K Royal:Privacy and Purpose

Dr. K Royal the reigning Classic Universe Woman titleholder, celebrated for her poise, authenticity, and commitment to empowering women. A passionate advocate, she serves as a National Ambassador for the Lupus Foundation of America along with other community service activities.  Her decades of service have been honored with a prestigious Lifetime Presidential Achievement Award for Volunteer Service. She also co-hosts the award-winning “Serious Privacy” podcast, bringing her signature warmth and insight to a global audience. She spends a lot of her time helping non-profits and educating kids and adults on the dangers of online activity and emerging tech.

She is also a prominent global compliance professional, privacy expert, and attorney with over 30 years of experience, specializing in healthcare and data protection law. Currently the Chief Privacy Officer at Crawford & Company and faculty associate at Arizona State University (ASU). K holds a PhD in Public Affairs and a JD, focusing on ethical compliance and risk management. She is also a recognized fellow and certified professional in privacy. K is a strong advocate for queens of all ages. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to Lipstick and Legacy, a podcast where your story matters and your journey has purpose. Together we lift and inspire our communities one story at a time. Welcome, Dr. Kay Royal.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hi, thank you so much for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Of course. After looking over your bio, I thought that a good theme for your podcast was service advocacy and protecting what matters most. Okay. I'm so excited to have you here. I met you last year at the Classic Universe pageant, and you are the reigning Classic Universe woman.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Yes, which means I am the 55 plus age category. And so the way our pageant works, if you haven't explained it to your listeners already, is that we have the four categories uh contemporary, which is 30 and up, woman or sorry, Ms. and Mrs., which are 45 and up, and then woman, which is 55 and up. However, there is no maximum age. So as I'm 57, 56 at the time, I could have competed in contemporary because I am 30 and up. Or I chose to compete in woman because I just waited for that until I was 55.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

That's great. I love that there's a space for women over the age of 30 and especially over the age of 50 like me. That's it's a really great experience if anyone's looking for a fun experience. Kay, beyond the accolades and titles, who are you? Tell me your story. A brief history.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Tell you my story. Oh my goodness. Okay, so poor backwoods country girl. I mean, I say we're we were so poor that the bank didn't even put a value on the trailer I grew up in, right? I mean, we were rural Mississippi poor. Uh, and now I have two doctorates, and you know, I'm constantly chasing that external validation that I am worthy. And I'm at a point in my life that I've recognized that and I can admit that. And you know what? I don't change it. Uh I seek external validation because the way I was raised is I I had no value, right? I was the girl. My brother was the golden child. Uh, I was the girl. I had I had no value. Um, which my family would say, yes, you did, but it's the way I was treated, right? It's the way I felt, right? That I had no value. And so um I feel like I didn't even come into who I am until we lived in Arizona, which I moved there at 2000, in the year 2000. Uh met my current husband there. So who am I? Uh I am a meme, I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm a dog owner, I'm a cat claimed. I don't own the cats, I they claim me. Uh, I'm a podcaster, I'm a global privacy professional, I am a queen, I am me. And actually, that's my platform, which is live out loud, be uniquely and unapologetically yourself, which that is a motto I took from the Lupus Foundation of America, who I am a national ambassador for, and I expanded it to my private life, right? Lupus is live out loud. It's an invisible disease. Show people what you have by telling them and sharing your story. But I adapted it to my personal and my professional life as well, because you know, I only had one dream in my life, and that was to be able to walk into the corner store and buy a Coke without having to balance my checkbook first.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Wow. Can you tell me maybe a memory you have as a child, something that really stands out in your mind that puts you on a trajectory to where you are today? They're all bad. It might be a bad one if you're okay sharing that.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Oh, I am, I am. And as a matter of fact, this reminds me of the portion of the pageant where all the women come together and tell their stories. And for the second year that I competed, when I tell my story, I don't meet the eyes of the people around me. And Linda, the director, is like, hey, you've got to meet eyes. I'm like, oh, don't worry about me in the pageant in the interview. I can meet eyes. It's telling the full story. And so I've been studying ever since then, why don't I meet people's eyes when I'm relaying that level of information? It goes with chronic uh PTSD. That it is a way of not validating that that's who you are now. Um it's a it's a way of protecting yourself from what you perceive might be judgment or pity or anything like that. So my bit memories, unfortunately, are typically bad ones. The one that I remember is that that stood out to me and really said, you're going to do more than this, you're capable of doing more than this, is when my brother came home from the Marines. He turned 18. And my brother had been very abusive to me growing up, and we're only like 20 months apart or something. And when he came in, and I forget what he was doing, I think he raised his fist to my mom. And they were walking out the door, and he had her and was raised his fist, and he's like 6'4. Um, and I was sitting on the couch reading a book, and I looked at him just out of the corner of my eye. I said, That fist lands, I'm calling 911 on you. I said, And I will find a way to kill you.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

And he just stopped and looked at me, put his fist down, and walked out. And that's when I realized, you know what? You can have control over your own destiny.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

You can were you when you have that memory?

SPEAKER_00 6:11

16?

SPEAKER_01 6:12

So if he was like 18, you were 16. It's incredible how we have these pivotal points where a memory really stands out where you stood your ground or you you decided to stand up to somebody. And those are those moments that really do shape us.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

They do. Now, unfortunately, I then went into two domestic violence marriages. The first one is the husband I have my kids from. So, you know, regardless of what happened, I can't regret it. I adore my kids, right? I have two daughters, they're in their 30s. And uh the second marriage was, of course, the rebound. You're as a single mom in the South, you're supposed to be married. So I married. He was also abusive, both in two different ways. And that's how I wound up in Arizona is I was running away from um him. He had had a psychotic break. Uh, he would not leave us alone in Arizona. So I picked up the girls and we ran as far as we could, which was Arizona. I'd never seen a city that big in my life, I don't think. As an adult, that I recognized how big it was, right? It was terrifying. Uh, for the first time in my life, I realized how a spouse could cheat on their spouse and not know. The other one not know because nobody knew each other there. Nobody knew each other in Arizona. People didn't know their neighbors, they didn't know their cars. This is how you could do it. So it was an eye-opener for me. But that's also where I met my current husband, and we've been married, it'd be 25 years this year.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

What gave you the courage to leave both times? But it sounds like that second time you literally ran across the entire country. What gave you that courage?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

My children, my girls, doing it for them. Uh, with um, with them, you know, I worked for domestic violence. When I ran from the second one and I sought help while we were there with the why, and they knew I was admitted to law school. I was a nurse at the time, and they gave me free help for my children. I'm like, you do know that I wouldn't qualify for your free help. I I have a good income as a nurse. They said yes, but you need that for law school when you can't work. All we ask is that you give back and you help other women who are victims of domestic violence. So going to Arizona, which I had to put off law school and then, you know, reapply to a new law school, um, I did. I volunteered with the first um legal, uh, legal assistance for victims of crime, which was a pilot program from the Department of Justice. Now they're common in every police department around the world, but we were the pilot program for the US. And I did. I volunteered through law school to help women um who were victims of crime. But what gave me the courage, my children? There is a song by Martina McBride that says, In my daughter's eyes, yes, I am a hero. I am strong and wise, and I know no fear. They are here, which I'm forgetting the words now because I'm talking on a podcast, but um, they're here to save me. But you know, um oh my goodness. Though the proof is clear to see, they were sent to rescue me in my daughter's eyes. I'm who I'm meant to be. And I even printed that on my law school graduation invitations, right? Because that is my children thought I was invincible. They thought I could protect them from everything. They put their entire faith in me. And I realized I needed to step up my game if I was going to be worthy of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

It's interesting how we do things for our children in that sense. I I wrote my book and it's called For the Sake of My Children. And it's like in those moments of darkness and desperation when you just want to curl up and die, you look at these little children and you're like, okay, I have to get up and fight today for them. It is for them.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, exactly. And every day you get up for them. I mean, I'm not a perfect mom by any stretch of the imagination. Uh, as a matter of fact, I raised my children to be very strong-willed and opinionated. And I can tell you sometimes I regret doing that when they turn it on me. Um, but you know, one of them is the one I live next door to with the grandchildren. They are um five, six, and seven now. And I have an older grandchild that came to her when through her marriage, and now that they're divorced, they no longer consider that I'm the grandmother, but me and the granddaughter do, right? That that's not broken just because of a piece of paper. Uh, but I live next door to three of them, and my other daughter is in residency in medical school. And can you imagine, coming from the background I did, that I have a daughter in med school, that my other daughter has a master's degree and she was a teacher. I mean, I I am just so full of pride for these children.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Well, I think you too. I was just gonna ask you, just a very brief history of your education. You said you were a nurse and then now you're an attorney. Can you tell me a little bit about your uh educational history?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Oh, absolutely. So I'm one of these freaks that I I score in the top half of the top 1% of the nation and everything. So everyone in high school thought that I knew what to do to go to college. I had no clue. I had no idea you were supposed to be applying to colleges. I had no idea that you're supposed to go visit colleges. Um, and I started getting all of these offers for colleges, including Princeton and Yale and Harvard, which I knew I wasn't rich enough to go there, but I had no idea to realize they had scholarships for poor people like me. So I went to Mississippi College, the Baptist College in Mississippi, uh, mainly because they spelled my name right. They spelled K with a K, not K-A-Y. So that's why I chose them. Go figure. Um, so I got my bachelor's degree, got married after my sophomore year of um college, and found out during the marriage process that I had lupus. And this was long before there was internet to search on. And so all the research I did on lupus said you had five years to live. And that's mainly because you don't get diagnosed until you're old and your kidneys are gone and your heart's shot and all that. I happened to learn from a fluke when I was young, 19. And that just I couldn't handle the five years. I had just decided I didn't want to kill myself. I tried my first suicide at 13 years old. I had just decided getting married, I don't want to kill myself anymore. There, there's other options out there. And then I'm told I have five years to live. That kind of puts a wonk in your brain. But I finished college, had my children. I was uh pregnant my entire senior year of college, uh literally the entire year at at Baptist school. It was amazing. And um then when I decided to leave him for my daughter, I found out I was pregnant. So we stayed married until the younger one was born. Of course, he was already shacked up with his, you know, girlfriend or whatever, not living with me. Uh, but stayed married technically until she was born and uh wound up a bachelor's degree making 15 five a year. I couldn't support children as a single mom, not getting child support. Uh so I looked around, what do I do to have a career that I'm never looking for a job? I became a nurse. I got my bachelor's first and then my associates. You know, to have a career that I could move anywhere and have a job. And so I did, and um got my law degree, uh, got my nursing degree, and it's so funny. I I would live in a state, I'd get a degree, I'd get a new career, and I'd get a new husband. So in Mississippi, it was um my bachelor's degree and husband number one. Psychology was my career. I was a child um counselor, and then I got my nursing degree and I moved to Tennessee and married husband number two, and then I moved to Arizona, got my law degree, and had husband number three. Tell him it was his fault he moved us to Texas and I got my PhD. It's all like we if we need to get married again, we can do that, right? So we can't. Um, but yeah, so then I realized I didn't want to be a nurse. I woke up on my 29th birthday and I was like, you're grown. Whatever goals you had in your life, you need to get them done. So I started looking around what the options were and finally decided that I might as well go to law school. So took the LSAT, got the score, got into law school in Knoxville, Tennessee. And like I said, then I had to run from the husband. I think it was me getting accepted to law school that made him have a psychotic break, right? Threatened by a smart woman who has ambitions. Of course. And so then I ran to Arizona, so I had to put off law school, and then someone's like, Are you gonna actually go to law school? I went, Oh, wait, yeah, I guess so. So I applied to Arizona State, got in, and that was it. Uh loved it. Um, I love being a lawyer. I'm not one of these that's ever gonna tell you you shouldn't be a lawyer, it's hard. I love being a lawyer, and then I wanted to get something else because then I realized I really wanted to be Dr. K. I just really did. I wanted that. Uh, so I got my PhD degree in public policy in Texas. And actually, I just got admitted to a master's program in AI management through Georgetown that I just registered for my classes yesterday. And this is for knowledge and education. I feel that if you're going to educate yourself, you need to have something tangible to show for it, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

I agree. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

I'm looking for a master's degree, not a master of laws, just a master's degree in AI management, because related to my law uh area, which is privacy, cybersecurity law, uh protecting data, the AI management will definitely come in handy with that. Because that's what I definitely will.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

So my favorite movie of all time, well, one of them is legally blonde. I'm sure you get that a lot. But we have a story on that one.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

That movie came out my first year in law school. So I was sitting in the audience going, no way she got a 179. Wait, top score is a 180. No way she got a 179. No, she that didn't happen. Um, and then through the movie, the female professor, I'm like, she's just like Kathy O'Grady, my professor at Arizona State. She's just like her. I mean, head to toe, that's Kathy O'Grady. Turns out the woman who wrote the story wrote it based on my law school. Oh, I think her day, I think her father had been a professor there, so she knew him, and she literally based that character on Kathy O'Grady.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Well, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

You know, so I knew it was her, head to toe, that that's Kathy O'Grady. And it was so funny to find out. So she used to come to the law school and talk to the students like every three years or so. I never had the chance to actually go listen to her explain how she came up with this story. But yes, so there you go. If you resonate with someone to know that the law school she based it on was my law school, wasn't Harvard, trust me.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Well, that's really really fun fact, actually.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

That was awesome. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Okay, so you're an attorney, you're a nurse, now you're the classic universe woman, which is an international title. What does that mean to you and how has that impacted your life?

SPEAKER_00 17:36

So, yes, I love it. I absolutely, tea totally. I was shocked when I won. This was my second year competing with it. I had done it two years before, and then I had to move to South Carolina, so I couldn't do it in 2024. Uh, and so I came back in 2025, and um I didn't expect to win. Uh, as you know, I broke my back in May, and they had expected to do surgery before I went to the pageant, but they didn't. And uh they messed up insurance done, long story. And so I'm like, you know what, the flights paid for, the hotels paid for, the pageants paid for. I know Linda would have let me defer to the next year, but you know, to me, that's a this is paid for, this is done. I committed, I'm going. So I usually say I'm not one of these women that are there in the pageant for the experience. I'm there to win. I am very, very competitive. It doesn't mean I win, and it doesn't mean I'm heartbroken when I don't. And I do love the experience, but to me, if you're not trying to win, you're not putting forth your best effort, right? You gotta have a goal in mind to really, really push it for the best effort. But this year, I wasn't. I was there for the experience. I was there to enjoy the women and the sisterhood and the amazing people that you're around and everything on stage, in flats, in tennis shoes, wearing my big old wrestling belt uh on a walker, other than when I was on stage, I was able to use a hiking stick on stage and I had to bling the heck out of it, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:08

It was definitely blinged out.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

It was definitely blinked out. And uh thank goodness I was able to use that on stage because I think that really helped with the choreography a little bit. Uh, but I didn't expect to win. I mean, here I was, you know, right? You don't expect to win when you're in a situation like that. And so when they called the lady's name who won first runner up, I was shocked. I'm like, okay, which one of these others is the dark horse? I I didn't see coming, right? Because it sometimes surprises you. Um, and it was me. And I I was just completely and totally flabbergasted. Uh, did I ever think that my my year of rain would be um completely overshadowed by having a broken back and not being able to travel much and go out and do much? Because it's still gonna take me a year and a half to recover, right? Um but it turns out you can do a lot of things virtually. You can do a lot of things online and you can you can parse out what it is that you do. So what did that mean to me? Everything. People always ask, Why do you do pageants? And I didn't start until I was almost 50, right? Why do you do pageants? I initially started because I had an experience in high school where I froze on stage. I was poor, I didn't wear the big white ball gown that all the other women wear. Mine was a column straight, road, dark rose color, right? And they hemmed it too short, so I was in flats that you could see everywhere. Um, and I froze on stage. I was doing a speech. And everybody else seems to have these nightmares about running naked down Main Street or something. Mine was that moment on stage. I had nightmares for decades. And so a friend of mine is like, why don't you compete in a pageant? Maybe it'll make you get over the nightmare, banish a nightmare and build a dream, right? And it has, it really has. Now I've I've made sure that I'm a great speaker and I I've done everything there, but the nightmare wouldn't go away. As soon as I started competing, no more nightmares, no more feelings of wanting to kill myself, you know, and yes, those came back for a long time. Uh, no more wanting to do that. Why? Because I I was being judged as an entire woman, not as a brain who can make money and support people, but as a woman. How did I look? How did I walk? How did I dress? How did I act? What am I doing in the community? Everything that a woman should be from head to toe, right? Not just beautiful. There are pageants that are just about external beauty. I don't enter those, right? Um classic universe values the whole woman, right? It's not just what do you look like. Clearly, I was on stage with a wrestling belt and a walking stick. Um, it's not just about what you look like. Like it's about who you are to me, down to the epitome of your soul. Who are you? Uh, and what do you do for your community? And you know how? So to me, it means everything that I won a pageant that judged me for being the complete woman. And it shocked me that I did, and um, I'm still kind of reeling from it. This has been months later. I mean, we're coming up to, you know, handing over our crowns, and I'm still shocked, you know, months later. My husband is too. He's shocked to be, you know, Mr. Classic Universe Woman.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Um, what a fabulous experience. You know, I always think that we're in our 50s or 60s, and we're like, okay, the best of us is behind. And I feel like I'm just getting started. And I do feel like 50 and 60 is like the new 30 and 40. We don't look like my grandma had gray hair, and that's not the case anymore.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah, I don't feel like the age that I thought when I was in high school and I looked at people my age. I don't feel like I'm that old.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Maybe it's just delusions. I don't know.

unknown 23:07

There's no way.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

So let's pivot a little bit with uh the pageant. We have a lot of uh service we do in our communities, and this podcast is really about how your story and what you do in the community matters. Can you give me a little bit? You have tons of different things. Lifetime Presidential Achievement Award for Volunteer Service, National Ambassador for the Lupus Foundation. You help a lot of nonprofits, a whole list. Can you just give me an overview of your favorite service and why you do it?

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Oh goodness, it's hard to choose just one. I'm gonna say my favorite is probably the lupus foundation of America because lupus has been such a defining part of my life, even when I didn't know I had it. They traced my symptoms back to at least nine years old. And both of my daughters have some form of autoimmune. Um, lupus can pretend to be a whole lot of things. And so um I passed it down to both my daughters, but we don't know anybody else in the family with it.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

So is lupus genetic or is it something you get?

SPEAKER_00 24:14

It is genetically tied, yes. It doesn't mean that you know, if your mom has it, you're gonna have it, but it is genetically tied. And um, it's unusual to pass it down to both daughters. It's also unusual to have it if nobody else up your family tree has had it. Uh, my mother and my grandmother were both nurses as well, and they used to call me a hypochondriac and blow off everything because I can I can't remember a day in my life I wasn't in pain or a day in my life I didn't pass out from being out in the sun. And it turns out I had a very serious health issue that you know nobody figured somebody like me would have, right? I have lupus. I also have a lot more of others that go along with it now that we find apparently you're not allowed to have just one. Um, but with my daughters having it, and they were diagnosed at 11 and 12, um, so very young ages. And um, with me having it, so I do a lot of volunteer work with them. We do the lupus walk. Uh, May is lupus awareness month. We do that. Uh, we do advocacy work with the the Congress to get funding and everything. We do a lot of um activities where we speak out and we're public about what we have and who we are. And National Lupus Day is uh May 10th, I think, which is Mother's Day. And so they reached out this year and asked me if I would share my story with them so they could feature me since I'm a mom with two kids with it, you know, um on Mother's Day. They thought that was good. So I hope fingers crossed that it works and it comes out. But that really means a lot to me because there's a lot of education that needs to happen with lupus. Uh, I have a disability tag for my car. Do I use it all the time? No, I don't. But when I do and I get out of the car, I face a lot of snide comments from people or you know, backwards looks of using her grandmother's tag. I'm glad I don't look as bad as I am. And I realized years ago that that's my response to them. If they say something to me, is honest and true appreciation that I don't look as bad as I feel. Right? Uh, and my broken back had nothing to do with lupus or osteoporosis or anything. I literally fell on my tail separating two fighting dogs.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

Wow. So that's totally separate.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Totally, totally separate. But yeah, does it help with everything? Right. So, but lupus foundation of America means the world to me because they get the funding for the research and share the awareness of what lupus is. There's hardly anybody in the world now that doesn't know that lupus exists, right? And have more awareness of their family members who might have it, or they just got diagnosed. What can I expect? Um, all of that education and personal experience just means the world.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

If you um were going to be talking to a woman who's feels a little overwhelmed with serving someone else or serving in their community, what would you tell them? Where can they start?

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Well, funny enough, I mean, I don't remember ever volunteering as a child. I I didn't volunteer until the why told me to, you know, help other women. I I don't know that I ever volunteered in my life. I didn't know it was a thing, right? Um, I mean, I guess with church doing things, but you know, nothing says, oh, you need to go volunteer. You need to be of service in your community. So I would say, you know, lean into what works for you.

unknown 27:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

If you are a marketing person, then look for an opportunity that you can do marketing and you can use those skills. Or maybe you want to do something completely opposite what you do in your day job. Uh, look for opportunities like that. Try not to overwhelm yourself to begin with, but start somewhere. Start doing something. Maybe all you can do is go to Amazon for your local dog shelter and order something off their want list. You know, maybe that's your first service, and that is service. Uh, servicing with your wallet counts just as much as servicing with your with yourself. But there's all kinds of experiences out there if you look for them. Um, you can just Google it or chat GPT it. Uh, for your community, you can do things online, you can do things one time, you can commit to an hour a week, you can sign up to do a one thing or a two things or to donate things or to talk to someone. There's a lot of different volunteer activities to do and don't get scared, get motivated, right? If you're asking the question, what can you do? That means you want to do something. So just look online for what you want. What are the things you love? Do you love kids? Do you love animals? Uh, do you love feeding hungry people? Do you love helping women with domestic violence? You know, what is it that you're you're tied to do? What is it you're called to do? What does your heart tell you that you should do, that you're good at, or something you need to learn?

SPEAKER_01 29:14

I think too, as women, we always think we need to do something more. And I often tell like my daughters or friends of mine that say, I wish I had time to serve. And it's like, well, did you make a meal for your family? You served them. Did you give somebody a ride? You served them. Did you send somebody a nice text today? That is service. So did you write a card? Anything at all, and they can take under three seconds sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Did you write a card?

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Yes, the cards of kindness.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Those are awesome. And no, I have not done them. Um, I've I've sat down so many times to do it. I'm not, I'm not gonna say I have an excuse there. It is a wonderful, wonderful effort, and I'm one of these people that I do write cards. I think I wrote a card to like everyone in the pageant last year. Um, as we were going around and I put like little motivational savings on everyone's little dressing table, whatever. It it took so little to do that, right? It took so very little to do that.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

It does.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

Am I blessed now that I'm an attorney and I make a good salary? Yes, I am, but I'm also supporting my daughter, who's a single mom and the three kids, my brother, my mom, everybody else, right? Um, I do serve with my wallet, trust me. Uh, but I also am helping to raise my three grandchildren. We live right next door, one driveway, two houses. That's the way I was raised with my grandmother, right? One driveway, two houses. So I serve in that way as well. Just as you say, did you make a meal for your family? That service.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Yes. All right. For the last few minutes, we're gonna switch gears. You are a privacy attorney. Yes. What are most people unaware about considering privacy with social media online? I think this is a really big push right now with AI. Every every podcast and radio I turn on where there's a talk show, they're talking about the dangers of AI. I went to a national pageant this past weekend, and that was one of the questions with AI, is it hindering or helping? So, what are some things that people are unaware about with social media, with with the dangers of it, where we can actually understand that? I don't want to hear your legal book.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

I have written a legal textbook. I actually have.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

I'm sure you have.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

It's right back here under my crown, right? It's it's a legal textbook that just came out this past year, uh, privacy and um data, data, privacy and security law case book that I wrote with a good friend of mine who's a professor by West Academic. Um, but I've also written other handbooks. I used to have a blog, but who blogs nowadays? Uh I have a podcast called Serious Privacy, uh, and we are a globally award-winning podcast in our seventh season. Uh, so what do people need to know? They need to know there's such a thing as privacy, and it's probably not what you think it is. So, all of the companies, people, even attorneys nowadays look at me and go, I don't know what you do as a privacy attorney. I make sure, and I work for companies, not for a law firm, I make sure that the companies I work with know what the laws are about what they do with personal data. How are they sharing it? How are they collecting it? How long are they keeping it? What are they doing with it? Um, and most people would say, Oh, well, as long as, you know, I don't, I don't care, you know, they they have my name and my email address. Do you know with your name and your email address, they can actually acquire information from data brokers that have created profiles on you? And you would be shocked what the algorithms, even before AO was a general public thing, what the algorithms can tell companies about you that you would not even know. Like they have 50,000 data points on average on every person. I could probably not give you, but maybe two or three thousand on myself if I had to sit down and think about it for a couple of weeks. But these data points are so targeted that um let me just ask you a quick question. I know we're coming to the end. What kind of websites do you think a person would need to visit that would be the number one indicator that they might buy high-end portable electronics?

SPEAKER_01 33:21

Amazon, Best Buy, military. Really?

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Military, because think about it, military people have clothing, food, houses, and quite often they're deployed somewhere where they can't really go out and do anything. So they have a lot of free time on their hands, and they have money to buy portable high-end electronics. So military websites. Would you even think of that? But no, these algorithms know it. And during uh election seasons, they will literally pop up and show you news stories that say that the line at the poll is wrapping around the block and people are are passing out and they don't have water and blah, blah, blah, all these things. And rather than going and looking at the polling to see if that's happening, they'll believe it and stay home and not go vote. But if they want you to get out and vote based on which political party it is, they might show you the exact opposite ads that oh my goodness, your vote matters, and the polling stations are basically empty. No one's voting. You need to get there and you leave. And people are like, isn't that paranoid? Yes, it is. It's being paranoid, but I know for a fact that these things happen. 50,000 data points. They show you ads based on what they know you go visit. That's how they use personal data. And they're like, Well, they don't have my name, they don't have my address. Yes, they do. They have your IP address. That's personal data. They have your computer fingerprint, which is how you set up how you use your computer and how you use it over time. The things you click on, the times you're on your screen, the times you're off your screen, the times that you have it synced to another device or you have it on your phone, how much are you spending on this or that? They know a lot of things about you.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

How can we protect our children? I mean, I have a young child and my grandchildren. What would be like the number one or two things that don't overwhelm us? Sometimes I get overwhelmed with all of the input of what to do to protect them. What can we do?

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Keep them offline.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

I mean, you know, that that's the number one thing you can do to protect them. But frankly, um, the bad actors will steal identities from children and you won't even know it until they're old enough to work and find out they've had a credit card for 20 years. Um, so it's it's crazy out there. So the number one thing is offline. Is that reasonable? No. Educate yourself, know what the dangers are out there and make sure that you are aware of what your child is doing online. Some of the most dangerous things online are playing games online, social media, where they're in the chat rooms that are full of pedophiles that pretend to be a six-year-old or an eight-year-old or whatever. And typically what happens is they get asked to share something. I want to know what you look like, share a picture. Kid doesn't think anything about that. Take a picture, send it to them. Oh, well, now I want a picture of your entire upper body. And the child's like, well, what do you want that for? Because I don't believe that you're eight years old. And they'll do it. And over time, they'll be gradually coached to provide more and more pictures. And nowadays with the AI, they're creating AI-generated deep fake porn. Uh, very, very proliferative when it comes to child sexual abuse material. It doesn't even have to be from your child. They may take your child's face and put it on a completely deep fake generated AI. And there's a question in my field of can a person be arrested and convicted for child pornography if everything they have is AI generated. Well, most of the time the police don't stop to look to see if the the pornographic images of a three-year-old that you have on your your screen is a real child or not. They might try to track them down, you know, using facial recognition, but it might be years before they can actually say that's not a real child. That's fake. They don't care. It's child sexual abuse material.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Yeah, policing something like that. It's just a new world that we live in that it's just not simple. It's very complicated. When I go to the airport and they do the scan on my face, it always feels very invasive to me. I'm like, why do I need that?

SPEAKER_00 37:38

But they don't like it when people opt out of it. But you can opt out of it. That is your right to do so. I don't opt out of it. Why? People are like, okay, your privacy. My face is out there so much anyway. Why do I care if TSA is going to use it to let me through the register?

SPEAKER_01 37:56

It does feel invasive though, and I always kind of get this feeling like this isn't right. Okay, so we are going to move into our last question. I ask everybody that comes on my show, okay, what do you want your legacy to be?

SPEAKER_00 38:12

I want my legacy to be that women can absolutely rule the world. And your dream is your dream. You don't have to dream what someone else tells you to be. You don't have to be president, you don't have to be a CEO. A woman's definition of success is very different from the stereotypical ideal of success that we've been told. You can be who you want to be. Find a dream and achieve it.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Beautiful. Okay, you have been an inspiration to me seeing you on that stage last year with a cane and a back brace. I was blown away, and I have really enjoyed getting to know you and serving with you as a sister queen. So thank you for taking your time to be on Lipstick and Legacy.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

It's been my pleasure. Thank you for doing this.