Jan 5, 2019
Guess what Facebook is in the news yet again. Listen in and I will tell you about one of the tricks they playing and why you must be concerned.
Did you get an Apple Watch? Today, I will be talking about what they have done with their new Heart Monitor and how it can help you.
How many Apps do you have? Are you using them all? Do you know what information they share? Today, I will be discussing Apps and how to stop them from tracking you.
Which browser is your favorite? With Internet Explorer going by the wayside and the Edge Browsers being updated using the chrome engine. it is time to talk about all the options you have and the benefits of each.
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: 01/05/2019
How Secure Are Our Gifts
Craig Peterson: 0:00
Hi everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome to the new year. Where's the time going? You know, it's going to be like that. And is going to be 2020. And we're going to be asking the same question man does time fly? I was at the barber the other day, got my haircut. And it was really funny. I don't know. Maybe she just wanted a bit better tip or something. But she thought I was about 10 years younger than I actually am. Is that legit? Or do you think she was she was just pulling my leg here trying to give complex to bugs out a man or she seemed like a nice enough girl, right? Maybe she's legit. But I don't know, time just keeps marching on. Oh, my family members keep getting older. I'm lucky enough to still have both parents alive, which is really kind of cool. But it's, you know, it's not going to last year forever.
Craig Peterson 1:00
Anyhow, we got a lot to cover about post-Christmas post-gift-giving
season, we're going to talk about a few of the gifts that you might
have given or received and the security and then one of the things
you should be considering what are the things you should do with
these devices. We'll talk about some specific devices. And we'll
also talk about them in general Facebook. Oh, my gosh, right. Are
they ever not in the news? Well, in the news again, because it
turns out, they never really did care about expanding the internet
to the whole world. It was all about Facebook. And we're going to
talk about one of the tricks they played in order to get it so that
your Android device would tell them where you are, what you're
doing, basically, without you knowing without that little pop-up
screen. Coming up, we're going to talk about airdrop assaults. I
have seen this before. I've had a couple of my listeners contact me
and saying this has happened to me. So we'll talk about what that
is Apple Watch, we're going to talk about how the new features in
that Apple Watch. You might have gotten as a gift work that can
detect certain types of rhythms and that you know,
Craig Peterson 2:12
your regular rhythms, arrhythmias, there you go. That's where I was
looking for. And that's really good. It's good news for a lot of
people. And we're going to talk a little bit more about how to stop
apps from tracking you because they're doing everything they can to
track it. We talked a little bit about this, I think
Craig Peterson 2:31
it was last week
Craig Peterson 2:32
of the week before as well. And we are, of course, doing a video
again this week. So make sure you check it out at
http://CraigPeterson.com. Well, let's get right into our holiday
season. You know how I have talked many times in the past about
security and privacy, right. That's kind of my thing. Because
there's so many of us just don't understand it, we're on doing it
the way we should, especially if you're small, medium business,
they just they're doing it wrong, right. You can't hire the right
people most of the time. So get somebody to come in help you get it
all established and then let them run with it. But there is a web
browser out there that I've recommended in the past. And I want to
talk about web browsers here for a minute. Because most of us would
have done some shopping online over the last few weeks.
Craig Peterson 3:22
The big one, of course, you know about his Google Chrome, Google
Chrome is about to be adopted by Microsoft, the getting rid of that
Edge browser that they've had. That is not a good browser, which
replaced an even worse browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer, do not
use Internet Explorer, any more people don't do it. If you have a
vendor that depends on you, using Internet Explorer, in order for
your web services to work, have them fix it threatened to go to a
new one because it is terrible. And it always has been well,
they've decided that edge is also terrible, which it is they just
don't have the compatibility. So to go for the ultimate in
compatibility. Microsoft is getting into bed with Google, at least
for the browser. And they are going to be using the Google Chrome
browser as the basis for their new browser. And trying to remember
now I think they said they were still going to call it Edge, The
Edge browser, but it's going to be chrome in disguise, it will run
the chrome plugins and extensions that you're used to running. So
kudos to Microsoft I gotta say it again, they haven't proved so
much since Steve Ballmer left, you know, getting rid of Steve
Ballmer was a wonderful co it's really helped the company they've
grown in some wonderful ways it's going to help us share growth in
a long term. Bill Gates did not do them any favors in his last
years. So I'm very impressed with their new management, I think
this is a very good choice for them. So we've got Chrome. And
that's now going to be the Microsoft browser as well. We've got
Safari on our various Mac devices. But most people nowadays,
frankly, are using Chrome. Well, there's another browser out there
that you should pay attention to. That's also based on Chrome
that's really rather safe. And I just had somebody reach out to me
about a month ago, because I asked you guys quite frequently, let
me know what you like about the show. Let me know what I should be
talking about some of the things that you've learned because that
helps me understand what I should be talking about here, what I
should be researching because you realize that it takes a lot of
research and a lot of work just to do this radio show. And this
these videos, the epic browser
Craig Peterson 5:51
API, see is what was mentioned by the listener, and he was saying,
Hey, listen, I use the epic, just like you had said that. He uses
DuckDuckGo for his searches. By the way, I think it was Google own
Duck.com. And they relinquished it. They gave it over to the
DuckDuckGo guys.
Craig Peterson 6:10
So pretty soon, I've actually probably haven't tried it in a while.
I was just going to DuckDuckGo. But you'll be able to go to
Duck.com to do your searches. And yeah, frankly, I think that's a
pretty good thing. So that's also a chrome based browser. There's
others out there that I use you've got opera, which isn't, you
know, reasonably popular browser. But the Mozilla Foundation is one
I want to talk about right now. Mozilla has the Firefox browser.
And they have designed it to be safe. Now, they, they really kind
of pulled in their wings, worked at it, and came up with a very
safe version and new faster, they got better tab handling the new
version 64, I think is what they're calling it. And it's something
to seriously look at because it is designed with security in mind.
You can run certain plugins, certain extensions for it, but not all
of them are going to work if you're running older extensions, many
of those just plain don't work. In fact, most of them don't,
because they're trying to be safe. That's their mantra. And you
should check it out. If you haven't checked out Firefox in a while.
Have a look at it. One of the things I love the most about it is it
isn't Google right, who's trying to collect all of the information
they can possibly collect on humanity and then sell it to other
people or use it themselves for marketing and other things. So have
a look at Firefox they've put out the Mozilla Foundation something
they're calling privacy not included and I was debating whether I
should talk about this before Christmas or wait until after
obviously, I didn't talk about it did not before now I'm going to
talk about it and what Mozilla's done with this privacy not
included as they've looked at some of the most popular gifts and
some of the most popular devices out there and tried to figure out
is this safe do they spy on us with them. So it's really good.
You'll see it up on my website at http://CraigPeterson.com. There
is a lot of different devices that there is a lot that they have
reviewed here. The Nintendo Switch coding kit, the Kindle, Hugh
light, coffee makers, pet trackers, just a ton of stuff, little
robots and things. Roku streaming players. Obviously, we're not
going to take the time to go through all of these. But if you have
a device you might want to check it out. It's on the
foundation.mozilla.org site. It's also up there on
http://CraigPeterson.com. But I do want to talk about a couple of
things. One, a very popular gift this year was the Nintendo Switch.
This is a brand new Nintendo in we've had them over the years.
Nintendo what was it the six for I'm trying to remember. And the
kids also we had the Nintendo we which Nintendo shot in the head
and they moved on this Nintendo Switch is really cool. You've got
the main unit. And then you've got the remote controls. And you can
play right there. All of these classic video games plus new ones,
you can play them right on this little handheld devices. Kind of
like a fabulous, you know, very large phone or small tablet. And
you can also take the signal and push it up to your TV set in order
to watch it very nice. And if you are looking to trade in a gift,
maybe this is something you might want to try for me. I have to
wear my reading glasses when I'm using it. But it does meet the
minimum security standards that Mozilla has
Craig Peterson 9:50
put out, you know, here's what they look at is what
Craig Peterson 9:54
Mozilla is looking at. And here's what you should probably look at
as well. First of all, can it spy on you? Do you remember, a week
or two ago, I was talking about our kids. And they're playing video
games is a serious security risk for us.
Craig Peterson 10:12
Because it is our kids are now being manipulated by online
criminals who are getting them to do things via these multiplayer
video games. So being able to spy on you. And knowing if it does or
not, is an important thing for you.
Craig Peterson 10:31
So the Switch does not have a camera. Now, remember, a lot of these
devices need, you have the physical device. And then you also have
an app that you use with that device. So you've got the device,
you've got the app, so the app is on your smartphone. And that app
may, in fact, have built into it the ability to use the smartphones
camera or its microphone. So remember that as well as you're
looking at these things. So these the Nintendo Switch does not have
a camera. And the app does not use the device's camera. It does not
have a microphone. But it does use the app's microphone. So that
could be a bit of an issue for you. And then from a location
tracking standpoint, the device does not track you. And the app
does not track you. So those are the dynamics. They look at those
of the things that the Mozilla people have been looking at stuff
you should look at as well. Now deeper into it, you can't tell
Craig Peterson 11:36
by looking at it, right. Like you can see a camera right, you might
be able to see a microphone. This does use encryption, it has a
privacy policy that you'd have to have a college degree to read. I
love the way they put this right. And it does share your
information with third parties for unexpected reasons. But
remember, didn't make their minimum standards. It all automatically
apply security updates, it deletes data, it stores on you and has
parental control. The company manages their security
vulnerabilities, which is really nice. We spend a lot of time with
our clients trying to keep their machines up to date on the
security vulnerabilities. So that's Nintendo Switch. It's well
worth doing. You know, you can be tied in with external devices to
those have their own security problems. minimum standards met
again, here. Privacy not included from Mozilla on the Philips Hue
smart light kit. This is something I have, I love these things, the
lights come on in the morning, they can dim they can give you kind
of a morning dawn type sequence, they can give you different colors
of the light in our room, we turn it down to read at night, which
is, of course, better for your eyes. So you sleep better. It's the
blue lights that really kind of nail you with these. But you can
also have the lights dance with your music and jump with the movies
and video games is a very, very cool a safety here camera, no on
the app or the device microphone. No on the app or the device
location tracking know on the app or device. Now Phillips had a
security problem with a few balls a few years back that we talked
about here, which was that people could remotely turn lights on and
off, which is it's a problem. But it's not the worst problem in the
world. So they really pulled up their socks. And they've got some
nice security in it. Now it does use encryption. It does require a
college degree to understand the privacy policy. And it does share
your information with third parties.
Craig Peterson 13:44
See, you have to change passwords that have automatic updates at
deleting your data that it stores. It has the company controlling
security vulnerability. So I'll have a look at that. Okay,
hijacking he Philips Hue Bob's much harder than it used to be. This
did not get a good privacy rating. And that's the nest learning
thermostat.
Craig Peterson 14:06
I like this. I think it's a cool thermostat. And I've been tempted
to get one forever. My son in law or one of my sons in law bought
one of these thermostats.
Craig Peterson 14:15
And it is neat, and it does save energy and stuff. But it also
connects to your network. So a few in my house, we have an IoT
network, which is an Internet of Things. So devices like, you know,
an Amazon Echo, or Google nasty, etc, those would go on to the IoT
network, which has no access to any of our computers in the house.
Nothing at all. Okay, so if I hadn't asked, that's where I would
put it, I would advise you guys to do that, too, for your homes.
Now, businesses, I deal with this all the time with security
cameras and other things. Businesses just are not segmenting the
networks as they should, it is important to segment them put these
types of devices on a different network. If you have manufacturing
equipment, make sure that also on a different network. Because
frankly, these devices can be and are being used to launch attacks
against you these security cameras that you see these Chinese
security cameras. Oh my gosh, that's terrible. What's happening
with these, many of them are coming pre-installed with backdoors.
And then the Chinese are getting into the devices. In some cases,
the Russians are hacking them, and they're using them to see all of
your data, get all your bank account information, etc, etc. So
again, here is an important safety tip. If you're going to have a
number of Internet of Things, devices, like these light bulbs, like
these thermostats, etc. etc. Make sure they are on a completely
separate network. This nest learning thermostat, the app does have
and use a camera the microphone again in the app location tracking
in the app. So the device itself doesn't have any of those. But the
app does and that uses down your smart device. It does have
encryption, it apparently does not share your information with
third parties. And it has automatic security updates Delete to date
at stores on you. And the company manages security policy. So some
good news there on a bunch of fronts. So look them up. Go online,
you'll see this whole report privacy not included from Mozilla. You
can just go to Craig Peterson. com. You can probably find it in a
Google search as well. Lots of good information there.
Craig Peterson 16:44
Next up, our friends over at Facebook. In the news again, Mark
Zuckerberg. Well, not just Mark but What's your name as well? Oh,
my. This is very interesting. Because they were doing some things
they promised they would never do. They said they weren't going to
spy on people. They weren't going to sell the information that
we're going to tell you about stuff, right? And we already know
they've just totally ignored all of that stuff. Sheryl Sandberg
right is their name. Wow. It turns out that the UK, Britain
Craig Peterson 17:20
seized emails, internal emails from Facebook. And it was part of a
parliamentary committee's investigation into Facebook. And isn't
this interesting. So of the company Facebook plan to gain users
permission to get at the user's call logs and lists of
everybody
Craig Peterson 17:44
they had called in texted on their phones without explicitly asking
for permission. In fact, they plan to do it as part of an update to
the mobile Facebook app. So normally, androids policies would
dictate the user See that little pop-up notification if you're an
Android user, you're used to seeing that so that notification pop
up saying, hey, they want access to your call logs to your phone
records to your texting records. And you would say no, I don't want
Facebook to have them. Well, apparently, they figured out a way
around that so that they could have a new application update come
in you to accept the update to the application. And it wouldn't
tell you that Facebook was trying to monitor all of your phone call
logs, isn't that something. So if Facebook shipped its app update
with only one permission request, it would not trigger the
permissions pop up. That meant that users would be opting into the
call log tracking when they downloaded the update without Android
making them aware of what they were opting into a Facebook Product
Manager put it this way, quote. This is a pretty high-risk thing to
do from a PR perspective, but it appears that the growth team will
charge ahead and do it and quote so that's from one of their
internal emails. And obviously, it's pretty shocking. And the UK
Government is pretty upset about all of us. And hopefully, we pick
up on it here. I don't know what the democrat controlled house
what's going to happen. They have a lot of tight ties into
Facebook. The Republicans have certainly been investigating
Facebook. Hopefully, they will. And everybody needs to know these
guys. They are not straight shooters. Absolutely not. So the same
email this is again from slate.com up on my site, you'll see to
http://CraigPeterson.com, the same email suggest holding off
another invasive permissions request not out of respect for users.
But due to concern, the backlash from the call logs request would
subject the second sensitive permission request to public scrutiny
to
Craig Peterson 19:59
So Facebook ultimately went ahead with the update and the
collection of Android call logs and succeeded in keeping it
quiet.
Craig Peterson 20:07
Oh, my gosh. Okay. So we start off 2019 with some more we're good
news about Facebook and what they've been up to.
Craig Peterson 20:18
I don't know if you've heard about these airdrops assaulted, been
going on one of one of my sons,
Craig Peterson 20:25
he kind of figured this out. Oh, you're too ago that he would go on
to his iPhone. And he'd see who had their airdrop turned on now you
can set it up and this is a way I do it. So that only your contacts
can see you. On Airdrop he would look and see who has their airdrop
wide open. And Airdrop is fantastic. Because you can send photos,
videos, documents, anything you want directly to another person
locally. So just it's literally airdrop to that person. They don't
have to go up the apples clouded. You don't need to use your
internet connection forward just goes right to them. So I got a
contact from one of our listeners saying they were driving down the
highway. And all of a sudden this request came up on their phone.
And they're trying to figure out what's going on. Should I accept
this? And obviously, they didn't. Right. And they reached out to me
after the fact you're trying to figure it out. Well, there's
something new called cyber flashing. Now. That's not what my son
did. My son would just drop the means on people's phones about
turning off air job or securing it. But cyber flashing is the act
of sending lewd pictures to unsuspecting victims via the airdrop
functionality on their phone.
Craig Peterson 21:49
Okay, very, very bad. Now it's become such an issue in New York and
particularly New York City that laws have been created to help
prosecute dead digital sexual harassment in Philadelphia, please
safe cyber flashing is happening there as well its kind of
interesting to read through the article. Again, Associate Professor
Temple University Fox School of Business recognizes a vulnerability
it goes on and on. But if you get an airdrop request from somebody
that you don't know, it could be cyber flashing, you might want to
go into airdrop and either just turn it off. Now it's available
right from that little-locked screen. So you know how normally you
might slide up on the bottom of your phone or the top right corner,
depending on what kind of device you have iOS device and you turn
on your flashlight. You know how to turn that flashlight? Well,
it's on that same screen. So you can turn your air drop off all of
the time. And just turn it off. When you're trying to send
something or someone else's trying to send something to you. That's
probably your safest bet.
Craig Peterson 22:58
Now if you got an app watch over the holidays, a brand new one, the
newest model, it is now designed to detect irregular heart rhythms.
Now that can save a life frankly, and it isn't like it's monitoring
all the time. It's not designed to detect a heart attack in the
process. What it does is it waits for you to be calm. So you're
kind of sitting, you're not really moving very much. And then it
monitors your rhythm. And it's looking for some basic arrhythmias,
and it'll inform you about them. It's designed to be used by people
over the age of 22, and they're not all designed for people who've
already been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation by their doctor.
But it can help with all the stuff Apple got first of its kind
clearance for the electrocardiogram app from federal regulators in
September, they did a preclinical study with 2000 people they did
clinical trials was 600 other people and founded it could
distinguish between a normal heartbeat and atrial fibrillation. So
that's where they're starting. This is going to get a lot faster,
better as time goes on. But if you have the latest software on your
watch, you can migrate over to the watch app on your iPhone. Then
scroll down to heart health, you'll see a new menu of options. And
you can enable a set of notifications so that your Apple Watch will
detect in your regular rhythm. You can also view your
electrocardiogram readings. Once you have taken them, it's they are
calling it ECG CD. Often it's EKG. So it's got notifications and
ask you for your date of birth to make sure you're over 22. And it
kind of goes on from there. So set up the app on the watch, make
sure you follow the instructions lightly touch the crown without
pressing down on it. And then it'll come up with some screens,
telling you some more details about what's going on and give you
that data. Pretty cool. If you got an Apple Watch and you don't
want to eat just send it to me care of the local radio station.
Craig Peterson. Now stopping apps and tracking you this is a very
big deal. I've talked about this a couple of times recently. But
now we found out that at least 75 companies are receiving people's
precise location data from hundreds of apps. Now, people have
enabled location services on these apps. Sometimes unwittingly, you
know, a lot of times you just don't think about it. And you just
click Yeah, except right or allow you got to pay attention to this
in the iOS space. As I've mentioned before, it's safer than for
tracking than it is an Android it's more clear, Apple's done more
about that, but these companies are using the and information
they're selling it to advertisers, investment firms, and others.
Can you imagine being in a doctor's office or, you know, an
emergency room and, and getting a notification that this clinic has
the same features half the price etc, right, while you're there in
the emergency room, or don't get that abortion because it's seen
that you are at Planned Parenthood, etc, etc. So they're collecting
all of this data and they are selling it
Craig Peterson 26:31
so it's kind of difficult to know the language for the disclaimers
can be pretty dense, pretty hard to understand there's no
definitive list. It's just a problem here. So here's what you do to
stop location tracking. On iOS. First, you open your settings
select privacy, it has a blue icon in a white hand then select
location services you're going to see a list of apps along with
location setting for each one of them it also has a little icon
that tells you if they've used location services recently and turn
on the option while using the app and don't let them use it all the
time. Because that's where most of the problem comes in. On Android
you can go to Settings security and location app level permissions
you'll see the list of apps and you got to dig around in order to
turn it off but it's good advice to turn that off make sure it's
off making sure it stays off because you really don't want all this
stuff happening to you. Hey I hope you are planning on a good year
I've got a whole series of master classes planned we are starting
them up these are master classes on security completely free we're
going to give them to you but you have to sign up go to crank
Peterson comm slash subscribe to make sure you're on my list
http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe we're going to be talking about
backups how to do them how to do them for business or we're going
to be talking about turning on free security tools what paid
security tools you should be loot using six weeks here master
classes every week http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe. Hey, Have a
great year ahead. Take care. Bye-bye.
---
Related articles:
Airdrop Assaults On The Rise As Criminals Cyber Flash Strangers
Apple Watch Can Now Detect Your Irregular Heart Rhythms And Other Problems: Here’s How It Works
Facebook Never Really Cared About Connecting The World
How To Stop Apps
From Tracking Your Location
---
More stories and tech updates at:
Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:
Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:
For questions, call or text:
855-385-5553