AS HEARD ON NH Today with Jack Heath WGIR-AM 610: Online Shopping and Black Friday Scams and Typosquatting and more

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. Thanksgiving week. of course, you know. Man, I went to the grocery store over the weekend and I have never seen a quite that busy before. Well, I think I have actually, I think about it. It was Thanksgiving last year. Everybody's out shopping everybody saying, "Hey, I shop all the time on the weekend and there's never this busy." So some of us are lying. Right? At least that's what I said to myself. Then I realized, you know what, yeah, I kind of shop all week long give or take. Anyhow, I was on this morning with Jack Heath and we were talking about some of the scams out there. Do you know about typosquatting? Well, that's what we talked about this morning. Here we go with Mr. Jack Heath.

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

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Imposter Retailers Outnumber Legitimate Ones

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Automated Machine Transcript:

Craig Peterson 
Good morning, everybody. Thanksgiving week. of course, you know. Man, I went to the grocery store over the weekend and I have never seen a quite that busy before. Well, I think I have actually, I think about it. It was Thanksgiving last year. Everybody's out shopping everybody saying, "Hey, I shop all the time on the weekend and there's never this busy." So some of us are lying. Right? At least that's what I said to myself. Then I realized, you know what, yeah, I kind of shop all week long give or take. Anyhow, I was on this morning with Jack Heath and we were talking about some of the scams out there. Do you know about typosquatting? Well, that's what we talked about this morning. Here we go with Mr. Jack Heath.

Jack Heath
Craig Peterson with a tech talk update. And hopefully speaking of technology, Craig, people on Thursday, just in some commentary will put down these handheld devices that actually communicate with others in person if they're around family and And turn this thing off all day. Unless you're listening to I Heart Radio the app. Good morning, Craig.

Craig Peterson
Or they could be wondering why would they do that they're going to be shopping. There is a whole lot of stores now that are going to be selling this week, some at some of the lowest prices of the year. So it's not just Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but we're going to be seen and we already are now quite a few different vendors online that you're going to have to be kind of careful of by the way while you're shopping this week, and I learned something new this year to the best deals for airline flights out of the year are expected this not tomorrow, but a week from tomorrow, the Tuesday after Cyber Monday. So if you're planning on flying, particularly after the first of the year, you will see the lowest prices ever come a week from tomorrow. Also the Tuesday after Cyber Monday. But we have a new statistic out right now that was conducted by a company looking at all of these online websites that we shop at. And they found that there are four times more fake retailer sites than real ones out there. What this means is, these fake sites are pretending they are the real big-box retailer. And when you go there, bottom line, you could be in trouble they use them for fishing, etc. And they're using something jack called typos squatting, they found 50,000 websites out there, that if you mistype the name of the retailer, you are going to end up on a site that is frankly trying to steal your information. Check Honey,

Jack Heath
You know what that looks and feels like the one and then you go to order by you know, go to the cart and how do you know it's not it's a bogus site.

Craig Peterson
Well, the best thing to do is to be very careful while you're typing. But the real retailers will have not only a secure site HTTPs. And you can tell that by going up into your menu bar, there usually be a little lock over on the left-hand side that says something like your site information. And it will say the connection is secure. But you want to double-check the certificate and I know who wants to become a computer security expert, right? But look at that certificate, all you have to do is click on it, it'll tell you who issued it, and who it is who is really out there. So a legitimate merchant is going to have a website with a secure certificate, and it is going to be signed by a major significant company. Bottom line jack, where we got to fix this system because it's far too complicated to make sure it is who you really think it is. There is work underway right now to replace what's called the DNS system that we've had for quite a number of years that solves another problem, but created this problem.

Jack Heath
Well, the other thing is, you don't know what you're getting sometimes. In other words, the other thing I've noticed, Craig, which is not exactly what you're describing, but similar, is, you know, how they micro-target us. So like, Oh, just hypothetically, if you're a watch person, and you look at watches, like men's watches, well, that when you go to your news sites on is you'll have all these offerings on the right, or if you're looking for a new winter coat, all of a sudden, you're bombarded with different coats that different companies, so sometimes they'll put a nice looking coat that was a little bit like what you were looking at, and they'll say, you know, today only 40 45% off and you go to that site. And I don't know why I'm not gonna say the name, but it might be you know, might be some kind of like, a tactical advantage is the name of the business. So then you go to tactical advantage and the company, there's nothing about it. There's just a marketing term, there's nothing there but they have the coats the site how to order. And it might just be a marketing kind of thing where you will get a coat in the mail but you have no information about the business. It's not like LL Bean, for example where we've heard of it. You can go online, you get a catalog, you go online, you know, it's LL Bean. It's like some name, like, you know, great adventure and outdoor wear. And it's got a lot of neat, well, good pictures, good prices on outdoor wear. But the check you never heard of the company go to, like, look at it, and it's not there.

Craig Peterson
Yeah, you have to that. It is a really good way to do it. You have to do a little bit of research here. And when we're talking about bait and switch right now, one of the biggest debates in the tech world has to do with you're going to a new location, you're visiting family, you need a place to stay. Many of us have been using sites like Airbnb and there's a number of them out there and there has been a lot of bait and switching going on.  So be very careful that too, what they'll often do is you book a, you know, a house or maybe even just a room on one of these sites. It looks great. It sounds great values pretty good. You know, it's not like the best in the world, which is, by the way, a big giveaway if it's too good to be true, right? And you end up getting them a message from them the day before or they're about saying, Oh, no, the toilet broke, a water line broke, etc, etc. So I'm going to have to move you to this other house, but it's just as nice and you show up and the place is just horrific. 

Jack Heath
That's what happened to Justin, Justin was looking for a place on Long Island for Thanksgiving. That's what happened to him. They just told them that the place he was gonna go to was flooded. So the place that you're gonna like it, it's basically a houseboat. He doesn't know what he's getting into. 

Craig Peterson 
Wow, be careful

Jack Heath
Even though they've already had Thanksgiving in your native Canada you have a great Thanksgiving. All right, thanks jack. Take care guys. Craig Peterson with some tech talk. His show airs Saturday afternoons and of course great tech information and tips. Especially if you are an online buyer like when you go to get something like I don't know, an iPad or something?

Justin McIssac

Oh hell yeah.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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