Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Thanks for joining us! Let me know if there are any topics you'd like us to cover by sending an email to me at craigpeterson . com!

Sep 18, 2018

In the wake of the Equifax data breach one year ago, an estimated 145 million consumers’ personal information was stolen from the credit agency. Craig talks with Jim Polito in depth about the Equifax hack and the changes that will take effect this week.

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

---

Related Articles:

It Will Soon Be Free To Freeze (And Unfreeze) Your US Credit Report

---

Transcript:

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

Airing date: 09/18/2018

Deep Look At New Law Concerning Equifax - New Hacking Tools

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hi guys. Craig Peterson here this morning with Jim Polito I talked about two things one I wouldn't do a bit of depth here on the whole Equifax hack and the changes that go into effect this week. That's right. New laws in place signed by President Trump a couple of months back. And this is a real game changer. So all of the pain people went through. It's going to be a little easier here in the future. And then I also just took a couple of minutes and explained a whole new piece that ran somewhere out there and how the bad guys are using it. And in fact a whole new category of business in the bad guys' field. So there's lots going on and here we go with Jim.

[00:00:53] This is the man with all the answers the guy we turn to all the time.

[00:00:58] Is it a national I.T. professionals day. He's far above and I.T. professional but you know he was at one time. Joining us now the man the sheriff of the Internet Craig Peterson.

[00:01:12] Good morning sir. Good morning. Yes I am. You are t. 

[00:01:19] Hey you helped us out when we had that whole Equifax data breach and you have done a lot of people for free. By the way for free on your own time which impacted about 145 million customers that personal information was stolen from this credit agency. So the advice was Hey get out there freeze your credit you get paid to do it but freeze your credit. Now you're saying that it may be soon that you don't have to pay that transaction fee for each of the three agencies that it will be free.

[00:01:58] Here's what happened and of course a lot of people were very upset with what happened then and understandably so.

[00:02:04] Equifax I still can't believe that they're still in business and they are they have a license to print money. The three credit firms have a license to print money. You and I should have gotten in on that.

[00:02:19] Well they didn't lose my license right there. That's right. It's just it's the implication is if you screw up it's over. Right. Pull your license. Yeah. They've got it. They smuggled in the printing press the same way they put it. That's exactly what they're doing. And you know Jim I did it for 100 listeners. OK.

[00:02:44] I monitored the credit stuff in the dark web for a while and I'm probably next month going to start doing something going to offer it for small businesses as well to see if your small business information is out there OK. But I did it for a couple of hundred listeners absolutely free. And some reports. And part of the report that I put together were OK if you were hacked with Equifax would say most people were frankly or if something new shows up on the dark web. Here's what you should do and it involves a whole bunch of different things you have to do because frankly if they hacked your information nobody cares right.

[00:03:29] You can't call up. You know I work with the FBI. Yes yes. And the FBI is there you know it's come on. You're one of how many.

[00:03:41] 145 million consumers. Is the right

[00:03:48] Word. Trying to a while anyway. So yeah. So they don't really care but if someone had stolen your information and then you're dead then you have to talk to the police department. You had to go the next step and the course now file that report with all of your you know credit card companies that maybe the information was used to steal money from the credit card people had the cars that were purchased using their name and their credit for they had to prove now that they never bought that new car that goes on and on.

[00:04:25] Right.

[00:04:25] At a minimum if your information is stolen and the bad guys use that word talk to them Jim I'm a nightmare because what I just talked about you have to call the bank right or you still do. Right.

[00:04:38] This stuff is still happening. Right. And when you have to call a bank during working hours right because that's when they're open. Right.

[00:04:48] When do you have to reach out to all of these different agencies the police department everything. Yeah the police and the banks are there 24/7. But there are fraud bureaus are the people who are handling this thing are only there nine to. When you do your homework.

[00:05:06] Most people work 9:00 to 5:00.

[00:05:09] So we're talking about on average if your data is stolen and someone then tries to impersonate you. We're talking an average of three hundred hours of your time writing letters chasing down documentation sending it off to all of these different credit agencies places where your name was used in order to try and get your good name back.

[00:05:36] And those are 300 hours out of a working here. That's two thousand hours right your normal working here is 24 hours. Right.

[00:05:44] So we're talking about you know what is it about 20 percent of your year. You can't work because you are running around trying to take care of all of this stuff.

[00:05:56] So on top of all of that what you have to do is in most states here you have to pay a fee of between five and ten dollars on top of all of that to freeze your credit.

[00:06:11] Yeah.

[00:06:12] So now it's it's just it's a nightmare when it happens to people and that's why I spent so much time and my staff. I had five people working full time on all of this dark web stuff for our listeners here.

[00:06:25] That was great period of three weeks OK. It was just crazy. Now that and so what that means is if you want to free the credit it's five to ten bucks for every one of those three agencies on top right now if you want to use your credit you have to pay another five or 10 bucks to get your credit unfrozen to get it right. So here's what's happened now. The president Trump has signed a bill that was part of the economic growth regulatory relief and Consumer Protection Act. So just starting on the 21st. So that's very sweet. Yep the law now that President Trump signed abolishes those fees. So all of those fees associated with freezing and freezing your credit which by the way that even if you freeze your credit it's only good for maximum three months. So all of those fees are gone. And that's a really good thing because the aquifer.

[00:07:30] Yeah. After the Equifax hack Jim about 20 percent now of consumers got a freeze. But most of those phrases ended up expiring. So this is a great thing. I wish Equifax wasn't in business. I wish you didn't have to deal with me.

[00:07:46] And you know I'm not calling for regulation here by any stretch but how the heck are these people not sitting in jail somewhere. Yeah we're responsible for something as simple as not doing enough data to third party software in other words they updated you update your Windows machine. OK. That's all well and good. And you got to do that. But on top of your Windows machine you have your Chrome browser you have Firefox to house whatever other tools and they didn't know

[00:08:21] What it was.

[00:08:22] Ok. And they're still walking around. Oh yeah couple of people lost their jobs.

[00:08:27] That's about all of that.

[00:08:30] And it cost Americans millions. In fact there are some people who are critical of this saying hey listen look at the money Equifax made because they quote lost unquote 145 million consumers personal information and then they charge five to ten bucks every time someone wanted to freeze and freeze. We're talking about them or tentatively here having made at least 50 million dollars of their script.

[00:08:57] We're talking with Craig Peterson. At the end of the segment. We're going to give you a number and if you text my name you'll get this information plus a lot of other information standard data and text rates apply. Quickly before we go I do want to talk about this new ransomware that has arrived and Ransomware is that you know comes in and says hey your computer is locked and we'll unlock it. We can fix the virus if you pay us. So there's a new one out there.

[00:09:29] Yeah this is. This is an interesting one because the ransom that's out there right now has been automatically morphine itself. So it changes it's also your standard antivirus software test is not going to catch that. We've now found something new and it's called the path. It just appeared last month for the first time we finally saw this stuff out there. But it has a module in it that allows attackers to customize the attack and how it's attacked. And the encryption key that text doesn't know everything else. Now we have we have a customer Jim and this is just not so. But it's true who has a business as a law firm and the law firm had apparently been losing documents that had to be filed with the court and then all of a sudden it started losing pictures of the owner's family. All of these pictures and stuff got stolen. It looks like what might have happened years that the guy hired hacked or he's not the guy by the bad guy which was in this case probably his ex-wife had hired a they got onto the computers and made some changes let's say to the files deleted things everything else. And apparently, it cost thirty-five dollars to hire this hacker to try and destroy this small law firm. Thirty-five bucks that's what it's going for right now. So and it's really kind of an interesting case. At any rate what we're talking about now is new type of ransomware completely remotely controllable completely customizable. Perfect for hacker as a service. That's a new business out there. Hacking has a service for thirty-five dollars. You as you can have someone hack your former business partner and your wife or maybe some company that you know has some money and you want to get that money out of that bank account 35 bucks is what it's going for.

[00:11:48] You see now this is why Craig Peterson is with us all the time because you get this information and then if you want more information you are more in-depth than you want to be on his list if there's another massive hacker breach or something. It's very simple. All you have to do is text my name Jim to this number.

[00:12:05] 855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553. 

[00:12:20] Standard data and text rates apply. Craig Peterson will not sell you down the river he will not yield he won't do anything like that. That's the bottom line and he's here every Tuesday. Craig thank you so much for your time buddy.

[00:12:37] Hey thanks, Jim. Take care.

[00:12:38] You too. Craig Peterson, a great resource. OK when we return a final word.

 

---

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