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