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Jun 19, 2019

Craig is in the WGAN Morning News with Ken and Matt. This morning,  we touched on a whole bunch of topics in the news. We discussed Apple's newly announced single sign-on and what they are doing that makes it different.  We delved into DNA testing and some of the legal implications that are currently in the news. We talked about the NSA and the unprecedented step they took to warn everyone about the latest Microsoft vulnerability and why we must take it seriously.  I gave  Ken, a tongue-in-cheek explanation as to how he could fix the problems he is experiencing with his MacBook Pro keyboard.  

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

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Transcript:

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

Airing date: 06/19/2019

Apple keyboard Issues, Legal implications of DNA databases, Apple's new Single Sign-on, NSA Warnings on latest Microsoft vulnerabilities,

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Craig Peterson
Hey, good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson, here. This morning, I got to talk with Ken and Matt a little bit. We discussed Ken's problem with his Apple keyboard, and I gave him a couple of solutions. His MacBook Pro. We reminisced a bit of a few things today, in fact, even with Matt. We did finally get to talk about some of the security problems that are out there., right now, There are some things you might want to be sure to give serious attention. We also went into some depth on Apple's new service that even Google is praising and is going to be a major competitor of theirs, right there in the same arena. So here we go with Ken and Matt.

Matt Gagnon
It is 738 on a Wednesday morning, which means it is time to talk to Craig Peterson who joins us now. Craig, how are you this morning?

Craig Peterson
Hey, it is, he does, and I'm doing well this morning.

Matt Gagon
Welcome back to the program.

Ken Altshuler
Craig my keyboard on my MacBook Pro keyboard keeps falling off. I am getting quite irritated. I'm going to bring it back, and they're going to have to send it to get fixed with a whole new keyboard. I'm not getting my computer back for a week. It has got to stop this insanity. It's got to stop.

Craig Peterson
Ken such a first world problem. Apple has, I think they still do, have a program for businesses, they had a program you would pay them a few hundred bucks per year. And they would give you loners and everything else if your machine had a problem.

Ken Altshuler
That is okay I could use Dropbox, and I could probably access it remotely. But you see Craig, nobody uses Word Perfect but me, anymore.

Craig Peterson
I was about to say that. Yeah, I'm glad you said it. Not me. No word perfect. There are still some lawyers out there that do that.

Ken Altshuler
It's the greatest ever made. Why would anybody use MS Word, it just sucks?

Craig Peterson
Well, I yeah, I was a big fan of WordStar to

Ken Altshuler
I used WordStar, too.

Craig Peterson
Yeah, I used to like that a lot. Then WordPerfect came along was perfect for attorneys. A lot of attorneys adopted it. Then I moved into Emacs. But I'm a geek. And it's not really for text editing. And I've used some others like TeX and LaTeX and Roff, and man all kinds of different typesetting tools and stuff over the years. I get you like that WordPerfect for your work again. Well, back to your keyboard. You've got that first generation of Apple's butterfly keyboard.

Ken Altshuler
That's correct. They'd said that they are not on the fourth version of it.

Craig Peterson
Yeah, they keep making changes to try and fit. What they did is they that they designed it so it would be small and light and narrow. They keep making this thing smaller. My son has one of these, and I think it's a second or third generation of a butterfly keyboard. I tried it, and I don't like it. I didn't feel of it. Right. But there's a certain point where they have to cut their losses. You know I learned on mechanical typewriters, right. 100%. Mechanical. Then a teletype, TTY 33. Back in the day. I liked the motion. I enjoy the click-clack, and it's big deep motion. I don't know, I think it's these kids, it's Matt's generation.

Ken Altshuler
It is magic.

Matt Gagnon
I don't know anyone, if you call me that, again, I'm going to come over there and punch you in the face with a baseball bat.

Ken Altshuler
See how angry they are? That generation. I do have a portable Bluetooth keyboard. However, the problem with that is, when you use it with the MacBook Pro, you have to put it so far out, that you can't see what you're typing because it's so far away.

Matt Gagnon
Nobody knows what you mean

Craig Peterson
You need to go to the dollar store and get a different pair of glasses. That will work for you. I have three different pairs of reading glasses, three different strengths, depending on how far away my screen is away. And so on might be all you have to do is you need a prescription. Thank God I don't need a glasses prescription. I need reading glasses. I have like one and a half, one and three quarters and twos. Sometimes I have to put two or three pair at the same time. If I need to read, the faintly printed model number on the back of a Mac.

Ken Altshuler
I take a picture of it and then enlarge it, to read those.

Craig Peterson
I've got a magnifying app. Matt, you can go away for a while.

Ken Altshuler
What's the name? Because I could use one.

Craig Peterson
I don't remember. I type in magnifier, and then it comes right up. But It's fantastic. It just it goes into super zoom mode and makes it easy to see. But you know that the high tech problems we have Apple are now kind of admitted they have a problem with a keyboard but not totally. But try some different reading glasses. That's what I do.

Ken Altshuler
I have to get the keys fixed. I've got an appointment at the Genius Bar tomorrow. The heart of geniuses I must say, and speaking of geniuses, why are murderers and rapists upset at technology, prey tell?

Craig Peterson
Yeah. What do you know about the Golden State Killer? You guys everybody's pretty much familiar with the this is the case of out in California. In California, where they had several murders, this was decades ago. They were never able to solve them. Then what the police did is that they went online, as many of us have done, to one of these DNA testing companies. I've done it, and my family's done it. Well, what happened is that when people have done it.
In many cases they have shared their DNA information to find family members. And frankly, that's kind of cool. Sometimes, you'll find second, third, fourth, fifth cousins. Anyway, they go into these public databases, and the terms of views allow anyone to go in and search and try and find family members. Well, in the case of the Golden State killer, they found that it was an ex-cop responsible for the killings. At least, I think that that's might still be an allegation. I don't know, if he's actually been convicted, yet. Well, now we're seeing the same thing happening in another case. But in this case, both parties have conceded that okay, you're, you're obtaining of the evidence was legal. But Ken, this is a really, interesting question because the police used one of these public databases of DNA that people are using to share to find other family members. From that public DNA database that gave them a clue as to where to look. When they started looking more closely at this family because the DNA indicated that it was someone within you know, a few relatives of the suspect and narrowed it down to this one guy. They were able to get, I think it was like like a coffee cup or something, that was discarded by the guy at the crime scene. They pulled the DNA off of that and found it to be an exact match from you know, DNA is never like 100 hundred percent, but consider, yeah, an exact match. And so now they pulled him into court. It's a real, exciting case with unique problems, as you know, from the Legal side. How far does it go? Both sides conceded that, okay, that they legally obtained the initial DNA information, so there will be no challenge in court on that point. However, here's another side of this as well, that is the online website that the police used has since hanged their terms of service. Now they are no longer allowing police to do searches for DNA matches.

Ken Altshuler
Why? It makes no sense.

Craig Peterson
They're afraid that people are not going to put their DNA up or do searches any longer, for fear that the police might get involved or their DNA might get used for solving a crime. I agree with you. I don't know why you wouldn't, but, but that's why. It is one of the most significant sites out there for this public sharing of DNA information. They changed the terms of use two days after the police, apparently used it to find this guy. That brings up an interesting question. And I agree with you can I don't know what Matt saying, but you know, why would they do that? But should there? Should there be a law? Reminds me of something my dad always used to say. "there ought to be a law against that," or for that, or whatever. It will put a little bit of a kink into some of these police investigations.

Matt Gagnon
All right, Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us now as he always does at this time on Wednesdays, Craig, the other day, I was signing my son up for soccer, whatever, and I couldn't for the life of me remember the login thing that I had created last year for the site. Like the week before that I had to log into something else that I hadn't logged into in a year. It happens to me pretty frequently. I just had to change my stupid password on this dumb computer. I have about thousand 1000 logins that I need, you know, in my head at any given time, and they are continually making me change my passwords and everything else. I can never keep it all straight. Is someone going to save me?

Craig Peterson
No. You're doomed?

Matt Gagnon
Oh, no, that's not the right answer.

Craig Peterson
Well, you already know about Facebook? Are you've seen sites that say to click here to login, with Facebook. And you've seen websites that do the same thing with Google, you know, use your Google login. There's a few of those out there. I have used them once or twice to see how they worked. I don't personally use those. Well, now Apple has come out with their login. It's a multiple login service, and you know by now that I like almost everything Apple is doing nowadays. They are trying to show "Hey, listen, we're going to keep your data safe, we're not going to keep it, we're not going to share it because we don't have it." "We're going to keep that information other than enough information that's required to get you logged in." I think that the fascinating thing about this is that with this multiple logins, single sign-on thing, that Apple's come up with, oh, btw, it's not quite available yet, but it will be. Apple has deals in place with almost everybody. It is going to be very big. Their concept is better than some of the others. Google has come out and said, "Hey, listen, we don't keep that information, either." Well, this is a company that used to say don't be evil, right, Google said. Google came up with a tacit recommendation for the Apple sign-in service saying, "Hey, listen, this is a read going to be a very, good thing for the internet although we don't share our information." They think this is going to be better, much better than normal logins. Not only do people forget them, and of course, many people misuse it them by using the same password, the same email on multiple systems. It's a bit of a problem. I think that you know if I was going to use one, once the Apple ones when it comes out, that's what I'd use. Under no circumstances would I trust Facebook at all with my data. I never use the Facebook Single Sign-On, on other sites. I don't use the Google Sign on, because frankly, they're trying to collect all of the data they can in the world and I don't trust them. The bottom line with Apple, If I am going to trust somebody at this point. They're the guys I trust, today.

Ken Altshuler
We're talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru, who joins us every Wednesday at 738. You know, the people on our radio station makes us take a security test all the time. Now, are all the CEOs and business owners that conscientious?

Matt Gagnon
Are we way ahead of the curve?

Ken Altshuler
Well said.

Craig Peterson
Matt, Is that true? Or are they just giving Ken the test?

Matt Gagnon
Sadly, Craig, I have to report that they give it to me as well.

Craig Peterson
Well, I'm glad to hear that. The techniques and bad guys are using keep changing, and frankly, we have got to keep our employees up to date.

Matt Gagnon
Okay, that's fair enough, Craig. But there's a man in a gorilla suit in the video.

Craig Peterson
Really?

Matt Gagnon
And I can pass the quiz without watching the videos.

Craig Peterson
Or in a Bunny Suit, one of the two, right? Yeah, you know, we got to get back to the brass tacks of security and making sure employees are up to date at that is a good start. You don't want to overburden them by continually doing some of these pieces of training. I've seen a lot of them. We signed up for a company that provided us with training videos that we could provide your customers. I watched them and about pulled my hair out and stabbed by eyeballs out. They were so bad. We stopped using them. Now we send out a little notification email. Okay, guys watch out for this with a couple of samples, and maybe once in a while a short one to two-minute video explaining it. However, we need to get back to the brass tacks, everybody. That's the bottom line. And that means, the password stuff. Now we've got the NSA doing though this is the first time, it is unprecedented. Ken and I and may Matt, I think you're old enough to remember that the NSA used to stand for no such agency because the federal government denied it even existed. Well, now it's gotten to the point where the NSA has a warning out right now about cyber attacks. They are warning that this could be the worst ever worldwide computer shutdown. It's just incredible. It is all about BlueKeep and some other stuff. Why could this be the worst ever? Remember, two years ago, almost now, we had the shutdown to hundreds of thousands of computers around the world because of an attack - WannaCry and Petya/NotPetya. At the time it was worst ever. It all happened because we were not covering the underlying security best practices. We're not doing the brass tacks of security. We're not making sure we've patched our systems. We're not making sure we're following the right schedules. I have yet to go into a company and find that they've got their basics in order. I don't blame them for having you guys take these little tests. I think it's frankly, generally speaking, an excellent idea.

Matt Gagnon
All right, Craig Peterson, our tech guru, joins us this time every Wednesday. Craig, we appreciate it. As always, thank you so much. We will talk to you again next week, sir.

Craig Peterson
Take care, guys. Bye.

Ken Altshuler
Thanks a lot. Alright. So we're going to take a quick break.

Craig Peterson
Hey, everybody, have a great day. I'll be back Of course, with my weekend radio show, heard in the Northeast and throughout the Northeast.

In fact, and it'll be a whole lot of fun.

Of course, we will be talking about all the newest tech news out there. As we readily quickly heard, we are working on getting ready for our big summer of security coming up. We're going to do it. Need information, email me at Craig Peterson dot com.

Have a great day, everybody. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.

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