AS HEARD ON - The Jim Polito Show - WTAG 580 AM: Typosquatting, Imposter Websites, SSL Certificates and Black Friday Scams

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning and we discussed a new technology fraud that you need to be aware of and also some other dangers that you may find yourself exposed to this holiday season. So, here we go with Mr. Polito.

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

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Related articles:

Hand in Hand On Black Friday --- Shopping and Privacy

Imposter Retailers Outnumber Legitimate Ones

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson
Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I had a lot of fun this morning with Mr. Polito. It's nice having somebody who's quick on the draw on the other side and get to figure out why. Or I know why there's a delay sometimes between me speaking and him speaking. But their equipment isn't compatible with my equipment. And so we're going to figure that out. So we've got a note with the engineers over the radio stations to after the first of the year to see if we can't figure out a better way to get me chatting with, Jim but you are going to like it. We had a lot of fun anyway, and we talked about the fake retailer sites. I'm going into quite a bit of detail with them, too. I had a little walk along this morning with Mr. Jim Polito. Hey, Happy Thanksgiving to everybody. Hope you are going to have a great time we've as always we invite a friend over who doesn't have local family and maybe if you are a friend like that, you will be able to enjoy it with another family or with your own or Even by yourself but you know, my heart goes out to everybody. Take care of everybody and here we go with Jim Polito

Jim Polito
Here he is the man the myth, the legend. I'm talking about our good friend and thanksgiving Tech Talk Guru, Craig Peterson let me be the first sir to say I want to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving

Jim Polito
Happy late Thanksgiving, I appreciate that sir. I

Craig Peterson
 I thought you were gonna say Jim you missed the Canadian Thanksgiving or you know you did you said Happy Thanksgiving that that

Jim Polito
When is the Canadain Thanksgiving? I always forget.

Craig Peterson
It's about a month earlier. You know, because in Canada, we live in Igloos. So it is in October, you know.

Jim Polito 
I love that. But Thanksgiving in Canada is more of a is a recognition of the harvest and not a historical event, right?

Craig Peterson
That's absolutely true. It has nothing to do with the Commonwealth and people starving to death. And then that celebration, celebration of the harvest, like so many of them are worldwide. Well, as you mentioned earlier on your show, a lot of cultures have things and that's what it is in Canada as well.

Jim Polito 
Yeah. And you know, the thing is, it's more likely that the Thanksgiving in Plymouth, the first which as we know it was Plymouth, not Jamestown, because Plymouth we actually have a document to prove it was the first but it was likely how late September early October also, just like the Canadian would be right about now you wouldn't be having any harvest festival down in Plymouth.

Craig Peterson 
No, no, you probably wouldn't. Yeah, it's harvest time for sure. I got all the honey from my bees. I got about 100 pounds of honey this year. That's all done. They were really productive.

Jim Polito 
Yeah, pretty earthy-crunchy for a for a guy who's a tech talk guru.

Craig Peterson 
Yeah, exactly. It is. You know, I've got chickens and we still have horses, cats, and dogs. We've got rescue Great Dane here. Wow.

Jim Polito 
I love Great Danes. Oh, they're so nice. And they keep the revenuers away.

Craig Peterson
They do. 

Jim Polito 
You and Burt Ward you know, Robin from the old Batman series and his wife. They do Great Dane rescue because people get a Great Dane and then realize, Hey, this is like having a pony.

Craig Peterson 
We've had those small horses too and they are actually horses not ponies. We've had for four Dane rescues and it's kind of a shame. But you're right, a lot of people can handle them. But it is not the kind of dog that you can't train. You have to train them. There is no option. But to train them.

Jim Polito 
Yeah, you have to train because they can do whatever they want, but they are very gentle and loving dogs.

Craig Peterson
You know, our Great Dane, well she identifies as a Chihuahua.

Jim Polito 
That means jumping up in Craig's lap.

Craig Peterson 
Yeah. She stands there with these sad eyes. You know, her eyes say there's room on that couch and I could fit just because it's made for three people and there are three people on it already doesn't mean a little Chihuahua. Like me can fit.

Jim Polito
They're just so big. They are just so powerful. That's right. Well, there we go. This Thanksgiving we've had our animal rescue pitch. Now, let's get into this. We need to talk about Black Friday scams from a tech perspective because that's what folks are looking forward and thinking about right now.

Craig Peterson 
Oh, and this year is worse than most well, almost any other one prior, frankly. We've had I think it's first off I think the first point is something called typosquatting domains. Now, do you know what typo-squatting is? We all make typing errors especially on our smart devices, right? Make them all the time. Yes, a typing mistake or you know, you're thinking about something else while you're typing until you typed in something else. My wife was trying to go to a Microsoft Office site the other day and she kept typing orifice. You know, sticking in an "R" in there. And you know, we do this all the time. So Wow, Right now a company called the Venafi went and they grabbed the names of the biggest retailers that they could find online. And basically, they found them all. But, here's what they found their statistics, they found that there were almost 25,000 authentic retail sites online. At least think about that number for a minute. You compare that to five or 10 years ago. 20,000 authentic retail sites online. Yeah. But they found 110 thousand fake sites that looked like the retail site. So you know, 20,000 to 110,000, over four times as many fake sites that look legitimate retail sites, legitimate retail sites that are out there, and they also found 15,000 paid pal certificates issued in 20. 17 first I choose for fishing. So we've gone from about, you know, 15,000 in 2017 of the PayPal ones to now 110,000. So rule number one while you're shopping, this whole holiday season is all about certificates. Now, you have to be good to figure this out. And maybe what I should do is put together a little paper and I'll send it out to everybody that wants it. That explains it. But if you go on if you're sitting in front of your computer right now, Jim, I know you are Yep. And you go to the URL bar, that's the bar word has the website address. And on the left side, it usually has a little lock icon. And if you hover over that, it says View site information. Yeah, click on that. Yeah. It will come up and say the connection is secure. That Is test number one. Yeah, that's not the ultimate test. Okay. In a little bit, you'll see it says the certificate is valid.

Jim Polito
I'm on Facebook and it says certificate says valid.

Craig Peterson
All right, and it'll tell you if you click on down below where it says View certificate. If you click on that, it'll tell you who the issuer is.

Jim Polito
certificate information. Details Wait a minute. The certificate is intended for the following purposes. issued to Facebook com. It is issued in California.

Craig Peterson
They are one of the biggest and most legitimate and the fact it says it was issued to facebook.com. Okay. That's what you want to look for Jim, right. And what that tells you is they, they went to the trouble to verify that this really was Facebook. So these more expensive certificates like all of these retail sites likely to have these more expensive certificates, they go to the trouble to verify. So they check with the state to make sure that the company's properly registered, who the appropriate people are within the company to can make these decisions and buying the company. And then they'll issue their certificate. So what you're looking at is a legitimate certificate for Facebook.

Jim Polito 
Got it? Interesting. So yeah, like if you go to amazon.com, you know, yeah, you know, or Amazon, whatever, you missed it, and then they have a site that mimics the other side. That makes sense. You got to go over there and make sure all this isn't now, just sites like that. Get certificates. Can it can a site if I put up Amazon, Amazon com? And then I have a site that looks an awful lot like Amazon, can I get a certificate? Or will they say not a chance, buddy?

Craig Peterson
You can. There is the technology out there. I sometimes use these guys to do it. And the whole idea is to make it so that all of the data on the internet is encrypted. There's a site or certificate issued by Let's Encrypt. So if you go to my website, for instance, so if you were to go right now to Craig peterson.com. Yep, you'll see I'm Craig peterson.com. On the left, it's got the little lock, and you can click on that lock and it's going to come up with a connection is secure. If you look at the certificate, You'll see that it's issued by Let's Encrypt. Yeah. Okay. It doesn't have much information about me. It doesn't have the company name who would tissue to or anything else. So in this case, I could get a certificate for amazom.com. Let's encrypt the letters. So this is where it starts getting really confusing to people. Okay? You notice the details on my site are different than they were on Facebook. My site hasn't been authenticated. Is it really Craig Peterson or someone else. All they've done now is it made it so that if you're browsing on my website, it is encrypted. So people can't spy on you when you're on my website. This is a technology problem that we're actually working on for the internet right now. And we've got a few potential solutions impact. It's funny you brought it up because this week, finally Microsoft said, that they may, eventually, absolutely are going to next week, or by 2030.  They sre going to start to use those very solid, very good newer standards that are out there. But this is one of the big weaknesses of the internet. And unfortunately, Black Friday, you're going to hit this one. So what to do here, let's really correct it only, we only got like a minute left here. And all of this stuff is up on my website. Craig Peterson dot com.  If any website is insisting that you download their application run away! Everybody has an app and frankly, most apps can be a little dangerous, okay? If they keep pressuring you for the app, forget about it. If the website has a lot of advertising on it, especially if it's not for their stuff, be leery. If you're on a website, you went to Amazon. And it was not just advertising Amazon stuff, but was advertising a whole bunch of other stuff. That's a really big giveaway. As always, if the price is too good to be true, it's a true bait and switch a very big thing this time of year. And be careful with you're going to one of these sites to rent a house for the holidays. Yeah, careful of bait and switch. There are some studies out there and Airbnb has been trying to crack down. But studies showing the better than 20% on some of these sites of the listings are fake. So you sign up for a house and what will happen is like the day before, you'll get an email from the owner of the house or the just a room even saying we had a flood we had a pipe break and toilet breaks, etc. I'm going to move you to another house. It's just as nice you're going along. 

Jim Polito
Okay. This is all good stuff. Now, if people text My name to this number

Craig Peterson
855-385-2553. That's 855-385-5553 standard

Jim Polito
Standard data and tax rates apply and Craig Peterson will provide you with this information. He'll provide you weekly with this information and won't bother you and you will be ahead of the curve. Craig, I can't thank you enough. Happy belated Canadian Thanksgiving. Happy American Thanksgiving. And we look forward to talking with you next week.

Craig Peterson 14:42
All right, and we can discuss when Canadian Christmas is on the same day.  

Jim Polito 
Festivous is the 23rd. Thanks, Craig. Bye-bye. All right, we're gonna let Billy get on board with whoo socks. 

Craig Peterson
Hey again. My friends, Happy Thanksgiving and I'll be on tomorrow. I expect I'll be on WGAN and up in Maine tomorrow too. So I'll be back then. Take care. Bye-bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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