Like many others, I was introduced to the concepts of so-called extreme privacy through the Privacy, Security, and OSINT Show, a weekly podcast hosted by a privacy consultant named Michael Bazzell.
MB took a leave at the start of summer and the show released a few pre-recorded episodes in his absence. It has now been several months and there’s been zero peeps about the status of the show. This has lead to some theories on the podcast’s subreddit that MB may have met an untimely demise or wound up imprisoned in a foreign country - something he joked about when he said in one of his final podcasts that could happen since he was going to be testing a method at obtaining a passport in an alias name from a foreign country. In a recent development, his company - Intel Techniques - has begun scrubbing any mention of his name from his website and his personal twitter page has been renamed to the company’s name.
I haven’t seen it discussed here so I figured I’d make a thread for any fans of the podcast. What do you think happened and do you think we’ll see a return of MB?
Yeah, I noticed that. It’s strange that the show notes for episode 306 were released on the same day the podcast was taken offline. As far as I know nobody was able to download a copy of that episode.
They’re also allegedly copyright striking people who share alternative downloads to the podcast (like torrent magnet links, etc.). Hard to say what’s going on, but this all definitely seems like deliberate moves on their end. I highly doubt he’s dead as some Redditors are speculating, but it could be indicative of some legal problems they’re facing which they aren’t allowed to disclose.
I don’t think anyone will be able to provide you with an answer to this question until they publish a response themselves.
I read a theory that he’s shedding his public persona of being "Intel Techniques by Michael Bazzell’ and trying to separate the two because it opens him up for legal liability by branding his name with the company and their products.
My theory is that they got swamped with a big client or something because I reached out to them inquiring about assistance for an anonymous home purchase and I got an email from an employee saying they are inundated with work and not currently taking on new clients. That was back in about August.
During number of podcasts MB mentioned his research into acquiring dual citizenship, he was in process of doing all the leagl stuff on himself, he also joked about getting thrown in jail (which jason said were not true).
From the podcast that was taken down, we can assume MB is back in US, but as to why podcast is on hiatus? We’ll have to wait for an official answer on that.
Blog post just popped up on my RSS app from Bazzell,
No more podcasts for now.
Other content/services are still live.
Expect new content soon.
Yada yada
He is doing fine.
Has a job offer If u can find him.
If u find him, can you tell me where, I need a job not joking.
Here is link below. https://inteltechniques.com/blog/2023/11/20/my-irish-exit/
I have a sneaking suspicion of the general area where is he is right now, but since Im not in the US, I cant really check and I cant really travel but from what the last blog sounds like, he wants OsInt people to find him and say hi. Now I just have to figure out the degrees part of his riddle.
I speculate he’s somewhere in the Caribbean because his company has a location there and in past episodes he mentioned working out an affordable option to obtaining a second passport in an unnamed Caribbean country. I’m willing to bet looking at flight, marine, and satellite traffic around that part of the world during sunset on the last few days would yield some useful results.
He’s living his freedom. I’m really happy for him!
I’m totally grateful for how much I learned from his podcasts. We still have the books and the PDFs (despite I avoid long reads online)
Worth is relative. I have the mobile devices and macOS devices. Neither is saying anything groundbreaking or anything that he didn’t say in the podcasts. But it gets into every detail on why, how it works and how to set it up. I found them very informative.
I’m very happy with the purchase that were totally worth to me. It gave me guides on how to mitigate many of the aspects I most disliked about two devices I use every day, that are both very expensive devices and sadly some of the most important devices in my life. So for me, paying $30 to be more comfortable using the $4000 worth of devices I use daily, was a no brainer.
Maybe he decided to hang things up and “retire” his public persona. Quite a shame because I think he had a really good voice for podcasting. Hopefully his new endeavor of blogging instead of podcasting is equally as effective at spreading the good word about personal privacy - I don’t think I would’ve ever got as deeply into privacy as I have without stumbling upon his podcast.
not joking.