218 Million Users of Words with Friends Hacked and more on Tech Talk With Craig Peterson today on Maine's WGAN Saturday Show [10-5-19]

Zynga the maker of a very popular game called Words with Friends had their database hacked by a Pakistani Hacker who goes by the name, Gnostic-players. He got personally identifiable information on 218 million users... Wow!

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Related Articles:

Popular Game Breaches Personally Identifiable Information of 218 Million People
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Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

Craig 0:08
Hey, welcome back, Greg Peterson here WGAN. And online at Craig Peterson dot com. I have a ton of stuff up there over 3000 articles all searchable, all about the latest in technology and security, the things you need to know about. So I hope you visited online again, Craig Peterson calm. Now we have been talking as we often do a lot about some of the security issues that we're seeing out there. I tend to emphasize small business stuff because man, I empathize. I'm a small business guy always have been, I have had lifestyle businesses, hopefully, at some point, I will not have the lifestyle business. I have right now. Well, pretty much a family business. And I really enjoy working with my family members. And then we have other people that work for us that are not family members. And I, again, I really enjoy working with everybody and all of our clients. Now, I said that because I want to make one thing clear. Now don't you always know when someone says that I want to make one thing perfectly clear, it usually means that they're lying. Right? I just heard that on the news this week to heard one of the presidential candidates saying those exact words it reminded me of President Nixon back in the day, anyhow,

I have something I have never given away before. That is of incredible value to any small business out there. And it's also a great value to any home users that are out there. And it is a 32 page, quick start guide for your cyber security. It goes through just a ton of things that you need to know need to be aware of. I give a couple of examples of clients that I've picked up recently that have been having problems, we've got the key points for every small business, that about what you should be doing. We've got the stepping stones that you should be taking as you go through this process. We talked about the whole path to security. Some things you probably never even heard of before, like some automated ways to keep some of your software and applications up to date, anti malware how to do patching, which by the way can be automated, even for other types of devices, then your Windows machine securing endpoint, virtual private network, do you need one? When would you use one different types of firewalls and point firewalls of firewall for your network, whether it's a home or small business network, as isn't the case here, a password pass codes, password managers, we give some recommendations in here, we've got bonus tips to stop future infections that go through 19 different bonus tips that are in here. 21, excuse me, 21 goes all the way through what to do if you already have been hacked, when you should be asking for professional help. Software availability, and we go through windows Max, what you can do what it is that we do to help as well. And you can get all of this by just going right now, as I said this, this has always been part of a paid program. We had never given this away before. It is so valuable. And I don't know I've had a couple people say Craig, don't give it away sell it. But I want it in your hands. Okay. And I know some people aren't going to bother getting it. And that's just fine. Somebody people are going to say, Oh, Craig, I don't want to get it and sign up for your mailing list. Believe me, I am not going to be nailing you. I'm, in some ways one of the worst marketers in the world. Well, obviously, I'm not the worst, right? marketers in the world, I'm not going to be hammering you and pounding you and you can always unsubscribe. But I want to warn people to if you do unsubscribe from my list, this is really important. And I'm going to start putting this little footnote in my emails. If you unsubscribe after subscribing, I will never, ever even if you try and re subscribe. Never ever, ever send you anything ever again. So today, you might get this quick start guide by going to Craig peterson.com slash Quick Start all one word Quick Start. And you might hear me in two months offering another guide for free. Maybe one that I've never offered for free before that's just for my paid client. If you unsubscribe from my list, and then you try and re subscribe, it's going to look like you re subscribed but I can now never send it to you again. And that's so I can comply with GDPR. It's I noticed it this week with somebody who had subscribed to my texting list. So they they sent a question and they asked to be subscribed or in this case with you guys, you probably just want to send the word WGAN to me, just text WGN 2855385 5553 but that is my phone number. And you can always send me questions, any questions you want to to that phone number. And great, I'll go ahead and add you to my list. And so now you'll get those emergency messages like your to the climax and last time around, right. Or you can email you can text me with the email address if you want me to add you to a list, etc, etc. So that actually goes to me. But if you tell me to stop, and I don't send out more than one text a week, and most weeks, it's not even one text. So if you reply with stop, at some point, I will stop sending you things. And when I say stop sending you things I mean for ever.

You can never ever get something from me again, because again, under the GDPR rules that I'm complying with, right, because I'm a security guy, I'm complying with all the security regulations. If you even if you try and re subscribe, I will ignore my software is going to automatically ignore you because you told me to stop sending you stuff. So I will stop sending you stuff you will be on a blacklist. So it's great if you sign up because you're going to get all of this free stuff. And I give away a lot of free stuff more than anybody else I've ever seen. And my wife isn't too fun to that, but I want to help, okay, and and if you're interested in buying something from me, great, okay. But I really, really do want to help. But if you ever unsubscribe, you are unsubscribe forever. It's that simple. So keep that in mind as well. Because I know some people they think it's pretty smart. They go and they subscribe and they get the free download and then they unsubscribe, well, I have a lot of these free downloads, and you're not going to find out about them ever again. Because most of them you'll only find out about in my newsletter. And then even if you try and re subscribe, you won't be able to reach subscribe. So I saw a guy who had subscribed to my text notification service. And so he he had sent me a thing he had said, Please subscribe me, I want to know about the alerts when they happen. And when you're live on the radio. And so I went ahead and sent it to him and great. So he's on and then he responded with stop, which is how you unsubscribe. But in SMS, most of the time works for me works for most places, if you ever subscribed to you know, send send this to this Texas to this phone number, you can always just send stop to that phone number. And based on the regulations, they have to stop sending new stuff. So I put him on the blacklist. And then he sent another message and I tried to respond to him. And I couldn't because he was on the blacklist. Okay, so keep that in mind. Some people don't do it this way. I do. I take it seriously. If you tell me to unsubscribe you you are unsubscribed. And you'll never hear from me again. Okay, so don't don't try and play games with this because it'll cost you in this case, it would cost you good and valuable information. Now we are hearing every week about another hack, right. And I understand everybody out there that is just totally discouraged. With all of this. You know, I understand it because it is discouraging. I was I was on the radio on an interview. And I said basically I've I've given up right, it's it. It is very, very discouraging, especially if you've been hacked, especially if you're a small business guy like I am, where you have been trying to build this business for your whole life. This is your retirement, right? This money isn't just some faceless bureaucracy somewhere, it is you it is your wife, it is your retirement.

So I get it. And I understand those people that have been trying to do something the same way for a long time. And, you know, you just don't want to change, I get that as well. And it is scary. It's difficult. But guys and gals, you have to do it. Because whereas echo facts can survive losing pretty much every person in the country is personal information. And more or less, nobody gets fired. And there's no real find. That's not true for you as a small business person, because within six months, you're out of business. And that's what this quick start guide is all about that you can pick up at Craig Peterson. com slash Quick Start. And as I said, it's up for free right now I guarantee you it will be coming down. So make sure you get that. But Words with Friends is from a huge game company. These guys, Zynga make all kinds of games. If you've ever played games on Facebook, some of the games on your Android or iOS device guaranteed. Some of them have come from Zynga very, very big. So there is a report that came out from Hacker News. And it's saying that this Pakistani hacker, who goes by the alias of gnostic players told Gizmodo Hacker News and I'm reading a report from Gizmodo, but told Hacker News that on some bout September 2, he was able to access the data belonging to all the players who installed the game on iOS and Android, which would apparently amount to about 218 million users. That's pretty impressive, isn't it? You start hearing numbers like that. So I gotta go right now got a hard break. We gotta go to when we get back. I'm going to finish this up and we're going to talk about some some new features. Let's, let's look at the happier side of things. With the Alexa. You're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN and online at Craig peterson.com. Stick around because we'll be right back.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

 

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