Podcasts about now apple

Apple announced its first Macbook’s running on a new chipset, called Apple M1. Now Apple says this processor is faster than most everything you can think of and it makes Macs much much better. To know more, tune in to this week's episode as @undertecher discuss all that's been trending in the tech world.

Welcome! Craig explains, why Apple and Google charge Apps 30%? Listen in to find out. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Read More: Musk says that Neuralink implants are close to ready for human testing Is China the World’s Greatest Cyber Power? Russian tourist offered employees $1 million to cripple Tesla with malware Ransomware Red Flags: 7 Signs You’re About to Get Hit IT blunder permanently erases 145,000 users' personal chats in KPMG's Microsoft Teams deployment – memo Apple won’t let Facebook tell users about 30% Apple tax on events Tesla with Autopilot hits cop car - driver admits he was watching a movie iOS 14 Privacy settings will tank ad targeting business, Facebook warns --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] You're buying apps from those app stores. Did you know that the app stores take your commission, shocker, and some people are very upset about this, and particularly Facebook, as it turns out, we'll tell you why? Hello everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for being with us today. This is a great weekend. I love the weekends. I love it when they come around, take a little bit of time and enjoy it. Hey, Apple, these guys, right? Apple's built a pretty darn big business nurse. In fact, right now, I think Apple's still the most highly valued business ever. It's like the first business in history to hit a 2 billion or trillion, I should say. A dollar, a valuation. That's just an absolutely amazing kid right down to this. Apple is doing some just frankly, astounding things. Now Apple has never been one to really create a market. There were some amazing MP3 players before Apple came out with their iPod. There were other smart devices before Apple came up Newton or, the iPhone as we have today. Of course, there were other operating systems around before Macko S which was is based on a Unix operating system. We'll leave it at that don't want to get too geeky on everybody. Apple, of course, came up with the iPad, which is just a bigger smart device, right? They weren't the first ones to have a tablet, but what they've been able to do is really capture people's imagination and help them to make a big change in their lives with technology. One of the things Apple has stressed and has been very good at is trying to keep our information safe. I mentioned Google in the last segment and Google. Is a company that's just trying to suck up everything and sell everything about you. Apple is not trying to do that at all. Apple wants to make money. Yeah. But it wants to make money because you like them. So you buy an app. When you buy an app off of that app store, Guess what happens? Apple we'll charge the developer a fee. Now I don't consider that to be very surprising, I guess I don't know about you, but Apple, they made this ecosystem. They own this ecosystem. Apple has done just amazing things with it. It has people who review the software. That's submitted for inclusion in the apps to make sure that there's no bad code in there. That's going to try and steal your data. Now, nothing to a hundred percent. But they do. Police did pretty darn well. They also advertise it. The apps they promote the apps. They give the developers, this, all the software. They need to develop apps for a hundred bucks. You can join the whole Apple developers program, do all kinds of stuff, even camp with a new programming language called Swift. So there is an article this week in ARS Technica. That's talking about-face now. Again. Oh, let's talk about what happens here. You buy an app off of the app store. Apple gets 30%. Of that revenue. So if you pay a dollar, Apple gets 30 cents just to keep this simple. The same thing is true for the Google play store. Now, the reason I'm bringing this all up is that we just had some big news out there about some of these app stores and apps being banned. From the Apple store. So it started first with the Apple store and then Google jumped right on it very quickly. Fortnite is out there saying, you can't ban us from the store. why was it banned? it has to do again with this payment system. If you buy an app for 10 bucks, Apple gets 30% of that. So they'll get three bucks, but you notice a lot of apps have in-app purchases. That's particularly true when you start talking about these games and Fortnite is Epic games. It's just a perfect example of that. You want to move further along in the game, you want to buy some additional virtual property inside the game. Remember how your assets trying to tax that, you want to do any of that stuff. They might charge you 50 cents or a buck. How about candy crush, right? How many people have I seen playing candy crush and they pay to play it and they pay to get cheats in candy crush? I remember getting cheats for doom way back when I found out what they were, I didn't pay for them little sneeze there. People are using these in-app purchases and that's where the problem's coming in. Now, of course, they'd rather you didn't. They have to pay 30% that developers right to Apple, but Apple's rules, state quite clearly that an app developer, she really has to use them. The purchase features that Apple provides them with. Which also, by the way, provide you with protection so that you don't have to worry about how good is the developer's store that's might be storing my credit card information, et cetera, but they say you have to use our technology. If you are going to be selling something inside your app. That's where the big problem came in the big divide because Epic games decided they were going to just set it up. So yeah, you can get the app. why not have the app for free? Yeah. It's for free on the app store. Then if you want to upgrade, just you just go to go, yeah. Go to our website there. They're over at Epic games and, we'll give you a 20% discount. So there's still making more money than they would have. If they had gone through the Apple app store. So Apple got very upset with them and not only did Apple but Google when they can figure it out, what was going on and this kind of Daisy chained into the WordPress app and everything else that it really got amazing here. So Apple found out about something Facebook was going to do inside the Facebook app. Facebook put something in there to warn users of the Facebook app that Apple would take 30% of the in-event payments. So if you registered for any event, a cooking class, whatever it might be on Facebook, Apple would take 30%. Facebook is trying to be actually for over a year now, make it so their platform can be used for training where you can sell it information products, where they can be sold. You can just go there. So they were going to put a message in there saying Apple is going to take 30% of the event payments, Apple wasn't too happy about that. And they nixed that message, frankly. Then Facebook announced a new feature. For paid events earlier this month, so that you could host these workout sessions, happy hours, whatever you wanted to charge people to participate in. In its announcement, Facebook said that on its site, that it was not taking a cut of customer's payments. So businesses could keep up a hundred percent of the revenue they generate over on the Android platform because Google was not going to charge that commission on events. So back and forth and back and forth. The big question that it comes down to is whose platform is it? And I want all of you guys that are business people out there to remember that and remember that well, whose platform is it? Is it Facebook's platform? If you're on the facebook.com site, is it Apple's platform if you were writing or using an iOS app? So whose customer is it? Is it Facebook's customer. Is it Apple's customer? Is it Google's customer or is it your customer? So remember that because, in reality, any of these companies can change any of their rules at almost any time. So always make sure if you are communicating with your customers or prospects that you. Drive them off of that platform onto something you own like a website so that you can continue to communicate with them, even if Apple and Google and Facebook decide to up to an eight percent tax if you will. All right, Steve, go round. When we get back, we're going to be talking about it. The seven signs that you're about to get hit by ransomware. A great article out on dark reading. Make sure you sign up for my newsletter. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Stick around. We'll be right back. --- 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

In this episode: The company behind Fortnite dared Apple to shutter its game on iPhones. Now Apple has gone ahead and sort of done that. American Express to acquire online lender Kabbage Fitbit Study Suggests Wearables Can Detect Covid-19 Before Symptoms Appear Exclusive: Amazon in talks to invest in cloud services company Rackspace, say sources PadSplit uses the Airbnb model to tackle the country’s affordable housing crisis Lyft will suspend its ride-hailing service in California A New ‘Franchise’ Model Could Help Uber and Lyft — but Not Their Driver The future of Uber and Lyft in California: What you need to know Weird and Wacky: Apple reportedly made a secret iPod with a Geiger counter for the U.S. government Tech Rec: Sanjay - Roadtrippers Adam - Headline Analyzer --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/techtalkyall/message

Welcome! Craig discusses the difference between Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and why Apple is Winning the AI Game. Then he tells you about a cool new website that can help us all alleviate a bit of the cabin fever this pandemic has caused. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Read More: Window Swap Lets You Enjoy the View From Other People's Windows Around the World Report: Hundreds of apps have hidden tracking software used by the government Researcher Finds New Office Macro Attacks for MacOS New cars can stay in their lane—but might not stop for parked cars Here’s why Apple believes it’s an AI leader—and why it says critics have it all wrong Snapdragon chip flaws put >1 billion Android phones at risk of data theft Trump Targets WeChat and TikTok, in Sharp Escalation With China Pen Testers Who Got Arrested Doing Their Jobs Tell All Information Operations Spotlighted at Black Hat as Election Worries Rise --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: [00:00:00] Craig Peterson: Artificial intelligence machine learning. Those terms are incorrectly used interchangeably. We're going to talk about what Apple means by it. Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson. Thanks for joining me. I'm on, of course, every weekend at this time on this station. and it is just a gas. I'm so glad that I'm here. You can also listen to me during the weekdays during the morning drive time, glad to meet you there. Of course, most people who listening, subscribe to my newsletter. So you can get all of these articles updates on what's going on, things about our courses and classes in our lives. Everything that we're doing, and you can get all of that for free. By going to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. In fact, I've got some real. Cool pre stuff for you that I'll be sending to you over the first week. [00:01:00] So I don't overwhelm you, but some checklists, some cheat sheets, some reboot stuff, you're going to love it. So Craig Peter sohn.com/subscribe. It applies to you as a business, but you know what? Most of that same stuff applies to home users too. So whether you are someone a, an ops person in a business, you're the manager and you need to understand this a little bit or. You're a home user. I have a lot of business owners, including one. I got a great email from here a week ago and he runs a 500 person plus now. So I guess it's medium business, not small anymore, a business that has various types of security requirements. And, he said he loved the security reboot guide. And here he is a big, important CEO. So it's available to you to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. Now Apple has been at the forefront of something called machine learning for a while. If you have an iPhone that's within the last couple of generations, you might not be aware of it, but it has a machine learning chip, right? [00:02:00] Built right into it. It's an integral part of that phone now. And it's used for a lot of things, unlike goals. And also this is true of Amazon with their echo, the Alexa devices where. It records something and then sends it up to the cloud where it's analyzed and decides what it is you want. And then it comes back down with the risk. Want, unlike that well, the way everybody else does it, Apple has been working for years now on having all of those smarts right in your phone. Remember, I talked about Apple all the time and about how they are the only choice when it comes to reasonable security. Part of the reason is they don't make money off of your data and they are trying to keep it private. [00:03:00] So by having everything on the phone and using it has a secure enclave and it just does so many things. But doing that means they don't even get that data. All handled by your phone locally. And now it's using machine learning for some of the very cool stuff. Since I think the iPhone eight, it's had a special portrait mode that's built-in, we have more fancy mood modes that are coming up here in the future, but those are all via machine. Learning. Now I read an article that kind of got me upset a few weeks ago and it got a backward. So I got to explain this to everybody. Artificial intelligence is the highest layer, right? Artificial intelligence is something that would easily pass. What's called the Turing test. You've probably heard of that four. And so for those of you who know what it is, bear with me for just a minute and we'll help those that don't know what it is. Alan Turing, absolute genius. He is the guy behind the machine that broke the German enigma code in world war II. You might remember seeing the movie, which was really quite good by the way. [00:04:00] You might want to check it out, but just an amazing man. And he developed this basic, the concept of a machine, an artificial intelligence machine will be considered serious artificial intelligence when. You cannot distinguish whether or not you're talking to a machine, so you can ask your questions, any questions you want and yeah, it will respond appropriately. And as part of those responses, it says, it's going to try and lead you down a certain road, right? Like you wouldn't have a conversation. And you're not going to be able to tell if it's a real computer or a real person that's behind that. that's the basics of the Turing test. That's the highest level. [00:05:00] That's artificial intelligence. That's something we, I have not achieved. It learned itself. It figures everything out. It can talk, you can do all kinds of things. Think of the Corbyn project from the early sixties and other sci-fi movies and what that computer did. That's artificial intelligence machine learning is quite a few steps beneath that. And machine learning means that there is a machine that has been programmed to learn certain things. So it might learn for instance, what, an APL looks like a dog looks like a cat looks like. And so it'll try. Thousands of hundreds of thousands of times to identify something and learn a little bit every time until it gets to the point where it can distinguish by itself. So basically the last question, it's a cat and you'll say, no, is this a cat? And you'll say, no, boring with the massive database bases that are online, Google that Google has and others, it was able to feed all this information in and the machine. Kinda learned how to identify these different things. [00:06:00] Now, Google home, a big problem with that. I probably don't want to go into that right now, but it had a real problem with distinguishing some things, particularly when it came to people and, they will just leave it there. And I'll find a kid into a religious ish war right now, but. Apple believes it's a leader in AI. That doesn't mean it's got AI right now. But in this case, it has that subset known as machine learning. And it is involved in almost every aspect right of your iPhone. You don't even know that it's there. Apple hasn't been touting it like some of them, these other guys have, but that's where they are going now. [00:07:00] You've heard of course, about the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. And they're always touting about how they've got the AI and they've got the machine learning again at best, in reality, it's machine learning, which is a subset of AI, but Apple's got it in all the iPhones, iPads, even now the Apple watch has that in there. And later this year, there's going to be two. New max, that'll be out Mac books that are going to be using Apple's own CPU technology, own central processors, Intel out the door. Okay. And because they have now their own technology, their own processes in there, they're going to be able to do some very cool stuff, including pudding. This machine learning chip into our desktops and laptops. It's absolutely going to be amazing. We'll see what happens here. So all of this, by the way, once you, if you can you follow along, this is again, this is an ARS Technica article. I love these guys. If you're watching on video, of course, I have it up on the screen right now, but ARS Technica goes into a bit of detail about what Apple is trying to do, and they were able to get. [00:08:00] quite Of Google's AI and search to come over to Apple back in 2018. So he's been very busy working on it. it's kinda cool here. He says, when I joined Apple, I was already an iPad user and I loved the pencil. So I would track down the software teams and I would say, okay, where's the machine learning team that's working on handwriting. And I couldn't find it. Turns out that there was no handwriting AI team at all, or machine learning team. So here's really surprised I was able to turn Apple around. So now machine learning is a part of absolutely everything inside Apple. So it's a very good thing. I think it is using it today. They are going to create more machine learning features. You'll see more of them in the iPhone, 12 they're already working on automatically blurring out backgrounds, putting different backgrounds in, even in FaceTime, having multiple people have a look like they are all in this same room, which is just absolutely amazing. [00:09:00] You take your picture and Tada, there's your whole family, even though they weren't really there absolutely cool stuff. So kudos to Apple for doing all of that. when we get back, we're going to talk about it. Another reason, never to use Android as well. There aren't enough out there, basically the Snapdragon chip that so many of them are using this put more than 1 billion Android devices at risk of data threat in a very big way. So we'll be talking about that. And before we go, I want to talk about this really quickly. You might want to check this out right now on your, Computer or your phone or wherever it is. Many of us are stuck at home and that can be a big problem, right? Being stuck at home travel and leisure magazine is where I found this article. [00:10:00] It's called window swap. You'll find it online at window dash, swap.com and it has 10-minute videos from people's windows, all around the world. So if you go to windows, swap.com, you're just going to be absolutely blown away. I think this is the neatest thing ever. You click on open a window, somewhere in the world and that's it. It's opening up for me right now. And here is a window in Dublin. Ireland is what it's showing me right now. And you can submit your own window. It has to be reviewed and approved. And that can take a little bit because apparently they've been total. Overwhelmed with submissions, Dublin Ireland. Let's see. [00:11:00] What's next up here for me Amsterdam. The Netherlands. Now they're supposed to, you can probably hear that to include sound and it's supposed to be a fixed. Picture. So what you're hearing is the video from a house that is our apartment, whatever that's sitting right there on the water, and it's watching a boat go along the canal in Amsterdam. So check this out. I don't think you will be disappointed at all. I've seen now windows from all over. Some of the stuff in Ireland is so cool and the European stuff, it's just like traveling. Some of these airlines right now, by the way, are reporting a 95 decrease in travel, the cruise lines. I just saw a thing from Norwegian this week, they have lost 99% of their business. Just absolutely amazing. And their revenue is down by a thousandfold. If you complete that, it's just absolutely amazing. So if you're stuck at home, you want to do a little touring. Do this, and what it reminds me of is Marty McFly, his living room and how they had that big wall with the big pictures on it. [00:12:00] That you could do this with your TV. If you got Apple TV, for instance, or there are other ways to hook it up, but you just throw it up on your TV. And now you get to see all of this cool stuff. Go by window dash, swapped.com. Do you have any questions for me? And he suggestions, by all means, email me and he had Craig peterson.com. You can also. Post a question right there on Craig peterson.com. we're going to talk about a really bad thing here. Hundreds of apps with hidden software tracking used by the government. When we get back. Listening to Craig Peterson, stick around. --- 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 discusses the flaw in the Snapdragon chip architecture and how has put 1 Billion Android devices at risk. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Read More: Window Swap Lets You Enjoy the View From Other People's Windows Around the World Report: Hundreds of apps have hidden tracking software used by the government Researcher Finds New Office Macro Attacks for MacOS New cars can stay in their lane—but might not stop for parked cars Here’s why Apple believes it’s an AI leader—and why it says critics have it all wrong Snapdragon chip flaws put >1 billion Android phones at risk of data theft Trump Targets WeChat and TikTok, in Sharp Escalation With China Pen Testers Who Got Arrested Doing Their Jobs Tell All Information Operations Spotlighted at Black Hat as Election Worries Rise --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: [00:00:00] Craig Peterson: As if I needed another reason to tell you not to buy Android, we've got a very big one right now. Stick around. Here we go. Hey everybody. Thanks for sticking around. Of course, this is Craig Peterson on WGAN online. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. I really appreciate everybody being with us today. There is always a lot of news to understand and know, and it's confusing. Hey, I get it a lot of people get very confused, trying to figure out what's what, and particularly when I start getting into the reasons you should not be using these VPN services that are constantly being sold to you, in various. [00:01:00] Places online and elsewhere. that's what I'm here for. I go through the articles every week and of course there are probably tens of thousands of them, but I always look at a thousand or more. I look at these things every day and try and find the top ones for the week. The things I think you might be interested in, but most particularly the things I think you need to know, and I put them together. And then I'll send some of that out to the radio stations that I'm on to talk about what it is, what's going on, all of that sort of thing. I enjoy doing this obviously, and I enjoy helping you out, but there's only one way that you can get these things directly. If you want to follow along on the radio show, You need to go to Craig Peterson.com/subscribe. We had a record number of subscribers last week, new subscribers to our weekly newsletter. You get all of that. Plus new subscribers. Get a plethora of some of my special reports. So they come over, every couple of days after you sign up. I really am trying to help everybody out here. So make sure you are on that list. [00:02:00] Craig peterson.com/subscribe. I've been teasing something here. That's very concerning to me. If much about most of these smart devices nowadays, they are all more or less based around what's called an arm architecture. By the way, there is some crazy stuff happening in China right now, because this arm architecture is owned by a US company. I think it's actually called arm inc. This is an architecture that use to design an implant, the central processing unit of many computers, including Apple iPhones, et cetera. That's very important stuff. Now Apple took the designs and what we in the industry called forked it so that they had their own version and they left the main line stuff. [00:03:00] Behind, but many other companies have continued to license it and get there the core really of the CPU, that core stuff from the arm group. Now, Qualcomm is one of those companies that uses it. There are many others and China has been licensing this technology, various Chinese firms. Again. From the U S arm inc. From now you remember, and we'll talk about this in a few minutes or the segment. I think it is a Tik Tok and we chat and this escalation with president Trump. We'll talk about what my feelings on that are. The problem is that China will no longer have the right to manufacture factor these chips based on the arm technology. [00:04:00] So that's a huge blow to China, frankly. I don't know that they'll be able to recover from this, I guess what could happen? Is China could say, forget about it. we're not going to follow those intellectual property laws. We already know they don't follow a lot of the intellectual property laws. They don't seem to care. so just keep making them, let them try and come after us nothing's going to happen. so that might well happen. But this is going to be quite a poke in the eye for China. No question about it. Now, the chip that we're talking and about here now is Qualcomm's snap, dragon chip. That's what it's called. There's a billion or more Android devices that are using this chip that's based on an industry standard, but using this Snapdragon chip, a billion or more. it turns out that there are more than 400 vulnerabilities known in Qualcomm Snapdragon chip that can turn the CPU in your Android device. [00:05:00] Into a spine tool. Isn't that absolutely amazing. Not all 400. We'll let them do that, but there's plenty that will, so they can exploit these in different ways. So the vulnerabilities can be exploited very easily. You might remember the whole thing with Jeff Bezos and his divorce and the Saudi Prince, supposedly sending the video. these vulnerabilities in the Snapdragon chip, which may be what were used. I'm trying to remember if Bezos had an iPhone or not back then, but, these vulnerabilities can be exploited. By simply downloading a video or any other content, like a graphic, a steel frame, a graphic that's embedded in an email. [00:06:00] Any time there's content that's rendered by the Snapdragon chip, it can be exploited. The targets can also be attacked by installing malicious apps that require no permission from the Android device owner at all. Then from there, attackers can monitor locations, listened to. Listen to nearby audio in real time, they can take photos and videos off of your device. They can upload them and it's possible to render the phone completely unresponsive. If they want to. These infections can also be hidden from the operating system in such a way that it makes disinfecting it reloading the operating system. Pretty difficult, if possible at all. So we've got some bad news for you. [00:07:00] If you're running an Android, still get rid of it. I keep telling people and they don't do it. I don't know if they don't believe me or what. so let's dig into this a little bit more Snapchat again. Dragon is. A system on a chip. if you had some of the older PCs, you can think of the original IBM PC or the PCX T or the a T all the way on until just maybe 10 years ago, five years ago, even you open up a computer and you'd see in there a bunch of discreet. Chips, you might see an Intel chip on that motherboard or maybe a power PC chip, if it was a Mac. Then there'd be a bunch of support chips nowadays. There's GPS that are on that, motherboard or on that board anyways. Then you have you're, you are to your serial ports and your parallel port. All of those were discrete. [00:08:00] Processes or chips. Why fi everything? Snapdragon is a system on a chip that has basically all of that on one chip. It's got a CPU, it's got a graphics processor. It does Dignitas digital signal processing. It has charging abilities controlled by the main chip video audio, augmented reality, all of your multimedia functions. Absolutely. Everything. With the di digital signal processor, that's on the chip that allows apps to really that understand how to use that DSP, how to really speed things up. But unfortunately, it's also created these 400 attack surfaces, just absolutely crazy. This is from security point from checkpoint. They've been around a very long time. They have a rapport to these vulnerabilities. They're being quoted here in ARS Technica saying, the DSP chips provide a relatively economical solution that allows mobile phones to provide the end users with more functionality and enable innovative features. [00:09:00] They do come at a cost chips, introduced new attack surfaces, and we. Points to the mobile devices. DSP chips are much more vulnerable to risks as they are being managed as black boxes, since it can be very complex or anyone other than the manufacturer reviewed the design, the functionality or their code. So call has a release out that is a fix for some of these flaws, but. It has not been included in the Android operating system or any Android device nears. Anyone can tell that uses the snap point, or Snapdragon, I should say. That's according to checkpoint, there you go. Are sent, Nicole went in as Google when they're going to include those Qualcomm patches. [00:10:00] And the company spokesman said to check with Qualcomm and Qualcomm wouldn't respond or didn't respond. these are some serious CVS for those of you who are. More technical in the security side and the Qualcomm compute DSP vulnerability is absolutely crazy. Okay. Now they are saying, Qualcomm is saying that they have no evidence as being currently exploited, but I can think of a few cases where it really smells like maybe that's what was exploited, make sure this is, common sense. You only. Download apps from the Google play store. The official store never used an alternative store. Never route your phone, right? No jailbreak your phone because all of those things make you even more vulnerable. You keep asking Craig, Greg, Android's fine. In fact, I got on the phone with. the gentleman who used to be the chief technology officer for the state of New Hampshire, did a lot of work for him, my company, over the years, setting up all of the stuff for the state. [00:11:00] And, he assumed I had an Android phone. Cause you can play with it. You can take it apart. You can route it. You can do all of this stuff. No, I don't. I had one way back one, but not since never since the biggest problem with Android. Is what was just disclosed here. Patches don't make it out to the devices. And this is more proof of that. Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson. Make sure you get all of this in your mailbox. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. We're talking about President Trump. When we get back right here on WGAN and online@craigpeterson.com. --- 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 Monday morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jack Heath this morning discussing Apple's new hardware and what it means for all of us - especially road warriors and the latest on the big Twitter 'God-Mode" hack. Here we go with Jack. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com ---  Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: And the Uber employees we're using God mode in order to monitor celebrities, where they were going, sports people, et cetera, what they were doing and they got nailed for that. Well it turns out in the Twitterverse, they had a similar program. [00:00:16] Hey, good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here, and Jack and I got into not just what's happening with Apple , but the whole Twitter thing. [00:00:27]Some interesting stuff came out over the weekend about who actually seems to have pulled this off. [00:00:34] Jack Heath: Right now with the tech talk, a tech stock update. Craig Peterson joins a slab nano affair with friends. Good morning, Craig. [00:00:41] Craig Peterson: Hey, good morning, Jack. [00:00:42] Jack Heath: Hey, uh, working from home and trying to keep it secure. You have an update when it comes to Apple. [00:00:48] Craig Peterson: Yeah. This is kind of interesting. Now Apple has been busy, of course, as they always are trying to come up with some new devices. What Apple's decided to do is solve really the worst thing about working remotely.  How do you keep that computer going all day long, all day real battery life, and the biggest complaint about the laptops. [00:01:08]So Apple has decided to drop Intel processors. That's a very, very big announcement they made about a month ago. They're switching over to their own in-house designed processors. The new iPad pro has been clocked faster than most windows notebooks out there. They're going to be using the version of that processor in the laptop. [00:01:33]We're expecting to see two new Macs from Apple this year using their own chip sets. No more Intel processors. [00:01:43]Jack Heath:  I don't know. The other thing is, uh, how people, I guess today people, can you go to your own room? You have your phone, but I mean, you got these homes now with the students, I guess they're sort of schools right now so that you don't have the virtual learning going on right now, but people all trying to share that electrical outlet or their chargers, try to charge something and kind of balance it all with homes. It's sort of taken on a new meeting. [00:02:04] Craig Peterson: Yeah, it sure has. We used to go to coffee shops that sit there and work. I think that'll start happening more. I actually have enjoyed sitting outside in my backyard and doing work, during some of the whole COVID thing and getting a little bit past the nature we live in New Hampshire. [00:02:23] Right. You just mentioned people are moving here. Part of the beauty of it is to be out in the beauty. [00:02:29] Then there's Twitter this week, Jack. [00:02:31]Jack Heath: Yeah, I know the big, the big, , I, I, [00:02:34] Justin McIssac: Craig, I heard there was, there was something like a, like, I don't know, a large amount of money. People actually fell for the scan with the, uh, the Bitcoin people hacking into major Twitter accounts and Twitter really got kind of knocked on its heels. Huh? [00:02:48] Craig Peterson: They really did. You know, you might remember Uber and how they got nailed for the God mode. Do you remember hearing about that? A couple of years back where Uber employees could look at anybody anywhere in the world at any time that was in an Uber car. The Uber employees were using God mode in order to monitor celebrities where they were going sports, people, et cetera, what they were doing and they got nailed for that. [00:03:15] Well, it turns out in the Twitter verse, they had a similar program, right. We've seen this over and over again, by the way, this isn't just Uber or Twitter.  They have a program that allows their contractors and employees to potentially see just about anything. In fact, there were some postings out there on Twitter showing Beyonce's page in this kind of God mode where they could see what was going on with her. [00:03:44]What happened here, apparently, what we know right now is. Some kids did. So they took over Barak Obama's account and dozens of other high profile, celebrity types. [00:03:57] Jack Heath: They didn't miss many people on that one. Alright. [00:04:00] Craig Peterson: They didn't. And then they said things like, Hey, listen, we want to give back, send us a thousand dollars in Bitcoin for the next 30 minutes, we'll double it and send it back to you. [00:04:10] And as Justin just said, [00:04:15] Alright, sorry about that. Had a meltdown in the board. Alright. Hey Craig, we have to run. Thank you very much, Craig Peterson. Thank you very much. [00:04:20] Should we come back? [00:04:21] Oh my it's one of those days, right? What happens on Mondays? Everything goes wrong. Port Justin with the board. He's been, uh, he's been having a bunch of problems getting beat up on this morning too. [00:04:32] I had the best meeting over the weekend, with a guy JJ, who maybe helping us here with producing more videos, training everything else. I am so excited about this. I've been telling you guys that I'm getting my studio redone.  I'm going to be also of course, putting out the podcast like I have been right now. [00:04:54] So audio podcast, probably video podcasts. We're going to be trying to do these radio shows alive, my hits live and then take questions and talk about other things potentially. The words every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday mornings. So that should be kind of cool. And we'll, we'll do it. I I'm thinking on Facebook, but I don't know. [00:05:17] I'd love to hear from you guys. See what you think the options as I understand them right now, anyways, cause I don't have the ability to do LinkedIn lives. LinkedIn hasn't allowed me for whatever reason, I just don't get that one. But, at any rate,  Facebook lives, we could do YouTube lives potentially. [00:05:35] We could just stream this on like my own , I have my own rooms over on WebEx as well that you could get to just with the browser. You don't have to. To download a WebEx app or anything. Let me know if you guys have a preference because we can talk about this. I love to and engage with you, people, you, people about this stuff too. [00:05:58] So let me know what you think. Just email me M e@craigpeterson.com and I'm pretty darn good about getting back to people. Usually within a couple of days, give or take. So give me a break of this, particularly if I'm out of town for a week, I just don't have time to pay much attention to email, but I, I do try and always get back. [00:06:19] All right. Everybody take care and we will 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 Message Input: Message #techtalk Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553  

Welcome!   For being locked down do to this Pandemic there is certainly a lot of technology in the news this week.  So let's get into it.  We are finding that managers are surveilling their employees, probably a little more than necessary and an uptick in VPN usage. Big Tech is strangling us and WordPress has a vulnerability plus much more   So sit back and listen in.  For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: Hey everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. Spring is in the air. I am so excited about this, you know, I love pretty much every season. I was just thinking the other day how I missed not having, you know, like crunchy snow that you can walk on. I know you might think I'm crazy, right? I know other family members of mine who absolutely think I'm crazy, but it's, maybe it's just a thing from my childhood, you know, being 40 degrees below zero and being outside and just walking in the snow and just having a crunch, crunch, crunch. [00:00:40] But you know, so wintertime makes me enjoy spring makes me enjoy summer to a bit of a lesser degree, but I love going motorcycling so that works right? In the summertime. And then I really like fall probably my favorite season and then winter is pretty good. I'm not a winter sports kind of guy. I should probably do a little bit more of that. [00:01:01] Well, if you saw me on the TV news this week, you know that I was talking a lot about this new surveillance society that we have. Yeah. I'm not just talking about general regular surveillance that we've talked about before. I'm talking about surveillance in the workplace. And now there are two sides of this. [00:01:23] Of course, there are like two sides to everything and there's the side of the employee and then there's the side of the employer. And so we're going to spend a little time right now going through some of the things on both sides. If you're an employer, why you might want to be doing surveillance. In fact, in some ways, why you should be doing surveillance, if you're an employee, what are your rights? [00:01:46] What can you do about it? We'll be talking about that. And then some of the software the businesses are using and what you can expect. So let's sort of been talking about a lot this week over on various radio stations and on television as well this week. So getting right into this, and you'll see some articles about this up on my website as well, at Craig peterson.com [00:02:10] Oh and man did I get a kick in the pants this week, you know I've been doing a little bit of work on the website because we're putting some new stuff together for people. For y'all and I, I went to CraigPeterson.com/subscribe and just tried to check it out. So guess what. It doesn't work. Slash Subscribe to me. I just hate it when that happens. [00:02:35] So if you have tried to subscribe on my website before to get my weekly newsletter or get some of my special reports because you get, I think it's four of them when you subscribe, I send those off to you and you went to CraigPeterson.com/subscribe to subscribe. It may not have worked. So I'm going to be working some more on that this week. [00:02:58] I got that problem and then I've got a problem as well with the text number, the (855) 385-5553 number. And I guess it's kind of like the cobbler's kids that have no shoes, right? Where man. There are so many things that I need to do and I've been doing for customers and lately, I've been doing even more for non-customers, is trying to help everybody out because there are so many people that are in such dire straits right now. [00:03:26] You know, all businesses have changed. Talking about the pivot and pivoting to work at home has been a very big deal. In fact, I'm going to. Probably have a little course on that coming up here in a couple of weeks. What to do if you a business and you're kind of pivoting to homeworkers maybe permanently, but certainly for the next little while. [00:03:45] What should you be doing from the security standpoint? I think it's really important for everyone to understand and to do. Many managers are turning to surveillance software and. I got this idea about a norm reminder really from the Washington Post this week now, Washington post, you know, I don't trust him at all for any of their political coverage because they haven't been honest with any of us for quite a while, but some of their technology coverage isn't bad. [00:04:14] It's kind of like the New York Times. It's such a shame because the New York times has such great. In-depth articles on so many things, and then they completely misrepresent politics all the time, like a hundred percent consistent, and it's, so, I'm just always torn. Do I pay any attention to these guys or not? [00:04:35] You know, I certainly look at their coverage too when it comes to the political stuff, cause I have to make a judgment call myself. But man, I don't mind supporting the regular things, but their editorial things are in their decisions as to which stories to run. Sometimes they're just so antithetical to everything, I believe. [00:04:55] But anyway, enough of that. So the Washington post article. Kind of got me thinking about it. So I did a bunch of research and I have one, two, three pages of a bullet point that I want to go through with you. Because I did research. I looked at a lot of things online. I looked at some of the websites of these companies making this, I don't know if you want to call it spyware, but that's kind of what it boils down to and figured out what's going on there. I had looked at some of the legal issues from the federal government side and from the state government, and here's the bottom line. When in doubt, assume you're being watched now. [00:05:36] I think that's a reasonable assumption in this day and age, right? We've all got our smart devices. We're online. We know that companies like Google and Facebook are compiling information to sell it about us, and I'm not sure that that's an absolutely horrific thing. I get more concerned when we're talking about employers surveilling us because if you have a bad boss or not so great boss, what's going to happen when that boss comes down on you for taking a break. [00:06:09] Right? Even a short break, you know? Yeah. You took a 15-minute break or whatever it was that was not, you know, necessary for them to come down on you. That's where I started getting concerned. People losing their jobs over this. Now, in some cases, if you're a transcriptionist and you're paid by the word, well, you know, why would they bother? [00:06:29] Monitoring me. I'm paid by the word, right? Who cares? You know? Obviously I have to deliver in a certain timeframe, but if it takes me all day and I have a 24-hour guarantee and I'm only typing one word a minute,  it's no skin off my employer's nose. And on the other end of the scale, if you are kind of intellectual work and you're working. [00:06:52] At a higher level, if you will, right? You're not just selling your, your keystroke, your fingers. You're actually thinking about problems. You're trying to logically analyze what's going on, what should be done, what shouldn't be done. If you're that type of person while then it's a completely different thing, right? [00:07:12] Again, how do you measure that? Because you might be reading a book, you might, you might have read a book last night and now you're in the office and you're looking at that book from last night cause you want to make some notes on it because you're one implemented into the office and now your employer's looking at you saying, well why hasn't your screen changed. [00:07:31] So that's the other side. So I get really concerned with the employers somehow thinking that this type of monitoring is a panacea for them. It's not going to motivate their employees to work. It just totally reminds me of when I was a professor on faculty out at Pepperdine University, and I taught, back then it was called MIS management information systems 422 out at Pepperdine. [00:07:57] And one of the things we had to look at was something called the Hawthorne principle. And they had done a study in Hawthorne, California of workers on a manufacturing line. And the big question was do they perform better when they're being monitored or when they're not being monitored? There were some interesting studies to this looking at music in the background. [00:08:21] Do you perform better when you have music playing in the background just at a low volume or better when it's quiet? Well, in all of these cases, it depends on what you're doing. Workers tend to perform better. With music in the background when they're doing kind of a rote task when they're working on an assembly line, and it's the same thing over and over and over again, that tends to help those people. [00:08:50] But when we're talking about an intellectual worker who is planning, who's thinking things through, who's writing marketing materials, who's doing software development, in most cases. They perform worse with music in the background and they're better off just having some basic white noise going on, which could be as simple as a fan. [00:09:13] It could be office chatter, et cetera, and I actually use some things in order to put that into the background myself, and I find them to be very, very helpful. You can find all kinds of them online. If you wanted to know exactly which ones I use, send me an email and I'll let you know, just me@craigpeterson.com but I have a plugin that goes into my browser. [00:09:37] That has a coffee shop, the ring of fire, burning, you know, outside a bird chirping, wind blowing, water lapping just, it has a few of those things. And, and I can select what I want and if I need to kind of focus on something, I find that to be very, very helpful. so when it comes to monitoring in the Hawthorne effect. [00:10:04] What they found is that yes, in some cases monitoring people. Worked out better, they produce better than not monitoring people. And that kind of reminds me of a good war movie that I absolutely loved. I don't think it was a great escape. Oh, no. I remember what it was. it was Schindler's list and there were supposed to be making hinges. [00:10:28] These are, of course, prisoners, that are being used as slave labor. And. They are supposed to be making these hinges. And so the guard comes over, lets me see, we make a hinge and he makes one in a matter of just seconds or minute or whatever it is. And then under the Hawthorne. That'd be principal here. [00:10:48] If he makes one hinge in one minute, he should be able to make 60 hinges in an hour. And yet they were only making, I don't remember what any of these numbers were. It's been a long time since I saw that movie. But, he didn't make his many, so obviously he got in trouble, as did other people who were on the assembly line. You know, if there's a gun to your head, maybe you will work better, maybe you will work faster. But in most cases, that's not true. And that was certainly true of these people who were confined to slave labor. They're in the Schindler's list movie. So we're going to talk a lot more about this when we get back because nearly half of the US labor force is now. working from home. [00:11:30] That's according to a study by MIT researchers in April, so just a couple of weeks ago, stick around. We're going to talk a lot more about this when we get back. You are listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN, and you'll hear me every Wednesday morning, give or take at 7:30 on with Matt. [00:11:52] Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here, on WGAN. I hope you're enjoying your Saturday, or if you're listening to me online, whatever day it is, you're listening, and of course, you can get that online experience through any podcast app. I'm on tune in. I'm on pretty much everywhere. You'll just be able to find me by looking for Craig Peterson. [00:00:28] The easiest way is just go to CraigPeterson.com/your favorite app when it comes to podcasts, whatever it is, and it'll just do a redirect for you, send you right to the right spot, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever it is. So we were talking before the break about what's happening here with surveillance scene, surveilling our employees out there. [00:00:55] And we're seeing some major changes. Now, some of these started actually a few years ago because businesses are rightly concerned about their intellectual property being stolen, and they need to know if an employee is. About to leave and leave with their customer list. And I have certainly seen that happen before. [00:01:17] Unfortunately, we often get these phone calls after the fact, after the data's already been stolen, the employee's gone, or whatever it is. But you know, that's kind of the way it is, right? Most businesses and people aren't willing to do anything about it until it goes over the cliff and this case. So what do we do as employers if we want to protect our information? [00:01:41] Because it's proprietary, right? That's called intellectual property for a reason, and the reason that it's proprietary is you just don't want it stolen and it gives you the advantage that you need to have. MIT researchers, as I mentioned before, are saying the nearly half of the US workforce is now working from home, which is absolutely massive. [00:02:06] We're seeing. VPN usage way up, and you know, I have a whole course on VPNs, the free one that I've been doing, and VPNs are not a panacea at all. In fact, they can make things much worse for you if you're trying to be secure. We've got these tattle wearables. Programs out there now that are doing everything from watching what you're typing and alerting the manager if you're typing in certain words that they think might mean that you are leaving their employee. [00:02:40] Right? So going to a website and employment website could cause, could cause a phone call from your manager. But we do have to check this. We do have to be careful. If you are going to be monitoring your employees, you need to make sure it's in the employee handbook. You want to be upfront with your employees and from the employee's side, remember that some of the software will do everything, like keep track of your keystrokes, watch the websites you're visiting, which is always the case. [00:03:13] A reasonable business is going to be tracking website visits. So keep that in mind. But, They're also going to potentially be screen capturing and maybe even capturing a picture from your camera. Some of them also will listen on the microphone and I get it. You know, it can be very demoralizing. [00:03:36] You've been working for a company for years, maybe decades, and now all of a sudden you've been, you're being spied on. Right? You think you've been a good worker, so talk with them. There are no federal laws against employee monitoring. In the private sector. There are a number of state laws, but many of these employers are crossing these ethical lines by continuing to track the employees after they've clocked out for the day. [00:04:05] So if you're an employee. Your best bet may be to just turn off the computer, turn off the laptop. If you have a smartphone that's been issued by the company, turned that off as well. If you have an app that is from the company, you might want to kill it. So it's no longer tracking and make sure your settings on your iPhone are set to only allow tracking while the app is active. [00:04:32] So those are a few things. You can talk to your HR department if you think something's happening that shouldn't be. And if you filed an internal complaint and nothing is really happening, you can file the same complaint with the securities and exchange commission, the equal opportunity employment commission, or the state organizations. [00:04:53] All right? By the way, you don't have to be informed that you are being spied upon. So keep that in mind. [00:05:01] So next step here, I want to talk about something from American thinker.com there's a great article there about big tech and how it is frankly strangling us right now. We have that 1984 ad. [00:05:17] Do you remember that? where. All of these people were sitting in a kind of Orwellian room, a socialist room. Everybody's dressed the same because you only have one type of clothes you can buy. Yeah. [00:05:29] By the way, Hey, thanks, guys. For this, what has it been two months exhibition of what socialism's really like? There's nothing on the shelves right now. [00:05:38] What do you remember that they're all sitting there and they're fighting this technocratic elite. When that woman runs down and throws the hammer at the screen. And obviously it was a pretty gloomy spot that ran, and I think it didn't have first run during the super bowl if I remember. Bottom line, but the tech giants now, like Apple and Google, all of these guys have really morphed into what is now, I think, near totalitarian giants. [00:06:13] No, they are controlling our speech. You got Candace Owens, brilliant woman. She's suspended from Twitter for challenging the Michigan governor. Facebook has flagged the declaration of independence as hate speech. It's incredible what's going on. We see Aaron Renn reporting that conservative and left-wing groups are being pulled down at Twitter, and that was back in 2016 2019 YouTube has been blocking some British history teachers from. [00:06:49] YouTube entirely for uploading archival material related to Adolf Hitler. Yeah. Heaven forbid that we remember what happened with him and YouTube said that these British history teachers were breaching. Guidelines banning the promotion of hate speech, even though they weren't promoting it, they were trying to let people know, Hey, this has happened before. [00:07:15] It can happen again. It's absolutely incredible. And, and where is that line drawn with the national socialists in Germany? Right? You remember? That's what they were. That's what Nazi stood for. National socialists. So the socialists there in Germany, they put out all kinds of a propaganda film about how great they were. [00:07:35] We were only telling half-truths. Sound familiar, right? and they're these British history teachers. Apparently we're putting some of these apps so people understood what it looked like to have manipulation coming from the government. So they deleted the videos, abrupt loaded to help educate future generations about the risks of socialism. [00:08:00] It's absolutely incredible. Now, Michael Cutler wrote just a couple of years ago that Twitter has, I love this language now morphed into a means of thought control. Through the control of language. Now we have, through the government, through the legislature and the federal level, we have given these companies immunity from prosecution in most cases because we say, Hey, it's like a public bulletin board. [00:08:30] People are up there saying stuff and YouTube and Twitter, et cetera. You're not liable if someone posts, posts, hate speech, et cetera, on your site. And now they're acting as though they might be liable. And so now because they're acting this way, should we remove their, their special treatment of being basically common carrier? [00:08:57] They're, they're saying, Hey, listen, we're, we're more like the telephone company than anything else than a newspaper. We don't have editorial control over the content and we don't control the content. Well, guess what? Those days are long past us. We need to make some changes here, okay? These big internet companies know more about you than you know about yourself, frankly. [00:09:20] And there's a study that came out, this was a years ago, where average consumers are checking their smartphones 150 times a day, and that number. Has grown, so we've got to make some changes. All right, everybody, stick around. We'll be right back. We're going to talk about some attacks that are going on. If you like to go online, visit websites, or particularly if you have your own business or personal website. [00:09:46] I got some news for you about attacks that are underway right now. Stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN yeah. Big tech is strangling us. We talked about that and how laws really need to change. I know that Chairman Pai over the FCC has been trying to tighten the things up a little bit, but there's been a lot of pushback from the left end from some people in their bureaucracy. [00:00:26]We also all already talked about the managers turning to surveillance software. And I understand why many of them are doing it to protect their intellectual property more than to make sure you're working at least. That's been the case historically. Now they're doing a little bit differently. They're actually trying to make sure you're working. [00:00:46] So if you are someone that has a website and it could be just a basic website, like something that you have for your local boy scout troop, or many, many of the other ones out there, your very likely to be using some open-source software called Wordpress. [00:01:07] WordPress is a great piece of software and I've been using it for many, many years. I used to hand-roll websites, which means I was sitting there writing the HTML code and putting everything in and it just wasn't very pretty. And then I moved over to an Adobe product. To do it. And then, then I went to something called WebGui, which was another piece of software to help run websites and build them. [00:01:35] And then I ended up on WordPress and I've been there for many, many years. Basically, since WordPress started. It has been quite a great little. Tool. So if you're thinking as well, by the way of putting up a website, let's say you want to start a business. Let's say you are a brick and mortar business, and frankly, you're looking to transition from brick and mortar to online first, which is what I think every business needs to be doing. [00:02:03] I want you to have a serious look at this. You can find it online. There are two WordPress sites. There's wordpress.com that you can go to online. And WordPress dot com just takes care of everything for you. They, they're a hosting company. They have themes. You can use a, they make it really quite simple. [00:02:25] It is not the most flexible but let me just give you a little bit of warning, but. All right? In this day and age, it's like 35% of the web is built on WordPress, so I'm looking at the numbers here on their website or their pricing plan. And for personal use, it is $4 a month. That is if you are paying for a year at a time so that that's hard to beat, isn't it? [00:02:59] And for premium, which I say is best for freelancers, it is $8 a month. Again, if you pay a yearly small business, they've got $25 per month and e-commerce. $45 a month. Now, the main difference between all of these different price points for WordPress. It has to do with domain name registration. Like if you're free, you probably don't have your own domain. [00:03:28] If you're a business, you're going to need your own domain name. Some of them have live support, 24/7 some of these, the basic packages only have email support. Premium themes are only available in the higher packages. You know, the business ones, which are premium business and commerce, they've gotten marketing and monetization tools that you can use at the business level. [00:03:54] Some search engine optimization, some advertising analytics, they have just a whole bunch of things that you can do. And then, then the highest end in e-commerce, they're adding on accepting payments and 60. Plus countries. Integrations with top shipping carriers, unlimited products or services, eCommerce marketing tools, premium customizable starter themes for 45 bucks a month. [00:04:22]So then this is kind of a duh, if you are looking to start a little business and have it online, if you have a business and you're looking to move it online, we're talking about WordPress right now. So wordpress.com is where you go for all of that. Now I get more complicated, than any of these provide for. [00:04:45] So I can't just use wordpress.com and I actually use WP engine as well as I self hosts some sites. In other words, I have my own servers because of my company Mainstream, we have our own data center. So why not? Right. But in some cases, like my bigger websites, I have up at WP engine and they maintain everything for me. [00:05:10] It's actually running on a Google platform, but they will automatically size it, resize it, and I can do absolutely anything I want. So if you want to be able to do anything you want, you're not going to use a wordpress.com. You're going to go to wordpress.org. Now, wordpress.org is the software that is behind wordpress.com and it's the software that I, again, 35% or so of the web uses. [00:05:43] I actually think it's probably higher than that, and most places use WordPress nowadays, and it's just so flexible. It's no longer just a blogging platform. And they have some built-in beautiful themes. I use something called Divi, which is a page builder. There's a few of them out there, Beaver, Ellementor. [00:06:03] Those are the three big ones. And if you're interested in, in thinking, Hey Craig, maybe you should do a class on this for us. Well, let me know. I'd be glad to put something together, but you got to tell me. Right? I just don't know. Otherwise, me, Me@craigpeterson.com if you'd like a class on this, and I know some people like Nancy Fields out there who she'll help people with their sites and put them together, but wordpress.org is where you go to get the software you need to put on too. [00:06:36] Some of these hosting services that you can use, and there's a million of them out there. Really. There's a lot, and then the kind of the ultimate, if you will, as the WP engine guys, but I brought this up to let you know the basics, right? This is what you want to look at. If you're thinking about going online. [00:06:54] But on the other side, I want to warn people right now because security teams and businesses have their hands full dealing with these COVID-19 related threats that are out there, and there are a lot of them, and right now the biggest problem isn't the hackers. The biggest problem is people clicking on emails and then getting ransomware. [00:07:16] We have a client that just. Yes. No, it was earlier in the week, I think it was Tuesday, one of their employees downloaded some software and he needed some software for windows to do some screen grabs cause he wanted to just grab a few things for off of the screen and save them the, save that graphic and use it in some documents. [00:07:38] So he went online, he did some searching and he found some screen. grabbing software, and lo and behold, there's this wonderful screen grab software for free that he downloads, and guess what? It's ransomware. So because we were doing all of the stuff for them and we had the really, the top anti-malware software that's out there very advanced stuff. [00:08:03] It detected it, it stopped it, it stopped it from spreading almost. Instantly, and that was just a phenomenal thing to have happened. It stopped it and it stopped the spread right away. So right now in WordPress, we're seeing a 30 fold increase in attacks on WordPress websites out there. , this is just dramatic. [00:08:27] So if you are running a word press word site or website, you're going to want to really, really have a look at it, make sure it's completely patched up because just like windows and Mac, iOS and iOS and Android, you have to apply patches. Man. It's like a grand central station here today. People in an out. [00:08:48] Anyhow, let's see. A million websites were reported, attacked, in the week from April 28th for one week. On May 3rd alone, they counted in excess of 20 million attacks against some half a million WordPress sites. It's just absolutely crazy. And by the way, they're coming in from more than 24,000. [00:09:10] Distinct IP addresses. What that means people are your machine to have been compromised and the bad guys are using them to launch attacks against websites and other people, which is not news, but it is news to most of those 24,000 people whose computers. Are being used to launch attacks. [00:09:32] You are Listening to Craig Peterson. Stick around because we're going to be right back. Talk a little bit about Zoom and how they are going to fix their chats. Stick around. We'll be right back and of course, visit me online at CraigPeterson.com. Craig Peterson: Hello everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. You can hear me here every Saturday from one till 3:00 PM and on with  Matt  Gagnon Wednesday mornings at 734 this week because the mayor was on, let's see, it was Friday at like eight Oh eight or something like that. So. Was very, a little bit, off. But I'm here from one til three. [00:00:31] Anyways. And for those listening online, of course, I am on pretty much every podcasting app out there. And in some ways, I'm one of the pioneers of this thing. I've been doing this podcasting stuff for over 20 years, so for a very, very long time. I don't know, it kind of makes you feel old. So, so far today we just talked about WordPress and how you can use that. [00:00:53] For your business where you can go online and order to find the right hosting environment for your WordPress site. We talked a little bit about how WordPress also has security vulnerabilities like anything else and what is going on right now. I also spoke about half an hour ago here about how big. [00:01:16] Technology is a drag, just strangling, just totally strangulating all of us with their censorship free speech just doesn't exist when you're talking about the big guys. And then, of course, we started out the show talking about surveillance software in what managers have been doing with the surveillance software over the years. [00:01:42] It's really bad, frankly. What's been going on. And right now we're going to talk a little bit about something. Pretty much I think everybody in the country's been on, and that is zoom. Now, if you have not been on zoom, let me just explain it really briefly, and that is zoom is a video conferencing. App, it's been around for a while now, was written by a couple of kids and they did a terrible job with the security side of things. [00:02:14] It works well, it's easy to use, and so they did a very good job on that. And frankly, if they hadn't, they wouldn't be kind of the premier video conferencing app right now. We just used it for mother's day. I set up a zoom conference for my mother and of course my stepfather, and we did another one for my, my father, and my stepmother, and we had the kids on there like 16 people called into it, and I chose zoom. [00:02:48] Knowing that it was easy to use, that a lot of people use zoom and really like it, but also knowing about the major security problems. Right? We're talking about mother's day, so I'm not worried about losing intellectual property. I'm not really worried about having people's zoom bombed me, and that is where zoom bombing has been going on like crazy. [00:03:12] But zoom bombing is where somebody. Gets onto your zoom conference and does something nasty. anything from sexual stuff through, I, I've heard of, swastikas coming up, you know, the good old socialist national socialist party of Germany and world war two I've heard about all just all kinds of terrible things that have been coming up. [00:03:37] So I wasn't worried about Zoom by me, so because I wasn't worried about privacy. Intellectual properties, zoom bombing. Okay. It's fine because I have a small business account on zoom. Now when I am doing something for my business, this business-related or I'm concerned about intellectual property or security, then I use WebEx because it is a, not just a regular WebEx, but a secured WebEx because it is a. [00:04:05] Very well known commodity out there, something that many people, have been looking at and the federal government uses, military uses, et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of what I do. So zoom has had a very, very bad rap as of late and for, I think, frankly, it's for many, many good reasons. And I'm, I'm on Google right now, and you know, I recommend you use duck, duck, go. [00:04:32] But I'm going to use Google because of the fact that that's what most people are using. And I wanted to have the same results you'd see. So I just went into Google news and I said, zoom security. And it's got a, the latest updates, the highs, the lows. Here's what you need to know. Avoid the app and do this instead. [00:04:53] Here's why. It's from Forbes. Zoom five offers new security and privacy features. That's the new version of zoom, the new major version that they've released. In case you didn't get that notification, make sure you upgrade zoom. zoom settles with New York attorney general over privacy and security concerns. [00:05:13] This is just two days ago. Zooms tips for safety as recommended by video conference, express zoom issues, play security issues, plays a spotlight on other video platforms, privacy troubles. but here's the one that I think is kinda interesting. This one's from. Forbes and that is Zoom buys key base in bold, new security move. [00:05:37] How this could change everything. If you've been listening for a while, you know, I've been talking about how there are still security jobs open. You know, right now, security is kind of at the bottom of the list for most of the businesses out there because businesses are saying, Hey, we just don't know what's going to happen with our business going forward. [00:05:59] So, let's just drop security who need security, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a bit of a problem if you ask me. And so because of that. I, you know, there, there's probably been a drop, I think, in the number of security jobs that are currently open, but we were talking about two and a half million, you know, up to 3 million open cybersecurity jobs before this whole pandemic. [00:06:26] It is, frankly, we need security now more than ever as business people and at home because we're under attack more than ever. But this is Zoom's first acquisition. Now I would actually call it more of an acquire than an acquisition. And if you're not familiar with that term, it's big probably because it's a pretty new term. [00:06:52] And an Aqua hire is where you find a company that has talent in it that you need or you want. And so how do you hire those people away? You probably can't, and it is a team of people working there, so you got to figure, they probably work together. They know how to work together. They know what some of the things are they need to do to work together. [00:07:19] So you just go ahead and you buy the whole company. So they're calling it an acquisition. In reality, this seems more like an acquire and Zoom got this 90-day plan to improve their security in this whole video conferencing system. We'll see what ends up happening. The terms of this deal weren't disclosed. [00:07:41] I'm sure a part of it is usually, Hey, all of the employees have to stay, or these key people have to stay. And then as part of the acquisition, they'll pay everybody some sort of an amount. So it isn't just the stakeholders. They're stockholders that make money off of this. Everybody stays around, but this is their first acquisition zooms nine years old in case you didn't know that if you thought they just came out of nowhere. [00:08:09] It's one of these overnight successes that took nine years to get there, but they're saying that as of a couple of weeks ago, there were 300 million people. On zoom, that's dramatic. In December, it was estimated that there were 10 million people. Now for the FBI InfraGard webinars that we were running, the FBI wanted us to use Zoom. [00:08:34] I don't know why, but that's what InfraGard wanted us to use. That's what I used. So we were part of that 10 million. To up to 300 million. Can you imagine that kind of growth so you can see how they had to do something, do something fast? They could not just staff up for it, but they're planning on creating a secure private and a scalable video communication system. [00:08:58] Part of the problem they've had recently when it comes to scalability is they have been routing people's teleconferences through China and other parts of the world. And of course, those really upset people when they found out about it because of course China sits there and spies on everything that's going on now. [00:09:19] The company that they acquired is called Keybase. They spent the last six years building a secure messaging and file sharing service. And with this, users can chat and share with team members and communities knowing that the messages are end to end encrypted. So the other thing with this acquire that zoom may be getting is the ability now to have chat and file sharing, which is something that. [00:09:49]Microsoft teams have that WebEx teams have, right? That's what the team's apps have. And even Slack has built-in now some communications ability. You can have small meetings and make calls to other users. And zoom is planning on putting this encrypted end to end meeting mode in for the paid accounts. [00:10:12] So if you have a free account, you're probably not going to get it, at least not initially. And then they're going to use public-key encryption, which is something that is, say, Pattonville a little bit of a go. But it's absolutely the way to do it. So I'm glad to hear that there are some adults in the room now over at zoom and they realized, not invented here syndrome is not going to help them grow. [00:10:37] It's not going to solve their security problems. And so they, I acquired a company that has been doing this type of security for quite a while. So, okay, here we go. This is a, an article from, this is dark reading, I think. Yeah. and they're saying as part of the deal, key basis, team members will become zoom employees. [00:11:00] So there you go. Okay. they, so they are planning on publishing a draft for their cryptographic design, next Friday. So it's coming up pretty soon. So we'll keep you up to date on this. I promised I would in the past let you know what zoom is doing and how they're doing and where they're going, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. [00:11:21] So I'm really glad to hear that zoom is pulling up their socks. So we are going to go away for a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about one of these companies that has smart hubs and what they have done. And this is kind of a story about what happens at end of life. And it's something that every business needs to think about. [00:11:48] If you're using salesforce.com Microsoft, you name it. Those companies are eventually going to go out of business. What happens when they go out of business? What's going to happen to your data? Whose data is it anyway? And in many cases, these companies are saying. It's my data. We own it, and if we lose it, we don't know you. [00:12:17] Anything. Real problem. If you asked me, so stick around. We'll be back here right after the break with news, et cetera, and we'll be talking more about all of this. You're listening to Craig Peter's son, right here on WGAN, and make sure you visit me online. Go to Craig peterson.com make sure you sign up for my newsletter so you can find out about the various cool stuff we've been working on and then we'll have out for you very, very soon. [00:12:45] Take care of everybody and stick around cause we'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey everybody. Welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN and of course online as well at craigPeterson.com. We have been talking about a bunch of stuff today and you know, if you missed any of it, you can go to my website, Craig peterson.com this includes why businesses are using surveillance software. [00:00:25] To where what you can do as an employee if you think they are spying on you and what are your rights when it comes to some of this stuff, I talked also about what is happening with big tech and censorship and it really is a big problem, WordPress and how you can use that as a business. You know, if you are brick and mortar, you probably want to try and transition to more of an online model. [00:00:53] But even if you have a little bit of both, maybe WordPress is the way to go. So we talked a little bit about that when you can get WordPress as a service and also what you can do about it yourself. And by the way, attacks on WordPress are have gone up 30 fold in just the past few days. And then just before the top of the hour, we talked about zoom. [00:01:17] And how they have acquired a company in order to have end-to-end encryption on zoom. And I bet you also because of this acquisition, who they purchased the zooms going to be seen a new feature here where they're going to be doing a little bit of conferencing and. Collaboration. So I think that's going to be a good thing. [00:01:40] It's going to give a little competition to WebEx teams and also to our friends at Microsoft teams. Now, how many of you guys out there have been using some of these services. For your internet of things devices now, internet of things, devices that I'm talking about here. My kind of definition is anything that would normally be considered just a piece of hardware, you know, something that you turn on and use. [00:02:10] A good example would be some of these thermostats many of us have right. We've got these, now it's Google nest thermostats or some of the lights that we have. Well, many of these devices require what are called bridges because they using different technologies. So for instance, in my home, I've got some. [00:02:35] Now Apple home equipment, and of course we use Apple equipment almost exclusively in my business, and we have iPhones with iOS and Apple's home. The Apple home is the most secure way of controlling near your internet of things devices. The problem is that not many people make devices for Apple home, and that is because they are a little bit more expensive to make. [00:03:05] You have to have better encryption software. You have to pay the Apple tax because Apple developed it and Apple is going to charge you as a manufacturer to use their technology. So many of these companies have kind of gone off and done their own thing. We have some hue lights as well. H U E from Phillips. [00:03:25] Great lights, by the way. And those are all, again, controlled remotely, and we've got it tied in so that our iOS devices, our I-phones can turn on and off. The hue lights can turn on and off like our family room lights, et cetera, and can change the colors of lights. But because my internet of things devices are not directly compatible with Apple home, we had to get some special hubs. [00:03:58] So we have a small hub, and that hub speaks both the hue protocol. It speaks to a protocol that is used by the light dimmers in our main rooms, and it speaks Apple's protocol. Now. Were totally geeked out. So guess what? We have Linux running on a box. It does all of that stuff for us, right? So we can maintain it, we can update it, we can upgrade it. [00:04:23] We know what's going on. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're really not after me. Right. Well, there is a company out there called Wink that many people have been using for quite a while. Wink, I should say, looks pretty darn good. It was launched first about six years ago, and the idea was to be able to connect and control all of their devices through just one master wink interface. So wink exists to really kind of simplify life for somebody, right? [00:05:00] That's really into the internet of things. You've got your lights, you got your locks, your thermostat, your cameras, your appliances. And they're all coming from different brands and they need different apps to operate. [00:05:13] Nowadays. You even see refrigerators and ovens. Man, I think I saw the first internet-connected one about six years ago as well. Our washing machines, dryers, all of these things, and they're different brands, and even though they might be using the same protocol, it doesn't mean as implemented the same way. [00:05:35] So these devices just can't speak to each other. Enter wink. Now there are a number of different devices out there that can be used as a smart hub, but speak to different, you know, different protocols, different vendors, everything else. But a lot of people went to wink because you bought it once. And that's it. [00:06:00] It was free for the rest of your life. Now, wink cost more yes than some of these others, but you did not have a monthly subscription fee that you had to pay. Well, as of this week, Wink is starting to charge on a monthly basis for their devices. The quote from Wink and obviously then they're looking for cash. [00:06:24] Now, who isn't? Wink has taken many steps in an effort to keep your hubs blue light on. That's the light on the Wink Hub. However, long-term costs and recent economic events have caused additional strain on our business. Unlike companies that sell our data to offset costs associated with offering free services, we do not. [00:06:48] Little jab there at Google. Data privacy is one of Winks core values. And we believe that user data should never be sold for marketing or any purpose. So basically what they were doing is, no grandfathering. The mandate here is to pay up or we're gonna shut you off. Here's what they said. Should you choose not to sign up for a subscription, you will no longer be able to access your wink devices from the app with voice control or through the API, and your automation will be disabled on May 13th your device connection settings and automation can be reactivated if you decide to pay up,  excuse me, to subscribe at a later date. [00:07:35] So there's no warning. It's now $5 a month per device. Think about how many devices are out there and how many devices people might have. Right? I'm a little unclear as to whether it's only $5 per house because you might only have the one Wink Hub or if it's $5 per month per device. That's kind of how I read it, so it could be really, really expensive and people are very upset about it. [00:08:05] You know, on Reddit there are thousands of responses to this company's tweet that was posted there. Most people are just absolutely angry. You know, they paid a lot more to get something that had lifetime support, and here it is, no life-time support. Right? So this feels like a variation on a familiar theme because it's happened many times. [00:08:29] You know, these internet-connected light bulbs. Many of them no longer work as a company went out of business and the servers got shut down. Smart scales. Some cases they just got dumb and they show you your weight to no longer show you your history or weight loss or anything, and in some cases, they just don't work at all because the companies pulled the plug on the apps. [00:08:51] These pet feeders. We've talked about a couple of cool ones here. They've gone. Out of business, they completely stopped feeding pets. How about these vacuums that we have in our homes that are all automated? They're running around cleaning the houses. So this is nothing new. We have seen companies go out of business before, right? [00:09:12] You've seen companies go out of business, right? Tell me. You have told me I'm not crazy. And when the companies go out of business and they're providing a monthly service for you. Then what happens? This gets to be a very, very big deal, and I also want to caution businesses because it reveals a major hole in this whole cloud business. [00:09:40] You know, we look at the cloud and say, it's going to make my life simpler. It's going to keep my costs down. I don't have to worry about the side of it anymore. I'll just use this cloud service like Salesforce for instance, or, or Dropbox or whatever it might be in reality. [00:09:59] Now, remember that your core business information, your intellectual property regarding your customers, regarding your orders, regarding your sales, your inventories, all of the stuff that is now in the hands of a third party. So what's going to happen when that third party. Goes out of business, it could be really, really bad for you. And for me. [00:10:27] So one of the things that we always advise our customers is to make sure you have a third party in a place that's securing these cloud-based apps and is doing backups for you. [00:10:43] So for instance, most of them, Microsoft. Office through the, what do they call it now? Windows three 65 plans or whatever it is. Those email accounts don't have backups and there's no guarantee from Microsoft that they will not lose your data. So are you backing that up as well? That I think there's a lot of lessons for all of us in this, and be careful when you're buying something. [00:11:11] We just got a new dryer. I made sure you were not internet-connected. I don't want a dryer from a company sitting in my house on my network, even though I've got it separated out into the internet of things network. I don't want that device sitting there potentially providing a breach for the rest of my network. [00:11:34] So think about that, be careful with that. You're listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN. Stick around because we're going to talk about how Microsoft is getting rid of passwords. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. Thanks for joining me today. I always appreciate it and I love getting your emails. I've got a couple of great ones this week. Again, Gary was out there letting me know what he was having some problems with. In fact, I even ended up getting on the phone with him to help him out a little bit with this whole tracking thing. [00:00:26] He was thinking that his GPS was being used to track him, and some people were really trying to mess with him while he's trying to make some money driving around. So I explained how the app he's using as a paid driver works, how tracks him, and how he can stop it from tracking him when he's not working. [00:00:47] So if you're driving for Uber eats or grub hub. Et cetera. That's, that's the sort of thing he's doing. And he was really kind of wondering about, because some people were changing the delivery point on deliveries and he'd show up at the new address and there's nobody there, and there's nobody at the old address. [00:01:07] And so he was really having some issues. Yeah. Obviously that can be a problem. So if you have any questions, whether it's about grub hub or anything else, by all means, just email me, ME@Craig peterson.com. Let me know how I can help. I'm always glad to give a little bit of help for absolutely nothing. [00:01:28] And obviously this is what I do for a living as well. So you know, if, if it's a lot of work, then I'm going to have to charge you. But anyhow, Microsoft. Now. passwords have been kind of the bane of my existence forever. I remember the very first time I had a password, I don't remember what it was. It would have been pretty simple back then but that was the early 1970s, and it was a non-online timeshare. [00:02:00] The Computer, an HP, I think it was like a 2000 access or 2000 after that got upgraded to an a and it was so totally cool. It was my first real computer access and we had a teletype, a TTY33 yay. Seven level. Yeah. So it was an a, it was really, really cool. [00:02:24] And that was my first major introduction to computers way back then and we had passwords now, the head of the, of the math department, and that's where was at the time I was in school then it was inside the math department. He always used some variation of his name for his password. And I still remember to this day, his name was Robert Allen Lang. [00:02:53]So, hi, Mr. Lang. If you're, if you're still around, actually, if you're listening, but He would always use a password that like R A lane or R Allen lane or, you know, you could always guess what his password was, so we would guess his password. And we'd use that to get more access. So for instance, our accounts could only have so much storage and the accounts could only have so much time per week to be used. [00:03:26] We just loved using as much time as we could. Oh, man. One of these days, I'll tell you some stories. And so we would hack into his account. And once we're in doing his account, we then gave ourselves upgraded privileges and online time and kind of everything else. So yeah, you know, that's what you do when you're a kid, but anyhow, you know, teenagers right? [00:03:54] Fast forward to today and passwords are still a problem. I've been using pretty darn good passwords for a very, very long time now, and as you probably are aware, if you sign up for my email list, I'll send you a special report on passwords, but you might be well aware that I really like one password. [00:04:16] It's by far the winner. There was some other half-decent password managers out there last pass being one of them, but 1password, absolutely the winner. And we also use DUO, which is a two-factor authentication system. So between the two of them, we're pretty secure and I have it generate passwords for me, which is really nice, and it'll generate passwords. [00:04:39] It's funny, many times I'll have a like a 20 plus character password and the website I'm on just doesn't support that. Sometimes it'll ask all, you didn't put enough special characters in, which, as you know, just doesn't count anymore. So make sure you get my password special report so you can see what the current advice is. [00:05:01] And it's really changed recently, current advice for passwords and what you should do. So we've got world password day and every year we talk about passwords and what you should do. And this is the first year I think we're seeing more people starting to really use new forms of authentication. We're working from home even at work, and people are starting to understand just how insecure and ultimately how costly passwords really are. [00:05:38] Our cybercriminals don't need advanced techniques when they can just bet on human behavior. Ponemon Institute did a survey in 2019 and this is all on security behaviors. Okay. And they found that 51% of 1700 information technology and information technology security professionals reused an average of five total passwords again and again and again across both their business and their personal accounts. [00:06:17] Now that is a very bad thing to do. There's something called password stuffing where they steal your password. And remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned a, "have I been pawned" or powned website? And there's a feature that I put out as well. I don't think they're airing on WGAN, but they are on some other stations all about powned passwords. [00:06:41] Well, Once a password has been stolen and they know what it is and they know what your username is, they just start automatically going and checking banks, trying to log in with that email address and that password. So having the same password that you're using on more than one system is a very, very dangerous habit because if they get ahold of just one password, they know they can use it on other sites and they're probably going to be able to get in. [00:07:16] So this single compromised password can create just this chain reaction of theft and liability, frankly, on your part. And on average, one in every 250 corporate accounts is compromised each month. Think of that one in one in 22 really accounts is compromised every year. Wow. That is huge. I don't think I've ever seen that stat before. [00:07:48] So this expense of using passwords is really continuing to grow because we're using more business applications online, aren't we? I just talked about the cloud and some things she needed to be careful of with the cloud. Well, the cloud requires passwords and we're using those same passwords. Man. That is bad. [00:08:12]By the way, password reset is one of the highest support costs, especially in larger businesses. And that means that companies are dedicating 30 to 60% of the support desk calls to just resetting passwords. So. We all have to understand it better. We all need a multifactor authentication. The very least two-factor authentication and Microsoft now has this passwordless login. [00:08:43] You might've used it, you might've seen it where it's using the camera on your computer, and sometimes it's using other biometrics, like your fingerprints, et cetera. And there are new technologies out there that are being deployed, including in web browsers that we'll be talking about in the future as they get a little bit more well adopted. [00:09:03] But some of these keys, these USB authentication keys have a built-in, it's called Fido - FIDO so if you're interested, you can always dig that up and we'll be covering that. To a, you know, a future show, as I said, and I do do some training on that with my mentorship site. All right, everybody, stick around. [00:09:25] You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and I'm going to talk a little bit about remote work and now. The security fight that's happening in the cloud. Make sure you join me as well. Wednesday mornings at 7:34 with Mr. Matt Gagnon morning drive time as we talk about the latest in technology. [00:09:50] Stick around. I'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, good morning everybody. Craig Peterson here. We started out this whole show talking about surveillance here that managers are doing as they're surveilling their employees. I want to talk now a little bit about surveillance where we should be keeping an eye on our cloud devices. And our endpoint. [00:00:28] So let's start out with the cloud. You know, I call them devices. In some places, you might be using a server that's living up in maybe Microsoft Azure or Google's cloud, Amazon cloud, Amazon web services, et cetera. Those systems can all be compromised. And yeah, they're sitting in the data center. Yeah. You don't have to pay for the hardware or the electricity or the cooling, which is really nice. [00:00:58] Yeah. You don't have to hear all of the noise they make in the background, but many businesses have found that, wow, the cloud really isn't the panacea. I thought it was. And they're actually moving it back out of the cloud. And that's particularly true of businesses that have security concerns due to regulations because moving to the cloud does not absolve you, from these regulations. [00:01:27] Now we've got this additional problem of people working from home, so they're using either their own computers or maybe a company computer at home. They might be connecting to the office, but it's just as likely, maybe even more likely that they're connecting to a cloud service somewhere. Not, not just for collaboration or for meetings, but to do their basic work. [00:01:51] As more and more businesses are saying, Hey, why should I be paying for the software or hardware, et cetera. Let's just move it all to the cloud. And we're seeing now States and cities that are starting to lift some of these stay-at-home orders, but frankly, this increased level of employees working from home. [00:02:12] Is not going to disappear. Sure. It'll get a little smaller. Many businesses are going to be calling people back and they are going to be working from that office, but many people are in businesses that are going to continue that move over to the cloud. So what are the security challenges that come from a hybrid infrastructure? [00:02:35] Almost three-quarters of companies expect at least 5% or more of the former onsite employees to work from home on a permanent basis. That's not a lot, but 5% when you add it up over all of the small businesses, that is a lot because half of all employees in the country work for small businesses. And a quarter of businesses are planning on keeping at least 20% of their workers out of the office post-pandemic. [00:03:06] And this is according to a survey of chief financial officers by the, it's maybe you guys know Gartner right? Gartner group. They're research firm, so their numbers are usually considered gospel in the business world. With this remote work comes even more cloud usage, and that could be a problem for a lot of companies that have issues with the visibility into the security of the cloud. [00:03:33] Now. You might be as a business relying on maybe some permitter defenses or maybe some on-premise security software and appliances to help keep your systems and data safe. Now, most of the time, small businesses aren't using the right stuff. They're just using some equipment that they got from, you know, a random break-fix shop or heaven forbid at staples or where they ordered it from Amazon. [00:03:59] You can't, you just can't get the good stuff from any of those places. But that's not going to work anymore at all. When we're talking about remote workers cause people are in their homes and they're using cloud services that you just don't know the security level of, you might not know what the patch level is of windows of the software that's running on windows. [00:04:26] You might not know any of that stuff. Right. But we are going to see a major shift so. Let's talk about it a little bit here. We're just seeing, you know, massive, massive growth. I'm looking at these numbers in telecommuting. It was growing slowly before, but now many technology firms, particularly marketing companies, are relying almost exclusively on people working from home. [00:04:53] IBM had moved people to work from home and then found that experiment to be a failure and moved everybody back into the office. Now, that was back in 2017 they pulled them back in and made them work from an office in one of six cities. While IBM now has moved almost entirely to remote work and they've got 95% of its current workforce working outside of the company offices. [00:05:21] IBM, by the way, is a major player in the cloud in case you weren't aware, they were way more prepared for this problem than many companies. It com and infrastructure information security groups. Absolutely true. So coming out of this, we need to embrace the fact that we have to continually be ready for full. [00:05:43] Remote workforce. What is going to happen? And, and I'm, I'm on governors, the governor's task force here on education, on re-opening education. What are we going to do? And of course, I'm the security guy, the technology guy, actually one of the technology people on that task force. And we had a meeting this week and we were talking about it. [00:06:07] Okay, fine. So we've got the COVID-19 thing and it's eventually going to be a thing of the past. But thinking about the teachers that are 60, 65, 70 years old, what happens when there's another virus? What happens when the annual flu or curves. Are we going to be shutting down our offices again? Are we going to be shutting down our schools again? [00:06:32] Are we going to maybe try and do quarantines as we've always done in the past where we say, Hey, if you are sick. Or if you are vulnerable, you just stay home because this is happening more and more. We, we had SARS very, you know, that wasn't long ago. Right? That was another covert virus that we had. We had to MERS. [00:06:56] That was another COVID virus that we had. We've had a number of these things. I'm thinking about Ebola, which I don't think was a COVID virus. They're happening more and more. And as we have more and more people in the world, the likelihood of them occurring is going to be even greater. So if you are a business person, and then the case of where I'm on the governor's task force, looking at education, if, if we are a school, what are we going to do in the future? [00:07:30] And I really think we have to realize that we have to be able to have our businesses basically work remotely. So I want to encourage everybody to really keep that in mind as we're looking at this going forward. What can you do in order to make your business covert proof? Now, it isn't just the COVID-19 what happens if there's a fire in your building burns down. [00:08:00] What happens if there is a major lightning strike and it burns up all of your computers just zaps them. What's that all going to mean and what's going to happen with the next 12 months? Are we going to have another massive spike in the COVID virus or are you ready for that? We got to think about it. [00:08:21] The other side is the endpoint devices and we're seeing right now. Six and 10 remote workers using personal devices to do work, and almost all of these workers believe that the devices are secure. CrowdStrike had a look at this and said that people are naive. Six in 10 remote workers are using personal devices to do work and all. [00:08:48] Almost none of them. Are properly secured, and we've got attackers now focused on targeting the remote workers. They're going after VPN technology technologies, which is part of the reason I say don't use VPNs, right? It's where the people are and it's where we're getting it back. So be ca

Welcome!   For being locked down do to this Pandemic there is certainly a lot of technology in the news this week.  So lets get into it.  I will give you my take on a recent federal court ruling about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and website terms of use policies. We will discuss the many risks that medical device manufacturers are introducing into hospitals, clinics, and patients. We have a couple of stories about Apple, first off they are ditching INTEL and designing their processors and why the fake news media is so eager to announce problems with their architecture even when it does not exist and much more. So sit back and listen in.  For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here another week with the Corona virus, I guess. Well, the latest coronavirus, right? This one is it called?  Corona, SARS two. Cause it's another version of the SARS virus. Hey Craig Peterson,  here on WGAN heard every Saturday right now from one till 3:00 PM and we talked about the latest in technology. [00:00:30] The things you need to know, things you can do. We kind of have a little bit of fun too. Sometimes we'll get into the real stuff that's serious and sometimes we just talk about some of the cool things and. Well, some things that I like to with the family and all of that sort of thing. And today, of course, is not an exception. [00:00:50] We've got, of course, these SBA loans, and you might've heard me bellyache about these because, of course, they're just not working. Uh, you know, I have a very small company and at the very least, I was supposed to get this little loan that every business that applied was supposed to get, and he supposed to get it within 72 hours.  Blah, blah, blah. From the SBA and to date I've gotten absolutely nothing and it's been weeks. And to top it off, I got an email from them a couple of weeks ago that was really ambiguous and saying that maybe I needed to provide some more information. We called them up to try and find out what's up. [00:01:32] Things just don't work there either. It just gets totally, totally messed up. So  for me  and some businesses obviously, you know, like big ones have gotten millions of dollars, including schools, universities, et cetera. And the little guys that really need the money, we just aren't getting anything. [00:01:55] Welcome to the club if you're one of them. If you're not, I'd love to hear from you. How did you make it work as a small business? Yeah, you can just email me@craigpeterson.com I would absolutely love to know. And then to top it all off, what happens this week? Of course, the SBAs loan system crashes as businesses are trying to apply for this stuff. [00:02:19] Maybe about another, what was it, 310 billion in emergency funds? It was was supposedly released on Monday or made available on Monday, and the portal course crashed and kept crashing all day long. The bankers who are trying to get onto the system to apply and behalf of the desperate clients couldn't get anywhere. [00:02:40] Very frustrating to them. Of course, no integration between the banking systems and the SBA. No integration, easy way for small businesses or even these big businesses that are pretending they're small businesses. No way for them to be able to get the information out there. And many of them are venting online on social media against the SBA, the small business administration that's running the program. [00:03:06] Now I've got to give them a bit of a break because I heard a statistic this week too, that the SBA has processed the more of these loan applications in the last, what is it, a month than they have in the last 15 years, which is absolutely incredible. [00:03:26] American bankers association is on Twitter saying they're deeply frustrated at their ability to access the SBA system. America's banks can help struggling businesses, you know? When did I say at the beginning of all of this. Based on the amount of money they were talking about and assuming that there were a hundred million businesses. I mean, families, excuse me, a hundred million families in the United States. Somebody just do a little quick math here. 100, one, two, three, one, two, three that's a hundred million. Then times 60, one, two, three $60,000 dollars per family, lets see three, three, one, two, three, $6 trillion, which was the estimated cost of the actual first bailout. [00:04:14] You know, you heard 2 trillion and 3 trillion. The actual bottom line was actually 6 trillion. So what we're really, what we're really talking about here is the ability. For the federal government to have given every family in the country $60,000 can you imagine that? What would that do to the economy? [00:04:37] Giving every family in the country $60,000 dollars. Now remember too, that you are on the hook as a family for $60,000 that were given to all kinds of businesses that probably didn't need the money in the first place. And businesses that were, you know, a friend of this Congress critter, that Congress critter. You saw what Nancy Pelosi snuck into the bills. [00:05:03] The Republicans kept saying, they're trying to keep this clean. Let's just get this to small businesses. And of course, the way they set it up, the way they did it just didn't work either.  Man is this is just me. Absolutely. Is it just me? Um. Yeah, the program first went in April 3rd it, and it's supposed to help the neediest businesses, these really small businesses, hair salons, coffee shops, dry cleaners, and businesses like mine. [00:05:31] And of course, it just didn't happen. Its Beyond frustration here for me and for pretty much everybody else. So these truly tiny businesses like mine are gone. They really, most of them are gone. I've seen estimates this week saying that it was probably in the order of 25% of them will never be back. And I was talking with one of my daughters this week and a restaurant in our neighborhood that has been here for almost ever. [00:06:06] A very old business. Uh, that restaurant, the building is haunted. It has been around for a hundred plus years, maybe 200 years. I'm not sure. Very, very old buildings. It's been a Tavern, et cetera, over the years. And he said, there's no way he's reopening. He just can't reopen. You know, he's been struggling for years. [00:06:28] It's a tough business to be in any ways, in the restaurant business, and I've seen stats on restaurants saying that we could see a 50% decrease in the number of restaurants. Number of restaurants, just an entirely here, 50% I don't know what the numbers are going to be. Um, Dallas. Here I, there's an article from, uh, the Dallas eater saying that Dallas restaurants opened in our May 1st is a bad idea. [00:07:00] Market watch has a thing about this as well. My state is reopening businesses, including restaurants and movie theaters. Am I selfish if I go?Many U S restaurants say PPP loans don't meet their needs. Yeah, no kidding. Right? Even if you get the money. You're supposed to spend three quarters of it on payroll and you've already laid off your people, how are you going to get them back? [00:07:23] Because they're making more money. As laid off people on unemployment insurance, and they would be, if you hired them back. So they're not going to reopen, and then you got to consider, well, okay, payroll was this much, but they were also getting tips which subsidized it because restaurant workers, many of them of course, making just to two or three bucks an hour. [00:07:46] This is a disaster. It is an absolute disaster. I don't know how many people are going to end up dead because of the consequences of what we did to try and slow down the Corona virus. And I'm glad we're able to slow it down. I don't know. Ultimately if flattening the curve is going to help, because you remember the whole idea behind flattening the curve was we did not want to overwhelm our medical system. [00:08:17] We didn't want the hospitals to be overwhelmed. Because we wanted the hospitals to be able to treat people that had this Corona virus. And they certainly were able to, we're seeing hospitals now, especially small rural hospitals closing down. Some of them may never open their doors again and they're not closing down because they were too busy. [00:08:37] They're closing down because it didn't have enough income because they weren't doing elective surgery. A their beds weren't even close to being full with Covid patients. Some of them only had a couple of Covid patients in them. So what, what , you know, um, and we've already had people who have committed suicide. [00:08:56] I'm aware of one, personally because of losing their job and now they had to pay the mortgage. They had to pay all of their other bills. They didn't have the money. The government was dragging their feet on it. And then the money that the government's been spending that did not end up in our hands, that money now  is not only money we have to pay back, but it's going to drive up inflation. And what's that going to mean? [00:09:21] Well, It could mean, well, the antidote for inflation from a typical economic standpoint is well you raise interest rates. Do you remember raised interest rates in the eighties early eighties? I had friends who lost homes because the only loan they could get on their home was a a variable interest rate loan. And so they had one of these variable interest rate loans and the interest rate got up into the twenties. I think I remember it being like 22-23% there it there in the early eighties. And so their monthly payments. Just went up. Doubled, tripled, quadrupled some people, and they couldn't afford to keep their home, so they lost their down payments on the houses. [00:10:05] And people are complaining right now that they cannot get a loan on their home because they don't have enough of a down payment. So the banks are getting free money. From us., Ultimately, right? Or from the treasury. So the banks are getting free money and some of these banks now we're looking for 20% down, again, which is what I had to do years ago when I bought my home. [00:10:27] I never only ever bought one home. So man, things are going to be a mess. They are going to be a very, very big mess. Um. We'll see.  In the Financial times, many U S restaurant's highly likely to return the small business aid. I was kind of interested in article denied by insurance companies. LA restaurants are waging a high stakes battle in court now because they had coverage. [00:10:56] It was supposed to cover this stuff and did it? No. Okay. Um. The many privately owned restaurants are saying the Paycheck protection program fails to meet their needs. Oh my goodness gracious. Um. This is, it's very ill suited for their industry from my industry, for most industries. [00:11:19] Basically, if you're a big enough business that you have a full time HR department, an accounting department, you probably could get the paycheck protection program. If you're a small business like me. And things are probably not so good for you, so, huh, man. Anyway, stick around. We'll get into the tech. I promise you're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN stick around because we'll be right back. [00:11:55] It kind of sounds like the national restaurant association show here with Craig Peterson, on WGAN. And I was thinking about my, uh, my favorite local restaurant. I love Mexican food. I have ever since I lived in Californ-i-a all of those years ago, out on the left coast. My wife, in fact, the native born Californian, and it, uh, it, I'm, I'm looking at them saying, how are they surviving. [00:12:24] Cause we would go over there once a week at least, you know, taco Tuesday type thing and enjoy ourselves. Have a nice little family outing. I haven't spent a dime there in six, eight weeks. I don't know how long it's been. It's been a very, very long time, so I just don't know. Anyways, let's get in. Let's get into the, um. [00:12:45] The stories for today, and we're going to talk about something that I think is really, really important. Uh, and of course, what else should we talk about? Right? But, uh, we've got, yeah, that was a drum roll. We've got an interesting problem right now. There is a law on the books right now that are inplace and has been in place for about 30 years, and it has to do with the definition of hacking. What is hacking, and it made sense about 30 years ago. [00:13:22] Nowadays, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Because we've got these terms on websites. So for instance. We'd talked about two months ago about a company that was scraping all of the information they could find about us, including our, our pictures, our video, our voices. But primarily they were after our pictures and from every site they could get their hands on from any site whether or not they were violating the site's terms of service. And some of these sites have sued them, et cetera. They've been hacked, and I guess that's what happens when you become a big target. But where should it be going? What should we be doing? We've got a problem right now, and there's a lawsuit that's been initiated by a group of academics and journalists, and of course the ACLU is behind it. [00:14:18] And you know, most of the time I look at what the ACLU is doing and wonder what it is they're up to. In this case, I think they might actually be doing something right. Isn't that nice for a change. They're arguing. That having these investigations against racial discrimination in online job markets by creating fake accounts for fake employers and job seekers. [00:14:49] Is that something that should be done? Right? Leading job sites out there in terms of service that prohibits that, right? So users of these sites are prohibited from supplying fake information, and the researchers are worried that the research could expose them to criminal liability. Because they're posting these things on the site and then they're trying to analyze all things being equal. [00:15:14] Was this a case of racial discrimination? So in 2016, they sued the federal government, and they're asking for whether a decision based on what they're saying is the First Amendment that you could in fact do almost anything online and get away with it. Now, I, for instance, you know, I have been using fake information on websites for a very long time, so when I go to authenticate myself, you know, they'll ask, what street were you born on? What's your mother's maiden name? I always make stuff up for that and I record it. So that later on I can always dig it up because you know someone can go online, they can become your bestest to Facebook friend. They can look at LinkedIn, find out about you and your history. And the younger kids these days have all of the information online and will for their entire lives. [00:16:17] So I have always used different email addresses, different versions of my email address, completely different names made up everything. Now obviously. When it comes to an official thing, like a bank account or government stuff, I'm not lying about anything except for my authenticity to be able to log into the site. [00:16:42] So I'll give my correct social security number, et cetera, et cetera, when it is required, because obviously would be a violation of a law, but they're saying. That under this federal law that's out there, the computer fraud and abuse act, it's been around for 30 years. Would it be illegal to create these accounts where we're just trying to figure out, are these people discriminating. So there is a federal judge by the name of John Bates who ruled on Friday a week ago, that the plaintiff's proposed research would not violate the CFAA, the computer fraud and abuse act provisions at all. And he said that somebody violates it when they bypass an access restriction, like a password, but someone who logs into a website with a valid password does not become a hacker simply by doing something prohibited by a web site, terms of service. [00:17:45] So that I actually, I think was a good ruling here. Now from the ruling itself, criminal is criminalizing terms of service violations, risks, turning each website into its own criminal jurisdiction and each webmaster into its own legislature. Yay. At last. Right now, unfortunately, courts are disagreeing about how to interpret this. [00:18:12] If this law is around forever. In Oh nine the California federal judge, right? What else? Ninth circus rejected a CFAA prosecution against a woman who contributed to a, myspace hoax that led to the suicide of a 13 year old by the name of Megan Meyer. And in that, the prosecutors argued that they had violated my spaces, terms of service. [00:18:40] In 2014 the night circus, uh, rejected another prosecution based on terms of service violation. So obviously I'm in favor of this. They're kind of moving in the right direction. We've got the seventh circus, uh, ruled that an employee had violated the anti hacking law when after quitting his job, he wiped an employer owned laptop that contained information that was valuable to his employer. [00:19:08] As well as the data could have been revealed misconduct by this person. So I think most of the way we're talking about the courts coming down the right direction here, but, uh, I, I'm very glad to see this because you know, that I. Protect site against hackers and hacking, not just websites, but businesses, right. [00:19:30] Including a real enterprise is real big businesses and I've done that for years. Usually the smaller divisions, because even the public companies have their own it staff and you know, they hold it all very close to the chest. It's in tasks. I don't trust anyone else. Don't, don't go with that person. Don't do what they say. [00:19:50] Yeah. Right. Which is, or I kind of get it cause I'd probably be saying the same thing, right. Cause I know what I'm doing, but in many cases they're just trying to protect their jobs. So when I am. Doing this. One of the things we do is have a honeypot set up. So what happens is the bad guys get onto a network and they started attacking. [00:20:13] They're immediately going to get into the little honeypot and the honeypot looks like an unpatched system. Might be a Linux system. Usually it is, or it might be a windows system, and so they start hacking away at it. And that immediately just sets off a trip wire, right? Cause I know, wait a minute, wait a minute. [00:20:33] Somebody's breaking into this system. So we monitor pretty closely. We know what's happening on it. I basically, all of the time, and there were interpretations of that law that would say that what I was doing was illegal. It was part of security research, even going on to the dark web and downloading some of these databases of hacked accounts. [00:20:55] Passwords, usernames, emails, et cetera. Even going online, looking for my client's information on the dark web could be considered to be illegal, so we've got to update these laws. There's a whole lot more, obviously, that we have to update, but I'm glad to see some of the stuff coming down on the right side. [00:21:15] Hey, we've heard about companies moving back to the U S now because of the Ruan virus and other things China's been doing. To our U S corporations for years. Uh, did you know Apple is doing something completely differently to this year that will potentially get them out of China, at least for the most part, stick around. [00:21:38] We'll be right back. This is Craig Peterson here on w G a N and online@craigpeterson.com. [00:21:54] Hey, welcome back. Craig. Peter sawn here. Listen to me on w. G. A. N I'm heard every Saturday from one till 3:00 PM and on Wednesdays I'm on with Matt during the morning drive time. You can pick me up at about seven 34 or every Wednesday morning as we talk about the latest in the news of technology. Hey, you might've heard of Fox con they are a big company based in China. [00:22:26] They have offices while manufacturing plants, frankly, all over the world. They've got factories in Thailand, Malaysia, Czech Republic, South Korea, Singapore, and the Philippines. They also were talking about opening up some plants in Wisconsin. Apparently those never actually opened, but they are. Busy worldwide. [00:22:49] And Fox con is Apple's longest running partner in building I-phones and some of the other devices that China makes. I mean, that Apple makes or sells, right, because remember who makes this stuff anymore? Well, Apple hasn't been making its newest IMAX or not IMAX. I shouldn't say a Mac pros. Yeah. In the United States. [00:23:14] Again, not that itself, it's a contracted manufacturing company, but the Mac pro, the one that came on 2013 as well as the new Mac pro are entirely made in the United States. Now, when we're looking at things like the iPhone and some of these other devices, yeah, they are certainly manufactured by Foxconn in China. [00:23:38] In mostly in at Shenzhen China location, but in fact, key iPhone components, according to Tim cook, are manufactured in the United States and then shipped abroad. And then the devices are assembled by Fox con, and then there's another company called Pegatron in China. Bottom line. What they are doing and what Apple is doing is protecting its intellectual property. [00:24:08] And we've heard of this before, haven't we? Where companies are in China, China requires them to give all of their intellectual property to their Chinese quote unquote. Partner, right? And Chinese national has to have at least a 50% ownership in it. It's real problem all the way around, and when we're looking at what's happening with the iPhone in the manufacturing in China, things are going to be changing. [00:24:37] In fact, they're going to be changing for a bunch of Apple's devices, including some of their new Mac books. If you've ever gotten into some of the hardware details inside of. It's a Mac books and, and in fact, they're Mac computers. Over the years, Apple has gone through a few different CPS. They were using the power CPU while before that they were using the murderer, Motorola, the 68,000 based CPS and a very, just an amazing CPU. [00:25:07] I remember at the time doing some operant system ports to it. It was just amazing. And then they went to Intel and, um. After. I'm not Intel, I mean, power PC, which was an IBM design. Frankly, power chips are the most amazing chips there are. Uh, from a cost perspective and performance. It's just, they are absolutely amazing, but they run hot and they use a lot of electricity, which is why you don't want them in a lab. [00:25:39] Top and Apple was not, or excuse me, IBM was not able to deliver to Apple chips that would meet their power requirements and performance requirements. So Apple said, okay, well we're going to switch to Intel because Intel promised that they would be able to provide the faster chips and they run cooler, so they'd be better for laptops and things, and they started using Intel. [00:26:04] And Intel worked out okay. Right now, by the way, uh, Intel is losing the performance war to AMD advanced micro devices. So that's kind of cool to hear those, you know, those things kind of shift back and forth every once in a while. But Intel has been unable to meet Apple's delivery requirements, and Apple's have been pretty tough over the years. [00:26:25] Look at what Johnny Ives has done with some of the designs, but Apple says, Hey, listen, we need a. Perf performance increase in the processor and we want to choose less juice and give off less heat. Well, those things are all difficult to do for a microprocessor manufacturer. So what Apple decided they would do is they went to an open source CPU design and started with that base and went on from there to have some just absolutely amazing chip designs. [00:26:58] Now I, I love some of these designs and they're showing up. But in all of our I-phones, if you have an iPhone or an iPad, you're using one of Apple's chips. Uh, the age 12, I think is the latest one. I'm trying to remember, uh, the version numbers, but, but they're made by Apple quote, unquote. In the U S for the most part, certainly not in China, and they are very efficient from a performance standpoint. [00:27:27] They're very fast. So they've been doing a very good job with these. Now, I, I talked to a couple of weeks ago about how much an iPhone would cost if it was made in America, and I saw another study that came out last week, so I had to bring this one up because the other one. Wasn't that clear. They figured it would only be a hundred $200 more. [00:27:48] So Wes, what RAs? Why Lara? This is from fi.org. You'll find this article online, uh, which is the foundation for economic education. And this is an article by Mark Perry. He's saying that an iPhone that today costs about a thousand dollars if it were made entirely in the United States, if it even could be, because believe it or not, the United States has fallen behind. [00:28:21] In manufacturing technologies because we have blood, China get ahead of us. We gave them all this technology to start with. I've complained about that before too, and now they are ahead of us, so we don't even have the ability to manufacture these things here in the U S right now, we not only have to ramp pump, but we'd have to develop some new technologies and. [00:28:45] That thousand dollar iPhone that is assembled in China that has some component parts made in the United States would push the price of an iPhone components from about 190 $190 that's what it costs right now. Estimated, right? Apple doesn't release these numbers, but estimated to cost $190 right now, it would be about $600 if it were. [00:29:12] Made in the us. So if the materials alone are costing better than triple what it would cost in China, we could probably see a $2,000 iPhone. Now, do you remember that the U S is only bringing in 6% of the profits from iPhone sales? Two out of three iPhone purchasers are not based in the United States. [00:29:38] Now, that's a huge change from years ago when most of Apple's customers are in the U S but right now with the whole. A wound virus has been spreading in China. The app, the iPhone sales are way down, and that's probably also true of other countries as well. So this is going to be an interesting little battle as we go ahead. [00:30:00] But here's the really big news as far as I'm concerned, and that is. That Apple is going to start making the Mac book using their chip sets. So like these eight, 12, and other processors I've been talking about, they've got the, uh, a fourteens are the new ones that are coming out. I think I got that model number right. [00:30:27] But these are 12 core chips and they are actually. Two chip sets. There's uh, that, that are in one package. It's just amazing what they're doing, but some lower powered ones for doing things that don't need a lot of CPU power and some higher powered ones. And they're going to be coming out in the new iPhones and the new iPad, but they are also going to be coming out in the new Mac books now that. [00:31:01] Is amazing. 12 core CPU is aided by a graphics processor that is probably going to have its own collection of cores. This is amazing. If you look at the current iPad pro tablets that are using the eight 12 X and Z chips, we're talking about an Apple iPad pro outperforming. 90% of recent PC laptops, so this could be amazing. [00:31:31] Apple's moving this, some of this back to the U S and they're getting Intel out of the way, and I think that's a good thing, frankly, for Apple. But listening to Craig, Peter sauna, WGAN stick around. We'll be right back. [00:31:50] Hello everybody. Welcome back. Craig. Peter Assan here on w G a N having a good time today. Hopefully you guys are as well, whether you are kind of locked up in the home maybe or any central person like you, me and your, you're out and about and maybe taking a little time on Saturday too. Work in the yard. [00:32:12] I appreciate you all being with us today. I have just absolutely amazed here what Apple is doing and congratulations to them now once get into our hospitals cause they've been in the news a lot lately. You know, we've got people. Who will have the Woodlawn virus, right? Who have the symptoms of this coven 19, which is very bad. [00:32:39] And, uh, it's particularly bad for older people. We have seen now covert 19, the average of the average. Age of someone who died, what state was, it was like 82 I can't remember if that was a single state or if that was a Countrywide, but that is frankly, absolutely amazing. That means it is killing older people, but we're also seeing other symptoms. [00:33:07] Now we have, people are getting blood clots. You heard about that athlete that had to have a leg amputated. Again, it's absolutely amazing here. Uh,  hospitals right now, according to the New York times, this is from Wednesday this week saying that airborne coronaviruses detected and woo Han hospitals right now. [00:33:29] That is not good. Um. It's man. I'm just going through these articles. It just, it just, I shake my head, but we're starting to see some electric surgeries coming back to hospitals. Uh, most of these field hospitals that were set up or shut down. Down, they were largely unused and right here, according to the Bangor daily news on Wednesday, we've got two bankrupt main hospitals warn they could close in June if they don't receive stimulus funds and president and Trump has announced that, yes, indeed, our hospitals are going to get stimulus funds. [00:34:08] But if you heard me at the top of the hour, you heard. You heard me talk about how, uh, you know, we were promised funds too, and we just haven't gotten any. So it's, this is going to be a very, very big problem for us all. Uh, and when we're talking about hospitals, there's one other angle or that people just aren't paying attention to right now. [00:34:30] You know, w we talked about the ventilators. And there w there just weren't gonna be enough. Right. And here in Maine and all over the country, there were more ventilators than were needed. And that's true. New York as well. And come to find out, of course they sold 500 ventilators rather than maintain them. [00:34:52] And instead of ordering more ventilators, what did the government do there in New York? While they just commissioned a plan as to how they were going to ration them, who got. To die, right? That's socialized medicine for you. If I ever heard the definition of it, a total death panel, but the good news is we didn't need all of those, but we've got the internet of things and we've talked about it and I've talked about it in my tree trainings and we go into it in some depth. [00:35:21] In my courses, but the so called internet of things also extends to our hospitals. It's the internet of medical things, and these devices are going online. Hospitals and medical facilities are really starting to stare this in the phase. And I mentioned when I was on with Matt Gagnan on Wednesday morning this week, that there is a problem been around for a long time. [00:35:50] I have my first, in fact, a hospital chain as a client was 25 years ago. Maybe. And we were trying to clean things up for them, fix them, network stuff, put some security stuff in place. And what did we find? Well, those those machines, those hospitals, plus all of the clinics that were affiliated with the hospital had old hardware that they just weren't taking care of. [00:36:18] These devices that are controlling the systems in the hospitals. Everything from the air ventilation systems through. All of the medical equipment. Think about all of this stuff right from the, the drip machines, the Ivy machines, the ventilators, our the MRE machines, the x-ray machines. Some of these devices are running very outdated operating system. [00:36:46] Some of them are still running windows 95. Windows XP, windows seven none of which are currently getting patches or updates, and many of them were never intended to go on line at all. Think about that. When, when they were designed the windows 95 and XP. They weren't thinking about these things being hooked up to the internet or even other networks really. [00:37:13] They were just kind of standalone systems that sat in a corner and then the programmer said, Hey, listen, we can add, there's really cool feature. We'll tie them together. And so doctors can look at x-rays remotely. And so a system that was never designed with network security in mind all of a sudden had a network connection all of a sudden was being used online on a network. [00:37:35] In a hospital that had never set it up properly in the first place. I really wish more of these medical centers in the hospitals would call me because they need so much help, and many of them don't even realize it. They, these things have no cybersecurity protection whatsoever, and then the hospital networks are often not even segmented. [00:38:01] That's something I teach home users to do. So that's allowing attackers to enter anywhere in the hospital and move around so they can get to the billing. They can get to all of these machines there. Even being researchers that are saying they have seen hackers inside cardiac pacemaker machines. Think about that one for a little bit. [00:38:28] How about if it gets onto one of these machines that's running on an older version of windows or even a brand new one that hasn't been patched up and they get onto it to a hacker, it may just look like, Hey, this is just another windows 10 machine. I'm going to use it for Bitcoin mining. I'm going to use it for spreading ransomware around. [00:38:48] You think that might be a problem? So it is now Bitcoin mining instead of watching your cardiac rhythm. Right? And so when I was going to overheat, it's gonna use up all of the systems, resources. It's going to spread ransomware throughout the hospital. We've seen that again and again and again and again, and we've seen that again and again in , even in our state, New Hampshire has had this as well. [00:39:17] I talked to and helped a school district that had been nailed by ransomware and they decided they were just pay the ransom, which by the way. Tells the ransom Merz, Hey listen, let's hack them again and put another ransom on. Cause we know they pay the ransom right. So there's third problem the hospitals are having is with all of this vulnerable equipment. [00:39:40] They're not replacing them. They're not upgrading, and they're not patching them. And not enough of this equipment has been recalled by the manufacturers because the manufacturers have gone on to a newer model, Hey, listen, uh, no need to update that machine or buy a new one for only $50,000. So where are the manufacturers spending their time? [00:40:03] Where are they focusing their efforts? Well, obviously they're focusing their efforts on getting them to buy a new machine to design these new machines. It is a very, very big, big deal. Now, another one of the big attacks, most common, I mentioned ransomware when it comes to the intranet of medical devices, but. [00:40:26] The other big one is a distributed denial of service attack. Cause you remember these devices in the hospital are performing critical. Things, right? Very critical functions that, as I said, there might be running a cardiac machine on MRI. They might just be keeping track of doctor's notes, all of which are critical. [00:40:49] So if a nation state specifically targets an IV pump and changes the dose of medication, what do you think will happen? It certainly could happen, but the more basic thread is. These devices getting a denial of service attack. So the whole network at the hospital becomes overloaded and now nothing works at the hospital. [00:41:18] So there's, there are just the basic threats that aren't being taken care of. Ransomware, phishing emails, and these attacks are targeting the weakest and the oldest operating systems that are typically running on these devices and hospitals are top targets. Now, one of the big hacking groups out there that has ransomware all over the world said, Hey, listen, in this time of covert 19. [00:41:44] We are not going to be attacking the hospitals because it just isn't fair. And in fact, they have been attacking hospitals. They are the top targets still for ransomware because they're very vulnerable and they pay. And that's why, what was it, five years ago? Seven years ago? I designed a system just to, it's a small computer. [00:42:09] Based on a little in Intel Adam chip that sits in front of these devices for manufacturers, for controlling valves for more critical equipment. It just sits there. And it is a specialized firewall for that piece of equipment. So this is a problem. It's a very, very big problem in hospitals, frankly, are afraid to do anything because they're afraid they're going to get sued. [00:42:37] Their insurance companies are sitting there saying, Oh yeah, yeah, well, if you're going to do an upgrade, the equipment might not work. Properly and you might get sued. So we're going to increase the fees for our, for our services, for our premiums. Premiums are going to go up. Okay. So they just don't want to do anything. [00:42:58] And then you got the FDA right? Man, does this story ever end? And, uh, FDA is saying, Hey, listen guys, we're okay with you doing patches, the hospitals afraid of recertifying. And I love this quote here. Uh, it says it's a willful lie on the part of some stakeholders in the system that you can't update medical devices. [00:43:25] Why do you think that. W why do they think that? Well, bottom line is that. These device manufacturers are telling them, you can't update because your insurance premiums are going to get too high. The FDA says it'll have to be read, type accepted for use, et cetera, et cetera. But I want to let you know if you work for the medical community here at any level, the FDA. [00:43:54] Has post-market guidance that they issued in 2016 and in that, the FDA explained that while federal regulations require manufacturers to report certain actions, the majority of the actions taken by manufacturers to address cyber security vulnerabilities and exploits are generally not considered to be a type of device enhancement for which the FDA. [00:44:21] It does not require advanced notification or reporting. So some good news there, we'll let the hospitals know. If you're involved with this industry, guys, pull up your socks. Hire security specialist. Some of them have been doing it for awhile. That can really help you out because there's so much to know. [00:44:40] Hey, you've been listening to Craig Peterson and WGAN and online@craigpeterson.com stick around. [00:44:51] Hello everybody. Greg Peters song here. We of course are on every Saturday from a one until three and I'm on with Matt Gagnan as well on Wednesday mornings during drive time at about seven 34. I've been in the tech business now for many decades, and then the security business helping businesses secure their internet connections. [00:45:16] Really since 91 and I have quite a backstory, and one of these days we'll have to have to share it with you, but I'm a business guy and this whole security thing, you know, back in the day. I did not really understand security, probably like a lot of you guys and uh, but I was very, very technical. I had helped to implement a number of the protocols that are used on the internet and that was a big win for me because I was able to take what I knew, dig into it. [00:45:47] It took me a few days to figure out what had happened and then lock things down and I was kind of years behind at that time. Point because the, what I got, which was called the Morris worm, had actually been known for a few years before it hit me. And that was kind of a shame. So, you know, back then, of course you didn't have Google. [00:46:09] AltaVista wasn't around yet. None of this stuff was out there. We were using a gopher search engines, right. Or Veronica, Archie, Jughead back in the day, and trying to figure it out was really a bit of a chore. Once I figured it out, it was easy enough to fix, but I almost lost my business over that and that was a very scary occasion for me. [00:46:29] So I have really kind of dug into it, and I've been helping out a lot of businesses here over the years to help be secure, and I'm doing the same thing as well. For individuals. And that's what this show's all about, right? We're trying to help you guys out with that. Talk about some latest cool technology. [00:46:48] And, uh, I was so successful in being able to help outfit, I was even drafted by the FBI's InfraGuard program and trained, I've trained thousands of businesses literally here across the nation on what. To do in order to keep safe, and I continue to do that with free webinars, courses, memberships, all that sort of stuff. [00:47:10] Anyhow, if you miss the first hour today, I talked about a change here in the way criminal hacking is being looked at by our courts, and that's. Very good things about time. They changed that Apple is going to be selling max with its own processor starting in 2021. Say goodbye to Intel, and I would add to that. [00:47:34] Good. Riddens uh, also the internet of medical things. You've heard me, if you've been listening to me. Uh, you've heard me talk a little bit about the internet of things. Well, there's something called the internet of medical things as well, and that is frankly very, very scary. So that's how we ended up last hour. [00:47:56] And I want to invite everybody to go online. Go to Craig peterson.com you will see all of the articles I talk about today with all of the background. You can listen to my podcasts, you can watch my videos every once in a while. I even have some trainings. Up there, but if you sign up, you can get my weekly newsletter, which does contain all of that stuff. [00:48:19] Craig, Peter, sawn.com/subscribe so you can just get out your phone. It'll work on your phone. It'll work on your desktop, on your laptop. Craig Peterson. Now I saved Craig Peterson because it's an O. N it's not an E. N, it's N. O. N. Alright, so it's Craig, CRA, I G just like you'd expect Peter sohn.com/subscribe and I do not. [00:48:46] I do not pass to you. In fact, when I have something that I am launching, you know, a new, a new course, a new product, whatever it is, I will give you the option to opt out of that. If you're not interested in it, and I, I, you know, just click right there and you'll still get my weekly newsletter. But you won't hear anything more about that particular promotion that's going on at the time. [00:49:09] So I'm not like some of these marketers that just slam you every day. I don't even consider myself a marketer. Right? I'm a tech guy that happens to have something to sell, not quite the same thing. Anyhow. Um. Yeah, w and the plenty of free stuff. A lot of people just use the free stuff and that's all they need. [00:49:30] We have a report that's been in the media that I want to talk about right now, and this is a report about this so-called zero day exploit against iOS. Now, what is zero day exploit? Basically. Uh, what we're talking about when we say zero day means, uh, it's kind of like patient zero, who was the first person to get the Corona virus as an idea, right? [00:49:57] That's patient zero zero day here. When we're talking about some of these hacks means no one has seen this particular hack before, at least no one was aware of it. Now, sometimes the government agencies. Of our government and other foreign governments, we'll find something out. Of course they won't. Uh, they won't tell us about it. [00:50:20] Right. They'll just kind of use it. That has actually changed under the Trump administration. President Trump has been adamant that they share this information. I'm sure that keeping a couple of things back, but the NSA even has been sharing information about exploits that are going on. So we're funded about more and more of them, but in this case, there is supposedly an exploit that's out there in the wild. [00:50:46] And then the wild means it is being used. It has been seen out there. And this particular exploit is supposed to be used just by sending out a specially crafted, uh, email. Okay. And I'm supposedly, I saw another article that was saying, Oh, it's especially triggered SMS, a text message or message message or something. [00:51:11] So there's a San Francisco based security firm named Zach ops, and they said on Wednesday that attackers a dues the zero day exploit against at least six targets over a span of at least two years. Well. Now that's being disputed because Apple is certainly acknowledging that there is a flaw in the mail app, but it is a bug that causes the app to crash. [00:51:39] It does not give the bad guys access to anything. Basically. So the bad guys, certainly, yeah. They could crash your mail app and it's just going to restart automatically, or are you going to click it and it'll re restart right on your iOS device. But in this case, what we're talking about is something that's really a whole lot different, a whole lot worse, or is it frankly, right? [00:52:04] If it's not giving them access to your data. Is it really worse because it can't take full control of your iPhone, unlike what some of the media outlets were talking about. So Apple had declined to comment on the report, but they came out and they said that the bug posed a threat to iPhone and iPad users and there had not been any ax exploit at. [00:52:29] All in the statement they said, Apple takes all reports and security threats seriously, thoroughly investigated. Researchers report based on the information provided have concluded these issues do not pose an immediate risk to our users, and they go on to say that they found these issues in mail that. [00:52:47] Cannot bypass the iPhone and iPad security protections and no evidence that they've been used against customers. Now Apple's really good too about trying to track what is happening on phones. You might have noticed if you go in complaining about a problem with your phone and you go into the. Oh store. [00:53:04] They can look at logs on your phone to see if the app has been crashing, et cetera. So yes, indeed, they can check this out and take care of it. There have been a number of independent researchers that have also questioned the conclusion that zinc ops came to, and I think this is good. You know, you've got to be out there. [00:53:26] You've got to be talking about these things. Apple did respond. I like the fact that it was all public here. And that people were able to look at it and kind of figure out what was going on. Cause there have been exploits. We know that the WhatsApp app has been nailed a few times and I think part of the reason for that is WhatsApp is supposed to be secure. [00:53:47] Well, how secure is it. Really, and so they, the bad guys are constantly kind of going after it, trying to prove that it's just not secure at all. But really they identified a crash report. They found a way to reproduce the crashes and some circumstantial evidence. Told them that may be this was being used for malicious purpose purchase purposes. [00:54:11] Okay. Um, so, uh, anyways, that's where that stands. So what to do, obviously keep your software up to date. Apple is very good, unlike again, in this month. Microsoft's updates ended up causing serious problems. For some people. Apple's updates rarely cause those types of problems, and when we're talking about iOS, they just don't get any easier. [00:54:39] You can apply them very, very simply. In fact, they will usually, if you have automatic updates turned on on your iPhone or iPad at night, while it's sitting there on the charger, it's going to go ahead and update itself, upgrade itself, and then the next morning, Qatar, you've got the whole new operating system you had to do. [00:54:57] Absolutely nothing, which is, man, that is my idea of an easy time, and you've heard me before, I'm sure say don't use Android and people just, I ignored, I don't understand why. Right? Some of these people, like Danny, for instance, I'm thinking of, he follows. Everything I say to the T and it has saved him again and again. [00:55:22] In his small business, he has a franchise restaurant and you know, Oh, we'll see how the restaurant business does, but he's doing okay right now, but he still uses an Android phone and I don't get it. You know, I, I'm not really fond of. Any of these big companies, politics, you name the company, the politics are probably bad nowadays. [00:55:44] You know, it used to be assumed that, Oh, big corporations, they were big, they were evil, they were nasty. And if you notice the Democrats, now they're not talking about the evil millionaires. They're talking about the evil billionaires, because of course they're millionaires, right? To all of them, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, the senators out there in California, Feinstein and others. [00:56:06] But, um. You know, the these big companies, so many of them are so left-leaning. It drives me crazy, so I get it. If you don't want to use Apple stuff because you don't agree politically with Apple, I think that's an okay reason. But reality sets in. And you just can't continue to use Android. You really can't. [00:56:27] And if you can get off of windows, you should do that as soon as you possibly can. Anyhow, that's just my opinion. So stick around. When we come back, we've got more to talk about. Of course, we're going to get into a very kind of an interesting problem over at Amazon. You're listening to Craig Peters on a w G a N stick around. [00:56:50] We'll be right back. [00:56:55] Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. You can hear me, of course. Every Saturday from one til three. You also can listen to me on Wednesday morning. Yes, I'm on with Matt Gagnon. Did you know there was a morning show. Yeah. Drive time. So I'm on with Matt every Wednesday at about seven 34 for a few minutes to talk about the latest in technology news. [00:57:23] And of course we get to spend a couple hours talking about this in more detail on Saturday. Well, we just talked about this iOS zero day bug, and what does that mean to you? Doesn't look like it's totally legit. Big, big problem with our medical devices and hospitals and otherwise they are still running windows 95 X P if you can believe that 2007, none of which are supported anymore. [00:57:55] And, uh, you also went into what. Uh, what really has been put in place out there to allow them to do upgrades and updates, but there's so much obfuscation. It's crazy. And then courts violating a site's terms of service is not criminal hacking. So if you missed any of that, you can find it online. You can just go to Craig peterson.com/iheart I also post this whole show as one podcast that you can find on your favorite podcast platform, whatever that might be. [00:58:31] By just searching for Craig Peterson. Or the easy way is go to Craig peterson.com/itunes or if you're like, hi heart, you can go Craig peterson.com/iheart or Craig peterson.com/soundcloud et cetera, et cetera, okay? But it's all out there and you can get the whole show, all kinds of. Put together for you, which I think makes some sense. [00:58:57] Amazon is the 8,000 pound gorilla out there. They have been just really taking over the online retail space in a very, very big way. In fact, the Amazon counts for about one third of all. US-based internet retail sales isn't that huge? Can you imagine having that kind of market share? One third of all of it, but it didn't get there entirely on its own in case you're not aware of it. [00:59:31] Amazon has about half of their items being sold by small businesses, by third parties, and you might've noticed that on label sometimes where the third party, uh, will. Ship has something to you directly, and yeah, it looks like an Amazon box and me having an Amazon tape on it. But in reality, what we're seeing is a return address that might not be Amazons. [00:59:57] Well, these typically are smaller vendors, so think of that for a minute. We've got about a third of all retail sales going through Amazon and about half of those coming from small vendors. That's a very, very big deal. And with the businesses the way they are today, you might want to consider. Should you be selling online? [01:00:24] A lot of companies abandoned eBay because of their pricing strategies and they moved over to Amazon and it's been okay for them over there. But I want to tell you about the problem that's happening right now at Amazon. And this is something I've seen over the years that has bothered me a lot. And I had over the years, a number of friends that had started software companies and some companies that I didn't even know that were. [01:00:57] Well, you know, I knew all of them, but I didn't know the owners. Then they had database software, they had scheduling software. They had a lot of different things, and what Microsoft would do is they'd, they'd keep an eye on the market and they'd say, Oh wait, wow. Wow. That database is doing really well and it's winning. [01:01:18] A lot of DTA deals that our database software's not winning. And the allegations were that what Microsoft was doing was kind of being a predator here cause they would go to the company that had the database software and uh, chat with them and see if the company would sell out at a reasonable price. [01:01:42] And then this is so anti competitive. It's crazy. But then. If that company didn't want to play ball, like sell themselves for super cheap to Microsoft, well, Microsoft was accused of doing and what Microsoft hadn't been convicted of doing in courts now is they would announce a product that competed directly with the small guy. [01:02:11] And wait to see who asked about it. So Microsoft would say, yeah, we have a database product for small businesses. Very easy to use. Drag and drop interface. Everything's going to be great. You are going to love it. And then Microsoft would sit there and see of companies would start calling them and say, when's your product going to be available? [01:02:34] What am I going to be able to do this? Well, in some cases they waited a year or more. And they never ever came out with a product. But what do you think happened to Mr. Small guy out there, the small business that had investors where the owners, they were founders had invested thousands of hours into it, maybe their entire life savings. [01:02:58] Well, people, companies, and I experienced this personally, companies who would sit there and say, well, you know, Microsoft is going to come out with something here. I want to see what Microsoft does. And so that small company. W is now out of business because what are they supposed to do? People aren't buying, you know, their models were based on so many sales and that was based on the people liking their product and talking about it and the marketing dollars they were spending. [01:03:29] But that money was going down the drain because Microsoft was there saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll, uh, we'll, we're going to do this. Yeah. Yeah, us, us, us. And so they got sued again and again, and they lost in court, but it was still cheaper for them and then made more money. Think of the billions in cash some of these companies are sitting on and, uh, that is a bad thing to do. [01:03:52] It really does hurt commerce. It certainly is not free trade. Uh, of course, we live now, I think in a largely a crony capitalist system. And they played that game. They played it very, very well. Well, back to our friends here, Amazon. But yet, you know, those allegations are still floating by the way, about Microsoft and many other companies that appear to be doing that thing in. [01:04:18] Here's what happened to them. Amazon. What happened was Amazon started looking at the merchants that were selling third party stuff on their websites, and the wall street journal has a great report on it right now because Amazon has its own in house brands. So it's making itself a direct competitor to many of these merchants who rely on the Amazon platform to reach. [01:04:50] Consumers. So now you've got your little product. Amazon is selling something that's similar to yours, or at least competitive with yours, and that's bad enough. But the wall street journal reviewed some internal company documents that showed that Amazon executives were asking for and getting data about specific marketplace vendors despite corporate policies against doing so. [01:05:23] Despite the fact that Amazon had testified in Congress that they never did this. And according to the wall street journal, more than 20 former employees told them that this practice of flouting those rules was commonplace. We knew we shouldn't, but at the same time, we're making Amazon branded products and we want to sell them. [01:05:48] So here's what they were doing. Amazon was looking. At what was being sold out there. And this one example that was given was something that I've bought. It's a car trunk organizer, and apparently Amazon employees access documents relating to that vendor's total sales. What the vendor paid Amazon for marketing and shipping and the amount Amazon made on each sale of the organizer before the company. [01:06:20] Then unveiled. It's own similar product. They're getting around the rules here. W we'll get into this when we get back. I'll tell you about some of these Amazon brands that you might not even be aware are Amazon brands. You're listening to Craig, Peter sawn here on w G a N every Saturday from one til 3:00 PM cause stick around. [01:06:43] We'll be right back. And of course there's a whole lot more to come today. [01:06:52] Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig, Peter sawn here. We were just talking about our friends at Amazon. I remember getting really, really upset with them. I sent them a a note, uh, years ago, decade or more, certainly more a go because Amazon decided it would patent something that it called one click ordering. [01:07:17] As though one click ordering was like some major leap forward and, and, and I couldn't believe the us patent and trademark office actually gave them a patent because I knew other sites that were doing it as well. It. This whole thing is totally upside down, not just with Amazon, but now you can get patents on almost anything and not, not just, I'm not just complaining about business processes here, business process patents, which, uh, I don't like. [01:07:48] Uh, but all the whole patent world, the whole thing has been changed, turned on its head with the new patent laws. It has gotten even worse, not better. Yeah, it makes it easier for the government, but in reality, it I think is hurting a lot of businesses. So let's see what we're talking about with Amazon here, where Amazon was combing through the data of these third party vendors that make up for about 50% of the products sold on amazon.com. [01:08:20] And these employees were accessing the data about what the vendor's total sales were, and they were getting around the rules by bending the concept of what's called aggregation according to the wall street journal and well, Amazon says that it did not access individual seller data. It did create reports of aggregate. [01:08:45] Seller data. And if a pool is large enough, that wouldn't be a problem. So if you've got 200 vendors selling iPhone cases, okay, but the example that the wall street journal is using here is have a trunk organizer. So in reality, how many trunk organizers were there at the time? So this pool of vendors, very, very small. [01:09:11] And when you're talking about a group of two entities, uh, okay, it's aggregated, but what's that telling them. So what Amazon had done then is they said, Oh, wait a minute. This is a very profitable niche that people who are using our services to sell it are in. So your small business, you come up with this idea of a trunk organizer, and it's better than any trunk organizer that's ever been made, and you're going to add two extra compartments to it. [01:09:43] I don't know what you're going to do right. You're going to make it very firm, very strong, and it can fold up, fit into a corner. And so you have to make some prototypes. You have to figure out, how do I do this? You might make a trip or two to maybe heaven forbid China or Indonesia or some other country, right? [01:10:02] Other than China, please. And you go out there for a few times, you. You end up paying, you know, easily 10 $20,000 just to have a stamp made that can stamp out your little product there for the insides. And then you got to get another vendor that had ships to that, that takes the material, sows it all together, and then can ship it out. [01:10:25] And then you have to have a minimum order sitting there in Amazon's warehouses ready to go. So you're into this one a hundred grand, maybe more. Plus all of the time that you spent doing it, which now is lost opportunity costs because you weren't doing something else while you were trying to design this chunk organizer. [01:10:50] So you have spent life savings on this. You've put it together. If you ever watched shark tank, and you look at some of these people, right? Most of those businesses fail. Even the ones that make it to shark tank. So you've done all of this. You had hoped that your business would succeed. Well, you're selling it. [01:11:13] It is succeeding. It's doing well. Maybe you've made back $50,000 of that a hundred thousand you put into it and maybe you get up to a hundred thousand Amazon notices. Whoa, this guy's making a lot of money. Maybe we should get into that trunk organizer business. In fact, we know exactly which models, which colors, which fabrics of his trunk organizer are selling. [01:11:43] Hm. So Amazon then takes the idea and runs with it. Amazon now has more than 145 private label brands. This is a huge, huge number. There is a website out there called this Justin. TGI research and they have a list of these brands that Amazon has. I'm scrolling through it right now. I had no idea. Most of these were Amazon. [01:12:18] You know, you've heard, I'm sure of Amazon essentials. That sounds like an Amazon brand, right? It is. Amazon basics. Okay. Those are obvious. But there's others like kids' clothing line scout and RO women's clothing, brand, Hayden Rose or furniture line stone and beam. Those are Amazon brands and you can't tell by the name, and I'm looking at this list over on this, Justin, and they all have their own logos. [01:12:54] You just, you would have no idea. Brass tacks leathercraft makes leather belts from, guess what those are? Those are Amazon chains. Ditch charming. Dove. Um, Ken sounds like charming Charlie, doesn't it? Hm. Uh, charm. Z silver. That sounds like chirpy. Oh my gosh. Amazon exclusive. Uh, and then charming Charlie's is out of business. [01:13:20] Right. Did you ever go there? My, some of my daughters used to love it cause you can get all of these little hoopy things and necklaces and stuff, but it goes on and on. This is, this is ridiculous. There's gotta be way more than what, what Tai and what wall street journal is reporting anyways, so they're saying those private labels account for 1% of Amazon's total sales. [01:13:45] That was according to a report last September, and some former employees apparently told the wall street journal that they are operating under the directive that Amazon's private label sales should be. 10% of the company's retail sales by 2022 so there you go. You know, we talked about the contentious relationships with eBay in the sellers. [01:14:11] Contentious relationships with Amazon in the sh in the sellers, the European union's competition Bureau opened up an investigation against Amazon. This is a very, very bad thing here. Uh, antitrust subcommittee chairman, David Sicilian from Rhode Island in house judiciary committee chair. Gerald Nadler. [01:14:36] We're pretty upset about this quote. This is yet another example of sworn testimony of Amazon's witnesses being directly contradicted by investigative reporting. So yay. At least somebody is doing investigative reporting out there. So I don't know. What are you going to do? I was upset with Amazon. I told them I'd never do business with them again, and then probably about 10 years later, I started doing some business with them again because it was the only place I could buy some of the things I wanted to buy, but they've been using this merchant data not good. [01:15:10] Not good at all. Well, we have a couple more cool things. We only have a minute or so left here in this segment, but let's get into this very, very quickly. At least get started. This is from dark routine.com they have a lot of great articles, but consumers and small to medium businesses are likely to fall. [01:15:31] For Corona virus scams. It said, now, I have seen a lot of emails coming in to me from companies saying that they can get me some of these loans. Uh, I don't think so. Uh, and I have, I saved some of them. I should put those out in my membership site or in the newsletter. You can see some of them do some training

Apple's AirPods took the world by storm in 2016. For years, it was hard to even get your hands on a pair. Now Apple is launching over-the-ear headphones for the first time — and if insiders are right, they'll be here very soon.

Apple's AirPods took the world by storm in 2016. For years, it was hard to even get your hands on a pair. Now Apple is launching over-the-ear headphones for the first time — and if insiders are right, they'll be here very soon.

Welcome!   Today there is a ton of stuff going on in the world of Technology and we are going to hit a number of topics from Keyloggers, to Privacy and Encryption, and Tracking -- so stay tuned. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Who is tracking your web movements? Use Firefox if you want to know. Little Inexpensive Devices Can Remove Sensitive Data Security 101 - Passwords and Password Management  Common Password Vulnerabilities and How to Avoid Them Cyber Cold War Right on Our Door Step International News Hits the Dark Web When Businesses Are Required to Capitulate to Chinese Society Cloud Players Vie for Pentagon Contract Privacy and China -- Not So Much --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Hello everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome to my Saturday show her right here on WGAN. And online at Craig Peterson calm. You'll also find me up on YouTube, where I am posting videos of this show. And I try and do that every Saturday. I've been doing this now, last few weeks. This Saturday's no exception. Next Saturday maybe because I am going to be out in the West in the conference. So we'll see how that all goes. I may end up doing next week's show from my laptop, which would be a little bit different. I haven't done that before. So we'll see how that all goes. Today we are going to be talking about Firefox. A lot of you guys asked questions about browsers. So I've got an article from naked security up on my website at Craig Peterson. Calm talking about this. But Firefox browsers and this came up in one of my masterclasses here over the last couple of weeks, you know, those free classes that I've been holding, these are not pitchfests, in the least, we spent two hours in the last one. And this particular one, we're talking about privacy, and I had mentioned the offer browser and have some questions on that. So we will be talking about that today. Keylogging is an ongoing issue. It seems that every business that we go into, to help them clean up or do a security assessment and action plan for them. They all seem to have key loggers, at least one machine, man This week, we just found one of our clients had a data x filtration going on. Thank goodness, we had the right kind of equipment in place because it automatically noticed it and shut it down. But keylogging is a great way to start. That whole BX filtration, we're going to be talking about passwords today as well, which is always a big topic. And we'll talk about one password and some common password problems. We've got a warning out from checkpoint, and those are some guys that make some security software. That is saying that there is going to be a new cyber Cold War next year like that's a surprise. So we'll be talking about what that means to you as a home user as a business. The BBC did something I don't know that anybody would think about, but when I thought about it a little more. It made sense. But the BBC is now on the dark web and will tell you a little bit about that. And that also goes into my whole commentary about some of the browsers out there. And by the way, if you want to sign up for these masterclasses, I don't think I'm going to be having one this coming week. But if you sign up for the master class, you can attend Live asked questions. I always answer all of the questions, which is why sometimes it goes much just three hours because I try and make sure everybody understands what we discussed. I've been doing them live as well on zoom so that you can kind of jump in and type in your question in the chatbox, and I'll make sure I get to it right away. And I will be having more so see the two I've done, I think, Okay, the last couple of weeks. I know I did one on VPN and one on mobile security just yesterday. So make sure you sign up Craig Peterson comm slash master class. And these are, as I said, they're free, and these are not pitchfests. But it's me looking at material trying out material answering questions that I can use in upcoming courses that I do so. Tick tock, by the way, if you haven't heard about it, I've mentioned it on one of the morning appearance appearances that I do on the radio, but Tick Tock is here. Getting back now about this is from China about claims that China is doing the nasty with it. Microsoft man who thought that they would win this Amazon was the shoe and winner for this contract with the feds. We'll talk about that. And a little bit about what does it mean for you if you are using cloud services and what's the government trying to do here, and China, they passed a cryptography law. You know, of course, about Facebook, as I mentioned this before, and Facebook's cryptocurrency while China's getting in the game as well. And hopefully, they don't beat us to the punch here when it comes to the cryptocurrencies. You can watch all of this, as I mentioned, and I just noticed myself right because I got a little monitor sitting here so I can see what we're streaming. And I noticed that this big green logo God is behind me. It is for my ball. I sit on one of these kinds of big bouncy ball things so I can keep my back moving. In fact, this whole table that I'm sending that that you can see in the video on YouTube, this whole table, and my website. Of course, this whole table goes up and down. So I've got my production equipment here. I've gotten more production equipment there. I've got a huge 4k TV up there that shows me all of the different feeds and things it's just a nice little setup, but that's what this is in case you're wondering watching on TV certainly caught my eyes I might have caught yours as well. So let's get into Firefox right now. Mozilla, these are the guys that make Firefox has been trying to focus on security and privacy. And there is a difference between security and privacy. Security is where we have information that is kept private, but it is also kept secure, so it doesn't get out. It doesn't leak out. There's no way for anybody to get it. So that's how we're defining. Well, no way, right? There's always some way. But that's how we're defining security when it comes to browsers. Privacy is different privacy is where you don't necessarily want websites to know where you are, where you've been, what you're doing when you're online. And we should have privacy. I'm more concerned about privacy, my privacy, right. When it comes to government monitoring, then I am worried about privacy rights when it comes to business monitoring. Because businesses all they're going to do is try and sell me another pair of shoes. Or a car, maybe when I don't need a car. Government, much, much different government is going to be very intrusive government is the sole authorized entity and that it states to use force against you for what they want. In other words, the government can pull out a gun, put you in jail, take away your rights, your freedom, and kill you in some cases. So I get concerned when it comes to government. If you don't have the government, then you are really at risk. Now, how good is the government? I don't know. We were seeing these impeachment hearings going on with President Trump. The accusations are that under Obama's direction, the CIA started an investigation into Trump for political purposes. Then the CIA fooled the FBI into launching an investigation, and then there were some people high up in both these organizations, right. It's not the normal, lower level of people that were running this sort of stuff. And there's we can tell, right? But I get concerned, because even if this was true, and also if it was only the top-level people within the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, that were involved in, could move downhill. And we keep hearing talk about the deep state and what they're doing. Well, do you want the federal government to have all this information about you about where you're going online, what you're doing, and it goes back to the socialists. The quote that I've had in the front of my mind for the last couple of months is, show me the man I will show you the crime. Because every last one of us has committed a crime, some of them felonies. You before you leave your house in the morning, you've probably broken some rules. Regulation or law? Because there's so many of them just on firearms, there are more than 20,000 laws, how can you be expected to comply with them all? So, if you've got a committee in Congress, for instance, that wants to impeach the president, or someone else and they're allowed to go after the guy everything look at everything they've ever done everything! YES, Everything Everything. They will find a crime because everything is a crime. Oh, finally, we found an offense. Do you think that you with what you do online might have committed a crime at some point in time? That's the real question. If you're online and you are doing something that they want to paint as a crime, right, all they have to have is rumors to destroy your life. Look What happened with Mike Flynn? Did he remember every word that was said when he was vacationing in the Caribbean? Man? I know a lot of people that are a vacation in the Caribbean and are tipping back. Few too many drinks. Do you remember everything you said last time you inebriated? Right? And then now you're led into a perjury trap. All of this can happen when it comes to your online browsing history, what you're saying online when you don't have privacy. Again, we're talking about the government here. What the government's monitoring with the recording -- Who are you calling? What are you doing? And me, I'm a member of the media. And as a member of the media, I talked to all kinds of people I'm sure people that I have interviewed over the years have ended up being arrested and Probably some of them convicted of who knows what crime. So now they go back, and they selectively look at things that I might have said I might have talked to that person, and now I am a criminal. So when we're talking about privacy, there are two levels. I'm not worried so much about businesses tracking me. I am apprehensive about government monitoring me. And when we get back, we're going to talk more about this because the government monitoring side of things, and the business side, end up merging. It's kind of like a Moebius spurt strip here, frankly. You're listening to Craig Peterson. I'm on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson, calm, stick around because we'll be right back. Hey, everybody, welcome back, Craig Peterson, here on WGAN. And online at Craig peterson.com. Of course, as Peterson SO and we were talking about privacy protection before the break, I want to add one more thing about privacy protection when it comes right down to it. And that is, you are the person responsible for it. So let's do a little bit of education here. Let me help you understand what we're specifically encryption. Your web browsers can use encryption when talking to websites out there so that any data from your browser to the site is encrypted. Not that they always do it, but they can do it, and there are some plugins to make sure that it is using eat in corruption when possible. So one of those plugins is called. What is SSL everywhere, I think, is what the name of it is. But there's a number out there. But there are many browsers that do aim at trying to keep your data safe online. And I talked about those in the masterclasses here that we recently had we got more coming up, and we'll be answering even more questions. Of course, correct. Peterson comm slash master class for those three classes. But you can use a different browser. So, for instance, you know that if you have windows, you probably had Microsoft Internet Explorer on it. And then, they switch to this Edge browser. And now they have switched to using Google Chrome as the base. So basically, it's there. It's called chromium, which is the base that Google Chrome is based on and is in the OpenStack Source space. And Microsoft, of course, put their stuff on top of it so that they make sure they break a lot of websites. Well, that's, that's not why they did it. They did it because they're Microsoft and they know better anyhow. Your current Edge browser is not a Microsoft product. It's a Google product for the most part. So some of us will also use Google Chrome, which is the most popular browser out there by far right now. If you are using a Mac, you probably have Safari. So I've run through the leading browsers that people are using out there. Currently, some browsers are privacy aimed. One of them is the Firefox browser. And the other one is Opera. Those are the two most common, and Opera is probably the better of the two. But as was brought up in one of my master class, by one of the attendees, there are rumors that China has started to take control of opera, which could be a problem. And then there is the most privacy oriented browser in the world called tour. But we're not going to go into that today. You can find all kinds of information on the tour. I have done some Facebook Lives on it. And you'll find those online at Craig Peterson comm slash Facebook. And you can find out how to use the most private and secure browser that there is out there and it's free, by the way. So Firefox is trying to be the browser when it comes to privacy. And they have a few different browsers that are available on iOS and your Android devices, each offering different levels of privacy protection. Still, they have offered another privacy treat tweak to Firefox version 70. And this is the ability to see how often websites are tracking you. So if you are running Firefox, you can go and access it by clicking on the address bar shield icon. That's where you would normally see the information about any SSL certificates in use right now. It has a drop-down at itemizes different types of trackers detected on the various websites that you might be using. Now, there are some other things that you could potentially use and what I use as well. And probably one of these days we'll have to get more into this and what am I using and how are we blocking things, but there there are a few other plugins that you could use one from our friends over at EFS Electronic Frontier foundation that I use and that I like. I recommend, but we're right now we're talking about Facebook and Facebook, Firefox. Okay. So naked security, as I mentioned, has an article you'll see up on my website as well. And it's talking about the enhanced Tracking Protection that they did test. They said users might not notice the detection of many trackers if you already have this set to a strict setting, but it works pretty well. I like what the EFF has done a little bit better. But to back up its claim that privacy protections with having of Mozilla released figures showing that Firefox had blocked 450 billion cross-site tracking requests since the second of July. And now that's risen to 10 billion blocks per day. So a cross-site tracking is a site that might put a cookie on your browser. So that it knows what you're looking at what you're interested in where you came from, right. And that's one level of being monitored by the marketers. The next level of being monitored by the marketers is this cross-site stuff, including scripting. And that is where they're pulling data from another website. I have a client that this just happened yesterday. And this client has been using Internet Explorer. Now, we have been after them for a long time to get rid of Internet Explorer. It's not even supported by Microsoft anymore. So there are all kinds of security vulnerabilities. And they use this one particular small bank to do all of their banking. And they went online to the bank, and they couldn't log in, they couldn't get it to work. And it hasn't been working for months. Well, as it turned out, the advanced security that we had installed in their Network found that the bank had used an embedded a cross-site script, going to a tracked customer relationship management system. That was a fairly new site. It's only been online for about three weeks period. So we consider that high risk because that's a typical mo modus operandi for a hacker group. So we blocked that access. And that access, then made it so that she couldn't get a login. Now, this is all good, because it's a high-risk site. And we don't want them going there. We don't like the cross-site scripting, because many times that's how hackers get your data. And we're not going to get into a whole bunch of detail on how that works. But the Mozilla will block that now, which is nice, frankly. And you have to turn that on. If Wanted again, it's called enhanced privacy protection. And by the way, there is also a built-in password tool on Firefox called block-wise. And they now can generate a secure password when signing up for a new account. Now coming up here a little bit later, I'm going to be talking about passwords, some specific stuff about password managers, and not what the best practices are. But you can use it to replace the weak ones, and Firefox has been doing a pretty darn good job. By the way, Mozilla says that lock wise can be protected using Apple's FaceID Android Touch ID face recognition systems. And they're using AS 256, which is pretty good. encryption, it's tamper-resistant, it's GCM, it's their block cipher technology. They're using one PW protocol to obtain keys a, and they're doing a pretty good all shocked to 56 for the encryption key. So have a look at that if you are concerned about privacy leading into security, have a look again. And a side note here from our friends and naked security reason test by the German Federal Office for information security Firefox as importantly only one of five browsers to be given a passing grade. And I will leave you to guess who some of the ones that had failed. Were and I talked about them all the time. All right, stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. Online at Craig Peterson dot com. We're going to talk about vampires on your computer when we get back, so stick around. Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome back. Of course, we're alive. Every Saturday from one till three. You can see me on Facebook Lives I've been conducting master classes. We got a great class coming up on hardening windows. It is a course we'll let you know about that as well. Hopefully, you got this morning's email. I send it out every Saturday morning with my notes for the week, including all of the articles we're talking about today. So make sure you follow along. If you haven't already, go to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, you'll get my special notes when they come out. You'll find out about some of the nastiness that might be happening out there, and you can be on top of and in Friend have any of these big problems that are out there? That's Craig Peterson comm slash subscribe. Well, let's get into the vampire side of things right the spooky time of year Halloween. Everybody's thinking about these vampires, and things about there's a kind of a cool new Walking Dead-ish show that it's a comedy on Netflix that we started watching. It is very, very cool. I think it's a fun one. But did you know that there may be vampires lurking in your computers? I mentioned a little bit earlier. But I have seen these vampires in pretty much every business that we've done an NSAAP in. So here's what an NSAAP is. An NSAAP is a network security assessment and action plan. We call them in NSAAP, right, so we'll go with In we charge 500 bucks. We analyze all of the machines that are on their network and what their security problems are. And then they have something they can run with, to try and fix the issues themselves or because it's so complicated, we'll fix them for them, right? That's what we do, we not only fix those problems, but we keep going. We keep the patches going, which is one of the most important things for you to do. We make sure that we have multiple layers of security on the machines and then on the network, and then at the network edge, etc., etc. So when we're looking at, these will look at two things that will look at vulnerabilities. And if they want us to, and there's an additional charge for this, we'll go ahead and look at indications of compromise, which means, Hey guys, not only do you have these vulnerabilities, but it seems like there's been a compromise. Now, you don't want to be compromised. I think that goes without saying the bottom line. But when we do this indication of compromise test, I think 100% of the times, and we have found one of these vampires on at least one computer. And what I'm talking about right now are key loggers. There is a guy that just went to prison sentenced just a couple of weeks ago for this type of thing. But there are two types of key loggers. But the bottom line is they're trying to find what you're typing because they know that you're going to have to type in password usernames, right? And they don't even need to know what's on your screen at the time because they can, you know, they can pretty reasonably recognize what you're typing. you're typing a letter versus you're logging into a system. And that, by the way, is why you need to factor authentication. That's why we use UB keys YUBI You can find them online Yubikey so that you have your account, you have your password, and then you have to physically insert this special encryption key to keep your data safe, right, that's the bottom line here. So the two types of these key loggers are there are hardware loggers, and the hardware key loggers are something that plugs into the back of the computer and then plugs into your keyboard. You don't see as much as you used to because many of us use Bluetooth keyboards. Now Apple is the best there is when it comes to it. And if you're watching me now, you see I've got an iMac over on my left, which is an Apple iMac. I've got Keyboard an apple keyboard, which is Bluetooth and an apple trackpad, which is Bluetooth hooked up to these, but it's using a special version of the Bluetooth protocol. To get the keyboard to sync up and the trackpad to sync up, I have to plug it into my iMac so that they can exchange security keys. So it's not just the basic Bluetooth security, it's much more advanced than that, which is great. So what they're trying to do now is get it so that with this apple keyboard and trackpad, there can be a key logger that pretends to be my Mac and then the keyboards talking to I'm Mac's talking to it, they get you can't do it right. Now, with the older stuff with a regular Bluetooth keyboard. What they'll do is they'll put a little Bluetooth receiver in the area, and it'll pretend it's the computer and the keyboard. Now regular Bluetooth keyboards do have security. And it does negotiate with the machine. So there's some security there. But most of them, the older ones, particularly all of them, are entirely hackable. So, what they were trying to do, again, is a key log. They sit in the middle between your keyboard and your computer and is easier to do with a hardwired or with a USB keyboard. You might want to switch to the latest version of Bluetooth available for your computer. Now the second way that keyloggers work and how we often find them when we're scanning the software. We're looking through the system registry, and looking in detail at everything. Those key loggers are pieces of software, and they've been inserting themselves into your operating system. So, that whether you're using a Bluetooth keyboard or hard wired keyboard, they see everything that you type. That's a problem because, again, they can figure out what your username is what your password is. Well, a New Jersey man has confessed to getting into businesses during hours and after hours and planting key loggers. And we've seen this happen in some congressional Democrats offices as well where they found installed key loggers. The Department of Justice has named the companies that were victimized one to New York, the others in Texas, and they both have offices in New Jersey. And what they said was that this guy, anchor wall 45 a month Ville news jersey pleaded guilty New York Federal Court on Tuesday this week to two counts of obtaining information from computers and one count of aggravated identity theft. So these can be bad, and they can be used to break into your bank accounts and all kinds of things. That's where identity theft comes in. And according to the court documents, it started in June 2016. When he trespassed into these companies, New Jersey, Brandt's branches, he got his hands on an access badge. And it let him keep, keep coming in when he wanted to write. And he installed the hardware key logger, those are the ones that sit on the USB port, or that you can program a Bluetooth keyboard into right so if you have physical access, all you have to do is just configure the Bluetooth keyboard to talk to your keylogger and then the keylogger talk to the computer. Then and then of This is hard, right? And apparently, he got employee usernames and passwords. He also snuck his computer and hard drive under the company's computer network. So we could install malware that does the same thing, which is the software key logger just talking about, then this gives the crooks a way to track everything, breach everything and get internet works completely. Okay. It's, it's a real problem. It's a real real problem. So, key loggers can be notoriously hard to find. But there is software that can find them in your normal antivirus. Sometimes it can. Hey, stick around. When we get back, we're going to get into passwords. You're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN. And I got a surprise for you when we get back. Of course, online Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. Hello, everybody, Greg Peterson here. WGAN online, Craig peterson.com. What we're going to talk about passwords right now, and there are some surprising numbers that have just come out. I'm going to be talking more about these next week. Zogby, these are the pollsters just came out with some statistics on businesses and getting hacked, which is amazing. Amazing. Because it turns out that a quarter of businesses hacked in 2019 went out of business, 10% immediately went out of business. It's just crazy, but we'll be getting into this in more detail coming up next week. But let's talk about passwords because this is one of the most important things you need for your security. Now there are movements underfoot, and Microsoft is involved in Google and others in getting rid of passwords entirely. That's good. And it's bad. Now, they're not saying they're getting rid of the password. So anybody can just say, Hey, I'm Greg Peterson, let me into the Twitter account, what they're going to be doing and what they're already doing actually, is those accounts that they are that they're trying to protect, or it's using an exchange between your browser, the website, As well as something that you have like the Yubikey. You know, TLTP it's a one-time password type thing. That's where it's going. It's not there right now. And right now, the best thing you can do is protect your past. passwords by using one of these pieces of software that automatically generates a unique password for you for every website, and also store them securely will fill out the form for you with your password in there, so you don't have to remember it. And we go the next step and my company because we are a master managed services provider, that in fact for a master managed security services provider, but that's a mouthful. Be meaning that we provide the security services that other companies sell. So we're the people behind the scenes for a lot of local break-fix shops, bars, etc. So the change is now that one password we can tie in and we do tie into something called do ODUO-and it's something else that Cisco Bought, it's interesting. I don't know if they're following us around, but three or four of these products that we've been using for years, Cisco recently bought that we've been using them because we found them to be the best that was out there. So one password has a Business Edition, as well as a condition that you can be using, and you should be using for your family and using it to share passwords. So with the business version here, you can create different groups of users with varying vaults of passwords. And it makes it very, very easy, therefore effective. And frankly, according to CIO magazine, and I agree with this, you can get a measurable, beneficial impact on security just a few days after you've rolled it out. Now they have one password advanced protection, which also has extensive monitoring tools that we use to So that you can take control of your security in your business. So look at one password. It's not expensive, and it's not cheap. Okay? It's right in the middle. But one of the things it does is it lets you know hey, we have reports at this website that you have an account on has been compromised, so you've got to go ahead and fix it. So you've got to keep control of your sensitive information I've talked to before I had quite a stir when I said .hey don't tell the truth your bank you should be lying to your bank when it comes to your password recovery questions. And some people push back one of my daughters is pretty high up in a bank, and she was taken back by the headline, which is Lie to your bank, right? And then she read the article, and she's going to share it with other people within the bank because it just makes a lot of sense. So one password business lets you securely share passwords across your teams, or do your parliament, and only the people that need access to an account can get the access to the account, which is very, very important. It's the whole concept of limited access and, and who should be able to have access, right? very minimal access. Now there are other password managers out there. As I've said many, many times, I like one password, I think it's absolutely the best out there. That's what we use. We use it in conjunction with do Oh, and use that in conjunction with Yubikey. So that we have multiple layers, multiple layers of security when it comes to logging in. So let's say that you can't use one password, maybe your home user, your Soho, small office, Home Office. Let's talk about the other options available. One of them's called LastPass, which is pretty good. I've mentioned when we've talked about Firefox that it has a password manager built-in. That's pretty good as well. But let's get into the common password vulnerability. Ladies and how to avoid them. The old thinking was that you should change your password every 30 days, maybe more frequently. And that you need to have a mixture of numbers, letters, special characters, upper and lower case. That is no longer true. Not at all. The best password is a long password, that phrase, and you throw a couple of uppercase letters and some special characters in there. That's the best password. And not having your people change passwords every 30 days is also beneficial because it encourages them to come up with better passwords. Okay, because weak passwords are just the worst. So length versus complexity. You know, a complex password. Some of them they're saying like eight characters or lowercase characters, numbers, special characters, and in reality, that's a weak way to come up with passwords. Because if you're talking about eight characters, that's easy to break, relatively speaking, you can download my table from the internet, it's about two terabytes and size is pretty long. But it allows you to break pretty much every password that was ever created by Microsoft, or that you've ever used on a Microsoft System older than Windows 10. And even Windows 10 systems where there's been a migration So in other words, pretty much every password used in Microsoft, and. And that's called a brute force attack. When you're going up to the character one's a long one, you can use these fancy crackers, okay, that are out there. Well, if you enter a 16 character password even let's get simple, a 16 character password that only has lowercase letters. Computers right now using brute force, it would take 224 million years to crack that password 224 million years, versus it could break your password in nine hours, an eight-character random password randomly generated. Okay, so the length is the key here. So whether you're using one password or you're using just one account by yourself length is what matters. Now, some applications older programs you're using, they used to be restricted eight characters, many of them. Hopefully, they're not anymore, but give it the longest password that they allow that you can reasonably remember because you don't want to grab one of these. I'm holding up a sticky notes post-it notes here in the camera. You don't want to use one of these to write down your password and stick it on the screen. or stick it in the drawer, okay? Because now that guy or gal that is breaking into your office at night can find your password good, you wrote it down. So you don't have to be so complex it has to be written down. And you don't want it to be a character because that only takes nine hours to be cracked. Okay? So keep those things in mind length. Is it enough? Well, yeah, pretty much okay. But if you're using a password that is like your catchphrase, put down that cocktail that people might know that maybe you have on your Facebook page or something on your website at the office, your LinkedIn page. The bad guys are going to do a little doc scene and find it, and they're going to use it, and they're going to get in okay. So don't use these. You know, the quick Silver Fox jumped over the lazy brown dog or other things are going to be easier us Long password, if you ever have taken one of those memory courses to help you with your memory, and then it's a random list of words and it's like, airplane armed, low brown dog, etc. And then you associate them right. So the airplane flew over into the envelope, and the brown dog ate the envelope. Well, do that. Memorize that. And you can also use foreign languages. For many of these, you can come up with crazy words, anything that you know, well, that's a long-phrase going to be the best password that you can generate. And never, ever, reuse the password. Don't use them on multiple websites because if you use it on your kid's site for their x box, and you use it on the banking side, and the Xbox gets hacked, they now have your banking site password, okay? So be careful of all of this stuff. There's this out there called Have I been Pawned - spelled P-W-N-E-D? Go there, check your password, they'll tell you how good it is, based on whether or not that same password is located online. In one of these hacked websites, it's out there and use password managers use multi-factor authentication. These are things like DUO and YUBIKeys. Just do it the right way hardware tokens. They're getting more involved. Now I mentioned OTP. One time password, which is a new protocol, is going to get rid of passwords online. Google has their own called Titan. And there was just recalled on a bunch of those Google Titan keys. certain models of them. You know, stick with Yubikey. They are quite good. smart cards open PGP Fido is the new standard that I've been alluding to, and use them all the time. All of your passwords matter. All right. So that's it for passwords. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the new Cold War. That's coming up in 2020. will be talking about the BBC now on the dark web tech talk and their response over China's influence. And Amazon was expected to win this big contract of the federal government. We didn't talk about that and what my concerns are with us, and what your concerns should be when it comes to cloud computing. So those are coming up. So stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN and online. Craig peterson.com. Subscribe to my email list. Get my weekly emails to find out about the free masterclasses etc. Craig Peterson dot com Hello everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome, welcome. Welcome back. Of course, you're listening to me either on WGAN-AM online at Craig Peterson dot com, you might be watching over on YouTube Craig Peterson dot com slash YouTube or maybe Facebook, maybe LinkedIn, I'm starting to do a few things with LinkedIn. So we'll see where that all leads us. We're going to talk right now about some predictions, and this is from information security. buzz.com. An article by Checkpoint is a company that makes various types of security software. They were one of the very first firewalls many many years ago. I used them 20 years or maybe more ago, but Checkpoint has been around for quite a while, is not a product I use anymore. But they do have some useful information. And that's what we're going to talk about right now. And they're talking about 2020. And this is all about their predictions. And they're saying that we really could be looking at a significant cyberwar coming next year. What does a cyberwar look like? What are we talking about here? Because cyber Cold War's mean what what what is it cold war. You're not using kinetic weapons writing. In other words, you're not firing missiles. You're not shooting guns. You are playing games with each other, Right? We had as part of the cold war against the socialists and in the USSR in Russia, Soviet Empire. We had a trade war going on where we wouldn't trade directly with them. We wouldn't trade certain things with countries that did do trade with them at the time, and the CCC p ended up going out of existence entirely. That's an example of a Cold War. So today, what is a Cold War look like? We know the United States has started doing some cold war-ish things with trade. Right? We've got our president out there right now, President Trump, who is saying, Hey, listen, China, you need to smarten up. You are doing things that are hurting us. None of the Presidents before me, have had the guts to come out and say this, or do anything about it, but I am going to put tariffs on these various goods because we want you to stop stealing our intellectual property. We want you to be fair and open in your trade with us. China has been pushing back, and put some of their tariffs in place, and they go up, they go down. Is that a Cold War? Well, I don't think sustainable. But at some point, that's a Cold War. Right at some point to say, yeah, that China in the US is just going to butt heads together. I think it becomes a Cold War when we start trying to enforce sanctions against countries that do business with China, which will be bad for us. Now, the European leaders also sat on their hands for about 20 years. It's been since the late 90s. They sat on their hands and didn't do anything about China. So is this a Cold War right now? No, not really. Is it a trade war? Well, kind of. Yeah. We do have a cold war going on with North Korea. They're, they're not shooting missiles at the US, per se. We're certainly not shooting missiles at them neither South Korea. So yeah, there's a cold war there. Where else might we have Cold War's Well, you know, kind of a little bit of a one with the socialists in Cuba? You know, killing 20 million people in Cuba turns out to be a bit of a problem. We have a Cold War right now with Venezuela. And in Venezuela, of course, again, people starving to death in the streets with their socialist government. There seems to be a trend here right with socialist governments and people dying. So yeah, we have cold wars going on right now. So what checkpoint is saying that these nation-states that are out there that don't like us, but have very little power over us are going to get into a cyber Cold War with us? Because, again, if things were to escalate, you know, China versus the United States, if we wanted to hot, or where we were shooting at each other, the United States would probably win, you know, we we'd have to see, of course, it'd be a lot of lives lost, which would be horrific. Obviously, these smaller countries, we just go in, and we could topple them pretty easily look at what happened in Iraq, look at what happened in Libya, in Syria, where the Obama administration decided they would destabilize the Syrian government. They sure as heck did that didn't they looked at where Syria is right now. So we could do this with most small countries. So what can they do to retaliate back against the United States they're certainly not going to get into a hot war with us. Well, what I what checkpoint is saying is there is going to be a new Cold War, conducted in the online world. the world as western and eastern powers increasingly separate their technologies and intelligence. We've already seen Russia have a kill switch for the internet. China has a kill switch for the internet. And in both cases, particularly in China's case, they are controlling everything that people see on the internet. And that's where the whole Tor browser on your network comes in, right to help get that information out. Behind these curtains. We've got the bamboo curtain. We've got the Great Firewall of China, all of these things. So they're saying the ongoing trade war between the US and China and the decoupling of the two huge economy economies is a clear indicator of a potential Cold War, cyberwar. And it actually might be if we don't come to terms with China, we can see things getting worse. Talking about something that happened this week with one of my clients. It is a client that took some of my advice, but not all of my advice, right? Unfortunately, that happens. And so we had some equipment in place. We found with this client that they had given remote access to employees, for the employees to get into the systems at the office. And they didn't do it right. And we gave them a proposal to go ahead and make this, you know, make this happen clean things up. And they didn't. So they still had this, how do I even put this, it's like a big box retailer, firewall VPN controller, and you've heard of the company's name before, I'm sure and just a total joke. And they wanted to continue to use it, and they continue to use it. So then Week, what we found was that someone hopped in via that one of those computers that were used remotely that remote connection, right so so they hopped in, they got on that remote connection, probably because the employee's computer on the remote side was compromised. So they connected to this VPN server on this platform that I, I'm not going to mention their name because I don't want to confuse anybody. And think that it's a good platform because it's not it's cheap, though. It's cheap. And they were able to get in now on to the computer with remote desktop. And then from that computer that was on their internal network that we had no visibility into, they were able to go to another computer for the Operations Manager. And from there, they started uploading x Phil trading data, again, customer information potential They're intellectual property, etc., etc. So they were trying to accelerate it through a device that we control that is designed to look at all of the data, make sure that none of that data that's going out is data that contains confidential information, etc. Right? And it noticed something weird, which was waiting a minute is 6 am. Why all of a sudden is are there gigabytes worth of data on the way out of the network. And so our systems alerted our tax and immediately shut it down. I think about eight gigabytes made it out before we shut it down. So this is an example of what happens in a cold or cyber Cold War in this day and age we saw this week. It's a very, very big deal and this is a small company and trying to save a few bucks. I mean, a few bucks. They may have lost everything. We stopped it partway through. But because we don't have visibility throughout the whole network, who knows what's been going on in there, we can only see stuff that's going out x filter via our network connection on the outside. Okay. So it's they're expecting our friends over at checkpoint are expecting this to escalate next year. Where did this come from? Well, we did some tracebacks. However, what happens is someone can be sitting in China, using computers that have been compromised in Russia, to connect to computers that are compromised in Brazil to connect to computers are compromised in Mexico to connect to computers right here in the northeast United States. So you see what I mean. It's unpredictable but it is exactly what happened. But we did see a little bit about the source in the routing, what happened here. Now, cyberattacks are being used as proxy conflicts between smaller companies that are countries. I should say smaller countries aligned with these bigger countries that want to go after each other. It's going to be fascinating. So we got a couple more points here. We'll get to, and I will get to them as soon as we get back. So stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN. And online at Craig Peterson dot com. Peterson, with an O, stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGN online. Craig Peterson dot com. Thanks for joining us today. I know you got a lot of stuff going on. I appreciate you guys sticking around. Last time I saw the stats for my show. I had the stickiest show on Saturday of all shows, which means more people sit and listen to my entire show on the radio than any other weekend show. I thought that was cool and appreciate you guys for doing that. Also, our numbers keep going up. We've had some incredible days. When it comes to our podcast, we're changing it up a little bit on the podcast side, which you can get on iTunes. You can get it on tune in, SoundCloud, you name it, go to Craig Peterson dot com slash iTunes, if you wouldn't mind and give me a five-star rating. Hopefully, I've earned that from you. Craig Peterson dot com slash iTunes. Let's get into these last points here when we're talking about a new cyber Cold War in 2020. The 2016 elections were the first major fake news elections. Now, of course, Hillary Clinton coined the term fake news during her candidacy for President. Donald Trump kind of grabbed on to it. But we're talking about fake news 2.0 you think the Russians messed around with our last election Wowsers our next election 2020 is going to be a doozy and it's just going to get worse from there. Because now we can create deep fakes that are going to make a significant impact on the elections. President Obama was the first social media president, and he claims his election was due to social media, that social media was what led him to get his message out. And it was his message getting out. That got him elected. Right? Well, now we've got the ability for politicians to really master social media and then almost automated fashion, political adversaries going back and forth Republicans and Democrats. And now you can have the greenies the libertarians, the who was it pop their head up again. Another kind of crazy guy anyways, who's out there to spread false stories to build their narrative based on fake news 2.0 Okay, very, very big deal. And they are already in the process of implementing their plans to influence these 2020 elections. It's a huge deal. Part of what we're going to see with the cyber Cold War is more cyber attacks on utilities are critical infrastructure. They're all going to continue to grow. We've seen attacks on the US and South African utility companies this year, as well. In many cases, critical power and water distribution infrastructure and sewage plants have been using older technology and haven't been updated. Now I can tell you a little bit of inside baseball here that's not confidential that I talked with some experts about when I was running, the FBI Infragard program webinars. So the InfraGard is something the FBI put together to help critical infrastructure And other companies out there to help keep them up to date on what's going on. Okay. So I know there's been a lot of progress made, but they're not all to the point where they are highly resistant to these hackers that are out there and particularly nation-state. So we have to continue to increase our cyber defenses substantially. And another thing while we're on this topic, because of the solar flare activity, one of the most crucial things you need to be doing right now is hardening our electrical grid or electrical infrastructure. So that if we do get one of these massive solar flares, we don't end up with another Carrington event that could knock us back to the 1850s all technology gone. Something for another show, I suppose. So the checkpoints technical cybersecurity predictions for 2020 are targeted ransomware attacks are going to increase 20 1970 Somewhere being increasingly targeted against specific businesses, local government and healthcare organizations that we had a lot of that this year, you guys probably are aware of that I certainly have talked about it, okay. Attackers are spending time and intelligence gathering on the victims to make sure they can inflict maximum disruption. Remember, the disorder is what they're going to do. They want to disrupt our economy. They want to empty your bank account, they want to confuse, conduct phishing attacks going beyond the email, email is still the number one attack vector. And that's what we guard carefully for our clients. So most of our clients now are using some version of Microsoft Office 365. And remember, there's 10,000 plus skews that Microsoft has these different products and they've got a one through I can't remember where it goes now he five or seven for their email product. And then they've got data offerings, and I got all these different things. Don't go with the cheapest. Okay? But what we do with the email because Microsoft isn't very good at providing anti-phishing and anti-malware services for the email, we brought all the mail through us, we run it through some highly active filters, and then we send it on over to our customers, okay. So be very careful about that. Now, and frankly, next year and on there is now vision which is voicemail phishing, there are SMS texting attacks against mobile devices, gaming platforms, social media platforms, it's crazy. Mobile malware attacks are moving up in the first half of 2019 saw a 50% increase in attacks by mobile banking malware, over 2018. So we're talking about stealing payment data credentials and funds from the victim's bank accounts. And there are new versions that are already available for the bad guys. And this stuff isn't expensive, and you know that a nation-state might pay a million dollars to get their hands on some of the newest zero-day attacks. But there are some beautiful attacks that you can get for 20 bucks online on the dark web that you can use to destroy a company. Twenty dollars is all it takes. Okay? And unfortunately, that company is going to have to spend a couple hundred thousand in order to protect themselves from that $20 attack, right? Is it worth it or isn't it? They're getting more sophisticated phishing attacks here and more effective as well. They're getting mobile users to click on malicious web links, etc., etc. Okay. Nice little quote here from Checkpoint that we won't read right now, but we've got to protect ourselves. These are called generation-five attack vectors, and they are getting very shrewd. They are able to really inflict maximum damage, it is just crazy. So that's why we have multiple layers, right? It goes back to Shrek, that Ogres are like onions. That's how you have to think of your security. You have to have a stack of security, and you have to have all these different layers. If they get through one layer, there's another layer underneath to protect it further. And then another layer and then another layer. That is how we stopped them this week at one of our clients from stealing all of their company's information. And, you know, again, it isn't cheap, but how much is the company worth? How much is your job worth, right? And I feel sorry for everybody that is this De facto security person and organization who does not have the budget that you need. And man, I empathize. That's why we're doing these mini-courses and the master courses as well. And that's why we got these free masterclasses and the Facebook Live so you can ask questions and get them answered because I really, really, want to help you guys. Okay, of course, I want to keep my lights turned on. So that's why I have paid for courses that you can purchase. But all of these classes are simple and free. So make sure you know about them. Sign up today. Go to Craig Peterson dot com slash master class, sign up, and you'll find out about these free classes that I'm holding more or less two times a month to three times a month, depending on what my schedule allows. All right, everybody, stick around because we'll be right back. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN Hello, everybody, welcome back. Craig Peterson here, man, the show is winding. Winding down, I guess, is what you'd say. We get about the last half hour here together, and we're going to be talking about some of the technology in our lives, some of the things we need to do to protect ourselves. Of course, that's what I do for a living. So that's what I know best. Right? So we've talked about a lot of technology, but we kind of stick most closely with some of the security stuff. We're going to talk about the BBC now and why they're using the dark web. If you've watched any of the war movies, you know, that we used the BBC the Allies did in world war two to get messages to the underground and other people who were in occupied territories. They did it through code words and things, you know, they'd have a little phrase that they would put up on the radio as they were broadcasting it. And sometimes, the phrase would mean something, and sometimes the phrase wouldn't mean anything. The whole idea was to confuse the enemy during the war. That way, the socialists in Germany didn't know what we were talking about. The Socialist Party, the Nazis, and that that's true to the Japanese and what was happening there with their socialist Empire. We wanted to get messages through, but how do you do that in a time of war when people are listening? Well, that's one of the proper ways to do it. Today, in this day and age, things a little bit different. It turns out that China, Iran, and Vietnam are three of the country's This is according to the BBC, that has tried to block access to the BBC. Now the BBC is biased, but you know, they overall have some pretty darn good news. And I get my news from several different places because I want to hear all sides. So I listened to the BBC. I listened to the CBC, I listen to PBS. I listen to Fox, I listen to NBC, I listen to all of these different ones in podcast format. Well, that's easy enough to do right now in the United States but in many places around the world, there is serious censorship. I've mentioned the Great Firewall of China before. And that is total censorship where they can pretty much ban anything at least that's their idea behind this. So what the BBC has done is they have launched our new website that looks identical to their existing normal website out on the dark web. You know, if you attend a masterclass where we were talking about VPN, and we're talking about mobile security. I talked about what the onion network is. And it is essentially a hidden network that sits on top of the normal internet. And it was established by the United States. It's still maintained by the United States. And it's for dissidents, to be able to communicate with our State Department. That's kind of what it was set up, for now, would use for almost everything. It's the dark web. We just talked about it in my show, where we're saying the dark web was also being used by the bad guys to sell these hacking tools. They use it to sell our identities to do trades with each other. Right? The dark web, though, isn't all bad. It was, as I said, designed to be good and to be very helpful. In fact, it still is. So the BBC set up a new version of their website on the dark web. And you can look it up on the BBC website to find out more if you'd like. And you can also find it on my website at Craig Peterson calm. What's the only way to get at it is for most people is to use the Tor browser to our browser. And the lot of detail I went into for like half an hour about the Tor Browser in the master class. But users of the Tor browser can visit a special URL. It's BBC News v to VJTPSUI dot onion. Now you're not going to remember that I'm sure which is why I told you to go to the BBC calm or go to Craig Peterson and you'll find it there. But it is a different type of URL than you're used to his net. And if you click on that address, it won't work. If you're using a regular browser, but if you're using a browser that's on the onion network that knows how to use it, like the Tor Browser, which is the ultimate and privacy, it can get to the BBC website. So the countries that are blocking it that I named a little bit earlier, including China, Iran, Vietnam, we know North Korea is and some others to people in those countries that have internet access, can use this browser even if they have some blocks, firewalls, etc, in place to stop people from getting out. So I think that's pretty darn cool and smarter. The BBC, they're saying is going to include foreign language services such as BBC Arabic, BBC, Persian, and BBC Russian. But UK only content like usual only be available within the UK due to broadcast right. So check out the TOR if you haven't already. T-O-R There is TOR clients for all major operating systems, including your desktop computers and mobile devices. And it attempts to hide a person's location and where they're going. It's not 100% effective, but it's pretty darn close. And that uses these exit nodes that are really all over the world. So it looks like you're coming from the United States or India, etc, etc. So check it out online and kudos to the BBC, for doing just that. I'm going to talk right now about Tick Tock with you guys. Because social media is really important to our kids, our grandkids, it's become important to society. It's one of the most effective ways to do advertising nowadays. Social media, it's where it's at. And there are these people on social media that have huge followings. haven't done anything, right? Like the Kardashians, right? They're famous for being famous. And they use the money from the OJ Simpson trial to really get that thing going because the or the old man had was a popular attorney and he charged a lot and she, his wife was able to manipulate it and do some amazing things with it just absolutely amazing. Well, one of the apps that our kids are using this become very, very popular is called Tick tock, ti KT, okay. If you have kids or grandkids or maybe you're using it, you need to need to have a talk with them and help them understand. Because Tick Tock is owned by a company called ByteDance. That is based in Beijing. And what many people forget is that China is a socialist country and it is socialist it is gone down the communist road. And any company that's based in China, you know, the Chinese government doesn't necessarily run the company, but they heavily regulate the country, which is why you compare the United States to, for instance, the Nordic countries, United States is very socialist. The Nordic countries are actually much more capitalist. But they have the money to put in these safety nets that we don't because of the socialist control anyways, blah, blah, right. So Tick Tock is owned by a company based in Beijing, China, which means there are surveillance systems in place. And the concern that's been expressed in the reason why people need not states are calling for Tick Tock to be banned in the US and they're calling immediately for people to delete it from their phone. is we just don't know how much of our data is being shared with the communist government over there. So let's look at the response and that one to think back. Right. President Nixon, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. Right. Let me make this perfectly clear. I did not have with Miss Lewinsky. When we get back, we're going to finish this. I'm going to read what the statement is that came out of China. You're listening to Craig Peterson are right here on WGAN. Online, Craig Peterson. com, of course, online kind of everywhere on all of the podcast platforms on YouTube on Facebook. And you can just go to my homepage, Craig Peterson, calm or keep listening to me here. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson here. WGAN online, Craig Peterson calm. And I am videotaping everything today. So you can watch me online that Craig peterson.com slash for YouTube. And we're changing the podcast formats up a little bit as well, trying to put the concepts together and just single podcasts as opposed to how I do things here on the radio show where I might go from one segment to the next segment, and make this just a little more friendly for the general online consumption. Now, before the break, I mentioned that I want you to keep something in mind. Remember President Nixon Nixon, and this is quoted all of the time I want to make one thing perfectly clear. And remember President Trump, let me make this clear. I did not Have with that woman misc Alinsky. Let's read the statement that came out from the company that makes this. Let me be very very clear. Sound familiar? Tik Tok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China. We have never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content, and we would not do so if asked. We are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government Tick Tock does not operate in China, nor do we have any intention of doing so in the future. So it makes me wonder when I hear let me make one thing clear. Are they lying? Right? It's like I always tell my kids because I know they're not trying to be deceitful, right, but if someone starts to sent insane Well, to be honest, You have to wonder where they been dishonest with you before, and now they're honest. Have you had that happen? I know I caught myself saying that I got into the habit of saying Well, to be honest, even though I had been correct the whole time, and I realized, wait a minute now, I'm painting a picture of me having been dishonest before this. So when were you telling the truth after you said let me make this clear or before? So the pushback from Tick Tock comes after US senators Tom Cotton and Chuck Schumer requested intelligence officials assess the national security risks posed by Tick Tock as well as other Chinese content platforms. Hundred 10 million downloads in the US alone. It's a potential counterintelligence tool that we can't ignore. That was in the statement that came out. Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, Whose firm competes with Tik Tok, particularly in the youth market, has also recently attacked the platform. Oversensitive. Concerned, remember that Coburg makes a competing product. Another US Senator Marco Rubio previously asked us national security panel to review their acquisitions of musically as well that happened this year. Concerns about censoring concerns also, about whether or not these guys are honest with everybody. So there you go. There's Tik Tok. I've got two more articles. Let's see if we can get through them here in the last segment. One is about the Pentagon. Many people have been looking at stuff saying Oh, man, I'm just moving to the cloud because then I don't have to worry about security anymore or configuration or updating computers. Remember, the cloud is just another word for someone else's computer. Your legal responsibility These to protect your data do not disappear when you move that data to the cloud. And you are frequently much more exposed once you're in the cloud than if you kept it on your machines. So what's happened here now is the Department of Defense is looking at their budgets saying, Hey, listen, if we move everything to the cloud, it's going to be cheaper for us. Now the Pentagon realizes it's not necessarily going to be more secure. And, in this day and age, most cloud services are far less reliable because of Miss configurations that humans have made on them, so I don't think the Pentagon is looking at as this as a way to make things more secure. Like so many small businesses do unknowingly and end up out of business because of it. But the Pentagon is looking to save money, and The winner that everyone was expecting from this was Amazon. And then President Trump came into power and said, Hey, wait a minute now. My administration has been looking at this bidding process for this project and says it doesn't look like this was fair. It's called the Jedi contract. By the way, JEDI. It doesn't look like this was appropriate. So let's have another examination at it. And Amazon came out with a statement awarding it to Microsoft. Amazon said that a detailed assessment purely on the competitive offerings wo

The U.S. has lagged behind in 'conversational commerce' enjoyed elsewhere in the world, where texting meets commerce for AI customer service. We spend most of our online time now throughout smartphones. Unlike other countries, the U.S. lacks centralized portals from which to operate in multiple ways, including shops, email, social and news. Now Apple is working to set up and integrated hub to drive the brand. For example, through the Apple platform - Apple Business Chat - and Delta's app, iPhone users have ease of communication for assistance from the airline. Emulating China's WeChat, Apple platform AI will allow better customer service response. Innovation like this can have very positive, unforeseen benefits for consumers. Facebook tried this kind of commercial integration, but a loss of trust is an obstacle there. The first best thing we'll see is perhaps the end of on-hold in-limbo no-customer service.   A ProPublica investigative report finds the health data of millions of Americans is completely exposed on the internet. They were able to find medical data on more than 16 million people online, including names, birthdays and where submitted, social security numbers. Security in the medical industry is pathetic. DO NOT FILL IN YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER at ANY medical facility. A recent Wallethub study weighed 31 happiness factors to rate U.S. states. Above an income level of around $70, money ceases to be a happiness factor. Factors include work environment, emotional and physical well-being. Hawaii comes out tops overall, followed by UT, MN, CA, NJ, ID, MASS, MD, NB, CT. Unhappiest: WVA, ARK, Alaska, MISS, LA, KY, AL, OK, TN, MO. ​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome Back !   Technology is advancing and we soon may see that our communications may not involve cell phones at all.  For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: The Future Communication Means No Phones --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig 0:08 Hello everybody welcome back Craig Peter song here WGAN online live on YouTube and Facebook you can watch the replays if you want you can just go to Craig Peterson comm slash YouTube if that's where you want to go, or Craig Peterson com slash Facebook. And both of those will take you to where you want to be. And today we've been talking a lot about password so far. Want to point you to Craig Peterson comm slash reports. That's a lot of slashes isn't it. But it takes you right to where you want to be. Or right now on the homepage, you'll get the free special report on the whole thing about passwords here this 10 page report and comparisons between different types of password, you know, pros and cons, password managers by just going to Craig Peterson calm and signing up on the homepage if you don't have that report so far. Now, last week, we gave out this quick start guide. That is never I have never ever given away before. It's always been part of a paid program. We had a few dozen people who picked it up. So congrats to you guys and gals. This is absolutely phenomenal. It is such a good report. So don't miss out this week on my password special report. And then we'll have another one next week. Because we have quite a few of these, we've been producing them getting them out and everybody's hand. And you can get them quite simply. And if you're already signed up on my list, if you're getting my emails, you can pick those up as well. And we link to them in the emails and you can grab them by signing up again, on the on the homepage, you'll only get one copy my email, you can use the same email address, so don't worry about that. We have our phones right there, there's always a newer better phone out there. My phone, if you're watching here on on camera, this phone and I've done this for years has a battery on the back. So the phone is actually not this big. But what the battery lets me do is keep it pretty much fully charged, which is nice. So I do let the battery run down every once in a while lithium ion batteries don't have the same memory problem. As the older types of batteries used to have right? Then nickel metal hydride, and then nine cabs, they were the worst, they were just terrible. So this is really a great little thing that you can do. By the way, it's really handy. So let's talk about this whole thing about phones. There's always a new one, right? We've got the new phones from Google, new phones from Samsung new phones from Apple. How long do you keep your phones for? I tend to keep mine for four or five years. Typically, if there's a feature I really need to have, then I'll get one. But the I still have an iPhone eight. And I got this because I wanted the 4k video. And it turned out I didn't really need it. You know, my whole studio is entirely 4k video that I used to do my trainings and produce some of these different types of videos that I do, right the classes and things. So it's, you know, 4k. So I figured, well, I need to have a 4k camera on my phone in case I want to shoot something. And that just hasn't worked out. I just haven't bother doing that. So what I have done, however, is I have made my phone last as long as I can, right? I don't know, maybe I'm cheap. But But I don't need the latest greatest. I just need the features, right? I buy a phone because of the features. Don't buy a phone because of what I think other people will think of me. But you know, that's me, I have a buddy always buys the latest iPhone always, even though he doesn't even know how to use this silly thing is always buying the latest. And I you know, I think he likes toys. But more than that, I think he he thinks that brings little status to him. And if he's listening right now, he probably knows who he is. So anyways, if you keep your phone for five years, do you realize that you may only have one more phone to buy before phones are obsolete. That is a real fight. Frankly, we're seeing artificial intelligence showing up everywhere. Now I talked about this a lot. My last show, we talked about some of the AI some of the deep fake stuff we talked about the AI the G is using in GS latest car, DR. x ray machine, that's what it is, is a whole set system. And it detects some various types of lung problems, energy texts it in just 15 minutes instead of eight hours, which is what has been taken. So that's really cool. That's what you like to see. Now Amazon has out their new Samuel L Jackson announcement, where he's going to replace the standard voice that's there in your Alexa in your Echo device. And they are also going to have some other voices, but much of its going to be artificially created. There is the other side to this. And there were many, many people who are complaining about the other side, which is when you give a command to one of these devices, if you say turn on the lights, or what's the weather for today, it records what you're saying. And it sends it up to the cloud. Now Apple does not do this apple, most of the processing actually happens in your phone. So your voice isn't recorded. Google and Amazon and some of these others, were using third party contractors to listen to what you said, in order to determine if it did the right thing, which is legitimate, right? You You want to improve the quality, and how else you're going to do it unless you have a human listen to it as well. And so that's what they've been doing. And people got very upset. So Amazon has an automatic feature. Now you can turn on that. delete your recordings, after three months, or 18 months. So the longer you can keep your recordings, the better can understand you because it uses those older recordings to analyze to figure out what you might be asking for what you might be saying etc, right. So all of that is available right there for you from our friends at Amazon. Well, this voice recognition keeps getting better and better and better and better. And we've got an entrepreneur, Gary venue, Chuck, who I have followed in the past as well, Brian little guy, actually is not that small. And he is quoted here in an article from the Daily Star over in the UK, I'm going to pull this up here on my screen. Okay, so that's the last one, let's push over here, okay. And what he's saying is that AI is going to connect us to the internet from anywhere and everywhere. And it's going to let us just talk to our devices to access any information or make any purchases. So basically, what he's saying we'll see in the future is a very simple system where we're wearing maybe like a Dick Tracy watch, think of an Apple Watch, is Apple Watches now even have built into them cellular data modems. So think of something like an Apple Watch. And you're not going to have to type a single thing, which is just absolutely amazing. He was speaking at the World Congress on information technology in Yerevan, Armenia, and he said that humans will only have to speak to an AI that is everywhere around us to get what we want. That part's a little concerning to me, right? Ai is everywhere. Well, if it's on your wrist, that's, that's not really everywhere, you can certainly turn it off, you can leave it at home, etc. But we have seen some amazing AI technology in our homes. And I have to agree with him on that one. Because we have my wife, one of my daughters, I think was the first in our house to get one of these Amazon Alexa echo devices. But there they are everywhere. And we're going to talk at the end of the show today. I've got a couple of really cool fun articles, we're going to talk about some of the ways this technology is going that I certainly wasn't expecting. But we've we've got to be able to who get access to the stuff we want when we want it when we want it. So it's we're going to have the systems tied into our cars and our homes, everybody, our offices. He said there be no reason to grab your phone in the morning to see what the weather is. If you have software like Microsoft Outlook, for instance, for email, it's using a type of artificial intelligence to determine whether or not it should show you an email article. So this stuff is coming. It's here already and within 10 years that for me that's two phone cycles. I'm going to have two more phones. We won't have any of this stuff anymore. So you can watch this live Craig Peterson comm slash YouTube or Craig peterson.com slash Facebook. You can see the video. And of course you're listening right now on WGAN. Will you'll find us on both am and FM stick around We'll be right back. Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- 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

96 800x600 Normal 0 false false false EN-NZ JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-priority:99;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;mso-para-margin:0cm;mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";} There's some unique Hurricane preparations being made in Florida.There's a very new and rather large big hazard all over the streets: scooters! They're getting pulled off the streets. Can you imagine being hit by a flying scooter?! The city of Miami has ordered them all to be removed. All up across Miami, Tampa and Orlando there are over 2000 scooters and hundreds of e-bikes.If you break your iPhone you'll soon have more optionsThank goodness! Until now you could only get your iDevices fixed at authorised Apple service providers but that will change. Now Apple will allow independent stores in the USA to buy genuine Apple parts. This should have happened a LONG time ago. Businesses will still need to be go through an Apple training course - which is free - but no love internationally yet.Cameras are coming to your wristA patent has been discovered from Google which has a pinhole camera in the middle of a watch. This sounds like a privacy nightmare. It was filed in 2017 but was only uncovered this week. There are obviously lots of questions about how you'd frame a photo too!LISTEN TO AUDIO ABOVE

Asian American Life Summer Edition featuring lifestyle trends and performing arts. Hosted by Ernabel Demillo. Segment 1: Korean Dance Modern Korean dance and music captivate with K-pop, South Korea's pop music scene that's become a global sensation. While many Korean Americans are caught up with K-pop, others choose to look to ancient times to keep their culture and tradition alive. Susan Jhun reports on the beauty of traditional Korean dance. Guests: Sunsook Roh, Yangoke Hwang, Jihwan Choi, Hannah Kim - students/performers at the Korean Traditional Music and Dance Center Guest 2: Yusun Kang, Director of the Korean Traditional Music and Dance Center. Segment 2: Pachinko Reporter Kyung Yoon sits down with award-winning author Min Jin Lee whose book "Pachinko" is one of President Obama's favorite summer reads. Pachinko reached the New York Times and Amazon best seller lists. Now Apple is creating a series based on the popular book. Guest: Min Jin Lee, author Segment 3: Actors Manu Narayan and Laura Kai Chen Reporter Rayner Ramirez catches up with actors Laura Kai Chen and Manu Narayan who talk about Asian American casting in front of and behind the camera. Segment 4: Jazz Pianist Miki Yamanaka Reporter Minnie Roh meets music prodigy and jazz pianist Miki Yamanaka who has performed with many jazz greats. She debuts her new jazz CD. Segment 5: Super You It's a bird, it's a plane, it's SuperYou - bringing music, art and fun to New York City Schools. Host and reporter Ernabel Demillo meets the creator and founder of SuperYou FUNdation that develops educational curriculums using the language of super heroes to inspire and empower students. Guest 1: Lourds Lane, Founder, SuperYou FUNdation Guest 2: Michele Dzwonek, Principal PS 239

Craig is in the WGAN Morning News with Ken and guest host Erik Lusk. This morning we talked about Apps and how bad they are, Why you should not use Android, Backups why they are really important now.  and what could happen in the future?  These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Be Careful What You Browse - Drive-By Malware on the Rise Are You Ready? Iranian Cyber Counter Attacks Cyber Breaches - How far does your liability extend? What We Know About Apollo Missions After 50 years  Trumping Iranian Aggression  Is Your App Safe? Maybe Not! We Will Need 3.5 Million Cybersecurity Professionals by 2021 and They Won't Come Out Of Our Colleges Mac Non-Vulnerability Vulnerability During Travel Is Your Data Safe from Snooping Eyes? Who Is Your Biggest Cyber Liability? Maybe It Is Not Who You Think --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 07/03/2019 --- Craig Peterson Hi everybody, Craig Peterson here. Oh my gosh, Independence Day. I want to say Happy Independence Day to everybody out there. Happy Canada Day to everybody who, of course, is from Canada. Some grand celebrations are coming up in France this summer, as well as the UK and all over the world. So, you know, let's give peace a chance as they say, right. Today I was on with my friends Ken Altshuler and Eric Lusk, and I gave Eric a bit of a kidney punch. I talked a little bit about an email I got from the FBI this week and talking about some of the security problems with Android. I am afraid I went on a bit of a rant here, you know, the whole 76% of mobile apps having flaws, security flaws, the Iranian cyber attacks against the United States. And we got into it today. At least I did. They could hardly get a word in edgewise. Anyways, here we go. Have a great week, guys, and I'll be back on Saturday. Bye-bye. Ken Altshuler And it's 738 on Wednesday Morning News. Eric is sitting in for Matt Gagnon, who is taking a few days off. Jeremy Fisher 'll join you after the eight o'clock news with an eye on politics but as usual on Wednesday, 738 none other than Professor Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us. Good morning, Mr. Peterson, how are you? Craig Peterson Hey, good morning, doing well. I love this kind of weather. It is why I live up here. It's just like you were saying. Right? Ken Altshuler Exactly. Craig Peterson I like a warm day, frankly, in the 80s. Maybe a little much. It's a beautiful beach day. But I'm not into the humidity and not into the 90 plus degree weather and everything else. I enjoy this. Ken Altshuler Well, you're in the right place. Enjoy it until winter starts in a couple of weeks. Craig Peterson Yeah. Ken Altshuler It's right around the corner. Winter is coming. Mr. Peterson, Eric Lusk You'll notice the days are getting shorter. Ken Altshuler Exactly right. Craig Peterson Well, you're not going to notice it quite yet. It speeds up a little bit, later on. Right now. We're only losing just you know, a few seconds every day but it does accelerate. Winter is, you know, the winter isn't so bad either. You know. Ken Altshuler There's no good winter, you're wrong. There's no nice way to put it, winter, I mean no way to put a nice spin on it. But no winter is not good. Craig Peterson Well, I look at it this way can I can always put on another layer of clothes in the wintertime. I cannot take off my skin in the summer. Ken Altshuler But you don't need to. You can be basking in the warmth in the heat. I am from Oklahoma, so you're talking to the wrong person. Craig Peterson Oklahoma's nasty. They have the worst of both, right. Ken Altshuler But that heat is super. It's like being in a SPAAA.. Ken Altshuler So let's get into the tech issues. You gave us a lot of tech issues that I didn't know where to start. I went to the one where 76 percent of mobile apps have flaws that allow hackers to steal passwords, money, and tech. So what my iPhone, these people can go on and steal my passwords. You tell me. Craig Peterson Here's the problem, I, in fact, I just forwarded an email to some friends, I'll have to send it out to my whole email list here on as part of this weekend's email that I send out. I sent out this email. It was a summary that I get from law enforcement from the FBI because of what I do with the FBI and Infragard running their webinar programs. On it was just a note that said here's the Android patches for July. It went on for I don't know three or 400 words just describing the critical patches and how only Samsung is going to be releasing fixes for these patches on Android for these significant security problems with Android software. Only Samsung going to be releasing fixes for them within the probably the next60 days. These are highly critical. These are crucial, critical, patches. Other vendors, some may never release patches for them. Okay, so let's start with that in mind. Okay, Android, forget about it. If you care about security at all. Never buy Android. Now, iOS Erik Lusk So much for my cell phone. Exactly. Craig Peterson Ditch it. I can't believe you're in the financial business and you have an Android because it is the most dangerous piece of hardware available today. It's worse than Windows. Ken Altshuler Wow. Craig Peterson Okay. Ken Altshuler Did you hear that? Craig Peterson So, don't Erik Lusk Do you want me to turn around so you can hit the other kidney? Holy smokes! Craig Peterson Is he starting to spit blood yet, Ken? Okay. Sorry about that. But most people don't know this. Right? It's not your fault, Erik. Some vendors are pretending Androids just fine. Right? So how do you know who to trust? I'm not blaming you for this, and it's why I get so upset with the antivirus software, people selling things like Android phones and tablets, televisions with built-in things like how webOS. Samsung said two weeks ago, don't forget to run an antivirus on your TV. Who knows this stuff? Right? The bottom line is, don't use Android ever. Stick with iOS. Going back to Ken's point here, where 76% of mobile apps, according to positive technologies analysis here, 76% of mobile apps have flaws that can allow hackers to steal the passwords, maybe even your money and texts. Okay. Yeah, there is not a device if it has power going to it, If it has a wire going to it - the potential is there that it can be hacked, okay. So Deal with it, bottom line. Poorly written iOS applications are going to use cloud services other than Apple. Now Apple, again, their cloud services are outstanding. However, many of these cloud services, look at the Amazon breaches, we just had another huge one yesterday, that affected TD Bank, according to the reports, they were using a third party contractor. In other words, if you are a business, think about this for a couple of minutes, you're giving your data to who? To salesforce.com to this cloud service. Do you know how good is this cloud provider's security? Many of these apps that we're using are going to the cloud, they're using cloud services, many of the vendors that are upstream from us are taking some of our data, and they're not protecting it. So I, man, I just, I can't emphasize this enough. It's terrible. It's but it's the way of the world, and it's going to continue to be the way the world. That's why I'm hosting my security summer. This summer, I have a six-week program, one hundred percent free for everybody. I want everybody to know what to do because the vendors out there are not telling you the truth. Okay. That's the bottom line. They're selling new software that they have because they have it. Right. They're not selling you solutions that solve basic things, and you need to do those first. It's brass tacks of what you need to do to keep your data safe. It's like you were talking about with distracted driving. Who can afford the latest version of Apple's Car Play? The new one that is just coming out with right now is phenomenal. Android has a similar thing. But again, I don't want you to use Android devices for distracted driving. Who can afford to pay somebody like me to help them? Well, you know, bigger businesses, obviously, Ken, right. The medium-sized companies and larger small businesses can come in, and I can secure it. There are so many defense contractors working just right south here at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard that has to have to be DFARS compliance, which is a federal regulation. But they don't know where they can go? How about the little guys that can't afford to hire the real security people that all they do is networks and security. That's what this security summer is all about, guys. If people want to find out more, listen, you got to get ahold of me, I'm more than glad to put you into this class. It's only 10 to 15 minutes sessions twice a week, during the summer. If you miss one, you can watch it on the replay you need to email me at Craig Peterson dot com if you want to be in it and I'll let you know when it starts, okay, this isn't selling new stuff. It is just getting down to the brass tacks and making sure that those are out of the way. Many of these things you can do are free. Some of them are just educational, but they need to know what to do and how to do it. And then some you might want to or need to buy some paid software. I'll tell you what to do. But email me at Craig Peterson dot com. It's not as though I care about this stuff. Guys. I don't want you to think I'm on a soapbox or anything. Okay. Erik Lusk Just a wee bit. Craig Peterson Oh, yea. Ken Altshuler But a good soapbox Erik Lusk Oh, yeah, absolutely! When the city of Baltimore was held hostage by some computer hackers that managed to figure out how to shut down the municipal website. That's no way to live. What's next shutting down our Public Utilities? Craig Peterson You don't? Yeah, well, that's what's happening right now. And maybe that was a cue for me right there. We had this whole thing with Iran, right, they shot down our drone. That was or was not in international waters, Right. So our response was to be in a posture to bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran. Right. Then President Trump called it off at the last minute, right? It is all that we're getting from the news. And then the part that most people haven't been talking about is apparently, President Trump's idea of, hey, listen, you didn't kill anybody in the plane, we don't want to kill anybody. Then in a reciprocal response was that we hacked and shut down their radars, missile radar systems and their missile sites. Their answer is what's happening now with Iran going after our US businesses. They've got some software that wipes your computer. If they get on to your business computers, what they want to do is cause problems with the US economy. Most businesses just are protected well enough. They've got some a break-fix shop that knows a little bit about security and certainly can install the software. And those are, you know, Wow, those are the experts. And so Life is good, right? Hey guys that is not the case. Now we've got Homeland Security coming out this last week here, and warning businesses that Iranian hackers are already targeting US companies. And they're using this wipe software. They're not holding your data ransom, they are wiping clean your computers and anything they can find on your network, rather than stealing the data. That's directly from Chris Krebs. He's the director of Homeland Security's Cyber Security Division Erik Lusk Isn't that an easier thing to do? Rather than to go in and steal the data, isn't it easier to just wipe out somebody's data altogether? Craig Peterson That's the easiest thing to do. And you know what, Eric, there are no fingerprints afterward, Right? Or should I say a very few fingerprints? So for instance, we've gone into companies, we went into one company, and we found that there were Chinese back doors installed. It was a small manufacturer. And they made some dumb parts, right? There's like you think of a screw. Well, who cares about a screw. And the Chinese had multiple back doors, and they were monitoring everything that was going on. But that screw eventually ended up in our military equipment, until the Chinese went after the little guy. It made it now easier, and they had access to the portal to the big defense contractor, etc., etc. So that was very easy to trace because we could see wherever these back doors were talking to how they were accessed. We worked with the FBI, and we were able to straighten it out very quickly, we got them back in business within 24 hours. However, when you're just wiping a computer, there is nothing left because they've completely wiped the silly thing. So yeah, Eric, that's what they're doing because it is the easiest thing to do. That's part of what we're going to do with the security summer the right ways to do backups. And I can tell you 90% of the people I've ever talked to probably really close to 100 are not doing backups properly. But I don't want people to feel bad. A good backup that works can recover your data from that wipe from the Iranians. It can also recover your data from any ransomware attacks coming. Many of those are from Russia. We have one client, and we were looking at their website the other day and the security mechanisms we have in place. Their website was getting attacked five times every second it was a little website. It's crazy. And it was coming straight from Russia, by the way, anyways, blah, blah. I'm going to long in this segment. But there's so much you have to know to do it right. Just email me at Craig Peterson dot com. I want to get you in this. It is free. It's for small-medium businesses. If you're just the IT person because you know the most or you like computers, and "tagged your it" right, like in the game of tag. It is for you. And it's free. And I want you to attend email me at Craig Peterson dot com. Ken Altshuler Great. Craig Peterson dot com and Craig joins us every Wednesday. 738. Craig, we hope you have a great Fourth of July. We'll talk to you next week. Erik Lusk So much for my cell phone. I guess I'm headed over to get something else. Ken Altshuler iPhone time. iPhone time. Yeah. Craig Peterson Have a great Independence Day, everybody. Erik Lusk Thanks, Joe. All right, we'll take a break for CBS News, and we'll be back after this. --- 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

It's 7:38 on a Wednesday, Craig is on with Ken and Matt. Today Craig gave Ken some instructions on how to upgrade his Windows machine. They also talked about the Pokemon region in the brains of the adults who played the game as kids, and how Facebook is a government protected monopoly. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Brain Scans Reveal A ‘Pokémon Region’ In Adults Who Played As Kids Facebook Is A Government-Protected Monopoly Google Confirms It Will Automatically Delete Your Data — What You Need To Know --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 05/15/2019 Risks Of Upgrading Windows - Pokemon Changed Our Brains - New Google Privacy Feature Coming Craig Peterson  0:00  Hey, good morning everybody Craig Peterson here. This morning, I got to answer some questions. I helped Ken out with how to upgrade his Windows machine. Gave some, I think the best advice possible when it comes to an upgrade. And it's not just upgrades for Windows but we talked a little bit about Mac, I gave him some hints on what to do, because on his Mac, he's got windows seven, as well as Mac OS, he's got to get to Windows 10. So we talked about that. We talked about a Pokemon region in the brain of adults. Now this is kind of cool, too. And why is Facebook a government protected monopoly? What's that all about? And Google, automatically deleting our data? So all of that and a couple extra things too this morning with Ken and Matt. It was kind of a fun time again today. What a week. Alright, guys, we will be back Saturday with our weekly radio show wrap up. Take care of and I have a big warning too but you'll hear that right near the beginning. Matt Gagnon 1:05 He's back ladies and gentlemen Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He's at this time every Wednesday. And it happens to be Wednesday at this time. So he's back again. Craig, How are you this morning? Craig 1:18 I'm doing great. How are you guys? Ken Altshuler 1:19 You know, the other day I was going to email you because I had a question. I forgot what it was. But another question has come up since then you have recommended everybody should upgrade to Windows 10. Correct? Craig 1:30 At the very least Yes. And there's a huge, by the way, a huge I mean, how does President Trump pronounce it? There's a huge which is a new pronunciation, security vulnerability on every Intel processor made since 2011. I mean, we haven't had anything this bad in like for ever. So those people that are on my email list and my text list are going to get a link today with more information. But this came out yesterday. And all of the major guys Microsoft and Apple have already issued patches are there they're working on they've got them done. They should be out soon. But this is we've never seen anything this bad before. Thanks Intel. But of course your iPhones are fine. And other Samsung Galaxies and anything that's not using an Intel chip is ok. But this is like the hugest security problem we have seen I think maybe in a decade or two so anyway. Ken 2:43 So when I upgrade to Windows 10. And is it something I can do or do I need somebody who knows something about computers like Matt could do it for me? Craig 2:50 Well, if you can't handle... Matt 2:53 He says this in the wake by the way of me having to clean up his computer last Friday. Ken 2:56 Evidently I had asked Jeeves on it. I don't know how I put it on and they really made fun of me and and I was ashamed. They shamed me. Matt 3:06 He was shamed.  Ken 3:08 So I used to think I was somewhat tech savvy for an old man. But is it something I do myself? Craig 3:15 I knew you had that it was coming. I knew that you had that sound bite. Matt 3:19  I got it on ready all the time. Craig 3:21 Well, if you can't handle tabs on your browser, I think there's a little bit of a clue there. But here's the here's the bottom line, here's the recommendation. If you aren't going to upgrade to Windows 10. And this is true, particularly with Windows, but really kind of any operating system. Here's what I do, I don't upgrade, what I do is I make sure I have two backups of my computer. I do a virgin install, I do completely wipe the computer, reformat the hard disk, and particularly with Windows. And then I get it installed, I get it all patched up up to date. And then I get the newest versions of the software that I had been running. And then I restore my files from backup. I don't restore the whole backup.  Ken 4:15 This is not going to happen. For me to do that is impossible. Just so you know. Craig 4:24 So you need help then. We knew that. You need help with your computer then Ken. And yes, absolutely. And here's why I do that. And here's why I recommend people that have the ability to do it, do it. There are, and this is kind of a technical term, but there are turds all over your computer. Okay. The Ask Jeeves. Ken 4:48   Matt fixed that for me. Matt 4:49  I did. I got rid of it. Craig 4:50 Yeah. Yeah, he got rid of it. And all these plugins remember when people were installing these bars on their browsers, right? Probably Ask Jeeves, yeah, don't do that people including today. But there's just all of these remnants from over the years that are there things are partially configured, the poorly configured. Your Windows machine crash right in the middle of updating the registry, all kinds of things happen there's a power failure, which never happens in Maine. There's a power failure when you're doing something and that messed up stuff just enough so the computer works but some things get weird and get slow, etc, etc. So that's why I recommend you just do a from scratch install, and then restore just your files. Now Apple is a little bit different. Apple can still have some of these types of problems. Apple doesn't use a registry, it has a much better system. But like even with that, there are different types of problems with your computer. So when you do an upgrade on the apple, it takes some liberties and cleans things up on your behalf. But every two or three or four major releases of Apple operating system, I advise people to make sure you've got at least one good time machine backup, which is the built in backup software with Apple. And with Apple, you can have two or more copies of your backups. So have two USB drives, plug them in, put them both on time machine, leave it alone for flow, you can use the computer but leave the backup alone for a few days. It'll backup everything. You'll have two copies, and then do a from scratch install. And then with a time machine backup, you can just restore the user account information. So all of your files and things and and then just reload your programs to stuff. So it's really good. It's like a then we take it to your car into the dealer and get an oil change. You get your transmission fluid changed, the coolant changed, everything changed. It's a good idea to do that with your computers and the way you do it is to good backups and then that thing out and start from scratch. Matt 7:11 Craig Peterson tech guru joins us Wednesdays at this time to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Craig I'm too curious to not ask about this one. The Pokemon thing. I mean, I so there's some people who played as kids have some sort of brain scan, the brain scan is revealed that there's a region their brain that essentially tells you that they played this game like explain this thing. Craig 7:34  Yeah. Yeah. Matt 7:35   And why is that? Like what happened? Craig 7:36 Pokemon. Well, here's what happened. This is just amazing. This is specifically that now any Pokemon gaming when you were young, now, you know, you had to do a fair amount of it, right? But any Pokemon gaming when you were younger, throws this little switch in your brain. But they found that particularly people who played Pokemon on Game Boys from the 1990s, are apparently kind of very susceptible for that. It's kind of cool, because here's what happened. They did an experiment, they did a brain study with some of these people who played Pokemon when they were kids. And they wanted to know, did it affect their brains? And you know how many years we've been talking about stuff like this right? Violent video games. Does that make you violent as an adult and stuff? Right. And I know, Matt, you've been saying no, it doesn't, right? Matt 8:35  No, it does not. Craig 8:36  Yeah, exactly. So I thought. So they scan the participants brains. These were all self selected, and everything. You know how that goes. So this wasn't like the best sort of study in the world, showing them images of all 150 original Pokemon. And they were showing them eight at a time and they mixed in other images, like animals faces, cars, words, hallways, other cartoons. And what they found in experienced players was a specific region of the brain responded more to Pokemon than to any other images. Absolutely amazing. This was the, you know, the occipital region, which is the rear back of the brain here. It's the occipital temporal sulcus. I think it is. S-U-L-C-U-S. Some will know how to pronounce that. But it was absolutely amazing. And novices did not have this region respond in any different way to anything. So basically, Pokemon programmed your brain to selectively notice Pokemons more than anything else as part of a theory called extra sensory bias. And it suggests the size of the images and the types we're looking at. And even in your peripheral vision, by the way, will make your brain respond. So fascinating. You know, what, what does that tell us? I don't know. Matt 10:07   You got to catch them all. That's what it tells you. Craig 10:10 Yeah. Exactly. So you've been programmed Matt, and you just don't realize it. Matt 2:50 I'd like to make clear with the audience that I did not actually play that game growing up, but I am familiar with it. Ken 10:20 We are talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us Wednesdays at 7:38. Is Facebook a monopoly Mr. Peterson? Matt 10:27 What does that have to do with milkshakes? I guess I didn't follow that. Craig 10:32 Wow, man, we could go on for hours. But here's the bottom line, not just milkshakes, Matt, but hamburgers. And there's a great example. This is an article that I have up on my website from Amgreatness. And Ray Kroc. Of course, you might remember the story of the start of McDonald's, right? A couple of brothers had a hamburger stand. And it was amazing. And so Ray Kroc visited them trying to sell milkshake mixer, and was wondering why they needed four up milkshake mixer for such a small stand. The story evolved into McDonald's and, and he took what they had done and license issues everything else in the legal side. So the point here is that with the way the patent laws are today, they go far beyond what most people think the Constitution requires. They now have patent laws that allow you to patent processes, business processes, for instance. And it's gotten to the point where companies like Facebook, have patents on things that were obvious next steps, that even the patent law says aren't supposed to be issued. But the patent office is so overrun their patent issuing patents for things that should never been patented. And so now you have companies like, like Facebook out there, and Microsoft, who have patents on things that may be shouldn't have been issued, I don't think most of them should have been issued. So they can have and they don't have any competition. You know, we have people being that deep platform, we have conservative voices saying, Hey, listen, we're, we're not able to make any money anymore, because YouTube has cut us off, Facebook has cut us off, etc, etc. We should have five different alternatives out there for people to go to if Facebook or YouTube or someone else does something that kicks them off. And they say, Well, fine, I'm going to like conservative Facebook called XYZ book or whatever it might be. But we don't. And a lot of the reason for that is the state of the patent laws. And I personally have said for a very long time, we've got to change them. With technology moving the way it is, we are hindering our progress in the technology world in a huge way, by allowing these corporations, big ones and small ones, to take an obvious idea patented, and then use the federal government to be there and for sure, for what's now effectively a protected monopoly. Matt 13:08 We are talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru who joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening in the world of technology. I guess the last question for us in the last couple minutes we have here Craig I'd love to ask you about about Google and deleting our data. This obviously sort of goes into privacy questions and everything we've been talking about recently in the online space. Will they be deleting my data? What do I need to know about this? Craig 13:34 Yeah, you can manually go in right now and get a bunch of your data deleted manually. There's some simple on off controls for location, history, web app activity. But you have to go into your Google account constantly to delete it and ask for it to be deleted. So Google has a new rollout coming within a month or so that is called auto delete controls. So you will be able to go in and I'll let you guys know when this happens, right. So you can go and turn it on. But you'll be able to go in and say, I want to place a limit. And you'll have the amount of time Google you keep my history, my web, my app activity, my location, I want to put a limit on that. And you will get to choose between three months and 18 months, and the data will be automatically deleted on a rolling basis. So this is really good news. It comes in the wake of Facebook staring down at $2 billion fine, the largest in history, I think Google is kind of getting the impression that maybe we don't want all of our data tracked. So this is a good thing. I'll let you a little more when it happens. I'm also going to be putting info up on the top of my homepage today about this Intel vulnerability. It is huge. It's the worst ever. Update update update people. Bottom line. Ken 15:01 Craig Peterson, tech guru joins us every Wednesday at 7:38. This not being an exception. Thank you very much. And I will let you know how my upgrade of Windows 10 by myself does next week. Craig 15:12 So you're upgrading from XP. What are you doing? Ken 15:15   No. Windows 7 because I have a Mac it's on my VM Fusion side of my Mac. Craig 15:21 Okay, so a little hint here, before you do this, because you're using Fusion, VMware Fusion, you can take a snapshot of your Windows machine before you upgrade it. Ken 15:35  How do I do that? Craig 15:36  Okay, you go into your fusion, and you click on the machine because you got a virtual machine, a Windows 7 machine, and then it has snapshot up in the menu at the top. And just go to snapshot and say take snapshot. And it'll it'll it'll completely preserve absolutely everything in your Windows machine. And then you can go ahead and do the upgrade and everything goes. Ken 15:58  Nice. I'm going to do that right you now. Thank you. Craig 16:01  You can roll back.  Ken 16:02   All right. Thank you so much. There you go. Matt 16:02   All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is Craig Peterson. American hero and friend of the show. Joins us every Wednesday at this time to go over the world of technology. Ken 16:10   American hero. Matt 16:12   American hero. Coming up at 8:08. we have our eye on politics team and Jeremy Fisher --- 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

Facebook is in trouble again, this time with Apple, having another app pulled off from the App Store. Find out more as Craig talks with Scott Spradling on WGIR. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles  Facebook Violates Apple’s Data-Gathering Rules, Pulls VPN From App Store --- Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 09/24/2018 Facebook Had Another App Pulled From The Apple Store Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Good morning. I had kind of a fun weekend this weekend. I had one of my daughters and her husband fly in from Europe where they're living. And we had a very early Thanksgiving even for Canadians, right, which comes up in late October. But it was fun. It was great. A bit of a family reunion. I always loved those things. Well, it looks like Jackie the might have been out doing the family reunion thing as well, because this morning. sitting in for him was Scott Spradling. And of course, we had Justin in as well. And we talked a little bit about Facebook. They just had another app pulled from the Apple App Store. And we talked about why we're carrying it through the morning this morning. And this segment could be just can't we all just get along Unknown 0:51 it. We're going to do a little tech talk here. I'd like to welcome our guest, Craig Peterson. Craig, thank you so much for joining us. And let's get started right away here where it says like Facebook and Apple aren't getting along too terribly well. Some Unknown 1:03 violation of data gathering rules by Facebook. What's happening? Hey, good morning, guys. Yeah, Facebook's been in trouble. Recently. As you'll recall, of course, they men managed to get themselves in front of Congress, which seems to be happening more and more with people. But they got in front of Congress because they were taking our data and doing things that maybe they should have been doing. We know about the investigations in the Facebook and the Russians trying to influence the election. But what you're referring to right now Scott is really kind of interesting because Facebook has violated some new rules Apple has started enforcing lately though, yes, trouble once again, these rules have to do with something known as a VPN. Now I'm putting together a masterclass for people. In fact, if you check your email for me over the weekend and text as well, I'm asking people, what do they want to learn? What do they need to know that help their business out? And the number one answer is VPN. Now, these are virtual private networks. They're designed typically to stop other people from listening in to what you're doing. Okay, so Scott, for instance, you go to a normal website on your computer, and let's say you're using Comcast or maybe it's Verizon or someone else, they know where you're going online, but they don't have access to the data that you have. And that's important if you're doing banking or business transaction, your other things because think about it, if you ever sat in the coffee shop and use a VPN or maybe use their wireless, right, definitely, yeah, all the time. Yeah, everybody does, right? It's pre-internet, right over the Wi-Fi, why wouldn't you use it, but most people aren't aware that some of these coffees off wireless Wi-Fi hotspots and the same things true for even some little bit fancier business type networks can be monitored and are being monitored. So this your business person, the safest thing to do is use one of these virtual private networks. So even though you're taking their hospitality, you're using their basic internet access, they can't monitor anything you're doing, they cannot steal your information. All attorney turned on Facebook's got Facebook bought a VPN company called on on on Apple protect, you'll see it in the store on Apple, or when a vo and Facebook's been offering that as a VPN for people so that you can safely use Facebook because there's a lot of information you put up there. You probably don't want people poking in. And maybe you have private pages and things that the photos happen all the time. Well, Facebook, a VPN has been spying on people, which is the exact opposite of what you want a VPN to do. So it's been tracking everything you do online. They're using that data. They're selling it to their advertisers and Apple because they are concerned about your privacy actually, remove the Facebook VPN software from the App Store because Facebook is spying on you, Unknown 4:31 Craig at this point, should we assume Facebook is spying on us all the time? If I if I talk about let's say like a Twix bar in my phone is nearby. And when I open up Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, suddenly I have an advertisement for Twix. It's amazing. Should we assume Facebook's always spying on us? Unknown 4:47 Well, Justin, I think you can assume that almost everybody is there were even accusations. You might remember over the last year that some of these apps were using the microphone in your device to listen in on you. It just having a device with you. When you walk into a store tells a retailer like that what Walmart or you name it, it tells a retailer you've been here before and your phone was being used to track you as you walk through the store. Now Apple has blocked that as well. That type of tracking. But you know, bottom line, Justin, you're right. When you are using something for free. Guess what? It's not really free wouldn't when you're using Facebook. Again. People remember Facebook, you are not the customer Facebook. You're not paying them a dime. You are Facebook's product. So anything you're doing Facebook users to monetize. You are the product here. Unknown 5:48 Craig Peterson. A very important lesson here in tech talk this morning, Craig, thank you so much for joining us. And this morning. And even though we've probably amped up everyone's paranoia, this is a really important warning for folks the true I understand. That's right, it is correct. Thanks so much and have a great day. Unknown 6:03 Take care guys. All right. Thank you. --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Message Input: Message #techtalk Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

That Blind Tech Show Rolls Again. Bryan brings Allison and Jeff back to the sho to talk about some of the latest Tech news, gidgets and gadgets and the latest from Sonos. We are proud to announce that Twitterrific for the Mac is Back, Downcast just got an update and AOL Messenger is no longer. Jeff gives us an update on the fire that hit Enchanted Hills Camp above Napa, CA and how we can all contribute and support #RebuildEHC. Be sure to check the links below to learn more about what the heck we were talking about. :) Check out the Twitterrific Blog and Subscribe to keep up with the latest from iConFactory Google Bought Apple or Did they! Twitterrfic for Mac is here How to get apps back in iTunes 10 Safari Long Press Shortcut Gestures. Do you remember to ever long press? Read more about Enchanted hills Camp #RebuildEHCand contribute what you can and lend your support. Give by phone: Call Jennifer Sachs at 415-694-7333   See Transcription below.   Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow   That Blind Tech Show is produced in part by Blind Abilities Network.   You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Transcription: That Blind Tech Show: Twifferrific on the Mac and Downcast is Back andSonos Gets 1 Bigger. (Transcription provided) [Music] Alison: Sonos One's which are the newest iteration of the play one, are the ones that have Lady A built-in. [Music] Alison: I did put the Eyes Free Fitness app on my phone and I'm hoping that you know buying some of the workouts for that, I will literally have no excuse not to, not to do it because my phone is always with me no matter where I go. Bryan: Somebody in New Zealand had something about unboxing one very early before the rest of the world which..... Alison: Oh yes Jonathan was very very happy that you know when he get, when these items come out he gets them a day ahead everyone else because New Zealand is a day ahead. Bryan: He should let people know that. [Laughter] Alison: He really doesn't gloat about that enough, but yeah. Jeff: So Alison you use your phone on a daily basis. [Laughter] Alison: The face ID, I'm still, I find myself still kind of getting used to this new thing called face ID. Jeff: I want to see the Grinch again this year. Bryan: So you want me to come visit? [Laughter] Big smiles okay, three, two one, welcome back to yet another episode of that blind tech show. I know it's been a very long time since we've been here in fact you've probably heard a lot of us on other great technology podcasts. I know our friend Allison Hartley recorded one of her regular tech doctor podcasts as well as she was on with the great people over at main menu. And you may have heard Jeff Thompson on with AT Banter and I believe he's got another podcast coming out with the good folks over at Mystic Access and you may have heard me on Blind Bargains but we finally got the band back together again and we're here to talk you through some of the holidays and the goings on now, so I'm going to go ahead and say yeah how you doing over there Allison. Alison: I'm doing okay, it's the day three of a four-day weekend so I'm just kind of milking the the time off work for all it's worth, I've been reading good books that I'll talk about later and eating lots of food, lots of pie, so much pie. Bryan: There's never such a thing as too much pie. Alison: No never. Bryan: What about you Jeff, how has your Thanksgiving holiday been? Jeff: Well pie is a continuum. Alison: Yep. Jeff: It's been great here, I've been bacheloring it, the family's been gone, and I'm living it here with the dogs, happy Thanksgiving, it's Thanksgiving everyday now. Bryan: I'm actually down in Florida still recording you see, we're all about bringing you the show. Holidays don't stop us. One thing I was very excited though on the plane ride down here, I was very excited some of you might have heard about therapy pigs getting kicked off planes. [Pig noises] I'm happy to report there was no therapy pig on my plane down here, just get old Nash in me. How about you Allison, have you ever been on a plane with a therapy Pig? Alison: I have never been on the plane with anything more exciting than another guide dog, I have to say. Bryan: What about you Jeff have you ever traveled with any pigs? Jeff: No but it, it would wouldn't be that bad if it was therapy bacon. Alison: Oh yeah. Bryan: That is true, that is true and for those of you not hear about that story it's actually not the first time a therapy pig has gotten kicked off a plane so, go ahead and check that out, it was one of the more humorous stories and, you know, it's great that they stand up for our rights as guide dog service dog users, but seriously, therapy pigs. [Pig noises] Now Allison, I think you're probably the only disappointed one because I'm hearing the Soup Nazi said no soup for you, no home pod for you this year? Alison: Yeah I mean I have really no reason to be disappointed. I have speakers coming out of my ears. [Spring noise and laughter] Alison: Quite literally right now cuz I'm wearing headphones but, I am, I am still interested in getting the home pod when it comes out, home pods I should say, cuz I want to get a stereo pair. I have my Lady A controlled Sonos speakers now, and I'm finding that that is honestly filling a lot of my needs in terms of playing satellite radio and playing any song that I could possibly think of. I do still want to get the home pods because I hear that the sound quality is gonna be even that much better than the Sonos speakers, but I'm not, I'm not tearing my hair out, if these new Sonos hadn't come out I might have been a bit more disappointed, but I'm okay. Jeff: Now you said they're gonna be better sounding than the Sonos? Alison: They are, they're going to have more tweeters and better far-field microphones for understanding you, the only limitation in my opinion it's gonna be Siri, I know this is a controversial subject on an Apple themed podcast but, Siri is terrible. Bryan: You will get no argument out of me, Siri and I, we're not even dating anymore, the relationship is over and.... Unfortunately this is not surprising news, Apple you know when they used to meet their deadlines, we talked about it this summer, it was a little odd that Apple was talking about this, it almost reminds me of you know back 10 years ago when they used to say there's an attack coming, it's not coming today, it's not coming tomorrow, but it's coming, and I kind of feel that's the same thing with (inaudible) Alison: Yeah. Bryan: Apple pod, they're not gonna be out today, they're not gonna be out tomorrow, but they will be out, probably around the same time that the Amazon app comes to the Apple TV. Alison: I would, I would say you're probably right there, and I would say that when they do come out they're gonna be a couple of years behind all of the other smart speakers with better AI. It's really, it's kind of gonna be sad almost. I really I want to see Apple push forward in this arena, but unfortunately you know, I, I've played now with Google assistant, I've had a Lady A in my life, I have been playing even with Bixby on a, on a Samsung phone, and yes you give something up in terms of your data, and in terms of your privacy, but when you're putting security above all, the AI, and the assistance itself becomes very limited in what it can do, and it's really starting to show in Siri when there are so many more worthy competitors. Bryan: Yeah, the Apple really missed the boat on the the home assistant and you know, Tim Cook was wishy-washy on it for several years and now it's just gonna be a speaker, I really have no interest, I mean I'm very happy with my Echo devices, heck, I got a small apartment you know, I've got one in the living room. They're $30.00 now over you know, the weekend... Alison: God Yeah. Bryan: I just don't have, I'm like, well do I really need another one, and I'm like, I've got one in the living room, one in the bedroom, and I don't spend much time in the kitchen so you know it's, there's no point really in getting another one but I, you just can't say no at that price and, how was the Google assistant, did you like it? Alison: I do, I actually I have a Google home speaker that I don't have plugged in at this point but on the Galaxy I mean it's just, you can just ask random questions and instead of saying, let me check the web for that, here's what I found, it actually just gives you the answer to your flipping question. Bryan: Yeah. Alison: It's really amazing and then you can ask like follow-up questions and it jives with what you were talking about and it answers intelligently. I just, you know maybe the home pod speakers will come out and something about Siri will blow us out of the water or something out of the speakers, about the speakers will blow everything else out of the water because they've had a little bit more time, but I'm starting to get a little impatient with Apple's obsession with, I know they want to get it right, and I know they want to have a really polished user experience, but that user experience is starting to suffer because of that need to be so meticulous, and so perfect. Jeff: Well I think they've actually, having it come out next year might be a good plan for their stocks in a way because people are buying the eight, or the ten, those are big items, and you're talking about $349.00 here. It's hard to comBryan when everybody else is you know flooding the market with these $29.00 minis, and dots, and Amazon, what do they have seven different items now in this department? The Look, the Show, the Tap. Alison: Now Google has three, I mean, it's a lot. Bryan: And, I'm hearing about headphones, Bose, I think there is a set of Bose headphones which you know, I couldn't afford those, but that have the Google Home built into them so we're starting to see more and more even headphones with these kind of assistants built into them and, I think Apple, you know, they've just been left behind and, not every company needs a home assistant so, I really don't see what the marketplace unless you are a big music listener, you know, or have capitol to spend, I really don't see the point to it, I guess I don't have a fine ear for music because I think the Echo speaker sounds fantastic and everybody I know that's into music says, "Are you kidding?" Alison: Oh no, oh God, no no no no no. Especially the Dot. The Dot is barely passable for spoken word, but even the big Echo, drives me crazy because it tries to simulate fake stereo, but it doesn't quite get it right on the one speaker so, it's, it drives me nuts. Bryan: What's the opposite of perfect pitch? Because that's what I have. [Laughter] Jeff: Either you have it, or you don't. Alison: Yeah. [Laughter] Jeff: So with the Sonos, you have two of them, that's the Sonos one you have two of them. Alison: Yep. Jeff: That does perfect stereo? Alison: It does, yeah I have them equal distant from each other on a table, and the stereo separation is amazing, it's really beautiful. Jeff: Oh that's great. Bryan: Are there multiple different kinds of Sonos? I've just heard phenomenal things about Sonos speakers, or is there one product line or are there different kind of product lines for the Sonos speakers. Alison: There are in the non smart, non Lady A connected Sonos products, there are three, well four technically different tiers of Sonos products, and it all depends on the number of tweeters that are in each speaker, and with all of them you can pair to get a stereo pair with the Play Ones, Play Threes, and Play Fives, but they become very expensive, and they have a sound bar, and they have a subwoofer for the television, but you couldn't pair Lady A with a skill now, to make all of your Sonos products somewhat controllable via Lady A, but the Sonos One's which are the newest iteration of the Play One, they look exactly the same except they have microphones, are the ones that have Lady A built-in. Bryan: Yeah well everything, everything seems to be getting smarter except Apple News, which you know, I often go through Apple news and my subscriptions when I'm putting this show together and, lately I've been noticing there's about two articles and then everything goes back six weeks, and they just don't seem to be coming out with a lot of content and as Jeff and I were talking about, a lot of ads you'll see an article, title of an article, title of an article, then an advertisement, and then a bunch of text, this is something about Apple and an ad and everything. Jeff have you been using Apple News, and have you noticed how down hill it seems to have gone? Jeff: I've noticed it's changing a little bit at first, the ads you can't even read the ads because that, all it does is give you description of it, and you have to skip over it, so they're not trying to sell to the blind. The thing that I noticed about Apple News is Apple shuts down at about four o'clock on Friday, there's no new news, they just kind of rehash the same stuff until Monday, and it's just like looking for an app update. If I get one on on Saturday/Sunday, someone paid extra to have that pushed out. Bryan: Yeah maybe I should go back to Newsify and actually reading my RSS feed for technology news. I'm not seeing that much content coming through there, I was I was really excited when Apple news came out because I thought it was gonna be great and I enjoyed it at first, I was using it all the time, but now I'm seeing less and less content and a lot of that content, there's nothing worse than when you're reading an article and like a paragraph into the article, all of a sudden advertisement is starts being read to you... Alison: Yep. Bryan: It drives me absolutely bonkers, and Jeff you actually said, and I'm curious because I read a lot of television recaps in Safari, where I'll say, Arrow episode, season six episode three recap, and it will, I'll find an article that will describe the action and a lot of times these articles, a paragraph in it starts reading an ad to me, you just got a pop-up blocker, now do you think those pop-ups might block those in article advertisements, or just really block pop-ups. Jeff: Actually it's not a pop-up blocker, that is native to the Safari app where you can turn that on or off and it blocks pop-ups. Now some colleges, if you're a college student, they use pop-up so you might want to beware that you might be shutting off something and not being able to gain access to so, try it out. What I got was Purify and that's P U R I F Y, it's a content blocker, and when you get that you, you purchase it, and I got it for a dollar ninety nine, I don't know if that was a Black Friday deal or a special over the holidays but, a dollar ninety-nine, it's very popular app according to Nick, my buddy up in Canada, and what it does is it works on your browser. So what you do is you purchase it and then you have to go into your Safari app settings, go down and just below pop-up blocker, you're gonna find content blocker, and then you have to enable it by turning it on. Bryan: Allison, have you ever used any kind of pop-up or ad blockers or anything? Alison: I do also use Purify and I find that that eliminates a lot of the ads on the websites that I use. What I love now also is reader mode for specific websites in iOS11, if you activate reader now, it's an actionable item and you can go to Auto reader and you can tell it that I either want reader to be active on this website all the time or, all the time for everything, so I have some very specific websites for which I just have reader all the time and I never have to worry about any extra crap on the webpage. Bryan: Where is that setting where you could set it specifically for an individual website? Alison: When you actually turn on reader and you've got reader selected, then there's an actions available, it might even be available for you to select it, and one of the actions is automatic reader when you flick down. You double tap that and then it comes up with a message that says do you want to enable reader for all websites or just on this domain and, you could turn it on for just on this website, and so like 9 to 5 Mac for example and a couple of other more the, more of the busy Apple news sites, I have since I do so much Twitter reading on my phone, I've got automatic reader turned on and it's changed everything. Bryan: Yeah that's something I'll have to, you know I I use the reader all the time, but I, and I remember hearing about, that you know, you hear, about so many new settings but I've never played around with it so, that's something I'm really gonna have to make use of, and by the way if you're out there and if you know of any specific ad popup blocker that might work in individual apps, let us know, you could tweet us in at BlindTechShow or shoot us in an email at thatblindtechshow@ gmail.com, let us know about that. This next thing is really interesting because I was down here listening, I have an app where I'm able to get any NFL audio feeds and everything, and the one thing that drives me bonkers because my dad's a little older so sometimes he forgets is I'm watching the Washington Redskins game here on Thanksgiving with him and I'm listening to the Redskins radio, the only problem is streaming audio is a good minute and a half to two minutes behind real time, and he keeps commenting about what's on TV and it's just driving me insane, I'm like Dad, remember it hasn't happened again you know, so, one thing that would be nice is if FM radio actually just worked on your iPhone which supposedly it could according to this article, we'll put in the show notes that it's built into the phone but Apple just will not activate it. Have you guys been following this story? I know it's been in the news a lot lately. Alison: I've heard two things about this, I've heard that Apple for whatever reason has just decided not to activate it but then I've also heard that the newer modems actually don't have the FM radio so it's a moot point. Bryan: Mmm okay, what about you Jeff if you've been following along to this? Jeff: Yeah I have but, you know it's to me it's like, is it, is it, am I dying for it, I don't know, I really don't know. Bryan: I think it'd be nice, just, you know to be in real time. I don't understand why they can't get streaming audio to be at least maybe you know a second or two behind. I mean it's just such a significance difference, I've got it put on do not disturb, otherwise I'll get notifications about a score in a game, you know, before it happened. The fascinating thing is during the, the Yankees playoff run, I went to my local bar with a pair of my head with the headphones with FM radio, and sure enough FM radio would get it like 30 seconds before television would. [Laughter] Alison: So there's no perfect solution. Bryan: No, there's not, I'd be like, I'd yell out "damn it" and people were like "What are you talking about, they've yet to throw the pitch". [Laughter] So yeah, there's there's no perfect solution. Jeff: I like tuneIn radio, I like stuff like that. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: If there's an emergency or something we got those alarms that go off and everything. I don't see myself turning it on, I don't know, it's just, it so interesting, there's so many resources, so many different avenues that I can get information that, just one more to be on the phone and then, where's my antenna. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: You know it's, now that we're Bluetooth everything so, do we have to wrap it in tinfoil? I don't know. Bryan: You just hold it up in the air while you're walking down the street like an umbrella. [Laughter] Am I getting a signal now? Damn it, the signal is better over here. You know it's funny because the one thing my headphones don't get is AM radio. Jeff: I think it's just as important to think about this. Now do we really want that on there because everyone was so excited when like your Amazon device could make phone calls. As soon as you make that phone call you're standing there for about two minutes going I can't walk away. Alison: Yeah, yeah. Jeff: It's not fun. Bryan: No no no, like I've said for a very long time, the worst app on the iPhone is the phone, and it's also my least used app. I wonder if I could take it out of the dock and put it on like page nine. [Laughter] Alison: You could yeah. Bryan: Yeah, you know it's funny yeah I've been down here in Florida like I said for a week and everything, so I've been in a lot of automobiles which in New York City you know I'm not in cars a lot, and I've noticed my phone still thinks I'm driving sometimes. Alison: My phone thinks I'm driving when I'm not even in a car, like I'll be laying in bed and all of a sudden that do not disturb while driving thing will pop up and I'll be like I'm just reading a book, can you go away? [Laughter] Bryan: But do you have a waterbed so maybe you're moving. [Laughter] Jeff: Too much coffee. Alison: Unfortunately no waterbed, but it's crazy I wish, I have it set on activate manually, so it should not be popping up at all, but it's driving me nuts. Bryan: Real quick for a millennial crowd, water beds were beds with water in them in the 1980s. [Laughter] Look them up. Jeff: California has regulations on waterbeds. Alison: Yeah. [Laughter] Right. Jeff: The other thing is someone told me about the notifications you know that, while you're in a car if you turn it to what is that the Bluetooth setting in your car mode, that that's supposed to trigger it, I don't know sometimes that some things are on, some things are off, I don't know. Bryan: Yeah, and I've got mine set the manual where I'm supposed to be able to turn it on, I have read in a lot of places and I think we may all be running different versions of betas, or some people may be having this problem, others may not and supposedly some people claim it's fixed in a certain beta. I don't even know if I'm running that beta, I think I'm one update behind, you know there's been so many betas out that I can't keep up with them, and a lot of updates coming out too, I notice all the time I seem to have like 80 to 90 updates every few days cuz, I self update, what about you? I know you guys self-medicate, do you self update? Alison: Well I'm constantly working on self improvement, self updating, oh oh you mean apps, yeah. [Laughter] Bryan: The apps, I like to make sure tha,t I like to read those little release notes, and the worst is we update our app fairly regularly, we're not going to tell you what we're doing. Alison: Nope. Jeff: If you get a self-improvement app, would that be self defeating? [Laughter] Bryan: I don't know, you know what, email us and let us know what you think. You know a lot of people are big fans of the Star Wars saga, but have you guys been following the blindfold game saga. Alison: It's been it's been rather epic. Bryan: It has, there's been multiple parts you know. We had, we even had my favorite was Blindfold game Strikes Back you know. Alison: And they did to their credit. Bryan: They did, they struck back hard. I'm a, you know I am a big fan of the games. Blindfold Uno, I've bought plenty of them, I know some people don't like them, I think Marty does a phenomenal job and, God I love the trivia games, and there's nothing like when you've got a, you're sitting in the store you got a few minutes to kill. I've actually set my Blindfold Uno to unlimited scoring so I've got like thirty thousand points in there, it just keeps... [Laughter] Every time the computer gets within ten thousand points of me I think it's cheating you know, but, he really does a great job with a lot of those games. Marty is a businessman and he makes these games you know, out of his love of making games for the community as well as to make money and... Alison: Sure why not. Bryan: I couldn't believe what, when Apple was telling him he needed to roll them into tab less apps in the App Store. It really seemed like Apple didn't know what they were talking about I, you know you could Google Marty's website, I'm not sure the exact site but blindfoldgames.com probably, or just google it, and he's got a blog that'll explain everything that happened if you're not aware of it but, I was really shocked at the stance Apple took against him starting out. Alison: I can summarize briefly if you'd like. Bryan: Sure. Alison: I've been fairly involved in reading about it. So essentially what happened was, and there's a whole detailed timeline on the website. Bryan: Start with episode 1. Alison: In episode one Apple was going through the review process for some iOS11 related updates for Marty's games and they noticed that a lot of the games used the same template. Now Apple technically has a rule that apps cannot be clones of one another, and not looking at the content of the games which are all different decided that these games are too similar and so we're going to have to reject these updates because they have the templates are too similar and you have to make the the gameplay different. Well the whole beauty of the blindfold games is once you know how to play one, you can pretty much figure out you know, several more, so Marty defended himself and said look while these templates are all very similar, the content within them is very different, but Apple didn't want to hear it, they heard, they're like 80 apps is too much. You have to compile them into less. Bryan: A handful, yeah. Alison: Amounts of apps. So Marty's stance, with which I agree, is that then that would make the apps too large to download because they all contain different voice files, and sound effects, so they're already you know pretty sizable downloads anyway, and it would hurt discoverability. For example if all the card games were in one app, somebody might only play one or two, and that might hurt his chances at making more revenue, and the man has got to be able to make some sort of money off it. Bryan: Sure. Alison: I get it. So eventually it came down to a lot of members of the community myself included, advocating with Apple to make them understand that this is a different type of situation than just the average you know, Yahoo up there trying to clone a bunch of flappy bird apps for example. And it worked, they understood, they eventually understood and had a conversation with Marty about, hey we understand that these games are different and now it's it's okay, when the review was passed and Marty at one point he was going to be taking down the games because he just didn't have the resources, either financial, or time wise to do the rewrites that Apple was starting with, so I'm really glad that this ended up, ending happily, and I got into some, some real Twitter spats with a couple of people who really think that, that oh, it's just blind people whining. No, it's, it's people advocating for games, which are truly different in the App Store, and yes blindness does have a little bit to do with it because we have a shortage of accessible games as it is, so don't take our choices away. Bryan: Would you summarize saying basically that Marty basically after the the Clone Wars beat the Empire? Alison: He did. Bryan: Yes. Yes. [Laughter] A Star Wars theme, yeah, no, not to make light of it, it was great that Apple reversed it's course and, Jeff, any comments? Where you following along on the Blindfold saga? Jeff: I was more or less following Allison on Twitter, I'm stalking again Allison. Alison: Oh no. Jeff: But Jonathon Mosan wrote a letter, other people in the community got going on, it was nice to see everybody come together for that you know, like some people were pretty negative, they were saying like "oh yeah, they come together this, but not for jobs" Alison: Some people were jerk faces about it, and I will call them out for that. Jeff: Other people were saying like "Oh Apple, they played the blind card to Apple" it's not that, it's like Allison just explained, it's more like that. It is kind of neat to sit back and watch how different people rise up to certain things and other people take sides, you know the bottom line is the guy is doing something. he has to make money. If he bundles them all up, and you only like one of them, you're not going to buy 8 you know, it makes sense, business sense for him, and I'm glad Apple saw it that way. Bryan: I think he's got a great price plan, because you know, yes, he's got a ton of games you know, nobody buy them all. You could test them out, you know he gives you a free amount of games with each one which I think is fantastic. How many mainstream games out there allow you to test it out before buying it? Alison: It's true. Bryan: So basically what we are saying Marty, "Stay Strong!" Jeff: And may the Force be with you. Bryan: You know something that just came to the app store new and I, I've gotta actually take a look at this, because I haven't exercised since last millennium, The Eyes Free Fit, you know Blind Alive some of you may know it as, I looked up Blind Alive, i couldn't find anything related to exercising. But if you look it up under Eyes Free Fitness, and this just came to the app store last week, and I looked through it, you gotta buy the programs, but it looks like they got a ton of different exercises in there, and I know they've been around for quite a while and on a lot of podcasts. Have either of you guys ever done any of their exercise programs? Alison: A long time ago I bought Cardio Level 1, and it is really great, and really descriptive. I did it a couple of times, I'm really bad with sticking with exercise routines no matter how accessable they are. So, it's really a motivation issue, its not an issue with the workouts themselves, but now I did put the Eyes Free Fitness app on my phone and I am hoping that, you know buying some of the workouts through that, i will literally have no excuse not to do it because my phone is always with me no matter where I go. Bryan: Yeah. How about yourself Jeff? You're an outdoor mountain man, have you ever indoor exercised? Jeff: I was actually testing her website with her so I got to get a few of those and she was next to me in the booth at ACB in 2016. It was in Minneapolis, it was really fun, it's really great that she's taken it to this level now that, you can even hook it up to your health app inside your phone too so.... Bryan: Wait a minute, there's a health app in the phone? [Laughter] Jeff: Page 9 Brian, Page 9. Alison: Page 11 yeah. [Laughter] Bryan: It's next to all of my pizza services. [Laughter] Jeff: So I suggest if people want it, it's Eyes Free Fitness, it's well described, that's the whole intent of it. She uses people who are professionally trained to come up with these exercise routines, but then there's also some stretching ones, and all that stuff. So it's pretty versatile, and they got some Yoga stuff in there, and then there's.... Alison: Pilates. Jeff: Yeah, lots of good stuff in there. Bryan: Yeah, yeah, my only complaint about this app and what she does, is she makes the rest of us look lazy. [Laughter] Can I set a New Years resolution in November, where that's my plan is to, exercise and, you know, a lot of people say they want to get in better shape. I would just like to get into a shape so.... [Funny sound effect and laughter] Alison: See it's a good time for me to get back into this because now I'm walking everyday with Gary with our neighborhood in Napa being so walkable that I actually am in a little bit better shape, so I feel like these exercises would be really great, you know especially if on the weekends when we walk less, it would really help me to get in even better shape. I'm still a far cry off from where I want to be and I still eat to much, but that'll never change. [Laughter] Bryan: I don't even eat that much, I just eat all of the wrong things, I've learned if I like it, it's bad for you. Alison: Yeah, that's kinda where I'm at too, I don't find that I eat these ginormous portions, I mean although I do like a healthy portion of food, but yeah, it's not the good things. It's a little light on the leafy green vegetables and such, although I like fruit. Jeff: You know one of the main things about exercise and all this stuff that we're talking about is the mindset and it takes a while to get your mind wrapped around it. I've been using a trainer for, it'll be coming up on a year and I finally got my mind wrapped around it after 10 months. I mean, it really takes something, I used to be in really good shape, I used to do a lot of stuff, I used to run and all sorts of stuff. But I am not being chased anymore so... you know. Bryan: It's may favorite line, "Do you still run?" "Only when chased" [Laughter] Jeff: Yeah, I think people who want to get back into it sometimes it takes a little commitment. You can buy these from $19.00 to $25.00 or something like that, but you have it, you can do it in the privacy of your own home, it's accessible, and it describes all of the stances, all the positions, well described steps, so if that's what it takes to get your mindset involved in it, it might be a good start for you. Alison: Yeah. Yeah can get as of out of breath or sweaty as you want, as quickly as, however quickly it takes and it doesn't matter because it's just you and yeah. Jeff: But make sure you have your phone notifications for driving set right. [Laughter] Bryan: Either that or in my kind of condition make sure you have 911 on speed dial. [Laughter] I got a good work out there, you know we're recording this the day after Black Friday, it's not even Cyber Monday yet but you'll hear this after Cyber Monday, and it was a low tech Black Friday for me because I got some clothes and everything, no technology but I wanted to ask you guys, what about yourself Allison was it a techie Black Friday Cyber Monday for you or no? Alison: No cuz I, I bought what I want throughout the year, I don't, I don't have the the impulse control to wait three months for something to go on sale on Black Friday, I just buy it when I, when I have the money and what I want it / need it. So Black Friday / Cyber Monday are always kind of a bit of a letdown for me cuz I'm like, oh this thing's on sale, oh wait, I already have it, this thing's on sale, wait I already have it. ]Laughter] Bryan: Got it got it got it got it got it need it you know. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: I just went shopping at Allison's place, I just walk to her house. [Laughter] I'll take that, that, that. [Laughter] Ain't got it, ain't got it, ain't got it. Bryan: You know it's not a big tech year for me because I'm not upgrading, I do need to get a new key chain cuz I have one of those key chains with the Lightning charger and for some reason the Lightning charger broke off of the key chain so, one of the things I heard somebody talking about was you know I've got all these kind of what I call lipstick chargers where you have to plug the cord into the charger. I heard they now got a charger out there that has the lightning charger built into it as well as a USB built into it and I think I'm gonna probably get something like that. Alison: Send me that when you find it. Because, send me the link, yeah because that is something, you know, I love my anchor batteries. I have the ones that are like even 20 thousand milliamps witch are a little bit bigger but I just put them in my purse, but yeah you've got to have the little the cables for your Apple watch and for your micro USB devices and your, your lightning cables all together and it's just it's a little bit much, it gets to be a little bit much to carry around. Jeff: Jack really makes a couple of these. One is a six thousand, one is a ten thousand fifty claiming that X needs more power so they made that one. They do have two cords, one is the Lightning port cord and the other is for all the Android stuff, your mini USB plug, and there's a third you can plug a USB into it so you technically you can actually have three by both outputs going at one time. My concern since their dedicated cables on there, are you committed to that if, what if the cable goes bad you know, I, I don't know but it does get a 4.5 out of 5 ratings on Amazon. Myself I like the big ones. Alison: Oh yes send me that one. Jeff: Cuz size does matter. Alison: It does. [Laughter] Bryan: Hey hey, this is a PG podcast. [Laughter] Alison: What, we're talking about, we're talking about batteries. Bryan: Oh. Jeff: I must admit I like big batteries. Bryan: I've heard that about you. Now Allison you've had the iPhone for a while now what are your thoughts? Alison: I basically really like it, it's nice and fast, I like the size, I have it in a leather case because it's glass on both sides and I do not trust myself with glass on both sides and I have dropped it and the leather case has saved me a couple of times. The face ID I'm still, I find myself still kind of getting used to this new thing called face ID. I find that it's very accurate. I find that even when it doesn't get your face it learns from the experience and it has been consistently doing better but it's not as fast as touch ID, the gestures for bringing up home and app switcher are pretty fluid and elegant I think. Bryan: Are you used to doing those after having the press on the home button for so long or does it take a little training yourself? Alison: I'm used to it now, I've had the thing now for a couple of weeks so I've gotten it back into my, into my muscle memory now that this is just what you have to do because there's no home button and luckily I'm not using any other older devices to confuse me, that's convenient but yeah it's it's never going to be as fast I don't think. Jeff: So Alison you use your phone on a daily basis? [Laughter] Alison: Pretty much almost every minute of every day. Bryan: Are you happy with the purchase, are you happy with the upgrade? Alison: I am because I wanted, I wanted the latest and greatest technology and now I've got it and I realized that sometimes that comes with some caveats so I am happy with it, there are some times though when I have just become resigned to entering in my passcode. For example if I'm laying in bed and I want to unlock my phone, I don't want to have to sit up put the phone all the way in front of my face, get face ID to authenticate me, wake up the husband, wake up the dog, so I just enter in the passcode and it's that's even become a little bit faster. Bryan: My dad was having trouble with his phone recently and I finally found out what the problem was. Alison: Yeah. Bryan: He's running an iPhone 4. [Laughter] Alison: Oh for goodness sakes. Bryan: Yeah, I said.... Jeff: Wait, you, you said it's running. Bryan: Yeah, barely, yeah he can make phone calls that's about it, I said no wonder you're having so many issues with everything else and yeah, he's getting ready to get a new one because my mom did order the iPhone 10 and he's gonna get the hand-me-down. I guess he's gonna move up to a 6 which is all he really needs. Alison: Yeah. Oh that'll be quite an upgrade for him. Bryan: Oh yeah, yeah, so but, my mom's got the 10 coming, she's got the, she ordered it online and has the two to three week wait so, I will not, not get to play around with it while I'm down here and everything but I've been you know listening to you on with Dr. Robert Carter not to be confused with Dr. Richard Kimble. Not that anybody but me. Alison: Not to be confused with John Kimble yeah. [Laughter] Bryan: I thought of Richard Kimble immediately but I'm probably the only one that did that so but you know you guys had a great walkthrough of the iPhone 10 and somebody in New Zealand had something about unboxing one very early before the rest of the world which... Alison: Oh yes Jonathan was very very happy that you know, when these items come out he gets them a day ahead of everyone else because New Zealand is a day ahead. Jeff: He should let people know that. [Laughter] Alison: He really doesn't gloat about that enough no but yeah. Bryan: Allison did I hear you do laundry every now and then? Alison: Every now then, you know I, the house-elves or my husband will not comply and I have to do my own. Bryan: Are you testing out that new GE, was it the GE product that you're testing out? Alison: Yeah so, so I have purchased the GE talking laundry box and actually we were in the market for a new washer and dryer anyway so we got the compatible washer and dryer and I've actually been doing a lot more of my own laundry and enjoying the heck out of it now that we have this talking machine because it's so easy to set all you really have to worry about is the start button and the little knob that controls the settings because the different wash cycles, because it verbalizes everything, you turn the knob, it verbalizes if you're on like cold wash, or towels and sheets, or casual wear, or bulky items, and you press Start and it says starting load on bulky items with an estimated 70 minutes remaining and there's a button on the box that you can press if you need an update of what, of time remaining and the dryer is much the same you just mess with the one knob, you can set your cycle and it just works. Our old washer and dryer we had the little arrows marked, but the one thing would spin, and there was another arrow that you could accidentally move, and Jeremy was really the only person who could set it without getting the other thing to spin, so I'm glad to be able to have some agency over my laundry once again. Bryan: And this works with all GE washer and dryers I believe right? Alison: So on the website it does say that it is, should be compatible with most, it should be compatible with the ones that have the ports in the back, the technician ports, but then it says these are the compatible models and it lists just a couple of different models. Slightly more expensive, that are compatible, I think that you can get this to work with older GE models if it has the port for technicians to hook up, but it's better I think in terms of the software working is optimally as it can if you can buy the the newer ones. Bryan: Yeah full disclaimer if your washer and dryers from 1974 and is GE..... Alison: Probably not going to work. Jeff: I do laundry and the thing on my washer and dryer mostly my washer is, there's that plastic cover that covers things up so you can't really tell the dial, so I took a needlenose pliers, it was excruciating sounds but I got that piece off of there, then I put some little markers on there, so now I just put my finger down there and I just turn it and everyone uses it that way so, yeah I don't recommend anybody to take a needle nose and tear that apart unless you know what you're doing but, yeah that's how I access that. Bryan: Yeah when you're like me and you live in New York it's great because I've got like fluff and fold where they pick it up and deliver it and it's pretty cheap and yeah I'm spoiled like that I think I've mentioned that on the show before. One of the things we did want to mention to the listeners if you do not have knfb reader you're just making your life harder, and it's a phenomenal app, I believe and don't quote me on this but I believe it's on sale at least through Christmas for about 50% off. Normally it's $100.00, I believe now it's $49.95. Go ahead and get that app, you'll make your life a lot easier if you want to read your bills or anything along that. Jeff: I really think if you're a student that that's the app to have. Seeing AI is a good app for a convenience, it's just a quick shuffle through the mail, but if you're gonna do bulk reading or if you want to save it and all sorts of things, you know, that's a workhorse the knfb reader app. Alison: I agree. Bryan: Yeah luckily I think all of us have easy names to pronounce, but I have a friend named Keith Strohak, and every time I tell Siri call Keith Strohak, it says did you mean Keith Sholstrum, did you mean Keith Beyer. It drives me bonkers, I have to go in and manually do it and I will put this link in the show notes. Did you know that you could teach Siri how to save names properly? Jeff: Mm-hmm. Alison: Yeah. Bryan: Okay I was the one who didn't. By the way ask Siri to pronounce Charlize Theron because I heard that's another name that she can't pronounce. Alison: Oh boy. Bryan: Yeah so if you're if you're one of those people and your name is Mustafi Mustafasin or something, go ahead and read this link and you know, maybe you could teach Siri how to read your name and everything. Jeff: The trick about it is that it asks you for the first name and then it asked for the second name, well I didn't know it was doing that so I said Laurie Thompson that's my wife, and then I said Laurie Thompson again. I wondered why it asked me twice, so every time she calls, are you sure you want to call Laurie Thompson Laurie Thompson? I left it I thought it was kind of cute. Alison: That is. Bryan: Now Jeff was a great guy and he posted you know happy holidays to everybody on the Blind Abilities Facebook page and I chimed in with my typical bah humbug and he thought that was you know the happiest he's ever heard me, and that's because he didn't hear how mad I was that my old Grubhub app that I've been running for several years because GrubHub has refused update is now officially dead. I finally had to update it and I don't know what I'm gonna do because this happened shortly before I left New York. I kept getting server error, server error, and I could not do anything so I had to update the app, GrubHub prepare for the barrage because I am gonna be hammering you every day now with fixing your heading navigation. I don't know. Alison: Now that your life depends on it yeah. Bryan: Yeah you know. Jeff: It's time to get that Blind Alive app, get that exercise going. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: Screw GrubHub. Bryan: I still gotta order dinner. I still gotta order dinner and everything. Alison: Try Postmates, try Doordash, you said Eat24 doesn't.... Bryan: Doordash I just heard about so yeah that's one I want to check... Alison: Yeah Postmates is also very good. Unfortunately in Napa our only choice really is Eat24, and that only has a couple of options. Bryan: Yeah you know one of the other things I plan to do when I get back from Florida is, because I've been running my old laptop here my Mac air, and it's so nice because it's running Sierra, and things have been running so smooth, as soon as I get home one of my first acts to do, I'm rolling High Sierra back, have you guys, I know Jeff's been playing High Sierra, Allison, are you still using High Sierra..... Alison: I am and for the limited number of things that I do on my Mac it's absolutely fine, I haven't really had any problems. Bryan: Editing text, when you're working with a lot of text and emails or documents and everything, it just befuddles me and everything, you know sometimes you gotta use the option key, and I did report this to Apple, quick nav does you know, when you use quick nav with words, it does not follow the insertion point, we did test it it is getting kicked up to engineers, there is a navigation problem with quick nav in Hi Sierra. Alison: That's unfortunate. Jeff: Yeah I'm using the beta's and you know it keeps on changing so I don't really complain about it I just keep using it and I know, I know it'll get better, so I just putz with it. Bryan: Yeah well Jeff you said you're running the latest beta and it's, you've noticed an improvement so, maybe it won't be the first thing I do when I get back to New York you know, maybe I'll give it one more update. I am not running the beta so I never run the betas on my computer and the word to the wise if you value productivity do not run those betas. Alison: Yeah, or have a partition on your hard drive or a separate hard drive on which to run them. Jeff: Oh my MacBook Pro [Inaudible] I'm not doing the betas on that so I can always go back to that if I need to but, you know I I usually forget that I'm slowly tweaking my muscle memory like you said Allison, and pretty soon I'm just readjusted. Changes happen and I don't know. Alison: Yep. Bryan: Chit chit chit chit oh wait, do we have to play now to use that song? In a more positive segment, I know we've rolled through some some negativity here, we don't want to be negative all the time but you know these are just some things that were pissing Brian off now because, Brian's been known to get pissed off. I always like to hear you know, what you guys watching, what you're reading, you know especially the holiday time of the year, there's a lot of great content out there. Netflix just seems to be piping everything out. Allison what you watching, what you reading? Alison: Well I'm still trying to work my way through Narcos, I have not had as much time for for Netflix recently, but I've been reading this really great book, I'm not sure if it's available on any of the freebies, unbarred or well book sure it's not free but it's practically free. I got off of Audible it's my Brandon Sanderson it's called "The way of Kings" it's part of the Stormlight archive series, it's an epic fantasy series, long long books, the first book I think is 45 hours long and I'm about 2/3 of the way through it, and it is absolutely amazing it's quite frankly taken over a lot of my life this holiday weekend. [Laughter] But it's amazing. Bryan: Well we're thankful that you were able to fit time in for the podcast. [Laughter] Alison: I did, I did have to interrupt my reading to.... [Laughter] Bryan: That 45 hours, that might take me 4 and 1/2 years to get through. Alison: Well I read at speed, I'm not gonna lie, I cranked it up to 3x and I can understand it just fine, so I'll get through it pretty quickly, but there's then two other main books, and then a little novella in the middle to read so. Bryan: That's a, that's a big.... Alison: It's gonna be ten books so... Bryan: Wow, wow, what about yourself Jeff, you been reading anything, watching anything? I know you've had some time alone there or are you just thinking in the dark? Jeff: I really got nothing, I guess I am thinking in the dark, family's been gone and I've been catching up on a bunch of other things that I hadn't been able to get back t,o and yeah, I got to get back to it so sorry you don't have anything to contribute. Bryan: That's okay Jeff. Jeff: Oh sorry. Bryan: I just finished down here with my parents you know I, they they were very nice and they watched, because their sighted with described video, the second season of Stranger Things, and the first season if you have not seen it as phenomenal I said to myself I don't know how they're gonna do a second season. It was really good so, it was very enjoyable, if you have not checked out Stranger Things on Netflix, you're definitely gonna want to check that out. I know we're gonna watch another series on Netflix that just came out I'm blanking on the name, the guy that was in Dumb and Dumber, not Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels is in it, it's a Western that just came out on Netflix. I'm hearing great things about it of course I'm, like I said, God, Godlessness, or Godless or something, it's a Great Western, and I've heard from other people it's very good and everything and, yeah I've still got the same four books. You know it's so funny I'm one of those people that loads up all the audio digital content to all the devices for the travel and then I end up listening to podcasts that I have on my phone. [Laughter] During the travels so, like I said this is a That Blind Tech Show, we're gonna wrap it up here. We are at Blind Tech Show on Twitter. thatblindtechshow @gmail.com if you want to email us in let us know what you think, let us know what you like. You can download our feed through the Blind Abilities podcast speed of your podcast player of choice, victor reader stream or download the Blind Abilities app. Allison what do you have coming up the next few weeks leading into what's that holiday Christmas? Alison: Just a quiet Christmas at home, gonna take maybe a couple of days off and just probably still be reading the Stormlight archive honestly, although I, although I may do a reread of Harry Potter, I lead such an exciting life. [Laughter] Bryan: Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with that. What about yourself Jeff, family coming back or have they given up on you? Jeff: My folks for 17 years they've been going down the Texas but they stayed up this year for the holiday so I got to go to spend time with them Thanksgiving. We were all up there and so they're here so we're gonna have Christmas there and my daughter and grandkids will be coming up mid-December, we try and offset it each year and so yeah, a lot of lot of family holidays and I want to, I want to see the Grinch again this year. Bryan: So you want me to come visit? [Laughter] Yeah I'm not a big holiday person so Thanksgiving I guess is our big holiday and, we just wrapped that up down here and Thanksgiving, I'll be heading back to New York in the next few days and you know, it's funny I'm sitting here in shorts and it's 80 degree weather so it doesn't feel like November, and then I'll go back to the 30 degree weather and, yeah amazingly Nash is not even shedding that much here in Florida, you would think he would get rid of that winter coat, but he is panting like it's August. This is That Blind Tech Show, maybe we'll have one more before the year hopefully, you know, all of our schedules have been so crazy we haven't been on a regular schedule, we plan to hopefully eventually get on it, but for now we are out. When we share what we see through each other's eyes, we can then begin to bridge the gap between limited expectations and the reality of blind abilities. For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter at BlindAbilities. Download our app from the app store Blind Abilities, or send us an email at info @blindabilities.com, thanks for listening.

  Have you heard of random number generation?  Well, listen in today as I tell you about the unique method that the company CloudFlare is using. The military finally sees my point of view on Fitness trackers. If you have been listening for a while you will know that I discussed this a year or two ago, but just recently the Military has begun to agree with me and has now recommended judicious use on bases. Would you trust Facebook with your financial information?  Listen in as I explain what Mark Zuckerberg wants banks to do? What is the effect of social media on our kids?  Listen in as I discuss some of the latest research on this subject. Are your suppliers serious about their security? Today, I will tell you about what can and did happen to a company and what it could mean to you. Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 08/011/2018 Lava Lamp Security. Fitness Trackers. Social Media and Mentality. Two Factor Authentication. Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, Good Morning, everybody. Everyone is listening around the world its really kind of cool to see some of these stats. We've got people in Ireland, of course, the U.K., in France, and Belgium, and Canada. Just really all over the world, Australia and Russia, it's very cool. So, welcome, of course. this is Craig Peterson. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about today. One of the things I think is so cool we're going to talk about is lava lamps, and you might be asking yourself what does that have to do with technology? Isn't that from like the 60s or 70s? This is very, very, cool what's happening with lava lamps. One of the world's top security companies says social media is giving children the mentality of 3-year-olds, and it isn't just kids that are having these problems. Facebook is trying to expand, and part of that expansion is trying to find out what your bank balance is. The Pentagon. This is so long overdue, they are finally restricting the use of fitness trackers and we'll tell you why these two-step or two-factor authentication schemes have some major major holes. If they're using your cell phone, we'll tell you why, and how you can get around that, and keep your bank and other information secure from places, not just Facebook. Computer viruses, yes they do cause major problems and they've just hit one of the big companies when it comes to tech. And that is Apple. We'll tell you how Apple is affected by this massive virus, and how to make sure no one is spying on your computer. [00:01:40] If that's of interest to you, or if any of these articles are, you can text me right now I'll send you a link to them. My Number 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. That's 8 5 5 3 8 5. Fifty-five fifty-three. Let me know what articles are of interest to you. We will send you a link to that. And this one, making sure people aren't spying on your computer actually has links directly to some of the software. So, here we go stick around. We're going to spend a little time on this lava lamp thing because I think this is absolutely phenomenal. There are a number of companies out there, of course, and their only purpose in life is to help you in business and government with security. And that's something I've been doing for almost 20 years. Of course, for my business clients is really making sure their networks and computers are safe secure and working, Right. You don't want to put in some massive security system and not be able to get your work done, Right. Putting everything in a vault - is that really going to fix your problem and turn off the power. No, no, it's not. So, we have to walk this line between security that is functional and useful and security that is just going to get in your way so much that people are going to resent it and not use it. Just like last week I was on the radio, and with Matt Gagnon and Ken Altshuler. [00:03:12] But, anyways with Matt and I explained some of the major problems that are happening right now with smart TVs. These smart TVs are using Android and I explained why it's a problem, what they're doing, how they're watching us, monitoring us how bad guys are using the information. And he shrugged his shoulders well whatever I don't care. I'm still going to use my android stuff. And, I just had to shake my head. Now I understand that some are, just so useful. And, in fact, for the first time ever I have an Amazon Echo in my house and I've never had one before. There have been major security problems but this tech has been out there now for a couple of years. They've gotten rid of some of the problems. Locally the machines figure out when you're calling their name their wakeup word that I am not going to use right now. But for Amazon or Apple et cetera. So, it isn't streaming up to the cloud like they did when they first came out. Now Apple didn't do that. But we're not going to get into any of those details right now. So, that's been a major security problem for me. And now that problem solved I have it in the house and I am finding it just to be amazing, really useful, really fun. And bottom line, I'm so glad I did it. You know I got this little Amazon Echo and it's unfortunate, that Apple's fallen behind Amazon is beating them like crazy, like a rented mule, right.  [00:04:41] Amazon's beating Apple because the Apple stuff is more expensive, it's harder to tie in. Amazon, now from your Echo you can control basically anything in your home. There's devices that attach into it. It's just phenomenal what they've been able to do. They've made it extremely useful and the price point is fantastic. In fact a bit of a side note. A study came out that said basically Amazon can give these Amazon Echo devices out for free, and still make money, because the average person that has these things is spending over 400 dollars a year with them on Amazon. And you can use them also to order things, it just makes life so much simpler for you. So, you know problems, problems, problems, but it's all security related. We have to watch what's going out from our homes, from our offices, what's coming in, and how do you do that. Well, this one particular company called CloudFlare does it with lava lamps. Now you remember these things. There is a guy from Britain who came up with them and what was his name. Edward Walker, I think Edward Craven Walker that is it. So his lava lamp made it into the late nineties cultural comeback but he didn't see what happens now because inside the San Francisco offices of Cloudflare they have 100 lava lamps on shelves. So, there the right on top of each other shelves. It's really kind of cool. And of course the lava lamp. Think about what's in it there you've got I think it's oil and water and wax and it heats up and it swirls randomly and it's really kind of peaceful to look at.  [00:06:24] I've always enjoyed lava lamps. Make a nice little present. I had one or two more recently that ended up breaking and I didn't have. Remember they used to have a light bulb underneath them and that's what was used to heat it up. Nowadays, they're not used in the light bulbs but if you think about the patterns in the lava lamps, they are continually changing they're continually morphing. And when the light comes in from the outside window and heats up or the temperature in the room rises or drops these are all factors that influence what that lava lamp is going to do. What the wax inside and that's what you're typically looking at is going to do. So, they figured at CloudFlare. How about we just put hundred of these things up and get them running. We'll put them in the lobby and then we will put cameras, shoot video of these lava lamps and use that as kind of a random number generator because random numbers are pretty darn hard to generate just in general. So, you can use things you can use background radiation and that's been used for a long time it is really, rather random. We can't predict any of that type of radiation, the background radiation. But they figured this is probably just as good maybe even better. So, they are watching these things.  [00:07:48] Any change in the video, causes a change in the random number generation, and what used to maneuver or manipulate, it is called a salt and it uses all of that. So, if you're walking in their lobby you're part of that randomization if the sun's coming in as part of the randomization.  [00:08:10] Now, they've taken a couple more things that aren't there in that lobby so, it can't really be hacked and can't be predicted. But it is really, really, cool because there's never twice the same scene. It's virtually impossible, statistically impossible with 100 of these things running so, really kind of cool and it's super-powered way to generate these cryptographic keys. I'm just, I'm tickled pink because it's just such a real cool way of doing it. OK. Next, here we're going to talk about kids and social media. Now, what we know about kids, right. We've we've been kids, were around kids some of us have kids, grandkids and kids like to play with things. When I was young we used to go outside, and we'd get kicked out of the house if we were in the house. We'd have to go outside and we'd play and we'd have just a gas. And in the summer living up in Canada up north up, in Canada, it would barely get dark at night. And so we'd be out playing. I remember kicking the can, I've shared this story before at about 10 o'clock at night 10:00 11:00 o'clock and we think it's just Twilight it's starting to get dark and probably should think about going home and my mom coming out and finding us and getting upset because we were out so late.  [00:09:34] Well, I didn't have a watch. Did you expect for me, right? Well, kids love social media. They love playing video games and when we're talking about kids here we're not just talking about really young kids. I know a lot of 30-year-olds that play a lot of video games, and to me, that's such a waste of time. But anyways, that's me right. I'm a much older generation. Well, there's an interesting thing that came out this week in The Daily Telegraph over in the U.K. where Baroness Susan Greenfield. Now, she's the former director of the Royal Institute of Great Britain, said that social media and video games have left children unable to communicate with one another and unable to think for themselves. Children who have been raised around these devices, much worse than when we were raised, and we had some TV, right that we were plopped in front of. But, these kids are constantly looking for something to distract from and she's predicting that and "here's a quote "I predict that people are going to be like 3-year-olds, emotional risk-taking, poor social skills, weak self-identity, and short attention spans." Now, that's really something since. [00:10:52] Look at her background here. She's a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford. She has supported her claims by looking at a study that was conducted by psychologists a few years ago at Virginia and Harvard Universities. She found that students are she didn't But, these studies found that students who would prefer to give themselves an electric shock, they'd prefer to give themselves an electric shock than to be left alone to think without distraction for 10 minutes. That's just crazy. She went on to say and this is an interesting article. Daily Telegraph they require a subscription. But, the study says. According to Her, people need a constant stimulation from their environment. Every single moment that implies they are no longer able to be left to contemplate their own thoughts. And that's something I've had to do many times, right. Think about your thoughts. There's a digital detox expert also out there she's the author of Stop staring at screens and her name is Tanya Goodin and she's claiming that reducing the use of digital devices can offer significant benefits to children. I could not agree more with Baroness Greenfield she tells the independent. A study from UCLA found that children who had all digital devices removed from them for a week were better able to read nonverbal communication and others than a group of children who carried on using screens. [00:12:19] And so think about this when you thinking about your kids or grandkids or maybe even yourself. This is a real problem. What's the first thing you do in the morning, right? How many times have we heard this test? The first thing you do in the morning. The last thing you do at night if it has anything to do with touching your smart device there is a problem and we've got to deal with that problem.  As humans, we've got to deal with each other. Now many people are saying while over time we're just going to have our brains hardwired directly into some of these machines, we're not going to have to communicate with other people, we're not going to really have to think for ourselves. I don't buy any of that. People buy things from people, and you have to understand people, you have to have relationships with people, you have to have a relationship in order to build a family, have a family, right. We've got to watch this and we've got to watch it with our kids. All right let's talk about Mark Zuckerberg and what he's up to here? what does this all about? He wants to know our bank balances. Wow.  [00:13:28] Well, we know Mark Zuckerberg has been out there trying to make money. [00:13:31] You saw a couple of weeks ago a massive plunge in the market value of Facebook, their stock went down. What was it 20 percent or so? Really, really big. And Facebook has announced that they expect over the foreseeable future. Bottom line here that they are going to continue to lose eyeballs, so people are starting to leave Facebook. They're not paying as much attention to it. And I think that really when you get right down to it they've done it to themselves in so many ways and started complaining a couple of years ago when they made a massive change to their programs, where the programs were at that point, starting to not show you articles from people you follow even though you wanted to see what they had to say. And frankly, it's just gotten worse and worse. So, I would expect just like every other big company Facebook's finally going to fall out of favor here, at some point. So, they've also struggled with some concerns about data privacy. You certainly heard about that, and what happened when he had to testify in front of Congress. We also know what happened with the Obama campaign getting the information on pretty much every user in the world. But, certainly, the Obama campaign from Facebook got information on everyone in the United States that was likely voter. And, then how the Trump campaign got some information on tens of thousands. Nowhere, near what Obama's campaign had. But by that time people were sensitized to it, right.  [00:15:06] Obama didn't get any criticism for it. But I think that even though he did a much much worse thing people just weren't paying attention, much worse than what Trump had done in the 2016 election campaign. So, now people are sensitized to it we don't want it to happen again. And, yet there are some other articles in the news this week, who won't be really touching on but they are talking about how Facebook is having major problems trying to identify, who it is that is putting out these fake news, and ads out on their Web site trying to influence campaigns. Now, used to be pretty easy you'd look at an ad and the wording would be bad, the grammar would be bad, There might even be spelling mistakes, and you say this is this is obviously fake. Now, they're going to regular U.S. based Web sites and just stealing the copy from those putting them into the ads. I don't think things are going to improve much in the 2018 or 2020 cycles, because the bad guys are just getting better at hiding, and you know where they are, and what they're doing. When we're looking at Facebook it has become entrenched. Many of us are paying a lot of attention to it. I am involved in a few different groups on Facebook and we're helping each other out with things and I help people with security problems and stuff. In fact, I had a closed group that really I know we had about almost 300 odd people in it. [00:16:33] And I just plain didn't use it. So, I shut the group down and maybe we'll bring it back to life at some point. But what we're talking about right now is Facebook, and where they want to go, because Facebook has warned analysts that active users could decline, the number of active users could decline and the amount of time they're using it for the foreseeable future. And they also came out with another announcement which was Facebook is planning on tying into your bank accounts. And even though they lost 20 percent in one day from the first problem, the second announcement drove shares up about four and a half percent. So, they approached apparently some large banks, Bank of America said forget about it. We don't want it. We don't want to have anything to do with this. Other banks are taking a kind of a wait and see type of an attitude which I think is a really good way to do it. Facebook is saying we want to integrate your bank accounts into messenger so that you can check your bank account balances. You can send money to receive money. They really want to be in that financial business. Now we talked about that before and how Facebook has been experimenting with blockchain technology, in an attempt to do a few things, solve a few problems, one of which is they want to be involved in every transaction. And one of the things they're asking the banks for is what are you buying. [00:18:06] So, if you have a credit card, a bank account, checking account whatever you're using to buy things they want to know everything you're buying so, that they can offer you ads for that category of stuff. Do you want Facebook to have that? We've already got privacy concerns with Facebook, right, Do you know about those. Those have been high in the news we know about hackers trying to get into all the systems out there. Do we really want another area of exposure? You know I I really don't know. OK, fitness trackers why you may not want to use one. And finally, why the Pentagon has finally come out and said, No. We talked about this a year maybe two years ago. You know we have people using the fitness trackers that they're really kind of cool. And they have GPS built into them. Some of them some of them use your cell phone to get the GPS so you can track your runs, right. That makes sense. Easy to do. It's kind of fun to do. You can compete with other people. So, hey I did that same run as you did. I did it faster. You can keep track of how much exercise that you've had how far you even walk to right there not necessarily only for running, but here's the problem. We have had cases, for instance, down in New York City down in Central Park where the bad guys, in this case, potential rapists and others, have been tracking the movement of cell phones and the movement of fitness trackers.  [00:19:48] So, they know who was running by a tree, for instance, So, they'll have the little receiver up there listening for the Bluetooth signature or the Beacon or the Wi-Fi signature or the beacon. And, that's obviously a real problem. That's a problem I think everyone should be concerned about if you're using the fitness trackers. Well, there's another one the military has, that we talked about well over a year ago, and that is some of these fitness trackers are uploading all of your data all of your runs to a Web site up on the cloud. Now, that's kind of interesting, right. So, you can see a global heat map I pulled it up I shared it with you guys a year or more ago. It's published by the GPS tracking company called Strava. S T R A V A and they use the satellite information that they're getting from these fitness tracker companies, in order to track where you. So, heavily populated areas are going to be well lit. But, when we're talking about the war zones like Iraq or Syria they're showing scattered pockets of activity, which could denote military bases or government personnel using fitness trackers, as they're moving around because the locals there are not using them. So, it's a reasonable assumption. And, so I use that data you can go into the heat map yourself and have a look at it and I was able to see circles right on Oval's really running along airstrips at air bases, running around the perimeter of bases, on the inside walls or even outside the walls.  [00:21:29] So, you could see where the military personnel were. Now, we have some secret bases and those secret bases were outlined, as well by this GPS information from these heat maps. So, the Pentagon has come out now with a policy, finally, that was obtained by The Associated Press and it stopped short of banning fitness trackers or these other electronic devices that can be linked to cell phone apps that can do the exact same thing. But, it didn't ban them but it did say these devices presented a significant risk to military personnel. So, those capabilities must be turned off in certain operational areas. So, under this new order, the military leaders in different areas have the ability to use their discretion to figure out whether or not troops under their command can and should to use GPS function on their devices. And, that's obviously going to be based on the security threat in those areas are on that base. Good. Good article. Interesting article a lot of different opinions out there. Well, we're not going to be able to get to the two-factor authentication stuff and how texting you a login code, just isn't enough. We're not going to be able to cover this computer virus that's crippled iPhone chip maker out there. The big guy the number, one contract manufacturer of chips in the world.  [00:22:51] Yeah, they got a virus right. What would happen to you? I betcha this has hurt the Apple stock, right there. But, you know they got back online because they had the right stuff in place, even though they got infected in the first place. And, then I think maybe the most important article is something you're going to have to read. And this is how to make sure no one is spying on your computer. Great article. You'll find it on my Web site. Craig Peterson dot com or as I mentioned the very beginning if you have any questions at all. Go ahead and text me. You can call, as well, but texting will get through. Phone calls are going to probably end up in voicemail 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53 I answer all of the questions. We go directly. This is my number 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. More than glad to help you out, but this article goes through some of the software that you probably should be using for yourself to protect yourself. And if you'd like me to put together a special little master class on that I'd be glad to do that. We've done them before free webinars. Let me know more than glad to do one for you guys who are listening, right now. But you have to let me know you'd like to see it and then I'm more than glad to spend a few hours in putting it together and online with you. [00:24:15] I think actually the last webinar, took me out a week to put together. But let me know 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. Have a great week and we will be back with you again next week. And, usually Monday Tuesdays and Wednesdays I release a podcast as well so keep an eye out for that. Craig Peterson dot com slash iTunes or just search for me in iTunes or SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcast. Take care. Bye-bye.   --- Related articles: Is anyone spying on your computer? How do you know? Fitness trackers are dangerous. You know that, right? Finally, the Pentagon woke to the dangers and restricts the use of fitness trackers, other devices Do websites send you a text message to verify it’s you logging in? Well text authentication isn’t enough to keep your accounts secure Facebook wants to know your bank balance and track your accounts Social media is giving children mentality of three-year-olds, warns researcher Lava lamps as a cryptographically secure source? How a bunch of lava lamps protect sites from hackers Could your business’ suppliers lack of security cripple your business? Apple just found out… --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Message Input: Message #techtalk Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Have you ever wondered about the technology behind the signs you pass by as you drive down the road?   Listen as Craig and Jim go into some detail about the billboards and road signs watching you and why you should be extra cautious now with your smart device because it is getting monitored.   Find out more on CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: New road signs can detect mobile phones are being used in vehicles --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 07/24/2018 Road Signs Watching You - Billboards Tracking You - Police Using You To Track Yourself Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey everybody Craig Peterson here. Have you ever wondered about those signs as you drive down the road while there is some technology we're going to talk about today with Jim Polito that goes into some detail about why you should be extra cautious now with your smart device because it is getting monitored. But also we talk about these new electronic licenses the ones for your cars as well as the ones for your smartphones. What are they going to be used for good or evil. You know are you going to get caught because you maybe went a little too fast last week. Wow all of that. More with Jim. So here we go stick around talking about Craig Peterson   [00:00:49] High tech talk to. This is a great one. Going to talk to us about the 10th anniversary of the app store but you should celebrate it by deleting most of your apps. But here's the one that caught my attention. New road signs can detect mobile phones are being used in vehicles. Joining us now our favorite Canadian and tech talker Craig Peterson. Good morning sir.   [00:01:20] Good morning Jim.   [00:01:21] Craig wait a minute. Now we've heard about red light cameras so they catch you running a red light.   [00:01:28] These are these devices can tell if fine texting when I shouldn't be texting.   [00:01:37] Good morning. Yeah I don't know. This is kind of concerning isn't it. You know we've got already billboards up that can detect a car an individual car. It reads the license plates and it knows hey you pass by this sign every day about this time. Now it also there's also tech out there that recognizes this type of car you're driving. So all the way down to the brand and model of the car. So for instance if there's a lot of high expense so high end expensive cars driving by the billboard will change because now they have a new audience that they can market something to. Wow. Which is. Yeah isn't that something. In the case of a car coming by the same time every day if it's like the only car on the road they can actually narrow it right down. You know I see this car coming so I'm going to show this ad that he comes by every day and they try and influence your behavior. Now think about tying a bunch of those billboards together. So they came and know where you go where you drive because the courts have ruled again and again there is nothing illegal with these readers. Right your driver's license right.   [00:03:00] Right so that's step one. It's the employees you know the next step is they are detecting your mobile phone. Now this is really kind of interesting because your phone is typically always giving out some information about itself and about you obviously being aware of who owns me. Yeah. Well the basics are with the phones all have an identifier that's built into them and that identifier is used by your Bluetooth device or your Wi-Fi device that unique identifier so you can connect to a Wi-Fi network. Now Apple made some real cool technology changes here a little while back then really led the field on this one so that if you if you walk into you walk into a store and you have never connected to their Wi-Fi network it uses a random number to identify itself. So every time you go into that store the store thinks hey this is a brand new phone. I've never seen before but if you do connect to the store's Wi-Fi your phone says oh I've seen this Wi-Fi before so it uses the same identifier used last time. Therefore a company like Wal-Mart if you use their Wi-Fi and I'm not real I'm not really picking on Wal-Mart.   [00:04:23] I understand. Yep.   [00:04:25] So you walk into the Wal-Mart store and now the Wal-Mart store says oh I've seen that phone before. And there is technology that is in some stores out there that will track your movements through the store based on your cell phone. So you connect to the Wi-Fi it knows where you are knows you posit a certain point in an aisle and then the analytics are already there where it looks at it all and says Oh what kind of a shopper is as a person. And then when Jim goes out to the cash register here to check out it knows oh ok. So now we can associate what you bought with where you were what you looked at. You know all of this sort of stuff and we we've talked a little bit before about Wal-Mart and how Wal-Mart has now got a patent because of a couple of weeks ago on listening devices. So it kind of could tie this all together. So what we're talking about. So now we move on to our roadsigns here and that type of technology moving over to the roadsigns. Now this is really kind of interesting. And they're looking at this in the U.K. right now because in the U.K. just like here it's illegal to use your cell phone when you're driving. So what these mobile phone doctors are doing that they're putting into some of these signs in the road and not just the big billboards but can be any sign is they're looking again at the signals from your cell phone. And if you're actively using your cellphone to send text messages or receive go online. You know we know the data packages and stuff in there. If you're actively using your phone that's easily detectable even though they're not necessarily monitoring what you're saying because your phones are encrypted to embrace encrypted so that right.   [00:06:20] Right. So they can tell if I'm doing that and then they're going to send me a warning kind of like the speeding sign that they have you know it says speed limit. And it sat up and says your speed. 75 miles an hour you know the speed limit is 45.   [00:06:39] It tells you that it's going to do the same thing.   [00:06:43] Yeah this is Norfolk County over there the UK and they are planning on doing this as of the road safety team. So run a bit more Stephanie on this which is where Californians are now. Yeah California is already experimenting with digital licenses on the cars themselves. So your car will report is a little act of device that there are in your life and your car will report your speed. Massachusetts has already got some work underway on your cell phone. Driver's license there's one state down south that already has that. So think about this for a minute. When you're talking about a driver's license on your smartphone. So you don't have to carry your wallet or credit card against people carrying those like they used to because everything is of no use Apple Pay to use.   [00:07:41] Right. Right.   [00:07:42] Yeah. So mean you've got an app issued by the state that the cop can come up and read and he's got all of your information. That app has access to your TPSAC your speed your travel history everything. So that app could also be reporting on your driving habits what you're doing on and on.   [00:08:06] Is speeding you know just the basics are you are you are you are you last week were you speeding last week.   [00:08:17] Know so we've got some interesting privacy concerns coming up right down the road at us and some of this tech is already there and it's already being experimented with excellent metaphor coming down the road at us folks.   [00:08:29] If you text my name to the number the Craig Peter sends about to give you you'll get this story and many others including the story about the 10 year anniversary of APS and why it's time of the App Store. It's time to clean out your apps. Craig Peterson will send all that information to you no charge and he will not annoy you. So text Jim 2   [00:08:57] 855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553 and standard data and tax rates apply.   [00:09:09] You'll get this information. If there's a major hack he will notify you he will not sell your name you will not try to sell you something he will just provide you with information like he does here every Tuesday every Tuesday. Craig Acción segment. Appreciate it. And we'll talk with you soon.   [00:09:28] Thank you sir. Take care. Bye bye.   [00:09:30] Thank you Craig Peterson everybody. Great guy. We will podcast that in case. --- Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating! Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year!  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

How do you protect your data from leaving with Employees? Listen in as Craig discusses what happened at Apple this week and how the lost some significant data. Can anyone break into your iPhone?  Well maybe, but today Craig explains how Apple is trying to make it harder with their newest iOS release.   Do you shop at Walmart?  Did you hear about the patent they were awarded this week.  Craig will fill you in on what they are trying to do and why you need to be concerned about it.   Are you worried about Ransomware?  Craig talks about revealing news from Sonicwall and what they found. You know the NSA has been collecting data.  But you might find what Craig has to tell you today about what the NSA is now doing and what it means for your privacy. How valuable is your Face?  Craig will explain how large databases of Facial recognition data is going to be used.  Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 07/14/2018 Apple Self Driving Tech Stolen. Facebook Still Abusing Privacy. NSA Deleting Phone Records. Malware Attacks Skyrocket. Walmart Eavesdropping Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hi, Everybody Welcome to Tech Talk with Craig Peterson. We've got a lot of stuff to cover today. We're going to be talking about an Apple employee who's been charged with stealing their self-driving cars secrets. Apple has a new mode. You got the iPhone's latest security update. It's called USB restricted mode. We'll talk about that Wal-Mart boy. Do you work for Wal-Mart? You know someone who does well they have a new patent that is really starting to concern some of Walmart's employees. We've got a new stat here from the guys over at Sonicwall about malware attacks and guess what? Surprise, surprise, they are skyrocketing. NSA is deleting millions of phone call and text records over privacy violations. Facebook is still abusing your privacy. So here we go. [00:00:51] On the front lines and ahead of the trends in business and consumer technology speaking with the top minds and creators behind the products and ideas that help to drive our everyday lives. [00:01:01] Dean Kamen is joining us now. He's the inventor of the Segway and the founder of us first Steve Forbes I appreciate what you do with Forbes magazine for all these years it's one of my first go to places or talk right now with the guys and gals behind Siri. We're joined right now by the director of Kirkendall technology. We're joined right now by the CEO of Ebates Kevin Johnson on the air for more than 15 years. [00:01:25] Over 20 million podcast downloads. This is Tech Talk with Craig Peterson [00:01:34] Well you know the bottom line here we have an autonomous cars coming and they're coming at us really really fast. We're going to talk right now about what's happened at Apple and what might happen with your business. Frankly, if you're not really careful. An Apple engineer was just charged with criminal offenses he apparently had been working in Apple's secret autonomous car business and while he apparently might have done something wrong. Now you know President Trump has been talking about the Chinese and how they're trying to steal our technology in fact how they have stolen our technology. We already know that's the case. We already know that some of these laws about privacy about some of the things we take for granted here, patents and things just are not enforced over in communist China. [00:02:25] Well, apparently what he did was he decided he was going to resign. So, how does he resign? Well, he is told to turn in all of his Apple gear. He's walked out the door. Now Apple has a really great policy that you should probably implement as well in your business and that policy is they walk them out the door. They take the equipment and then they do forensic analysis on that, equipment. When was the last time you did a forensic analysis of equipment for people that were leaving your business? Well, they found that he had done a few things wrong. First of all the activity of copying stuff on the network to and from devices had increased dramatically in the days before he resigned. They also found that he used Airdrop to drop some of these files from his computer to a non-Apple owned computer, apparently that of his wife he was going to take a job over in China. And apparently, he was going to take the secrets with him. So, remember whether you're talking about an employee who might have access to your accounting records or maybe it's an employee who has access to your client records. There's a lot of information you don't want walking out of the door. Can you look back in time to see what an employee has been doing? Can you erase a laptop that just doesn't get returned from an employee? Erase it remotely. Do you want your salespeople or others who have access to this information to walk away with it? And then on an everyday day to day basis. The big question is do you really want all of your employees to have access to everything. I hope you don't. I suspect you don't want that either. So, lock it down keep tabs on it and let's really try and keep this world and our businesses a bit of a safer place. I'll let you know what ends up happening with the charges here. Maybe he's convicted maybe he won't be but we'll see. This is industrial espionage of the highest degree top secret information [00:04:44] Of course, you've heard about what's been going on with the FBI trying to get into iPhone's, local police department also trying to get into iPhone's. [00:04:53] These things are locked down pretty well but there are a couple of companies that allow you to get into the iPhone. Employers have been using them, let's say someone leaves their employ, say they move on to a new job. What do you do with the data that's on that iPhone? Because sometimes the employees will just go ahead and lock it up and forget. I'm not going to open it up for you. All the information in there is not only lost to a business but on top of that what's happened is that iPhone has become unusable. If it's not locked to your Apple account. Now there are some ways to deal with that with employee devices reach out if you'd like to know a little bit more. But what we're going to talk about right now is Apple and law enforcement a little bit of the battle going on here. And I I don't know kind of which side they absolutely come down on with this because I don't want the bad guys to have access to complete privacy, right because then they can conduct their bad deeds their evil deeds and deeds in private. But I also don't want to have this problem of having my information available to some bad guy that just grabs my phone and walks away because I'm sitting in a coffee shop. And then they can hook it up and they can hack it. [00:06:11] Right, do you want that. I know I don't. So Apple introduced in their latest release here in OS it's eleven point four point one. They introduced a new feature which is called USB restricted mode. Now what that does is it locks down your iPhone. You a little port at the bottom of it so that you cannot you or a bad guy, in this case, cannot access the information or the data that's on it. So they can't just plug it in and download everything from it. So, what Apple has done, is they've put a delay in if you haven't unlocked that phone for at least one hour that port is turned off. Now in my case we're talking about this coffee shop obviously, the guy if he has his little apple iPhone copier device there with him he's going to be able to take that information and he's going to be able to hook up your phone right away because you probably opened it up in the coffee shop, right. You probably had it right there so that you could use it. That's why you had it open in the coffee shop. So, it's opening in the coffee shop. He has access to it. He just takes it over to his table and puts it in a bag right. With a little battery powered device that offloads everything from your iPhone and tada he has all of your data. [00:07:33] Now the same thing is true when we're talking about law enforcement. Obviously, if you are at a border crossing you probably already know or within 50 miles of a border. We're talking about international borders here. They can open up your devices have a look inside them make copies of them just do all kinds of things with them. And that one-hour timer obviously is not going to be, in fact, in effect. But if you lose your phone it's found on the side of the road. This will stop most people from being able to get into it. Law enforcement they're going to be able to gain access to quickly. There are some workarounds in fact that you can use to keep that port alive. We're not going to get into that right now but keep an eye out if you have an iPhone. Obviously, take the latest software update they tend to be very stable, in this case. I have it already. It is stable and I like the idea of trying to block that USB port and the ability for the bad guys to be able to get your data here, Bottom line. But if you don't have a good passcode on it. You're not paying attention to security at all. Well, you probably don't care. Check it out online. Craig Peterson dotcom [00:08:57] If you worked for Wal-Mart you might want to listen up here right now because they've got a new patent in place. If you compare the two big retailers who are you talking about while you're obviously talking about Wal-Mart because they've got physical retail store out there. But you're also going to be talking about our friends over at Amazon and when we're talking about Amazon and Wal-Mart you're talking about two behemoths who are fighting for your business and my business. Wal-Mart. Great place to go shop you can save a lot of money. Amazon same type of thing. So, how are they going to compete? Amazon has this great advantage when it comes to costs. They don't have to maintain a retail store. They don't have to stock all of those shelves. They don't have to move the merchandise on time for you to be able to buy it. They don't have to have the people at the checkout registers or the checkout registers, right. They don't have to have all of the doors in and out they don't have to have the air conditioning. Think of all of the overhead of retail. And that's the reason why frankly Amazon has killed so many small retailers out there. So, when we're talking about the big battles ahead, Wal-Mart has to find some way to become more cost effective. So, how can they do that? Well, we already know from local Wal-Mart that they have some pretty big self-checkout areas. My local Wal-Mart has eight checkout areas. I've seen them with much bigger check out errors for you to do it yourself. So you scan it. It weighs it when you put it down so that it gets an idea. Making sure you're not trying to steal something. [00:10:36] So you are not trying to put in something way too heavy or way too light in there and depending on where you live sometimes those scales are really picky sometimes they're not so picky but Walmart's done that helped save some costs who hasn't been to a store whether its Wal-Mart or Target or you name it where you haven't had to wait for a long time in line and that can be a very big deal. Well in this case what we're talking about is Wal-Mart being able to track you and their checkout people in the store and the patent applies to sound technology. We're talking about Wal-Mart now using sound, to figure out what youre doing in the checkout line. It's listening for things potentially like the the crinkle of the bag as a bag is used or the movement of the cart. So they know hey there's a lot of people in line I need to do something about it and even record conversations. Now that's a little bit scary, for both the consumers and for the Wal-Mart employees as well. Whether or not Wal-Mart is actually going to take advantage of this patent or if it's something that they might just license. We'll see. Time will tell. So far it's just a patent that was just awarded this week and it has to do with using sound, to track you in the store while you're buying things and that in conjunction with these RFID tags these radio frequency identifiers that Wal-Mart is already putting into most of the products, that's really going to give them a bit of a leg up, in fact, a huge leg up over other retailers. But, I don't know if it's enough to beat our friend over at Amazon [00:12:28] We have all kinds of reports that come out about cyber security. Verizon's a real big one. They released reports quite frequently but so do many others WEBROOT. We've talked about on my radio show before there is a new study out right now that is I think there's a little bit of a surprise here. It's from our friends over at Sonicwall and it's talking about what they have been seeing. Sonicwall is a provider of VPN services, you know where you have the hardware there in your business that you want to use. They also have some firewall techniques and some specialized security software that they run. And what they're showing is that in the first half of 2018 ransomware attacks are on the rise again. Now, ransomware attacks are very scary. They're kind of nasty frankly and they're on the rise because they work. If you get hit by ransomware you have to follow a few rules here some bottom line rules. First of all the FBI strongly recommends that you never pay a ransom. However the business realities might dictate that you have to pay the ransom. But if you do pay that ransom for ransomware, remember that you may never actually get your data back up 50 percent of the time according to the FBI your data is never recovered. So remember that the other big problem when it comes to ransomware payments is if you pay and the bad guys receive it. Right. So assuming this transaction happened they now know that you pay ransoms. So, many cases ransomware perpetrators have attacked again and again at the exact same business. So be very careful. [00:14:22] The best ways to help prevent ransomware and the best ways to help prevent real high cost when it comes to being hit by ransomware are the following. First of all, make sure you have a very good backup. Make sure that backup is tested. Test your backups. Test them frequently to make sure they're working. The next thing is you need to have not just anti virus anti virus does not cut it anymore. I can't emphasize that enough. It is just not enough. You need frankly you need kind of like an onion you need something where there are multiple layers you're you're guarding your DNS. You've got an endpoint piece of software looking at every file on the machine as it's open. You have something that the edge in your firewall. These next generation firewalls and some are better than others obviously. Now my personal preference is Cisco. That's what I sell. But I have something at the edge that says wait a minute here. This is an infected file and hopefully can go ahead and grab it and scrape it back. You know the average time it takes a small business or any business in the United States to be able to find out that it has been hacked is a good six months sometimes even longer. So, you got to be careful you've got to watch that. You have to be prudent when it comes to ransomware because as our friends at Sonicwall just told us ransomware is on the rise and ransomware can kill a business. Most businesses that get hit with ransomware or a good hack are out of business. [00:16:00] They're out of business within six months. Not good by the way. [00:16:04] Mystics 6 billion malware attacks during the first six months of this year compared with 3 billion attacks over the last half of 2017. We're talking about a 100 percent rise in ransomware attacks. By now everybody worldwide knows who the NSA is it's no longer. No such agency. It's the National Security Agency and the guys and gals over there have been sweeping up data. We've certainly talked about it before on my show. But did you know what they're doing now. This is a big surprise to pretty much everybody out there. The NSA has been collecting not just metadata but all kinds of data. And we've heard about FISA warrants in the news recently as it appears President Trump's campaign was monitored due to one of these FISA warrants which are designed really to help to catch spies and other foreigners who might be trying to do harm here in the U.S. Well, apparently a number of these FISA warns were flawed. And the new management that was put in place by President Trump over at the NSA has been looking at what's going on not obviously just maybe what went on with the Trump case but they are looking at all of the data what's been captured what did the Obama administration orchestrate when it started capturing all of the data on all Americans dealing with all of their communications. [00:17:49] Well, its turned out now that under the Trump administration the NSA has started purging i.e. deleting billions of records yes those records that they were recording that are now under questionable jurisdiction are being deleted. What they're saying is they think that they may have intercepted communications between people that frankly they were not really authorized to do so instead of trying to play games with it or just try and keep it secret. They have come out and have officially announced that they did capture data. They probably shouldn't have. And rather than go through it all and try and figure out what's what what's where they're just deleting it. They're calling it technical irregularities and we're talking about a purge right now of over 685 million phone and text records records. Now that's really really huge. You know is the NSA to blame. They certainly have collected billions over the years but seeing that they are getting a little bit of oversight now makes me feel good in knowing that the NSA has identified some of these records as records they should not have and they're deleting them. So kudos. Good on you guys over there. The NSA [00:19:18] Well, if you're a Facebook user and you've been paying attention you know that Mark Zuckerberg about three months ago agreed to stop tracking much of the information online. To be more transparent about it and to of course allow you to control some of your data. But we have some questions for Mark Zuckerberg right now due to some more information that's come out. First of all how are you making things more open and more transparent when the European Union introduces new laws about privacy. California has almost the exact same laws going into effect in 2020. So when those laws went into effect about you keeping data private about you at Facebook not only keeping the data private but letting people control their own information how is it that you try and move and that you did over a billion records from the European Union to the United States hopefully out of reach of the European regulators at least that's what it looks like to me. That's what it looks like to a lot of people who have had closer looks at it than I have. Well, now FaceBook they're facing yet another problem, because what they're also doing is they are using specialized facial recognition software. Now this software is designed for them to be able to figure out who's who in which pictures. [00:20:50] Bottom line. What Facebook is saying is they're using it to protect your identity online. I'm not sure how much protection there is by having Facebook capturing my face and measuring all of the coordinates on my face and taking all of that data now and and putting it on to a bigger database which now becomes a database they can sell so that if I'm recognized down the street who knows what's going to happen. You remember Tom Cruise, walking by a billboard and the billboard greeting him with a new sale at the store has on just for him. You know that could be great. All right. As a marketer my marketing hat here I have that hat on and I'm thinking wow this is great. I don't have to bother people or not to interrupt people who might not be interested in my product. So, if I know who they are and I know what they've been looking for I can target them better and they're going to have a better experience overall. [00:21:53] But the reality is some of this data is already being used elsewhere. We know in China they have a new whole new way of classifying people. They are doing kind of a social media trick over there where you have a social cred. This is what they're calling it your social cred. So if you jay walk across the street it recognizes your face because they have it on a database. It then uses that data now to lower your social cred. Doesn't that sound like something from a sci fi twilight zone type episode. So, it lowers your social cred. And then there are things you won't be able to do if you have a low social cred. So having a low social cred could stop you from getting on an airplane from opening a bank account. Obviously getting a loan. That type of data has already been used here in the U.S. for well more than a decade we've been protecting things like the Super Bowl using facial recognition technology where we have our federal databases of the bad guys of the known criminals. When you walk into that venue it looks at your face and it says Okay you're clear it's hundreds of others today anyways a gate that comes down so no you can't enter. But the police will respond if you are spotted in a stadium and you are thought to be a terrorist. So, today there is some false positives as time goes on there probably be fewer of them but maybe not, right. It depends on on how strong the state gets and whether or not it continues to move towards a socialist or communist type fascist state right. We've certainly seen that progression in the last 50 years. So, how could this possibly go wrong. [00:23:44] Mark Zuckerberg having our information about our faces that's a biometric piece that could be used in a lot of different ways. Now, remember an iPhone 10. Right, what does that have on the front of it. It has a sensor that reads your face. And we have Android devices that will be coming out with it and more and more. So, if you can read someone's face what do you think's going to happen with the facial recognition software. What kind of value do you think there will be in a database of people's faces, Yeah. We've already seen where some of these facial recognition programs can be faked and fairly easily frankly so as time goes on as those those databases are hacked and stolen or sold, will the bad guys be able to get into my iPhone 10 or other device. Right. Will they be able to get into this thing and be able to use the this to excuse me in my face to get into this. We've got 3-D printers. If you've got a really good face print if you will because you've captured my face from the front from the side aren't all of the photos I've uploaded to Facebook all of the family photos on me and that it's it is automatically tagged me and I've noticed that by the way the auto tag thing where it's using facial recognition technology and saying hey listen we think we found this person in your picture. You want to tag them. How do you think that's working? So, will they be able to use this technology that you may not even know you're giving Facebook the permission to use, Right. Your face. Will they be able to use that technology to hack our devices. [00:25:34] Almost certainly at least that's my bottom line. [00:25:37] Visit me online. Hope you have a great week ahead. [00:25:41] Craig Peterson dot com. Take care guys. Thanks for joining us today.  --- Related articles: --- Former Apple Employee Charged With Stealing Self-Driving Car Secrets Facebook Is Still Abusing Your Privacy NSA deleting millions of phone call and text records over privacy violations Malware attacks skyrocket in the first half of 2018: SonicWall  - this site shows a little excerpt, needs to sign-in/paid membership? Walmart’s Newly Patented Technology For Eavesdropping On Workers Presents Privacy Concerns Apple’s USB Restricted Mode: how to use your iPhone’s latest security feature --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Message Input: Message #techtalk Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553