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

Do you use Facebook?  Do you want them to have your bank account information?  Listen in as Jim and I talk about what Mark Zuckerberg has in mind for Facebook and you.

Computers watching you? Yes, but good news if you listen in Jim and I will discuss an article that you can use to guide you through the process of protecting your security.

Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them.

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

---

Related Articles:

Is anyone spying on your computer? How do you know?

Facebook wants to know your bank balance and track your accounts

---

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 08/014/2018

Zuckerberg Wants Your Bank Account Information. Keeping Your Computers Safe From Spying.

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hi, Everybody Craig Peterson here. Today, I spoke with Jim Polito, and we talked about a couple of different things. One that we talked about was how to tell if someone else is spying on you, via your computer. A Really, great article referred to in there and went into some detail about Mark Zuckerberg what he's trying to do in the financial arena. Did you know he's trying to get access to your bank account? Yeah. He's, you know, he's been in trouble. Stock down 20 percent. You saw that right. A couple a few weeks ago. Well, this is his answer to getting more eyeballs on his site, for a longer period every day. So, here we go. 

[00:00:46] He is the man you need at your side to protect you in cyberspace. I am talking about our tech guru Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir. 

[00:00:59] Hey. good morning Jim. Quite the morning. 

[00:01:01] Yeah, it is. A lot of news, lots of stuff going on, but hey, I always turn to you. In times of uncertainty. So, Facebook. wants to look at my bank account. Whoa Whoa well good luck. Good luck there.

[00:01:21] No no no they can't.

[00:01:25] They can look into my but they look into my bank vault. Hello. Hello. Anybody, anybody. Yeah. No, Facebook wants to see our bank accounts. What is this?

[00:01:38] Well, Jim they can handle negative numbers, so. You know they might be a problem, I don't know. 

[00:01:49] You know. I don't know I'm sure you follow this a little bit but, Facebook about two weeks ago had a massive dive. Their stock sank more than 20 percent. And the reason for that was fewer people are using it and, in fact, Facebook CFO came out and said that they're expecting revenue growth rates to continue to decelerate in the second half. So, they're saying hey listen our growth is going to decelerate, the hard numbers are showing their users are leaving, and there's a lot of people that attribute that to the fact that Facebook was spying on people, Right. And, that's a that's a bit of a problem. So, Facebook is presented right now with some really interesting dilemmas. How do they get people to stay on their site? Now, I want you just think back a little bit. Think back five years, maybe ten years to your use of the computer. What was on your home page? I mean when you first run your web browser.

[00:02:50] What site came up? Google.

[00:02:53] Yeah, it would be Google or AltaVista. I'll tell you not yet. Yep yeah yeah. And there were some others out there Yahoo, of course, is kind of a portal, and some people had America Online et cetera. 

[00:03:10] Today, what do people have? Well, when opening the browser I don't know what do you have? What does Danny have? 

[00:03:17] Well, I still have Google here, because I'm going to start searching. I'm going to start doing things. But, other people here who use this same computer if they're login is still here on this computer, in the studio. Guess what some of them it's Twitter. Some of them it's Facebook. They go right there. I mean they don't they don't mess around, they're right there, that's their landing page. 

[00:03:42] And, that's where the value is. Because now you are going to that Facebook page or that Google page, etc.. That's what they want to control. Many people have YouTube now, as their home page, in fact, that trend right now. 

[00:03:59] Does Danny saying he does. Yeah, he as YouTube as his homepage. 

[00:04:05] Exactly. The trends are showing that number one is that Google out there online the number two search engine is YouTube which is owned by Google. And, then, of course, you have facebook etc.. So, right now the top sites are Google and Facebook depending how you want to look at it, Right. But, YouTube is about to pass Facebook. If these trends continue. Wow 

[00:04:30] Mark Zuckerberg, Yeah, they've got a real problem. Ohh Zucky. 

[00:04:38] One of the things Mark is Looking at that is he wants to be involved not just as your home page as to how you start your Internet experience but, he wants to be on the financial side too. So, he's been playing with block technologies. Think of bitcoin, for instance, he wants Facebook to be a currency, as well, that you use online.

[00:05:02] And a step towards that. Now, he has come out and Facebook is saying, hey listen we want to have your bank information. We actually kind of want to be your bank right. 

[00:05:16] Isn't it enough that Jeff Bezos has my bank information. It's true. Is Zuckerberg going to have it too? What does Elon Musk want it now, after him? 

[00:05:27] Well, he's been approaching Amazon, Google and J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and others and he's saying hey listen we want to move the financial services from the ATMs to Facebook. And, of course, Facebook could make more money in the process. People would spend more time there. They could send the money through Facebook, they could pay their bills. The bills would come right into Facebook, so, Facebook would become essentially the clearinghouse even more than an ATM. Now everybody is still kind of talking with Facebook. The banks are not sure if they want to do this. Bank of America has said forget about it. It's not going to happen. But, that's the next step for Facebook, if Zuckerberg gets his way. 

[00:06:15] Wow. Makes sense. Taking over the world. We're talking with Craig Peterson, our tech guru, and at the end of this segment we're going to give you a phone number and if you text my name Craig we'll get you this information with a lot more detail and a lot of other information and he will not annoy you. He will not try to sell you things. It's all just good information helping you too, to not be so alone in the in the outer space that is cyberspace. All right I want to get quickly to the computer. 

[00:06:45] I'm looking at it, but it's looking back at me. Whose in control of that. 

[00:06:53] And, yes we do we know about the L.A. County, the L.A. Unified School District, and how they were spying on girls getting dressed in their bedrooms because they had their laptops open. We know that can happen, and in that case, they have specifically installed, kind of like spyware on your on their computers. Now, there are ways to stop this. I've got a great article up on my site. And, I've been thinking maybe it's time to do another webinar, where we walk people through how to do this themselves. I've got a great article on my site from popular science where they go through and talk about it. It's no longer good enough to have an antivirus, right. McAfee himself, John McAfee the founder of McAfee, which of course makes hantavirus products said, McAfee, is the worst thing for viruses we have. We have Nortons Symantec, saying essentially the same thing. Right. You can't just have one anymore. It has to be layered. It has to be like an onion or maybe an ogre if you're familiar with Mike Myers movie, and you have to have all these layers. So this goes through it, you know, including things like AVG free maybe Windows Defender or malware bytes, Avast. There's a lot of them out there, spy search and destroy. It is no longer enough, to just sit there with an anti-virus product. We have we have another business client we just picked up, Jim. And it was just absolutely insane and this client called us after they had already lost 180 thousand dollars to a business. 

[00:08:42] E-mails compromise OK. 

[00:08:45] And, I would love it if we could stop it right. Great to come in after the fact and clean up, I can charge more. Right. Right. You know do it right the first time. Some of the software I'm talking about costs here's a few bucks. OK. It has this is popular science that has links to buy these things. But you know for an average business, to have everything you need including all of your software updates all the stuff that makes sense. You know, it's going to cost you north of 100 maybe 150 dollars a month per computer to do it right. And if you don't do it right, I can tell you a horror story after horror story. It's not enough to have anti-virus, anymore. And that's true for home users, so if your home user. Have a look at this article from my site. If you're a business user. Have a look at this article from my site. And remember this is not good enough. You've got more money at risk and more liability because in the Commonwealth you could really get in deep trouble with fines, and in some cases, even jail time. If any personally identifiable information gets out. gets out. 

[00:09:57] It's a big deal. That is a big deal and it's great that we have you on our side folks, Craig Peterson will provide you with this information. And again he's not going to try and sell anything to you. And, if there's ever a big crisis like a hack or breach. He gets notice out to people and tells them what to do. So, if you text my name, to this number 

[00:10:19] 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53 that's 8 5 5 3 8 5 fifty five fifty three. He will send you this information in more. Standard data and text rates apply. 

[00:10:33] Fantastic. Craig, always a pleasure to have your expertise. 

[00:10:38] Hey thanks, Jim. Take care.

[00:10:39] You too. Bye-bye. When we return a final word Thursday's.

[00:10:44] Now for those that are interested if you want to reach out to me. Find out more about how to secure your business or maybe you want me to do another one of those free webinars, kind of walking through it. Let me know. Just text me again that same number 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. That really is my number. This is one of those services. And let me know. Thanks. Take care. Have a great day. We'll be back tomorrow bye-bye.

 ---

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

Do you use Facebook?  Do you want them to have your bank account information?  Listen in as Jim and I talk about what Mark Zuckerberg has in mind for Facebook and you.

Computers watching you? Yes, but good news if you listen in Jim and I will discuss an article that you can use to guide you through the process of protecting your security.

Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them.

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

---

Related Articles:

Is anyone spying on your computer? How do you know?

Facebook wants to know your bank balance and track your accounts

---

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 08/014/2018

Zuckerberg Wants Your Bank Account Information. Keeping Your Computers Safe From Spying.

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hi, Everybody Craig Peterson here. Today, I spoke with Jim Polito, and we talked about a couple of different things. One that we talked about was how to tell if someone else is spying on you, via your computer. A Really, great article referred to in there and went into some detail about Mark Zuckerberg what he's trying to do in the financial arena. Did you know he's trying to get access to your bank account? Yeah. He's, you know, he's been in trouble. Stock down 20 percent. You saw that right. A couple a few weeks ago. Well, this is his answer to getting more eyeballs on his site, for a longer period every day. So, here we go. 

[00:00:46] He is the man you need at your side to protect you in cyberspace. I am talking about our tech guru Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir. 

[00:00:59] Hey. good morning Jim. Quite the morning. 

[00:01:01] Yeah, it is. A lot of news, lots of stuff going on, but hey, I always turn to you. In times of uncertainty. So, Facebook. wants to look at my bank account. Whoa Whoa well good luck. Good luck there.

[00:01:21] No no no they can't.

[00:01:25] They can look into my but they look into my bank vault. Hello. Hello. Anybody, anybody. Yeah. No, Facebook wants to see our bank accounts. What is this?

[00:01:38] Well, Jim they can handle negative numbers, so. You know they might be a problem, I don't know. 

[00:01:49] You know. I don't know I'm sure you follow this a little bit but, Facebook about two weeks ago had a massive dive. Their stock sank more than 20 percent. And the reason for that was fewer people are using it and, in fact, Facebook CFO came out and said that they're expecting revenue growth rates to continue to decelerate in the second half. So, they're saying hey listen our growth is going to decelerate, the hard numbers are showing their users are leaving, and there's a lot of people that attribute that to the fact that Facebook was spying on people, Right. And, that's a that's a bit of a problem. So, Facebook is presented right now with some really interesting dilemmas. How do they get people to stay on their site? Now, I want you just think back a little bit. Think back five years, maybe ten years to your use of the computer. What was on your home page? I mean when you first run your web browser.

[00:02:50] What site came up? Google.

[00:02:53] Yeah, it would be Google or AltaVista. I'll tell you not yet. Yep yeah yeah. And there were some others out there Yahoo, of course, is kind of a portal, and some people had America Online et cetera. 

[00:03:10] Today, what do people have? Well, when opening the browser I don't know what do you have? What does Danny have? 

[00:03:17] Well, I still have Google here, because I'm going to start searching. I'm going to start doing things. But, other people here who use this same computer if they're login is still here on this computer, in the studio. Guess what some of them it's Twitter. Some of them it's Facebook. They go right there. I mean they don't they don't mess around, they're right there, that's their landing page. 

[00:03:42] And, that's where the value is. Because now you are going to that Facebook page or that Google page, etc.. That's what they want to control. Many people have YouTube now, as their home page, in fact, that trend right now. 

[00:03:59] Does Danny saying he does. Yeah, he as YouTube as his homepage. 

[00:04:05] Exactly. The trends are showing that number one is that Google out there online the number two search engine is YouTube which is owned by Google. And, then, of course, you have facebook etc.. So, right now the top sites are Google and Facebook depending how you want to look at it, Right. But, YouTube is about to pass Facebook. If these trends continue. Wow 

[00:04:30] Mark Zuckerberg, Yeah, they've got a real problem. Ohh Zucky. 

[00:04:38] One of the things Mark is Looking at that is he wants to be involved not just as your home page as to how you start your Internet experience but, he wants to be on the financial side too. So, he's been playing with block technologies. Think of bitcoin, for instance, he wants Facebook to be a currency, as well, that you use online.

[00:05:02] And a step towards that. Now, he has come out and Facebook is saying, hey listen we want to have your bank information. We actually kind of want to be your bank right. 

[00:05:16] Isn't it enough that Jeff Bezos has my bank information. It's true. Is Zuckerberg going to have it too? What does Elon Musk want it now, after him? 

[00:05:27] Well, he's been approaching Amazon, Google and J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and others and he's saying hey listen we want to move the financial services from the ATMs to Facebook. And, of course, Facebook could make more money in the process. People would spend more time there. They could send the money through Facebook, they could pay their bills. The bills would come right into Facebook, so, Facebook would become essentially the clearinghouse even more than an ATM. Now everybody is still kind of talking with Facebook. The banks are not sure if they want to do this. Bank of America has said forget about it. It's not going to happen. But, that's the next step for Facebook, if Zuckerberg gets his way. 

[00:06:15] Wow. Makes sense. Taking over the world. We're talking with Craig Peterson, our tech guru, and at the end of this segment we're going to give you a phone number and if you text my name Craig we'll get you this information with a lot more detail and a lot of other information and he will not annoy you. He will not try to sell you things. It's all just good information helping you too, to not be so alone in the in the outer space that is cyberspace. All right I want to get quickly to the computer. 

[00:06:45] I'm looking at it, but it's looking back at me. Whose in control of that. 

[00:06:53] And, yes we do we know about the L.A. County, the L.A. Unified School District, and how they were spying on girls getting dressed in their bedrooms because they had their laptops open. We know that can happen, and in that case, they have specifically installed, kind of like spyware on your on their computers. Now, there are ways to stop this. I've got a great article up on my site. And, I've been thinking maybe it's time to do another webinar, where we walk people through how to do this themselves. I've got a great article on my site from popular science where they go through and talk about it. It's no longer good enough to have an antivirus, right. McAfee himself, John McAfee the founder of McAfee, which of course makes hantavirus products said, McAfee, is the worst thing for viruses we have. We have Nortons Symantec, saying essentially the same thing. Right. You can't just have one anymore. It has to be layered. It has to be like an onion or maybe an ogre if you're familiar with Mike Myers movie, and you have to have all these layers. So this goes through it, you know, including things like AVG free maybe Windows Defender or malware bytes, Avast. There's a lot of them out there, spy search and destroy. It is no longer enough, to just sit there with an anti-virus product. We have we have another business client we just picked up, Jim. And it was just absolutely insane and this client called us after they had already lost 180 thousand dollars to a business. 

[00:08:42] E-mails compromise OK. 

[00:08:45] And, I would love it if we could stop it right. Great to come in after the fact and clean up, I can charge more. Right. Right. You know do it right the first time. Some of the software I'm talking about costs here's a few bucks. OK. It has this is popular science that has links to buy these things. But you know for an average business, to have everything you need including all of your software updates all the stuff that makes sense. You know, it's going to cost you north of 100 maybe 150 dollars a month per computer to do it right. And if you don't do it right, I can tell you a horror story after horror story. It's not enough to have anti-virus, anymore. And that's true for home users, so if your home user. Have a look at this article from my site. If you're a business user. Have a look at this article from my site. And remember this is not good enough. You've got more money at risk and more liability because in the Commonwealth you could really get in deep trouble with fines, and in some cases, even jail time. If any personally identifiable information gets out. gets out. 

[00:09:57] It's a big deal. That is a big deal and it's great that we have you on our side folks, Craig Peterson will provide you with this information. And again he's not going to try and sell anything to you. And, if there's ever a big crisis like a hack or breach. He gets notice out to people and tells them what to do. So, if you text my name, to this number 

[00:10:19] 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53 that's 8 5 5 3 8 5 fifty five fifty three. He will send you this information in more. Standard data and text rates apply. 

[00:10:33] Fantastic. Craig, always a pleasure to have your expertise. 

[00:10:38] Hey thanks, Jim. Take care.

[00:10:39] You too. Bye-bye. When we return a final word Thursday's.

[00:10:44] Now for those that are interested if you want to reach out to me. Find out more about how to secure your business or maybe you want me to do another one of those free webinars, kind of walking through it. Let me know. Just text me again that same number 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. That really is my number. This is one of those services. And let me know. Thanks. Take care. Have a great day. We'll be back tomorrow bye-bye.

 ---

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

Did you have a Lava Lamp when you were younger?  Listen in as Jack and I discuss how those crazy devices are providing high tech security.

Do you wear a fit bit or other fitness tracker?  Today Jack and I discuss some of the reason that the Military is putting a kobash on their use.

Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them.

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

---

Related Articles

Fitness trackers are dangerous. You know that, right? Finally, the Pentagon woke to the dangers and restricts the use of fitness trackers, other devices

Lava lamps as a cryptographically secure source? How a bunch of lava lamps protect sites from hackers

---

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

Airing date: 08/13/2018

Military Dangers of Fitness Trackers. Lava Lamps for High Tech Security

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, Good Morning to everybody out there. Craig Peterson here. We've got a couple of things that we talked about this morning with Jack Heath. One is the dangers of fitness trackers. Yes indeed, these things are dangerous, particularly, if there might be a predator after you. And we talked about the comeback of lava lamps. How lava lamps are being used for security. Who knew that it was such a high tech thing. I love those. I got to get them to get a lava lamp here. Those things are so cool. All right. So, here we go with Jack Heath covering what today most of New Hampshire and parts of Maine and Vermont and Mass and it's fun I enjoy being on with Jack even though it's usually a quick hit. As we bring in Craig Peterson, our tech talk guy on Monday morning Craig's show airs on Saturdays on the weekends here.

[00:00:51] Craig joins us now to us finds Craig. It's not really, I guess it's, I don't call it high, high, tech but have heard about in Southern California Have you ever heard of these bird electric scooters. There all kind of skateboard scooters. have you seen these things? No, I haven't. So, they just kind of like motorized little scooters, basically not like a motorcycle be kind of stand on it and it's electric cars about 10-15 mph. For whatever reason but why are you surprised, because it's southern California. People who don't like him anymore. Basically, throwing them out in public places and even throwing them into the ocean or burning them. Because that's what you do if you live in Southern California, I guess. If you've had enough of the bird scooter. I'm looking it up right now online.

[00:01:35] But yeah that's dangerous, isn't it?

[00:01:38] Not only for the "I love the big call for the environment" and they throw them into the ocean. OK. What else is what's going on in the high tech world. 

[00:01:49] This is really something that. I'll have to look at this. Oh, we've got a few things that are kind of funny. One is a flashback and, of course, here remember lava lamps, Right.

[00:01:58] So, David has one. David's using words like, Swell, in his traffic reports, he's going retro. These things are very cool.

[00:02:07] You know the 60s and 70s, I remember them I always wanted one. They had a bit of resurgence here in the 90s. One of the problems that we have in the computer world is, how do you generate truly random numbers? Because, computers, of course, are kind of running in lockstep and it's it's hard to generate random numbers and we need these random numbers in order to keep things secure. Because what we're doing, Jack, is we are using them to do public key exchanges in order to keep things safe. So, every time you go to a Web site and it's a secure site there are these massive random numbers that are used, in order to keep that session secure. So, because computers aren't great at this, what's happened is one of these computer companies that do some of the security out there CloudFlare has decided that they are going to use a special kind of random number generator. They have 100 Lava lamps that are sitting there in the foyer. And these things are completely unpredictable. You've got the oil, water, wax moving around in them and so they have a camera watching these 100 lava lamps and how they're moving randomly and they're using that in order to secure the websites help to secure the internet. Who thought lava lamps would be used for some of this high tech security. I thought that was pretty cool.

[00:03:38] Yeah, well you know everything comes around, right. Everything you know just when you think have it's gone it will make a comeback right back to you. 

[00:03:48] What else is going on?

[00:03:50] Well, get the big thing I've talked about a few years ago that these fitness trackers. We had some bad guys down in New York City in Central Park who were putting out receivers on trees and so they were using these because the fitness trackers are broadcasting our phones are pinging and being pinged. So, they were using these little receivers they put up on trees to track women, where they were running in the park. And when they were running in the park and the whole idea behind it was to assault specific women. They could track them. Well fast forward a couple of years and we started having even more questions. You know we've got something called heat maps that are showing a lot of activity in different areas and many people are using these fitness trackers to compete with other people. So, you can keep track of your run, how fast you're going, where you went. Hey, I went ran the same area faster than you did, even though you don't even have to run together. It's just all recorded and compared on the Internet. So, problem have now and I checked this out myself. Is that you can go to some of these Web sites, see where people are running, where most people are running, and you can see where our military personnel are running the perimeter of the bases, of airstrips of some of the towns there are in, including secret bases overseas all because of the use of fitness trackers. They have to GPS whether or not it's a device on your wrist or on your phone. And now the Pentagon has finally started restricting the use of these fitness trackers. Because some of our secret bases have been revealed, again. You know the technology not quite thinking it at all way through. Thank goodness, now the Department of Defense has kind of wised up to this stuff.

[00:05:50] All right good stuff Craig, on a Monday morning make us think about that on the fitness side in terms of who's seeing what. Thank you, Craig.

[00:05:57] Thanks, Jack. Bye-bye.

[00:05:59] All right another top college.

---

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:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Did you have a Lava Lamp when you were younger?  Listen in as Jack and I discuss how those crazy devices are providing high tech security.

Do you wear a fit bit or other fitness tracker?  Today Jack and I discuss some of the reason that the Military is putting a kobash on their use.

Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them.

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

---

Related Articles

Fitness trackers are dangerous. You know that, right? Finally, the Pentagon woke to the dangers and restricts the use of fitness trackers, other devices

Lava lamps as a cryptographically secure source? How a bunch of lava lamps protect sites from hackers

---

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

Airing date: 08/13/2018

Military Dangers of Fitness Trackers. Lava Lamps for High Tech Security

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, Good Morning to everybody out there. Craig Peterson here. We've got a couple of things that we talked about this morning with Jack Heath. One is the dangers of fitness trackers. Yes indeed, these things are dangerous, particularly, if there might be a predator after you. And we talked about the comeback of lava lamps. How lava lamps are being used for security. Who knew that it was such a high tech thing. I love those. I got to get them to get a lava lamp here. Those things are so cool. All right. So, here we go with Jack Heath covering what today most of New Hampshire and parts of Maine and Vermont and Mass and it's fun I enjoy being on with Jack even though it's usually a quick hit. As we bring in Craig Peterson, our tech talk guy on Monday morning Craig's show airs on Saturdays on the weekends here.

[00:00:51] Craig joins us now to us finds Craig. It's not really, I guess it's, I don't call it high, high, tech but have heard about in Southern California Have you ever heard of these bird electric scooters. There all kind of skateboard scooters. have you seen these things? No, I haven't. So, they just kind of like motorized little scooters, basically not like a motorcycle be kind of stand on it and it's electric cars about 10-15 mph. For whatever reason but why are you surprised, because it's southern California. People who don't like him anymore. Basically, throwing them out in public places and even throwing them into the ocean or burning them. Because that's what you do if you live in Southern California, I guess. If you've had enough of the bird scooter. I'm looking it up right now online.

[00:01:35] But yeah that's dangerous, isn't it?

[00:01:38] Not only for the "I love the big call for the environment" and they throw them into the ocean. OK. What else is what's going on in the high tech world. 

[00:01:49] This is really something that. I'll have to look at this. Oh, we've got a few things that are kind of funny. One is a flashback and, of course, here remember lava lamps, Right.

[00:01:58] So, David has one. David's using words like, Swell, in his traffic reports, he's going retro. These things are very cool.

[00:02:07] You know the 60s and 70s, I remember them I always wanted one. They had a bit of resurgence here in the 90s. One of the problems that we have in the computer world is, how do you generate truly random numbers? Because, computers, of course, are kind of running in lockstep and it's it's hard to generate random numbers and we need these random numbers in order to keep things secure. Because what we're doing, Jack, is we are using them to do public key exchanges in order to keep things safe. So, every time you go to a Web site and it's a secure site there are these massive random numbers that are used, in order to keep that session secure. So, because computers aren't great at this, what's happened is one of these computer companies that do some of the security out there CloudFlare has decided that they are going to use a special kind of random number generator. They have 100 Lava lamps that are sitting there in the foyer. And these things are completely unpredictable. You've got the oil, water, wax moving around in them and so they have a camera watching these 100 lava lamps and how they're moving randomly and they're using that in order to secure the websites help to secure the internet. Who thought lava lamps would be used for some of this high tech security. I thought that was pretty cool.

[00:03:38] Yeah, well you know everything comes around, right. Everything you know just when you think have it's gone it will make a comeback right back to you. 

[00:03:48] What else is going on?

[00:03:50] Well, get the big thing I've talked about a few years ago that these fitness trackers. We had some bad guys down in New York City in Central Park who were putting out receivers on trees and so they were using these because the fitness trackers are broadcasting our phones are pinging and being pinged. So, they were using these little receivers they put up on trees to track women, where they were running in the park. And when they were running in the park and the whole idea behind it was to assault specific women. They could track them. Well fast forward a couple of years and we started having even more questions. You know we've got something called heat maps that are showing a lot of activity in different areas and many people are using these fitness trackers to compete with other people. So, you can keep track of your run, how fast you're going, where you went. Hey, I went ran the same area faster than you did, even though you don't even have to run together. It's just all recorded and compared on the Internet. So, problem have now and I checked this out myself. Is that you can go to some of these Web sites, see where people are running, where most people are running, and you can see where our military personnel are running the perimeter of the bases, of airstrips of some of the towns there are in, including secret bases overseas all because of the use of fitness trackers. They have to GPS whether or not it's a device on your wrist or on your phone. And now the Pentagon has finally started restricting the use of these fitness trackers. Because some of our secret bases have been revealed, again. You know the technology not quite thinking it at all way through. Thank goodness, now the Department of Defense has kind of wised up to this stuff.

[00:05:50] All right good stuff Craig, on a Monday morning make us think about that on the fitness side in terms of who's seeing what. Thank you, Craig.

[00:05:57] Thanks, Jack. Bye-bye.

[00:05:59] All right another top college.

---

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Have you heard of random number generation?  Well, listen in today as I tell you about the unique method that the company CloudFlare is using.

The military finally sees my point of view on Fitness trackers. If you have been listening for a while you will know that I discussed this a year or two ago, but just recently the Military has begun to agree with me and has now recommended judicious use on bases.

Would you trust Facebook with your financial information?  Listen in as I explain what Mark Zuckerberg wants banks to do?

What is the effect of social media on our kids?  Listen in as I discuss some of the latest research on this subject.

Are your suppliers serious about their security? Today, I will tell you about what can and did happen to a company and what it could mean to you.

Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them.

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

---

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 08/011/2018

Lava Lamp Security. Fitness Trackers. Social Media and Mentality. Two Factor Authentication.

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, Good Morning, everybody. Everyone is listening around the world its really kind of cool to see some of these stats. We've got people in Ireland, of course, the U.K., in France, and Belgium, and Canada. Just really all over the world, Australia and Russia, it's very cool. So, welcome, of course. this is Craig Peterson. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about today. One of the things I think is so cool we're going to talk about is lava lamps, and you might be asking yourself what does that have to do with technology? Isn't that from like the 60s or 70s? This is very, very, cool what's happening with lava lamps. One of the world's top security companies says social media is giving children the mentality of 3-year-olds, and it isn't just kids that are having these problems. Facebook is trying to expand, and part of that expansion is trying to find out what your bank balance is. The Pentagon. This is so long overdue, they are finally restricting the use of fitness trackers and we'll tell you why these two-step or two-factor authentication schemes have some major major holes. If they're using your cell phone, we'll tell you why, and how you can get around that, and keep your bank and other information secure from places, not just Facebook. Computer viruses, yes they do cause major problems and they've just hit one of the big companies when it comes to tech. And that is Apple. We'll tell you how Apple is affected by this massive virus, and how to make sure no one is spying on your computer.

[00:01:40] If that's of interest to you, or if any of these articles are, you can text me right now I'll send you a link to them. My Number 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. That's 8 5 5 3 8 5. Fifty-five fifty-three. Let me know what articles are of interest to you. We will send you a link to that. And this one, making sure people aren't spying on your computer actually has links directly to some of the software. So, here we go stick around. We're going to spend a little time on this lava lamp thing because I think this is absolutely phenomenal. There are a number of companies out there, of course, and their only purpose in life is to help you in business and government with security. And that's something I've been doing for almost 20 years. Of course, for my business clients is really making sure their networks and computers are safe secure and working, Right. You don't want to put in some massive security system and not be able to get your work done, Right. Putting everything in a vault - is that really going to fix your problem and turn off the power. No, no, it's not. So, we have to walk this line between security that is functional and useful and security that is just going to get in your way so much that people are going to resent it and not use it. Just like last week I was on the radio, and with Matt Gagnon and Ken Altshuler.

[00:03:12] But, anyways with Matt and I explained some of the major problems that are happening right now with smart TVs. These smart TVs are using Android and I explained why it's a problem, what they're doing, how they're watching us, monitoring us how bad guys are using the information. And he shrugged his shoulders well whatever I don't care. I'm still going to use my android stuff. And, I just had to shake my head. Now I understand that some are, just so useful. And, in fact, for the first time ever I have an Amazon Echo in my house and I've never had one before. There have been major security problems but this tech has been out there now for a couple of years. They've gotten rid of some of the problems. Locally the machines figure out when you're calling their name their wakeup word that I am not going to use right now. But for Amazon or Apple et cetera. So, it isn't streaming up to the cloud like they did when they first came out. Now Apple didn't do that. But we're not going to get into any of those details right now. So, that's been a major security problem for me. And now that problem solved I have it in the house and I am finding it just to be amazing, really useful, really fun. And bottom line, I'm so glad I did it. You know I got this little Amazon Echo and it's unfortunate, that Apple's fallen behind Amazon is beating them like crazy, like a rented mule, right. 

[00:04:41] Amazon's beating Apple because the Apple stuff is more expensive, it's harder to tie in. Amazon, now from your Echo you can control basically anything in your home. There's devices that attach into it. It's just phenomenal what they've been able to do. They've made it extremely useful and the price point is fantastic. In fact a bit of a side note. A study came out that said basically Amazon can give these Amazon Echo devices out for free, and still make money, because the average person that has these things is spending over 400 dollars a year with them on Amazon. And you can use them also to order things, it just makes life so much simpler for you. So, you know problems, problems, problems, but it's all security related. We have to watch what's going out from our homes, from our offices, what's coming in, and how do you do that. Well, this one particular company called CloudFlare does it with lava lamps. Now you remember these things. There is a guy from Britain who came up with them and what was his name. Edward Walker, I think Edward Craven Walker that is it. So his lava lamp made it into the late nineties cultural comeback but he didn't see what happens now because inside the San Francisco offices of Cloudflare they have 100 lava lamps on shelves. So, there the right on top of each other shelves. It's really kind of cool. And of course the lava lamp. Think about what's in it there you've got I think it's oil and water and wax and it heats up and it swirls randomly and it's really kind of peaceful to look at. 

[00:06:24] I've always enjoyed lava lamps. Make a nice little present. I had one or two more recently that ended up breaking and I didn't have. Remember they used to have a light bulb underneath them and that's what was used to heat it up. Nowadays, they're not used in the light bulbs but if you think about the patterns in the lava lamps, they are continually changing they're continually morphing. And when the light comes in from the outside window and heats up or the temperature in the room rises or drops these are all factors that influence what that lava lamp is going to do. What the wax inside and that's what you're typically looking at is going to do. So, they figured at CloudFlare. How about we just put hundred of these things up and get them running. We'll put them in the lobby and then we will put cameras, shoot video of these lava lamps and use that as kind of a random number generator because random numbers are pretty darn hard to generate just in general. So, you can use things you can use background radiation and that's been used for a long time it is really, rather random. We can't predict any of that type of radiation, the background radiation. But they figured this is probably just as good maybe even better. So, they are watching these things. 

[00:07:48] Any change in the video, causes a change in the random number generation, and what used to maneuver or manipulate, it is called a salt and it uses all of that. So, if you're walking in their lobby you're part of that randomization if the sun's coming in as part of the randomization. 

[00:08:10] Now, they've taken a couple more things that aren't there in that lobby so, it can't really be hacked and can't be predicted. But it is really, really, cool because there's never twice the same scene. It's virtually impossible, statistically impossible with 100 of these things running so, really kind of cool and it's super-powered way to generate these cryptographic keys. I'm just, I'm tickled pink because it's just such a real cool way of doing it. OK. Next, here we're going to talk about kids and social media. Now, what we know about kids, right. We've we've been kids, were around kids some of us have kids, grandkids and kids like to play with things. When I was young we used to go outside, and we'd get kicked out of the house if we were in the house. We'd have to go outside and we'd play and we'd have just a gas. And in the summer living up in Canada up north up, in Canada, it would barely get dark at night. And so we'd be out playing. I remember kicking the can, I've shared this story before at about 10 o'clock at night 10:00 11:00 o'clock and we think it's just Twilight it's starting to get dark and probably should think about going home and my mom coming out and finding us and getting upset because we were out so late. 

[00:09:34] Well, I didn't have a watch. Did you expect for me, right? Well, kids love social media. They love playing video games and when we're talking about kids here we're not just talking about really young kids. I know a lot of 30-year-olds that play a lot of video games, and to me, that's such a waste of time. But anyways, that's me right. I'm a much older generation. Well, there's an interesting thing that came out this week in The Daily Telegraph over in the U.K. where Baroness Susan Greenfield. Now, she's the former director of the Royal Institute of Great Britain, said that social media and video games have left children unable to communicate with one another and unable to think for themselves. Children who have been raised around these devices, much worse than when we were raised, and we had some TV, right that we were plopped in front of. But, these kids are constantly looking for something to distract from and she's predicting that and "here's a quote "I predict that people are going to be like 3-year-olds, emotional risk-taking, poor social skills, weak self-identity, and short attention spans." Now, that's really something since.

[00:10:52] Look at her background here. She's a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford. She has supported her claims by looking at a study that was conducted by psychologists a few years ago at Virginia and Harvard Universities. She found that students are she didn't But, these studies found that students who would prefer to give themselves an electric shock, they'd prefer to give themselves an electric shock than to be left alone to think without distraction for 10 minutes. That's just crazy. She went on to say and this is an interesting article. Daily Telegraph they require a subscription. But, the study says. According to Her, people need a constant stimulation from their environment. Every single moment that implies they are no longer able to be left to contemplate their own thoughts. And that's something I've had to do many times, right. Think about your thoughts. There's a digital detox expert also out there she's the author of Stop staring at screens and her name is Tanya Goodin and she's claiming that reducing the use of digital devices can offer significant benefits to children. I could not agree more with Baroness Greenfield she tells the independent. A study from UCLA found that children who had all digital devices removed from them for a week were better able to read nonverbal communication and others than a group of children who carried on using screens.

[00:12:19] And so think about this when you thinking about your kids or grandkids or maybe even yourself. This is a real problem. What's the first thing you do in the morning, right? How many times have we heard this test? The first thing you do in the morning. The last thing you do at night if it has anything to do with touching your smart device there is a problem and we've got to deal with that problem.  As humans, we've got to deal with each other. Now many people are saying while over time we're just going to have our brains hardwired directly into some of these machines, we're not going to have to communicate with other people, we're not going to really have to think for ourselves. I don't buy any of that. People buy things from people, and you have to understand people, you have to have relationships with people, you have to have a relationship in order to build a family, have a family, right. We've got to watch this and we've got to watch it with our kids. All right let's talk about Mark Zuckerberg and what he's up to here? what does this all about? He wants to know our bank balances. Wow. 

[00:13:28] Well, we know Mark Zuckerberg has been out there trying to make money.

[00:13:31] You saw a couple of weeks ago a massive plunge in the market value of Facebook, their stock went down. What was it 20 percent or so? Really, really big. And Facebook has announced that they expect over the foreseeable future. Bottom line here that they are going to continue to lose eyeballs, so people are starting to leave Facebook. They're not paying as much attention to it. And I think that really when you get right down to it they've done it to themselves in so many ways and started complaining a couple of years ago when they made a massive change to their programs, where the programs were at that point, starting to not show you articles from people you follow even though you wanted to see what they had to say. And frankly, it's just gotten worse and worse. So, I would expect just like every other big company Facebook's finally going to fall out of favor here, at some point. So, they've also struggled with some concerns about data privacy. You certainly heard about that, and what happened when he had to testify in front of Congress. We also know what happened with the Obama campaign getting the information on pretty much every user in the world. But, certainly, the Obama campaign from Facebook got information on everyone in the United States that was likely voter. And, then how the Trump campaign got some information on tens of thousands. Nowhere, near what Obama's campaign had. But by that time people were sensitized to it, right. 

[00:15:06] Obama didn't get any criticism for it. But I think that even though he did a much much worse thing people just weren't paying attention, much worse than what Trump had done in the 2016 election campaign. So, now people are sensitized to it we don't want it to happen again. And, yet there are some other articles in the news this week, who won't be really touching on but they are talking about how Facebook is having major problems trying to identify, who it is that is putting out these fake news, and ads out on their Web site trying to influence campaigns. Now, used to be pretty easy you'd look at an ad and the wording would be bad, the grammar would be bad, There might even be spelling mistakes, and you say this is this is obviously fake. Now, they're going to regular U.S. based Web sites and just stealing the copy from those putting them into the ads. I don't think things are going to improve much in the 2018 or 2020 cycles, because the bad guys are just getting better at hiding, and you know where they are, and what they're doing. When we're looking at Facebook it has become entrenched. Many of us are paying a lot of attention to it. I am involved in a few different groups on Facebook and we're helping each other out with things and I help people with security problems and stuff. In fact, I had a closed group that really I know we had about almost 300 odd people in it.

[00:16:33] And I just plain didn't use it. So, I shut the group down and maybe we'll bring it back to life at some point. But what we're talking about right now is Facebook, and where they want to go, because Facebook has warned analysts that active users could decline, the number of active users could decline and the amount of time they're using it for the foreseeable future. And they also came out with another announcement which was Facebook is planning on tying into your bank accounts. And even though they lost 20 percent in one day from the first problem, the second announcement drove shares up about four and a half percent. So, they approached apparently some large banks, Bank of America said forget about it. We don't want it. We don't want to have anything to do with this. Other banks are taking a kind of a wait and see type of an attitude which I think is a really good way to do it. Facebook is saying we want to integrate your bank accounts into messenger so that you can check your bank account balances. You can send money to receive money. They really want to be in that financial business. Now we talked about that before and how Facebook has been experimenting with blockchain technology, in an attempt to do a few things, solve a few problems, one of which is they want to be involved in every transaction. And one of the things they're asking the banks for is what are you buying.

[00:18:06] So, if you have a credit card, a bank account, checking account whatever you're using to buy things they want to know everything you're buying so, that they can offer you ads for that category of stuff. Do you want Facebook to have that? We've already got privacy concerns with Facebook, right, Do you know about those. Those have been high in the news we know about hackers trying to get into all the systems out there. Do we really want another area of exposure? You know I I really don't know. OK, fitness trackers why you may not want to use one. And finally, why the Pentagon has finally come out and said, No. We talked about this a year maybe two years ago. You know we have people using the fitness trackers that they're really kind of cool. And they have GPS built into them. Some of them some of them use your cell phone to get the GPS so you can track your runs, right. That makes sense. Easy to do. It's kind of fun to do. You can compete with other people. So, hey I did that same run as you did. I did it faster. You can keep track of how much exercise that you've had how far you even walk to right there not necessarily only for running, but here's the problem. We have had cases, for instance, down in New York City down in Central Park where the bad guys, in this case, potential rapists and others, have been tracking the movement of cell phones and the movement of fitness trackers. 

[00:19:48] So, they know who was running by a tree, for instance, So, they'll have the little receiver up there listening for the Bluetooth signature or the Beacon or the Wi-Fi signature or the beacon. And, that's obviously a real problem. That's a problem I think everyone should be concerned about if you're using the fitness trackers. Well, there's another one the military has, that we talked about well over a year ago, and that is some of these fitness trackers are uploading all of your data all of your runs to a Web site up on the cloud. Now, that's kind of interesting, right. So, you can see a global heat map I pulled it up I shared it with you guys a year or more ago. It's published by the GPS tracking company called Strava. S T R A V A and they use the satellite information that they're getting from these fitness tracker companies, in order to track where you. So, heavily populated areas are going to be well lit. But, when we're talking about the war zones like Iraq or Syria they're showing scattered pockets of activity, which could denote military bases or government personnel using fitness trackers, as they're moving around because the locals there are not using them. So, it's a reasonable assumption. And, so I use that data you can go into the heat map yourself and have a look at it and I was able to see circles right on Oval's really running along airstrips at air bases, running around the perimeter of bases, on the inside walls or even outside the walls. 

[00:21:29] So, you could see where the military personnel were. Now, we have some secret bases and those secret bases were outlined, as well by this GPS information from these heat maps. So, the Pentagon has come out now with a policy, finally, that was obtained by The Associated Press and it stopped short of banning fitness trackers or these other electronic devices that can be linked to cell phone apps that can do the exact same thing. But, it didn't ban them but it did say these devices presented a significant risk to military personnel. So, those capabilities must be turned off in certain operational areas. So, under this new order, the military leaders in different areas have the ability to use their discretion to figure out whether or not troops under their command can and should to use GPS function on their devices. And, that's obviously going to be based on the security threat in those areas are on that base. Good. Good article. Interesting article a lot of different opinions out there. Well, we're not going to be able to get to the two-factor authentication stuff and how texting you a login code, just isn't enough. We're not going to be able to cover this computer virus that's crippled iPhone chip maker out there. The big guy the number, one contract manufacturer of chips in the world. 

[00:22:51] Yeah, they got a virus right. What would happen to you? I betcha this has hurt the Apple stock, right there. But, you know they got back online because they had the right stuff in place, even though they got infected in the first place. And, then I think maybe the most important article is something you're going to have to read. And this is how to make sure no one is spying on your computer. Great article. You'll find it on my Web site. Craig Peterson dot com or as I mentioned the very beginning if you have any questions at all. Go ahead and text me. You can call, as well, but texting will get through. Phone calls are going to probably end up in voicemail 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53 I answer all of the questions. We go directly. This is my number 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. More than glad to help you out, but this article goes through some of the software that you probably should be using for yourself to protect yourself. And if you'd like me to put together a special little master class on that I'd be glad to do that. We've done them before free webinars. Let me know more than glad to do one for you guys who are listening, right now. But you have to let me know you'd like to see it and then I'm more than glad to spend a few hours in putting it together and online with you.

[00:24:15] I think actually the last webinar, took me out a week to put together. But let me know 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. Have a great week and we will be back with you again next week. And, usually Monday Tuesdays and Wednesdays I release a podcast as well so keep an eye out for that. Craig Peterson dot com slash iTunes or just search for me in iTunes or SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcast. Take care. Bye-bye. 

 ---

Related articles:

Is anyone spying on your computer? How do you know?

Fitness trackers are dangerous. You know that, right? Finally, the Pentagon woke to the dangers and restricts the use of fitness trackers, other devices

Do websites send you a text message to verify it’s you logging in? Well text authentication isn’t enough to keep your accounts secure

Facebook wants to know your bank balance and track your accounts

Social media is giving children mentality of three-year-olds, warns researcher

Lava lamps as a cryptographically secure source? How a bunch of lava lamps protect sites from hackers

Could your business’ suppliers lack of security cripple your business? Apple just found out…

---

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:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Have you heard of random number generation?  Well, listen in today as I tell you about the unique method that the company CloudFlare is using.

The military finally sees my point of view on Fitness trackers. If you have been listening for a while you will know that I discussed this a year or two ago, but just recently the Military has begun to agree with me and has now recommended judicious use on bases.

Would you trust Facebook with your financial information?  Listen in as I explain what Mark Zuckerberg wants banks to do?

What is the effect of social media on our kids?  Listen in as I discuss some of the latest research on this subject.

Are your suppliers serious about their security? Today, I will tell you about what can and did happen to a company and what it could mean to you.

Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them.

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

---

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 08/011/2018

Lava Lamp Security. Fitness Trackers. Social Media and Mentality. Two Factor Authentication.

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, Good Morning, everybody. Everyone is listening around the world its really kind of cool to see some of these stats. We've got people in Ireland, of course, the U.K., in France, and Belgium, and Canada. Just really all over the world, Australia and Russia, it's very cool. So, welcome, of course. this is Craig Peterson. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about today. One of the things I think is so cool we're going to talk about is lava lamps, and you might be asking yourself what does that have to do with technology? Isn't that from like the 60s or 70s? This is very, very, cool what's happening with lava lamps. One of the world's top security companies says social media is giving children the mentality of 3-year-olds, and it isn't just kids that are having these problems. Facebook is trying to expand, and part of that expansion is trying to find out what your bank balance is. The Pentagon. This is so long overdue, they are finally restricting the use of fitness trackers and we'll tell you why these two-step or two-factor authentication schemes have some major major holes. If they're using your cell phone, we'll tell you why, and how you can get around that, and keep your bank and other information secure from places, not just Facebook. Computer viruses, yes they do cause major problems and they've just hit one of the big companies when it comes to tech. And that is Apple. We'll tell you how Apple is affected by this massive virus, and how to make sure no one is spying on your computer.

[00:01:40] If that's of interest to you, or if any of these articles are, you can text me right now I'll send you a link to them. My Number 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. That's 8 5 5 3 8 5. Fifty-five fifty-three. Let me know what articles are of interest to you. We will send you a link to that. And this one, making sure people aren't spying on your computer actually has links directly to some of the software. So, here we go stick around. We're going to spend a little time on this lava lamp thing because I think this is absolutely phenomenal. There are a number of companies out there, of course, and their only purpose in life is to help you in business and government with security. And that's something I've been doing for almost 20 years. Of course, for my business clients is really making sure their networks and computers are safe secure and working, Right. You don't want to put in some massive security system and not be able to get your work done, Right. Putting everything in a vault - is that really going to fix your problem and turn off the power. No, no, it's not. So, we have to walk this line between security that is functional and useful and security that is just going to get in your way so much that people are going to resent it and not use it. Just like last week I was on the radio, and with Matt Gagnon and Ken Altshuler.

[00:03:12] But, anyways with Matt and I explained some of the major problems that are happening right now with smart TVs. These smart TVs are using Android and I explained why it's a problem, what they're doing, how they're watching us, monitoring us how bad guys are using the information. And he shrugged his shoulders well whatever I don't care. I'm still going to use my android stuff. And, I just had to shake my head. Now I understand that some are, just so useful. And, in fact, for the first time ever I have an Amazon Echo in my house and I've never had one before. There have been major security problems but this tech has been out there now for a couple of years. They've gotten rid of some of the problems. Locally the machines figure out when you're calling their name their wakeup word that I am not going to use right now. But for Amazon or Apple et cetera. So, it isn't streaming up to the cloud like they did when they first came out. Now Apple didn't do that. But we're not going to get into any of those details right now. So, that's been a major security problem for me. And now that problem solved I have it in the house and I am finding it just to be amazing, really useful, really fun. And bottom line, I'm so glad I did it. You know I got this little Amazon Echo and it's unfortunate, that Apple's fallen behind Amazon is beating them like crazy, like a rented mule, right. 

[00:04:41] Amazon's beating Apple because the Apple stuff is more expensive, it's harder to tie in. Amazon, now from your Echo you can control basically anything in your home. There's devices that attach into it. It's just phenomenal what they've been able to do. They've made it extremely useful and the price point is fantastic. In fact a bit of a side note. A study came out that said basically Amazon can give these Amazon Echo devices out for free, and still make money, because the average person that has these things is spending over 400 dollars a year with them on Amazon. And you can use them also to order things, it just makes life so much simpler for you. So, you know problems, problems, problems, but it's all security related. We have to watch what's going out from our homes, from our offices, what's coming in, and how do you do that. Well, this one particular company called CloudFlare does it with lava lamps. Now you remember these things. There is a guy from Britain who came up with them and what was his name. Edward Walker, I think Edward Craven Walker that is it. So his lava lamp made it into the late nineties cultural comeback but he didn't see what happens now because inside the San Francisco offices of Cloudflare they have 100 lava lamps on shelves. So, there the right on top of each other shelves. It's really kind of cool. And of course the lava lamp. Think about what's in it there you've got I think it's oil and water and wax and it heats up and it swirls randomly and it's really kind of peaceful to look at. 

[00:06:24] I've always enjoyed lava lamps. Make a nice little present. I had one or two more recently that ended up breaking and I didn't have. Remember they used to have a light bulb underneath them and that's what was used to heat it up. Nowadays, they're not used in the light bulbs but if you think about the patterns in the lava lamps, they are continually changing they're continually morphing. And when the light comes in from the outside window and heats up or the temperature in the room rises or drops these are all factors that influence what that lava lamp is going to do. What the wax inside and that's what you're typically looking at is going to do. So, they figured at CloudFlare. How about we just put hundred of these things up and get them running. We'll put them in the lobby and then we will put cameras, shoot video of these lava lamps and use that as kind of a random number generator because random numbers are pretty darn hard to generate just in general. So, you can use things you can use background radiation and that's been used for a long time it is really, rather random. We can't predict any of that type of radiation, the background radiation. But they figured this is probably just as good maybe even better. So, they are watching these things. 

[00:07:48] Any change in the video, causes a change in the random number generation, and what used to maneuver or manipulate, it is called a salt and it uses all of that. So, if you're walking in their lobby you're part of that randomization if the sun's coming in as part of the randomization. 

[00:08:10] Now, they've taken a couple more things that aren't there in that lobby so, it can't really be hacked and can't be predicted. But it is really, really, cool because there's never twice the same scene. It's virtually impossible, statistically impossible with 100 of these things running so, really kind of cool and it's super-powered way to generate these cryptographic keys. I'm just, I'm tickled pink because it's just such a real cool way of doing it. OK. Next, here we're going to talk about kids and social media. Now, what we know about kids, right. We've we've been kids, were around kids some of us have kids, grandkids and kids like to play with things. When I was young we used to go outside, and we'd get kicked out of the house if we were in the house. We'd have to go outside and we'd play and we'd have just a gas. And in the summer living up in Canada up north up, in Canada, it would barely get dark at night. And so we'd be out playing. I remember kicking the can, I've shared this story before at about 10 o'clock at night 10:00 11:00 o'clock and we think it's just Twilight it's starting to get dark and probably should think about going home and my mom coming out and finding us and getting upset because we were out so late. 

[00:09:34] Well, I didn't have a watch. Did you expect for me, right? Well, kids love social media. They love playing video games and when we're talking about kids here we're not just talking about really young kids. I know a lot of 30-year-olds that play a lot of video games, and to me, that's such a waste of time. But anyways, that's me right. I'm a much older generation. Well, there's an interesting thing that came out this week in The Daily Telegraph over in the U.K. where Baroness Susan Greenfield. Now, she's the former director of the Royal Institute of Great Britain, said that social media and video games have left children unable to communicate with one another and unable to think for themselves. Children who have been raised around these devices, much worse than when we were raised, and we had some TV, right that we were plopped in front of. But, these kids are constantly looking for something to distract from and she's predicting that and "here's a quote "I predict that people are going to be like 3-year-olds, emotional risk-taking, poor social skills, weak self-identity, and short attention spans." Now, that's really something since.

[00:10:52] Look at her background here. She's a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford. She has supported her claims by looking at a study that was conducted by psychologists a few years ago at Virginia and Harvard Universities. She found that students are she didn't But, these studies found that students who would prefer to give themselves an electric shock, they'd prefer to give themselves an electric shock than to be left alone to think without distraction for 10 minutes. That's just crazy. She went on to say and this is an interesting article. Daily Telegraph they require a subscription. But, the study says. According to Her, people need a constant stimulation from their environment. Every single moment that implies they are no longer able to be left to contemplate their own thoughts. And that's something I've had to do many times, right. Think about your thoughts. There's a digital detox expert also out there she's the author of Stop staring at screens and her name is Tanya Goodin and she's claiming that reducing the use of digital devices can offer significant benefits to children. I could not agree more with Baroness Greenfield she tells the independent. A study from UCLA found that children who had all digital devices removed from them for a week were better able to read nonverbal communication and others than a group of children who carried on using screens.

[00:12:19] And so think about this when you thinking about your kids or grandkids or maybe even yourself. This is a real problem. What's the first thing you do in the morning, right? How many times have we heard this test? The first thing you do in the morning. The last thing you do at night if it has anything to do with touching your smart device there is a problem and we've got to deal with that problem.  As humans, we've got to deal with each other. Now many people are saying while over time we're just going to have our brains hardwired directly into some of these machines, we're not going to have to communicate with other people, we're not going to really have to think for ourselves. I don't buy any of that. People buy things from people, and you have to understand people, you have to have relationships with people, you have to have a relationship in order to build a family, have a family, right. We've got to watch this and we've got to watch it with our kids. All right let's talk about Mark Zuckerberg and what he's up to here? what does this all about? He wants to know our bank balances. Wow. 

[00:13:28] Well, we know Mark Zuckerberg has been out there trying to make money.

[00:13:31] You saw a couple of weeks ago a massive plunge in the market value of Facebook, their stock went down. What was it 20 percent or so? Really, really big. And Facebook has announced that they expect over the foreseeable future. Bottom line here that they are going to continue to lose eyeballs, so people are starting to leave Facebook. They're not paying as much attention to it. And I think that really when you get right down to it they've done it to themselves in so many ways and started complaining a couple of years ago when they made a massive change to their programs, where the programs were at that point, starting to not show you articles from people you follow even though you wanted to see what they had to say. And frankly, it's just gotten worse and worse. So, I would expect just like every other big company Facebook's finally going to fall out of favor here, at some point. So, they've also struggled with some concerns about data privacy. You certainly heard about that, and what happened when he had to testify in front of Congress. We also know what happened with the Obama campaign getting the information on pretty much every user in the world. But, certainly, the Obama campaign from Facebook got information on everyone in the United States that was likely voter. And, then how the Trump campaign got some information on tens of thousands. Nowhere, near what Obama's campaign had. But by that time people were sensitized to it, right. 

[00:15:06] Obama didn't get any criticism for it. But I think that even though he did a much much worse thing people just weren't paying attention, much worse than what Trump had done in the 2016 election campaign. So, now people are sensitized to it we don't want it to happen again. And, yet there are some other articles in the news this week, who won't be really touching on but they are talking about how Facebook is having major problems trying to identify, who it is that is putting out these fake news, and ads out on their Web site trying to influence campaigns. Now, used to be pretty easy you'd look at an ad and the wording would be bad, the grammar would be bad, There might even be spelling mistakes, and you say this is this is obviously fake. Now, they're going to regular U.S. based Web sites and just stealing the copy from those putting them into the ads. I don't think things are going to improve much in the 2018 or 2020 cycles, because the bad guys are just getting better at hiding, and you know where they are, and what they're doing. When we're looking at Facebook it has become entrenched. Many of us are paying a lot of attention to it. I am involved in a few different groups on Facebook and we're helping each other out with things and I help people with security problems and stuff. In fact, I had a closed group that really I know we had about almost 300 odd people in it.

[00:16:33] And I just plain didn't use it. So, I shut the group down and maybe we'll bring it back to life at some point. But what we're talking about right now is Facebook, and where they want to go, because Facebook has warned analysts that active users could decline, the number of active users could decline and the amount of time they're using it for the foreseeable future. And they also came out with another announcement which was Facebook is planning on tying into your bank accounts. And even though they lost 20 percent in one day from the first problem, the second announcement drove shares up about four and a half percent. So, they approached apparently some large banks, Bank of America said forget about it. We don't want it. We don't want to have anything to do with this. Other banks are taking a kind of a wait and see type of an attitude which I think is a really good way to do it. Facebook is saying we want to integrate your bank accounts into messenger so that you can check your bank account balances. You can send money to receive money. They really want to be in that financial business. Now we talked about that before and how Facebook has been experimenting with blockchain technology, in an attempt to do a few things, solve a few problems, one of which is they want to be involved in every transaction. And one of the things they're asking the banks for is what are you buying.

[00:18:06] So, if you have a credit card, a bank account, checking account whatever you're using to buy things they want to know everything you're buying so, that they can offer you ads for that category of stuff. Do you want Facebook to have that? We've already got privacy concerns with Facebook, right, Do you know about those. Those have been high in the news we know about hackers trying to get into all the systems out there. Do we really want another area of exposure? You know I I really don't know. OK, fitness trackers why you may not want to use one. And finally, why the Pentagon has finally come out and said, No. We talked about this a year maybe two years ago. You know we have people using the fitness trackers that they're really kind of cool. And they have GPS built into them. Some of them some of them use your cell phone to get the GPS so you can track your runs, right. That makes sense. Easy to do. It's kind of fun to do. You can compete with other people. So, hey I did that same run as you did. I did it faster. You can keep track of how much exercise that you've had how far you even walk to right there not necessarily only for running, but here's the problem. We have had cases, for instance, down in New York City down in Central Park where the bad guys, in this case, potential rapists and others, have been tracking the movement of cell phones and the movement of fitness trackers. 

[00:19:48] So, they know who was running by a tree, for instance, So, they'll have the little receiver up there listening for the Bluetooth signature or the Beacon or the Wi-Fi signature or the beacon. And, that's obviously a real problem. That's a problem I think everyone should be concerned about if you're using the fitness trackers. Well, there's another one the military has, that we talked about well over a year ago, and that is some of these fitness trackers are uploading all of your data all of your runs to a Web site up on the cloud. Now, that's kind of interesting, right. So, you can see a global heat map I pulled it up I shared it with you guys a year or more ago. It's published by the GPS tracking company called Strava. S T R A V A and they use the satellite information that they're getting from these fitness tracker companies, in order to track where you. So, heavily populated areas are going to be well lit. But, when we're talking about the war zones like Iraq or Syria they're showing scattered pockets of activity, which could denote military bases or government personnel using fitness trackers, as they're moving around because the locals there are not using them. So, it's a reasonable assumption. And, so I use that data you can go into the heat map yourself and have a look at it and I was able to see circles right on Oval's really running along airstrips at air bases, running around the perimeter of bases, on the inside walls or even outside the walls. 

[00:21:29] So, you could see where the military personnel were. Now, we have some secret bases and those secret bases were outlined, as well by this GPS information from these heat maps. So, the Pentagon has come out now with a policy, finally, that was obtained by The Associated Press and it stopped short of banning fitness trackers or these other electronic devices that can be linked to cell phone apps that can do the exact same thing. But, it didn't ban them but it did say these devices presented a significant risk to military personnel. So, those capabilities must be turned off in certain operational areas. So, under this new order, the military leaders in different areas have the ability to use their discretion to figure out whether or not troops under their command can and should to use GPS function on their devices. And, that's obviously going to be based on the security threat in those areas are on that base. Good. Good article. Interesting article a lot of different opinions out there. Well, we're not going to be able to get to the two-factor authentication stuff and how texting you a login code, just isn't enough. We're not going to be able to cover this computer virus that's crippled iPhone chip maker out there. The big guy the number, one contract manufacturer of chips in the world. 

[00:22:51] Yeah, they got a virus right. What would happen to you? I betcha this has hurt the Apple stock, right there. But, you know they got back online because they had the right stuff in place, even though they got infected in the first place. And, then I think maybe the most important article is something you're going to have to read. And this is how to make sure no one is spying on your computer. Great article. You'll find it on my Web site. Craig Peterson dot com or as I mentioned the very beginning if you have any questions at all. Go ahead and text me. You can call, as well, but texting will get through. Phone calls are going to probably end up in voicemail 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53 I answer all of the questions. We go directly. This is my number 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. More than glad to help you out, but this article goes through some of the software that you probably should be using for yourself to protect yourself. And if you'd like me to put together a special little master class on that I'd be glad to do that. We've done them before free webinars. Let me know more than glad to do one for you guys who are listening, right now. But you have to let me know you'd like to see it and then I'm more than glad to spend a few hours in putting it together and online with you.

[00:24:15] I think actually the last webinar, took me out a week to put together. But let me know 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. Have a great week and we will be back with you again next week. And, usually Monday Tuesdays and Wednesdays I release a podcast as well so keep an eye out for that. Craig Peterson dot com slash iTunes or just search for me in iTunes or SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcast. Take care. Bye-bye. 

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Related articles:

Is anyone spying on your computer? How do you know?

Fitness trackers are dangerous. You know that, right? Finally, the Pentagon woke to the dangers and restricts the use of fitness trackers, other devices

Do websites send you a text message to verify it’s you logging in? Well text authentication isn’t enough to keep your accounts secure

Facebook wants to know your bank balance and track your accounts

Social media is giving children mentality of three-year-olds, warns researcher

Lava lamps as a cryptographically secure source? How a bunch of lava lamps protect sites from hackers

Could your business’ suppliers lack of security cripple your business? Apple just found out…

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The whole world can be watching you while you watch on your Smart TV or while you are on your way home on an Uber ride. Are they allowed to do this, and how do we know if we are being recorded?

Find out more on CraigPeterson.com

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Related Articles:

How to Stop Your Smart TV From Tracking What You Watch

Ridesharing live streams on Twitch raise privacy worries (update: Uber cuts access)

Russian Hackers May Have Penetrated US Electricity Network and Could Turn Off Power, Officials Say
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Transcript:

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

Airing date: 08/08/2018

Uber Privacy - Smart TV Surprises - Russian Grid Hacking

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hi guys. Craig Peterson here I was talking with some Maine as this morning up in Maine. Actually the stations cover mostly southern Maine but I guess are some repeaters that go up to the center of the state. So if you're listening from Maine here to my podcast send me a shout on shambled. I'd love to know how far north it ends up going. So this morning I spoke with Ken and Matt we talked about Uber and the problem with drivers videotaping you while you are in your uber smart TVs some of the problems behind those and a couple of things more included something I think they found very surprised. I think you will too and it will change the way you look at some of the technology out there. So here we go.

Matt Gagnon: [00:00:46] We're back again and this time on a Wednesday 738 means it's time to talk to Craig Peterson our tech guru joins us now. Craig are you okay. Good morning. Doing good. How are you guys.

Ken Altschuler: [00:00:57] No complaints at all you know every day we talk about the Russians the Russians turn off our electricity now.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:05] Oh man maybe that's what happened last year. My father went out of my house and storms. Did you guys have that boy crazy last night. Yeah. All of this is from a story from the Wall Street Journal here last week. And what they're saying is that yes indeed apparently hundreds of rhetoric's station. You know these guys that control the grids the various grid points have been hacked by the Russians and it's kind of interesting when you look at it and look at what's happening right now with Iran and the potential of them trying to hack cash and what are they trying to do. What's the ultimate goal and obviously the goal is kind of similar to what they were doing during the election that is just really kind of confuse everybody and everything that's going on. But they could shut down our power grid and we've seen problems with that before. But I've got some good news here gentlemen that is you first of all you know I work with the FBI the infrared guard program I run their webinars. And the good news is that our power grid nationally is improving their security quite substantially. There's been a big effort in trying to get the Russians out of the grid out of our water supply because we remember those are all computer controlled as well. They're called it controls but really tighten it all up. So hopefully knock on wood we're not going to know that the Russians are coming for us because all of a sudden we all lose power. But I have my strong suspicions that last night it was probably more due to some sort of a storm that might have come by than the Russians.

Matt Gagnon: [00:02:53] We're talking to Craig Peterson our tech guru who joins us at this time every Wednesday to talk about the world of technology and Craig I've got a smart TV, am I smart though I don't know how smart it is it might be a little too smart if you know what I'm saying. So is it tracking what I watch and is it telling anybody what it is that I watch?

Craig Peterson: [00:03:10] Yeah it's interesting because it's not that it's not just smart in that way a lot of these smart TVs are crazy smart. And when I say crazy smart I think you're about to be very surprised because first of all these smart TV's most of them are running a version of the Android operating system and Matt. You know what I think about Android. I do. OK. They're running a version of Android and they have built into them things like they might have Netflix Hulu etc. and I assume your TV has something like that as well?

Matt Gagnon: [00:03:46] He does. Yeah.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:48] And the idea is pretty obvious I think to everybody that if you're using your smart TV you've connected to the Internet so that you can stream the programming and the TV monitors that you're on Netflix for instance. And that's kind of a given. Obviously you can know you're on Netflix because it's running Netflix for you right? But these smart TVs are using some specialized software that goes further than that and it can monitor what you're watching on TV. Now it's interesting how it does because these smart TVs can be hooked up to gaming systems and Matt you're of the age. You probably got some sort of an x box or something right?

Matt Gagnon: [00:04:30] I do. Mostly for my son. Oh yeah I got time to play video games good.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:36] Come on. What was interesting about it is that it monitors not just what channel you're on or what inputs like that but it actually watches what you're watching. So some of these TVs can tell that you're playing as certain video game how long you're playing it for. We talked before about some of this Martini's having cameras built two of them and they have facial recognition software so they can see who's watching the TV. They know what games you're playing up there on the TV and it's used for marketing and you know that it's probably OK. Right. If I'm going to buy a car I don't mind seeing car commercials because I like to figure out what's going on. It's annoying when i get car commercials when I'm not going to buy a car for another ten years. So from that standpoint it's all pretty reasonable from a marketing standpoint. But where it gets really really concerned is you know a week doesn't go by we're not talking about some hack or another. Right. So what happens when our TVs are hacked and they have been hacked and they're hacks going on right now and the TVs have all this information about us and let's say those hackers might want to know when you're on vacation when you're not home when the kids are home alone so that they can come in and burgle your home or even worse we're putting these smart TVs into our businesses into the lobbies into the cafeteria areas and they are being hacked.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:11] So the bad guys can watch to see when there's someone there in that building and businesses have been broken into and have things stolen because the hackers knew what was there because of these cameras in them so you might want to opt out of this viewing information service that's on your TVs. They're in. It's in their Samsung. That's in your Sony is algae's videos all of these TVs many others. You can turn them off and even if you have a Roku and external Roku there can be problems. My general advice and what I do is I use Guess what an Apple TV but I also have a Roku on one of my TVs but I use an Apple TV it's the safest. Apple is not selling any of this information. I make sure it's all turned off on my smart TV. And in fact I do not connect the TV to the Internet. So there is no way for it to get hacked and there's no way for that information to get out of it. So if you're if you're really concerned you might want to do what I do and I don't know maybe I'm a little paranoid but I've just seen these hacks happen just too frequently.

Matt Gagnon: [00:07:22] You're never going to get me to care about that. I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to go home today. I'm going to put Netflix on the wall streaming from my phone.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:30] Yeah. It's a matter of days it's just so easy to do. Right? But I got to tell you I picked up another client last week a small business. They had two hundred thousand dollars stolen from them and it had to do with this type of stuff where the information is just too easily available and the bad guys found it and used it again. And it's a small business. They don't have a whole lot of money I think they have 10 employees. And the business is probably going to go under. Now this is a guy that 10 in my age and he's been building this business his whole life his businesses his retirement. That's what he's counting on. And now it looks like they're going completely out of business. So you know there are concerns about it but you're right man. You know who's going to make a change. It's just it's so darn convenient.

Ken Altschuler: [00:08:23] We're talking to Craig Peterson our tech guru by the way you can go to Craig Peterson dot com. You want to get all his vital information on a newsletter and e-mails and all that kind of stuff. So before we let you go right cheers I'm still a fan of Uber but I don't really have any. I mean people live streaming me when I'm riding in the back of the Uber?

Craig Peterson: [00:08:44] Well it's mainly two party consent state. When it comes to recording No I don't I don't remember. OK.

Ken Altschuler: [00:08:50] It's just one party. It's one party.

Craig Peterson: [00:08:53] So here's the trick. Here's what's been happening Uber drivers many of them have been live streaming because they've they've got their phone up on the dashboard. They're using it in order to get the directions to pick up rides et cetera et cetera. Right. Well some of these guys and gals are also live streaming now. They're saying that it's for their safety. And I can see that right. You're picking up who knows. This is true for taxi drivers as well. Who knows who's getting into the back of your taxi or your Uber. So they're live streaming streaming and then some of these people are using the service called twitch which is designed exactly for that for live streaming and they are going one step further than just having their wife husband significant other whoever it may be wanting for safety purposes. Right. I can kind of understand that. So it's on in the background on some TV in the House and we're making sure everything's OK. Or maybe it's being recorded for playback in case something nasty happens later on. But apparently some of these Uber drivers according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch have been broadcasting hundreds of trips on Twitter Twitter I should say they have now been explicitly obtaining consent from the passengers and they are charging for the Twitter feed. One of these guys is reportedly making 500 bucks a month extra by people paying him to watch the live streams. So this this is a little weird that this is a problem with single party state where only one person has to give consent in order to have a recording occur. I personally think that any public servant in the line of their duty should be recordable even in a two party state. But this is a matter of concern that some of these guys are putting stickers on their window like in Missouri. They are. Most of them have a little sticker saying that this may be monitored for safety for passenger and driver safety but it's announced just a little creepy to me. And you should be aware of it. So don't do anything in the back of the Uber seat. You see that too. Maybe wouldn't want broadcast.

Matt Gagnon: [00:11:18] Good advice for all. Thanks. Craig Peterson our tech guru joins us at this time every Wednesday to give us an eye on technology. Craig appreciated again we'll talk to next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:27] Hey, gentlemen. Take care. Bye bye.

Matt Gagnon: [00:11:30] All right. Break time.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:31] Hey thanks again to everybody that listens to this podcast. I've got finally everything in place. Almost four for the security packages we've been talking about for the last year. We've been working with some of our vendors with the client to get the business class the authority of business class security together and make it affordable for the small medium business marketplace and we're getting close on that. So make sure you are on my mailing list or you find out about it. We're going to have some free classes on security associated with this and this offer I think is going to be fantastic. Everybody that we've offered it to so far has gone for Solloway it's going to be good. It's going to be great. Well let me tell you it's going to be huge. So make sure you're my mailing list you can find that. Craig Peterson dot com. Have a great day. We will be back on Saturday as we have my weekly radio show when we post on that as well usually goes up Saturday about the same time that the radio show airs. So you can listen to it in the same place listening here which is of course iTunes or SoundCloud or Tune In or almost anywhere except I heart. I don't get that. I Heart Radio stations and they still don't have me on their streams. Anyhow, have a great day. Talk to you later. Bye bye.

 ---

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

The whole world can be watching you while you watch on your Smart TV or while you are on your way home on an Uber ride. Are they allowed to do this, and how do we know if we are being recorded?

Find out more on CraigPeterson.com

---

Related Articles:

How to Stop Your Smart TV From Tracking What You Watch

Ridesharing live streams on Twitch raise privacy worries (update: Uber cuts access)

Russian Hackers May Have Penetrated US Electricity Network and Could Turn Off Power, Officials Say
---

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 08/08/2018

Uber Privacy - Smart TV Surprises - Russian Grid Hacking

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hi guys. Craig Peterson here I was talking with some Maine as this morning up in Maine. Actually the stations cover mostly southern Maine but I guess are some repeaters that go up to the center of the state. So if you're listening from Maine here to my podcast send me a shout on shambled. I'd love to know how far north it ends up going. So this morning I spoke with Ken and Matt we talked about Uber and the problem with drivers videotaping you while you are in your uber smart TVs some of the problems behind those and a couple of things more included something I think they found very surprised. I think you will too and it will change the way you look at some of the technology out there. So here we go.

Matt Gagnon: [00:00:46] We're back again and this time on a Wednesday 738 means it's time to talk to Craig Peterson our tech guru joins us now. Craig are you okay. Good morning. Doing good. How are you guys.

Ken Altschuler: [00:00:57] No complaints at all you know every day we talk about the Russians the Russians turn off our electricity now.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:05] Oh man maybe that's what happened last year. My father went out of my house and storms. Did you guys have that boy crazy last night. Yeah. All of this is from a story from the Wall Street Journal here last week. And what they're saying is that yes indeed apparently hundreds of rhetoric's station. You know these guys that control the grids the various grid points have been hacked by the Russians and it's kind of interesting when you look at it and look at what's happening right now with Iran and the potential of them trying to hack cash and what are they trying to do. What's the ultimate goal and obviously the goal is kind of similar to what they were doing during the election that is just really kind of confuse everybody and everything that's going on. But they could shut down our power grid and we've seen problems with that before. But I've got some good news here gentlemen that is you first of all you know I work with the FBI the infrared guard program I run their webinars. And the good news is that our power grid nationally is improving their security quite substantially. There's been a big effort in trying to get the Russians out of the grid out of our water supply because we remember those are all computer controlled as well. They're called it controls but really tighten it all up. So hopefully knock on wood we're not going to know that the Russians are coming for us because all of a sudden we all lose power. But I have my strong suspicions that last night it was probably more due to some sort of a storm that might have come by than the Russians.

Matt Gagnon: [00:02:53] We're talking to Craig Peterson our tech guru who joins us at this time every Wednesday to talk about the world of technology and Craig I've got a smart TV, am I smart though I don't know how smart it is it might be a little too smart if you know what I'm saying. So is it tracking what I watch and is it telling anybody what it is that I watch?

Craig Peterson: [00:03:10] Yeah it's interesting because it's not that it's not just smart in that way a lot of these smart TVs are crazy smart. And when I say crazy smart I think you're about to be very surprised because first of all these smart TV's most of them are running a version of the Android operating system and Matt. You know what I think about Android. I do. OK. They're running a version of Android and they have built into them things like they might have Netflix Hulu etc. and I assume your TV has something like that as well?

Matt Gagnon: [00:03:46] He does. Yeah.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:48] And the idea is pretty obvious I think to everybody that if you're using your smart TV you've connected to the Internet so that you can stream the programming and the TV monitors that you're on Netflix for instance. And that's kind of a given. Obviously you can know you're on Netflix because it's running Netflix for you right? But these smart TVs are using some specialized software that goes further than that and it can monitor what you're watching on TV. Now it's interesting how it does because these smart TVs can be hooked up to gaming systems and Matt you're of the age. You probably got some sort of an x box or something right?

Matt Gagnon: [00:04:30] I do. Mostly for my son. Oh yeah I got time to play video games good.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:36] Come on. What was interesting about it is that it monitors not just what channel you're on or what inputs like that but it actually watches what you're watching. So some of these TVs can tell that you're playing as certain video game how long you're playing it for. We talked before about some of this Martini's having cameras built two of them and they have facial recognition software so they can see who's watching the TV. They know what games you're playing up there on the TV and it's used for marketing and you know that it's probably OK. Right. If I'm going to buy a car I don't mind seeing car commercials because I like to figure out what's going on. It's annoying when i get car commercials when I'm not going to buy a car for another ten years. So from that standpoint it's all pretty reasonable from a marketing standpoint. But where it gets really really concerned is you know a week doesn't go by we're not talking about some hack or another. Right. So what happens when our TVs are hacked and they have been hacked and they're hacks going on right now and the TVs have all this information about us and let's say those hackers might want to know when you're on vacation when you're not home when the kids are home alone so that they can come in and burgle your home or even worse we're putting these smart TVs into our businesses into the lobbies into the cafeteria areas and they are being hacked.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:11] So the bad guys can watch to see when there's someone there in that building and businesses have been broken into and have things stolen because the hackers knew what was there because of these cameras in them so you might want to opt out of this viewing information service that's on your TVs. They're in. It's in their Samsung. That's in your Sony is algae's videos all of these TVs many others. You can turn them off and even if you have a Roku and external Roku there can be problems. My general advice and what I do is I use Guess what an Apple TV but I also have a Roku on one of my TVs but I use an Apple TV it's the safest. Apple is not selling any of this information. I make sure it's all turned off on my smart TV. And in fact I do not connect the TV to the Internet. So there is no way for it to get hacked and there's no way for that information to get out of it. So if you're if you're really concerned you might want to do what I do and I don't know maybe I'm a little paranoid but I've just seen these hacks happen just too frequently.

Matt Gagnon: [00:07:22] You're never going to get me to care about that. I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to go home today. I'm going to put Netflix on the wall streaming from my phone.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:30] Yeah. It's a matter of days it's just so easy to do. Right? But I got to tell you I picked up another client last week a small business. They had two hundred thousand dollars stolen from them and it had to do with this type of stuff where the information is just too easily available and the bad guys found it and used it again. And it's a small business. They don't have a whole lot of money I think they have 10 employees. And the business is probably going to go under. Now this is a guy that 10 in my age and he's been building this business his whole life his businesses his retirement. That's what he's counting on. And now it looks like they're going completely out of business. So you know there are concerns about it but you're right man. You know who's going to make a change. It's just it's so darn convenient.

Ken Altschuler: [00:08:23] We're talking to Craig Peterson our tech guru by the way you can go to Craig Peterson dot com. You want to get all his vital information on a newsletter and e-mails and all that kind of stuff. So before we let you go right cheers I'm still a fan of Uber but I don't really have any. I mean people live streaming me when I'm riding in the back of the Uber?

Craig Peterson: [00:08:44] Well it's mainly two party consent state. When it comes to recording No I don't I don't remember. OK.

Ken Altschuler: [00:08:50] It's just one party. It's one party.

Craig Peterson: [00:08:53] So here's the trick. Here's what's been happening Uber drivers many of them have been live streaming because they've they've got their phone up on the dashboard. They're using it in order to get the directions to pick up rides et cetera et cetera. Right. Well some of these guys and gals are also live streaming now. They're saying that it's for their safety. And I can see that right. You're picking up who knows. This is true for taxi drivers as well. Who knows who's getting into the back of your taxi or your Uber. So they're live streaming streaming and then some of these people are using the service called twitch which is designed exactly for that for live streaming and they are going one step further than just having their wife husband significant other whoever it may be wanting for safety purposes. Right. I can kind of understand that. So it's on in the background on some TV in the House and we're making sure everything's OK. Or maybe it's being recorded for playback in case something nasty happens later on. But apparently some of these Uber drivers according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch have been broadcasting hundreds of trips on Twitter Twitter I should say they have now been explicitly obtaining consent from the passengers and they are charging for the Twitter feed. One of these guys is reportedly making 500 bucks a month extra by people paying him to watch the live streams. So this this is a little weird that this is a problem with single party state where only one person has to give consent in order to have a recording occur. I personally think that any public servant in the line of their duty should be recordable even in a two party state. But this is a matter of concern that some of these guys are putting stickers on their window like in Missouri. They are. Most of them have a little sticker saying that this may be monitored for safety for passenger and driver safety but it's announced just a little creepy to me. And you should be aware of it. So don't do anything in the back of the Uber seat. You see that too. Maybe wouldn't want broadcast.

Matt Gagnon: [00:11:18] Good advice for all. Thanks. Craig Peterson our tech guru joins us at this time every Wednesday to give us an eye on technology. Craig appreciated again we'll talk to next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:27] Hey, gentlemen. Take care. Bye bye.

Matt Gagnon: [00:11:30] All right. Break time.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:31] Hey thanks again to everybody that listens to this podcast. I've got finally everything in place. Almost four for the security packages we've been talking about for the last year. We've been working with some of our vendors with the client to get the business class the authority of business class security together and make it affordable for the small medium business marketplace and we're getting close on that. So make sure you are on my mailing list or you find out about it. We're going to have some free classes on security associated with this and this offer I think is going to be fantastic. Everybody that we've offered it to so far has gone for Solloway it's going to be good. It's going to be great. Well let me tell you it's going to be huge. So make sure you're my mailing list you can find that. Craig Peterson dot com. Have a great day. We will be back on Saturday as we have my weekly radio show when we post on that as well usually goes up Saturday about the same time that the radio show airs. So you can listen to it in the same place listening here which is of course iTunes or SoundCloud or Tune In or almost anywhere except I heart. I don't get that. I Heart Radio stations and they still don't have me on their streams. Anyhow, have a great day. Talk to you later. Bye bye.

 ---

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

Do you know your SmartTV is tracking what you're watching and the video games that you play as well?

Learn more about how to stop this from happening from Craig as he speaks with Jim Polito about SmartTVs, the Russians hacking our power grid, and how he is finally able to sit on his back patio and enjoy it.

Find out more on CraigPeterson.com

---

Related Articles:

How to Stop Your Smart TV From Tracking What You Watch

Russian Hackers May Have Penetrated US Electricity Network and Could Turn Off Power, Officials Say

---

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 08/07/2018

How To Keep Mosquitoes At Bay - Russian Hackers In Our Power Grid - Stop SmartTV Tracking

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey good morning everybody. Getting ready to do my rest of my day today. It's been a real fun time lately. You know shutting down some of the bad guys I guess. I guess I shouldn't be happy about that but I am. I love it because all of these poor people write these business people who've been building their businesses their life savings tied up in it and they get stole and being able to help them out in fact we've got a new client that's an attorney who's hired us for an insurance company because a company did fall prey to one of these hacks while in this case it was a business email compromise and about hundred thousand dollars in cash was stolen. It's absolutely incredible and so now you've got all the insurance guys fighting with each other as to who's going to pay what for what. But being able to stop the bad guys before it even happened that makes my day. And even if I have to come in afterwards and clean up and make sure it doesn't happen again. Wow. In fact I found out this week because we were of course we're working with some of the top people in the industry when it comes to security. But I found out this week that we are the only company that they are aware of who has not had any of their clients hit by ransomware. Isn't that amazing. So that made me feel really good. None of my clients. Wow. How long has it been now. Twenty five years. I think that I've been very focused on security. We haven't been hit by anything at all or our clients and none of them hit by ransomware.

[00:01:37] So I guess that's really good I should feel good about myself. That's kind of my goal in life right now is to stop it right here I am staring down retirement trying to figure out what should I be doing here when I retire and came to realize that in fact I can help other people who are just like me who have their businesses who have been building their businesses who really want their businesses to survive and do well and be a retirement for them and maybe even pass it on to the family because my business is basically a family business as well. So that doesn't make me feel really good. And we've picked up from 1 to 3 or 4 6 6 new clients in the last month. So it's been a very busy time anyhow. Today this morning I got to speak with Jim Polito one of my favorite appearances on radio and this morning with Jim we talked about how I am now able to go sit on my back patio and enjoy it. How's that for a change. We talked a little bit about the Russians and what's happening in the power industry with them and kind of you know what we're doing to defend ourselves. I think that's a really important thing frankly for everyone to understand because these Russian hackers you know could be devastating. And then how to stop your smart TV from tracking what you're watching and the video games you're playing. So all of that and more with Jim and here we go.

[00:03:05] Here is our good friend and his weekly segment that is very very popular. He is our tech talker to tell you about my friend Craig Peterson. Good morning sir.

[00:03:21] Good morning. Do you like this weather.

[00:03:24] Well I know it's basically killing you. You may have to be hospitalized if it gets above 60 degrees. Craig Peterson goes in the shower.

[00:03:35] I've been inside for the most part. But you know what I did this year Jim I did something I've never done before and I've been talking about it forever and ever never ever. And that is we we have a patio out back here. The house it's really nice it's all nice.

[00:03:50] Brick patio and we've had it now for probably 15 maybe 20 years and I never go outside because I get eaten alive. Yeah.

[00:04:01] And I I've been debating back and forth. You know I've the technology out there and I've tried a few things like those little things that make sound just keep mosquitoes away and they didn't seem to do much good. But this year for the first time ever we bought mosquito magnet. Now I didn't want to buy one because the mosquito magnets to read about them online and they fail. You know actually yeah it's somewhere item right. So it is good for three out of maybe five years and it's not cheap it's a few hundred bucks. But I put one out at the beginning of June I think it was and I followed all of the directions right as to be downwind and everything. And I did all of that. And I this year for the first time ever have sat outside on a patio in the evening even when the mosquitoes are usually out and I haven't had any problems.

[00:04:58] It is called Hundert if not thousands of flies will the beginning yeah and hundreds and hundreds of mosquitoes. This is the first ever cell technology that's been around for a while but I've been reluctant to use. I got to say wow I am impressed. I know there is no light. It's not like Jim. I don't get paid for mentioning things on the air. No I know that. Yeah but I was just really impressed or a little word of advice if you've got the same problem as me and you maybe you want to sit outside in this weather I don't get it.

[00:05:35] But it may be one side. This thing has been amazing.

[00:05:40] What's the name of it again.

[00:05:43] It's called a mosquito magnet magnet. And they were bought by another company a few years ago and so I wasn't sure you know what to call it going to be like. And you put an LP tank on it. But you know have your barbecue. Right. And a little 20 pounder and that lasts about three weeks and it goes through. I wanted to doing this and basically burning the gas to make carbon dioxide which is what makes you scratch them.

[00:06:12] Yeah exactly. And then there's a little you and you've got to do this. I try it without. But there's a little scent packet that you put inside of it and it's bait and it really drives him right to it. So the carbon dioxide brings him in from a distance. They get close they smell the bait. They go in for the bait. And then there's a slight vacuum that's running all of the time and they get sucked into it and into the trap.

[00:06:40] And you have to keep it running at all times. Just keep it. You do. OK. So that will clear your area because what you're getting around do is you know that you know you want to clear your area. Mosquitoes aren't going to travel very very far. Their life cycle is not long may need standing water to breathe right and like. So you basically set that up and you cleared out the Peterson backyard.

[00:07:08] It takes two or three weeks and it Yeah it's pretty much cleared out and you're right. Mosquitoes who knew this right are territorial and so they don't go very far. As you said and they don't has been it has been a life changer Jim and it's ending with a blackflies.

[00:07:26] Early on in the season you know and I get these welts from back blackflies to yeah almost like a bees thing.

[00:07:35] So it was wonderful wonderful wonderful. So next year I think the Peterson family may get one for the front yard as well walk out the door and you get eaten alive. The front door right now I can sit on the patio.

[00:07:50] I like that. Craig some see look at that and doing an endorsement even though he's not being paid for it and giving you advice so always giving us advice. I want to ask you about something important here. Russian hackers may have penetrated the U.S. electricity network and could turn off power. I read a little something about this but I want to get it from you which basically means talk about war you don't need a missile you won't need a tank you will need a gun. All you'd have to do is come into the United States and shut off all of our power.

[00:08:27] And believe me that would be a lot worse than dropping an atomic bomb on a major city and harder to trace right away with this. This is a report that came out of the Wall Street Journal last week. And there have been debates you remember of course the 1984 blackout. I mean had 2004 back to back in the 80s up in Quebec.

[00:08:51] But there were questions whether or not that was a hacker and most of the security community we seem to think that in fact it probably was a hacker and they didn't mean to bring down the electric grid but that's what happened. But right now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that a group who is known as dragonfire energetic bear now interject has been doing all kinds of nasties lately but they've gained access to many of our power grid centers. Now they're talking about hundreds of them that they have gained access to and they're using the standard tools that you know were constantly seeing in businesses these spear phishing e-mails business e-mail compromise right watering hole attacks and they're tricking victims into it. But it is absolutely crazy what they're able to do out there and what could happen that they really could turn off the power. I got a grandkid here.

[00:09:48] Hi Susan.

[00:09:52] I like that shirt and R2 D2 shirt on here. CATHERINE Not me. That's pretty cool.

[00:09:59] So so yes think about all of the people who are who are dependent on electricity of days like today. And you know with the heat we really have death.

[00:10:09] If we don't have air conditioning we get the heat waves all the time.

[00:10:14] So look you know you use. You can make a living out of going to companies and saying here here's what you need to do to protect yourselves. Please give me some hope and I know in other industries you haven't been able to do that. Give me some help that they're really working on this to try to reach.

[00:10:34] Yeah they really are from this particular problem. They really are working on it. There are all kinds of controls that electrics that are electronic that are all over the place. These are called skater's systems and they are upgrading them. They are adding security to them. The plants themselves are upgrading the systems now. You know I work with the FBI and the unforgotten program right which is an infrastructure program they have and I I know myself because I've run webinars for the FBI on this topic. So all of these guys are very engaged in this and I think this problem is going to be pretty much fixed within the next year or two. But you know opening salvos of war could well use this type of stuff with a hack and they shut down power grids they shut down power acts. I mean that water facilities and stuff but you know they could do an incredible amount of damage to us. We have to use these types of techniques against other countries before we certainly use them with Iran in their centrifuge programs. This is the future. However this problem is being actively worked on.

[00:11:46] So that is good news which I agree with Craig Peterson. Craig I just want to get something very quickly from you before we have to wrap up. How do I stop my Smart TV from tracking what I watch. And why do I want to do that.

[00:12:02] Yeah most aren't aware of that but if you have a TV that has built into things like maybe Netflix Hulu or whatever yeah you and I have most of those TVs including Sony for instance. They're running Google's Android operating system in the TV. OK. And that's a problem to begin with because we know about Android vulnerabilities but in most of them I've got it up on my Web site. You can go there all of the major brands are covered by the TVs smart TVs don't just know that you're on Netflix. They don't just know that you are playing a video game on an external box right so you've got your x box or whatever it is they actually watch the content they can figure out what game you're playing and are streaming to the TV. So they've got all of this information but you can go in on all of these TVs and turn it off. You have to go to your setting and use the user agreements and other things all the details are up on my Web site. But you should opt out of it. Now in some cases you're going to have to turn off the smart TV function which I think is a great idea.

[00:13:13] Anyways I use always an external box like a little rogue who use my Roku you don't use the stuff that's already embedded in the TV.

[00:13:24] Exactly because when was the last time that this software update on that. Did you ever apply a patch to your TV.

[00:13:31] No. No. Actually now that I think of it. No I have not.

[00:13:36] Who does is right. And most of these TVs people don't even hook up to the Internet or they may so the quick and easy workaround.

[00:13:44] Pull the plug on the TV spots on the Internet side.

[00:13:48] Ok but then all of your special smart TV functions are going to go away if you do turn off the internet on it by using the external box that gets updates that you know is safe and the safest by far of course is the Apple TV although it's the most expensive as well.

[00:14:05] You said that. See this is all great stuff. We have from mosquitoes all the way up to your smart TV and you can get more of it. Well right. Because next Tuesday our friend Craig Peterson will be back.

[00:14:19] But if you text my name to this number 855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553.

[00:14:33] Craig Peterson will send you a weekly update after his segment with all the information we discussed. Plus a whole bunch of other stuff. And then when there's some type of hack some type of a big problem guess what your friends list and he will send you that information yes and sell your name. He doesn't pester you. It doesn't do anything like that. Standard data and tax rates apply. This is a great thing to get on board with Craig as usual a great segment and I look forward to talking with you next week.

[00:15:03] Hey thank you. Take care camera.

[00:15:05] All right. Mosquito Magnet mosquito magnet.

[00:15:09] No money has exchanged stands but Craig Peterson brought to you by the mosquito man. Thanks Craig. We'll see you next week. All right. Don't go anywhere. Final word when.

 ---

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

Do you know your SmartTV is tracking what you're watching and the video games that you play as well?

Learn more about how to stop this from happening from Craig as he speaks with Jim Polito about SmartTVs, the Russians hacking our power grid, and how he is finally able to sit on his back patio and enjoy it.

Find out more on CraigPeterson.com

---

Related Articles:

How to Stop Your Smart TV From Tracking What You Watch

Russian Hackers May Have Penetrated US Electricity Network and Could Turn Off Power, Officials Say

---

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 08/07/2018

How To Keep Mosquitoes At Bay - Russian Hackers In Our Power Grid - Stop SmartTV Tracking

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey good morning everybody. Getting ready to do my rest of my day today. It's been a real fun time lately. You know shutting down some of the bad guys I guess. I guess I shouldn't be happy about that but I am. I love it because all of these poor people write these business people who've been building their businesses their life savings tied up in it and they get stole and being able to help them out in fact we've got a new client that's an attorney who's hired us for an insurance company because a company did fall prey to one of these hacks while in this case it was a business email compromise and about hundred thousand dollars in cash was stolen. It's absolutely incredible and so now you've got all the insurance guys fighting with each other as to who's going to pay what for what. But being able to stop the bad guys before it even happened that makes my day. And even if I have to come in afterwards and clean up and make sure it doesn't happen again. Wow. In fact I found out this week because we were of course we're working with some of the top people in the industry when it comes to security. But I found out this week that we are the only company that they are aware of who has not had any of their clients hit by ransomware. Isn't that amazing. So that made me feel really good. None of my clients. Wow. How long has it been now. Twenty five years. I think that I've been very focused on security. We haven't been hit by anything at all or our clients and none of them hit by ransomware.

[00:01:37] So I guess that's really good I should feel good about myself. That's kind of my goal in life right now is to stop it right here I am staring down retirement trying to figure out what should I be doing here when I retire and came to realize that in fact I can help other people who are just like me who have their businesses who have been building their businesses who really want their businesses to survive and do well and be a retirement for them and maybe even pass it on to the family because my business is basically a family business as well. So that doesn't make me feel really good. And we've picked up from 1 to 3 or 4 6 6 new clients in the last month. So it's been a very busy time anyhow. Today this morning I got to speak with Jim Polito one of my favorite appearances on radio and this morning with Jim we talked about how I am now able to go sit on my back patio and enjoy it. How's that for a change. We talked a little bit about the Russians and what's happening in the power industry with them and kind of you know what we're doing to defend ourselves. I think that's a really important thing frankly for everyone to understand because these Russian hackers you know could be devastating. And then how to stop your smart TV from tracking what you're watching and the video games you're playing. So all of that and more with Jim and here we go.

[00:03:05] Here is our good friend and his weekly segment that is very very popular. He is our tech talker to tell you about my friend Craig Peterson. Good morning sir.

[00:03:21] Good morning. Do you like this weather.

[00:03:24] Well I know it's basically killing you. You may have to be hospitalized if it gets above 60 degrees. Craig Peterson goes in the shower.

[00:03:35] I've been inside for the most part. But you know what I did this year Jim I did something I've never done before and I've been talking about it forever and ever never ever. And that is we we have a patio out back here. The house it's really nice it's all nice.

[00:03:50] Brick patio and we've had it now for probably 15 maybe 20 years and I never go outside because I get eaten alive. Yeah.

[00:04:01] And I I've been debating back and forth. You know I've the technology out there and I've tried a few things like those little things that make sound just keep mosquitoes away and they didn't seem to do much good. But this year for the first time ever we bought mosquito magnet. Now I didn't want to buy one because the mosquito magnets to read about them online and they fail. You know actually yeah it's somewhere item right. So it is good for three out of maybe five years and it's not cheap it's a few hundred bucks. But I put one out at the beginning of June I think it was and I followed all of the directions right as to be downwind and everything. And I did all of that. And I this year for the first time ever have sat outside on a patio in the evening even when the mosquitoes are usually out and I haven't had any problems.

[00:04:58] It is called Hundert if not thousands of flies will the beginning yeah and hundreds and hundreds of mosquitoes. This is the first ever cell technology that's been around for a while but I've been reluctant to use. I got to say wow I am impressed. I know there is no light. It's not like Jim. I don't get paid for mentioning things on the air. No I know that. Yeah but I was just really impressed or a little word of advice if you've got the same problem as me and you maybe you want to sit outside in this weather I don't get it.

[00:05:35] But it may be one side. This thing has been amazing.

[00:05:40] What's the name of it again.

[00:05:43] It's called a mosquito magnet magnet. And they were bought by another company a few years ago and so I wasn't sure you know what to call it going to be like. And you put an LP tank on it. But you know have your barbecue. Right. And a little 20 pounder and that lasts about three weeks and it goes through. I wanted to doing this and basically burning the gas to make carbon dioxide which is what makes you scratch them.

[00:06:12] Yeah exactly. And then there's a little you and you've got to do this. I try it without. But there's a little scent packet that you put inside of it and it's bait and it really drives him right to it. So the carbon dioxide brings him in from a distance. They get close they smell the bait. They go in for the bait. And then there's a slight vacuum that's running all of the time and they get sucked into it and into the trap.

[00:06:40] And you have to keep it running at all times. Just keep it. You do. OK. So that will clear your area because what you're getting around do is you know that you know you want to clear your area. Mosquitoes aren't going to travel very very far. Their life cycle is not long may need standing water to breathe right and like. So you basically set that up and you cleared out the Peterson backyard.

[00:07:08] It takes two or three weeks and it Yeah it's pretty much cleared out and you're right. Mosquitoes who knew this right are territorial and so they don't go very far. As you said and they don't has been it has been a life changer Jim and it's ending with a blackflies.

[00:07:26] Early on in the season you know and I get these welts from back blackflies to yeah almost like a bees thing.

[00:07:35] So it was wonderful wonderful wonderful. So next year I think the Peterson family may get one for the front yard as well walk out the door and you get eaten alive. The front door right now I can sit on the patio.

[00:07:50] I like that. Craig some see look at that and doing an endorsement even though he's not being paid for it and giving you advice so always giving us advice. I want to ask you about something important here. Russian hackers may have penetrated the U.S. electricity network and could turn off power. I read a little something about this but I want to get it from you which basically means talk about war you don't need a missile you won't need a tank you will need a gun. All you'd have to do is come into the United States and shut off all of our power.

[00:08:27] And believe me that would be a lot worse than dropping an atomic bomb on a major city and harder to trace right away with this. This is a report that came out of the Wall Street Journal last week. And there have been debates you remember of course the 1984 blackout. I mean had 2004 back to back in the 80s up in Quebec.

[00:08:51] But there were questions whether or not that was a hacker and most of the security community we seem to think that in fact it probably was a hacker and they didn't mean to bring down the electric grid but that's what happened. But right now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that a group who is known as dragonfire energetic bear now interject has been doing all kinds of nasties lately but they've gained access to many of our power grid centers. Now they're talking about hundreds of them that they have gained access to and they're using the standard tools that you know were constantly seeing in businesses these spear phishing e-mails business e-mail compromise right watering hole attacks and they're tricking victims into it. But it is absolutely crazy what they're able to do out there and what could happen that they really could turn off the power. I got a grandkid here.

[00:09:48] Hi Susan.

[00:09:52] I like that shirt and R2 D2 shirt on here. CATHERINE Not me. That's pretty cool.

[00:09:59] So so yes think about all of the people who are who are dependent on electricity of days like today. And you know with the heat we really have death.

[00:10:09] If we don't have air conditioning we get the heat waves all the time.

[00:10:14] So look you know you use. You can make a living out of going to companies and saying here here's what you need to do to protect yourselves. Please give me some hope and I know in other industries you haven't been able to do that. Give me some help that they're really working on this to try to reach.

[00:10:34] Yeah they really are from this particular problem. They really are working on it. There are all kinds of controls that electrics that are electronic that are all over the place. These are called skater's systems and they are upgrading them. They are adding security to them. The plants themselves are upgrading the systems now. You know I work with the FBI and the unforgotten program right which is an infrastructure program they have and I I know myself because I've run webinars for the FBI on this topic. So all of these guys are very engaged in this and I think this problem is going to be pretty much fixed within the next year or two. But you know opening salvos of war could well use this type of stuff with a hack and they shut down power grids they shut down power acts. I mean that water facilities and stuff but you know they could do an incredible amount of damage to us. We have to use these types of techniques against other countries before we certainly use them with Iran in their centrifuge programs. This is the future. However this problem is being actively worked on.

[00:11:46] So that is good news which I agree with Craig Peterson. Craig I just want to get something very quickly from you before we have to wrap up. How do I stop my Smart TV from tracking what I watch. And why do I want to do that.

[00:12:02] Yeah most aren't aware of that but if you have a TV that has built into things like maybe Netflix Hulu or whatever yeah you and I have most of those TVs including Sony for instance. They're running Google's Android operating system in the TV. OK. And that's a problem to begin with because we know about Android vulnerabilities but in most of them I've got it up on my Web site. You can go there all of the major brands are covered by the TVs smart TVs don't just know that you're on Netflix. They don't just know that you are playing a video game on an external box right so you've got your x box or whatever it is they actually watch the content they can figure out what game you're playing and are streaming to the TV. So they've got all of this information but you can go in on all of these TVs and turn it off. You have to go to your setting and use the user agreements and other things all the details are up on my Web site. But you should opt out of it. Now in some cases you're going to have to turn off the smart TV function which I think is a great idea.

[00:13:13] Anyways I use always an external box like a little rogue who use my Roku you don't use the stuff that's already embedded in the TV.

[00:13:24] Exactly because when was the last time that this software update on that. Did you ever apply a patch to your TV.

[00:13:31] No. No. Actually now that I think of it. No I have not.

[00:13:36] Who does is right. And most of these TVs people don't even hook up to the Internet or they may so the quick and easy workaround.

[00:13:44] Pull the plug on the TV spots on the Internet side.

[00:13:48] Ok but then all of your special smart TV functions are going to go away if you do turn off the internet on it by using the external box that gets updates that you know is safe and the safest by far of course is the Apple TV although it's the most expensive as well.

[00:14:05] You said that. See this is all great stuff. We have from mosquitoes all the way up to your smart TV and you can get more of it. Well right. Because next Tuesday our friend Craig Peterson will be back.

[00:14:19] But if you text my name to this number 855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553.

[00:14:33] Craig Peterson will send you a weekly update after his segment with all the information we discussed. Plus a whole bunch of other stuff. And then when there's some type of hack some type of a big problem guess what your friends list and he will send you that information yes and sell your name. He doesn't pester you. It doesn't do anything like that. Standard data and tax rates apply. This is a great thing to get on board with Craig as usual a great segment and I look forward to talking with you next week.

[00:15:03] Hey thank you. Take care camera.

[00:15:05] All right. Mosquito Magnet mosquito magnet.

[00:15:09] No money has exchanged stands but Craig Peterson brought to you by the mosquito man. Thanks Craig. We'll see you next week. All right. Don't go anywhere. Final word when.

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