Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
Courageous Leadership with Dr. Travis Yates Podcast examines what it means to be a Courageous Police Leader. Join us weekly as the concepts of Courageous Leadership are detailed along with interviews with influencers that are committed to leading with courage. You can find out more about Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates at: www.TravisYates.org
Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
Preserving Officer Privacy with Pete James
This episode explores the critical importance of online privacy for law enforcement officers and their families. Pete James is the owner of Officer Privacy and he shares insights from his experience in law enforcement and highlights how Officer Privacy helps protect officers from risks associated with doxxing and data leaks.
• Introduction to Officer Privacy and its mission
• The dangers of doxxing and its impact on law enforcement
• How personal data is easily accessible online
• Real-life stories of officers impacted by privacy invasions
• Proactive steps officers can take to safeguard their information
• The importance of leadership in prioritizing officer privacy
• Different service options offered by Officer Privacy
• Call to action: visit officerprivacy.com for more information.
Join Our Tribe of Courageous Leaders:
Get The Book
Get Weekly Articles by Travis Yates
Join Us At Our Website
Get Our 'Courageous Leadership' Training
Join The Courageous Police Leadership Alliance
Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates:Welcome back to the show. Thank you for being here, thank you for watching, thank you for listening. I'm excited about today's guest and you will be as well. On today's show we have Pete James, a 24-year law enforcement veteran, now retired. He's the owner of Officer Privacy over at OfficerPrivacy. com and, as you know, I don't talk about a company unless I believe in it, unless I'm a customer of it. And, of course, they have been a sponsor of this podcast for the last year. You've heard of them, you've heard me talk about them, but you're going to love what you hear today. Pete James, how are you doing, sir?
Pete James :I'm doing awesome. Thank you, Travis. Thanks for having me on today.
Travis Yates:Well, pete, you've got a wild story of how you even got into this. I guess bring our audience up to speed of how you are owner and operator of this phenomenal company that is an officer safety mandate. I mean, we treat officer safety very seriously if we're on the streets, but this is just as, if not more, important than, officer safety at home. But how did you get started in this?
Pete James :Well, I'm the guy that got frustrated because I was sick and tired of hearing all of the stories about our law enforcement officers being demonized in the media. Are law enforcement officers being demonized in the media? And there would be incidents and, the next thing you know, criminals and crazies would show up at the front door of officers' houses, sometimes assaulting them, and it was having a tremendous impact on those officers' lives. And this was happening and nobody was doing anything about it. So I do have a background in, of course. I spent many years with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department. The tail end of that career, I focused in forensics. I took that, worked as a consultant, did some open source intel and investigations, and so I took that and combined all of that and created a service where we help officers remove their private information from the internet so they and their families can feel safe, so they're not concerned about crazies easily finding their information online and showing up at their front door.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I mean we've come a long ways from when I started this career over 30 years ago. You just had to get a PO box right. You get a PO box and you get your mail at the PO box and nobody can find it. The internet changed all of that. I don't think people understand how much is out there. I didn't understand it.
Travis Yates:I, of course, being in a command level at a major metropolitan department giving interviews, I've been doxxed a few times and I'll never forget. Somebody texted me. A friend of mine said hey, man, you know that your full address is out there on the voter rolls. Your full address is here, your full address is there. And I was getting letters at the house. I was getting. I mean, I was so pertinent, I was looking outside my front door and I didn't. I hadn't heard of you at that time. It's been quite a long time ago.
Travis Yates:So this is a service that everybody needs because I don't have those worries anymore. My wife doesn't have those worries anymore because you guys take a hands-on approach and there's other so-called companies that do this, but you guys are just tip of the spear. I mean, you're law enforcement-owned, your staff is law enforcement, you're US based. You're doing phenomenal stuff. I have to imagine that you're getting some incredible stories from some officers where, after you signed them on, kind of tell us some of those stories, because some of the before and after People need to understand how important this is. This should not be an option. Quite frankly, like everyone needs to have this, and the peace of mind you get from it is incredible.
Pete James :Yeah Well, the reality is that policing has changed the last few years, especially in the last decade, and what we're finding is officers are hesitating to really make that, to take those proactive steps that they really should be taking, because in the back of their minds, they know that if they take down some big cartel, if it's a high profile case, if the media is going to cover it or if they have an auditor recording them, they know that it is possible that they're going to have protesters or crazies at their front door. And this has happened. This happens all the time. I keep a document with all the headlines of this happening, as well as the client stories that we get. Unfortunately, many of our clients only sign up after an incident has happened and that will help, but it's much, much better to get ahead of us, and that's what we try and explain to people.
Pete James :Look, you know, once the cat is out of the bag, you know it's tougher to catch up. So it's good to get ahead of this, and what I always recommend is do a scan, search for yourself online like a stalker, would you know? Start clean like you don't know anything, and what you're going to know is your name, your first and last name, you're going to know about where the city you live in or around, and go online, search for yourself, like a stalker would, and see what you can find. If you do that, you'll be amazed at what is out there and how easy it is to see that information. But it's not all bad. This can be fixed. You can minimize the information that is exposed, but you have to take steps to do that.
Travis Yates:So give them how bad it is. Pete, I was amazed of when I got the first report back from your staff. How many websites are out there. I mean it is crazy. This would take an eight-year-old could find this information. This is not some complicated thing right by somebody on the dark web or something. How did that happen and how prevalent is it?
Pete James :Well. So let's take a step back. We are the cause of much of that information getting to those sites, and I know that we will point our fingers at people search sites and data brokers, but we're giving them that information, and so let's figure out how we're doing that and then take steps to correct it. Let's figure out how we're doing that and then take steps to correct it. So, for example, travis, when's the last time you used DoorDash or Instacart?
Travis Yates:This month, yeah this month.
Pete James :All right, you are leaking your data. You're leaking your data. They will say and they will admit that they are going to share that information with their marketing partners or their partners, which means data brokers. Right, when grocery store rewards cards is another example, it's very convenient. Save us a little money. But if you go to Kroger's website Kroger being one of the largest national supermarket chains out there if you look at the books, half of their profit comes from their other services, not selling groceries. Including their other services is their marketing.
Pete James :They have realized that data is very valuable and they are collecting that and then selling it to other people. So what happens is we provide this information inadvertently to companies. They package it, they sell it to their partners and then data brokers people search sites buy it and post it. I always say you don't really, really want to go crazy about being private. We need to live our lives. The issue isn't necessarily that our marketing data is being collected and shared. They sell it to these people search sites that then expose it online. That's the problem. That's the step that is dangerous when it happens.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I don't want to scare people because we should be concerned about this, but I mean I can take it to the next level. I worked with an officer out of Wisconsin his name's Joseph Mensah, and they went to his house and shot the house up. I mean that's how bad this can get, and it's just very disturbing to me. Like you know, I travel a lot and I never post my travel beforehand, but I leave my family here alone a lot, right, and so when this information's out there, your family is probably at more risk than you if you're working full time or you're traveling. So really it's a family safety issue. And, pete, you've probably got some resistance right. People don't want to be paranoid. You've got some resistance. What are some of the things you hear on the resistance side, that people say why they don't need this?
Pete James :Yeah, sure, Some people will say, well, hey, look, if they show up at my house, I know how to take care of business, you know they'll never be seen again, I'll take care of it. But the reality is it's best to avoid that in the first place. Right, it's best, it's best to avoid that confrontation. And, like you said, what if you're not? What if? What if you're not home? What if just the family is home? It's, it's not a good situation.
Pete James :Another thing I may hear often is well, you know it's already out there. You know I can't be invisible. Therefore, you know, I'm not even going to try. And I'm like well, do you lock your front door at night? Well, yeah, you do. Okay, Well, could somebody come through it? Of course they can. So I suggest, you know, taking a reasonable approach, right, but do what you can, follow best practices. And we may not be able to get 100% of the information off the internet about you, but if you can get 99% off or the majority, then that's a big step. You don't want to just throw your hands up and say, okay, well, whatever, I don't care, you may regret that decision. So, so, you know, search for yourself, see what information is out there, see how bad the problem is yourself, and then take steps to fix it.
Travis Yates:Well, I will tell you from personal experience, pete, for the audience, for the audience, I mean, mean, I have been very much a public figure for 20 years podcast, media, training, media stuff for a long, long time. Man, you guys did phenomenal work. I mean, I was, I was almost like you, like I have it's all out there, what am I going to do? And it didn't take but a few weeks and I saw the difference. And it's once again for me, it's just for the money that you have to spend is not very much compared to what you spend on other things, to have the peace of mind. And, pete, how do you do this? I know you have a couple of options. Right, like you could.
Travis Yates:I don't like you have an option where you can do it yourself. I'm not a fan of that because that's just something I don't think about. You know how will I remember to do it? So I know you have that option, but then I have the full service. You guys do it all for me. I don't have to worry about it, it just happens. I get an email once in a while, I get a phone call once in a while. It's just probably one of the best things I've done. I mean, I pay for a concealed carry insurance with bearing arms is one of the ones I love. I pay a lot more for that than I do for you, but quite frankly, the odds of me using that are slim, very slim. The odds of me needing you are much greater. So this is a it's an incredible thing to do. So just talk to the audience about the different options they would have.
Pete James :So we have two services that that can help. One is I never want money to be a barrier to privacy, so we offer use of our software. It is free for 14 days. After that it's a couple of bucks a month. With that you use our software and you follow super easy step-by-step process to remove yourself from those sites. So with that plan you can add family members living with you at no additional cost. So that is our, that is our free do it yourself. But what more clients are really interested in is for us to do the work for them. So it's super easy.
Pete James :They go to officerprivacycom sign up. It takes about a minute or two to go through the process and you'll need to tell us who you are and a little bit of information. It takes just a couple of minutes. Within 48 hours you're going to get your first report. So immediately after you send your information in, we assign it to one of our privacy experts. We are all current or former US-based law enforcement officers.
Pete James :We get to work right away. Within 48 hours you get your first report shows the sites that we've already removed you from and shows the sites that we are still working on. Within a couple of days of getting that report, you're going to get a phone call from one of our team members. We want to make certain that you receive the report and that you understand the content and that we answer any questions that you may have about it. After that, every two weeks, you'll get another report with a follow-up until you've been removed from all the top sites that we remove you from. So that's the process. Again, we are US based. We have all done the job, so we know how important it is that you get removed from these sites for you and your family safety. So, um, you know we've grown like crazy the last six years and we are all very, very passionate about the work that we do and excited to help those still at the tip of the spear.
Travis Yates:Well, this is the reason I love you guys. Pete, I mean, if you were wanting to make as much money as possible, you would market this to the, you know, the worldwide, to anybody that wants to do it. You would send all your work overseas to people that came and speak in, used to do all the work, but you're focused in on law enforcement. You will do this for other individuals, but all your marketing, everything, is geared towards law enforcement. In fact, on your website, you talk about conceal your LEO status, which I thought was great, because this isn't a day and time you want to advertise that away from a job, and so you've honed in on truly, truly people that need it. I firmly believe that. I mean, you can't quantify it, but you probably saved lives because you can't quantify it, because it doesn't ever happen once people sign up, like I have no worries whatsoever with me and my family, with your service.
Travis Yates:Where are you going next? I mean, obviously you're always obviously having to you keep, but the other good thing about you doing it P is you're keeping up with the additional sites. You're keeping up with the things that keep popping up. This stuff is moving very quickly and I just don't think an individual can do it. I mean, I would recommend anybody. Okay, if you don't have the money which is not much to do the full service, then do the other one. But keep in mind you need somebody in the background constantly keeping up with the technology, because this is changing rapidly, is it not?
Pete James :Because this is changing rapidly, is it not? It is New sites are popping up. New process is to follow. We are on top of that. We are always constantly updating, and one of the things we do that is also important is, like you have your people search sites, right, those are the ones that you go to, that you can see your information, but a layer below those are the actual data broker sites. We remove you from the top data broker sites, and the reason this is important and not a lot of people do this or know about this.
Pete James :Think of going out and mowing and you have a field full of weeds, right. If you go out there and mow down the weeds, it's going to grow right back. What you want to do is you want to pull that weed out by the root. All right, you want to stop it from coming back, and the way to do that is to go to the data broker sites and take your information off of there and tell them do not sell them to anyone else, which will prevent them from selling it to the people search sites that then show it. So, yes, it's important to know the ins and outs of these sites and how they work and how they're connected and which ones are related to the others. We know that we use that to our advantage and we do the best we can for our clients.
Travis Yates:Now I assume by law they have to remove you when you ask Do any of them ever give you a hard time or do they know that they have to do it immediately? They're kind of playing with fire with federal law if they don't.
Pete James :There are some sites that are not based in the US that give us challenges, so that give us challenges. So it is not always an easy process to work with them, but we are very diligent and we will keep at it until they're removed. It is. It is not always easy. There are. There are struggles in this, uh, in this, in this world, which, if, if we're facing them and we're the experts, we know the ins and outs, we know the best way to get this done.
Pete James :If you're trying to do this on your own, you don't know that. So that's why many people hire us to be the experts to take care of this for them. And, um, so that's why. That's why many people hire us to be the experts to take care of this for them, and so that's why. That's why you know, when I mentioned we do offer our software for free. The majority of our clients just want us to do the work for them so that, so that they can just know that you know it's being taken care of, they know what they're doing, and I'm just going to turn this over to them and let them handle this.
Travis Yates:If you're just now joining us, we're speaking to Pete James. He's the owner and operator of OfficerPrivacycom, one of the most incredible companies you'll find if you truly believe in officer safety. And, pete, let's talk about the leadership angle of this. It's a podcast to leaders. I mean, if you're a leader in law enforcement, and, of course, one of the huge components of that is caring for those under you, taking care of them, we should take that just as serious. Off duty. It's on duty, should we not?
Pete James :So we've come a long way the last few years in being aware of the health and wellness of the officers on our teams and how that affects their performance, and I would ask you to consider how privacy fits in there.
Pete James :So right.
Pete James :So we know that we want them in a good mental headspace.
Pete James :We know that we want them to be physically fit, but if their information is exposed on the internet, they're going to have this nagging feeling in the back of their minds like okay, I'm at risk, I'm in danger, I don't know how to fix it, and they may hesitate in taking that step, which may have a huge impact on the community that we serve. So we're not doing them any favors by letting them live with this risk or danger. So what I would ask you to do is is um, hey, the next time you go on briefing, go online um, search for your information or an officer's information if you get their permission, and show what information is available online. Show their home address, the names of their relatives, their phone numbers, their email addresses and use that as an example like hey, look, if we can do this here, any criminal can do it, and they do do it, so we gotta fix it. So educate your team about the risks of this and then give them some options to fix it.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I know it's probably not on the front of a lot of leaders' minds, but I have to. You know, I'm thinking of all the money we spend on all the software products out there, right, whether it's office products or PowerDMS, I mean it's. Most departments are spending hundreds or hundreds of thousands of dollars on software products, and those aren't always for all officers, right. I mean, not everybody is using those products, it's for the organizations as a whole. How cool would it be, though, if somebody stepped up, pete, and said I want to take care of this for my officers. I mean, I can't think of any better gift, so to speak, to make sure that the department actually cares for me. I know, not every department is created equally. Every department wants to display that type of caring, but, from a leadership standpoint, I have to think that you would be open and willing to provide this to an entire department, would you not?
Pete James :Absolutely. We have many associations and entire departments that sign up for our services, so absolutely.
Travis Yates:Yeah, it's incredible stuff. How can they reach out to you, pete? How can they get a hold of you? Because I mean we could. Actually I want to back up. I want to talk about credit card stuff. You know applications for credit cards, credit histories. How much does that play into privacy? You know, because I know sometimes private investigators have different softwares and a lot of these information websites you talk about will show all these places you used to live at. I'm sure that's probably a credit report type thing. Is there any way to protect yourself in that, because most people are going to use credit right, so is there any way, anything you can do when it comes to that?
Pete James :So one of the things I found when I first started this company and in fact I didn't want to move forward until I was able to confirm that this was accurate and let me take a step back and tell you how these people search sites make money. Right, because they spend a lot of money buying this data. They've got the databases in the background and they've got the website that they're running and they've got the advertising that they're spending. So they're spending a lot of money to get this website. The way they make money back is two ways One, by selling advertising on that page and number two, by selling more comprehensive reports about that person that you find on that page. And number two, by selling more comprehensive reports about that person that you find on that site. So this is why those people search sites don't want you to remove your information, because when you're not found there, there's no comprehensive report to buy and there's no advertising.
Travis Yates:Well, and just so the audience knows, this is not expensive. I just actually, I actually just did this the other day for somebody I was looking from high school and I noticed the report was $4.95. So it's not like your local person you arrested couldn't afford this. I mean, this is easily affordable to a lot of people.
Pete James :Absolutely, absolutely. So. In order to purchase that more comprehensive report, the information that'll have more information than what is just shown on the site, you have to have a profile on the front end. You have to have a profile to start with. If you don't have a profile to start with, then there is no extra comprehensive report to purchase. Comprehensive report to purchase. So when we remove you from those sites, there is no listing, there is no comprehensive report for them to purchase, right? So there has to be step one before step two. Step two is a comprehensive report. Step one is the initial listing. We take you off of that, so there is no step two. So, um, so the idea is you know, take yourself off that site, and if you but if you are on that site, yes, somebody can spend just a few dollars and learn way more about you than than you would imagine.
Travis Yates:And so back to the back to the credit card application. Stuff is, I guess they're selling information in those sites too as well. Right, it's just another way you're putting your information. And, by the way, as Pete mentioned earlier, we're all worried about TikTok, but all these social media companies that you get for free it's not really for free. They're selling your data to all these individuals.
Pete James :One of the biggest privacy risks that there is is are the apps on your phone, the apps on your phone. When, when we download those, when we agree to their terms and conditions, we are agreeing to share so much information about us with them. And that and the reason the app is inexpensive is because they make the money on the backend. They make the money by selling your data, so it's always a good idea Check your settings, check your uh, check your micro. Not only check your location settings, um, but check your microphone settings. A story came out a little while ago. Cox Media Group admitted they were listening in on our conversations. And how do they get that information? From your microphones on your phone, from the microphones on your TV, from any smart devices you have? We are leaking this data, right? We always used to think, oh my gosh, I would have a conversation with somebody about a product. Next thing, I know I see the ad. Oh my gosh, Okay, it's true, it's true Google.
Travis Yates:Zuckerberg. He testified in front of Congress back when this came up and you got to listen to what he said. He said Facebook doesn't listen to your conversations. He didn't, that's all. Of course, these 90-year-old senators didn't ask him the follow-up question Well, are you selling that? Of course he is. He's selling it to other people to listen to it, and so his comment was so interesting to me because he answered it correctly. He was under oath. Facebook probably doesn't, but it's the people he's selling the information to. That does Correct.
Pete James :Correct, Correct. It's their marketing partners that will. They will buy that information from them. Another thing that came up just recently is Walmart bought Vizio for $2 billion. So why would Walmart buy a TV company?
Travis Yates:Well, it's not about TV. That's the tip. It's not because of the TV that TV, it's not because it's the great TV technology. Go ahead, Pete, answer it.
Pete James :Correct. Correct, it's because of the information that that TV is collecting, right, they're collecting what we watch. When we watch it, they're very likely are listening with and and and, believe me, I'm not this, you know crazy net like oh my gosh, I need to wear a tinfoil hat. That's not it Technology companies will lie to us. They will lie to us over and over. Google says, no, we're not scanning your emails. A lawsuit, and a couple billion dollars later, oh yeah, we were. Oh, sorry about that.
Pete James :Okay, back to Walmart. And why would they buy Vizio? Well, it's because it's the data that they're collecting, right, and and if you take a step back and say you know Walmart needs to advertise to its clients, well, uh, how do they do that? Well, they have to buy it by you know space, on, on, on on TV. Well, how about if you just buy that marketing channel by the marketing channel, by the marketing channel? So the streaming services, um, commercials, eventually we're going to start, you're going to start. I predict if you have a vizio, you're going to start seeing walmart commercials on there or commercials from their marketing partners, based on what you watch and what they know about you.
Travis Yates:And what they know about you is a lot so I have four vizios because I love the roku feature, so I'm part of that roku.
Pete James :so roku is a streaming service. Roku works with kroger, the grocery store to, um, to collect that data and then market to you. I give a presentation and I have a screenshot of uh, the, the marketing arm of uh, the data broker arm of Kroger, and I show that they are bragging to potential advertisers that when they show a, a ad to their uh customer, they are five times more likely to buy that in the store. So they're tracking this right. So so it's all interconnected Uh, but it starts with right Knowing about how we are leaking our data and then taking steps to to keep ourselves safe.
Travis Yates:Well, yeah, the way you described it. I mean, you really can't avoid it. If you're going to live life, you can't avoid it. So the best option is is your service speed. I mean, I cannot emphasize enough how important this is for your safety and your family's safety. In fact, that's why it's more important than individual officer, because it's protecting your family as well. So they need to get a hold of you guys and you need to do it today. Trust me, it will be the best thing you've done for your family in a very long time. How do they get a hold of you, Pete? How do they sign up? Where do they go from?
Pete James :here Super easy officerprivacycom Sign up.
Travis Yates:Yeah, you do make it easy. Even I can understand it. It's right there and you give away a lot of free tools. I mean you've got a, you've got a bunch of resources on there that if you, if Pete and I haven't kind of concerned you up now you can go get the resources and you can look at it for yourself. It's extremely important.
Travis Yates:Pete, the service I've told you this in person and have dinner with Pete because he's got alternative phone numbers, his phone. He never is on his phone because I don't think he has apps, so being around him makes you more private. I've told you this in person. But I know this is a company. I know this is a business, but this service is probably done more for law enforcement than pretty much anything I can think of, because it is providing something that really is not available, that people aren't aware of. So it's an education piece as well. There's no telling the impact it's actually made on safety. So thank you so much for doing that and thank you for being here. Go to officerprivacycom, check them out. Do this for yourself, but, more importantly, do this for your family. Thank you, pete, james, and if you've been watching and you've been listening, thank you for doing that. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. travisyates. org.
