Speaker 1: A little behind time here as we start interest its
Speaker 1: Tech pride to a Dave Hatter interest I dot com
Speaker 1: or you get Dave and the crew working on your
Speaker 1: computer related your business computer related issues. Dave, welcome back
Speaker 1: to the program. Struggling with my uh voice this morning. Apologies,
Speaker 1: congratulations on being the Kentucky elected official of the year.
Speaker 1: Just saw that. Notice you are the man. Oh thanks, Let's,
Speaker 1: without further ado dive into if you don't mind jumping
Speaker 1: right into smart TVs which are spying on us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a little voice problem myself this morning.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so we can we can commiserate with each other.
Speaker 2: Go now. I guess my first question for you and
Speaker 2: your listeners would be, is anyone surprised to know that
Speaker 2: you're smart TV is spying?
Speaker 1: Not anymore? I just want to know are their options
Speaker 1: to smart TVs if I wanted to buy a new TV,
Speaker 1: are they all smart? Or can you avoid this crap?
Speaker 2: Well, it's really hard to avoid it. I'm not aware
Speaker 2: of any manufacturer that makes TVs that don't at least
Speaker 2: have this capability. But here here's the problem with it,
Speaker 2: and then I'll tell you what you can do to
Speaker 2: try to limit your exposure because at this point, again,
Speaker 2: I'm not aware of any manufacturer that makes a TV
Speaker 2: that isn't smart quote unquote, and you know, people can't
Speaker 2: see my fingers doing the air quote as we say this.
Speaker 2: You know, all of these sort of IoT devices because
Speaker 2: these things, you know, they have a perverse incentive versus
Speaker 2: your incentive is someone that might care about your privacy
Speaker 2: and security. These things are often, if not normally, made
Speaker 2: in China. Their goal is speed to market, market share,
Speaker 2: and ease of use. And anytime you're focused on ease
Speaker 2: of use, you're almost always at the expense of privacy
Speaker 2: and security. So again, whether it's something like an ring
Speaker 2: doorbell or a smart TV or whatever, the smart TVs,
Speaker 2: I think they are particularly insidious in how they work.
Speaker 2: If you have concerns about this. Now, I'm not saying
Speaker 2: that everything this does is some sort of evil plot,
Speaker 2: but I think it's like so many of these other
Speaker 2: smart devices, they play off the fact that people don't
Speaker 2: really understand how any of this works. They don't understand
Speaker 2: how much surveillance can be done on them, and you know,
Speaker 2: they don't really go into it with informed consent. As
Speaker 2: I've said to you, many times over the last ten years.
Speaker 2: If you understand what you're signing up for when you
Speaker 2: use these things, and you understand the potential risks, and
Speaker 2: you choose to move forward, well that's on you. You're
Speaker 2: an adult. Do what you want, right, But I don't
Speaker 2: think most people really get again, just how invasive this
Speaker 2: kind of surveillance can be. Now, most of these new
Speaker 2: smartes TVs, probably all of them. And you may see
Speaker 2: the term CTV for connected TV. That's sort of another
Speaker 2: term you might find if you look into this. You know,
Speaker 2: they have microphones so you can talk to them. So
Speaker 2: there's a potential problem. The thing might be listening to you.
Speaker 2: It could be recording what you're saying. And I would
Speaker 2: remind folks in addition to the fact that recent information
Speaker 2: has come out that a company that people like Facebook
Speaker 2: works with who claim they are listening to you, because
Speaker 2: Facebook has claimed they're not. If you think about it, Brian,
Speaker 2: any so called smart device that you can talk to
Speaker 2: for whatever purpose must be listening to you in order
Speaker 2: to know when you wanted to do something right.
Speaker 1: Always scene makes sense to me along those lines, Dave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, so with that said, you know, if it
Speaker 2: has a microphone. It could be listening to you. Some
Speaker 2: of these things have cameras in them. But the real
Speaker 2: bottom line, and this is going to be a good
Speaker 2: segue into another topic this morning, is these TVs come
Speaker 2: with what's known as an advertising ID, and then that
Speaker 2: advertising ID, when you watch things, is connected back to you,
Speaker 2: and it might be connected to other devices. So you
Speaker 2: know a lot of people will use their phone or
Speaker 2: tablet or PC while they're watching TV. You're coming from
Speaker 2: the same IP address. It's it's possible, through the use
Speaker 2: of cookies and browser fingerprinting and things like that, to
Speaker 2: connect that while you were watching this show, you were
Speaker 2: also doing this on your phone. That must mean that
Speaker 2: you like this, so let's sell you some ads. But
Speaker 2: one of the things they point out specifically in here
Speaker 2: is a lot of these free channels that are streaming based,
Speaker 2: they point out to be and specifically are essentially designed
Speaker 2: for tracking you. And you know, they'll see while you're
Speaker 2: watching a show, how that show is ranked in terms
Speaker 2: of like it's psychographic impact on people, and then they'll
Speaker 2: put ads in there based on that, so you know,
Speaker 2: again it's collecting enormous amounts of information about you. There
Speaker 2: was a lawsuit against Visio at one point, like every
Speaker 2: second they were taking a screenshot of what you were watching.
Speaker 2: So if you think when you're using one of these
Speaker 2: smart TVs you have any privacy whatsoever and out by default,
Speaker 2: you do not. Now to answer your question, what can
Speaker 2: you do about it? Well, it's tough. I mean I
Speaker 2: would remind everyone you could buy a smart TV and
Speaker 2: then just not connect it to the internet, right, you know,
Speaker 2: use it like an old TV. Now, of course, that's
Speaker 2: going to significantly limit how the capabilities of the TV.
Speaker 2: Another thing you could do would be instead of giving
Speaker 2: your data to let's say a Samsung or a Visio
Speaker 2: or whoever makes the TV, you could use a different
Speaker 2: streaming product like a Roku or something. Now, it's it's
Speaker 2: going to track you to it's just a question of
Speaker 2: who's get all that data right.
Speaker 1: Right, your laptop would be getting the TV signal which
Speaker 1: would be transferred to your TV, which is not hooked up.
Speaker 1: Meaning whatever protections you have on your laptop like a
Speaker 1: VPN might offer additional security that a smart TV hooked
Speaker 1: directly up would not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or I mean you could There's a lot of
Speaker 2: different ways you could potentially choke off some of this flow.
Speaker 2: But a lot of it boils down to going into
Speaker 2: the settings on the TV itself and seeing what you
Speaker 2: can disable. You know, can you turn off any of
Speaker 2: this sort of tracking? You know, use either some kind
Speaker 2: of privacy settings. Now you get into the privacy washing
Speaker 2: and the dark patterns of the stuff's hidden, and they
Speaker 2: don't really want you to turn it off right. Well,
Speaker 2: but you may be able to, on any given TV
Speaker 2: disable some of this stuff. You might be able to,
Speaker 2: like if something will let me, but if it won't
Speaker 2: let me turn it off, I'll go in and change
Speaker 2: that advertising idea every once in a while, just so
Speaker 2: it's harder to track me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know me, I never run a call
Speaker 1: for legislation. But the technology to turn this stuff off
Speaker 1: does exist widely in the world. It's not expensive. Everything
Speaker 1: should have the option to let us decide what goes
Speaker 1: out into the world. Period. End of story. Exclamation point
Speaker 1: and I'll reserve my expletives for when the microphone is off, Dave,
Speaker 1: We've got to take a break. We're out of time.
Speaker 1: In six forty fifty five krcit talk station so far
Speaker 1: behind six forty four to fifty five carcity talkshin see
Speaker 1: we try to make some time back up. Dave had
Speaker 1: our interest it dot com. Thank you for you and
Speaker 1: the teams scheduling the segment on Tech Friday, data brokers
Speaker 1: also tracking our phones. I suppose we shouldn't be shocked
Speaker 1: by this either.
Speaker 2: You know, again, Brian Good, segue from the previous topic,
Speaker 2: because this stuff is all related. I just have to
Speaker 2: once again remind people, as we've done so many times,
Speaker 2: that these companies that are making extremely low cost products
Speaker 2: are giving you anything for free, believe it or not,
Speaker 2: are not making it for free. You become their product.
Speaker 2: They capture your data, they monetize that data, and I think,
Speaker 2: as we're finding out slowly in chunks, as I mentioned
Speaker 2: that last segment, we've now seen a company claim that
Speaker 2: they've worked with companies like Facebook, they're listening to you
Speaker 2: all the time. So when people say, how is it
Speaker 2: possible that I'm having a private conversation with my spouse
Speaker 2: and suddenly I get ads for X, Well, it's due
Speaker 2: to all of this sort of thing. You know. Any
Speaker 2: any so called smart device certainly has the capability to
Speaker 2: track you in some way if they want to, and
Speaker 2: most of them do, because again they're either making additional
Speaker 2: money even if you paid for something and you know,
Speaker 2: recurring money, or that's how they're offsetting the cost of
Speaker 2: whatever they're providing to you for free, quote unquote. So
Speaker 2: this story I thought was really interesting because basically it's
Speaker 2: saying that they can track your phone using a variety
Speaker 2: of different techniques, and it comes back to that advertising
Speaker 2: identifier again. You know, Apple and Google both give your
Speaker 2: phone an advertising identifier as well as other types of
Speaker 2: unique identifiers that identify it to the carrier, network and
Speaker 2: so forth. But the point they're making out here is
Speaker 2: that you can use this advertising eye to track where
Speaker 2: the phone is going. They sell this data to various
Speaker 2: data brokers, and that's how, over time, these incredibly detailed
Speaker 2: and grantular dossiers are built up about you. So you know,
Speaker 2: whether it's location tracking, it's the thing you're viewing. Things
Speaker 2: you're viewing on the phone. Some of this gets sold
Speaker 2: to data broker X by application Y, some of it
Speaker 2: gets sold to another data broker. They sell this stuff
Speaker 2: amongst each other, and then over time again you have
Speaker 2: this unbelievably granular and detailed dossier about you. Where you've been,
Speaker 2: what you're doing. And you know, I know some people
Speaker 2: will say, well, I don't care about that. I have
Speaker 2: nothing to hide, and I would just remind folks. Just
Speaker 2: in the past six months, we've seen two massive data breaches,
Speaker 2: the National Public Data Data breach and mc square. Both
Speaker 2: of these are background check companies where they have incredibly
Speaker 2: sensitive information about you. Think about it, Brian, if I
Speaker 2: had all the background check information about you, I'd know
Speaker 2: places you worked, places you lived, your family members, all
Speaker 2: kinds of other information. So whether I wanted to impersonate
Speaker 2: you and commit fraud in your name, or I wanted
Speaker 2: to attack you and have legitimacy because I know information
Speaker 2: that only the legitimate player would know. That kind of
Speaker 2: data provides that. And the more data that gets collected
Speaker 2: about you by these sorts of hidden tracking capabilities, you know,
Speaker 2: that's all feeding into this. Then when it gets breached
Speaker 2: or leaked, it comes back to bite you. And that's
Speaker 2: why you should care about.
Speaker 1: These indeed, and you know judgment Paulaitano has mentioned this before,
Speaker 1: and he's not the only one that's brought it up.
Speaker 1: When you wonder why a politician votes a certain way,
Speaker 1: which seems to fly directly in the face of what
Speaker 1: he or she had campaigned on he or you previously
Speaker 1: stood for. You may have the answer right there, Dave Hatter,
Speaker 1: let's pause. Exactly frightening stuff. Apparently, businesses have lost a
Speaker 1: lot of money in email scans, a huge amount. It's
Speaker 1: six fifty to fifty five of k RC, detalxation, interest
Speaker 1: it dot com. That's where you find Dave Hatter and
Speaker 1: his team. If you have a business, you have computers,
Speaker 1: and he'll keep you from stepping in it, hopefully best
Speaker 1: practices and avoiding all the problems. And we talk about
Speaker 1: speaking and stepping in it, and real quick here we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the email scans and how much it's cost businesses.
Speaker 1: Speaking of that, but real quick here, Rick wanted to know,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a great question because I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it sounds good. Can my router be configured to
Speaker 1: block out going packets from the television?
Speaker 2: Potentially? Yes, it's going to depend on the capabilities of
Speaker 2: your router, how smart it is. You know. One of
Speaker 2: the things you could do too, to protect your other
Speaker 2: devices from any smart device would be to set up
Speaker 2: what's what nerds like you would call a v land
Speaker 2: and basically create a separate network inside your network, so
Speaker 2: these smart devices can't talk to other devices. You could potentially,
Speaker 2: you know, if if the TV is using a main
Speaker 2: name or something to send it back to you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: you could potentially configure your devices to try to block
Speaker 2: that traffic. The problem, Brian is most people wouldn't even
Speaker 2: know how to ask that question. You know, you could
Speaker 2: go online and probably help depending on your specific device.
Speaker 2: It is theoretically possible to do that.
Speaker 1: Well, there's your next business model there. You need to
Speaker 1: set out to help homes secure themselves and keep their
Speaker 1: smart devices from revealing all the information in the world.
Speaker 1: I think the first thing you do is just don't
Speaker 1: get an Alexa type device anyway. Business email scams.
Speaker 2: So this is a huge problem, Brian. We see this
Speaker 2: regularly and it really you know, it's kind of shocking
Speaker 2: to me how bad this problem is and how much
Speaker 2: money is being lost as a results this. The FBI
Speaker 2: says it's fifty five billion dollars from twenty thirteen to
Speaker 2: twenty three. I can tell you that I believe it's
Speaker 2: a lot more than.
Speaker 1: That, and businesses don't report it. You've mentioned that so
Speaker 1: many times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in many cases unless there's a regulatory reason to
Speaker 2: report it. They won't, right. I have firsthand knowledge of
Speaker 2: a company here in Cincinnati that was referred to us
Speaker 2: after this an unfortunate situation like this. They lost nine
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty three thousand dollars. Think about that for
Speaker 2: a second. And this often occurs because people do not
Speaker 2: have strong passwords, strong unique passwords, and they don't have
Speaker 2: MFA turned on. If I can get into your email,
Speaker 2: I can look around in there and figure out, like, well,
Speaker 2: who do you communicate with on a regular basis right now?
Speaker 2: For a frontline employee working in a factory, maybe I
Speaker 2: won't ever get access to this kind of information, but
Speaker 2: I might also be able to move latterly within your
Speaker 2: network once I'm in there. But if I can get
Speaker 2: into let's say, like someone that works in your accounting
Speaker 2: department or your finance department because they have a bad
Speaker 2: password and or no MFA, I'm eventually going to figure out,
Speaker 2: if I have enough time, how to get to some money.
Speaker 2: It often involves fraudulent invoicing or request for wire transfers.
Speaker 2: I know we don't have time today, but I think
Speaker 2: I told the story not too long after I became
Speaker 2: mayor and fort Wright, the city clerk got an email
Speaker 2: that looked like it came for me. Wanted to do
Speaker 2: an international wire transfer, and thankfully, you know, she said
Speaker 2: find the world with the city of fort right, Kentucky,
Speaker 2: do an international wire transfer. And yeah, picked up the
Speaker 2: phone and called me, which is always the right answer.
Speaker 2: Anytime there's any question about something, especially if it's financial,
Speaker 2: you should stop what you're doing and either call your
Speaker 2: IT people or your manager or the CEO or whomever
Speaker 2: and say is this legit? Right? But the scope and
Speaker 2: scale of this is insane, And I'm just telling people
Speaker 2: from someone that works in the field. Every day. We
Speaker 2: see this all the time. These are not ridiculously overblown numbers.
Speaker 2: Business email compromise is happening all the time, and I
Speaker 2: just keep to remind people, if you make it easy,
Speaker 2: they will steal your money. Your money has value to them,
Speaker 2: just because often you're on too small I don't any
Speaker 2: think we're stealing, well, your money. It's worth stealing, and
Speaker 2: they will steal your money if you make it easy.
Speaker 2: The good news is well, there's nothing that is bulletproof
Speaker 2: against this. Brian. There's a lot of things you can do,
Speaker 2: including training that will significantly reduce the likelihood of a
Speaker 2: successful attack. But if you don't take it seriously, and
Speaker 2: if you allow people to not have strong unique passwords
Speaker 2: and not use MFA, you are eventually going to fall
Speaker 2: prey to one of these kinds of scams. It's just
Speaker 2: a matter of time until they find you with something
Speaker 2: that's compelling to.
Speaker 1: People well and find you. They will, and it usually
Speaker 1: it doesn't require an individual on the other side, you
Speaker 1: picking up a phone or launching the attack. They do
Speaker 1: this remotely with bots and bot farms, and you know,
Speaker 1: just flip a switch. You got thousands of basically micro
Speaker 1: computers going to work trying to get you to, you know,
Speaker 1: respond to an email. Doesn't cost them much money at all,
Speaker 1: and it's a volume business.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, think about it, Brian, if I could, if
Speaker 2: I could send you a phishing email that leads to
Speaker 2: nine hundred and eighty three thousand dollars to me. I
Speaker 2: just really, that's like some Hillary Clinton type return on investment.
Speaker 1: It is cattle futures, and it's a much easier ROI.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is, yes, it is.
Speaker 1: It's you know, I have to joke about this. You know,
Speaker 1: if you don't ask you, you're not going to know.
Speaker 1: This is like go out and ask every woman you
Speaker 1: run into if they want to go out, and eventually
Speaker 1: one of them will. But if you don't ask, they're
Speaker 1: never going to have someone who said yes. If you
Speaker 1: send thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of phishing emails out in the world, somebody's going to
Speaker 1: respond and you're gonna get nine hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Maybe tech Friday, Dave had or intrust it dot coms
Speaker 1: where you find Dave and the crew you need them
Speaker 1: if you have problems along the lines of what we
Speaker 1: talk about each and every week. Thank you Dave for
Speaker 1: spending time with my listeners and me. I always really
Speaker 1: truly look forward to the segment and appreciate the sage,
Speaker 1: wisdoms and advice. Look forward to your next business venture
Speaker 1: helping individuals and homes avoid the snooping and all the
Speaker 1: other things that go along with it. Until next Friday,
Speaker 1: my friend, have a wonderful weekend.
Speaker 2: Always my pleasure, Brian, I look forward to chatting with
Speaker 2: you next week. Thanks