Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

Craig joins Jack Heath on NH Today talking about how to shop safely online during the holidays.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Related Articles 

10 Cybersecurity Tips for Online Shopping
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Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 11/26/2018

Online Shopping Safely Tips

Craig Peterson 0:00

Hi guys, Craig Peterson here. I had a good chance this morning to speak with Jack Heath. And Jack's now covering all of the State of New Hampshire, parts of Maine. Vermont, Massachusetts. It's really kind of cool. He's grown that quite well. He's got a great morning show. And we talked this morning about, of course, Cyber Monday online shopping. Some tips and tricks to keep you safe online. Justin's wife has had some problems online, some financial issues with stolen stuff. I hate it when that happens. And jack as well. How can you tell the scammers from the real guys What should we be doing online, all of that and more, of course, with Mr. Jack Heath. Here we go.

Unknown 0:45
Monday morning with Cyber Monday, we're going to bring in Craig Peterson and a moment our tech talk guy. But Justin, you and I were talking before we went on the air this morning earlier about the scams and the one of our regular contributors without saying her name, got a phone call or a recording same as a so you know, her social security number had been breached, and to call this number. And you and I know that's not how it works. And I was telling you about the other day, if you get a call and your Verizon user, and you might get an automated call on your phone, like an 800 number. typically don't even answer those typically. But it's like your account is going to be terminated if you don't press one now and verify your account information, right. And you're sometimes people get a statement or something looks like they're from their bank and asking if you did this transaction. And people just fall for this stuff all the time. And they'll say, you know, did you did you buy you spend $879 this weekend in New York? Yeah, no,

Unknown 1:41
but they they want you to go and verify your account that's how they capture information from you. Right It's it's tough

Unknown 1:49
because my wife my wife Renee, she she got a her her debit card was actually compromised. So she got a call from our credit union saying hey, this happened and she was skeptical because we get so many calls that are scams that are trying to get you on so you know what, once real right. So she got a social security card call said that one was a scam. The bank one was real. It's tough to tell.

Unknown 2:10
And and I think you're going to get even more even more right around with all the volume right now. And today is Cyber Monday. Going to set a record I think about 18, 20% over last year. It's going to be the biggest single transaction day online in history. Craig Peterson joins us in the Auto Fair listener lines. It is Cyber Monday. Craig and that's a kind of a mixed thing, isn't it?

Unknown 2:31
Yeah. Hey, good morning. We are setting a number of new records this year we are already broke black Fridays record of having the most shopping done from our mobile phones as opposed to our desktops and also the best deals ever on Thanksgiving Day. So yeah, we're we're shifting we're using our mobile devices more there are better ways to pay online than there have been in the past it's going to be quite the for retailers.

Unknown 3:02
Well, yeah. And but you know, I, I guess I guess more and more people are just you know, it's easy to do is sitting in your house a set of like, with Black Friday, you know, going to, you know, early in the morning and, you know, battle the crowds to go in and get a deal on a flat screen TV or a video game. But you can just sit in your house and do it. I don't think there's any turning back. But you know, part of this too is you know, you got to be careful, right? Because of all the scammers out there trying to get your information

Unknown 3:31
Yeah, I've gotten to the point now where my phone will only ring if it's a number that it recognizes that says my contact so it is getting bad out there. But yeah, there's a few tips as you're shopping online. Probably the biggest tip and and this one of course, is Justin and found out kind of the hard way when it comes to debit cards. But they can be the worst way to do online shopping. Now, Justin, you lucked out because your credit union reached out to you correct thing to do. At that point, you say thank you very much paying off and then look up your credit unions chrome number which will be on the basket that debit card and call them directly. That's the only way to verify who they are. But we can now skip that debit card, we can use some of these online payment services, things like PayPal, for instance, if all you have is a debit card. And by the way, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Or you know, just not having the credit card. But if you link your debit card, and just something like PayPal or into Apple Pay or Samsung Pay. Now your debit card is a lot more protected. Because remember, if they steal money from you, it comes right out of your checking account. And using these services like PayPal or Apple Pay protects you because the merchant never gets that credit card number. Therefore it can't be stolen. And those two companies apple and PayPal already very good about keeping your data safe. So that's probably the first tip and the best one out there. Don't use a debit card if you can don't even use a credit card. But use something like Apple Pay or PayPal online.

Unknown 5:15
And that gets to be arduous. I mean it just like what can you use?

Unknown 5:20
Yeah, exactly. It does get kind of crazy. But with the rate to we're seeing right now. You know, I run the webinars nationally for the FBI for the info guard program. And that statistics are alarming right now when it comes to businesses and consumers were talking about 60% of businesses being hacked in the next year. That's what we're looking at. And when we're talking about consumers it gets even worse because consumers just don't have the education they need to be able to tell ya this isn't the IRS or like Justin's wife did saying listen, sounds a little fishy, right? So bottom line, if it's fishy, don't follow through on on the phone call or that email never clicked on links that come in the email. So you might get a warning for instance, from your bank by email, just go to the bank's website. Or what I do is the credit cards I have been used. I have an app from the credit card company on my phone. And what's really nice about that is every time there's a credit card transaction, my phone gets a message on it just pops right up and says you know, $10 was just spent with Apple, it gives you the details you can rest a little bit more comfortably and you don't have to wait 30 or 60 days to review that transaction. When it comes in the mail. You can see it immediately. So consider that to use credit cards and credit card companies and debit cards banks that have their own the app that allow you to track all your transactions and by all means use the safest stuff up there now the safest stuff in short is Apple yeah Android yeah cash but he can't use that online. Can you know it's I can use that with PayPal

Unknown 7:19
free all the currency you can even check into hotel you know you can say you say a hotels $180 before all the taxes which make it about 240 for the night you know basic comfort in put that $500 in cash. They say I'm sorry I need a credit card

Unknown 7:33
or you can't rent a car either a car rentals you can't buy airline tickets most of the time was I'm cash so use user applicant but also consider using the Firefox browser. Firefox is available for free part of the whole Mozilla thing but it is kept up to date is is looking for scams it is trying to protect you. So if you're going online, use five Fox News. These other third party payment services Watch out for the email scam. Don't click on link. Make sure you beef up your passwords. I've I've got a whole list of these things up on my website as well. Like practice on.com all of the tips with many more details behind them. And then also a few shopping tips. My favorite this season, by the way, is the room buys on sale almost everywhere. These are these robotic vacuum cleaners. My wife loves them. I love us up in the office and use them in a home.

Unknown 8:33
They just a backup. And Craig said and PayPal is great if you have an issue with them. If you get the in my experience. Like if you something goes wrong. PayPal fixes it immediately. So I've gotten you an email once and I'll say it was a problem with your PayPal account. I don't have PayPal and well that's an issue.

Unknown 8:52
Know what I mean. Yo, you'll get a lot of these. I'll tell you it's very hard to ascertain what is bogus. And what's real. before we let you go Craig if had to say two biggest really good byes today on the tech side. What are they?

Unknown 9:05
Well as the Roomba you can get it almost anywhere online for more than $100 off which I think is a very very good five and a lot of kids love these video games. And there's a couple of games out right now that they're going to love as well. But consider some of these video game console like the new Nintendo that's out there that Justin was talking about earlier.

Unknown 9:27
All right. Thank you very much Craig. Good stuff Cyber Monday 2018 to 20% above last year I guess going to set a record is the biggest shopping day online ever. That's today and thanks Craig. And imagine a lot of people even at the workplace might be doing that I you know, of course.

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Message Input:

Message #techtalk

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

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For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Craig joins Jack Heath on NH Today talking about how to shop safely online during the holidays.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Related Articles 

10 Cybersecurity Tips for Online Shopping
---

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 11/26/2018

Online Shopping Safely Tips

Craig Peterson 0:00

Hi guys, Craig Peterson here. I had a good chance this morning to speak with Jack Heath. And Jack's now covering all of the State of New Hampshire, parts of Maine. Vermont, Massachusetts. It's really kind of cool. He's grown that quite well. He's got a great morning show. And we talked this morning about, of course, Cyber Monday online shopping. Some tips and tricks to keep you safe online. Justin's wife has had some problems online, some financial issues with stolen stuff. I hate it when that happens. And jack as well. How can you tell the scammers from the real guys What should we be doing online, all of that and more, of course, with Mr. Jack Heath. Here we go.

Unknown 0:45
Monday morning with Cyber Monday, we're going to bring in Craig Peterson and a moment our tech talk guy. But Justin, you and I were talking before we went on the air this morning earlier about the scams and the one of our regular contributors without saying her name, got a phone call or a recording same as a so you know, her social security number had been breached, and to call this number. And you and I know that's not how it works. And I was telling you about the other day, if you get a call and your Verizon user, and you might get an automated call on your phone, like an 800 number. typically don't even answer those typically. But it's like your account is going to be terminated if you don't press one now and verify your account information, right. And you're sometimes people get a statement or something looks like they're from their bank and asking if you did this transaction. And people just fall for this stuff all the time. And they'll say, you know, did you did you buy you spend $879 this weekend in New York? Yeah, no,

Unknown 1:41
but they they want you to go and verify your account that's how they capture information from you. Right It's it's tough

Unknown 1:49
because my wife my wife Renee, she she got a her her debit card was actually compromised. So she got a call from our credit union saying hey, this happened and she was skeptical because we get so many calls that are scams that are trying to get you on so you know what, once real right. So she got a social security card call said that one was a scam. The bank one was real. It's tough to tell.

Unknown 2:10
And and I think you're going to get even more even more right around with all the volume right now. And today is Cyber Monday. Going to set a record I think about 18, 20% over last year. It's going to be the biggest single transaction day online in history. Craig Peterson joins us in the Auto Fair listener lines. It is Cyber Monday. Craig and that's a kind of a mixed thing, isn't it?

Unknown 2:31
Yeah. Hey, good morning. We are setting a number of new records this year we are already broke black Fridays record of having the most shopping done from our mobile phones as opposed to our desktops and also the best deals ever on Thanksgiving Day. So yeah, we're we're shifting we're using our mobile devices more there are better ways to pay online than there have been in the past it's going to be quite the for retailers.

Unknown 3:02
Well, yeah. And but you know, I, I guess I guess more and more people are just you know, it's easy to do is sitting in your house a set of like, with Black Friday, you know, going to, you know, early in the morning and, you know, battle the crowds to go in and get a deal on a flat screen TV or a video game. But you can just sit in your house and do it. I don't think there's any turning back. But you know, part of this too is you know, you got to be careful, right? Because of all the scammers out there trying to get your information

Unknown 3:31
Yeah, I've gotten to the point now where my phone will only ring if it's a number that it recognizes that says my contact so it is getting bad out there. But yeah, there's a few tips as you're shopping online. Probably the biggest tip and and this one of course, is Justin and found out kind of the hard way when it comes to debit cards. But they can be the worst way to do online shopping. Now, Justin, you lucked out because your credit union reached out to you correct thing to do. At that point, you say thank you very much paying off and then look up your credit unions chrome number which will be on the basket that debit card and call them directly. That's the only way to verify who they are. But we can now skip that debit card, we can use some of these online payment services, things like PayPal, for instance, if all you have is a debit card. And by the way, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Or you know, just not having the credit card. But if you link your debit card, and just something like PayPal or into Apple Pay or Samsung Pay. Now your debit card is a lot more protected. Because remember, if they steal money from you, it comes right out of your checking account. And using these services like PayPal or Apple Pay protects you because the merchant never gets that credit card number. Therefore it can't be stolen. And those two companies apple and PayPal already very good about keeping your data safe. So that's probably the first tip and the best one out there. Don't use a debit card if you can don't even use a credit card. But use something like Apple Pay or PayPal online.

Unknown 5:15
And that gets to be arduous. I mean it just like what can you use?

Unknown 5:20
Yeah, exactly. It does get kind of crazy. But with the rate to we're seeing right now. You know, I run the webinars nationally for the FBI for the info guard program. And that statistics are alarming right now when it comes to businesses and consumers were talking about 60% of businesses being hacked in the next year. That's what we're looking at. And when we're talking about consumers it gets even worse because consumers just don't have the education they need to be able to tell ya this isn't the IRS or like Justin's wife did saying listen, sounds a little fishy, right? So bottom line, if it's fishy, don't follow through on on the phone call or that email never clicked on links that come in the email. So you might get a warning for instance, from your bank by email, just go to the bank's website. Or what I do is the credit cards I have been used. I have an app from the credit card company on my phone. And what's really nice about that is every time there's a credit card transaction, my phone gets a message on it just pops right up and says you know, $10 was just spent with Apple, it gives you the details you can rest a little bit more comfortably and you don't have to wait 30 or 60 days to review that transaction. When it comes in the mail. You can see it immediately. So consider that to use credit cards and credit card companies and debit cards banks that have their own the app that allow you to track all your transactions and by all means use the safest stuff up there now the safest stuff in short is Apple yeah Android yeah cash but he can't use that online. Can you know it's I can use that with PayPal

Unknown 7:19
free all the currency you can even check into hotel you know you can say you say a hotels $180 before all the taxes which make it about 240 for the night you know basic comfort in put that $500 in cash. They say I'm sorry I need a credit card

Unknown 7:33
or you can't rent a car either a car rentals you can't buy airline tickets most of the time was I'm cash so use user applicant but also consider using the Firefox browser. Firefox is available for free part of the whole Mozilla thing but it is kept up to date is is looking for scams it is trying to protect you. So if you're going online, use five Fox News. These other third party payment services Watch out for the email scam. Don't click on link. Make sure you beef up your passwords. I've I've got a whole list of these things up on my website as well. Like practice on.com all of the tips with many more details behind them. And then also a few shopping tips. My favorite this season, by the way, is the room buys on sale almost everywhere. These are these robotic vacuum cleaners. My wife loves them. I love us up in the office and use them in a home.

Unknown 8:33
They just a backup. And Craig said and PayPal is great if you have an issue with them. If you get the in my experience. Like if you something goes wrong. PayPal fixes it immediately. So I've gotten you an email once and I'll say it was a problem with your PayPal account. I don't have PayPal and well that's an issue.

Unknown 8:52
Know what I mean. Yo, you'll get a lot of these. I'll tell you it's very hard to ascertain what is bogus. And what's real. before we let you go Craig if had to say two biggest really good byes today on the tech side. What are they?

Unknown 9:05
Well as the Roomba you can get it almost anywhere online for more than $100 off which I think is a very very good five and a lot of kids love these video games. And there's a couple of games out right now that they're going to love as well. But consider some of these video game console like the new Nintendo that's out there that Justin was talking about earlier.

Unknown 9:27
All right. Thank you very much Craig. Good stuff Cyber Monday 2018 to 20% above last year I guess going to set a record is the biggest shopping day online ever. That's today and thanks Craig. And imagine a lot of people even at the workplace might be doing that I you know, of course.

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Message Input:

Message #techtalk

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

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For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Did you rush to finish Thanksgiving Dinner to rush to the sales? Did you go out on Black Friday? Are you shopping today and tomorrow?  How about on-line Cyber Monday?  Well if any of these apply to you listen in for some tips on how to stay safe while you shop and where to get the best deals.

If you have been listening in to prior shows you know I have been talking about China and their different hacking activities.  Well, they are at it again and hacking even more.  Listen in as I tell you some of the ways they are doing it now.

You know that I am a fan of Two Factor Authentication when it is done right.  But unfortunately, sometimes it is not done with much thought and it fails. Today, I will talk about one type of two-factor failures.

How readily do you install apps, plugins, etc?  Today we will discuss why millions are installing hacks at the same time.

Did you hear about the government employees who caused a network compromise?  When you hear how they did it you might be surprised.  Or maybe not. 

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit -CraigPeterson.com

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Transcript:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 11/24/2018

Safe Shopping Online - China Hacking Even More - Two Factor Authentication Failure - Millions Are Installing Hacks - Porn Watching Leads To Network Compromise

Craig Peterson: 0:00

Hey hello everybody. Craig Peterson here. Got a lot today as usual, make sure you visit me online. http://CraigPeterson.com. I've got some great information out there when it comes to online shopping tips, of course, right? That's this time of year when we have to deal with that. So pros & cons. In fact, there's 10 different tips that we have out there on the website. And we're going to cover some of those today as well. We finished getting everything else set up, right, there's always something you forget to do. So let's get going safer online shopping.

Craig Peterson 0:44
Well. we all shop online. This year, of course, we're going to set another record not only for travel but for what people are buying online how much money they're spending. I've got 10 tip top of my website at http://CraigPeterson.com, that you might want to pay attention to the first tip. And this is a really big one. I think most people might know about it. Some people might have forgotten about it. But it has to do with how you are paying the first part of this tip, skip the debit card, do not use the debit card. In fact, you can go one step further, if you'd like some of the companies are already offering you on an alternative. For instance, you know, you can use Apple Pay, you can use Samsung Pay, depending on where you are. Apple pay is very safe. Samsung Pay seems to be quite safe as well.

Craig Peterson 1:39
So if you have to use a debit card if you don't have a credit card, and I want 20 years without a credit card. So I know what you're feeling here. What's your thinking. And all I had was a debit card, put that debit card behind another payment system, such as Apple Pay, or Samsung Pay if you have a debit card, otherwise, don't use it. Okay, that's kind of the bottom line here. Because debit cards will cause you to know, end of grief of that information is stolen, right. So remember that there's another new trick that's out there that's been available for a few years, depending on whose credit card you have, you have to have a credit card, not a debit card in order to do this. And that is getting a temporary credit card. They'll give you a number that only works once in some cases. Visa has this MasterCard has their own program. But it only works one time because it's only working that one time.

Craig Peterson 2:41
If someone steals a number, who cares, right, just because you have a secure server, which that with that HTTPS and that little lock up in the corner doesn't mean that your data is secure, other than when it's in transit. So rule number one, skip the debit card, use Apple Pay if you can use Samsung Pay if you have to. And you know how, what I feel about some of the Android devices and the software they have. I'm not a big fan of that, right. So use those or use a temporary credit card number to shop on secure sites. Now,
what does that mean? I've had a lot of people ask over the years, hey, listen, this isn't a secure site, I don't want to enter information into it. You could have your information intercepted. And we've talked to my show before about how Russia and China both have routed internet traffic from the US from businesses to the foreign offices of the spy agencies and have

Craig Peterson 3:47
gathered information. So if you're using a secure server, you are thwarting the Chinese hackers, the Russian hackers etc. And that's a very good thing. So make sure you are using a site that the URL begins to https. Okay, so secure site. This is an obvious one, right? And yet, every time we go into a business we see this isn't being paid attention to but update all your software, make sure your operating systems up to date and make sure your browser is up to date. Use the best technology out there. A lot of people have switched to using Firefox. Now it's fast. It's designed to be rather safe and secure. They're updating it constantly. So Firefox seems to be the number one choice for security-conscious web browsers safaris quite good Chrome is quite good. Although Google I'm kind of shaking my head. If you watch this on video, Google is a company that they keep our information right there, they kind of sell our information to other people, but make sure your software is up to date. And you might want to use one of these tablets that are going to be a little more secure. We'll talk about that in just a second.

Craig Peterson 5:08
Now, email scams, who talked about these before a lot. And business email compromise has cost us companies over $12 billion over the last two years. Can you believe that $12 billion, that's a lot of money? And that money comes from these business email compromises the scams, where they get you to click on something that you shouldn't be clicking on. So what's the easiest way to deal with that I've got a solution. The simplest way to deal with business email compromise scams is to use a different email when you're online shopping. That's what I do. I've been using different email addresses for the last 30-40 years almost. Now those business email addresses that I'm using, I use a different one for every website.

Craig Peterson 6:02
So, I know now emails coming in. And it's being directed at an address that I know I've only ever used on site x. And yet it's purporting to be from PayPal It ain't right thing right. This is not them. This isn't PayPal because it's coming in from site x that I want to sell. For instance, I sign up for something on Cnet.com I use a different email address now there's a trick here you might not know and that's the use of the plus sign depending on your email system you may be able to put a plus sign so for instance if you send an email to [email protected]. It's going to go to me if you send email to [email protected]. It's still going to go to me and it's going to show that it's sent to craig[email protected]. So I have filters in place, so I know about it. But use a different email address for your online shopping at least have to write maybe more. Maybe another one for your banking. I even go so far as to recommend that you use a different computer. For some of your online shopping. And certainly for your online banking.

Craig Peterson 7:20
Just say no to clicking links. Never click a link. Just go up to the web browser, menu bar, and right in there, type in the URL of where you want to go. Don't follow those links. but beef up your passwords. You know, I have a special report on passwords. I can send that to you if you email [email protected]. How about this. Did you like my last tip? Well, why don't you try and send it to [email protected]. And that allows me to track and say yeah, you want password stuff. And I'll be glad to send that to you. That's normally paid special report. But I'll make it available to you for free. $97 gift to you. But brief them up.

Craig Peterson 8:08
And when you beat them up. The best way to do that, frankly, is to use a password manager because they can generate some of the best passwords. We're not going to go into and what that means, But that's in the special report. You know how you should generate them what they should consist of it to deeper right now, but beef them up, okay, never give more information than is absolutely necessary. I think that's a really big deal. So if they're asking for your name and address and various other things, you might want to consider doing something I've done as well for more than 40 years and that uses a kind of a fake name now you're not trying to commit a crime here this isn't fraud but you can now track who's using it so I will spell my name differently or use part of another name like mine I even very frequently will use the website name as my name.

Craig Peterson 9:07
So again, if the website saw that, it might put seen that Peterson for instance, and then my address so they can ship the stuff to me.

Craig Peterson 9:17
Now I know something comes to an email that says hey, seen that well, who I know where they got my email address from. And I know that nothing that's in there is stuff that you know, maybe I asked for, maybe I didn't write, but its marketing material at the best and the worst. It's someone that stole CNET's database and is now trying to defraud me on something. So don't give any more information than needed.

Craig Peterson 9:44
Another really good tip here. These are some great ones, I got them up on my website. http://safewise.com has these, of course, I'm adding some more in as I go. But don't use free hotspots. They're like manna, right? Everybody uses them unless you have the right kind of VPN. And I gotta say, most people have no idea what that VPN is really doing. Most of the free VPN and the cheap VPN are stealing your data. Now, they're not necessarily stealing it to have your credit card and use your credit card against us. Some of them are, but they are stealing your data. So be careful with that public networks just plain aren't secured. Other people can also connect to your computer. And many times a bad guy will set up a fake little wireless network and make it look like hits for the coffee shop or for the story are in and when you connect to it. You're really connecting to them. And they're stealing your data. Be smart about the shopping apps that you're using.

Craig Peterson 10:49
If you're an Android, particularly people only use apps from the Play Store that does not guarantee that they're safe, by the way, because the Google Play Store is not meticulous about making sure that all of the apps are safe that they're not doing something nefarious Apple's store Apple's App Store much better about doing that. But again, you're not necessarily safe. Okay? Don't let your computer or your device remember your credit card number. You probably don't want them to remember passwords and things again, that's why you should use a password manager.

Craig Peterson 11:27
Does that make sense to you? Bottom line is is that something that you think you should be doing is it obvious I think it is so if you want that password manager information, just email [email protected], you'll find this article and others right there online. http://craigpeterson.com. Alright, and next up here, we're going to be talking about what China is up to.

Craig Peterson 12:00
Well, you can't think that I would do a whole show just on Cyber Monday. And shopping over the holidays. Do you think China has taken the gloves off when it comes to the theft of US technology? Now, you might call this a great microchip heist, we've seen China breaking into computer systems. In fact, right here locally, we've picked up a new security client where I'm I'm acting as their data security officer. And we found Chinese backdoors on it. But there's a great article from the la times I've put up on http://CraigPeterson.com, and it's talking about this stunning microchip heist. Our computers have memory in them. There's different types of memory, one of those types is called DRAM. It's very important memory. It's kind of typically it's the main memory for your computer. Right, not the hard disk, not the SSD. But the main computing memory that's in it, what we've been tracking this for a while. And it turns out that the US federal government has been tracking for the last couple of years Beijing.

Craig Peterson 13:11
Now, I'm not going to get into all of the details, you might want to read this article up on http://CraigPeterson.com, but it's talking about China and how they've prioritized stealing intellectual property. And they really wanted to be able to manufacture these DRAM chips.

Craig Peterson 13:27
So they managed to get this information. And believe me, they're doing it by hook or by crook, the small-medium businesses are the most attacked, they're the most vulnerable and they have the most to lose. So the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI, San Francisco office, John Bennett is saying that out there in Silicon Valley, and they've been going double time, the quote is, they don't care if they get caught, or people go to jail, as long as it justifies there. And they are not going to stop. And of course, the Trump administration has been increasing some of its rhetoric when it comes to the Chinese and what the Chinese have been doing. So it's been a big deal all the way around. It's kind of a scary thing, frankly. So that's our little bit of a china story here. When we come back, we're going to talk about some more leaky data out there.

Craig Peterson 14:26
Alright, so next up, this is kind of interesting, because all of us have SMS, right? You have a phone, SMS is the simple messaging system, a gay texting, right that you're used with your phone. And we all have these, we all use these. And we talk a lot about two-factor authentication with our clients. And I've talked about it on the on the show here before, you've got to have the ability to not only know of password but have something the best security is something you know, along with something you have so many websites have decided that the easiest way to have a two factor authentication is you've, you've got your cell phone, right, that's something you have along with something, you know, which is your password. So what do they do when you try and log in, or maybe once a week, when you try and log in, they'll send a text to you. And then that text is used to do what that text is used to send you a number so that you log in with your username and password. And then you enter that number. That's a type of two-factor authentication. And that works great except when it doesn't. So there are bad guys out there who have been very busy trying to do a couple of things to us. One is they will do sim hijacking, which is a real problem nowadays. Or in this case, we've got a massive security lapse.

Craig Peterson 15:58
This is a massive database containing tens of millions of text messages, including password reset links to factor code, shipping notifications, and more. So let that sink in. Have you ever used your phone to identify yourself I've ever used your phone to get a password reset link? Now, some of these companies that send it to your phone or are pretty smart, they realize hey, listen, that's your phone, the stuff like this could happen. And at that point, your data is exposed, right which is a very bad thing. So they put a limit on it. It's only good for maybe 510 minutes. Some of them though are good for a very long time the expose server belongs to a company called box ox and it used to be called tell centrist they're out of San Diego, California their communications company and they lost a huge number was it I'm trying to the number here in this article 26 million. Here you go text messages year-to-date.

Craig Peterson 17:05
So what was found by TechCrunch in looking at this they found passwords sent in plain text to a phone number from a dating app called battle several Booking. com customers are sent their six-digit to factor codes to log into the company's corporate network Fidelity Investments, fidelity, right, they're located right here in my town
also sent six-digit security codes to one number in Chicago. Many messages included two-factor verification codes for Google account all over the world, including Latin America, Mountain View, California credit union, it goes on and on shipping notification text sent by Amazon. That's a little less troublesome. Unless you are someone who is trying to steal some of these Amazon packages we must before but it goes on and on Huawei ID, verification phones, etc. Very, very bad. But this goes to the point of two-factor authentication. And using your phone for two FA two factor authentication. If you can avoid it, avoid it, what I do is I use an app and it's called duo. Let me pull it up here for you. Right now. If you're watching this on video, you can see my phone. If not, you're going to have to kind of imagine.

Craig Peterson 18:30
But this is my duo app. And you can see I've got my mainstream protected login, my Craig Peterson login, Facebook, Amazon, and more right here. So what happens with this is this is a special app to run on smartphones ties into these applications.

Craig Peterson 18:48
And if I am trying to log in, particularly if I'm logging into a system that has our customers data on it, it will go ahead and send notification sorry for the little coughing fit there and hit the cough button.

Craig Peterson 19:06
But it'll send a notification to my phone that the app activates. And I now have to authenticate to the app. So it uses passcodes. But it also uses biometric identification. So I'm logging into a system that has climbed information on it, obviously, that's critical, right? That's something we have to watch for. So we're logging into the system,

Craig Peterson 19:32
I am now authorized to access it. Because I've given the password I've given bio information thumbprint or face print, etc.

Craig Peterson 19:42
And so now that application knows, it really is me. So think about that use something like duo it was just bought by Cisco. It's funny, all of these companies that we've been using that Cisco ends up buying it's good because you know, we're part of the Cisco ecosystem are pretty high up actually in the Cisco installing reseller's space, but they bought it, it's now integrated. And you can expect more and more of these things as time goes forward. But these are the leaks that we worry about. This is one we found out about how many of them did we not find out about? That's what's next here. We're going to tap can talk right now about the hack

Craig Peterson 20:20
that millions of people are installing themselves. Yeah, yeah, really. And you might be doing this to this is something we're always cleaning up for customers.

Craig Peterson 20:37
Now, you are using a web browser, right? Who doesn't use web browsers nowadays, you go on, I just did some banking this morning, using my web browser. Now, again, I use a different web browser for banking than I do for other things. And I often will use a different machine kind of depends on what accounts I'm messing around with. But the internet browser is the gateway from your world to the internet world. And many of us just don't pay the type of attention, we should pay to our internet browsers. Now, everyday users.

Craig Peterson 21:10
According to this study that was done here. Very recently, information that was released from Google, nearly half of all users of Chrome on the desktop use browser extensions. Now, they can be very handy. In fact, a Chrome browser is essentially an operating system in and of itself, right. But some of these are now these browser extensions are being used to hack into people's computers by the millions.

Craig Peterson 21:43
Now simple things like unwanted advertisements is one thing. But they've been stealing passwords, they've been siphoning other sensitive information, they've been using some of these browser plugins to mind for cryptocurrency, which means your machine is now going to overheat as it's looking for cryptocurrency, which by the way, will make them money, but will cost you a lot more in only your electric bill. Why is it getting hot because it's burning all that electricity? Okay, so this is a prime target for hackers, you might not want to use them, avoid them. When possible, I do use a few. And what I tend to do is activate an extension when I need it.

Craig Peterson 22:28
So if I'm trying to figure out a Facebook Pixel, I'll turn on the Facebook Pixel extension. If I want to add something to instant paper or my pocket account so that I can use it and follow up in some of the webinars I do or this radio show. I turn it on when I need it because it's giving these devices privileged access. And that's something frankly we just don't want to do. Okay, well, I'm a million users here, just for one Chrome extension. This is getting to be a very, very big problem.

Craig Peterson 23:04
Now we're going to talk about something that is also a big problem and cost the federal government of a whole lot of money. Most of us are smart enough, right. And we were just talking about extensions to Chrome and other web browsers and how that can really cause some havoc with your security. Most of us are smart enough not to go to online porn sites or gambling sites.

Craig Peterson 23:31
Those are the two worst right now when it comes to malware. Well, this is kind of interesting because the Interior Department has this watchdog and they found that the US Geological Survey had been the source of a massive breach. And I mean, massive breach, the agency's inspector general traced malicious software to a single unnamed you USGS employee. That's US Geological Survey employee. Now, that employee reportedly used a government-issued computer to visit some 9000 tall websites. So this is according to a report that was published about a month ago, many of these prohibited pages were linked to Russian websites containing malware, which was ultimately downloaded to the employee's computer and use to infiltrate Geological Survey networks. Now that this is according to the auditors that went in afterward, the investigation found the employees saved much of the pornographic material on an unauthorized USB drive and personal Android cell phone, both of which were connected to their computer against agencies. protocol, by the way, the employee's cell phone was also infected with malware.

Craig Peterson 24:52
Well, what can we learn from this? Has this happened to you in your business? Have you got first of all in place policies and procedures that say employees cannot should not do that? And then secondly, do you have any method in place to stop them from doing that, even if they're breaking the policies, right? The policies are there, but that doesn't mean that they're going to be obeyed. So do you have the proper filters at the network edge that are going to stop people from breaking out into the internet How about on the local computers have you turned off the USB ports and you know, a lot of places do that you can turn them off in the BIOS and then the employee goes in and turns them back on which means of course, you should have at very least protected BIOS is on those machines of course nowadays and not using bio says, but the same concept applies many businesses and government agencies have decided that they have to completely disable those ports which are too bad because employees are taking their phones right the Android phone a hook it up, plug it in, let me see. Oh, look at this. I've got a charging cable right here. I think I'm going to plug my phone in. Right, and they do that now. Viruses come out from their phones that go into the computers they spread through the networks the phones become infected by infected computers so they're putting epoxy into those ports on the computers and I've had more than one client that had their employees your walk around you see all of these cables whether they're like this for an apple or regular USB cables you know micro USB or now USB C cables and we recommend that they all be removed and so we remove them all and employees get upset because they know they want to hear from their family from time to time they're not necessarily on their phone all day long.

Craig Peterson 26:49
How do you deal with that right that's a problem and then add on to that the fact that they're on your network or on your business network is it being controlled is being controlled properly right? All great questions so keep an eye on this one porn watching government employee introduced a massive problem for the US Geological service How about for you in your business right. Think about it for a minute put those in place if you want more information reach out to [email protected] got some great employee handbook sections that we can share with you we've got all kinds of good information there on the website again http://CraigPeterson.com. Make sure you sign up and that's easy enough to do and I would love for you to rate my show and my podcast. Go to http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. That will take you right to my podcast on iTunes where you can subscribe and I'd really appreciate it if you did because those numbers really help us reach more people out there. And while you're there, hopefully you'll give me a five star rating. I'd appreciate it. http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. Have a great week ahead and we'll talk with you again soon. Bye bye.

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10 Cybersecurity Tips for Online Shopping

The Security Hack Millions of People are Unknowingly Installing Themselves

Two-Factor Authentication Using Your Cellphone is Dangerous -- A Leaky Database if SMS Text Messages Exposed Password Resets and Two-Factor Codes

China ‘Has Taken the Gloves Off’ in its Thefts of U.S. Tecnology Secrets

Forget the New iPhones: Apple’s Best Product is now Privacy

The New YUBIKEY Will Help Kill the Password

This Windows File May be Secretly Hoarding Your Passwords and Emails

Healthcare.gov Breach Included Social Security Numbers and, reportedly, Children’s Info

Porn-watching Employee Infected Government Networks with Russian Malware, IG says
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Did you rush to finish Thanksgiving Dinner to rush to the sales? Did you go out on Black Friday? Are you shopping today and tomorrow?  How about on-line Cyber Monday?  Well if any of these apply to you listen in for some tips on how to stay safe while you shop and where to get the best deals.

If you have been listening in to prior shows you know I have been talking about China and their different hacking activities.  Well, they are at it again and hacking even more.  Listen in as I tell you some of the ways they are doing it now.

You know that I am a fan of Two Factor Authentication when it is done right.  But unfortunately, sometimes it is not done with much thought and it fails. Today, I will talk about one type of two-factor failures.

How readily do you install apps, plugins, etc?  Today we will discuss why millions are installing hacks at the same time.

Did you hear about the government employees who caused a network compromise?  When you hear how they did it you might be surprised.  Or maybe not. 

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit -CraigPeterson.com

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Transcript:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 11/24/2018

Safe Shopping Online - China Hacking Even More - Two Factor Authentication Failure - Millions Are Installing Hacks - Porn Watching Leads To Network Compromise

Craig Peterson: 0:00

Hey hello everybody. Craig Peterson here. Got a lot today as usual, make sure you visit me online. http://CraigPeterson.com. I've got some great information out there when it comes to online shopping tips, of course, right? That's this time of year when we have to deal with that. So pros & cons. In fact, there's 10 different tips that we have out there on the website. And we're going to cover some of those today as well. We finished getting everything else set up, right, there's always something you forget to do. So let's get going safer online shopping.

Craig Peterson 0:44
Well. we all shop online. This year, of course, we're going to set another record not only for travel but for what people are buying online how much money they're spending. I've got 10 tip top of my website at http://CraigPeterson.com, that you might want to pay attention to the first tip. And this is a really big one. I think most people might know about it. Some people might have forgotten about it. But it has to do with how you are paying the first part of this tip, skip the debit card, do not use the debit card. In fact, you can go one step further, if you'd like some of the companies are already offering you on an alternative. For instance, you know, you can use Apple Pay, you can use Samsung Pay, depending on where you are. Apple pay is very safe. Samsung Pay seems to be quite safe as well.

Craig Peterson 1:39
So if you have to use a debit card if you don't have a credit card, and I want 20 years without a credit card. So I know what you're feeling here. What's your thinking. And all I had was a debit card, put that debit card behind another payment system, such as Apple Pay, or Samsung Pay if you have a debit card, otherwise, don't use it. Okay, that's kind of the bottom line here. Because debit cards will cause you to know, end of grief of that information is stolen, right. So remember that there's another new trick that's out there that's been available for a few years, depending on whose credit card you have, you have to have a credit card, not a debit card in order to do this. And that is getting a temporary credit card. They'll give you a number that only works once in some cases. Visa has this MasterCard has their own program. But it only works one time because it's only working that one time.

Craig Peterson 2:41
If someone steals a number, who cares, right, just because you have a secure server, which that with that HTTPS and that little lock up in the corner doesn't mean that your data is secure, other than when it's in transit. So rule number one, skip the debit card, use Apple Pay if you can use Samsung Pay if you have to. And you know how, what I feel about some of the Android devices and the software they have. I'm not a big fan of that, right. So use those or use a temporary credit card number to shop on secure sites. Now,
what does that mean? I've had a lot of people ask over the years, hey, listen, this isn't a secure site, I don't want to enter information into it. You could have your information intercepted. And we've talked to my show before about how Russia and China both have routed internet traffic from the US from businesses to the foreign offices of the spy agencies and have

Craig Peterson 3:47
gathered information. So if you're using a secure server, you are thwarting the Chinese hackers, the Russian hackers etc. And that's a very good thing. So make sure you are using a site that the URL begins to https. Okay, so secure site. This is an obvious one, right? And yet, every time we go into a business we see this isn't being paid attention to but update all your software, make sure your operating systems up to date and make sure your browser is up to date. Use the best technology out there. A lot of people have switched to using Firefox. Now it's fast. It's designed to be rather safe and secure. They're updating it constantly. So Firefox seems to be the number one choice for security-conscious web browsers safaris quite good Chrome is quite good. Although Google I'm kind of shaking my head. If you watch this on video, Google is a company that they keep our information right there, they kind of sell our information to other people, but make sure your software is up to date. And you might want to use one of these tablets that are going to be a little more secure. We'll talk about that in just a second.

Craig Peterson 5:08
Now, email scams, who talked about these before a lot. And business email compromise has cost us companies over $12 billion over the last two years. Can you believe that $12 billion, that's a lot of money? And that money comes from these business email compromises the scams, where they get you to click on something that you shouldn't be clicking on. So what's the easiest way to deal with that I've got a solution. The simplest way to deal with business email compromise scams is to use a different email when you're online shopping. That's what I do. I've been using different email addresses for the last 30-40 years almost. Now those business email addresses that I'm using, I use a different one for every website.

Craig Peterson 6:02
So, I know now emails coming in. And it's being directed at an address that I know I've only ever used on site x. And yet it's purporting to be from PayPal It ain't right thing right. This is not them. This isn't PayPal because it's coming in from site x that I want to sell. For instance, I sign up for something on Cnet.com I use a different email address now there's a trick here you might not know and that's the use of the plus sign depending on your email system you may be able to put a plus sign so for instance if you send an email to [email protected]. It's going to go to me if you send email to [email protected]. It's still going to go to me and it's going to show that it's sent to craig[email protected]. So I have filters in place, so I know about it. But use a different email address for your online shopping at least have to write maybe more. Maybe another one for your banking. I even go so far as to recommend that you use a different computer. For some of your online shopping. And certainly for your online banking.

Craig Peterson 7:20
Just say no to clicking links. Never click a link. Just go up to the web browser, menu bar, and right in there, type in the URL of where you want to go. Don't follow those links. but beef up your passwords. You know, I have a special report on passwords. I can send that to you if you email [email protected]. How about this. Did you like my last tip? Well, why don't you try and send it to [email protected]. And that allows me to track and say yeah, you want password stuff. And I'll be glad to send that to you. That's normally paid special report. But I'll make it available to you for free. $97 gift to you. But brief them up.

Craig Peterson 8:08
And when you beat them up. The best way to do that, frankly, is to use a password manager because they can generate some of the best passwords. We're not going to go into and what that means, But that's in the special report. You know how you should generate them what they should consist of it to deeper right now, but beef them up, okay, never give more information than is absolutely necessary. I think that's a really big deal. So if they're asking for your name and address and various other things, you might want to consider doing something I've done as well for more than 40 years and that uses a kind of a fake name now you're not trying to commit a crime here this isn't fraud but you can now track who's using it so I will spell my name differently or use part of another name like mine I even very frequently will use the website name as my name.

Craig Peterson 9:07
So again, if the website saw that, it might put seen that Peterson for instance, and then my address so they can ship the stuff to me.

Craig Peterson 9:17
Now I know something comes to an email that says hey, seen that well, who I know where they got my email address from. And I know that nothing that's in there is stuff that you know, maybe I asked for, maybe I didn't write, but its marketing material at the best and the worst. It's someone that stole CNET's database and is now trying to defraud me on something. So don't give any more information than needed.

Craig Peterson 9:44
Another really good tip here. These are some great ones, I got them up on my website. http://safewise.com has these, of course, I'm adding some more in as I go. But don't use free hotspots. They're like manna, right? Everybody uses them unless you have the right kind of VPN. And I gotta say, most people have no idea what that VPN is really doing. Most of the free VPN and the cheap VPN are stealing your data. Now, they're not necessarily stealing it to have your credit card and use your credit card against us. Some of them are, but they are stealing your data. So be careful with that public networks just plain aren't secured. Other people can also connect to your computer. And many times a bad guy will set up a fake little wireless network and make it look like hits for the coffee shop or for the story are in and when you connect to it. You're really connecting to them. And they're stealing your data. Be smart about the shopping apps that you're using.

Craig Peterson 10:49
If you're an Android, particularly people only use apps from the Play Store that does not guarantee that they're safe, by the way, because the Google Play Store is not meticulous about making sure that all of the apps are safe that they're not doing something nefarious Apple's store Apple's App Store much better about doing that. But again, you're not necessarily safe. Okay? Don't let your computer or your device remember your credit card number. You probably don't want them to remember passwords and things again, that's why you should use a password manager.

Craig Peterson 11:27
Does that make sense to you? Bottom line is is that something that you think you should be doing is it obvious I think it is so if you want that password manager information, just email [email protected], you'll find this article and others right there online. http://craigpeterson.com. Alright, and next up here, we're going to be talking about what China is up to.

Craig Peterson 12:00
Well, you can't think that I would do a whole show just on Cyber Monday. And shopping over the holidays. Do you think China has taken the gloves off when it comes to the theft of US technology? Now, you might call this a great microchip heist, we've seen China breaking into computer systems. In fact, right here locally, we've picked up a new security client where I'm I'm acting as their data security officer. And we found Chinese backdoors on it. But there's a great article from the la times I've put up on http://CraigPeterson.com, and it's talking about this stunning microchip heist. Our computers have memory in them. There's different types of memory, one of those types is called DRAM. It's very important memory. It's kind of typically it's the main memory for your computer. Right, not the hard disk, not the SSD. But the main computing memory that's in it, what we've been tracking this for a while. And it turns out that the US federal government has been tracking for the last couple of years Beijing.

Craig Peterson 13:11
Now, I'm not going to get into all of the details, you might want to read this article up on http://CraigPeterson.com, but it's talking about China and how they've prioritized stealing intellectual property. And they really wanted to be able to manufacture these DRAM chips.

Craig Peterson 13:27
So they managed to get this information. And believe me, they're doing it by hook or by crook, the small-medium businesses are the most attacked, they're the most vulnerable and they have the most to lose. So the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI, San Francisco office, John Bennett is saying that out there in Silicon Valley, and they've been going double time, the quote is, they don't care if they get caught, or people go to jail, as long as it justifies there. And they are not going to stop. And of course, the Trump administration has been increasing some of its rhetoric when it comes to the Chinese and what the Chinese have been doing. So it's been a big deal all the way around. It's kind of a scary thing, frankly. So that's our little bit of a china story here. When we come back, we're going to talk about some more leaky data out there.

Craig Peterson 14:26
Alright, so next up, this is kind of interesting, because all of us have SMS, right? You have a phone, SMS is the simple messaging system, a gay texting, right that you're used with your phone. And we all have these, we all use these. And we talk a lot about two-factor authentication with our clients. And I've talked about it on the on the show here before, you've got to have the ability to not only know of password but have something the best security is something you know, along with something you have so many websites have decided that the easiest way to have a two factor authentication is you've, you've got your cell phone, right, that's something you have along with something, you know, which is your password. So what do they do when you try and log in, or maybe once a week, when you try and log in, they'll send a text to you. And then that text is used to do what that text is used to send you a number so that you log in with your username and password. And then you enter that number. That's a type of two-factor authentication. And that works great except when it doesn't. So there are bad guys out there who have been very busy trying to do a couple of things to us. One is they will do sim hijacking, which is a real problem nowadays. Or in this case, we've got a massive security lapse.

Craig Peterson 15:58
This is a massive database containing tens of millions of text messages, including password reset links to factor code, shipping notifications, and more. So let that sink in. Have you ever used your phone to identify yourself I've ever used your phone to get a password reset link? Now, some of these companies that send it to your phone or are pretty smart, they realize hey, listen, that's your phone, the stuff like this could happen. And at that point, your data is exposed, right which is a very bad thing. So they put a limit on it. It's only good for maybe 510 minutes. Some of them though are good for a very long time the expose server belongs to a company called box ox and it used to be called tell centrist they're out of San Diego, California their communications company and they lost a huge number was it I'm trying to the number here in this article 26 million. Here you go text messages year-to-date.

Craig Peterson 17:05
So what was found by TechCrunch in looking at this they found passwords sent in plain text to a phone number from a dating app called battle several Booking. com customers are sent their six-digit to factor codes to log into the company's corporate network Fidelity Investments, fidelity, right, they're located right here in my town
also sent six-digit security codes to one number in Chicago. Many messages included two-factor verification codes for Google account all over the world, including Latin America, Mountain View, California credit union, it goes on and on shipping notification text sent by Amazon. That's a little less troublesome. Unless you are someone who is trying to steal some of these Amazon packages we must before but it goes on and on Huawei ID, verification phones, etc. Very, very bad. But this goes to the point of two-factor authentication. And using your phone for two FA two factor authentication. If you can avoid it, avoid it, what I do is I use an app and it's called duo. Let me pull it up here for you. Right now. If you're watching this on video, you can see my phone. If not, you're going to have to kind of imagine.

Craig Peterson 18:30
But this is my duo app. And you can see I've got my mainstream protected login, my Craig Peterson login, Facebook, Amazon, and more right here. So what happens with this is this is a special app to run on smartphones ties into these applications.

Craig Peterson 18:48
And if I am trying to log in, particularly if I'm logging into a system that has our customers data on it, it will go ahead and send notification sorry for the little coughing fit there and hit the cough button.

Craig Peterson 19:06
But it'll send a notification to my phone that the app activates. And I now have to authenticate to the app. So it uses passcodes. But it also uses biometric identification. So I'm logging into a system that has climbed information on it, obviously, that's critical, right? That's something we have to watch for. So we're logging into the system,

Craig Peterson 19:32
I am now authorized to access it. Because I've given the password I've given bio information thumbprint or face print, etc.

Craig Peterson 19:42
And so now that application knows, it really is me. So think about that use something like duo it was just bought by Cisco. It's funny, all of these companies that we've been using that Cisco ends up buying it's good because you know, we're part of the Cisco ecosystem are pretty high up actually in the Cisco installing reseller's space, but they bought it, it's now integrated. And you can expect more and more of these things as time goes forward. But these are the leaks that we worry about. This is one we found out about how many of them did we not find out about? That's what's next here. We're going to tap can talk right now about the hack

Craig Peterson 20:20
that millions of people are installing themselves. Yeah, yeah, really. And you might be doing this to this is something we're always cleaning up for customers.

Craig Peterson 20:37
Now, you are using a web browser, right? Who doesn't use web browsers nowadays, you go on, I just did some banking this morning, using my web browser. Now, again, I use a different web browser for banking than I do for other things. And I often will use a different machine kind of depends on what accounts I'm messing around with. But the internet browser is the gateway from your world to the internet world. And many of us just don't pay the type of attention, we should pay to our internet browsers. Now, everyday users.

Craig Peterson 21:10
According to this study that was done here. Very recently, information that was released from Google, nearly half of all users of Chrome on the desktop use browser extensions. Now, they can be very handy. In fact, a Chrome browser is essentially an operating system in and of itself, right. But some of these are now these browser extensions are being used to hack into people's computers by the millions.

Craig Peterson 21:43
Now simple things like unwanted advertisements is one thing. But they've been stealing passwords, they've been siphoning other sensitive information, they've been using some of these browser plugins to mind for cryptocurrency, which means your machine is now going to overheat as it's looking for cryptocurrency, which by the way, will make them money, but will cost you a lot more in only your electric bill. Why is it getting hot because it's burning all that electricity? Okay, so this is a prime target for hackers, you might not want to use them, avoid them. When possible, I do use a few. And what I tend to do is activate an extension when I need it.

Craig Peterson 22:28
So if I'm trying to figure out a Facebook Pixel, I'll turn on the Facebook Pixel extension. If I want to add something to instant paper or my pocket account so that I can use it and follow up in some of the webinars I do or this radio show. I turn it on when I need it because it's giving these devices privileged access. And that's something frankly we just don't want to do. Okay, well, I'm a million users here, just for one Chrome extension. This is getting to be a very, very big problem.

Craig Peterson 23:04
Now we're going to talk about something that is also a big problem and cost the federal government of a whole lot of money. Most of us are smart enough, right. And we were just talking about extensions to Chrome and other web browsers and how that can really cause some havoc with your security. Most of us are smart enough not to go to online porn sites or gambling sites.

Craig Peterson 23:31
Those are the two worst right now when it comes to malware. Well, this is kind of interesting because the Interior Department has this watchdog and they found that the US Geological Survey had been the source of a massive breach. And I mean, massive breach, the agency's inspector general traced malicious software to a single unnamed you USGS employee. That's US Geological Survey employee. Now, that employee reportedly used a government-issued computer to visit some 9000 tall websites. So this is according to a report that was published about a month ago, many of these prohibited pages were linked to Russian websites containing malware, which was ultimately downloaded to the employee's computer and use to infiltrate Geological Survey networks. Now that this is according to the auditors that went in afterward, the investigation found the employees saved much of the pornographic material on an unauthorized USB drive and personal Android cell phone, both of which were connected to their computer against agencies. protocol, by the way, the employee's cell phone was also infected with malware.

Craig Peterson 24:52
Well, what can we learn from this? Has this happened to you in your business? Have you got first of all in place policies and procedures that say employees cannot should not do that? And then secondly, do you have any method in place to stop them from doing that, even if they're breaking the policies, right? The policies are there, but that doesn't mean that they're going to be obeyed. So do you have the proper filters at the network edge that are going to stop people from breaking out into the internet How about on the local computers have you turned off the USB ports and you know, a lot of places do that you can turn them off in the BIOS and then the employee goes in and turns them back on which means of course, you should have at very least protected BIOS is on those machines of course nowadays and not using bio says, but the same concept applies many businesses and government agencies have decided that they have to completely disable those ports which are too bad because employees are taking their phones right the Android phone a hook it up, plug it in, let me see. Oh, look at this. I've got a charging cable right here. I think I'm going to plug my phone in. Right, and they do that now. Viruses come out from their phones that go into the computers they spread through the networks the phones become infected by infected computers so they're putting epoxy into those ports on the computers and I've had more than one client that had their employees your walk around you see all of these cables whether they're like this for an apple or regular USB cables you know micro USB or now USB C cables and we recommend that they all be removed and so we remove them all and employees get upset because they know they want to hear from their family from time to time they're not necessarily on their phone all day long.

Craig Peterson 26:49
How do you deal with that right that's a problem and then add on to that the fact that they're on your network or on your business network is it being controlled is being controlled properly right? All great questions so keep an eye on this one porn watching government employee introduced a massive problem for the US Geological service How about for you in your business right. Think about it for a minute put those in place if you want more information reach out to [email protected] got some great employee handbook sections that we can share with you we've got all kinds of good information there on the website again http://CraigPeterson.com. Make sure you sign up and that's easy enough to do and I would love for you to rate my show and my podcast. Go to http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. That will take you right to my podcast on iTunes where you can subscribe and I'd really appreciate it if you did because those numbers really help us reach more people out there. And while you're there, hopefully you'll give me a five star rating. I'd appreciate it. http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. Have a great week ahead and we'll talk with you again soon. Bye bye.

---

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---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Craig joins Ken and Matt as they talk about Thanksgiving and about the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals online.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Related Articles:

---

Transcript:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 11/21/2018

Getting High Over The Holidays - Black Friday Cyber Monday Deals Online

Craig Peterson: 0:00
Hey everybody. I hope you're going to have a great Thanksgiving with hopefully family right Craig Peterson here. If you have face time on your Apple devices and you've upgraded to the latest iOS just in time for Thanksgiving, Apple now has group calls with FaceTime major redesign so you can get together with your family and friends over the holidays on FaceTime check that out and of course if you have like an Amazon Echo reach out and and say hi to everybody this is a great time of year and you'd hate to think that some poor people in your family or friends that you know just didn't get the kind of love and attention that maybe they should have had over the Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Year's, Hanukkah whatever you celebrate this time of year So reach out we got the tech today to do it use that tech and be kind be nice. Alright today and was on with our friends in Maine and I had a chance to talk to Ken and Matt a little bit about two different tech stories and a quick summary of all of this stuff you need for Black Friday including a website that shows you all of the circulars for the major brick and mortar retailers yeah yeah I know who would have thought that retailers still existed a in this online world there are you going to be online shopping or are you going to be going to retailers I know I'm probably going to be doing 99% of my shopping online this year by time and I'm not alone and I also think this year from the stats I've seen we may end up with more online purchases over this Black Friday Cyber Monday we can long weekend then purchases in stores physical stores so we'll see what happens there too but anyways here we go off to Ken and Matt have a great Thanksgiving Day

Unknown 2:03
Wednesday 738 time for Craig Peterson, our tech talk guru who's joining us for a special day before Thanksgiving appearance. How are you doing Craig?

Unknown 2:10
Hey doing well I'm enjoying the whole families getting together and we're smoking a couple of turkeys

Unknown 2:25
I really thought that's where you're going because you know a pot is legal in Maine and we just talked to our from soco who clearly was are protecting this morning yes so

Unknown 2:35
you know I have never tried that back back in the 70s when I was in college everybody was smoking marijuana hashish

Unknown 2:45
that would be me yeah

Unknown 2:46
yeah and I you know I remember we used to hitchhike back then you remember that Ken?

Unknown 2:53
we just go out and check we get in anybody's car somebody we didn't know they were everywhere

Unknown 2:58
yeah well I guess it has change that much because now we'll get anybody's card will pay them

Unknown 3:05
Uber and Lyft is a little different than

Unknown 3:08
the okay well I remember one time I got a ride from campus and there was a van one of those members 70s and you know no windows in the back

Unknown 3:23
it was smoking back there and so I guess maybe I did partake little bit by accident yeah yeah by osmosis if

Unknown 3:32
you're in good company because Matt Matthew

Unknown 3:36
is not a millennial, but almost has never taken either. I have made up for both of you. That's all I think. Yes, you've taken that one. And I have I have pie because I have to do what you guys don't I just I don't understand what appeals to people about it would you drink to get but that's a different that's a completely different thing. And no, I don't really not much how does very sexual it you know mellows you out I don't want to be mellow by the way if you have a bad TV show or movie. I get good. All of a sudden makes you hungry. I don't need to be, you know, fat

Unknown 4:11
ice cream and stuff. golfing and mashed potatoes while you kids. That's why. So let's talk about the text of Shall we up before be why is uniquely I mean, Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg was a bad year for them. Yeah, he saw and but seemed a little defensive. And I mean, isn't it kind of people to stop using Facebook or my face face or something like that? I mean,

Unknown 4:36
there

Unknown 4:37
was a huge amount of stock shares. And so I seems like it was silently quietly selling off some of his stock. Let's go

Unknown 4:47
Well, you'd have to assume that they that he is right. Yeah, Facebook. It's interesting, right? First of all, all of the younger kids decided they weren't getting use Facebook does mom and dad were on it, and so's they don't have this younger, younger generation coming up. It's the older people. So they they seem to be kind of now turning the way they're running the business towards the older crowd. And you look at the latest product. For instance, I received this portal from Facebook

Unknown 5:20
for now having one is, oh, it's a brand new product of pushing for this Christmas season. If you haven't seen that yet, you're going to see ads for this thing. And what it is essentially is an Amazon Echo that's tied into the Facebook ecosystem. And it allows you to have face calls with people. How's that for weird contract. So you can be a you know, you got all your Facebook, friends and family. And now you can have a video call. It's a standalone unit. We just look it up online, you'll see a portal from Facebook, and you set it on the counter or wherever. And kind of you unique thing for this device, at least for the fancier one is it follows you around the room, which I don't know, seems kind of creepy. It turns it follows you zoomed in on your face. But the idea is that they're trying to make it so that you can have Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever you're trying to do birthday celebrations with family dropping on families, which the Amazon Echo has been doing for a while. And their their motto is, if you can't be there, feel there. So that's different, right? And, and because it's always been online, it was text type messages where you type them and and then you could have some video chats. But now they're really trying to make it so that you can be there. I don't know Ken there. I've heard predictions and Facebook is on its way out. It will be dead, which of course happens all the time, right? The market leaders end up falling pies of wayside. They've certainly lost a lot of people's trust with over 30 million accounts totally hacked. Apparently, all of that information is for sale on the dark web right now hack just a few weeks ago. And I think people are just getting to the point where they're fed up with it. I I know I'm tired of at that point personally.

Unknown 7:20
And Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us as he always does at one Wednesdays at this time to take a look at the world of technology. Craig, you mentioned a moment ago, and Amazon

Unknown 7:29
Echo. So this is an interesting

Unknown 7:32
story that I read a couple days ago about the secret recordings. This thing is making a view as you walk around your house.

Unknown 7:41
What is

Unknown 7:41
being done with those things?

Unknown 7:44
Yeah, well, this this is an interesting question. And we'll talk a little bit about frack Black Friday. You're just a sack because frankly, a lot of people are looking at those actors and and the Google homes and now those Facebook portals to have for their houses. The I think what you're referring to, is this double homicide. That is exactly

Unknown 8:04
what I am referring to. Yes.

Unknown 8:06
Yeah, right next door, New Hampshire. And here's the bottom line on those. Okay, the first of all, the echo is listening all the time. And that's true for pretty much every device in your home. But it's not recording it. And it's not sending it up to the cloud unless you give it a command. So in the case of this murder investigation, double homicide of what the police will find on that devices, nothing because it overrides the last few seconds of what uttered continually so listen to her few seconds. And it looks for its wake up word, which would be Alexa address case or, you know, hey, Google, if you got a Google Home device, and if it listens for that wake up word. And then it starts sending about third up to 30 seconds of off to the cloud. So they're not going to find anything on the device unless the murderer woke up and said, Hey, like, how do I committed double homicide

Unknown 9:12
if there is not going to be realized you just sent a bunch of Alexa.

Unknown 9:16
Yeah, I know,

Unknown 9:19
including the one that I have

Unknown 9:22
a big event going to have recorded and have it up to the cod. However, this has happened before, where they the person who was in the home, use the Alexa beforehand to order pizza, find out what time it is, what's the weather tomorrow or play my favorite playlist? That's where they might find the murderers voice on the device. So if you're thinking about buying one of these for, you know, the holidays for as a gift, I would say, go ahead. I certainly have one, I found it to be just really, really helpful. And I'm done. Worried about the technology in any market when you mute and Alexa. It has a unique hardware inside and that little, there's a red light that comes on a big red light. And the hardware can only do one of two things. It can only power the red light, or it can turn on the microphone so that red light is on there's no way within software. Even if the bad guys have hacked your device remotely. There's no way for them to turn on that microphone. So it's not so bad, frankly. But they may find stuff it's happened before. But the last big case with Amazon the Amazon Alexa file was groups all charges dismissed once the Alexa recordings were given to the police and the guy that on had previously only Alexa said, Yeah, please, you can have it Amazon, go ahead and release it because Amazon was fighting it. But Black Friday really got like a second or two here. I gotta throw some things in here. If you want to see the big door busters. There's a website you have to visit. They'll show you the all of the circulars from all of the big guys like Walmart, Best Buy target, even Amazon. They have leaked add that they were able to put up. It's called Black friday.com. You'll also see some big deals coming up from Apple over Black Friday weekend. If you're looking for a very cool gift. There is a deal going on right now. On Amazon on the new Roomba. The room by 960. It is fun. Domino, you will get $200 off. This thing checks up pet hair that you didn't even know you had. These things are beautiful. The Roomba 960 for sale on Amazon. Right? Yeah, so cool.

Unknown 11:56
You'll also see Black Friday deals on things like the new smart from all apps that are out there. Philips Hue which is a great lighting system. The Google Pixel book drops by 300 bucks. I've got all of this up on my website, by the way. So you can see some ideas there by the probably the best place to go to start. All of this is black friday.com to find the circulars that are out there right now. But do be aware of scams. But you know, guys, I think there's going to be fewer of the hacking of scams that have gone on in years past this year. A lot of retailers have smarten up. But some of them still aren't keeping our data safe. So as always be careful out there guys

Unknown 12:45
joining joining us on tech guru as he joins us every seventh or eighth grade. You have a great Thanksgiving. We'll talk to you next week.

Unknown 12:52
Take care guys. Take care of her.

Unknown 12:55
See Craig. All right. Let's toss things back.

---

Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating!

Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year! 

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Craig joins Ken and Matt as they talk about Thanksgiving and about the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals online.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Related Articles:

---

Transcript:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 11/21/2018

Getting High Over The Holidays - Black Friday Cyber Monday Deals Online

Craig Peterson: 0:00
Hey everybody. I hope you're going to have a great Thanksgiving with hopefully family right Craig Peterson here. If you have face time on your Apple devices and you've upgraded to the latest iOS just in time for Thanksgiving, Apple now has group calls with FaceTime major redesign so you can get together with your family and friends over the holidays on FaceTime check that out and of course if you have like an Amazon Echo reach out and and say hi to everybody this is a great time of year and you'd hate to think that some poor people in your family or friends that you know just didn't get the kind of love and attention that maybe they should have had over the Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Year's, Hanukkah whatever you celebrate this time of year So reach out we got the tech today to do it use that tech and be kind be nice. Alright today and was on with our friends in Maine and I had a chance to talk to Ken and Matt a little bit about two different tech stories and a quick summary of all of this stuff you need for Black Friday including a website that shows you all of the circulars for the major brick and mortar retailers yeah yeah I know who would have thought that retailers still existed a in this online world there are you going to be online shopping or are you going to be going to retailers I know I'm probably going to be doing 99% of my shopping online this year by time and I'm not alone and I also think this year from the stats I've seen we may end up with more online purchases over this Black Friday Cyber Monday we can long weekend then purchases in stores physical stores so we'll see what happens there too but anyways here we go off to Ken and Matt have a great Thanksgiving Day

Unknown 2:03
Wednesday 738 time for Craig Peterson, our tech talk guru who's joining us for a special day before Thanksgiving appearance. How are you doing Craig?

Unknown 2:10
Hey doing well I'm enjoying the whole families getting together and we're smoking a couple of turkeys

Unknown 2:25
I really thought that's where you're going because you know a pot is legal in Maine and we just talked to our from soco who clearly was are protecting this morning yes so

Unknown 2:35
you know I have never tried that back back in the 70s when I was in college everybody was smoking marijuana hashish

Unknown 2:45
that would be me yeah

Unknown 2:46
yeah and I you know I remember we used to hitchhike back then you remember that Ken?

Unknown 2:53
we just go out and check we get in anybody's car somebody we didn't know they were everywhere

Unknown 2:58
yeah well I guess it has change that much because now we'll get anybody's card will pay them

Unknown 3:05
Uber and Lyft is a little different than

Unknown 3:08
the okay well I remember one time I got a ride from campus and there was a van one of those members 70s and you know no windows in the back

Unknown 3:23
it was smoking back there and so I guess maybe I did partake little bit by accident yeah yeah by osmosis if

Unknown 3:32
you're in good company because Matt Matthew

Unknown 3:36
is not a millennial, but almost has never taken either. I have made up for both of you. That's all I think. Yes, you've taken that one. And I have I have pie because I have to do what you guys don't I just I don't understand what appeals to people about it would you drink to get but that's a different that's a completely different thing. And no, I don't really not much how does very sexual it you know mellows you out I don't want to be mellow by the way if you have a bad TV show or movie. I get good. All of a sudden makes you hungry. I don't need to be, you know, fat

Unknown 4:11
ice cream and stuff. golfing and mashed potatoes while you kids. That's why. So let's talk about the text of Shall we up before be why is uniquely I mean, Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg was a bad year for them. Yeah, he saw and but seemed a little defensive. And I mean, isn't it kind of people to stop using Facebook or my face face or something like that? I mean,

Unknown 4:36
there

Unknown 4:37
was a huge amount of stock shares. And so I seems like it was silently quietly selling off some of his stock. Let's go

Unknown 4:47
Well, you'd have to assume that they that he is right. Yeah, Facebook. It's interesting, right? First of all, all of the younger kids decided they weren't getting use Facebook does mom and dad were on it, and so's they don't have this younger, younger generation coming up. It's the older people. So they they seem to be kind of now turning the way they're running the business towards the older crowd. And you look at the latest product. For instance, I received this portal from Facebook

Unknown 5:20
for now having one is, oh, it's a brand new product of pushing for this Christmas season. If you haven't seen that yet, you're going to see ads for this thing. And what it is essentially is an Amazon Echo that's tied into the Facebook ecosystem. And it allows you to have face calls with people. How's that for weird contract. So you can be a you know, you got all your Facebook, friends and family. And now you can have a video call. It's a standalone unit. We just look it up online, you'll see a portal from Facebook, and you set it on the counter or wherever. And kind of you unique thing for this device, at least for the fancier one is it follows you around the room, which I don't know, seems kind of creepy. It turns it follows you zoomed in on your face. But the idea is that they're trying to make it so that you can have Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever you're trying to do birthday celebrations with family dropping on families, which the Amazon Echo has been doing for a while. And their their motto is, if you can't be there, feel there. So that's different, right? And, and because it's always been online, it was text type messages where you type them and and then you could have some video chats. But now they're really trying to make it so that you can be there. I don't know Ken there. I've heard predictions and Facebook is on its way out. It will be dead, which of course happens all the time, right? The market leaders end up falling pies of wayside. They've certainly lost a lot of people's trust with over 30 million accounts totally hacked. Apparently, all of that information is for sale on the dark web right now hack just a few weeks ago. And I think people are just getting to the point where they're fed up with it. I I know I'm tired of at that point personally.

Unknown 7:20
And Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us as he always does at one Wednesdays at this time to take a look at the world of technology. Craig, you mentioned a moment ago, and Amazon

Unknown 7:29
Echo. So this is an interesting

Unknown 7:32
story that I read a couple days ago about the secret recordings. This thing is making a view as you walk around your house.

Unknown 7:41
What is

Unknown 7:41
being done with those things?

Unknown 7:44
Yeah, well, this this is an interesting question. And we'll talk a little bit about frack Black Friday. You're just a sack because frankly, a lot of people are looking at those actors and and the Google homes and now those Facebook portals to have for their houses. The I think what you're referring to, is this double homicide. That is exactly

Unknown 8:04
what I am referring to. Yes.

Unknown 8:06
Yeah, right next door, New Hampshire. And here's the bottom line on those. Okay, the first of all, the echo is listening all the time. And that's true for pretty much every device in your home. But it's not recording it. And it's not sending it up to the cloud unless you give it a command. So in the case of this murder investigation, double homicide of what the police will find on that devices, nothing because it overrides the last few seconds of what uttered continually so listen to her few seconds. And it looks for its wake up word, which would be Alexa address case or, you know, hey, Google, if you got a Google Home device, and if it listens for that wake up word. And then it starts sending about third up to 30 seconds of off to the cloud. So they're not going to find anything on the device unless the murderer woke up and said, Hey, like, how do I committed double homicide

Unknown 9:12
if there is not going to be realized you just sent a bunch of Alexa.

Unknown 9:16
Yeah, I know,

Unknown 9:19
including the one that I have

Unknown 9:22
a big event going to have recorded and have it up to the cod. However, this has happened before, where they the person who was in the home, use the Alexa beforehand to order pizza, find out what time it is, what's the weather tomorrow or play my favorite playlist? That's where they might find the murderers voice on the device. So if you're thinking about buying one of these for, you know, the holidays for as a gift, I would say, go ahead. I certainly have one, I found it to be just really, really helpful. And I'm done. Worried about the technology in any market when you mute and Alexa. It has a unique hardware inside and that little, there's a red light that comes on a big red light. And the hardware can only do one of two things. It can only power the red light, or it can turn on the microphone so that red light is on there's no way within software. Even if the bad guys have hacked your device remotely. There's no way for them to turn on that microphone. So it's not so bad, frankly. But they may find stuff it's happened before. But the last big case with Amazon the Amazon Alexa file was groups all charges dismissed once the Alexa recordings were given to the police and the guy that on had previously only Alexa said, Yeah, please, you can have it Amazon, go ahead and release it because Amazon was fighting it. But Black Friday really got like a second or two here. I gotta throw some things in here. If you want to see the big door busters. There's a website you have to visit. They'll show you the all of the circulars from all of the big guys like Walmart, Best Buy target, even Amazon. They have leaked add that they were able to put up. It's called Black friday.com. You'll also see some big deals coming up from Apple over Black Friday weekend. If you're looking for a very cool gift. There is a deal going on right now. On Amazon on the new Roomba. The room by 960. It is fun. Domino, you will get $200 off. This thing checks up pet hair that you didn't even know you had. These things are beautiful. The Roomba 960 for sale on Amazon. Right? Yeah, so cool.

Unknown 11:56
You'll also see Black Friday deals on things like the new smart from all apps that are out there. Philips Hue which is a great lighting system. The Google Pixel book drops by 300 bucks. I've got all of this up on my website, by the way. So you can see some ideas there by the probably the best place to go to start. All of this is black friday.com to find the circulars that are out there right now. But do be aware of scams. But you know, guys, I think there's going to be fewer of the hacking of scams that have gone on in years past this year. A lot of retailers have smarten up. But some of them still aren't keeping our data safe. So as always be careful out there guys

Unknown 12:45
joining joining us on tech guru as he joins us every seventh or eighth grade. You have a great Thanksgiving. We'll talk to you next week.

Unknown 12:52
Take care guys. Take care of her.

Unknown 12:55
See Craig. All right. Let's toss things back.

---

Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating!

Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year! 

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Craig is on with Jim Polito talking about Thanksgiving and the ups and downs of digital privacy. How do you stop Google from tracking your location and activities?

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Related Articles:

How to Stop Google From Tracking Your Location And Activities

---

Transcript:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 11/20/2018

The Ups And Downs Of Digital Privacy

Craig Peterson: 0:00
Hey, good morning everybody. Craig Peterson here. Massachusetts, just this week on Monday it became legal to sell recreational marijuana. Now I want you to listen to this interview with Jim and tell me if you think he's well, I don't know. Maybe he's, I think he visited a pot shop earlier this week 

Unknown 0:27
Good old Jim Polito. Oh, we had a great discussion this morning about online privacy. He brought up some really great issues it talk more than I did today. So here we go with Jim Polito. Oh, by the way, everybody have a great Thanksgiving and thanks to everybody who responded to my email that I sent out to some of those subscribers about trying to have a little get together have friends to talk about this whole problem with small business and computers and security and everything so

Unknown 1:00
Thanks to you, and if you haven't seen a response from me yet, that's because I'm going through I'm sending individual responses to everybody. So this is this is not just an in the blind to everybody. So hey, anyways, here we go with Mr. Jim.

Unknown 1:14
He's the man, the myth, the legend. Hey, you know that he wrote code that is still in use and the internet. I'm talking about our good friend and Tech Talk guru Craig Peterson. Good morning, Craig. How are you doing today, buddy? Always a pleasure to see you. Hey, good morning, doing really well. What is no way

Unknown 1:39
the snow and the cold for you is nothing. It's like, like for you. It's like you're back home. Which reminds me when his Canadian Thanksgiving Mr. Peterson well in the US they call it Columbus Day. So it's about a month earlier and with our family. We actually had another session.

Unknown 2:00
You've been September because one of my daughters with along with their husband was home from Norway and they just love Thanksgiving. So I got three shots. This thing giving this year I love Listen, I would take that I would take that it's my favorite holiday. And what's interesting, Craig is that if the Canadians are celebrating Thanksgiving around Columbus Day,

Unknown 2:24
the Canadians are probably more accurate or closer to the day the actual first Thanksgiving took place because it would have been a harvest festival and it was likely late September early October in 1621. So Craig I guess the Canadians have us beat on this one even though we had the first Thanksgiving yeah it's interesting there's all kinds of differences you know Canada they call all the indigenous people First Nations I thought cool Yeah. First Nation other words, there was a first or

Unknown 3:00
Establish a nation. I mean, they were here the whole time. But yeah, I thought the whole thing of interest, I just love the story of that first Thanksgiving and, you know, moving the Commonwealth out of really being the Caitlyn, who else? yeah how people were finally about starving to death. It's a great story. This is not sold. And I know and I'm telling it and this is a chance for a shameless plug. Even though there's no money involved in this one on wt ag on Thanksgiving morning at 9am and on why. And on Thanksgiving morning at 7am my Thanksgiving special I actually went to you know, I'm a little bit of a history buff. I went to Plymouth Plantation and produced a one hour special on it using the reactors. They're

Unknown 3:47
like I'm interviewing them in in modern day because when you go to Plymouth Plantation, they don't break character Craig. They stay in character and they become

Unknown 4:00
Hey, there's and they represent actual people who were there in the Plymouth Colony and historical people. So I interviewed them and use them in it. And then I got someone from a what they call the indigenous program there a native person who runs that program of the whopping dog. And but they, they, when you see them there in the dress of the period and working

Unknown 4:26
in the their homes of the period, but they they speak to you and you know modern parlance you know, they don't, they don't play act because they say, we don't have to play act. We're native people when

Unknown 4:41
we were here. So with all that in mind, I want to ask you about this thing with Google because it's kind of a

Unknown 4:49
it's a good bad situation. You sent me this information. So if you don't want Google tracking you

Unknown 4:58
if you want your privacy better.

Unknown 5:00
back, you will have to give up some convenience. You're going to tell us how you can do it with your smartphone and with with your iPhone or with your Android, but

Unknown 5:10
you give up to get that privacy, the suggestions and things that Google does for you that actually I prefer, because like when I go to YouTube, I like when they suggest videos to me that are videos I'd be interested in because they know what I watch. But why don't we talk about that start with start there, Craig?

Unknown 5:30
Well, it is kind of interesting, because all the major manufacturers, Google and Apple, certainly the real big ones are interested in in the whole mobile assistance marketplace. Google has something they call in a system and the idea is it really does track you particularly if you're using an Android device. So let's say for instance, that you go down to New York City and it notices that the last couple of times you've

Unknown 6:00
down to New York City, you've always been in this one neighbor of us. And it goes so far as to notice which restaurants you've eaten. And in other words, which ones you went in. And you stay for a while, right? So now you go to the north, and or you go somewhere in Boston, who knows what you like, at least out in New York the different areas yourself, too. And the idea is, the google assistant will make recommendations to you based on what you've done in the past, even in other city. Wow,

Unknown 6:33
that's really quite cool. It's very nice. But it's, it's the same time. Yeah, so Google knows that at nighttime. Your phone resides at 123 Main Street in Western Mass. And so now if his figured out Well, that's probably worth gym lifts right there on Main Street. Yep. And I seen his calendar that he has an appointment later on today. Going

Unknown 7:00
But he has another one first. And so it figures out your route for the day. The idea is, it will wake you up. It'll tell your fingers working to do now. Here's what's going on. Yeah. How about I order to Noli for you while you're in the north and you get up here? That's where they're hoping to take this whole thing. And you know what, it's already doing some of that already, because it will Google Maps. I never assigned where home was, but it eventually picked up okay, this is home free gym. This is where he lives and eventually asked me Do you want to set this as home in your Google Maps

Unknown 7:41
getting a little forward with you? Yeah, yeah. And I did only because I like to hit one button. You know, I use my smartphone is my GPS my car. I mean, these are all great things, Craig. But what you're giving up for these is privacy I'm giving

Unknown 8:00
up all of the privacy and there's a part of me. I've always been the type that has said, I don't care if what people do and what people look at me look at for me because I'm not doing anything wrong. I don't care. I mean, of course, I believe in the Bill of Rights. But you know, in terms of the government, I don't care because I'm not doing anything wrong. But there's another part of me that says, Hmm, I don't know if I like this.

Unknown 8:28
Think about this. 510 years down the road. We're going to have autonomous cars, fully autonomous cars. Yeah, and these things are going to be driving around and it's going to tie into your system and your system now is going to say you've got a meeting in you need a car I'm going to have a car pick you off at 10am. If you're not going to own a car. Certainly in 20 years. Most people won't have a car anymore yeah, and and it's going to show up well, it's a bad guy. nose mouth.

Unknown 9:00
That that Jim is going to this meeting. And let's say the bad guy wants to frame the who, who's got everything they might need. Let's say the bad guy wants to attack you. We have already cases in New York City down in Central Park where bad guys put sensors on trees and those sensors. He texted people's Fitbit as they went by and those fit bits were then track and the bad guys were able to track the specific women in order to attach them to rob them and the other various things that might have been trying to do so all of that data being there It's one thing for marketers to have it because it might be a benefit right yeah there I think there's a benefit I don't consider it annoying when you when you want to buy a car that's when you want to see the car commercials all the time right right and and the other side of it with the government is well you know

Unknown 10:00
The government gets to have a quick look at my data and say yeah, obviously Jim wasn't even he say or nearest he's not a suspect in this white cast the net that's the benefit to because now you're not getting harassed and getting pulled into the precinct again.

Unknown 10:17
So, so there's some benefits there. But the, the negative parts of all of this, ours is that data essentially gets out. Look at the about 30 million Facebook accounts. Right? You reach the goal, right, right. And big data is taking all of that is selling it it's putting this together knows and it's going to be yeah and and and that's the that's the worry. You know, it's funny, you talked about the Fitbit thing because you had a few weeks ago told us about how the government didn't want members of the military when they're deployed to put on their Fitbit because the same thing could be done the bad guys in the park who were looking to attack women by tracking their shipping.

Unknown 11:00
Bad guys in Afghanistan and Iraq would do the same thing to try to track our soldiers. So if I want to get off that, and I know at the end of this segment, folks we're with Greg Peterson, we're going to give you a number you'd be text My name to, he'll send you this information. But in standard data in text rates apply. But Craig, it's not that hard in the settings of your smartphone.

Unknown 11:23
To stop this know there's a few things that you're going to need to do. And it does obviously varies from Android, iOS, and which version of Android you're on a better etc. But basically, you go to my activity, and that's where it shows you how you're being tracked online. And once you're in there, you're logged into your Google account online by the ways what you're doing so yes, you're going to the web Google my activity. It's showing how your tracked online and you can open that button you can set it up and change it. There's six sections in there that you're going to find it

Unknown 12:00
And you can also control your Android phone tracking from there. Your phone's track tied into Google account, which probably is. Yeah, if you're an iPhone user, you can toggle off web and act as app activity, location history, there's a bunch more, this gets a little bit complicated, but we're talking about three to five minutes worth of work. Yeah, you can turn that off. And I think that's the big positive now, you should just, you know,

Unknown 12:31
expect that you're not going to get all those conveniences after you do that. And by the way, folks will get you this information

Unknown 12:39
in in from Craig Peterson, but you should expect to knock and have the convenience anymore, a lot of that will go away, no doubt about it, it's still going to track you if you're using the map application dapp obviously it needs to but other than that, the features the assistance and other things that you might like are really as he says it's going to go away.

Unknown 13:00
Alright let's go on to something else which is getting rid of your personal information online and and you were talking about Apple CEO Tim Cook talking about need for digital privacy reform I don't know that's kind of like him talking about it's like the chicken I mean the fox guarding the chicken coop but I mean how do you will send the information but but what's possible What are you able to do well again the Apple iOS platform is your least monitor a randomized everything but it's hard to reconstruct Apple can even give it to the government okay they don't have it bottom line but as you know over time it's going to become impossible Jim you know I think we are on a ship that's been scuttled yeah and the odds were going to survive this are almost zero.

Unknown 14:00
You know, from a standpoint of our privacy, it's going away. People are giving it up. We're using our credit cards all time was using Apple Pay, et cetera. And all of this is just a little bit of the time. Right? As you move from a cashless society, to an all digital society, yeah. And who knows where from man, it's To me, it's, it's scary. Tim Cook. Typing has some great ideas. And I'm glad to hear Apple really is concerned about privacy. They haven't been the best in the world about privacy, but they're nowhere near as bad as Facebook or obviously our friends at Google. All right, let's find out how to get this information. So what you do is you text My name to this number.

Unknown 14:52
855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553.

Unknown 15:00
Standard data and text rates apply. Craig Peterson will not pester you. He'll send you this information so that you'll be able to do it yourself. Or at least you'll be able to have the information. Should you decide you want to do it. And don't forget Craig Peterson will be back here on Friday in the seven o'clock hour. We're going to talk Black Friday, we're going to talk Cyber Monday. We're going to talk buying online with Craig Peterson. Craig, thank you so much. And Happy Thanksgiving to you, sir. Hey, thank you. Take care. Take care. Speaking of Thanksgiving, the turkey is our final word. You're listening. 

---

Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating!

Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year! 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Craig is on with Jim Polito talking about Thanksgiving and the ups and downs of digital privacy. How do you stop Google from tracking your location and activities?

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Related Articles:

How to Stop Google From Tracking Your Location And Activities

---

Transcript:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 11/20/2018

The Ups And Downs Of Digital Privacy

Craig Peterson: 0:00
Hey, good morning everybody. Craig Peterson here. Massachusetts, just this week on Monday it became legal to sell recreational marijuana. Now I want you to listen to this interview with Jim and tell me if you think he's well, I don't know. Maybe he's, I think he visited a pot shop earlier this week 

Unknown 0:27
Good old Jim Polito. Oh, we had a great discussion this morning about online privacy. He brought up some really great issues it talk more than I did today. So here we go with Jim Polito. Oh, by the way, everybody have a great Thanksgiving and thanks to everybody who responded to my email that I sent out to some of those subscribers about trying to have a little get together have friends to talk about this whole problem with small business and computers and security and everything so

Unknown 1:00
Thanks to you, and if you haven't seen a response from me yet, that's because I'm going through I'm sending individual responses to everybody. So this is this is not just an in the blind to everybody. So hey, anyways, here we go with Mr. Jim.

Unknown 1:14
He's the man, the myth, the legend. Hey, you know that he wrote code that is still in use and the internet. I'm talking about our good friend and Tech Talk guru Craig Peterson. Good morning, Craig. How are you doing today, buddy? Always a pleasure to see you. Hey, good morning, doing really well. What is no way

Unknown 1:39
the snow and the cold for you is nothing. It's like, like for you. It's like you're back home. Which reminds me when his Canadian Thanksgiving Mr. Peterson well in the US they call it Columbus Day. So it's about a month earlier and with our family. We actually had another session.

Unknown 2:00
You've been September because one of my daughters with along with their husband was home from Norway and they just love Thanksgiving. So I got three shots. This thing giving this year I love Listen, I would take that I would take that it's my favorite holiday. And what's interesting, Craig is that if the Canadians are celebrating Thanksgiving around Columbus Day,

Unknown 2:24
the Canadians are probably more accurate or closer to the day the actual first Thanksgiving took place because it would have been a harvest festival and it was likely late September early October in 1621. So Craig I guess the Canadians have us beat on this one even though we had the first Thanksgiving yeah it's interesting there's all kinds of differences you know Canada they call all the indigenous people First Nations I thought cool Yeah. First Nation other words, there was a first or

Unknown 3:00
Establish a nation. I mean, they were here the whole time. But yeah, I thought the whole thing of interest, I just love the story of that first Thanksgiving and, you know, moving the Commonwealth out of really being the Caitlyn, who else? yeah how people were finally about starving to death. It's a great story. This is not sold. And I know and I'm telling it and this is a chance for a shameless plug. Even though there's no money involved in this one on wt ag on Thanksgiving morning at 9am and on why. And on Thanksgiving morning at 7am my Thanksgiving special I actually went to you know, I'm a little bit of a history buff. I went to Plymouth Plantation and produced a one hour special on it using the reactors. They're

Unknown 3:47
like I'm interviewing them in in modern day because when you go to Plymouth Plantation, they don't break character Craig. They stay in character and they become

Unknown 4:00
Hey, there's and they represent actual people who were there in the Plymouth Colony and historical people. So I interviewed them and use them in it. And then I got someone from a what they call the indigenous program there a native person who runs that program of the whopping dog. And but they, they, when you see them there in the dress of the period and working

Unknown 4:26
in the their homes of the period, but they they speak to you and you know modern parlance you know, they don't, they don't play act because they say, we don't have to play act. We're native people when

Unknown 4:41
we were here. So with all that in mind, I want to ask you about this thing with Google because it's kind of a

Unknown 4:49
it's a good bad situation. You sent me this information. So if you don't want Google tracking you

Unknown 4:58
if you want your privacy better.

Unknown 5:00
back, you will have to give up some convenience. You're going to tell us how you can do it with your smartphone and with with your iPhone or with your Android, but

Unknown 5:10
you give up to get that privacy, the suggestions and things that Google does for you that actually I prefer, because like when I go to YouTube, I like when they suggest videos to me that are videos I'd be interested in because they know what I watch. But why don't we talk about that start with start there, Craig?

Unknown 5:30
Well, it is kind of interesting, because all the major manufacturers, Google and Apple, certainly the real big ones are interested in in the whole mobile assistance marketplace. Google has something they call in a system and the idea is it really does track you particularly if you're using an Android device. So let's say for instance, that you go down to New York City and it notices that the last couple of times you've

Unknown 6:00
down to New York City, you've always been in this one neighbor of us. And it goes so far as to notice which restaurants you've eaten. And in other words, which ones you went in. And you stay for a while, right? So now you go to the north, and or you go somewhere in Boston, who knows what you like, at least out in New York the different areas yourself, too. And the idea is, the google assistant will make recommendations to you based on what you've done in the past, even in other city. Wow,

Unknown 6:33
that's really quite cool. It's very nice. But it's, it's the same time. Yeah, so Google knows that at nighttime. Your phone resides at 123 Main Street in Western Mass. And so now if his figured out Well, that's probably worth gym lifts right there on Main Street. Yep. And I seen his calendar that he has an appointment later on today. Going

Unknown 7:00
But he has another one first. And so it figures out your route for the day. The idea is, it will wake you up. It'll tell your fingers working to do now. Here's what's going on. Yeah. How about I order to Noli for you while you're in the north and you get up here? That's where they're hoping to take this whole thing. And you know what, it's already doing some of that already, because it will Google Maps. I never assigned where home was, but it eventually picked up okay, this is home free gym. This is where he lives and eventually asked me Do you want to set this as home in your Google Maps

Unknown 7:41
getting a little forward with you? Yeah, yeah. And I did only because I like to hit one button. You know, I use my smartphone is my GPS my car. I mean, these are all great things, Craig. But what you're giving up for these is privacy I'm giving

Unknown 8:00
up all of the privacy and there's a part of me. I've always been the type that has said, I don't care if what people do and what people look at me look at for me because I'm not doing anything wrong. I don't care. I mean, of course, I believe in the Bill of Rights. But you know, in terms of the government, I don't care because I'm not doing anything wrong. But there's another part of me that says, Hmm, I don't know if I like this.

Unknown 8:28
Think about this. 510 years down the road. We're going to have autonomous cars, fully autonomous cars. Yeah, and these things are going to be driving around and it's going to tie into your system and your system now is going to say you've got a meeting in you need a car I'm going to have a car pick you off at 10am. If you're not going to own a car. Certainly in 20 years. Most people won't have a car anymore yeah, and and it's going to show up well, it's a bad guy. nose mouth.

Unknown 9:00
That that Jim is going to this meeting. And let's say the bad guy wants to frame the who, who's got everything they might need. Let's say the bad guy wants to attack you. We have already cases in New York City down in Central Park where bad guys put sensors on trees and those sensors. He texted people's Fitbit as they went by and those fit bits were then track and the bad guys were able to track the specific women in order to attach them to rob them and the other various things that might have been trying to do so all of that data being there It's one thing for marketers to have it because it might be a benefit right yeah there I think there's a benefit I don't consider it annoying when you when you want to buy a car that's when you want to see the car commercials all the time right right and and the other side of it with the government is well you know

Unknown 10:00
The government gets to have a quick look at my data and say yeah, obviously Jim wasn't even he say or nearest he's not a suspect in this white cast the net that's the benefit to because now you're not getting harassed and getting pulled into the precinct again.

Unknown 10:17
So, so there's some benefits there. But the, the negative parts of all of this, ours is that data essentially gets out. Look at the about 30 million Facebook accounts. Right? You reach the goal, right, right. And big data is taking all of that is selling it it's putting this together knows and it's going to be yeah and and and that's the that's the worry. You know, it's funny, you talked about the Fitbit thing because you had a few weeks ago told us about how the government didn't want members of the military when they're deployed to put on their Fitbit because the same thing could be done the bad guys in the park who were looking to attack women by tracking their shipping.

Unknown 11:00
Bad guys in Afghanistan and Iraq would do the same thing to try to track our soldiers. So if I want to get off that, and I know at the end of this segment, folks we're with Greg Peterson, we're going to give you a number you'd be text My name to, he'll send you this information. But in standard data in text rates apply. But Craig, it's not that hard in the settings of your smartphone.

Unknown 11:23
To stop this know there's a few things that you're going to need to do. And it does obviously varies from Android, iOS, and which version of Android you're on a better etc. But basically, you go to my activity, and that's where it shows you how you're being tracked online. And once you're in there, you're logged into your Google account online by the ways what you're doing so yes, you're going to the web Google my activity. It's showing how your tracked online and you can open that button you can set it up and change it. There's six sections in there that you're going to find it

Unknown 12:00
And you can also control your Android phone tracking from there. Your phone's track tied into Google account, which probably is. Yeah, if you're an iPhone user, you can toggle off web and act as app activity, location history, there's a bunch more, this gets a little bit complicated, but we're talking about three to five minutes worth of work. Yeah, you can turn that off. And I think that's the big positive now, you should just, you know,

Unknown 12:31
expect that you're not going to get all those conveniences after you do that. And by the way, folks will get you this information

Unknown 12:39
in in from Craig Peterson, but you should expect to knock and have the convenience anymore, a lot of that will go away, no doubt about it, it's still going to track you if you're using the map application dapp obviously it needs to but other than that, the features the assistance and other things that you might like are really as he says it's going to go away.

Unknown 13:00
Alright let's go on to something else which is getting rid of your personal information online and and you were talking about Apple CEO Tim Cook talking about need for digital privacy reform I don't know that's kind of like him talking about it's like the chicken I mean the fox guarding the chicken coop but I mean how do you will send the information but but what's possible What are you able to do well again the Apple iOS platform is your least monitor a randomized everything but it's hard to reconstruct Apple can even give it to the government okay they don't have it bottom line but as you know over time it's going to become impossible Jim you know I think we are on a ship that's been scuttled yeah and the odds were going to survive this are almost zero.

Unknown 14:00
You know, from a standpoint of our privacy, it's going away. People are giving it up. We're using our credit cards all time was using Apple Pay, et cetera. And all of this is just a little bit of the time. Right? As you move from a cashless society, to an all digital society, yeah. And who knows where from man, it's To me, it's, it's scary. Tim Cook. Typing has some great ideas. And I'm glad to hear Apple really is concerned about privacy. They haven't been the best in the world about privacy, but they're nowhere near as bad as Facebook or obviously our friends at Google. All right, let's find out how to get this information. So what you do is you text My name to this number.

Unknown 14:52
855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553.

Unknown 15:00
Standard data and text rates apply. Craig Peterson will not pester you. He'll send you this information so that you'll be able to do it yourself. Or at least you'll be able to have the information. Should you decide you want to do it. And don't forget Craig Peterson will be back here on Friday in the seven o'clock hour. We're going to talk Black Friday, we're going to talk Cyber Monday. We're going to talk buying online with Craig Peterson. Craig, thank you so much. And Happy Thanksgiving to you, sir. Hey, thank you. Take care. Take care. Speaking of Thanksgiving, the turkey is our final word. You're listening. 

---

Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating!

Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year! 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Craig is on with Jack Heath talking about the role Alexa played in a New Hampshire murder trial.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Related Articles 

Amazon Reportedly Ordered To Hand Over Echo Recordings In N.H. Murder Trial

---

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 11/19/2018

Double Homicide - Can Police Get Information From An Alexa

Craig Peterson 0:00
A good morning everybody. I sent out some emails to a few people this last weekend. Hopefully you got it on Saturday. If you are on my list, I'm going to be doing a quick one to group a six week course here. Well, not even course really. I'm going to be helping out a small group of friends with business security. So we're going to be walking through everything. I'm giving them just tons of great information. Everything from the employee handbook sections they need sounds like four dozen different employee handbook session sections, what they should be doing with their computers, what they can do for free how to make this all work some some serious training for a C levels within organizations. That includes business owners. And the idea at the end of this is they'll know who to hire, how to hire them, how to select our managed services provider, or even a break fix shop all of the questions they should ask them everything. So this is a beta program people are going to have to apply to get into this program. I think it's going to be a phenomenal thing. And I've already had quite a few responses. So if you think you might be interested, if you are a sea level or business owner and you want to get your arms around security are my people doing the right thing? Why did the IT guys always clam up when I asked him about security? Right? Have you have any of those types of questions and make sure you send me an email let me know I will this week. I think probably I don't know that this week. A lot of people are probably out for Thanksgiving but I'm going to send out a quick email but let me know and I will send you information on how to apply to be in this program we are charging for this program because it's going to take a lot of my time to guide this group. It's a beta program that's going to be leading edge but just email [email protected] if you are interested, get your arms around the security there and your business. Alright, so this morning I was on with Mr. Jack Heath. And we talked quite a bit about this double homicide that happened in New Hampshire and explain in more detail what type of technology is being used by these IoT devices Internet of Things the the Amazon Alexa is the Google Home

Unknown 2:27
Craig Peterson joins us on the auto fair listener line and interesting article Craig hopefully doing well. Jeff Jonas, you're talking about this on Friday is a Lexus speech protected? This goes to a case where the the technology the locks, it may have heard something that ties into a double homicide in Farmington almost two years ago.

Unknown 2:52
Yeah, good morning, Jack. It does. I spent some time talking about this case on my show this weekend. Very in here. Yeah, it's very interesting. Because we're bringing more of these devices in your homes. You mentioned the course the Amazon Alexa, Google has the Google Home. Apple has it theory. And there have been a couple of cases now. And this one is making some national news where the prosecutors felt that there may be information that's contained within that device, in this case, and Amazon Echo bottom line on this for people that do have these devices, the prosecutor doesn't really understand how the technology works. So I take a second to explain it. But also that the prosecutor may not be entirely wrong here. So jack, what happens with these devices nowadays is they're constantly listening to everything going on the environment. So that part the prosecutor has, right However, they are locally listening for their wake up word. So I'm not going to save the way help word. But you know, when you address these things, you call it by name. And then you give it a command. So nothing's going up to the cloud. Unless the device has been modified, nothing is going up and to the cloud and kill it hears its wake up word. So in the case where there was a double homicide, what would have happened is, it would have hurt the whole homicide because the the detectives in the case think that the original action took place in the kitchen, which is where the Amazon echo that they seize was located. So they think that they probably heard it and it probably did, but that Amazon Alexa sitting there is not going to be sending any of that data to the cloud. And it's only stores a few seconds worth of sound on the device locally. And then it rights over it again, now where things so they're not going to get anything from this and let's the murderer, someone else called out the wake up word, then that 32nd stream of data and it's usually only 30 seconds max would have been sent up to Amazon. And Amazon does keep it now where it might be interesting. And we've seen this before is in a case where maybe someone with crime of passion patch use the Alexa earlier in the day. So they might have ordered pizza, or they might have asked what the weather is tomorrow, etc. In those cases, that device is recording the boys and uploads it to the cloud. In fact, you can go in with any of these devices online and in the apps and listen to the commands that's been given. So in that case, the prosecutor could go to Amazon and say, Hey, listen, we need the recording and listen to see if the murderer had or the accused I had previously use that device, maybe an hour or so before the burgers and then there's a crime of passion. And now they have some suspect at least they have the voice of the suspect now in in the pre or price previous case. In the non New Hampshire case where they went ahead and subpoenaed amazon for the records. Amazon resisted them saying no, we're not going to provide that data to you. And ultimately the guy who was charged with the crime conceited and said to Amazon Yeah, go ahead and release it. They listened to what recordings were and ended up dropping all charges against the guy because there was nothing incriminating on them but it's an interesting question an interesting problem and it's got national prominence now Jack

Unknown 6:45
Well, it does and these things are so like you saying your home now and you don't think of what's captured Do you think of sort of what's live and what's happening you know, you know Alexa it's like the ad you know play me some Whitney Houston you know they're not thinking Alexa Bose final score last night of the bears game you know, people aren't thinking of what's picked up right or what's captured

Unknown 7:06
right and you know that thing what was the score the bears game that has been used in divorce cases before not not because it's the bears not the Patriots. It's been using cases before because a boyfriend or a girlfriend of the spouse comes over and uses the Alexa it's all recorded in the spouse notices wait a minute now this isn't my playlist this isn't the music I like and and who the heck like the bears and so they have the voice of the cheater and the GD right there on the device it's been used in court that way before it's funny

Unknown 7:43
how people used to say careful of stay on the phone the government might be listening and now it's like let's practice listening device into our house and set it up

Unknown 7:51
Isn't it funny and and what what else were we told don't get in cars with strangers right and don't take candy from strangers now Now we call a stranger give them money to get in their car and get takes it places guys the whole world just changed entirely hasn't it?

Unknown 8:06
Yeah

Unknown 8:08
interesting stuff and you know again this is that was a pretty pretty well known double homicide case in terms of pristine solvents murder and a friend

Unknown 8:22
you know I guess the whether or not they can get suspect from this and who knows if they're gonna you know there's such a legal ramifications right

Unknown 8:30
yeah and Amazon is going to continue to resist from what they're saying right now and really the only way they would be able to release it without any problems is for the owner to say yeah go ahead and leave those records but in this case apparently the owners debt because I imagine it was hers at the time yeah so it isn't please Cassidy I doubt they're going to get anything but maybe they will but they're certainly not likely to get a recording of the murder as it happens like what happened in the Saudi embassy over in Turkey now here we go there's a

Unknown 9:05
Alexa can help solve that but they have plenty of video they have plenty of video and other stuff to know that a mystic a show he was not leaving that console and alive. All right. Thank you, Craig. And have a great great Thanksgiving.

Unknown 9:16
Hey, thank them people right now on our homepage. If you go to dir there is a an article about travel on Thanksgiving. Google has mapped it out where you should go where you shouldn't go and when it's a really great article.

Unknown 9:32
Alright, thanks. Thanks, Craig. Appreciate it. We come back checks out over the financial show airs.

Unknown 9:36
Hi everybody. By the way. Have a great Thanksgiving if you don't hear from me, although I'll be on again Tuesday and Wednesday this week. And of course my radio show this Saturday, but I might love Thanksgiving. It's a great time for families and friends to get together so enjoy yourself. Take care. Bye bye.

---

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Craig is on with Jack Heath talking about the role Alexa played in a New Hampshire murder trial.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Related Articles 

Amazon Reportedly Ordered To Hand Over Echo Recordings In N.H. Murder Trial

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Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 11/19/2018

Double Homicide - Can Police Get Information From An Alexa

Craig Peterson 0:00
A good morning everybody. I sent out some emails to a few people this last weekend. Hopefully you got it on Saturday. If you are on my list, I'm going to be doing a quick one to group a six week course here. Well, not even course really. I'm going to be helping out a small group of friends with business security. So we're going to be walking through everything. I'm giving them just tons of great information. Everything from the employee handbook sections they need sounds like four dozen different employee handbook session sections, what they should be doing with their computers, what they can do for free how to make this all work some some serious training for a C levels within organizations. That includes business owners. And the idea at the end of this is they'll know who to hire, how to hire them, how to select our managed services provider, or even a break fix shop all of the questions they should ask them everything. So this is a beta program people are going to have to apply to get into this program. I think it's going to be a phenomenal thing. And I've already had quite a few responses. So if you think you might be interested, if you are a sea level or business owner and you want to get your arms around security are my people doing the right thing? Why did the IT guys always clam up when I asked him about security? Right? Have you have any of those types of questions and make sure you send me an email let me know I will this week. I think probably I don't know that this week. A lot of people are probably out for Thanksgiving but I'm going to send out a quick email but let me know and I will send you information on how to apply to be in this program we are charging for this program because it's going to take a lot of my time to guide this group. It's a beta program that's going to be leading edge but just email [email protected] if you are interested, get your arms around the security there and your business. Alright, so this morning I was on with Mr. Jack Heath. And we talked quite a bit about this double homicide that happened in New Hampshire and explain in more detail what type of technology is being used by these IoT devices Internet of Things the the Amazon Alexa is the Google Home

Unknown 2:27
Craig Peterson joins us on the auto fair listener line and interesting article Craig hopefully doing well. Jeff Jonas, you're talking about this on Friday is a Lexus speech protected? This goes to a case where the the technology the locks, it may have heard something that ties into a double homicide in Farmington almost two years ago.

Unknown 2:52
Yeah, good morning, Jack. It does. I spent some time talking about this case on my show this weekend. Very in here. Yeah, it's very interesting. Because we're bringing more of these devices in your homes. You mentioned the course the Amazon Alexa, Google has the Google Home. Apple has it theory. And there have been a couple of cases now. And this one is making some national news where the prosecutors felt that there may be information that's contained within that device, in this case, and Amazon Echo bottom line on this for people that do have these devices, the prosecutor doesn't really understand how the technology works. So I take a second to explain it. But also that the prosecutor may not be entirely wrong here. So jack, what happens with these devices nowadays is they're constantly listening to everything going on the environment. So that part the prosecutor has, right However, they are locally listening for their wake up word. So I'm not going to save the way help word. But you know, when you address these things, you call it by name. And then you give it a command. So nothing's going up to the cloud. Unless the device has been modified, nothing is going up and to the cloud and kill it hears its wake up word. So in the case where there was a double homicide, what would have happened is, it would have hurt the whole homicide because the the detectives in the case think that the original action took place in the kitchen, which is where the Amazon echo that they seize was located. So they think that they probably heard it and it probably did, but that Amazon Alexa sitting there is not going to be sending any of that data to the cloud. And it's only stores a few seconds worth of sound on the device locally. And then it rights over it again, now where things so they're not going to get anything from this and let's the murderer, someone else called out the wake up word, then that 32nd stream of data and it's usually only 30 seconds max would have been sent up to Amazon. And Amazon does keep it now where it might be interesting. And we've seen this before is in a case where maybe someone with crime of passion patch use the Alexa earlier in the day. So they might have ordered pizza, or they might have asked what the weather is tomorrow, etc. In those cases, that device is recording the boys and uploads it to the cloud. In fact, you can go in with any of these devices online and in the apps and listen to the commands that's been given. So in that case, the prosecutor could go to Amazon and say, Hey, listen, we need the recording and listen to see if the murderer had or the accused I had previously use that device, maybe an hour or so before the burgers and then there's a crime of passion. And now they have some suspect at least they have the voice of the suspect now in in the pre or price previous case. In the non New Hampshire case where they went ahead and subpoenaed amazon for the records. Amazon resisted them saying no, we're not going to provide that data to you. And ultimately the guy who was charged with the crime conceited and said to Amazon Yeah, go ahead and release it. They listened to what recordings were and ended up dropping all charges against the guy because there was nothing incriminating on them but it's an interesting question an interesting problem and it's got national prominence now Jack

Unknown 6:45
Well, it does and these things are so like you saying your home now and you don't think of what's captured Do you think of sort of what's live and what's happening you know, you know Alexa it's like the ad you know play me some Whitney Houston you know they're not thinking Alexa Bose final score last night of the bears game you know, people aren't thinking of what's picked up right or what's captured

Unknown 7:06
right and you know that thing what was the score the bears game that has been used in divorce cases before not not because it's the bears not the Patriots. It's been using cases before because a boyfriend or a girlfriend of the spouse comes over and uses the Alexa it's all recorded in the spouse notices wait a minute now this isn't my playlist this isn't the music I like and and who the heck like the bears and so they have the voice of the cheater and the GD right there on the device it's been used in court that way before it's funny

Unknown 7:43
how people used to say careful of stay on the phone the government might be listening and now it's like let's practice listening device into our house and set it up

Unknown 7:51
Isn't it funny and and what what else were we told don't get in cars with strangers right and don't take candy from strangers now Now we call a stranger give them money to get in their car and get takes it places guys the whole world just changed entirely hasn't it?

Unknown 8:06
Yeah

Unknown 8:08
interesting stuff and you know again this is that was a pretty pretty well known double homicide case in terms of pristine solvents murder and a friend

Unknown 8:22
you know I guess the whether or not they can get suspect from this and who knows if they're gonna you know there's such a legal ramifications right

Unknown 8:30
yeah and Amazon is going to continue to resist from what they're saying right now and really the only way they would be able to release it without any problems is for the owner to say yeah go ahead and leave those records but in this case apparently the owners debt because I imagine it was hers at the time yeah so it isn't please Cassidy I doubt they're going to get anything but maybe they will but they're certainly not likely to get a recording of the murder as it happens like what happened in the Saudi embassy over in Turkey now here we go there's a

Unknown 9:05
Alexa can help solve that but they have plenty of video they have plenty of video and other stuff to know that a mystic a show he was not leaving that console and alive. All right. Thank you, Craig. And have a great great Thanksgiving.

Unknown 9:16
Hey, thank them people right now on our homepage. If you go to dir there is a an article about travel on Thanksgiving. Google has mapped it out where you should go where you shouldn't go and when it's a really great article.

Unknown 9:32
Alright, thanks. Thanks, Craig. Appreciate it. We come back checks out over the financial show airs.

Unknown 9:36
Hi everybody. By the way. Have a great Thanksgiving if you don't hear from me, although I'll be on again Tuesday and Wednesday this week. And of course my radio show this Saturday, but I might love Thanksgiving. It's a great time for families and friends to get together so enjoy yourself. Take care. Bye bye.

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

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For questions, call or text:

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