Violet Blue

Violet Blue is an awarded author, notorious blogger, and independent journalist for CNET, Engadget, Zero Day, ZDNet, CBS News and other outlets. Blue is a notorious public pundit on privacy activism and bleeding-edge tech culture. She is an educator, speaker, crisis counselor, volunteer NGO trainer: Blue is outspoken and controversial. She lost a domain to Libya, has been yelled at by Steve Jobs, and was the first female podcaster. Ms. Blue is well known for breaking news stories at the intersection of cybercrime and activism, as well as the impact of technology on at-risk populations. She was first to break the stories of Wikipedia's paid-editing scandal; the hacking of US Government institutions such as The Federal Bank and Federal Sentencing website by Anonymous; the Google "real name" ("nymwars") debacle; Snapchat's database hack, and many more stories. Blue has worked and taught in the healthcare harm reduction sectors for over a decade, and participates as an instructor in UCSF's Global Health Program live simulations, where she works alongside Doctors Without Borders and other NGOs to train on-the-ground crisis workers in circumventing hostile media situations. Blue was named a Forbes 25 "Web Celeb" and one of Wired's "Faces of Innovation." Blue is regarded as the foremost sexuality and tech expert and sex-positive pundit in mainstream media (such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, Attack of The Show). She is regularly interviewed, and featured prominently by major media outlets including Wired (and Wired UK), Newsweek, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Salon.com, BBC, CNN, NYT, LA Times, Cinematical, PBS:Mediashift, CBS, The History Channel, Esquire, Maxim and more. Violet is the author and editor of many award-winning, best selling books that have won numerous awards and translated into 8 languages. Blue's newest book is "The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy." Her 2006 book "The Smart Girl's Guide to Porn" is excerpted on The Oprah Winfrey website. Blue connected with an audience of over 4 million readers a month with her San Francisco Chronicle column "Open Source Sex". Forbes called her podcast (Open Source Sex) "One of the Internet's most popular podcasts." Blue named "Open Source Sex" for the intersection of technology and sex, and the free-flowing information exchange of the open source software movement. She has been a contributing writer for outlets such as CNN, Forbes, O: The Oprah Magazine, MacLife, and UN sponsored health organization, RH Reality Check. She is regularly cited in print outlets ranging from Wired UK's "Experts Predict The Future" feature to David Levy's book "Love + Sex With Robots." Violet speaks about Internet sexuality, hacker culture, and privacy to security conferences around the world, at cyberlaw classes at UC Berkeley (Boalt; Samuelson Law Clinic), health programs at UCSF, tech conferences (ETech, LeWeb, Gnomedex and SXSWi), volunteers as an advisor and instructor about sexual health to sex crisis counselors. She speaks at outlets including O'Reilly's ETech and SXSW: Interactive, Google Tech Talks at Google, Inc. Oft-quoted and sourced, Violet has been a published writer in the field of sex and culture since 1998. Ms. Blue is in no way associated with the unauthorized use of her (trademarked) name and/or likeness in pornographic films.