That Tech Pod
Welcome to That Tech Pod, a podcast co-hosted by Laura Milstein, Gabi Schulte and Kevin Albert. Each Tuesday, That Tech Pod will feature in depth discussions about data privacy, cybersecurity, eDiscovery, and tech innovations with heavy hitters in the industry. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode! Visit thattechpod.com for more information.
That Tech Pod
How To Simplify Encoding Privacy Across Your Tech Stack With Transcend CEO Ben Brook
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Today on That Tech Pod, Laura and Gabi chat with Ben Brook. Ben is the co-founder and CEO of Transcend, the privacy platform that makes it easy to encode privacy across your tech stack. Transcend’s technology moves companies into the future of data privacy, with freed up resources, enhanced regulatory stances for the laws of today and tomorrow, and stronger relationships with their customers through respectful and compliant data transparency, consent, and control.
Visit www.thattechpod.com for more info!
Hello and welcome to that tech pod where we discuss all things data privacy, e-discovery, and cybersecurity, and all the things that you could imagine that a tech podcast would talk about. I'm Gabby Schulte, and you know, I actually don't know all that much about tech.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Laura Milstein, and I know a little bit like the tech innovations that we're gonna be talking about and the data privacy for today. I'm excited about it.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's why each week we talk to heavy hitters in the industry to help us break down and explain all these topics to us and you all. So Laura, who are we talking to today?
SPEAKER_01Today we're talking to Ben Brooke. Ben is the co-founder and CEO of Transcend, the privacy platform that makes it easy to encode privacy across your tech stack. Transcend Technology moves companies into the future of data privacy with freed up resources, enhanced regulatory stances for the laws of today and tomorrow, and stronger relationships for their customers through respectful and compliant data transparency, consent, and control. And I have to be honest with you, Ben, I love transparency, consent, and control. So I'm very excited for you to be on today, Ben.
SPEAKER_00Well, uh excited to be to be on here as well, and uh definitely share uh share your love for all of those three things.
SPEAKER_02Um well, Ben, so tell us a little bit about yourself, about you know how you got started in tech. We normally find like people have pretty interesting um journeys into the tech world. So yeah, just tell us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so uh I was actually born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Uh came to the United States when I was 17 to uh study computer science at Harvard. Actually, I was supposed to study film but switched into computer science.
SPEAKER_02Um, wait, real quick though, let me interject because I come from a film background. Um, why did you? I mean, I don't blame you, but why did you uh do the switch?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I actually read a book in the sort of gap between my senior year and starting school uh in that summer, uh, basically just about like the future of artificial intelligence. And uh I think it just really sort of inspired me to at least take a one class in computer science. Oh, interesting. I felt like there was just so much that's gonna happen in my lifetime in this field, and so I thought, let's at least just try it and see what happens. Um, I was always kind of mathy in high school, and so um, so I figured I might as well at least get a taste for computer science. Took my first class, immediately fell like head over heels in love with computer science and uh like building software. And uh I just basically pretty much after the first semester, I just did a full hard switch over. And that was after being completely obsessed with film for like five years through high school high school and middle school.
SPEAKER_02Um well, as someone who like yeah, went to film school, grad school, I was like, oh, I should have done something more lucrative. But why did you fall in love with computer science? I should have I should have read that book. Where was that book? You messed out. Missed out. All right. Well, Ben, how so how did you find yourself getting into like data privacy um specifically? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um so there was a moment where I basically decided that I wanted to help make data rights exercisable. Um, and that was after seeing firsthand just how little control we have as consumers. Um, so I believe we are already in a world in which every step we take, every thought we have, every decision we make is recorded somewhere. And ultimately to preserve our agency as individuals, we need to have an element of control over that data. And so uh, you know, flashback to college, uh, my friend Mike and I would get together outside of class and work on software projects. Um, and we were both really interested in like data science and statistics. And we came upon this idea of studying ourselves. Like, let's get all of our behavioral data and let's go and just like take a look at like what it says about us, right? Um, and so we had all these sort of lofty goals for like let's figure out you know the optimal amount of sleep we need to like be productive in the day. And like uh, but step one is just like let's get yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01Efficiency in every category. I love it.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01I like that you're you know, you studied yourself to figure that out.
SPEAKER_00So well, we tried. So we the first step of doing any of that is actually to get our hands on our behavioral data. And so what we did was we went to all of the apps and the companies we knew that tracked all of this, right? We had, you know, basically all our geolocation history, where we're going throughout the day, uh, the time uh we're sleeping, like how much time are we offline, right? Um, Facebook actually typically will have that information because the first and last thing you do in the day is like open the Facebook app uh or an Instagram app or something like that. And so they actually have pretty good information around like when you're sleeping, for example. So we actually went to all these companies and we said, Hey, like, can we get a copy of our personal data? Uh like this is like just my day-to-day life story. And they're all like, No way, right? Like, there's that's just not something we can do. That's not something we're willing to do. Um, and it wasn't like we fundamentally disagree with like the like the philosophy behind it. It was more just like, no one's ever asked us that. And like, frankly, as far as we're concerned, this is our information. So uh we basically just got turned away like across the board. And uh that just kind of like planted the first seed for us, where we were like, that doesn't seem right that consumers have no ability to read their own life story, right? And like increasingly that's like a very high resolution version of your life, right?
SPEAKER_02Where yeah, more so it's your data that they just have it.
SPEAKER_01It's just like I would read your life story, Gabby. Like, if if if you were to study yourself, Gabby, I'd be into it.
SPEAKER_02I'd be like, I mean you would literally it would be the most boring life story. It'd be like walking my dog, working on a podcast, walking my dog, sleeping. That's that's my life story, but yeah, no, that's so interesting and weird. Yeah, because it's like inherently, it's like, well, this is this, it's my like I gave this to you. Why can't you just let me see it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and if you think about it, like if you wanted to know, like, let's say like March 3rd, 2015 at 3 p.m., what were you doing? You can't really figure that out. But there's a lot of people in the world at companies who could absolutely look that up. Like, that's pretty crazy.
SPEAKER_01Ben, we know exactly what you were doing on March 3rd, 2015.
SPEAKER_02We actually bought it from Google Google, um, and they told us.
SPEAKER_01Oh, wait, hold on, Gabby. I just looked your doing um you were walking your dog, Gabby. You were walking your dog, I was walking my dog.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01So um, Ben, just to kind of I'm gonna use your company name just to kind of transcend from here. Uh bad joke. I know I could have done better. You've had better war.
SPEAKER_02You've had bad.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's I'm tired today. Um, but you know, you have a very interesting background. And I think we always, I think everyone on our show for the most part has an interesting background. I actually look forward to bringing someone on whose background I don't like, just so I can be like, your background isn't interesting. This you better blow us away today. Um but with everything that you know about data privacy, and with, you know, I think it's really exciting that you've created this company and that you were like, hey, how are we gonna do this? I'm gonna study myself. This isn't gonna happen, I'm gonna make all these changes. And there's always learning when it comes into that. But what I want to ask you is a little bit relevant and a little bit irrelevant. So just thinking about all of all of the tech, what else besides big tech is going on in data privacy? And so, you know, being the CEO of a tech company, can you kind of yeah, what do you think? Yeah, can you just I know you didn't see that question coming, but that that's it.
SPEAKER_00I love it. Well, it I would think of it like this. If you if you were to like open any news site and search privacy, 99% of coverage is going to be Google, Facebook, Apple, and maybe three other companies. Um, it is very much a big tech narrative. And if you actually look at the number of people involved day to day in privacy, it's it's like the the inverse is true. Like 99% of people working on privacy don't work at Facebook or Google or Apple. It's like every business in the world is impacted by modern privacy laws. And so um, you know, just to step back into that moment where Mike and I, my co-founder, were in college looking at this problem of data rights. So too were regulators in Europe uh saying, you know, something's got to change here. We have to actually like think of some regulation that's gonna actually put consumers uh onto some degree of parity, right? And so they pass GDPR. Um, and that then, at least on paper, gives everybody in Europe the right to delete their data, the right to access their data, the right to correct their data, the right to actually uh not be tracked unless uh unless there's a very specific reason why they legally can be tracked, or you have to ask for consent, which is just permission to track someone. Um, and so it GDPR becomes kind of the first like landmark modern privacy law, which brings data rights online into the world. And it that applies to all companies. You know, Facebook and Google, it's it's the narrative, but every company, essentially every company in the world has to comply with GDPR. If you have any users or uh individuals that you have data on, i.e. they're like visiting your website, you have to have at least some controls for privacy. And that is like that is actually a very important part of the story, is that every company you look at, there's people who are working on privacy. And that's actually the majority of it, in in my view. And so it's every service you go to uh will have uh actually a pretty astonishing amount of data that they collect. And so there's tools that you can use to sort of inspect a website. Like if you go to, you know, New York Times, Washington Post, whatever, you'll see there's like hundreds of different trackers on there. It's not just Google and Facebook, but like your data is basically being like traded through hundreds, if not thousands, of businesses, like pretty much instantaneously. And that is like a pretty astonishing fact on the consumer side. But when you look at like just how normal that is, it means that every single company actually is doing a lot of work to try and get on top of these privacy laws and actually uh A comply, but B ultimately give these give their customers, give their uh users uh these data rights that they're now getting. Um and so what we find is fundamentally there's like a huge gap in infrastructure to do that. So, you know, someone comes knocking on your door and says, delete all data you've ever collected about me, all data that you've ever transferred to a third party, uh, everything that's in your database, everything that's in your like analytics tools, uh, and that's legal, they're legally they're right, and legally you have to do it. Companies are like, okay, uh what? Like, how are we gonna do that? We've been collecting this data for two decades and we've been pouring it into thousands of systems and sending it to hundreds of vendors and like how do you sweep that up?
SPEAKER_02Conceptualize and visualize that, but yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, we yeah, I like to think of like the infrastructure that's built that's been built to collect your data. It's like a 12-lane super highway going northbound, and then the southbound lane for you to like actually get it back is like maybe one lane and it's probably not even paved. And so, yeah. And so if you think of like what transcends actually building data privacy infrastructure, it's like that south southbound highway. Like, how are we going to get consumers back into the into the center of this? And how do we actually make it even possible for a business to comply with a request to delete you? Um so ultimately, this is a story about pretty much every business in my mind, uh, having to basically meet these new expectations from GDPR, but also now an entire global legal wave of privacy laws that in almost every part will mimic GDPR and fundamentally the data rights offered.
SPEAKER_02Right. So and uh go ahead, Laura.
SPEAKER_01I just I just was thinking about this and um I want to ask you something, and it's you know, any anyone who's listening right now, this is the R-rated portion. So if you aren't ready for it, just ignore this. But Ben, what is the most fucked up thing about privacy? That's what I want to know. Just like I I don't even want you to scare us. I mean just to tell us like the the dirty of it. Like, what is fucked up when you hear privacy, like we're hearing all these regulations, you're like, you know, all of a sudden you can't do this, you're getting sued on this, this is happening. This is, you know, what is something that in your opinion, you're kind of just you hear it and you know this is fucked up about privacy?
SPEAKER_00That is a great question. Um let's see. So I would say on in terms of consumer impact, the most fucked up or scary thing is the impact it has on our agency. So basically our ability to make free choice. The more information that exists about you, about your behavior, about your beliefs, about your decision making, um, about just the current situation in your life, that can and is actively used to shape your opinion uh towards other directions. So um so a third party with essentially perfect information into your life actually has a lot of a pretty strong capability of like starting to pull the strings in your life and start pushing you towards certain beliefs or uh directions. Some would call this essentially that's the if you think about it, the underlying goal of advertising. But it's it's also an infrastructure and a mechanism that can be used for political beliefs uh or really anything. And so I think the most fucked up part of it is that it's greatly contributing to polarization in the United States uh and uh destabilization around the world. And there's like very, very, very real impact of uh us not yet having this degree of control. Um that's the scary part for me, and that's why I like really believe in what we're working on. Um I would say then on the Yeah, I I would actually leave it at that.
SPEAKER_02I think that's yeah, that's no, I mean that's really interesting. So just to go into that, I mean, you know, there's all these stories that like, for example, and we can get into Google Analytics a little bit more, um, because there's a story out about GDPR and and Google Analytics that I want to ask you about. But um, you know, so for example, say I am watching a video about a puppy who is um getting trained to uh give their paw or something. And so Google so Google Analytics, the algorithm, will keep showing me videos and uh about more puppies and more training, and and it just spirals down to that because that is what they see I'm looking at, and blah blah blah. And the same thing applies to if you're looking at videos, you know, of any political spectrum of anything, and it keeps going down and down, say, a rabbit hole, which is actually uh a name of a podcast about about this um from the New York Times. That was really interesting. But is that sort of the idea that you're talking about? Like these sort of algorithms are seeing some of our choices and then sort of presenting us with more and more choices instead of maybe um presenting us with alternative um information that might be useful, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the the reality is uh we are sort of the sum of the content we consume as individuals. Like if you imagine just everything you hear throughout the day, that's like all the content that you consume. Increasingly that is personalized and sort of curated by uh businesses with interests in what you believe in. Um, and so it's it's actually quite easy relatively to like actually start skewing people toward beliefs, whether whether that's like you should buy this, you know, really cool pair of shoes, or it's like you should vote for this political party, or you should believe in this or that. It's it's very easy to actually find the the right message that will push you over the edge. And that is a massive infrastructure that's been tuned to an incredible degree, uh, that ingests your information and turns it into the exact right message to place in front of you, be it a video, whatever it is, it's all the content that you consume.
SPEAKER_02Um do you think that because you said um, you know, specifically we're we're talking about the United States. Do you think that's because, you know, do you see any of that similarly happening in other places, for example, maybe Canada or Europe? And if not, um, is that because you know the the US is still a little behind on these privacy laws, privacy regulations?
SPEAKER_00It's it's it's definitely global. Uh we see it uh essentially in every region in the world. Uh with it may not just be polarization, it could be, it could be really anything, um, but there's it's definitely global. Now with something like GDPR in effect, what we're starting to see is enforcement really ramp up. So GDPR was passed in 2018, or it came into effect in 2018. Um since then, we've had regulators, essentially privacy police, right? Like enforcement agencies who are dedicated to uh consumer protection around privacy. Uh they have massively scaled up and started actually making uh bringing tons of enforcement actions. And there are a lot of actually cases that were filed, you know, may May 25th, 2018, the day GDPR came into effect that are getting their decisions just about now, right? So we're starting to see some of those first court cases uh come out. And what we're what we're seeing is like a very strong appetite from European regulators to basically use all of the teeth that they have with uh privacy enforcement. And so um one thing that uh you alluded to was uh the Google Analytics decision, um, where essentially it was decided that because Google Analytics uh is based in the United States, the transfer of a European data from a uh somebody browsing a website in Europe, that that analytics information about what they're looking at, what they're interested in, that gets transferred to the United States. That in and of itself may even be illegal under GDPR because uh of actually something that's really interesting, which is that uh the United States is not seen by Europe as a uh a region which sufficiently protects consumer information, and primarily that's because of spying, interestingly.
SPEAKER_02So interesting. Ooh, this is this is where the podcast gets super juicy. Um we're gonna talk about spying now. No, I'm just kidding. Um no, but the um well, we can't, but the the for for any of you that don't know, you would you probably do because you're all very smart people, but if you don't know it yet, um so basically there was a few decisions, there was one in uh Austria, and then so this one particularly I'm thinking of is the one from the French data protection watchdog, C N I L. And I'm getting this from TechCrunch right now. So basically, um, they said that uh you know, Google Analytics is non-compliant with GDPR because it breaches Article 44, which covers personal data transfer outside the block to so-called third countries, which are not considered to have essentially equivalent privacy protections. The US fails this critical equivalence test on account of having sweeping surveillance laws, which do not provide non-U.S. citizens with any way to know whether their data is being acquired, how it's being used, or to seek redress for any misuse, which is what you just said. And I that's so interesting to me because us, you know, us Americans, we're like so in our bubble, we have like no idea what this is like, so ignorant to like what's happening outside of the country, and just like, oh, well, yeah, it's not normal for like um being to be surveyed by your government all the time or like by big uh companies. So that's I think that's so interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it's it's fascinating stuff. And um a lot of this, a lot of what Europe would point to is the cloud act uh that's in the United States, which is essentially sort of like an entitlement uh for the NSA, for example, to go knock on any tech company's door and say we, you know, we want to get Gabby's records or something. And uh and then it's just like of my dog walk walking around it happens so often.
SPEAKER_01The NSA is forever trying to get Gabby's records, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, um, yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, it's that's and um I don't think there's any end to it. Like, do you? Like, I mean, I don't see ever once that Pandora's box was opened, um, I don't, you know, for the the Patriot Patriot Act and all that, I just don't ever see it being closed. Um so it's gonna spread. It's gonna spread. It's gonna spread all over. Yeah. But what like what do you think? Like, let's let's look a little bit ahead um in in data privacy world. What do you think it's like maybe give us something bad, something good in about the future of data privacy?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um so that there's there's a couple interesting things here. So if if you look at Europe basically on a long enough timeline, there's gonna be tons of cases that say that basically reaffirm the decision, decision from the Austrian data protection agency, uh C Nil, the French agency. And basically things like international transfer to the United States will be seen as illegal, and that we'll just like we'll keep seeing cases uh with something like that. Um on the backdrop of that, there will be a huge industry effort and scramble to find mechanisms to make that legal. So the first attempt at that uh was something called Privacy Shield. And Privacy Shield basically was a safe harbor where companies could um essentially like self-regulate and say, like, we have the following controls in place for the data we collect uh about Europeans. And so long as you're uh privacy shield compliant, like you were you had safe harbor to transfer the data. That got made deemed illegal. So uh there's a a lawsuit from uh a man by the name of Max Shrems who uh basically sued and said uh this framework is actually not uh is not compliant with laws like GDPR because of uh this issue of spying. So it's basically violating uh it's it's basically just it's not sufficient uh to protect European data. And then uh there's a scramble after that. So, you know, everybody all of a sudden is illegally collecting European data, right? And uh now the regulators even tried to say, like, okay, we have to figure out something. How are we gonna like not shut down the tech economy? And so they came out with uh standard contractual clauses, which are basically uh something that at the very like bottom of any sort of agreement with Google Analytics or uh what have you, uh there's a set of uh things that you agree upon. So if I'm uh you know the independent.co.uk newspaper and uh I have Google Analytics on there. Google actually agrees to have some safeguards that uh is basically a template document written by European regulators. Those just got uh ruled against with this Google Analytics suit. So that's also an insufficient. Interesting, basically for the same reason. And so what we're gonna see, in my belief, is a contraction over like the course of the next five to ten years of the ad industry in Europe, where there's just gonna be less and less ability to have any kind of personalization or really any kind of visibility into this data in the first place. And um and it's gonna be it's gonna be hard fought, of course, by the ad industry because you know, basically fully complying with GDPR tomorrow probably means shutting off a lot of their revenue. Yeah, so there's gonna be scrambles to find frameworks, and there's gonna be scrambles to find privacy first technologies. And so now I'm getting into my sort of like good scenario. So that this is this is, I guess, the kind of like doom and gloom uh side of it.
SPEAKER_02All right, so bring us out of that. Bring us out of that.
SPEAKER_00So what I'm excited about is privacy first frameworks that will actually reduce the amount of visibility into individuals' daily lives and still preserve some ability to have cool features like personalization. So can we actually stop you know tracking the fact that you are walking your dog at 3 p.m. on March 3rd?
SPEAKER_01Uh can we actually that's important information that we need to know. Yeah, the ad companies need it.
SPEAKER_00They need it, but maybe they don't in the future.
SPEAKER_02Poop bags for my dog.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So so Ben, not to, you know, I think we can go into like the future of privacy so in depth. Um, and there's so many unknowns and uh unfortunately knowns that I think we wish were unknown. Um, but if for for the listeners out there that maybe they don't know much about privacy or you know, maybe they're kind of new into privacy, is there any advice that you can give to people out there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, first, first of all, it's critical to actually adopt uh some kind of framework for actually complying with these laws. So we're talking a lot about GDPR. The reality is like every year there's there's two two times as many privacy laws as there were the year before it. And so each state is gonna have a privacy law, each country is gonna have a privacy law that's really similar. And so the web of complexity that will grow under your feet as a business is going to compound in complexity. And it's really, really important to have some kind of uh central like framework for complying with this. And that's something that we focus a lot on today is like how do we really like find the commonality between all these laws and help companies actually encode this into their data system? So every business collects data, virtually every business collects data. Uh how do you do that in a way that is compliant? And how do you do that in a way that actually uh builds trust with and respects your users? Um it's by actually offering them choices. That's fundamentally what this is all about. It's like consumers should have choices.
SPEAKER_02And uh that seems reasonable enough, right?
SPEAKER_00Right. Uh and so it it it turns out it's just hard to actually uh actually like honor those preferences when you have all this infrastructure that does the opposite of it. And so, how do you actually bring all that into uh a place where when a user says delete me, you can delete them. When a user says op me out, you can you can stop tracking them for that reason. And so that's that's why we build data privacy infrastructure at Transcend, is we really help give those companies that kind of operating system that like automatically goes to their data systems and sweeps out a user's data. Or uh when a user says stop tracking me for the purpose of analytics, we will actually make make that so inside the business. We will turn off the pipes of data that are tracking them for analytics. Um and as you look at like just the compounding complexity, be it in the growth of the new privacy laws, be it in the just the growth of your product with new data systems and new vendors, like that's super hard to stay on top of without something that can actually simplify it for you. Um so ultimately, I think my advice would be to find some way of doing it scalably, um, because this is not something that you just do once and forget.
SPEAKER_02Right. No, and and and well, why while you were talking about um, you know, consumer choice and everything, and all, you know, the ads, the ad industry and everything, I there there is this. Has anyone seen the show American Gods on stars? Okay. Well, it's by a book, um, it's by or is it a book or a graphic novel? I'm not sure. Uh, by Neil Gaiman, and he is, it's really good. But there's this, it's basically oh my gosh. Well, it's basically it's like a it's like a fantasy sort of show, and there's these sort of god, like actual gods that are in the form of like different things that I feel like Americans would worship. So one obviously is I think probably geared toward like capitalism. And so like you there's this one speech that was just like, you know, you can have any type of salsa that you want, but it's the same brand. But of course, you can choose like extra spicy people have choice. You can choose medium, you can choose not like mild. And I was just like, that's so like it's it's great. I'm I'm doing it a great injustice, but basically, it was just like, yeah, that is that's just like what um everything is translating into. Like uh we are all just kind of be sort of be being given a false sense of of choice in our in our lives. Um so with that very dystopian outlook uh then. Thank you so much for for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00Uh thank you so much for having me on. It was uh it was a lot of fun getting to speak with you both. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01So, Gabby, we just talked to Ben Brooke, the co-founder and CEO of Transcend. Um, what what do you think? What were your tech takeaways?
SPEAKER_02I really like that he talked to us about other things other than like, you know, when we think about data privacy, we're like Facebook, um, Twitter, Instagram, which is also Facebook. I guess I should be saying meta now, but I will never do that. Meta sucks. Anyway. Um, the name. Anyway, um, well, Facebook's the company sucks too. Anyway, but metaverse or the Facebook verse, like that doesn't work. But anyway, but but my point is um, like he brought some other interesting aspects around data privacy that I think is very interesting, um, that we don't really hear about a lot. And, you know, in the form of how hard it is for companies to keep up with the regulations. Um, I think it's pretty interesting. But at the same time, I feel like they're really important. I'm also like, you know, yeah, I feel like a very um, like I said, like dystopian outlook. Every time we do a data privacy episode, I'm like, we're already living in a dystopian world. And uh we're into data privacy episodes these days.
SPEAKER_01We gotta do it. We really are. We gotta mix it up. We're gonna mix it up soon, don't worry. We're we're falling ourselves in these dark holes where we're just like where do we live? What's happening? But it but you're not wrong, and it is like you know, you look at the big companies, they can afford to risk, you know, the regulations because they can pay the fines, but some of the smaller ones can't. And so you got to kind of look at who who's it really benefiting. Um, but anyway, if you're interested in hearing more from Ben Brook or about Transcend or us and data privacy or any other questions that you may have for us, please reach out to us directly at contact at thattechpod.com. Swing on over to our website at www.thattechpod.com. You can uh enter your email to stay in the loop so you don't miss any information. We also have some great new tech gear, so definitely check out our tech gear on the website. And when you're thinking tech gear, yes, we do have yoga pants. Obviously, that falls under tech gear. Uh swing over to our LinkedIn. We do not have yoga mats, but Gabby is building her own with the uh we have a whole yoga.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm building my own by getting multiples at all the mouse mouse pads and then making a yoga mat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, tweet at us and uh yeah, I don't know, Gabby. What what else are they missing other than all their merch? Because I'm I don't know why every time I go out, I don't see someone wearing a tech pod shirt. It doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_02We have merch, just get it. Yeah, um it's there for you at thattechpod.com. Um, you can also go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you're listening to this podcast, and if there's an option to give us a you know, either five stars, a rating, whatever, it would be amazing if you can go ahead and give us five stars and write us a little review. We would love you forever. Because what that does, all of you tech nerds out there, is it helps the uh podcast algorithms uh like boost us up uh if we the more ratings and stuff that we have. Um so if people are searching for tech podcasts or whatever, um, and they type in tech podcasts, we will more likely show up if you give us a five star rating in review. So thank you very much in advance. See you next time.