OUR HOSTS: 

Corinne Foxx - @corinnefoxx

Natalie McMillan - @nataliemcm and @shopnataliemcmillan 

What we're drinking: Syrah Christmas Cuvee  

TOPIC: 

We’re surprising each other with topics on this episode! Corinne schools us on something that we all know we need to be better about: password safety. She shares some surprising statistics and advice for how to create iron-clad passwords. Natalie talks about how to talk to someone who is dealing with chronic illnesses, a topic that is important to her as someone with type 1 diabetes. Corinne also adds her perspective on that based on her endometriosis experience. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• Protecting yourself online 
• Tips for how to create hacker-proof passwords
• The best ways to support someone who is struggling with a chronic illness 
• Our personal experiences with chronic illnesses

END OF THE SHOW: 

Corinne and Natalie introduce Hottie of the Week: Emily Blunt 

WINE RATING:

Syrah Christmas Cuvee   = 7/ Emily Blunt

WRAP UP:

To wrap up the episode, we pick a few cards from the We're Not Really Strangers x HBO Max pack. Corinne asks Natalie about the biggest risk she’s ever taken at work and what about her upbringing felt most different from her friends. Natalie asks Corinne what part of her career fuels her and what drains her, and they both discuss what they would get arrested for. 

We have a brand new newsletter for our Am I community. You can sign up for the newsletter on our website: amidoingthisrightpod.com

You can email us for episode ideas or Random Advice: amidoingthisrightpod@gmail.com

Follow us on Instagram: @amidoingthisrightpod 

Don't forget to rate and review the podcast! It really helps us grow!

[00:00:08] Natalie McMillan: And I'm Natalie McMillan.

[00:00:20] Natalie McMillan: And each week we cover a new topic and we pop open a new bottle of wine.

[00:00:28] Natalie McMillan: We don't know a

Y'all have no idea what's going on here. You're just

[00:01:03] Corinne Foxx: Whatever your topic is is perfect. We're going to find out. Oh, and then at the end of the episode, we're playing something really fun.

Oh yeah.

[00:01:20] Corinne Foxx: Yeah. We had an episode last year. The founder of we're not really

[00:01:33] Corinne Foxx: friendship.

So we're going to play that episode after we go through our mystery topic. I know. Get into the wine that we're drinking this

[00:01:54] Corinne Foxx: it's on Thursday. Isn't it? Let's say Friday, Friday.

It's coming up. So this is the Christmas Kobe Saarah it's from Walla Walla, Washington. Oh, I just

[00:02:15] Natalie McMillan: and is highly caffeinated. I am

And we are, we are recording this a few days before that, so I'm not missing Natalie's birthday, but I figured in the spirit of mysteries, if we don't know what's going to happen, I want to give you your birthday gift.

[00:02:41] Corinne Foxx: Oh my gosh. No, no, no, no, no, no.

It's your birthday. So now it's going to do a live gift opening.

[00:03:06] Corinne Foxx: that's the, the card is the SNL skit.

Dick a box. If you guys know what that is, if you don't look it up in your welcome.

The world is a brighter, happier place because you are in it. I love you with all my heart happy birthday. I'm going to cry. Love Kerryn, AKA your heterosexual life partner. For real

[00:03:52] Natalie McMillan: every day, every single day.

Like this is pretty much. I just like randomly boys, don't

[00:04:01] Natalie McMillan: Yeah. Yes, we do that all the time. Wednesday. I just teared up because it's in writing for some reason, but we do talk about this every single day, every day.

And also the other day I was filling out like a medical form and I had to have, I had to put like a emergency contact. So I put her in and then I was like looking through the list. It was like a 25 long list. No, but I was like, there needs to be a heterosexual life partner. I know there was regular life partner and I was like, dude, do I just say that?

Cause it was like aunt, uncle ex husband. I'm like, I need heterosexual life partner. Okay. Here we go. Okay. Oh, flip it over. It is a book. Oh, okay. It has my name on it. And it's a personal horoscope book.

[00:05:01] Natalie McMillan: best friend quiz or whatever.

I really thought you were doing.

[00:05:10] Natalie McMillan: No, I really thought, cause then you said there was a pay wall and I'm like, dad, that happens. I know that was a really good room.

So I was like, oh, can't do it. So basically it's like your whole. But like explained in depth in the book. And so it like goes through everything. I wanted to open it so bad, but I didn't want to like crease it. So I like kind of peaked. And I ended up looking at like the moon and areas part,

[00:05:36] Corinne Foxx: Um, and so yeah, you can just like spend forever reading about yourself and all the different, like little aspects and everything. Here we go, moon in Aries. I kind of like flipped and saw that a little bit, but my

[00:05:53] Corinne Foxx: Yeah. Am I right? Is everything right?

Four 20 blaze it. Okay. Just

check.

[00:06:15] Corinne Foxx: Happy birthday, everyone go. Wish not a happy 28. My

I don't want to say like, well, I'm feeling my age, but like, I feel like I'm becoming more of a. I'm like a full-blown woman adult at this. I mean, yeah.

[00:06:40] Natalie McMillan: Yes. And my hairstylist, Anna, shout out to Anna. She does literally everybody's hair that we know, except for, except for current,

[00:06:49] Natalie McMillan: Yes. She's connected to everyone somehow, but she was like, good. We were talking about my birthday and she was like, you also just like, you look like a woman now. She was like, all you guys are starting to look like. And not like little freshly out of college, you know what I mean? Cod.

[00:07:13] Natalie McMillan: Yes. Should I go with my mystery topic? I would love it if you would go first. Okay.

[00:07:29] Natalie McMillan: need help with this? Oh no. Is it asking for help? Oh no, no, no, no, no.

Okay.

[00:07:35] Natalie McMillan: Oh, fuck. The up it's

[00:07:42] Natalie McMillan: So I've been so excited about this. Oh my God. I need this. I do need this so much. So I have a few

Like your bank statements, your work logins and your medical information. And for many online systems, a password is all that stands between your personal information and a half. True. Very true. And not what is your situation? Yeah, my

If my assistant's listening right now, she's going to laugh so hard because she gets logged out of things sometimes. And then she's like, Hey, what's the password for Pinterest or whatever. And I'm like, I have no idea. I have to make a new password every single time because I have no.

This is not, you're not in a good situation. I am not. Well, you are really only one weak password away from a breach. And despite the increasing sophistication of hacker technologies and tools, the easiest step of a hack, it's still just cracking a password. In fact, it's so easy that many times it doesn't even involve guessing at all.

Really don't hear something crazy. 24% of Americans have used the word password QWERTY, you know, just down the keyboard line or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 as their password. Oh my

[00:09:19] Corinne Foxx: mom's was too. And so if you. You know, have a simple password, or if you've used that simple password across multiple accounts, a reported 92% of online users do do that.

That puts your data at risk. Okay. Interesting. And what's really scary is that 1 million passwords are stolen every week. So I've

[00:09:50] Corinne Foxx: that.

We're going to go there, but yeah, no, you can't do that because, well, we'll get that. Okay. Okay. Well, we'll get there. I didn't want to jump the gun. No, no, no, no. I think it's also important to know that hackers have published as many as 555 million stolen passwords on the dark web. If you're on a mailing list, they will email you like, Hey, we are Dana was Bree, like target, all your passwords are probably floating on the dark web

It also says like on my iPhone, sometimes it's like, this password has been compromised and it's like, you should change it immediately. And I'm like, that's all right. I'm like,

So hackers use multiple methods for trying to get into your accounts. The most rudimentary way is to personally target you and manually type in letters, numbers, and symbols to guess your password. The more advanced method is to use what is called a brute force attack. So. Technique, basically like a computer program runs through every possible combination of like letters, numbers, symbols, as fast as possible to crack your password.

And so the longer, and the more complex your password is the longer that takes and passwords that are three characters long, take less than a second to crack. Can you

[00:11:13] Corinne Foxx: I guess I could be three, but I feel

[00:11:18] Corinne Foxx: characters now, which is great.

I mean, it's what you should be doing. Another thing you can do is make your password a nonsense phrase. So long passwords are good, but long passwords that include random words or phrases is better. So if your letter combinations. In the dictionary, your phrases are not in published literature or none of it is grammatically correct.

They will be harder to crack.

[00:11:49] Corinne Foxx: And also don't use characters that are in sequential order on the keyboard, such as numbers in order like 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, or don't use QWERTY court.

[00:12:04] Corinne Foxx: It is another thing that, that you can do, which they actually make you do. A lot of the time is include numbers, symbols, uppercase, lowercase letters. They like a lot of times you have to have that now, but yeah, randomly mix up symbols and numbers with letters. You can also substitute a zero for the letter O or the at sign for an a, and if your password is a phrase, consider capitalizing the first letter of each new word, which will actually make it easier for you to write.

A hundred percent. And then this is what you, this is what you were saying. Avoid using obvious personal information. So if there was information about you that it's easily discoverable such as your birthday, your anniversary, your address, your city of birth, high school relatives and pets. Now. Pet's names thinking do not include them in your password.

I literally like on my Instagram highlight story that says Archie, so that, that would probably not be a good thing for me.

[00:13:02] Corinne Foxx: really all we talked about. And then lastly, don't reuse passwords, not tag li. Bruce complete large-scale hacks. As they have recently done with popular email servers, the lists of compromised email addresses and passwords are often linked online.

So if your account is compromised and you use this email address and password combination across multiple sites, your information can be easily used to get into any of these other accounts.

[00:13:31] Corinne Foxx: all of them. Oh yeah, for sure. But I know it's really hard to remember passwords and something that I started maybe like two or three years ago.

We're good at this has changed my life and was on all the lists is to use a password manager. You have to pay for these, but it's kind of worth it. So a password manager. I password or last pass, create strong, unique passwords for all of your accounts. And that means that if one of your passwords does get caught up in one of these data breaches, criminals, won't have the keys to the rest of your online services and the best types of password managers sync.

Desktop and mobile and have auto-complete futures. That's what I need. So it's like, if you're creating a new account on your phone, and then you go on your computer, that new password will be there and it's all connected

So I'll do that sometimes. Cause I forget a password so many times, but then it doesn't sync to my phone and I'm

And if that's compromised, you're fucked. It's like cryptocurrency. If you forget the password, you're fucked, you're fucked. Um, and also if someone guesses that password you're fucked.

[00:15:00] Corinne Foxx: that point. And another thing that you can do to just keep yourself safe is to change your passwords regularly.

So the more sensitive your information is, the more often you should change your password. Once it's changed, do not use that password again for a very long time. And then lastly, my last little. The street tip is, which I think a lot of people do, but enable two factor authentication. If you can do it, they often send you like a little code.

Like you have to put the password in and then you learn code and you go to the code. There's a lot of different ways to keep yourself. So that's my feel on task. That

[00:15:38] Corinne Foxx: top. I was very excited about it. Oh my gosh. Passionate about password

I also heard, this is just a fun tip and I don't know why I know this, but Rami Malik. I think it was because I was watching God. What was that show? He was. Mr robot, which is like a show about hackers. Yeah. And he was saying that they had like a lot of people come on to like advise them. Right. And they were like, you should basically change your email address, like once a month

Yes.

[00:16:34] Corinne Foxx: schooled?

Okay. So mine,

So this is actually, there's a girl on Instagram called chronic and creative and she makes all these little infographics and all this stuff about chronic illness. So this is how you can talk to somebody, a friend, a family member about their.

[00:17:17] Natalie McMillan: illnesses.

So yeah, if you ever want to talk to us about our illnesses, here are your tip

[00:17:24] Natalie McMillan: So we're, we sometimes are in a little bit

And it was just like, we were like,

Take a little sip of my drink, wine get into it. Okay. So number one is do your own research. So most of us, I think both of us are very comfortable with talking to people, answering questions about what we have and, you know, spreading the knowledge, whatever, but there's really nothing that makes you feel more loved than.

Having somebody that knows what it is themselves. Like they look into it and they're like, oh, or they can even have a conversation with you about it. Yeah. Like that is the fact that Corrine knows about like all my little, my decks, calm. She can talk to other people about type

So somebody, sometimes people think I have. Because they talk about it so much. I'm in my, like DMS was like, thanks. Type one, sisters, something like that. I was like, oh my God. I can understand why you would think I

So it was just like to have somebody already, like, you don't have to burden us with telling you about it. Yeah. You already know. That's a really nice thing to do for somebody. For those of us who have something where we're like physically impaired. Just simply asking if like, if you're going somewhere, oh, do you want me to carry your things?

And if they say no, don't, you know, don't say it again, but that could be a really nice gesture. Just be like, Hey, do you want me to carry that? Because living with chronic illnesses is just like elevates everything into a whole nother. So just walking can be tough. You know what I mean? Yeah. This, I think this next little tidbit I think relates very well to when Corona and I last week had our moments, which is just listen.

Just listen, because sometimes we need to just vent and it's like, we know that you might not understand entirely like what's going on. Sometimes we just want to like cry at you.

I just need you to know I am crying right

And I was so

[00:20:22] Natalie McMillan: honor for me. I was like, oh my God.

The one time. So yeah, I'm trying to be better about reaching out for him and just saying when I'm struggling, the next thing is to not offer unsolicited advice to your friends. If they have chronic illness, because. I don't know if you've really experienced, have people been like, oh, you know, if you did acupuncture go away and do that

Yeah. I've had people say things to me. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And it's just the time I've already done it years ago

Yeah. But it's also just like, don't we already know what we're dealing with. You don't think we've looked at. Because we have, because we have this one, I think is something that I need to lean into more for myself. But the tip is to respect the limits of people who are struggling with an illness. So if they like cancel plans, it's not because they like don't love you or don't want to hang out.

It's because we're, we're tired. Yeah. I mean, imagine on an endo day, a bad endo day.

Yeah. I'm going to have a bad day, but yeah, there are times where I have to cancel because I can't, I can't walk

You know, sometimes our little auto-immune diseases, they say. No, they say you're going to stay home today. Like, okay. So yeah, just kind of respect the don't push it too much if you're like, oh, like, or don't make them feel bad. You know, lastly for this little segment on IRL friendships, cause I'm going to go into online friendships.

Is to just check in and it doesn't have to be like a huge long paragraph. It doesn't have to be like a two hour phone call. You could even just be like, Hey, like I'm thinking about you. I hope you're doing good. Like hope you're feeling well. Like that's just so nice to at least be acknowledged because a lot of the times I think we also downplay how much of our lives are.

Taken over, you know what I mean? Especially on particularly bad days, it's like a whole life change, you know what I mean? So just feeling like, oh, they noticed me, they remember me, like I'm not all alone over here, just like in pain. Yeah. You know,

And so I feel like. I'm really remembering things for me to do better too. Like, oh, you know, making sure I'm checking in more frequently, things like that. So anyways, and listening as both the student and the teacher,

It can be any sort of sickness somebody dealing with. Like, and again, it doesn't have to be a big because the other thing is, at least for me, If somebody checks in on me and it's just like, kind of a light thing like that, like, oh, Hey, like I'm just thinking about you and like, how are you doing? That's like so much easier than like having a big, long con cause sometimes I don't want to talk about it forever and ever.

So that's just nice. It's a really nice thing to do. So then this, I thought about how we have, obviously our in-person friends, but as, particularly by from the pan pandemic, a lot of us have like online friends, like exclude that we haven't met, you know, Instagram friends that you haven't even met in person, you know, but they might know that you're dealing with.

So one thing to know is that they might just like your message. If you send them a message and they just hit you with the little, little double tap it's because they want you to know, I saw this, I read it, but I, I just don't have the mental capacity. Cause sometimes you're just so tired and you're like, I can't, I can't do it.

Yeah. And in that same area, They might not respond. And I've noticed that I'm starting to do this more, is not responding for like maybe even days. Yeah. Because he just, you have to get the strength up. You want to be present with them. And sometimes when you're so tired or if you're sick, you're just like, I can't do it.

So yeah. Just kind of recognize that they are, I think the overarching theme here. We, and when I say we, I mean the chronically ill, but like, we love you guys so much. If you feel like you're being ignored, it's probably not. It's probably just that. We're dealing with

[00:25:57] Natalie McMillan: on an everyday basis. That for me, at least I tend to downplay like how much of my life it takes.

Yeah. So people that are dealing with these things, it's a lot of work and that can be really tiring. And sometimes that makes things get put on the back burner, like responding to text messages or Instagram, DMS, or whatever, whatever. So again, that can go right back to like, Texting, you know, somebody, you know, like you don't have to respond, just wanting to know I'm thinking about you.

Yeah. Something like that. I think that's great. And that is my spiel on how to talk to your chronically ill friends.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:09] Corinne Foxx: Yeah. I don't like explaining it to people. It's not fun, especially mine. Cause it has to do with your reproductive system and sometimes they don't want to talk to somebody. I don't know very well about my uterus.

[00:27:36] Corinne Foxx: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, that was a great mystery topic. It was a great mystery topic and we hope you guys learned more about password security and how to talk to a

[00:27:50] Corinne Foxx: Yeah. We can bring them back. It was fun for me because it was like, I don't know what to do.

I know,

[00:28:00] Corinne Foxx: a password manager manager, and let's start the year off secure, secure,

[00:28:15] Corinne Foxx: okay, well let's circle back on the wine.

Oh. And introduce her Hottie leak. Do you wanna introduce her? Oh, I'm very excited about. I love her. She's so great.

[00:28:25] Corinne Foxx: blunt, suddenly black. And we chose her because she doesn't have social media, which makes her a little mysterious. Yeah. And again, the theme for today is mystery. I

think

And she's just like stunning and such a good actress. She has a British accent and

[00:28:43] Natalie McMillan: Exactly. Exactly. Yes,

[00:28:48] Natalie McMillan: is, it is the Christmas Kobe from Walla Walla, Washington. It's a 2018. It's a sarong

I actually really like this. I don't like Serrano's a lot

[00:29:08] Corinne Foxx: It's not like my favorite, favorite, favorite. I'll give it an eight from Kerryn. Give it whatever you want. It's your birthday. You're going to give it a six from Nat salad. Seven, seven out of Emily, Emily blunt.

[00:29:25] Corinne Foxx: love her husband. I'm yeah. He's has he been no,

[00:29:40] Corinne Foxx: Okay. This is the. I said, we play a little wrap-up game and today we're playing, we're not really strangers in partnership with HBO, max, Mario Mac, which we're very excited about.

it also had this little card like that it came with that said you don't need a lot of besties, just the right ones. No.

[00:30:12] Natalie McMillan: without know truly, truly, truly. And I was trying to explain that to somebody the other day. I was like, I just need you to know, like, when I say we're a heterosexual life partners, I mean, like one would not exist without the other, but it's not in a co-dependent way.

It's just in like a simple fact sort of thing. I actually think

[00:30:34] Natalie McMillan: she would not exist. I would just disintegrate. Okay. So I think we can just, it's not in any sort of order, so I think we can just draw one. Okay. You want to go first birthday girl? Should I just pick it off the top?

Off the top? Oh, what am I most likely to get arrested for? Oh my

[00:30:56] Natalie McMillan: for? Yeah,

[00:31:17] Natalie McMillan: How much fun? Yeah, I, yeah, something around that, something like

[00:31:29] Natalie McMillan: You know what though, if it was in the reverse, if I had to think of what you would get arrested for, I don't know what it would be either.

I'm such a rule follower, you know what I think it would be, well, I guess, you know, I'm answering this in the reverse, but I feel like if you were at like some sort of March on Washington, that like was somehow oh, okay. Amy

[00:31:50] Natalie McMillan: would see maybe something like that

Okay. Well let's okay. Let's see. What's the biggest risk you've ever taken at work? Did it pay off, I guess I'm asking you this.

[00:32:13] Corinne Foxx: also when you went exclusively online, like when you oh yeah,

Oh yeah. That was a big risk. And that did pay off. It did, but the one that I'm thinking about that was like momentous is when I first started my brand, I had like two other jobs and I had quit one and then I had quit the second. And I, it was like within walking distance of my house. And I remember walking home.

Oh, fuck. Like I have to make it work. Yeah. You know,

[00:32:47] Natalie McMillan: very scary. I remember just walking home and I'm like, oh shit. But Hey, I've never had another job

[00:32:55] Natalie McMillan: I really do feel like I'm driving. You are all right. I'm going. We'll do one, one more. Yeah, we'll do one more each.

What part of your career fuels you and what drains you.

And then the part of my work that says drains. Yeah. What drains you? Honestly? All of the in-between. I actually just hired a personal assistant. Yeah. Figuring out, coordinating times, all that stuff. It's like stuff that takes away from my creativity. And I spend a lot of time just answering emails, back and forth to set appointments, set, set lunches, find places, eat, lunch out what this looks like.

I just want to focus on the creative behind everything. And so I'm really excited for the new year to just have my assistant do all the stuff that I think takes away from me being like a creative person. Yeah.

[00:34:02] Corinne Foxx: sorta

[00:34:09] Corinne Foxx: the creativity.

It does. And I love this podcast too. It's just such like a source for both of us. Yes, I do love. Okay, this is our last one. What about your upbringing felt most different from your friends?

I grew up in a very interesting dynamic where the four of us. So my dad, my mom, my brother and myself lived four completely

[00:34:54] Natalie McMillan: didn't know, Kenny till I was 20, probably. Yeah, like actual and he lived in the room next to me.

And like, I literally did not know who the person was, but I just sorta like raised myself. And like I was always at. Another per like other people's houses. So yeah, we had four completely separate lives.

[00:35:20] Natalie McMillan: I are like friends, but back in the day, I'm like, I don't even know who this person is.

I didn't know. Yeah. I was just doing my own thing, so, but I didn't know. That was weird until, until later.

[00:35:55] Natalie McMillan: gossip girl. Yeah.

So like the one that says, what am I most likely to get arrested for? It's inspired by the HBO max original, the flight attendant.

[00:36:15] Natalie McMillan: So it's based on the female friendships from their

A lot of them are from IME destroy. You. Okay? Yeah. Guys, we will link it in the show notes. If you guys want to pick this up, this is super cool. Thank you. And yeah, we hope you guys have. Mystery episode. And also don't forget to join our newsletter. Oh, maybe we'll write in the newsletter. One of the questions on the cards for you guys to ask your friends.

Yes. We'll put in the newsletter this week. You can sign up for it on, am I doing this right? pod.com. You know what else we should

[00:36:55] Corinne Foxx: Probably not so

[00:36:57] Corinne Foxx: Okay. Well, we love you guys and we'll be back next week with another episode.

Oh. And Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. Those who celebrate. Thank love you guys.