringing, but when I answer, there's no one there."

Unknown

That's postman's knock. People have been doing that for hundreds of years. Smashing Security, Episode 84. No, my voice is not my password. With Carole Theriault and Graham Cluley. Hello, hello, and welcome to Episode 84 of Smashing Security. My name is Graham Cluley.

Carole Theriault

And I'm Carole Theriault.

Graham Cluley

Hi, Carole.

Carole Theriault

Hello, Mr. Cluley.

Graham Cluley

And we have a special guest with us this week. It is the returning John Hawes of AMTSO, the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization. Hello, John.

John Hawes

Hello, Graham. Hello, Carole.

Graham Cluley

Hi, wonderful to have you back on the show again. I hope you're keeping well.

John Hawes

I'm pretty good. Lovely to be here as always.

Graham Cluley

And I hope the world of anti-malware testing is behaving itself.

John Hawes

Oh, it's most excellent. We just recently launched our first proper standard, which is certainly interesting times for us.

Graham Cluley

Well, I would hope you've released a standard, John, if you're in charge of the anti-malware testing standards.

John Hawes

We are the standards organization, so it's about time.

Carole Theriault

Yeah.

Graham Cluley

So do you mean all this time we've been talking to you, you hadn't actually released any standards?

John Hawes

Well, you can't just put them out there. You have to actually build them first.

Graham Cluley

Oh, okay.

John Hawes

And getting consensus among 50-odd rival organizations, not always easy, but we've done it.

Carole Theriault

You're like a diplomat, I guess.

John Hawes

Pretty fairly indeed.

Graham Cluley

Is there an equivalent of Trump? Is there someone who's sort of threatening to leave the Paris Accord on anti-malware testing standards?

John Hawes

There's many Trumps.

Graham Cluley

A lot of Trumping in the room. Oh yes. This week's episode of Smashing Security is sponsored by VirusTotal. Now you probably know VirusTotal as a malware research tool. Over 1 million files are uploaded every day by folks analyzing malware and attempting to determine what different antivirus products call a sample. But you can do much more than that with VirusTotal Intelligence, which helps you get more context about your alerts through advanced malware threat hunting, relationship and behavioral visualization, as well as historical analysis on billions of malware samples. To learn more about how VirusTotal Intelligence can help you, visit virustotal.com/intelligence. Learn or email the team at and be sure to say you heard about them on the Smashing Security podcast. Right guys, well look, I want you to do me a favor. Can you say my voice is my password?

John Hawes

Is that safe?

Carole Theriault

Is that safe?

Graham Cluley

Is it safe? Is it safe? Do you remember that? Neither of you are Dustin Hoffman. Neither of you are prepared to say, "My voice is my password."

John Hawes

Hang on. Are they— now, when you say they may ask you to say that phrase, are they actually saying, please say this particular phrase?

Graham Cluley

They are, as you will find out, John. I will explain.

John Hawes

But that's not very stealthy. You'd think if they managed to get you to say those words separately in other sentences and then put them back together again.

Graham Cluley

Oh, it's always one, isn't there? Look, yes, they're not stealthily getting you to say the phrase. What they've stealthily done is they've collected this database.

John Hawes

Okay.

Graham Cluley

This is as yet unknown. Let me explain to you exactly.

John Hawes

I was being overly pedantic there. Please carry on.

Graham Cluley

You were being a bit pedantic. And no wonder your standards have taken so long to be arranged. If this is the level of discussion which goes on. HMRC announced way back in January 2017 that they were introducing voice ID technology to help it recognize taxpayers when they called in and speed up the security steps needed. You know, those hurdles you have to jump over before a call can be dealt with.

Carole Theriault

So it announced this, it announced this publicly.

Graham Cluley

They announced this exactly back in January 2017. They said the first time you call, you might be asked to say this phrase up to 5 times, and then you'll be passed to an advisor to complete the call, right? They said, "We're going to securely store your passphrase and you can just use your voice in future to confirm your identity." Don't worry a jot about how we secure this.

Carole Theriault

We're the government.

Graham Cluley

Exactly.

Carole Theriault

Okay.

Graham Cluley

UK government never had a security breach in their life.

Carole Theriault

Hey, I would've done it. I think I would've done it if I didn't have a choice and I needed to talk to the taxman and it was part of their process. I'd probably just do it.

Graham Cluley

They said at the time that they, although they would be encouraging callers to take advantage of voice ID, you could choose to opt out if you wished.

Carole Theriault

Well, then I would've done that. Okay.

Graham Cluley

Okay.

Carole Theriault

Yeah.

Graham Cluley

Now let's move forward to the present day. Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, also known as BBW.

Carole Theriault

A bit 1984.

Graham Cluley

I think that's the point they're trying to get across. Yes.

Carole Theriault

Not the TV show.

Graham Cluley

No, it's not about watching the reality TV show. I imagine they get a lot of their web traffic for people trying to find out about Celebrity Big Brother. Yes.

Carole Theriault

Yeah.

Graham Cluley

So maybe they were.

Carole Theriault

They probably have excellent traffic.

Graham Cluley

Yes.

Carole Theriault

Huge jump-off rate though. Not the track. Yes. A lot of bouncing.

Graham Cluley

A lot of bouncing. Which is true, of course. Anyway, so BBW, which can also stand for Big Beautiful Women, I believe. Oh dear. Anyway, they said that they received a number of complaints, and so they tested HMRC's system and they found there was no way to opt out or to have your voiceprint securely deleted. So what happens is this: if you ring up the taxman, if you ring up HMRC here in the UK, You are asked to say, "My voice is my password." And if you decline by saying, "No thanks," you're told, "I'll need you to say exactly those words." And if you keep on refusing, they say, "It's important you repeat exactly the same phrase. Please say, 'My voice is my password.'" Say it.

John Hawes

"My voice is my password." Are you saying the HMRC has been taken over by Daleks?

Carole Theriault

So not everyone has been confronted with this, because if the database is only 5 million voice prints, there's more taxpayers than that.

John Hawes

That's true. Yeah, I'm sure I've called HMRC and I've never been asked to say any weird sentences.

Graham Cluley

Well, maybe they're not doing it on absolutely everyone. And of course, not all taxpayers actually have to call HMRC. I think I've only ever called them once.

Carole Theriault

That explains a lot of things.

Graham Cluley

Yep. And let's not forget, a voice isn't actually a password, is it? Really? It's a bit misleading that, because a real password, it's easy to change, but it isn't easy to change your voice, is it?

Carole Theriault

Yes, it is unique though, like a thumbprint or a fingerprint.

Graham Cluley

Oh, you think your voice is unique, do you, Carole?

Carole Theriault

I think my voice is pretty unique.

Graham Cluley

I'd be amazed. You don't think we could mimic it?

Carole Theriault

Oh no, I know you can mimic it. I know you can mimic it.

John Hawes

There are a lot of people who make a living out of imitating other people's voices, so presumably it must be possible.

Graham Cluley

Well, it depends on how good the biometrics are, I suppose, at analysing your particular voice signature, whether they're able to detect determine it or not. Last year, BBC Click reporter Dan Simmons set up an HSBC account which uses voice ID for authentication, and he wheeled in his non-identical twin brother Joe to mimic his voice. And as you can hear, he managed it quite successfully. After the tone, please repeat the phrase, "My voice is my password." My voice is my password.

Carole Theriault

Welcome to HSBC Advance. The balance of your account is £1.21 credit.

Graham Cluley

I'm off to the bank. For your available balance—

John Hawes

I thought it was going to be more than that, Dan. That doesn't seem like a surprise to me. I would have assumed that it would be quite easy to mimic someone's voice.

Carole Theriault

But I think the point that Graham's trying to make on that is that therefore you can't use this type of thing if it can be broken just by a brother. Yeah, I mean, this is tax information. This is not, you know, presumably if you get through, you have access to all the tax background information.

Graham Cluley

Exactly, right? You could have access to all kinds of things, couldn't you? And the concern of Big Brother Watch is that this might be being used as a backdoor for collecting biometric data on millions of UK citizens. And might this data be being shared with other government agencies? HMRC aren't saying how it's being used.

Carole Theriault

Oh, they're staying stum right now?

Graham Cluley

They're staying fairly stum. They're not saying, "My voice is my password." Now it occurs to me, first of all, that I've said "my voice is my password" a number of times now. So even if I've opted out, they can basically— They're screwed! They can opt me in.

John Hawes

I've heard they're big fans of the show.

Carole Theriault

It is odd that you can't choose your own private sentence as well.

John Hawes

That if I was doing this— Yeah, that's true. So are they just taking "my voice is my password" as a way of reading in your voice, or is that something you have to say every time you log in again?

Graham Cluley

I get the sense that they expect you to say the same sentence.

John Hawes

It just seems very strange that if they're building a security system based around voices being passwords.

Carole Theriault

Yeah.

John Hawes

And they've chosen this phrase, very similar to a phrase from a movie where some people defeated voice-based identification systems.

Graham Cluley

That's right.

John Hawes

So presumably they've seen that movie and they know that it doesn't work and they went ahead anyway.

Carole Theriault

How ironic.

Graham Cluley

Isn't it ironic?

Carole Theriault

Isn't it? Don't you think?

Graham Cluley

Anyway, the ICO, the Information Commissioner's Office, is investigating. Who knows what's going to happen to this, because sometimes the rules are rather different for government agencies than the rest of us. So watch this space. But in the meantime, I'd tell people, be a little bit careful. I mean, if I was asked to give my biometric, I might be tempted to do one of my famous impressions instead, like my Scottish. Or—

Carole Theriault

It's hard to tell the difference, actually.

Graham Cluley

Hey, it's Carole here. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Smashing Security. Is that good? Is that any good?

John Hawes

Was that me?

Graham Cluley

Yeah. John, what's your topic for us this week?

John Hawes

Well, so I wanted to talk a little bit about a fairly big US law story that kicked off last week, which is basically a Supreme Court ruling, making it much more difficult for US law enforcement to access people's phone location data.

Carole Theriault

Hallelujah. That's good.

John Hawes

We've all seen the TV shows where, you know, the cops tracking down the bad guys and they're going, oh, where is he? Oh, let's triangulate his phone. That's what we have to do. And they always find him straight away. It turns out, as things are at the moment, they pretty much can do that. It's possible for police to ask cell phone providers for big, big swathes of data based only on suspecting that it might be useful in their investigation.

Carole Theriault

Okay.

John Hawes

It's called a court order for disclosure. But going back, so back in December 2010 to March 2011, there was a big spate of armed robberies at RadioShack and T-Mobile stores. I think it was Ohio and Michigan. And ironically, they actually stole a bunch of smartphones.

Carole Theriault

Okay.

John Hawes

And basically what the— some members of the gang got caught. The cops persuaded them to dob in their buddies and they got the phone numbers for 15 other people. And they went to the cell company and said, can you just give us everything you've got on these 16 people? And then they matched up where they had been over a period of 4 months or something, 127 days for one of them.

Graham Cluley

Holy moly.

John Hawes

And said, well, okay, these guys were outside the scenes of these crimes. So we reckon they probably did it. And one of them, Timothy Carpenter, for whom they looked at something like 13,000 data points for this 127-day period, he was convicted and sentenced to 116 years in jail.

Graham Cluley

116 years?

John Hawes

Yeah, that's fairly standard for—

Carole Theriault

You know what? In this day and age, he might actually get out. Seriously.

Graham Cluley

It's pretty tough, isn't it? If they've got evidence that you're outside that many locations where crimes are being committed, unless you can claim that you're some sort of superhero crime fighter. It's quite unlikely, isn't it?

John Hawes

Or that you

Carole Theriault

Or that you gave your phone to someone else.

Graham Cluley

Villains.

John Hawes

Yeah. Anyway, so he obviously appealed against this on the basis that his cell phone data should not be harvested and used in this way. It's a Fourth Amendment right to privacy thing. Right, and his original appeal was rejected in 2015, but then last year this went up to the Supreme Court and they've been pondering it for the last 6 or 7 months. just drive around a lot. I think it was November 2017 that they heard the arguments, and then finally last week they came out with their decision saying he's right and the cops should not be allowed to get at that data without a warrant. They should have a proper formal warrant, and it shouldn't just be give me everything on this guy. It should be I'm fairly sure this guy is a strong suspect in this case, and I would like this particular data from this particular period for these particular reasons.

Carole Theriault

And see, that makes a lot of sense to me, right? That makes a lot of sense. I have no problem with people putting warrants together to get information because they need it, because they suspect someone of a crime. What I don't like is that potentially innocent people that have not committed any crime have their data being flying between departments and organizations willy-nilly.

John Hawes

Yeah. No, and it's also, it's the broadness really.

Graham Cluley

Yeah.

John Hawes

It's that they can go and say, give me everybody that And then we'll go and track all those people and say, oh, these are interesting people.

Carole Theriault

I mean, they got without a warrant 127 days worth of data on 16 different people.

John Hawes

passed by this cell tower in the last 10 days.

Graham Cluley

Yeah.

John Hawes

That's a huge amount of stuff.

Carole Theriault

Yeah.

Graham Cluley

So this went all the way up to the Supreme Court. I mean, there's no Suprema Court, I imagine.

Carole Theriault

It's the Supremo Court.

John Hawes

It's the Supremo Court.

Graham Cluley

Yeah.

John Hawes

Yeah.

Graham Cluley

This is the big one.

John Hawes

Top of the line. Top of the line. So obviously, I mean, it's not, this is not a huge thing that's going to affect everybody. This is really only a kind of a small change in the law that affects particular law enforcement agencies and how they go about doing their business. But there are kind of implications that it will expand to impact, say, when law enforcement goes to Apple and says, can you unlock these phones, please? Because we believe they belong to terrorists or something. Technology is moving a lot faster than law, obviously.

Graham Cluley

Oh, yeah.

John Hawes

And this is just kind of one little step in bringing law closer in line with how we live today. I mean, a lot of this expectation of privacy law relies on a case from, I think, 1967, where some guy was in a phone box and the phone box was bugged. The argument was, you know, I'm in a phone box. I have a reasonable expectation that it's private.

Graham Cluley

That's not the only expectation you have in a phone box. You also expect the smell of urine. You probably expect little postcards offering sexy Sadie or something like that.

Carole Theriault

You know, most millennials don't even know, have probably never been in a phone box in their lives. They've never had that joy.

Graham Cluley

And Carole, what's your story for us this week?

Carole Theriault

Well, this past weekend, The New York Times ran a rather disturbing story, and it all started when someone noticed that an increasing number of people were calling help hotlines convinced they were going crazy. And when these callers were being pressed for more information, the caller would say things like, "I turned on my air conditioner, but then it switched off all without me touching it," or, "The code of my digital lock changes daily. I don't know how it's doing this." Or the doorbell keeps ringing, but when I answer, there's no one there.

Graham Cluley

The doorbell keeps ringing, but there's no one there. Isn't that postman's knock? People have been doing that for hundreds of years, right? You go up to someone's door and you leg it after ringing it. And as for the air conditioner, it turns off when it's decided it's now cool enough in the room.

John Hawes

Yeah, they do have thermostats generally, don't they?

Graham Cluley

They should have rung me up for support. I could have helped with this.

Carole Theriault

You see, you think you're so clever. You think you're so clever. This is all about IoT-enabled devices. So the New York Times conducted more than 30 interviews with domestic abuse victims, lawyers, shelter workers, and emergency responders. Turns out the perps had somehow gained access to the IoT-enabled apps on the smartphone. Now we're talking about apps that run things like doors or speakers or thermostats or lights or cameras, you name it. And we're not talking just accessing these, but also remotely controlling these devices in the victim's home. Basically to either drive them batty or make them scared out of their wits.

Graham Cluley

Geez. Wow.

Carole Theriault

In some instances, and we've talked about these on the show before, but we've heard of people trying to spy or terrorize people in the room. Remember with those baby monitors, IoT baby monitors? Yes. So take Graciela Rodriguez. She runs a shelter in San Rafael, California. She told New York Times that some people have come in talking of thermostats suddenly being kicked up to 100 degrees or smart speakers suddenly blasting music.

John Hawes

Wow.

Graham Cluley

Okay.

John Hawes

So this isn't just problems where the devices aren't working properly. This is people intentionally meddling with their stuff to freak with them.

Graham Cluley

Or turning up the temperature. It's like, it's getting hot in here. So think, you know, it's—

Carole Theriault

I see you gesturing. But imagine if a relationship ended badly, for example, right? And the guy is kicked out of the house, but he still has his phone. He's pissed off. He's got his phone, he's got apps, he's got the apps to manage the thermostat and to manage the Amazon device or Google device. But, you know, he's a bit smart with these things.

Graham Cluley

And then also—

Carole Theriault

And yeah, right. So while people love the convenience and the kind of snazziness of internet-enabled devices, the problem seems to be that victims and even some emergency responders, when they're called in, don't have the required knowledge to stop these abuses. They just don't know how to do it. But I'm thinking we do. I've pulled together a few tips. I wanted you guys to throw in a few as well as I go along, if you have any advice for our listeners on what we would recommend they do if they feel they're in this type of situation. Ready?

Graham Cluley

Braced.

John Hawes

Mm-hmm.

Carole Theriault

So number one, I would say you need to know which devices in your house are internet-enabled. It is not always easy to know from just looking at it. So you're talking things like heating and TVs and locks and Wi-Fis. And I suggest label everything in your house, put a little sticker on it saying that is Wi-Fi enabled. People have Wi-Fi fridges, for God's sake. And even if you're not sure, if you bought it in the last five years, I would just look up online and look up the manufacturing code to see if it has any internet capability.

John Hawes

But presumably you have to, it's not like you just buy a fridge and slap it in the corner and suddenly it's online. You have to connect it to your Wi-Fi.

Carole Theriault

No, but for example, my husband could have put one in.

Graham Cluley

Yeah, maybe abusive partners set it all up. That's the thing, isn't it? Yeah.

Carole Theriault

And yes, of course, some are probably doing it because they're just assholes. Okay, so things you want to think first, can you reset the device to just reset it, bring it back to zero?

John Hawes

Factory settings.

Carole Theriault

Right. And if you can't do that, figure out whose account the device is registered to. If it's you, you can create a new account, maybe even change your username, but definitely change your password on that device. Now, there are some devices that will not let you change those passwords. And if you can't change those passwords on those devices, find out if there's a microphone or a video camera on that device. If there is, then I'd consider dumping it if you can't change the password. Would you guys agree with that?

Graham Cluley

Yes.

John Hawes

Yeah, that's very sound advice. I would say yes, try and find that out in advance and don't buy it. But if you've already bought it, then throw it away.

Carole Theriault

Exactly. Now, three, check out if the account's been shared with anyone. Now, for instance, my husband bought our household a VPN service and it's been installed on some of my devices under his email and password. So there's only one registered user for that account, but I have access to it. So be wary of that. So one, look for accounts and see if there's shared users. There's two email addresses, for example, tied to one account. And also, if you think that account's been shared with anybody, switch it up, change the password to a new unique password. And of course, use password managers to manage all that stuff so they're nice, long, and complex, and not your dog's name, Fifi. You would be amazed at the devices that have microphones and cameras these days. And if you're not sure, look online and find out and figure out if you can disable those things.

John Hawes

Do fridges have microphones?

Graham Cluley

I bet there are some fridges with microphones. I bet there are some fridges where you can do Dick Tracy style, you know, FaceTime equivalent chatting, you know, I bet you can do video calls and things like that. Yeah.

Carole Theriault

With the panel on your fridge?

Graham Cluley

Yes, you'll probably have some sort of daft sort of Windows XP embedded sort of governance or something like that, wouldn't you? I bet it happens.

John Hawes

So you can ask it if there's any cheese left without opening the door.

Graham Cluley

I'm always fully aware of the cheese levels in my fridge. I'm intimately keeping track of those.

Carole Theriault

Now we totally talked about IoT devices, but we haven't talked about the obvious things, the Wi-Fi, the mobiles, the computers. Of course, these things need to be looked at. So you want to check your settings, check the accounts, check all the configuration settings and get rid of accounts you don't need. And basically you just want to change everything, all the passwords you can. Try and lock it down, especially the Locate My Phone.

Graham Cluley

So Carole, I think it feels to me like with so many devices potentially being in your house and being IoT enabled and it being hard to work out exactly what might be connected, that a key thing to do is probably to look at your Wi-Fi router and maybe change the name of your Wi-Fi network because then all those devices won't be able to connect to the internet via your router anymore, right?

Carole Theriault

If you change the username of your Wi-Fi and can't find it?

Graham Cluley

A small number of devices may have SIM cards or they may be connected to your neighbor's Wi-Fi. And obviously there's not much you can do about that, but it feels to me like that would be something. And also look at your routers generally, because if you were with a nerdy person who might now be tormenting you via IoT, there's always the potential that they could log into the router remotely and reconfigure it or set up an additional Wi-Fi network inside your house so that all those devices can get back online too.

John Hawes

Yeah. And there's also generally when you log into your admin panel on your

Carole Theriault

Yeah. And a little tip actually is make sure you make

Graham Cluley

Yeah.

John Hawes

router, you can actually see which devices are connected.

Carole Theriault

your name of your Wi-Fi router boring, like 65677BC as opposed

John Hawes

So you can look through the list and go, hang on, I don't recognize that fridge.

Carole Theriault

to Donna's Pad, especially if your name's Donna. Right. Because people do that. I see them everywhere. When I'm looking around for Wi-Fi, I can see that people use their name.

Graham Cluley

Well, actually, I once, we have a very— We have a world-famous author who lives in my village, and once I wanted to contact him for something or other. His Wi-Fi said his name, and so I knew which house he lived in, and then I was able to pester him.

Carole Theriault

Now, lastly, before I wrap up, if I may, if you think you are being watched, right, in this situation, what you need to do according to some online harassment guides, which I have linked to via the show notes, the best thing is you have to document everything relevant to the incident. So times, dates, apps used, or technology involved, or details, the incident screenshots, screenshots, screenshots, photos, all that stuff, really useful. But a really good tip that I read is don't hand over too much information or irrelevant information as part of that, because it could always be handed over as evidence to the courts or shared with, you know, inadvertently with the abuser. So, for example, don't include personal photos unrelated to the incident. Good to know, right? As I said, there's a lot of information on our website and show notes. And if you have a friend or colleague that's going or has mentioned things this, don't assume they're nuts. You know, they're not cray-cray. Share the podcast with them so they can get some help.

Graham Cluley

Well, thank you for that, Carole.

Carole Theriault

It's a little sober this week, but important.

John Hawes

Yeah, scary. A bit of a sad topic in some ways. But you know what isn't sad? It's time for Pick of the Week. And thanks once again to VirusTotal for sponsoring this episode of Smashing Security.

Carole Theriault

Pick of the Week.

Graham Cluley

Pick of the Week is the part of the show where everyone chooses something they like. It could be a funny story, a book that they've read, a TV show, a movie, a record, a podcast, a website, or an app. Whatever they like. Doesn't have to be security-related necessarily.

Carole Theriault

I hope it's not this week.

Graham Cluley

Well, mine isn't security-related this week. Mine is a website and it's called music-map.com. And it will— yes, intriguing, eh? Music-map.com. Well, what it does when you go to it, it asks you to name an artist and you type in the artist's name.

Carole Theriault

I'm going in right now. Bryan Adams.

Graham Cluley

The Groover from Vancouver.

Carole Theriault

The Groover from Vancouver.

John Hawes

Oh.

Graham Cluley

And what it will do is it will put up almost like a mind mappy thing. All these names will swirl around of other artists who it believes are similar or other music that you might like if you are a fan of whoever you put in.

Carole Theriault

Right, yeah, it's an interesting thing. So I see Celine Dion, presumably that link is that they've come from, they're born in Canada.

Graham Cluley

A lot of Canadian people like to, you know, basically eat that meat.

Carole Theriault

Meatloaf.

Graham Cluley

And so they're enjoying Brian and they're enjoying Celine. They're just helping the national economy.

Carole Theriault

Right.

Graham Cluley

Right. So I entered, for instance, Del Amitri, right, who are an early '90s, '80s pop group, and up comes Ron Sexsmith. And so I discovered Ron Sexsmith, who I think is another Canadian, isn't he?

Carole Theriault

I don't know.

Graham Cluley

Ron Sexsmith is a great Canadian songwriter. I've only discovered him in recent months. He's smashing. And I found out via sites like this him and other artists who I might enjoy.

Carole Theriault

Oh yes, I'm looking now. You have Rufus Wainwright nearby.

Graham Cluley

So if you want to have a slightly wider— what am I saying?

Carole Theriault

Musical repertoire.

Graham Cluley

Yes, you might want to go to music-map.com. And you will find other artists you might enjoy. Then you can go and check them out on Spotify or one of those and say, oh no, I do actually really like them. So it's a great way of finding other things. So I found, for instance, some sort of Danish miserable rock genre, right, which because Ron Sexsmith is a bit of a hangdog deputy dawg kind of figure, a bit morose, which is what I like. And so it's helped me find other artists. And so I really like it. And that is why it is my pick of the week.

Carole Theriault

It's a very cute pick of the week. I'm just looking up Thom Waits right now.

John Hawes

Oh, sweet.

Carole Theriault

Who would be like him? Yeah. Oh, Nick Cave. Yep.

Graham Cluley

I don't know how—

Carole Theriault

Drake, Leonard Cohen.

Graham Cluley

I don't know how— oh yeah, Joni Mitchell. I don't know how they're working out. I don't know if it's something like an Amazon people have also bought this or I don't know where this data is coming from, but like the Apple Genius thing. Yeah, not sure.

Carole Theriault

This is, yeah, this is quite interesting. When I put in Thom Waits, I would probably know 60, 70% of them here. Yeah, interesting. Cute pick of the week. I like it.

John Hawes

Thank you. Very nice.

Graham Cluley

John, what's your pick of the week?

John Hawes

Well, so I've got a slightly meta pick of the week. I'm a big fan of BBC Radio 4, the BBC's flagship—

Carole Theriault

Who isn't?

John Hawes

Show channel for serious, mature people like myself. And I don't have specific times when I listen, so I very much like a show they have called Pick of the Week, where they have a guest on and they choose their favorite shows from the last week. And no, so Pick of the Week is not my pick of the week this week. I actually wanted to mention a show that I heard on Pick of the Week, or I heard an excerpt from, which is a clip from a show called Shortcuts. Which is lots of little documentaries, plays, just kind of 5-10 minute bits. And this particular one was about meatspace, which people with long memories might actually remember. So basically there was a guy wrote a novel, I think, called Meatspace. I don't know this at all. Him and a friend were looking into ways to promote this and they were very literal-minded people, obviously. So they decided to get a lamb chop from their local curry house and send it up into space on a weather balloon with a camera attached. And they had this plan that they would send it up on this weather balloon and taking a video and then figured out where it would come back down again and went to the field where it was going to come back down and it wasn't there. And so this episode of this show details how they went about getting it back and particularly how they were basically messed with by some weird dude who kept telling them that he had their camera and he would meet them at the motorway service station outside Bridgewater, and then wouldn't show up, and then would phone them and say, oh, I'm sorry, I'm on my way home, let's go and meet in somewhere else. And it was a very interesting story, and they eventually obviously did get it back because there's quite a famous video on YouTube of the lamb chop going from the curry house to space, which I recommend you watch. It's like 2 minutes long.

Graham Cluley

I think there's a video somewhere, isn't there, about poop being someone's cup of tea? Isn't that famous? That sounds pretty nasty. I've never watched it myself, but it's something like one cup, two—

Carole Theriault

Okay, shorter than the description.

John Hawes

Much shorter than description, yes. But also, my actual pick of the week was not the video, but the show about the background of how the video was retrieved from this crazy dude. Okay, that's really cool.

Carole Theriault

I'm definitely going to watch that. Thank you very much. Yeah, that is quite something. Everyone knows that. And I'm also a bit of a fan of the kind of tech-driven sci-fi stuff like Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror. So I was thrilled that Adam Buxton recently published an interview with the Black Mirror creator, Charlie Brooker. It's a rambly chat, and it touches on everything from playing video games to behind the scenes of Black Mirror. And yeah, they do. They chat, there's bathroom humor in there. Find Adam Buxton podcast on his website, episode 76, where he interviews Charlie Brooker. Yeah, you know, it's funny stuff to me, but maybe pooping is not everyone's cup of tea. There's a bit of cussing, so maybe adults only. Worth a listen. Sounds wonderful.

John Hawes

You can reach me at . Fantastic.

Graham Cluley

And folks can follow us on Twitter @SmashingSecurity, no G, Twitter wouldn't allow us to have a G. You can buy t-shirts and stickers and other kinds of goodies at smashingsecurity.com/store. And thanks for tuning in. If you like the show, rate us on Apple Podcasts. Helps people find us. It's fantastic. And go to smashingsecurity.com for past episodes and for details of how to get in touch with us. Until next time, cheerio. Bye-bye. Bye everyone.

Carole Theriault

Bye-bye. It's a sex show.

John Hawes

Pirates.

Graham Cluley

Don't want any of those around here. It's recording. We have started recording.

If it hadn’t been for privacy campaigners at Big Brother Watch making a stink about HMRC’s breach of privacy rules and complaining to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), it’s unlikely the data would ever have been erased – giving the British government “one of the largest known state-held voice databases in the world.”

In October 2018, HMRC changed the way it sought permission to collect voice IDs. And if you have called the tax hotline since then any voiceprint collected will not be included amongst those now being deleted before the ICO’s deadline of 5 June.

In short, HMRC will now continue to collect biometric data of people calling it on the telephone – but only if callers choose to opt-in to the scheme.

As BBC News reports, Big Brother Watch views the outcome as a big success:

“To our knowledge, this is the biggest ever deletion of biometric IDs from a state-held database. This sets a vital precedent for biometrics collection and the database state, showing that campaigners and the ICO have real teeth and no government department is above the law.”


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and hosts the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on TikTok, LinkedIn, Bluesky and Mastodon, or drop him an email.

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