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

Good morning everybody! 

I was on WGAN this morning with Matt Gagnon and started off this morning talking about Fake Faces and the legitimate uses for them and then got into some of the seedier applications that they are being used for and what we can do to protect ourselves from being victims.  Then we got into some things you can do to be sure you are shopping securely this holiday season. Here we go with Matt.

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

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Any of these internet-connected devices. So add to your list once you buy these things. Or even before you buy them. Do they self-update for security issues? Can I even get new firmware? Hey, I was on with Mr. Matt Gagnon this morning and we talked a little bit about our printer security, the security of the toys online. The shopping where you bought those toys, right. And being safe online. We also talked about, again, our little face generation, what's it being used for? Is it legit? Is it not? For three bucks you can get a little diversity on your website with fake people, which is just amazing. It's amazing how good it is. And it's amazing how cheap it is as well.

So here we go with Mr. Matt.

Matt Gagnon: [00:00:54] It's WGAN morning news on Wednesday, which is a great time as always to talk to Craig Peterson, our tech guru, Craig, how are you this morning, sir?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:02] Good morning. Doing well. Thank you.

Matt Gagnon: [00:01:05] Indeed. Craig Peterson also of course heard on this very station on the weekends, Saturdays at one o'clock.

If I'm not mistaken, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:12] Yes, that is correct.

Matt Gagnon: [00:01:14] And you'll be talking about many of these same issues when you've got the microphone all to yourself.

So let's get into them right now. cybersecurity, something that's often ignored and, something that's incredibly important. and, and I think this is a great time to talk about cybersecurity in general and this is something that I know you're passionate about.

Why don't you tell me what I should know about, printer cybersecurity threats that are often ignored?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:36] Yeah, this is a bigger deal than most people might realize. When we go into a business and start looking at the security, that's there. The first thing we typically do is do a little scan and we check to see what are the versions of software that are on the computers and the devices.

Now, we all know that we should be updating our Windows, machines, Macs, or our Android devices, et cetera. But. Most of the time we go in and in fact, I can't think of an exception. So I'm going to, I, most of the time, when we go in, we find that their printers have never been updated. Now, this becomes a very real problem because the printers are running a real computer inside of them, now. Especially these laser printers that are attached to your network and that particular little computer can be used and often is used to launch attacks. We've been into businesses that are saying, Hey, listen, something weird is going on. Our network is slow. The printer seems slower. We're not sure what's up. We've got some threats here. How did we get ransomware? In one case, that printer could be the source. So make sure that particularly in the shopping season, when we're online and more concerned about our finances. We've got taxes coming up again early next year. Quarterly's due at the end of this month. Make sure that your printers are up to date.

I would put that on my list to make sure this week you have to go to the printer. Many of them have a little webserver built right into them. So you can just use your web browser to connect to that printer, check the firmware version, which is the version of software on that printer.

Go to the manufacturer's website, find out what the latest version is. Download it and then install it on the printer.  I know that seems like a lot of work and frankly, it is. The more advanced printers that are available out there. Do have the ability to automatically update their software. But it is key nowadays and too often, as you said, ignored.

Matt Gagnon: [00:03:52] Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening in the world of technology.

Craig, I am interested in buying a unique worry-free fake person and I have about a $5 bill in my pocket right now. Can I pull that off? Can I get one?

Craig Peterson: [00:04:07] Yeah, you can even get one for free.

You can get them in for as little as a dollar. Many businesses now have been using these pictures on our websites for years and years. Oftentimes you'll go and hopefully buy one, right? Adobe has a service for that. There are many of them out there.

We have had problems in the past where those pictures didn't have the right release behind them and many companies especially, the SoHo small office home office. They'll just grab a photo online all the way through the big guys. Facebook is one of those that when you sign up, they say, all of your pictures, you upload basically bond to us. Some of these pictures have shown up on billboards and people have complained.

So number one, it's easy to use these types of pictures for our businesses and websites and things because these people just don't exist.

In fact, you can go online to this person does not exist.com and you can get your own fake person for free, which is amazing. You can buy them for as little as three bucks, just for one.

So yeah, your $5 bills do well. But there are also problems with this when it comes to just these dating sites. We've talked before, Matt, about people who are lonely. They go online, just trying to find maybe not full companionship, but at least someone to talk to.

There are many bad guys out there, all over the world who are more than happy to try and con us into sending money to help their, mother or whoever, who's supposedly is in the hospital and needs this surgery.  There are so many excuses out there. Con us out of money.

If you generate one of these fake people and use that as your picture for your profile. Now, all of the standard techniques that are used to figure out if you stole a picture or from a site online and use that as your profile picture if didn't have to do a reverse lookup, but those types of techniques to see if you're a fake won't work because there, the picture doesn't exist anywhere.

So you've got to be very careful, online. And this is just another example of what's coming our way.

Matt Gagnon: [00:06:36] Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us at this time every Wednesday.

Craig, before I let you go, obviously we are now. Fully and the holiday shopping season, December it's after Thanksgiving. So we now give permission to everybody to actually do this. so I think particularly given COVID, a lot of people are going to be going online. That's obviously been a trend anyway for recent years, but I think it's probably going to be even more pronounced this year. So in terms of keeping yourself secure while doing your holiday shopping online, what's some important stuff to keep on the top of your mind.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:05] Everyone knows the basics, right? We just mentioned keeping your computers up to date. You obviously want to look and make sure that it is what's called a secure site, which basically establishes a VPN from your browser to their site.

Unfortunately, that little lock in the corner of the website URL up there on your screen, that little lock doesn't mean your data is actually safe once it arrives. So make sure you are shopping at a legitimate store online.

Make sure while you are shopping that you also just look around take care make sure that deal is really a good deal. Do a little comparative shopping, just like in the old days.

Tying it back into the printer that you were asking about earlier, we're buying more and more internet-connected items. You might remember that. Barbie from a few years back that allowed interaction with it.  You can talk to this little doll and it could talk back to you. It turned out it was sending all the audio straight to the internet. That's a computer inside that toy. That's a computer inside that washing machine.

Any of these internet-connected devices. So add to your list once you buy these things or even before you buy them, do they self-update for security issues?  Can I even get new firmware for those devices? I want to encourage people to check out right now. Have I been pwned.com? That's spelled it. Have I been  P W N E D. Have I been pwned.com put in your email address and find out has my account been breached? More or less? It probably has been. It'll tell you where it's been breached. It'll tell you if your credit card number was stolen, your password, your email. Whatever was stolen in that particular breach. Keep in mind that we need to change our passwords. We need to find out where they have been breached. And maybe be a little more cautious with that particular company in the future.

And as we go out there again, Stop. Think. Look at that email, that website make sure it really is legit.

Matt Gagnon: [00:09:33] Indeed. Craig Peterson, our tech guru with some great advice here as you head into your holiday shopping habits.

Appreciate it, Craig, as always. And we'll talk to you again next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:41] Take care, Matt.

Matt Gagnon: [00:09:42] All right.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:43] I had a little bit of noise there underneath my audio. Anyways, we'll have to see where we can fix that. Everybody have a great rest of the week. Hope you did have a fantastic Thanksgiving.

We'll be back on Saturday. Of course.

Take care. Bye-bye.

--- 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

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

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

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito. We discussed the Fake People Phenomenon and some of the positive and negative impacts it is having. Then we got into Online shopping and how to do it securely. Here we go with Jim.

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

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] One of the ways that people get scammed, and this isn't just our more senior citizens, but it's all the way down into their thirties and forties. By people who put up fake profiles on these dating sites.

Hey, good morning, Craig, Peterson here. I was talking this morning on the air with Mr. Jim Polito, and we spoke about some of the major changes this year because of the lockdown that we have seen in the online business.

What can small retailers do? What should you be doing when you're shopping online? Then we got into the whole "designed to deceive" thing with pictures. There's some, this crazy website out there that lets you create completely fake people. So all of that and more here, right now with Mr. Polito.

Jim Polito: [00:00:56] One of our favorite guys, I'm talking about our tech talk guru, Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:04] Hey, good morning.

Jim Polito: [00:01:06] How are you been?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:08] I've been doing pretty well. Not sleeping so well the last couple of nights, but it might be all of that Turkey, I think.

Jim Polito: [00:01:15] I thought that was supposed to make you sleep with that L-tryptophan, but maybe not.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:20] Yeah.

Jim Polito: [00:01:20] Maybe not. Listen you celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving and then this Thanksgiving, maybe it's just too much Thanksgiving.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:28] That's true. It is a Thankful time. I'm so glad to be here. It's this crazy. We've got a great family and even though some of them were remote, it was still, it was a really nice day.

Jim Polito: [00:01:41] I'm glad to hear that. All right, let's get a look at, well, first of all, let me just ask you off the cuff, cyber Monday. Black Friday, they were really the same thing. There was a great increase in retail shopping, but it all came online, I guess.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:00] Yeah. Yeah, no, it really did. This year. Their stores were down depending on the store, their traffic anywhere from about 60% to 75%. So it was online, but there wasn't the emphasis this year on those two days, you mentioned of course, black Friday, which has been historically where businesses make their money.

They finally go black. And then cyber Monday for the online businesses, but that emphasis now is over the entire season. We saw a week or two weeks beforehand of these stores offering great deals or at least what appeared to be great deals. As we've talked about before, You really gotta shop around.

Jim Polito: [00:02:45] To make sure that you're getting the right deal. I would imagine that you feel this trend will continue right through the holiday.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:53] Yeah. I've mentioned that a couple of times in my show as well, but yeah, the bottom line is this is just going to keep going.

These retailers have to make the money. There are a few like Amazon, for instance really profited. More than that it's like half a million new employees roughly over at Amazon right now. They've really profited from this whole lockdown thing. Many other businesses, particularly the small ones have really suffered.

It's hard for people to shop. For instance, when I talked about what are the things you should do or look for when you're shopping online? One of the things is to really look at the retailer. Can they be trusted with your data? I hate to say that because it's the small guys that have a hard time with it, at least so you'd think right. Equifax, TJX, and all these other big ones aside. It's difficult for them to come up in the search engine results. It's difficult for the small guys to be able to really compete on any sort of an even footing. Then you get these search engines like Google that really do weigh things towards some of their own properties.

You get Amazon who weighs things. There've been suits that I believe Amazon just lost a suit over in Europe because when you do a search for something on Amazon, they will steer you towards their own products. And I've seen this before and you may not be aware of it, but they have dozens and dozens and dozens of their own private-labeled products.

So when you're buying something, it could well be an Amazon thing and not from some small company.

Jim Polito: [00:04:42] Hey, I bought it, but this wasn't like a private label. It was actually the Amazon label. I bought Amazon batteries because I needed some and they had their D cell batteries, the real big ones. Amazon. I don't know why had a limit on the number you could buy. So I bought some Rayovac and some of theirs, I maxed out on both of them cause I needed a bunch of batteries. It was for, these window candles, you know? It was Amazon made.

It wasn't like them being sneaky or it wasn't made, I'm sure it was made under license, but it was the name Amazon on it and it was a battery.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:25] Some of those are really good. And I've done that before, too. I've got an Amazon power strip and I use these batteries that are rechargeable. It's a new generation. You can recharge them a thousand times. It's just incredible.

They perform as well as a regular battery. So I use those very, very frequently and they're Amazon branded. I used to buy, what is it, Sanyo? I think was the original company Panasonic.

Jim Polito: [00:05:55] Yup.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:56] Rechargeable batteries.

Jim Polito: [00:05:57] Interesting. All right. So the trend continues. Amazon will be sneaky. Speaking of sneaky, you sent me some stuff in the notes that was incredible. It's actually the first story in the notes. It's about designed to deceive making fake people. Now, why would I want to make a fake face? Not my face, but a fake face.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:25] Well, I can tell you, I, you know, I've been doing internet for Oh, since 83, I think was I first got started in it. Wow. But here's the problem I've seen. Cause I started making commercial websites back when it was legal to do it. And that was September of 91. And we built some of the biggest properties. You might remember Big Yellow or Superpages, you know?

Jim Polito: [00:06:54] Wow.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:55] I put together the team and we wrote all of the software and we built the data center. We ran it, absolutely everything. I've built websites for the last count it was over 5,000 businesses over the years. Not something I really do anymore. One of the problems we had with those websites is that people would say, okay, well either I need a group of people on my website here, or I want this face, or I want that face and you can go and you can buy these pictures of people and it's a model and they have to assign the release. Then once they've got that release signed, you can use it, but you still might get sued.

I had more than one occasion where they came back to me and said, we have to change the picture because we were contacted by that person and that did not cover this type of usage of the picture. So it's very legitimate reasons.

If you're going to put a face-up on a website, So now we can go to a website called generate photos, and you can buy a big person for as little as a buck, depending on how many you want. And you can go right now to a website for free called this person does not exist.com and get a completely computer-generated person. And you know what? It looks like a real person. So there are legitimate reasons for this, but as you can guess, Jim, there's illegitimate too.

Jim Polito: [00:08:29] Uh, yeah. And you know, this is like that whole thing I see on Tik Tok.

Like people actually themselves superimposing the face of say, Arnold Schwartzenegger. Over them. And it's like a combination of their face and Arnold, and it looks really reall.

Craig Peterson: [00:08:51] Let's talk about another side of this. That's bad. It's very similar to what you're talking about, and that is people are being scanned all of the time, and one of the ways that people get scammed and this isn't just our more senior citizens, but all the way down into their thirties and forties. By people who put out fake files on these dating sites. And they started a relationship back and forth. And then, you know what?

Jim had turns out that their mother needs surgery. It turns out that it's going to be like $5,000 and they just can't afford it. And this is part of a conversation they're really working with these people. These are crazy good Grifters, nowadays. And that's where we're concerned because now you can take one of these pictures.

You can put it up on one of these websites, you can now start a conversation and this is going to lead to even more people being scammed. And I'm very worried. You're in the holidays is there's so many of us out there that are lonely and looking for. I have a little bit of companionship, even if it's just online the way they've dealt with it before is, and I'm sorry, I'm going on and on here, but this is something that really irks me, but the way they've dealt with this type of thing before is.

You, you have someone who sets up a new profile. So there are people, usually volunteers at these dating sites who take that photo and use Google's reverse image search to see if that's a legitimate person, or if they took the picture from some other site out there. And then they'll say, okay, well, this is obviously not a real person because we found this picture on 50 other sites, and doesn't look legit.

Well, there's something like this. They're not going to find a picture anywhere because it only costs them three bucks to buy one picture.

Jim Polito: [00:10:48] Wow.

Craig Peterson: [00:10:49] That doesn't exist. It's not a real person. Right. So I'm getting worried.

Jim Polito: [00:10:54] Yeah. So I do that reverse image search. Right. Which I always do. And nothing comes up because it's unique.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:05] Yeah. This is AI now. The other people that should be worried about this, and you mentioned the videos is Actors, right. Who are out there because now they can really take anybody who physically can move around and do all of the actions that they want, and basically do it in a green suit and then paste any base they want to on it, including these types of faces.

So you'll see, in the future, these movie companies having fully computer-generated people from every angle, everything about them. There will be I don't know if they're going to copyright and trademark it patented. I don't know what they'll do, but now they don't have to worry about that. Actor or actress aging.

Because they can always use them and they can generate that say says at 80 years old and that same face at 20 years old. It's really going to change everything.

Jim Polito: [00:12:09] Yeah, I know. I mean, the set, the difficult thing is, um, For politicians too, cause somebody could ruin your you're running for a race and somebody could, uh, put you, um, as a politician, into a compromising situation, release that video.

And as Mark Twain said, you know, what is it? A lie makes it all the way around the world before the truth gets up out of bed. Um,

Craig, this is fascinating. So you've got the show on Sundays. From 11 o'clock great show, um, that everybody should watch on and listen to on TAG and HYN. And then, uh, if people want to reach you, what do they do?

Craig Peterson: [00:12:52] Well, the easiest way is go to my [email protected]. I answered questions every day that people just email me. I'm more than glad to do that. Just email me [email protected].

Jim Polito: [00:13:06] Craig, always a pleasure and thank you so much, sir. We'll talk to you next week. I hope you get some sleep.

Craig Peterson: [00:13:12] Thanks. Bye-bye

Jim Polito: [00:13:14] All right. A final word. When we return, you're listening to the Jim Polito show, your safe space.

Craig Peterson: [00:13:20] You guys might be interested to know that I was on WBZ. They started making some little news things with me, as well as WRKO too. The big powerhouses in the Boston market. So that was fun yesterday. Hopefully, we'll be able to just a little bit more of that, get this word out to people, but what they should be doing.

I got a great little note too, from one of our listener's Guy, and he was saying, okay, after yesterday, Monday, I'm going to have to check off of the pictures in the office, make sure their firmware is up-to-date.

So another note, really good thing here, hoping to raise awareness and telling people what they can do in order to get. A little bit safer in this online world.

Take care of everybody and we should be back tomorrow. Bye-bye.

---

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

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito.  We discussed the Fake People Phenomenon and some of the positive and negative impacts it is having.  Then we got into Online shopping and how to do it securely. Here we go with Jim.

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

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] One of the ways that people get scammed, and this isn't just our more senior citizens, but it's all the way down into their thirties and forties. By people who put up fake profiles on these dating sites.

Hey, good morning, Craig, Peterson here. I was talking this morning on the air with Mr. Jim Polito, and we spoke about some of the major changes this year because of the lockdown that we have seen in the online business.

What can small retailers do? What should you be doing when you're shopping online? Then we got into the whole "designed to deceive" thing with pictures. There's some, this crazy website out there that lets you create completely fake people. So all of that and more here, right now with Mr. Polito.

Jim Polito: [00:00:56] One of our favorite guys, I'm talking about our tech talk guru, Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:04] Hey, good morning.

Jim Polito: [00:01:06] How are you been?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:08] I've been doing pretty well. Not sleeping so well the last couple of nights, but it might be all of that Turkey, I think.

Jim Polito: [00:01:15] I thought that was supposed to make you sleep with that L-tryptophan, but maybe not.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:20] Yeah.

Jim Polito: [00:01:20] Maybe not. Listen you celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving and then this Thanksgiving, maybe it's just too much Thanksgiving.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:28] That's true. It is a Thankful time. I'm so glad to be here. It's this crazy. We've got a great family and even though some of them were remote, it was still, it was a really nice day.

Jim Polito: [00:01:41] I'm glad to hear that. All right, let's get a look at, well, first of all, let me just ask you off the cuff, cyber Monday.  Black Friday, they were really the same thing. There was a great increase in retail shopping, but it all came online, I guess.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:00] Yeah. Yeah, no, it really did. This year. Their stores were down depending on the store, their traffic anywhere from about 60% to 75%. So it was online, but there wasn't the emphasis this year on those two days, you mentioned of course, black Friday, which has been historically where businesses make their money.

They finally go black. And then cyber Monday for the online businesses, but that emphasis now is over the entire season. We saw a week or two weeks beforehand of these stores offering great deals or at least what appeared to be great deals. As we've talked about before, You really gotta shop around.

Jim Polito: [00:02:45] To make sure that you're getting the right deal.  I would imagine that you feel this trend will continue right through the holiday.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:53] Yeah. I've mentioned that a couple of times in my show as well, but yeah, the bottom line is this is just going to keep going.

These retailers have to make the money. There are a few like Amazon, for instance really profited. More than that it's like half a million new employees roughly over at Amazon right now. They've really profited from this whole lockdown thing. Many other businesses, particularly the small ones have really suffered.

It's hard for people to shop. For instance, when I talked about what are the things you should do or look for when you're shopping online? One of the things is to really look at the retailer. Can they be trusted with your data? I hate to say that because it's the small guys that have a hard time with it, at least so you'd think right. Equifax, TJX, and all these other big ones aside. It's difficult for them to come up in the search engine results. It's difficult for the small guys to be able to really compete on any sort of an even footing. Then you get these search engines like Google that really do weigh things towards some of their own properties.

You get Amazon who weighs things. There've been suits that I believe Amazon just lost a suit over in Europe because when you do a search for something on Amazon, they will steer you towards their own products. And I've seen this before and you may not be aware of it, but they have dozens and dozens and dozens of their own private-labeled products.

So when you're buying something, it could well be an Amazon thing and not from some small company.

Jim Polito: [00:04:42] Hey, I bought it, but this wasn't like a private label. It was actually the Amazon label. I bought Amazon batteries because I needed some and they had their D cell batteries, the real big ones. Amazon. I don't know why had a limit on the number you could buy. So I bought some Rayovac and some of theirs, I maxed out on both of them cause I needed a bunch of batteries. It was for,  these window candles, you know? It was Amazon made.

It wasn't like them being sneaky or it wasn't made, I'm sure it was made under license, but it was the name Amazon on it and it was a battery.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:25] Some of those are really good. And I've done that before, too. I've got an Amazon power strip and I use these batteries that are rechargeable. It's a new generation. You can recharge them a thousand times. It's just incredible.

They perform as well as a regular battery. So I use those very, very frequently and they're Amazon branded. I used to buy, what is it, Sanyo? I think was the original company Panasonic.

Jim Polito: [00:05:55] Yup.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:56] Rechargeable batteries.

Jim Polito: [00:05:57] Interesting. All right. So the trend continues. Amazon will be sneaky. Speaking of sneaky, you sent me some stuff in the notes that was incredible. It's actually the first story in the notes. It's about designed to deceive making fake people. Now, why would I want to make a fake face? Not my face, but a fake face.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:25] Well, I can tell you, I, you know, I've been doing internet for Oh, since 83, I think was I first got started in it. Wow. But here's the problem I've seen. Cause I started making commercial websites back when it was legal to do it. And that was September of 91. And we built some of the biggest properties. You might remember Big Yellow or Superpages, you know?

Jim Polito: [00:06:54] Wow.

Craig Peterson: [00:06:55] I put together the team and we wrote all of the software and we built the data center. We ran it, absolutely everything.  I've built websites for the last count it was over 5,000 businesses over the years. Not something I really do anymore. One of the problems we had with those websites is that people would say, okay, well either I need a group of people on my website here, or I want this face, or I want that face and you can go and you can buy these pictures of people and it's a model and they have to assign the release. Then once they've got that release signed, you can use it, but you still might get sued.

I had more than one occasion where they came back to me and said, we have to change the picture because we were contacted by that person and that did not cover this type of usage of the picture. So it's very legitimate reasons.

If you're going to put a face-up on a website, So now we can go to a website called generate photos, and you can buy a big person for as little as a buck, depending on how many you want. And you can go right now to a website for free called this person does not exist.com and get a completely computer-generated person. And you know what? It looks like a real person. So there are legitimate reasons for this, but as you can guess, Jim, there's illegitimate too.

Jim Polito: [00:08:29] Uh, yeah. And you know, this is like that whole thing I see on Tik Tok.

Like people actually themselves superimposing the face of say, Arnold Schwartzenegger. Over them. And it's like a combination of their face and Arnold, and it looks really reall.

Craig Peterson: [00:08:51] Let's talk about another side of this. That's bad. It's very similar to what you're talking about, and that is people are being scanned all of the time, and one of the ways that people get scammed and this isn't just our more senior citizens, but all the way down into their thirties and forties. By people who put out fake files on these dating sites. And they started a relationship back and forth. And then, you know what?

Jim had turns out that their mother needs surgery. It turns out that it's going to be like $5,000 and they just can't afford it. And this is part of a conversation they're really working with these people. These are crazy good Grifters, nowadays. And that's where we're concerned because now you can take one of these pictures.

You can put it up on one of these websites, you can now start a conversation and this is going to lead to even more people being scammed. And I'm very worried. You're in the holidays is there's so many of us out there that are lonely and looking for. I have a little bit of companionship, even if it's just online the way they've dealt with it before is, and I'm sorry, I'm going on and on here, but this is something that really irks me, but the way they've dealt with this type of thing before is.

You, you have someone who sets up a new profile. So there are people, usually volunteers at these dating sites who take that photo and use Google's reverse image search to see if that's a legitimate person, or if they took the picture from some other site out there. And then they'll say, okay, well, this is obviously not a real person because we found this picture on 50 other sites, and doesn't look legit.

Well, there's something like this. They're not going to find a picture anywhere because it only costs them three bucks to buy one picture.

Jim Polito: [00:10:48] Wow.

Craig Peterson: [00:10:49] That doesn't exist. It's not a real person. Right. So I'm getting worried.

Jim Polito: [00:10:54] Yeah. So I do that reverse image search. Right. Which I always do. And nothing comes up because it's unique.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:05] Yeah. This is AI now. The other people that should be worried about this, and you mentioned the videos is Actors, right. Who are out there because now they can really take anybody who physically can move around and do all of the actions that they want, and basically do it in a green suit and then paste any base they want to on it, including these types of faces.

So you'll see, in the future, these movie companies having fully computer-generated people from every angle, everything about them. There will be I don't know if they're going to copyright and trademark it patented. I don't know what they'll do, but now they don't have to worry about that. Actor or actress aging.

Because they can always use them and they can generate that say says at 80 years old and that same face at 20 years old. It's really going to change everything.

Jim Polito: [00:12:09] Yeah, I know. I mean, the set, the difficult thing is, um, For politicians too, cause somebody could ruin your you're running for a race and somebody could, uh, put you, um, as a politician, into a compromising situation, release that video.

And as Mark Twain said, you know, what is it? A lie makes it all the way around the world before the truth gets up out of bed. Um,

Craig, this is fascinating. So you've got the show on Sundays. From 11 o'clock great show, um, that everybody should watch on and listen to on TAG and HYN. And then, uh, if people want to reach you, what do they do?

Craig Peterson: [00:12:52] Well, the easiest way is go to my [email protected]. I answered questions every day that people just email me.  I'm more than glad to do that. Just email me [email protected].

Jim Polito: [00:13:06] Craig, always a pleasure and thank you so much, sir. We'll talk to you next week. I hope you get some sleep.

Craig Peterson: [00:13:12] Thanks. Bye-bye

Jim Polito: [00:13:14] All right. A final word. When we return, you're listening to the Jim Polito show, your safe space.

Craig Peterson: [00:13:20] You guys might be interested to know that I was on WBZ. They started making some little news things with me, as well as WRKO too. The big powerhouses in the Boston market. So that was fun yesterday. Hopefully, we'll be able to just a little bit more of that, get this word out to people, but what they should be doing.

I got a great little note too, from one of our listener's Guy, and he was saying, okay, after yesterday, Monday, I'm going to have to check off of the pictures in the office, make sure their firmware is up-to-date.

So another note, really good thing here, hoping to raise awareness and telling people what they can do in order to get. A little bit safer in this online world.

Take care of everybody and we should be back tomorrow. Bye-bye.

--- 

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

Welcome,

Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jeff Chidester on NH Today. We hit a number of interesting tech topics this morning. We started off with Fake People and the legitimate uses for them and then we got into how the scammers are using them. Then we discussed how your office printer can be used as an attack launchpad into your business network and how you can prevent that from happening. Here we go with Jeff.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit.

- CraigPeterson.com

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, good morning, everybody had a good call with Mr. Jeff Chidester on New Hampshire today. And, they still don't have a permanent host thereafter Jack Heath left, but anyhow, we had a good little chat about everything. Printers and what the federal government's warning about from your shopping this year, all the way on, through the basics of some of the privacy that we have, or maybe we don't even have anymore. So here we go with Mr. Chidester.

Jeff Chidester: [00:00:32] 38 past the hour. Jeff Chidester with you. Of course, our next guest Craig Peterson, you can find out more by going to craigpeterson.com. Craig peterson.com. Also, you can hear him on tech talk right here every Saturday. Plus you see them all over the place. So he's just about everywhere, Craig, how are you?

Craig Peterson: [00:00:47] Hey, good morning, that's because I need to lose a few pounds, I think. I'm everywhere.

Jeff Chidester: [00:00:51] I have a great idea for you. you can have a fake person generated. That's actually one of the top news stories you were talking about. This is a really odd dynamic that I've seen over the last few weeks. That is as real, it doesn't seem like it would be nefarious, but there are some implications to this of being able to generate fake people to put up online.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:12] Yeah, there really is it, I have built a website since it was legal to new business on the internet using the web. When that whole protocol came out. One of the biggest problems we've always had is, what faces do we put up there? most of your customers don't want you to take.

It cheers with them. And we've had issues in the passage from people in different phases. And this is all part of this kind of this deep fake that's been going on for quite a while. I have a software impact on doing podcasts and any sort of audio recording. Yeah. That I trained for my voice, Jeff so if I'm there and I'm saying, man, I just love listening to Hampshire every day, but I, it should be on Saturday and Sunday as well.

She could have added that in after I recorded it. Just add in that it should have been on Saturday or Sunday. And it sounds like it was me saying that. We've got deep fakes now for videos. You've probably seen some of those things where people put in have their favorite celebrity, do whatever they want.

Now, what you're talking about is you can go for free, there is a website you can go to for free and have a, get a photo. If you will, of a person that just doesn't exist at all. You can get them for free. you can buy them for a buck apiece, depending on how many you're buying. These are attractive faces.

They look like they're normal. And this technology over the last three years has gone from you gotta be kidding me that wouldn't fool a soul back in 2017 to today where it is absolutely amazing. Check it out. Check, go to this person does not exist. And get your own free, fake face.

Jeff Chidester: [00:03:03] We're talking to Craig Peterson.

Once again, you can find out more by going to Craig peterson.com. I always, I kid with people that I have a face for radio, so maybe I should hop over there again, really. That's what Jeff looks like. we talked about, this could be a great tool for businesses. As you said, for those who go through testimonials and the picture, people don't want to be pictured and stuff like that.

But, people can actually, there's a, there's something about a face, seeing a face that could lead to a false trust factor. Talk a little bit about that as well.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:31] Yeah, that's that is a very big deal. It's been a problem for a long time. One of my sons is a volunteer on this dating site and what he does is when people submit their, their photos, as well as other stuff, he verifies it.

So you'll take the photo. Google has a reverse lookup. That allows you now to check and see, does this photo exists somewhere on the internet? So you'll take the photo of Jeff Chittister and you'll put it into Google reverse image search. And it'll say this person picture shows up all over the place.

With Jeff Chittister, he's going to be in some newspapers, he is going to be on the iHeart radio site, et cetera. okay. Those are all legitimate. But what if you wanted to cheat someone out of something. This is happening more and more where it's not just our seniors, it's the younger generation now generation Z that is far too trusting of information online.

So you could generate very easily. As I said, go to this free website. This person does not exist.com. They could use that. Photo from there posted somewhere. I have a make a new Instagram profile or Facebook, whatever it might be, and then con people.

Because even if you're smart enough to know that you should do a reverse photo lookup on that person, it's not going to show up anywhere. And that seems a little bit illegitimate. I don't know. Maybe in this day and age, if the person's photo doesn't show up anywhere, maybe it really is a fake, but this is incredible because they can also take that face and they can make them talk.

They can turn it into videos. They can become now your product. Person. And Hollywood's really worried about this because what it has the ability to do is take someone completely unknown person/Actor have basically put them in a green suit, have them do all of the physical stuff, and then they can paste in whoever they want, saying whatever they want.

And the actor in 10 years from now, are going to be second class citizens.

Jeff Chidester: [00:05:42] Oh, yeah. and just completely destroyed those wages as well. I want to go to talking to Craig Peterson, Craig peterson.com. You can find out more.

So more people are working remotely. One of the other interesting stories you were talking about more people are moving remotely, and we always think about the computer as the actual laptop or the desktop it's choosing from home for your office work as the issue of the greatest susceptibility to cybersecurity.

But now we have to look beyond that computer don't we when we're talking about remote employees?

Craig Peterson: [00:06:12] Yeah, you do. There's there are so many things that are on people's networks and so many devices that are there now. And so many of them have been compromised and, I'm always beating my drum out the Android devices, and don't use them, Because the biggest problem is that they don't get the updates. They don't get those software updates at the rate that Apple does.

Apple will release a security fix and it'll be installed on 70% of the phones in two weeks. Versus Android, where many phones won't get the updates. And right now I thought that I saw that 60% of Android phones are three major releases behind. So you know that you've gotta be very careful. If you're a business person, you have to extend the security that hopefully, you have in the office out to all of your homes are people's homes and their mobile devices, whatever they are.

When we're talking about updates, that's another thing that's come out in that great article by the people who are providing the cybersecurity and infrastructure protection. There's this security agency about that. They're warning us now with this gift-giving season coming that we have to keep everything up to date, including remember our appliances, all of our electronic devices, and nowadays, more and more our children's toys.

It turns out even some voting machines are connected to the internet and they're running Windows Seven. If you can believe that,

Jeff Chidester: [00:07:51] I will tell you the story I had about a few weeks ago about a guy who's still running Excel 97. I don't even know how you do that. but clearly, that's something to think about, and it's you're right, because a lot of these businesses too, Craig only have one or two, IT people, and they have been just inundated with moving people into a remote office and then trying to manage that most officers weren't ready for that.

So even like the printer, becomes an area of susceptibility, because they're not printing in the office anymore. They're going out and buying one or giving them a generic one to use at home.

Craig Peterson: [00:08:23] All of those, again, attached to the network. Have you ever updated the firmware in your printer? That's now on your network or your light bulb that comes in the roof above you?

And now we've got the children's toys that are coming our way. All of those, especially for using a VPN. Can now get through the VPN to the offices called piggybacking. And what happens is that the VPN is running on your machine. Whatever it might be, a mobile device and other devices that are on your network can potentially. Use that it's just like having a roadway. Almost anybody can get on unless things are configured properly.

Printers. When we go into facilities, businesses, even bigger ones, even DOD department of defense contractors, we're finding printers that have never, ever been updated. That has major security problems and is, in fact, the source of this security vulnerability and loss of all of their data and intellectual property. It all started with a printer.

Jeff Chidester: [00:09:27] There's so much to think about once again, that's why I need to follow Craig. Once again, Craig peterson.com Craig peterson.com.

Here we are worried about the Terminator when we should've been worried about Teddy Ruxpin. I'm looking down the hallway to see this thing marching down, cause he's been connected to the internet as well.

Hey Craig, we've actually run out of time. We've got to remind everybody who wants to Craig peterson.com Craigpeterson.com.

I'll see you heard on this radio station and other radio stations this weekend as well.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:50] All right. Take care, everybody. Thanks

Jeff Chidester: [00:09:52] You as well, Craig, once again, all that great stuff.

I would highly suggest that you go ahead and, make Craig part of your, one of your bookmarks or favorites. Cause he keeps you up to date on all the things you heard here, plus other interviews and other podcasts he duds does are all located up on Craig peterson.com.

What we'll do is go and take a break right back, catch you up, up to date on the markets on this first day after the Thanksgiving holiday.

---

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

Welcome,

Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jeff Chidester on NH Today. We hit a number of interesting tech topics this morning. We started off with Fake People and the legitimate uses for them and then we got into how the scammers are using them.  Then we discussed how your office printer can be used as an attack launchpad into your business network and how you can prevent that from happening. Here we go with Jeff. 

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit.

- CraigPeterson.com

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, good morning, everybody had a good call with Mr. Jeff Chidester on New Hampshire today. And, they still don't have a permanent host thereafter Jack Heath left, but anyhow, we had a good little chat about everything. Printers and what the federal government's warning about from your shopping this year, all the way on, through the basics of some of the privacy that we have, or maybe we don't even have anymore. So here we go with Mr. Chidester.

Jeff Chidester: [00:00:32] 38 past the hour. Jeff Chidester with you. Of course, our next guest Craig Peterson, you can find out more by going to craigpeterson.com. Craig peterson.com. Also, you can hear him on tech talk right here every Saturday. Plus you see them all over the place. So he's just about everywhere, Craig, how are you?

Craig Peterson: [00:00:47] Hey, good morning, that's because I need to lose a few pounds, I think. I'm everywhere.

Jeff Chidester: [00:00:51] I have a great idea for you. you can have a fake person generated. That's actually one of the top news stories you were talking about. This is a really odd dynamic that I've seen over the last few weeks. That is as real, it doesn't seem like it would be nefarious, but there are some implications to this of being able to generate fake people to put up online.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:12] Yeah, there really is it, I have built a website since it was legal to new business on the internet using the web. When that whole protocol came out. One of the biggest problems we've always had is, what faces do we put up there? most of your customers don't want you to take.

It cheers with them. And we've had issues in the passage from people in different phases. And this is all part of this kind of this deep fake that's been going on for quite a while. I have a software impact on doing podcasts and any sort of audio recording. Yeah. That I trained for my voice, Jeff so if I'm there and I'm saying, man, I just love listening to Hampshire every day, but I, it should be on Saturday and Sunday as well.

She could have added that in after I recorded it. Just add in that it should have been on Saturday or Sunday. And it sounds like it was me saying that. We've got deep fakes now for videos. You've probably seen some of those things where people put in have their favorite celebrity, do whatever they want.

Now, what you're talking about is you can go for free, there is a website you can go to for free and have a, get a photo. If you will, of a person that just doesn't exist at all.  You can get them for free. you can buy them for a buck apiece, depending on how many you're buying. These are attractive faces.

They look like they're normal. And this technology over the last three years has gone from you gotta be kidding me that wouldn't fool a soul back in 2017 to today where it is absolutely amazing. Check it out. Check, go to this person does not exist. And get your own free, fake face.

Jeff Chidester: [00:03:03] We're talking to Craig Peterson.

Once again, you can find out more by going to Craig peterson.com. I always, I kid with people that I have a face for radio, so maybe I should hop over there again, really. That's what Jeff looks like. we talked about, this could be a great tool for businesses. As you said, for those who go through testimonials and the picture, people don't want to be pictured and stuff like that.

But, people can actually, there's a, there's something about a face, seeing a face that could lead to a false trust factor. Talk a little bit about that as well.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:31] Yeah, that's that is a very big deal. It's been a problem for a long time. One of my sons is a volunteer on this dating site and what he does is when people submit their, their photos, as well as other stuff, he verifies it.

So you'll take the photo. Google has a reverse lookup. That allows you now to check and see, does this photo exists somewhere on the internet? So you'll take the photo of Jeff Chittister and you'll put it into Google reverse image search. And it'll say this person picture shows up all over the place.

With Jeff Chittister, he's going to be in some newspapers, he is going to be on the iHeart radio site, et cetera. okay. Those are all legitimate. But what if you wanted to cheat someone out of something. This is happening more and more where it's not just our seniors, it's the younger generation now generation Z that is far too trusting of information online.

So you could generate very easily. As I said, go to this free website. This person does not exist.com. They could use that. Photo from there posted somewhere. I have a make a new Instagram profile or Facebook, whatever it might be, and then con people.

Because even if you're smart enough to know that you should do a reverse photo lookup on that person, it's not going to show up anywhere. And that seems a little bit illegitimate. I don't know. Maybe in this day and age, if the person's photo doesn't show up anywhere, maybe it really is a fake, but this is incredible because they can also take that face and they can make them talk.

They can turn it into videos. They can become now your product. Person. And Hollywood's really worried about this because what it has the ability to do is take someone completely unknown person/Actor have basically put them in a green suit, have them do all of the physical stuff, and then they can paste in whoever they want, saying whatever they want.

And the actor in 10 years from now, are going to be second class citizens.

Jeff Chidester: [00:05:42] Oh, yeah. and just completely destroyed those wages as well. I want to go to talking to Craig Peterson, Craig peterson.com. You can find out more.

So more people are working remotely. One of the other interesting stories you were talking about more people are moving remotely, and we always think about the computer as the actual laptop or the desktop it's choosing from home for your office work as the issue of the greatest susceptibility to cybersecurity.

But now we have to look beyond that computer don't we when we're talking about remote employees?

Craig Peterson: [00:06:12] Yeah, you do. There's there are so many things that are on people's networks and so many devices that are there now. And so many of them have been compromised and, I'm always beating my drum out the Android devices, and don't use them, Because the biggest problem is that they don't get the updates. They don't get those software updates at the rate that Apple does.

Apple will release a security fix and it'll be installed on 70% of the phones in two weeks. Versus Android, where many phones won't get the updates. And right now I thought that I saw that 60% of Android phones are three major releases behind. So you know that you've gotta be very careful. If you're a business person, you have to extend the security that hopefully, you have in the office out to all of your homes are people's homes and their mobile devices, whatever they are.

When we're talking about updates, that's another thing that's come out in that great article by the people who are providing the cybersecurity and infrastructure protection. There's this security agency about that. They're warning us now with this gift-giving season coming that we have to keep everything up to date, including remember our appliances, all of our electronic devices, and nowadays, more and more our children's toys.

It turns out even some voting machines are connected to the internet and they're running Windows Seven. If you can believe that,

Jeff Chidester: [00:07:51] I will tell you the story I had about a few weeks ago about a guy who's still running Excel 97. I don't even know how you do that. but clearly, that's something to think about, and it's you're right, because a lot of these businesses too, Craig only have one or two, IT people, and they have been just inundated with moving people into a remote office and then trying to manage that most officers weren't ready for that.

So even like the printer, becomes an area of susceptibility, because they're not printing in the office anymore. They're going out and buying one or giving them a generic one to use at home.

Craig Peterson: [00:08:23] All of those, again, attached to the network. Have you ever updated the firmware in your printer? That's now on your network or your light bulb that comes in the roof above you?

And now we've got the children's toys that are coming our way. All of those, especially for using a VPN. Can now get through the VPN to the offices called piggybacking. And what happens is that the VPN is running on your machine. Whatever it might be, a mobile device and other devices that are on your network can potentially. Use that it's just like having a roadway. Almost anybody can get on unless things are configured properly.

Printers. When we go into facilities, businesses, even bigger ones, even DOD department of defense contractors, we're finding printers that have never, ever been updated. That has major security problems and is, in fact, the source of this security vulnerability and loss of all of their data and intellectual property. It all started with a printer.

Jeff Chidester: [00:09:27] There's so much to think about once again, that's why I need to follow Craig. Once again, Craig peterson.com Craig peterson.com.

Here we are worried about the Terminator when we should've been worried about Teddy Ruxpin. I'm looking down the hallway to see this thing marching down, cause he's been connected to the internet as well.

Hey Craig, we've actually run out of time. We've got to remind everybody who wants to Craig peterson.com Craigpeterson.com.

I'll see you heard on this radio station and other radio stations this weekend as well.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:50] All right. Take care, everybody. Thanks

Jeff Chidester: [00:09:52] You as well, Craig, once again, all that great stuff.

I would highly suggest that you go ahead and, make Craig part of your, one of your bookmarks or favorites. Cause he keeps you up to date on all the things you heard here, plus other interviews and other podcasts he duds does are all located up on Craig peterson.com.

What we'll do is go and take a break right back, catch you up, up to date on the markets on this first day after the Thanksgiving holiday.

---

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

Good morning everybody!

Happy Thanksgiving day to all!

I was on WGAN this morning with Aaron Chadborn and started off this morning talking about electoral issues that are taking front and center in the result counts going on. I discussed Dominion Voting systems and how they meet even the level of cybersecurity that is required at your local pizza shop. Then we discussed online shopping, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday Deals. Here we go with Aaron.

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

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey good morning, everybody. I hope you are going to have a great Thanksgiving this year. We're just so busy, my wife and I getting everything ready, doing all of that.

This morning I was on with a new guy because he's sitting in for Matt. Gagnon. His name is. Aaron Chadborn. He's been involved in politics for a long time.

In fact, worked for the governor for a while. We talked about this dominion voting system. We got into it a little bit. I'm going to get into it a lot more on my show this weekend. we also spent a little bit of time talking about shopping this season here, where should you go? What should you do?

What can you expect? So here we go with Aaron on news radio five 60 am and 98, five FM W G A N. I had to put that in there. Well, I didn't have to wait anyway. Here we go.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:00:56] I'm Aaron Chadborn filling in for Matt Gagnon. We wish him a very happy Thanksgiving. He's on vacation all week.

We are not in Jeremy mixer in the sound, but with a freezing, I'm sensing a theme. I think it's cold outside. It's very cold outside.

Well, we are pleased to be joined once again for Tech Talk with our good friend, Craig Peterson, Craig, how are you?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:16] Hey, good morning, doing well. A little work in the bathroom, remodeling, and the normal COVID stuff.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:01:24] Well, I think that during COVID, everyone's been home much more than usual, and I've been talking to folks who are contractors or who are at Home Depot, Lowe's and they say that everyone's doing a new project. So I think you're in good company, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:40] Well, looking at the stock value of Lowe's and Home Depot. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:01:48] The year 2000 for elections, it was Florida, Florida, Florida. This year. It seems like it's Dominion, Dominion, Dominion. Obviously, a lot of people are very concerned, whether they're hearing about technology and these dominions voting machines.

Craig, I know you've been watching the issue closely. What can you tell us about what's going on there?

Craig Peterson: [00:02:06] Well, this is huge. In fact, I'll be talking about that on my show on Saturday at one o'clock right here, but in doing a deep dive, but it is really very concerning. You know, I do security for a living. That's what I do.

I run the webinar training series for the FBI and their InfraGard program. Ideal with everything from a pizza shop, all the way up through Department of Defense contractors and providing cybersecurity for them. So I kind of know a little bit about cybersecurity when it comes right down to it here, Aaron.

What we're seeing now with Dominion is very, very concerning. And I wanted to just make a comparison between what's happening with our voting systems. the majority of states in the US are using the Dominion voting system and compare that to the very basic the bottom, the beginning, of where you should be in cybersecurity.

Now the basics when we're talking about cybersecurity are what is known as the payment card industry standard. PCI has been around for a long time, and it is what you have to do to accept credit cards. This isn't DOD stuff. This is very, very basic. In fact, what your local pizza shop has to deal with. They have to be PCI compliant. There's this massive 400-page document that they have to accept and then go on from there.

So I got a call from a pizza shop. They had been informed that they were going to be audited because there were some questions about some credit cards that have been processed. So the payment card industry was going to come out just to find if they had been breached and the data was out on the internet about people's credit cards. Was more than a hundred dollars per credit card that had been taken by them over the last year? We're talking huge, huge fines. So we went out, we had a look and sure enough, they weren't compliant and they needed to be compliant within two days. So we got busy and we upgraded their security, but it's very, very basic stuff.

So comparing Dominion, which is our voting. This is our right here as citizens of the United States. Comparing Dominion software and voting systems to what a pizza shop and has to comply with, Aaron, what do you think? Do you think pizza shops should have more security requirements than the voting systems?

Aaron Chadborn: [00:04:50] I think they certainly have higher thresholds and better resumes. then some of the people running our voting systems, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:58] Well, PCI, the payment current industry standards have 12 different requirements or controls that you have to meet in order to accept credit cards. Of those 12 requirements, the Dominion voting system meets only two. It fails on everything from built-in firewalls, through proper password protections, a cardholder data, or protecting voter data of maintaining antivirus software being even patched up to the latest versions of Android or Windows, restricting data access. Having logs on the voting machines that cannot be modified. You can go in and modify them with just a basic admin password using the same password on multiple machines. It goes on and on-air, just how bad this is.

When you compare an online voting system, for instance, or I'm looking right now at a company and you can find them online called elections online, and they have a basic set of online voting software. They are PCI validated. They meet the basic requirements. It's $800. Versus $800,000 for Dominion system

Aaron Chadborn: [00:06:25] You're listening to WGAN Morning news. This is Aaron Chadborn in for Matt Gagnon. And we're talking with Craig Peterson. You can hear him every week on Saturday afternoon from one to three.

Now, Craig with Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow, Friday is Black Friday. I know you always have tips and tricks for Black Friday. What are you pointing people toward this year?

Craig Peterson: [00:06:44] Well, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, frankly. Have been changing places over the last few years, and this year. It's completely different again, because of what we're seeing is that the deals, the great deals that we used to have online just don't really exist this year.

Yeah. There are some deals and you need to be an informed shopper, and that means you've got to go online. You've got to poke around. I can guarantee you that Amazon does not have the best prices on things. Guaranteed. Amazon has now taken its market leader position and been cranking up on the prices.

Walmart, when we're talking about online has some great values this year. So look at cyber Monday a little bit more. Don't just buy something on Friday this week, thinking that it's going to be a good deal. It's guaranteed to be a good deal, cause it's not true. Cyber Monday, we're expecting even better deals.

I think the bottom line this year, Aaron when we're looking at all of them, is to pay attention. Shop around. There are a lot of reasons not to shop this year on Black Friday. One of the biggest ones really is that the deals are hard to come by. These bargains aren't necessarily as good as they appear to be. There's plenty of other chances to save, even later in the season this year.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:08:16] Well, I think that, you know, we were talking earlier in the show, Craig, that it's going to affect a lot of brick and mortar retailers in a number of ways. This is going to be one of, I think the most difficult holiday seasons that a lot of our local mom and pops and local retail shops have ever seen.

So I know as much as I like getting deals online, I'm trying to do some of my shopping in person this year. I'm spacing it out. I'm not waiting in line on Friday morning. I'm trying to make sure that those people that are using those payment systems, that local pizza shop is still going to be here.

We lost bull moose music. We just learned yesterday in Portland. Um, but you know, I, I think a lot of us are looking for new ways to support our local retailer.

Craig Peterson: [00:08:53] And that's a great thing to do. I've been doing that as well in many of these retailers because of COVID because it can have as many people in the store at one time, they are now going the whole week, this week, and probably all the way up through Christmas this year, in providing deals for people that come in and you know what? I like that friendly face, a small local toy shop.

One of my daughter's first jobs, I think it was her first job. She was fifteen and she had the key to the toy store.

They went out of business years ago and now you'd have a look around. You're not going to see Toys R us anymore. Even the very big, you know, opposite ends of that scale. Aaron, all retailers have been hurt. I do try and go local. That's a good consideration this year.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:09:43] So for folks looking to tune into you on Saturday, Craig, what else do you have coming up?

What topics are you going to cover?

Craig Peterson: [00:09:48] Well, we're going to do a deep dive we're into the whole Dominion, the whole voting system thing where we're looking at what's happened with Texas. Why did they reject it? And they had a lot of good reasons for rejecting that system. How can we keep our elections safe?

In addition, we are going to talk a little bit about holiday gift shopping and how Apple is trying to stop some of the creepy user tracking that's been going on.

Of course, a little bit about how cyberattacks are working today. Are we expecting too much from our internet service provider?

There we go. I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. It is a wonderful time of year. I actually kinda like this time of year.

Take care. Bye-bye.

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

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

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

Good morning everybody! 

Happy Thanksgiving day to all!

I was on WGAN this morning with Aaron Chadborn and started off this morning talking about electoral issues that are taking front and center in the result counts going on.  I discussed Dominion Voting systems and how they meet even the level of cybersecurity that is required at your local pizza shop. Then we discussed online shopping, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday Deals. Here we go with Aaron.

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

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey good morning, everybody. I hope you are going to have a great Thanksgiving this year. We're just so busy, my wife and I getting everything ready, doing all of that.

This morning I was on with a new guy because he's sitting in for Matt. Gagnon. His name is. Aaron Chadborn. He's been involved in politics for a long time.

In fact, worked for the governor for a while. We talked about this dominion voting system. We got into it a little bit. I'm going to get into it a lot more on my show this weekend. we also spent a little bit of time talking about shopping this season here, where should you go? What should you do?

What can you expect? So here we go with Aaron on news radio five 60 am and 98, five FM W  G A N. I had to put that in there. Well, I didn't have to wait anyway. Here we go.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:00:56] I'm Aaron Chadborn filling in for Matt Gagnon. We wish him a very happy Thanksgiving. He's on vacation all week.

We are not in Jeremy mixer in the sound, but with a freezing, I'm sensing a theme. I think it's cold outside. It's very cold outside.

Well, we are pleased to be joined once again for Tech Talk with our good friend, Craig Peterson, Craig, how are you?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:16] Hey, good morning, doing well. A little work in the bathroom, remodeling, and the normal COVID stuff.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:01:24] Well, I think that during COVID, everyone's been home much more than usual, and I've been talking to folks who are contractors or who are at Home Depot, Lowe's and they say that everyone's doing a new project. So I think you're in good company, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:40] Well, looking at the stock value of Lowe's and Home Depot. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:01:48] The year 2000 for elections, it was Florida, Florida, Florida. This year. It seems like it's Dominion, Dominion, Dominion. Obviously, a lot of people are very concerned, whether they're hearing about technology and these dominions voting machines.

Craig, I know you've been watching the issue closely. What can you tell us about what's going on there?

Craig Peterson: [00:02:06] Well, this is huge. In fact, I'll be talking about that on my show on Saturday at one o'clock right here, but in doing a deep dive, but it is really very concerning. You know, I do security for a living. That's what I do.

I run the webinar training series for the FBI and their InfraGard program. Ideal with everything from a pizza shop, all the way up through Department of Defense contractors and providing cybersecurity for them. So I kind of know a little bit about cybersecurity when it comes right down to it here, Aaron.

What we're seeing now with Dominion is very, very concerning. And I wanted to just make a comparison between what's happening with our voting systems. the majority of states in the US are using the Dominion voting system and compare that to the very basic the bottom, the beginning, of where you should be in cybersecurity.

Now the basics when we're talking about cybersecurity are what is known as the payment card industry standard. PCI has been around for a long time, and it is what you have to do to accept credit cards. This isn't DOD stuff. This is very, very basic.  In fact, what your local pizza shop has to deal with. They have to be PCI compliant. There's this massive 400-page document that they have to accept and then go on from there.

So I got a call from a pizza shop. They had been informed that they were going to be audited because there were some questions about some credit cards that have been processed. So the payment card industry was going to come out just to find if they had been breached and the data was out on the internet about people's credit cards. Was more than a hundred dollars per credit card that had been taken by them over the last year? We're talking huge, huge fines. So we went out, we had a look and sure enough, they weren't compliant and they needed to be compliant within two days. So we got busy and we upgraded their security, but it's very, very basic stuff.

So comparing Dominion, which is our voting. This is our right here as citizens of the United States. Comparing Dominion software and voting systems to what a pizza shop and has to comply with, Aaron, what do you think? Do you think pizza shops should have more security requirements than the voting systems?

Aaron Chadborn: [00:04:50] I think they certainly have higher thresholds and better resumes. then some of the people running our voting systems, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:58] Well, PCI, the payment current industry standards have 12 different requirements or controls that you have to meet in order to accept credit cards. Of those 12 requirements, the Dominion voting system meets only two. It fails on everything from built-in firewalls, through proper password protections, a cardholder data, or protecting voter data of maintaining antivirus software being even patched up to the latest versions of Android or Windows, restricting data access. Having logs on the voting machines that cannot be modified. You can go in and modify them with just a basic admin password using the same password on multiple machines. It goes on and on-air, just how bad this is.

When you compare an online voting system, for instance, or I'm looking right now at a company and you can find them online called elections online, and they have a basic set of online voting software. They are PCI validated. They meet the basic requirements. It's $800. Versus $800,000 for Dominion system

Aaron Chadborn: [00:06:25] You're listening to WGAN Morning news. This is Aaron Chadborn in for Matt Gagnon. And we're talking with Craig Peterson. You can hear him every week on Saturday afternoon from one to three.

Now, Craig with Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow, Friday is Black Friday. I know you always have tips and tricks for Black Friday. What are you pointing people toward this year?

Craig Peterson: [00:06:44] Well, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, frankly. Have been changing places over the last few years, and this year. It's completely different again, because of what we're seeing is that the deals, the great deals that we used to have online just don't really exist this year.

Yeah. There are some deals and you need to be an informed shopper, and that means you've got to go online. You've got to poke around. I can guarantee you that Amazon does not have the best prices on things. Guaranteed. Amazon has now taken its market leader position and been cranking up on the prices.

Walmart, when we're talking about online has some great values this year. So look at cyber Monday a little bit more. Don't just buy something on Friday this week, thinking that it's going to be a good deal. It's guaranteed to be a good deal, cause it's not true. Cyber Monday, we're expecting even better deals.

I think the bottom line this year, Aaron when we're looking at all of them, is to pay attention. Shop around. There are a lot of reasons not to shop this year on Black Friday. One of the biggest ones really is that the deals are hard to come by. These bargains aren't necessarily as good as they appear to be. There's plenty of other chances to save, even later in the season this year.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:08:16] Well, I think that, you know, we were talking earlier in the show, Craig, that it's going to affect a lot of brick and mortar retailers in a number of ways. This is going to be one of, I think the most difficult holiday seasons that a lot of our local mom and pops and local retail shops have ever seen.

So I know as much as I like getting deals online, I'm trying to do some of my shopping in person this year. I'm spacing it out. I'm not waiting in line on Friday morning. I'm trying to make sure that those people that are using those payment systems, that local pizza shop is still going to be here.

We lost bull moose music. We just learned yesterday in Portland. Um, but you know, I, I think a lot of us are looking for new ways to support our local retailer.

Craig Peterson: [00:08:53] And that's a great thing to do. I've been doing that as well in many of these retailers because of COVID because it can have as many people in the store at one time, they are now going the whole week, this week, and probably all the way up through Christmas this year, in providing deals for people that come in and you know what? I like that friendly face, a small local toy shop.

One of my daughter's first jobs, I think it was her first job. She was fifteen and she had the key to the toy store.

They went out of business years ago and now you'd have a look around. You're not going to see Toys R us anymore. Even the very big, you know, opposite ends of that scale. Aaron, all retailers have been hurt.  I do try and go local. That's a good consideration this year.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:09:43] So for folks looking to tune into you on Saturday, Craig, what else do you have coming up?

What topics are you going to cover?

Craig Peterson: [00:09:48] Well, we're going to do a deep dive we're into the whole Dominion, the whole voting system thing where we're looking at what's happened with Texas. Why did they reject it? And they had a lot of good reasons for rejecting that system.  How can we keep our elections safe?

In addition, we are going to talk a little bit about holiday gift shopping and how Apple is trying to stop some of the creepy user tracking that's been going on.

Of course, a little bit about how cyberattacks are working today. Are we expecting too much from our internet service provider?

There we go. I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. It is a wonderful time of year. I actually kinda like this time of year.

Take care. Bye-bye.

--- 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

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

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

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito. We discussed Why I think it is safer to buy pizza than to Vote. Then we got into the lack of deals this Black Friday and Cyber Monday and why it pays to shop around. Here we go with Jim.

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

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning, and we talked about the dominion voting systems. Did you know, your vote is not as safe as buying a pizza?

We went into that. the reason why I'm really upset with the way this whole software is set up is it's just craziness.

We talked a little bit about whether or not, you should actually be shopping on Black Friday. There are a lot of changes this year. So here we go with Mr. Polito.

Jim Polito: [00:00:33] Here he is. Always great to have him here and even though as a Canadian, he already had a Thanksgiving back in October. He joins us now leading into Thanksgiving, a lot of important stuff on the plate.

How about the Dominion voting system? But before that, How about his recommendation that you don't shop on Black Friday? Whoa, joining us now. Our good friend and tech talk guru. Craig Peterson. Good morning.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:03] Hey, good morning, Jim. It is one of those mornings. Isn't it?

Jim Polito: [00:01:08] It is. I want to get to the dominion thing, which is important.

It's relevant with the election, the president's complaints, but, you don't want me to shop on Black Friday? Is this a, just an ethical thing, a moral thing, or is this a Jim, I can save you more money thing?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:26] First of all, there's Cyber Monday, which of course people are now familiar with, which is the Monday after Black Friday.

And the deals are really interesting this year. I don't know what you want to blame it on, whether it's been some of the lockdown stuff or something else. The deals have been there all along. But this year, it looks like many of these retailers are looking to make up the difference of the money they lost because of us just not shopping anymore.

And they are not giving us these deals. They used to, in fact, these online deals now are. Pretty hard to come by.

Jim Polito: [00:02:03] Ah, so it's not so novel anymore, right? Oh

Craig Peterson: [00:02:09] Yeah. That's a really good way to put it. Yeah, I liked that.

Jim Polito: [00:02:12] So now they're just going to stick it to us through the whole thing.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:17] You also want to look at companies like Amazon. Amazon is expected to be a big winner this year, and so is our Walmart and some of the others.

But if you look at Amazon and look at their prices, people just assume that you're going to get the best price, the best value by shopping at Amazon. It certainly is probably the most convenient, especially if you pay that extra a hundred and change right every year to Amazon.

As it turns out, those deals that you're seeing on many of these sites, Amazon included aren't so hot. You really have to do comparison shopping.

Jim Polito: [00:02:58] Ah, I see that,

Hey, Our folks who do the financial exchange showed on TAG and HYN. Barry Armstrong told me a while ago, you know what, Jim, you should comparison shop when you're online shopping.

And I said, other than Amazon, he said, try Walmart. He said Walmart is really making an effort. For the things that Walmart stocks, there are times you can beat Amazon, and if you order enough, you get free shipping. He's right.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:26] Yeah, absolutely. And with Cyber Monday this year, again, we are expecting even better deals than we will be seen on Black Friday.

Compare, make sure you've got that budget line down, obviously the normal don't fall into the hole of running up some of your credit cards. Look online is a great place to go. You probably also want to visit some of these local retailers. It's a shame to see all of these stores closing, but frankly, the majority of us will be shopping online this year.

It's like over 80%.

Jim Polito: [00:04:00] Wow. I remember years ago having conversations following the holidays and it'd be like, Oh, 20% of people shopped online, like this, and now the whole thing has flipped. COVID pushed it over the edge, but the whole thing was flipping.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:16] Yeah, it is flipped in a very big way.

Many of us, me included. We just go to Amazon and buy something. it's just so easy. My family. And as we've got a couple of kids. we, every year we have a gift exchange and rather than everybody buying something for everybody cause there was 10 of us. plus now the grandkids and the spouses, we have one of these sites that you just put everybody's name in and it goes ahead and split them up and says, okay, you've got stocking, you've got the main gift or this particular person and that site is free.

But here's how that works. You do some research using this site and they list here's what I want for Christmas sort of a thing. And they now get a commission on anything that you're buying. Via their sites. So every link that you click on, every gift that's in there tends to be with Amazon and they make over there one to 3% on every gift.

There's just not a big amount of money, but it's enough for them to have a whole business just based on that.

Jim Polito: [00:05:28] Wow. Wow.

All right. Let's get to, now that we've done the shopping, we've got our shopping out of the way we got to get down and dirty.

We've heard a lot about Dominion. This is the system for voting, that the president and his allies have pointed out is easily hacked and is not good. And, you've actually uncovered some more stuff about it.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:55] This is frankly, to me, the biggest indication of how bad this stuff is, but, I professionally do computer security, network security all the way from a little pizza shop, right by the studio. In fact, there's one all the way through the department of defense contractors.

So I see all of this security stuff. I see it almost every day, right? Yeah. And w here's the very basic level right there. There's the DOD and then there's a pizza shop. On the other side, the pizza shop, anybody that accepts credit cards has to comply with what is called the PCI standard, which is the payment card industry.

So you have to have certain security in place, no matter what kind of business you are, if you are taking credit cards. And if you don't, there are massive fines that come from the payment card industry. that contract, I don't know if you checked it, but it's over 400 pages long that you sign\ just to take credit cards. Okay.

So just taking credit cards. So let's look at the requirements for PCI. There are 12 basic requirements on security to accept credit cards. Okay. and you look down this list of them and you compare it with our friends over dominion voting system. And they fail our voting systems that were used in so many States, including here in the Northeast, that system is not compliant with 10 of the 12 controls. In other words, it's failing 10 of them, basic ones.

This is a little slimy if you ask me because there's a comparison that I looked at here from the Gateway Pundit, and they looked at HOA voting software and HOA voting software is fully PCI compliant, right? These are just basic things you need to be compliant with us to run a pizza shop. Okay.

Yet the $800,000 that our States have paid dominion, that software 800,000 is far less secure than the $800 HOA voting software. So it's a shame, of course, Elizabeth Warren or Senator, she wrote a letter complaining about that.

Jim Polito: [00:08:27] So the liberals back then and the left and the anti-Trump crowd. They were all on board saying this system is bad and now all of a sudden. No problem, nothing to see here, folks.

And on top of all of that, we have the NSA and these other organizations saying, we have no evidence of any hacking. Everything was okay.

How deeply did you look? Did you look all the way down to every single local system? I'm not suggesting that there was some overreaching, conspiracy with, worldwide conspiracy, has been inferred. How about just a local little conspiracy? Do you know what I mean? In one or two precincts that's sometimes all it takes.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:15] Yeah. And just real quick here are the Fails for dominion software. No firewall that's required by PCI. They do not have password protection in place here. Many of these systems are sharing even the same password. Data dumps or private voter data are possible on this. Encrypted transmitted data. In most cases, these things were not hooked up to the internet, but in some precincts they were.

Jim Polito: [00:09:45] Yeah.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:46] No antivirus. They don't have proper controls in place for updating the software. And we heard about that right? The night before the election, all of a sudden their software getting pushed out. Restricted data access failed, the whole concept of the need to know. Many people external even to the secretary of state's office have access to some of this data. Unique IDs for access.

Restricted physical access. Create and maintain access logs. The logs on these systems can be altered by anybody with an administrative password.

Jim Polito: [00:10:21] Wow.

Unbelievable. that's heavy-duty. That's heavy-duty and these are the things that people need to, keep in mind. Do you know what I mean?

Like when you're talking about all these systems are okay and this and that. It isn't okay. I love your analogy of, yeah you want to do business and had to take your credit card, 400-page contract. Compared to the dominion system something more important than a simple financial transaction.

And it doesn't even come close to the protections that no, it just doesn't. It's crazy.

Every time you want to do something, it's voter intimidation. It's not. But it's the most important thing we all do.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:07] It's true. and it's apparently running windows seven, scan and touch it for vulnerabilities.

No, it's gone years with the same security issues nothing's been done. This is absolutely crazy. What the heck's going on. Yeah.

Jim Polito: [00:11:25] Craig, this has been fascinating. And our Craig Peterson folks has a show every Sunday at 11:00 AM on WTAG, WHYN Craig, in the meantime, we want to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving to everyone in your family. I hope everyone is safe, but, How can folks get in touch with you?

If you have a question, you can always email me Me@craigpeterson dot com or all of this stuff ends up on my website at craigpeterson.com. And you can subscribe right there. You'll get my weekly newsletter.

I've been sending out show notes and more recently every week, got a little training tidbit, two to three minutes to run through to help you understand your home computer and your business computers, what you should be doing.

So just. Craig peterson.com.

All right, Craig. Thank you very much. And I look forward to catching up with you after the holiday

alright

Craig Peterson: [00:12:20] and you have a great Thanksgiving too, Jim.

Jim Polito: [00:12:22] Thank you, Craig. All Craig Peterson, everybody.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:25] Oh, and by the way, as my little Roomba is cleaning up here in this studio. Hey, I want to thank everybody for listening and wish you a great Thanksgiving time with you and your family, I'll be on the radio again tomorrow morning, but I'm not sure we'll get this out in time. So if not, or even if we do. I appreciate you guys I really do. You help make this all worthwhile.

Take care. Talk to you probably tomorrow. Bye-bye.

---

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

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito.  We discussed Why I think it is safer to buy pizza than to Vote.  Then we got into the lack of deals this Black Friday and Cyber Monday and why it pays to shop around. Here we go with Jim.

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

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning, and we talked about the dominion voting systems. Did you know, your vote is not as safe as buying a pizza?

We went into that. the reason why I'm really upset with the way this whole software is set up is it's just craziness.

We talked a little bit about whether or not, you should actually be shopping on Black Friday. There are a lot of changes this year. So here we go with Mr. Polito.

Jim Polito: [00:00:33] Here he is. Always great to have him here and even though as a Canadian, he already had a Thanksgiving back in October. He joins us now leading into Thanksgiving, a lot of important stuff on the plate.

How about the Dominion voting system? But before that, How about his recommendation that you don't shop on Black Friday? Whoa, joining us now. Our good friend and tech talk guru. Craig Peterson. Good morning.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:03] Hey, good morning, Jim. It is one of those mornings. Isn't it?

Jim Polito: [00:01:08] It is. I want to get to the dominion thing, which is important.

It's relevant with the election, the president's complaints, but, you don't want me to shop on Black Friday? Is this a, just an ethical thing, a moral thing, or is this a Jim, I can save you more money thing?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:26] First of all, there's Cyber Monday, which of course people are now familiar with, which is the Monday after Black Friday.

And the deals are really interesting this year. I don't know what you want to blame it on, whether it's been some of the lockdown stuff or something else. The deals have been there all along. But this year, it looks like many of these retailers are looking to make up the difference of the money they lost because of us just not shopping anymore.

And they are not giving us these deals. They used to, in fact, these online deals now are. Pretty hard to come by.

Jim Polito: [00:02:03] Ah, so it's not so novel anymore, right? Oh

Craig Peterson: [00:02:09] Yeah. That's a really good way to put it. Yeah, I liked that.

Jim Polito: [00:02:12] So now they're just going to stick it to us through the whole thing.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:17] You also want to look at companies like Amazon. Amazon is expected to be a big winner this year, and so is our Walmart and some of the others.

But if you look at Amazon and look at their prices, people just assume that you're going to get the best price, the best value by shopping at Amazon. It certainly is probably the most convenient, especially if you pay that extra a hundred and change right every year to Amazon.

As it turns out, those deals that you're seeing on many of these sites, Amazon included aren't so hot. You really have to do comparison shopping.

Jim Polito: [00:02:58] Ah, I see that,

Hey, Our folks who do the financial exchange showed on TAG and HYN. Barry Armstrong told me a while ago, you know what, Jim, you should comparison shop when you're online shopping.

And I said, other than Amazon, he said, try Walmart. He said Walmart is really making an effort. For the things that Walmart stocks, there are times you can beat Amazon, and if you order enough, you get free shipping. He's right.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:26] Yeah, absolutely. And with Cyber Monday this year, again, we are expecting even better deals than we will be seen on Black Friday.

Compare, make sure you've got that budget line down, obviously the normal don't fall into the hole of running up some of your credit cards.  Look online is a great place to go. You probably also want to visit some of these local retailers. It's a shame to see all of these stores closing, but frankly, the majority of us will be shopping online this year.

It's like over 80%.

Jim Polito: [00:04:00] Wow. I remember years ago having conversations following the holidays and it'd be like, Oh, 20% of people shopped online, like this, and now the whole thing has flipped. COVID pushed it over the edge, but the whole thing was flipping.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:16] Yeah, it is flipped in a very big way.

Many of us, me included. We just go to Amazon and buy something. it's just so easy. My family. And as we've got a couple of kids. we, every year we have a gift exchange and rather than everybody buying something for everybody cause there was 10 of us. plus now the grandkids and the spouses, we have one of these sites that you just put everybody's name in and it goes ahead and split them up and says, okay, you've got stocking, you've got the main gift or this particular person and that site is free.

But here's how that works. You do some research using this site and they list here's what I want for Christmas sort of a thing. And they now get a commission on anything that you're buying. Via their sites. So every link that you click on, every gift that's in there tends to be with Amazon and they make over there one to 3% on every gift.

There's just not a big amount of money, but it's enough for them to have a whole business just based on that.

Jim Polito: [00:05:28] Wow. Wow.

All right. Let's get to, now that we've done the shopping, we've got our shopping out of the way we got to get down and dirty.

We've heard a lot about Dominion. This is the system for voting, that the president and his allies have pointed out is easily hacked and is not good. And, you've actually uncovered some more stuff about it.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:55] This is frankly, to me, the biggest indication of how bad this stuff is, but, I professionally do computer security, network security all the way from a little pizza shop, right by the studio. In fact, there's one all the way through the department of defense contractors.

So I see all of this security stuff. I see it almost every day, right? Yeah. And w here's the very basic level right there. There's the DOD and then there's a pizza shop. On the other side, the pizza shop, anybody that accepts credit cards has to comply with what is called the PCI standard, which is the payment card industry.

So you have to have certain security in place, no matter what kind of business you are, if you are taking credit cards. And if you don't, there are massive fines that come from the payment card industry. that contract, I don't know if you checked it, but it's over 400 pages long that you sign\ just to take credit cards. Okay.

So just taking credit cards. So let's look at the requirements for PCI. There are 12 basic requirements on security to accept credit cards. Okay. and you look down this list of them and you compare it with our friends over dominion voting system. And they fail our voting systems that were used in so many States, including here in the Northeast, that system is not compliant with 10 of the 12 controls. In other words, it's failing 10 of them, basic ones.

This is a little slimy if you ask me because there's a comparison that I looked at here from the Gateway Pundit, and they looked at HOA voting software and HOA  voting software is fully PCI compliant, right? These are just basic things you need to be compliant with us to run a pizza shop. Okay.

Yet the $800,000 that our States have paid dominion, that software 800,000 is far less secure than the $800 HOA voting software. So it's a shame, of course, Elizabeth Warren or Senator, she wrote a letter complaining about that.

Jim Polito: [00:08:27] So the liberals back then and the left and the anti-Trump crowd. They were all on board saying this system is bad and now all of a sudden. No problem, nothing to see here, folks.

And on top of all of that, we have the NSA and these other organizations saying, we have no evidence of any hacking. Everything was okay.

How deeply did you look? Did you look all the way down to every single local system? I'm not suggesting that there was some overreaching, conspiracy with, worldwide conspiracy, has been inferred. How about just a local little conspiracy? Do you know what I mean? In one or two precincts that's sometimes all it takes.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:15] Yeah. And just real quick here are the Fails for dominion software. No firewall that's required by PCI. They do not have password protection in place here. Many of these systems are sharing even the same password. Data dumps or private voter data are possible on this. Encrypted transmitted data. In most cases, these things were not hooked up to the internet, but in some precincts they were.

Jim Polito: [00:09:45] Yeah.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:46] No antivirus. They don't have proper controls in place for updating the software. And we heard about that right? The night before the election, all of a sudden their software getting pushed out. Restricted data access failed, the whole concept of the need to know. Many people external even to the secretary of state's office have access to some of this data. Unique IDs for access.

Restricted physical access. Create and maintain access logs. The logs on these systems can be altered by anybody with an administrative password.

Jim Polito: [00:10:21] Wow.

Unbelievable. that's heavy-duty. That's heavy-duty and these are the things that people need to, keep in mind. Do you know what I mean?

Like when you're talking about all these systems are okay and this and that. It isn't okay.  I love your analogy of, yeah you want to do business and had to take your credit card, 400-page contract. Compared to the dominion system something more important than a simple financial transaction.

And it doesn't even come close to the protections that no, it just doesn't. It's crazy.

Every time you want to do something, it's voter intimidation. It's not. But it's the most important thing we all do.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:07] It's true. and it's apparently running windows seven, scan and touch it for vulnerabilities.

No, it's gone years with the same security issues nothing's been done. This is absolutely crazy. What the heck's going on. Yeah.

Jim Polito: [00:11:25] Craig, this has been fascinating. And our Craig Peterson folks has a show every Sunday at 11:00 AM on WTAG, WHYN Craig, in the meantime, we want to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving to everyone in your family. I hope everyone is safe, but, How can folks get in touch with you?

If you have a question, you can always email me Me@craigpeterson dot com or all of this stuff ends up on my website at craigpeterson.com. And you can subscribe right there. You'll get my weekly newsletter.

I've been sending out show notes and more recently every week, got a little training tidbit, two to three minutes to run through to help you understand your home computer and your business computers, what you should be doing.

So just. Craig peterson.com.

All right, Craig. Thank you very much. And I look forward to catching up with you after the holiday

alright

Craig Peterson: [00:12:20] and you have a great Thanksgiving too, Jim.

Jim Polito: [00:12:22] Thank you, Craig. All Craig Peterson, everybody.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:25] Oh, and by the way, as my little Roomba is cleaning up here in this studio. Hey, I want to thank everybody for listening and wish you a great Thanksgiving time with you and your family, I'll be on the radio again tomorrow morning, but I'm not sure we'll get this out in time. So if not, or even if we do. I appreciate you guys  I really do. You help make this all worthwhile.

Take care. Talk to you probably tomorrow. Bye-bye.

--- 

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

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito. We discussed alternatives to big tech social media platforms and why they should big tech should lose section 230 protections. Here we go with Jim.

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

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Parler. They have committed to not blocking the things that you want to say. They're not going to hire people who hate you to somehow do something called fact-checking, which doesn't mean fact-checking, which just, again, it's so Orwellian to change the language.

Hello everybody. Craig Peterson. I had a great little chat this morning with Mr. Jim Palito about social media alternatives. Specifically, we spoke about Parler, AKA parlay, and I thought it went really well. It was very, very, very quick.

Jim couldn't believe how fast the time went. This is a time when we need an alternative. We've got right now, today as I'm putting this together, it's Tuesday, and we've got Jack Dorsey, the Twitter guy, and we've got the guy from Facebook are both in front of the Senate, virtually answering questions about why they messed around with conservative information online. Here we go with Jim, and we talk all about it.

Jim Polito: [00:01:15] He is the man with the plan, the man who knows it all. Our good friend, one of our most popular guests every Tuesday at this time. Tech talk guru, Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:29] Hey, good morning. I don't forget the best-looking guest on Tuesdays.

Jim Polito: [00:01:33] Best looking guest on Tuesday. I hope your ears weren't ringing.

We were talking with our national correspondent, who is based out of Philly, and he was talking about how cold it is up here. I said, well, our Tuesday guest Craig Peterson, he knows real cold. He came from the great white North. And uh, yay. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. I mean, really, you know, cold, as a matter of fact, you can survive living in the temperature that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination needs to be stored.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:15] Well, I don't know about that. That there's somehow that liquid nitrogen-oxygen thing scares me.

Jim Polito: [00:02:24] Well, anyway. Hey, um, always a pleasure to be with you. I do want to leave it up to you to discuss what you'd like to discuss today. Cause we're at the point where there's so much stuff going on. But I do want to discuss parlay, which, uh, but it's spelled P a R L E R. Choose the upstart conservative should I say Twitter? And has been growing exponentially since late in the election, the presidential election. Am I correct?

Craig Peterson: [00:02:59] You are. And I'm on parler. I have been for a while, and you're right. Parlay is how they used to pronounce it anyway.

Jim Polito: [00:03:07] Yeah, how do they pronounce it parler now? I just want to make sure. Okay,

Craig Peterson: [00:03:13] Well then, now they pronounced it. Parler because people were confused. They didn't really understand, and they don't know what parlay means. I thought Parler was perfect. Right. Because it was, we learned from captain Jack Sparrow, when you want to talk under a flag of truth,

Jim Polito: [00:03:28] Yes, you Parler

Craig Peterson: [00:03:30] Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jim Polito: [00:03:32] And it's also, you know, French for speak, so you know. Parler Vous Francais. You know.

Craig Peterson: [00:03:33] Craig speaking French

Forget it. Now. I'm done. See, but that was it. That was about it. And I know some bad words, and I had French for about three years and, uh, I think four actually, I had French for about four years now. I never did that well in it. All right. So let's talk about it because, um, I'm on it. I got on it early because I said, Oh, this new platform, and I always want to get Jim Polito, you know so that I don't have to be like the real Jim Pollito.

Like Donald Trump has to be the real Donald Trump, I have Jim Polito on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and now, parler. So tell us about it.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:27] It really is a replacement for Twitter. You're right about that. It has grown 300% just in the last little while. It has been growing like crazy as conservatives have felt that they needed to get away from Twitter. Remember Twitter. It's not just that they are bold in saying, there are people who disagree with this statement, even though it might be an opinion and might even be presented as an opinion. Twitter part of the problem is everything you see, you see, not because you follow Jim Pollito on Twitter, you don't see. Trump's tweets because you followed president Trump. No, no. You see what they want you to see no matter what, which is a real big problem. So with parler, they have committed to not blocking the things that you want to say. They're not going to hire people who hate you to somehow do something called fact-checking. Which doesn't mean fact-checking, which just, again, it's so Orwellian to change the language, and many people are using it.

I am too. And there are other alternatives that are out there right now. There's an alternative to YouTube. I don't know if you've heard about MagaBook, M A G A - Make America Great Again. Yeah.

Jim Polito: [00:05:50] Yeah. So there are alternatives. The question is, I mean, I know in parler has benefited from the problems with complaints about Facebook and Twitter, especially over the article in the New York Post, which kind of started it all.

Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg, I think, are in DC again today. To answer questions. I believe that I believe today they are before a congressional committee. But Parler really seized upon that. Now the question is, when you compete with any massive monopoly, can they survive?

Craig Peterson: [00:06:28] Yeah, that's a good question. But I got to point out the people behind them. You've got the number one conservative podcast in the country is behind Parler. In fact, he owns part of parler now. Senators Ted Cruz and Devin Nunez, of course, he's a rep. They have both been pushing Parler, and because of the censorship, I think they stand a pretty good chance.

It's pretty new 2018 is when Parler first came online. I became aware of it about six months ago, really, and signed up, and I do a little bit. Candace Owens was probably the first high profile conservative to bail on Twitter and join Parler.

Jim Polito: [00:07:12] Yeah, I mean, for me, well, I just got listeners customed to Facebook and Twitter and following me there and now to flip them over. Now, there are listeners who are writing to me and saying, Hey, how come you're not active on parler?

And I, you have to make sure. That I do get active and, and make sure that I use my, use my name there and, and spread the word there. I do notice, though, that the president, Craig, continues to use Twitter.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:44] Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's where most people are, and he likes to share the pot. And so that just, that's where he gets the most comments and everything.

And it's interesting when you're talking about like the president and, and Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. Now look at so many of these companies. How well will Twitter do? How well will CNN do, uh, to use the Nixon quote if they don't have Trump to kick around anymore?

Jim Polito: [00:08:12] Oh, I've said that. Yeah. What are you going to do now?

The big boogeyman is gone. The big orange man, the great pumpkin, is gone. What are you going to do? Who are you going to blame?

Craig Peterson: [00:08:21] So I think that's going to hurt some of these left-wing sides, like the Twitters of the world, but it's going to help Parler. It's going to help some of these other sites that are out there.

I think YouTube, that's going to be a hard one to beat down because there's just so much content. But Twitter is it's up to date, right? It's up to the minute. You're not looking for a video, those recorded three years ago. So I think Google is going to hold onto that. But Jim, I've had so many of our listeners contact me over the last two to three weeks, way, way more. It's up hundreds of percent asking. So, what do I do? I don't like Google. I don't trust Google anymore. Many of our listeners really aren't Twitter people, but they are on Facebook. What do I do about Facebook? And right now, I think the only real viable alternative to all of those is, frankly, the Parler site parler.com, P A R L E R.com.

I've been recommending to everybody stop using Google for most things. I cannot do research anymore, using Google. DuckduckGo. Like kids game where you play. Yeah. They will show you the types of results you would expect to get from Google. But Google now, with all of their censoring and waiting and everything else. Just isn't showing you, frankly, even what it used to show you,

Jim Polito: [00:09:54] You know what I find I do, I'm finding it and cause I have been using duckduckgo. And because I look at, I put something in, and I see the first 10 results, and I know Google's going to say, Jim, this is based upon people's previous clicks now.

No, it isn't, um, it's based on their previous clicks. Cause you've been pushing this agenda. I find that for commercial endeavors, like I want to review a product or I want to look at something like that. I go to Google when I want to do my stuff. I go to duckduckgo because I know I will be more at ease.

I won't have to scroll through three pages just to find what I'm looking for. I find it much easier. If I'm looking for someone with a conservative opinion on some event. I have an easier time with that go because I get it all. They don't push the conservative side. I just get it all.

Right. Yeah. This is what we had hoped for, with the internet when it all started all those years ago. Look at what's happening, even more divisiveness.

Yeah. It's just not good. Craig, this was. Actually, I can't believe the time just flew by how fascinating this was. I'm gonna follow your lead.

I'm doing duck, duck go, but I'm gonna follow your lead. I'm going to get on parler. I mean, I'm on it, but get on it and use it. Why not?

Craig Peterson: [00:11:22] There are apps for everything. You can use it from a web page on your desktop. It's available everywhere, and yeah. Why not the top conservative voices now, including Mr. Jim Polito?

Jim Polito: [00:11:36] Well, I was there. I just wasn't active. You'll see the name, you'll see the name Jim Polito, and you'll see a picture. That's about it.

All right, Craig, as usual, excellent segment. Craig's got a great show on WTA G and W H Y N every Sunday morning at 11:00 AM. It's also podcasting on the websites, but Craig, how else can folks reach you?

Craig Peterson: [00:12:01] I've been really working on some special reports for people just absolutely free. I'm not going to hammer you write this. I'm not like Mr. Marketing. I'm Mr. Technology. There are things people need to know. So make sure you are getting my weekly newsletter, and that'll also, you need to reply to those, and I will respond to you.

So just go to Craig peterson.com/. Subscribe, and I'll send you some of these things automatically. If you have a question, just replied to those emails again. That's Craig peterson.com/subscribe.

Jim Polito: [00:12:36] Craig always a pleasure, always great to talk with you. We will catch up with you next Tuesday.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:43] Hey, thanks, Jim. Take care.

Jim Polito: [00:12:45] You too. Bye. Bye.

Craig Peterson, everybody.

---

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