AI Predators and Digital Dangers: Keeping Children Safe Online

Intro 0:01

Welcome to the She Said Privacy/He Said Security. Podcast, like any good marriage, we will debate, evaluate, and sometimes quarrel about how privacy and security impact business in the 21st century.

Jodi Daniels 0:22

Hi, Jodi Daniels here, I’m the founder and CEO of Red Clover Advisors, a certified women’s privacy consultancy. I’m a privacy consultant and certified informational privacy professional providing practical privacy advice to overwhelmed companies.

Justin Daniels 0:36

Hi, Justin Daniels here, I’m a shareholder and corporate M&A and tech transaction lawyer at the law firm Baker Donelson, advising companies in the deployment and scaling of technology. Since data is critical to every transaction, I help clients make informed business decisions while managing data privacy and cybersecurity risk. And when needed, I lead the legal cyber data breach response brigade.

Jodi Daniels 0:57

And this episode is brought to you by Red Clover Advisors, we help companies to comply with data privacy laws and establish customer trust so that they can grow and nurture integrity. We work with companies in a variety of fields, including technology e commerce, professional services and digital media. In short, we use data privacy to transform the way companies do business together. We’re creating a future where there’s greater trust between companies and consumers to learn more and to check out our best selling book, Data Reimagined: Building Trust One Byte at a Time. Visit redcloveradvisors.com. You ready for a good discussion today about protecting especially girls online? Indeed, that’s where you kick us off.

Justin Daniels 1:46

All right. Well, let’s introduce our guest. Today. We have Angeline Corvaglia with Data Girls and Friends. Angeline is on a mission to help young people learn to thrive in an AI driven digital world. She is focused on preparing young minds to navigate and succeed in the ever evolving digital landscape. Angeline, I guess it is, what? Good afternoon, where you are? 

Angeline Corvaglia 2:12

Yes, good afternoon.

Jodi Daniels 2:14

Well, Angeline, please do share where you’re based, because we learned the secret in pre show, but not everyone else knows 

Angeline Corvaglia 2:22

I’m in southern Italy, in Apulia, which is the heel of the Italian boot.

Jodi Daniels 2:29

Well, we could spend the entire episode just talking about Italy. We have two girls in our family, and our older daughter is obsessed with Italy. But here we actually have to talk about, you know, some other things. So we’ll have to save our passion for Italy for another time. But we would love to hear how your career evolved to what you are doing now in helping girls navigate this digital landscape.

Angeline Corvaglia 2:59

Well, it’s a pretty, I would say, unique path that I took. I was in finance for a long time, and my last role was a CFO of I was a medium-sized financial institution, and my daughter was born, and I realized that’s not what I want her to strive towards, because that wasn’t me. So I’ve been spending the last, I would say, three to five years, looking for myself, what I really want to be. I worked at a software services company, and then I would say, around six months ago, the light came on, David, girl and friends, what I could do, taking all of my knowledge and experience and really help help, as you said, the youth children, to be able to survive better in this crazy world that’s evolving by the minute. Yeah, so that’s what I’ve dedicated my life to. 

Jodi Daniels 3:57

Well, I know we’re going to dive a little bit more into that, so we’re looking forward to hearing more detail.

Justin Daniels 4:04

Yes, we are and so we want to start off and just ask you, how did your career evolve into your current role?

Jodi Daniels 4:10

I just asked that, silly goose, 

Justin Daniels 4:13

Are you serious? I did. I am so sorry. Clearly I need you

Angeline Corvaglia 4:23

Our finance and software services. And then I was going after I didn’t leave. I left the part out where I was looking after my own ideas and spent some time. And then I founded Data Girl, after some months of soul searching,

Justin Daniels 4:38

All right, then let’s talk a little bit about Data Girl, where did your inspiration for it come from?

Angeline Corvaglia 4:45

Well, it started, I would say this around nine months ago, where I was obviously still I had a lot of the software IT gang in my LinkedIn, and everyone was talking about AI and this big high. Depending on the hype cycle of this, and I realized that the regular, average person was completely left out of this. So I started to really inform myself, especially about AI and the impacts on online security and on the average person who doesn’t really pay attention to what’s going on. And I started following some people on LinkedIn, and I found Bill Schmarzo, which was an amazing inspiration from me. He was, he’s the dean of big data. And then now he’s really, he’s written a book called Citizens of Data Science, trying to help people, the average person, kind of learn data science. And he wrote an article for children, trying to explain to them about how their data was used. And then I said, Well, I think this would probably come over better if it was a video. And I created a video, I said, I asked him, can I create a video? And created this little short video, the first data girl episode, and he really loved it. And a lot of people loved it, and I realized I love creating, taking complex concepts and putting them to simple terms. And there’s a real need there. So that’s how it was born. And then someone came and said, Why don’t you add AI? So we have a character for AI, and they have a character for online security.

Jodi Daniels 6:21

You mentioned that the average person has been left out of the conversation, and I think the average parent also doesn’t really understand. What are the online risks for girls? What would you tell those parents?

Angeline Corvaglia 6:37

I would say, yeah, they definitely don’t understand. I mean, if people are, I would tell those parents that it’s kind of okay not to know, not to know the risk, because we do have a society where the adults are always supposed to teach the children. But in the case of the online world, now, I think most adults don’t actually know what’s going on online. They can’t imagine the impact of AI, for example, on the risks related to the online world. And I would just tell the average parent that it’s okay not to know, but you really need to open dialog with your children about it.

Jodi Daniels 7:23

Can you share perhaps a few of those risks? What are maybe two or three of the common risks that you think parents need to know and might not?

Angeline Corvaglia 7:33

Well, I think the parents I mean just the basic concept that that a lot of people have in their mind, if they share their data, they share too much they’re going to have, there’s going to be personalized ads, but it’s so much more than personalized ads that predators, for example, can use AI in a way that can kind of automate the grooming of children, because they can, they can program chatbots. That’s what they’re doing. These programming chatbots that will talk to their children and these obviously learn to get more efficient over time so they can even groom the children without even being personally involved, so to speak. Any other aspect, of course, is that that you can a private person can, with tech, know how, obviously, can scrape data from social media, and they could use it again with AI, because AI can analyze large amounts of data to find potential victims that are more vulnerable based on what they’re they’re Putting online. And of course, we hear a lot about the media, about deep fakes. I think people are aware of deep fake images and videos that can be created of children that was in the news with Taylor Swift. But also they can be deep fakes of celebrities and influencers who can write directly to the children and in trying to get their trust. So it’s a completely different world than I think a lot of parents can imagine. Exists.

Jodi Daniels 9:12

Yeah, the AI chat bot. We’ve had a couple conversations about that on the show, and that entire concept just is super, super scary, even as an adult, how do I I want to be able to trust that I’m talking to a human, or at least a not trickery, chat bot? In that this is where we’ve come with companies creating these chat bots is, I think, just very scary.

Justin Daniels 9:38

I think they feel the need to create them, because their view is, is, if they don’t do it, their competition will, and they’re in a race for market dominance, and don’t view it as part of their mission, to think about, what are some of the implications like using a chat bot to groom a child on something like Snapchat, which is awful, but that seems to be the reality. 

Angeline Corvaglia 10:00

It doesn’t appear that we learned very much from what happened with social media, that it’s a moment in AI where, you know, the whole landscape is developing in a way that it hasn’t. It just hadn’t previously. And yeah, we should have learned from what went wrong with social media, but it really doesn’t appear, as you said, it doesn’t really appear that we have and yeah, as you say, that the competition who’s going to get there faster, who’s going to who’s going to get you know, the most people there and the vulnerable are the ones that are kind of being left behind. That’s one of the main reasons why I do what I do is that the vulnerable are being left behind. And you know that if people with awareness, if we can plant awareness in the younger generation, we can at least help them protect themselves, where technology companies aren’t necessarily stepping up.

Justin Daniels 11:02

So, you know, in particular, because, you know, you’re focused on Data Girls and Friends is, can you talk a little bit specifically about what are some of the online pressures that girls specifically face? From your perspective,

Angeline Corvaglia 11:18

Girls and boys face the same pressures. But girls, obviously, they have the societal expectations that are different. Obviously, I’ve lived in six different countries, so it’s different in each country to which degree this is true. But girls, obviously they have some expectation from the beginning, from very early on, I also have a daughter, a young daughter. And I was shocked at how early people were throwing certain expectations about how she had to be, how she had to act, how she had to look. And people are saying this to girls. And these are a lot of these things are exactly the kind of aspects that online that you can see with the influencers, with beauty, with fashion, with, you know, being perfect, the illusion of perfection, this is that affects Girls more, because they generally always also have the expectation from society outside of the online world. And then obviously there’s the aspect that girls start puberty earlier. So in general, and once they hit puberty, they’ll start looking for social connections outside of their family and generally. So I’ve seen some studies, let’s say that that’s a moment where puts them more at risk, because if they go into the online world, they haven’t really solidified their offline presence enough, because they’re a few years younger, then the boys might have those urges. So those are pressures that girls kind of face more than boys.

Jodi Daniels 13:06

Parents often hear from their teenage girls, you’re just being overprotective. I’m smart enough. I won’t talk to those people. I will block them. It’ll only be my friends. You don’t have anything to worry about. What would you tell those parents of how to explain these risks that we’re talking about here to their teenage daughters or cousins or nieces or nephews or right fill in the blank, I guess not nephews in this specific situation, but you know what we’re talking about?

Angeline Corvaglia 13:39

Yeah. Well, I think that there’s obviously no simple answer, because each family dynamic will be different, but I think it’s important for the parents can tell their children. It’s also something they said about about cyber attacks, for example, it’s not a question of if you’re going to have an issue, it’s a question of when I’ve seen, obviously, a lot of statistics, and there was one, I think some watch internet, watch foundation or something from the UK, where they said 77% of girls within the first remember how many six to 12 months of being online had already seen inappropriate images. And it’s, it’s just mind boggling. So if someone says no, it’s going to be fine, then the answer needs to be No, it’s not going to be fine, because that’s, there’s just too much sophistication on the other side. And that said to really open dialog with the kids, with the girls, and say, we have to solve this together, because I’m also not a cyber security expert, and open the dialog. Don’t set rules without explaining and discussing. Treat. I think if parents treat their children as responsible beings, that. Can talk through and can find compromises, then a basis of trust can be, can be found, and then slowly, over time, there can be discussion and understanding between them.

Justin Daniels 15:18

So you had mentioned earlier that you’ve lived in several different countries and you’re raising your own child, and what is your perspective around what you’ve seen in various countries around the world about how privacy laws are evolving when it comes to protecting kids?

Angeline Corvaglia 15:38

I’m spoiled, obviously, because I live in Europe, we have GDPR, and I’m really thankful for that. Every time I come back to the US to visit my parents, I can really even tell the difference on all my devices, how much more protected I am in Italy. But I really see that that awareness is kind of growing. I’ve also read that even in Asia, apparently, that the privacy laws are even more kind of protective than in Europe, in some countries, but in the US, it’s kind of heartening to see some movement happening. Obviously, California has kind of been leading the way. And states are, states are, some states are following up in the privacy protection laws, especially aimed at children with this age specific design code, for example, that California has, yeah, and the federal government in the US is working somehow.

Jodi Daniels 16:43

Angeline, I’m curious, you said that you can tell a significant difference in your home country compared to when you come to the US. Can you share an example of how you’re seeing that literally, you mentioned on your devices?

Angeline Corvaglia 16:59

Well, I mean, it mostly has to do with cookies, I have to say that I’m really big on making sure my cookies are all turned off, and it’s not much of an issue in Europe, because it’s the law that every time I open a web page, then I get the cookies, that I can select the cookies, and I can See when I come to the US, that that’s not always the case, that I can just get into websites without, without selecting cookies. And then I just noticed that this doesn’t happen in Europe, that I always get just like my cookies in the US, I sometimes have to do some extra effort to find them.

Jodi Daniels 17:41

Yeah, yep, that’s true. Significant Difference and overall philosophy, even in the states here that have privacy laws, compared to what we have in GDPR. So interesting, interesting comparison. I’m curious, Angeline, what tip we always ask everyone, what is their best personal privacy tip? And here, I would love to hear. What would you tell parents listening to this episode, what specifically they could do to help protect their daughter online?

Angeline Corvaglia 18:11

Well, I mean, I’ll just start. I don’t mind. I have two. One is a very basic one. Whatever privacy setting you can turn on. Just turn it on. I wouldn’t even think it through, because your data is going to pass in two or three other ways, anyway that you’re not aware of. So that’s the first one. I’m not sure that you know people that push the cookies, except I always wonder about that. So just push, no cookies reject. But the other one is really not to underestimate talking, because we really tend to overestimate that children will know what to do online. We because our devices are so user friendly and so easy to kind of figure out how to use it that we confuse that with understanding how to use it correctly and safely. And so what parents really should do the best privacy tip is teach their children critical thinking, to teach them and work together, what talk it through. Teach them to ask, why does this person want this information? Why does this web page or app want this information? Who is actually behind it? The critical thinking is the best privacy tip for me to really — yeah, because it how whatever the tech scene will throw at you, if you have critical thinking, then you will be in a much, much better position to protect your privacy and stay safe.

Jodi Daniels 19:52

I completely agree. I love the idea of critical thinking. That’s something Justin you and I have been talking about a lot when it comes to this concept of digital. Citizenship and trying to get people to understand what is real, what is not. Can I trust this? Can I not? What should I do? When should I seek additional help? It’s a really important skill.

Justin Daniels 20:10

But it sounds like one of the other things that Angeline is saying is, even if you think your kids are tuning you out and it seems like an insurmountable mountain to get through to them. It sounds to me like it doesn’t mean you stop communicating and telling them things, even if they roll their eyes, because on some level, I think when they’re out and you’re not around, they have this little, little avatar talking to them that my parents say this. My parents say this because I doubt they ever want to admit to it, because I know Jodi and I struggle with that, and we continue to tell our kids that, even though they roll their eyes, they act like they’re not listening, but I kind of think they are. They are. It’s mastering repetition and redundancy.

Jodi Daniels 20:58

Yes, Justin, that is a specialty of yours, repetition and redundancy.

Angeline Corvaglia 21:04

Well, I think I also left out that another way you can gain their trust is talk about your online, your own online experience with them, or so. It’s not just taking, but it’s also giving them, because obviously we talk a lot about protecting children because they’re more vulnerable, but adults are also attacked. So if we say, oh, look what happened to me. Look what doubts I have. I read this, this scared me. Let’s talk it through that will also help build the trust. But yeah, as Justin said, repeating things in a respectful way will plant really important seeds later on. Don’t give up. I like it. Don’t give up. Don’t give up. Think that’s the message for parents.

Jodi Daniels 21:55

It is, in all more ways than just protecting people online, don’t give up.

Justin Daniels 22:01

So Angeline, what do you like to do for fun when you’re not protecting girls online?

Angeline Corvaglia 22:09

Well, I try to have the exact polar opposite of thinking about AI and data security and predators and all of this. So my fun is spending time in nature, really, I have a bunch of animals, and obviously I live in a very beautiful area of the world, so I do a lot of walking and visiting the sea and kind of just staring at trees sometimes, if it’s been a hard day.

Jodi Daniels 22:36

You know, what I noticed Justin is that a lot of our guests who spend a significant amount of time on screens and talking about some significantly serious issues on privacy and security, all like to go far away from their computers and go to nature. We have a lot of hikers and bikers and kayakers and skiers and a lot of outdoor enthusiasts in this industry.

Justin Daniels 23:01

Yes, I think being in front of a computer screen all day, it’s taxing.

Jodi Daniels 23:05

It really, it really is. Well, Angeline, where can people go to learn more?

Angeline Corvaglia 23:13

Well, it’s Data Girl and Friends. The probably easiest way is to look on LinkedIn. We have, I have a web page, a page Data Girl and Friends. And there you can have links to I have the videos on Vimeo, and then obviously, have a website and on YouTube. So that’s the best way to find us on LinkedIn, and then branch out to our other resources.

Jodi Daniels 23:39

Wonderful. Well. Angeline, as parents of two girls, thank you for what you’re doing to protect girls online. And for everyone listening, please be sure to check out those resources and share them with all the people that you know so that we can continue to protect the next generation online. Angeline, thank you so much for joining us today.

Angeline Corvaglia 23:57

Thank you so much for having me and really for pushing these issues. I know you’ve done it with a lot of other speakers, so it’s really so important. Thank you.

Jodi Daniels 24:07

Absolutely.

Outro 24:13

Thanks for listening to the She Said Privacy/He Said Security. Podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes and check us out on LinkedIn. See you next time you.