AS HEARD ON NH Today with Jack Heath WGIR-AM 610: Warnings on Smart TVs and Facial Recognition and more

Good morning, everybody.  The Christmas Holiday season is underway and it comes with a couple of warnings.  Today I discussed a couple of them with Alicia Preston, who filled in for Jack Heath and Justin McIssac.  Here we go.  

I will be doing some Facebook Lives during the holiday season, so keep an eye out.

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

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Related articles:

The Convenience of Facial Recognition is not All It's Cracked up to be

Smart TVs, Security, and the FBI

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Automated Machine Transcript:

Craig
Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I had a fun time this morning, Alicia Preston, and I actually she has a married name, but she still goes by Alicia Preston. We've been on TV together before she was a prominent TV host for a long time. And now she is doing other things. But this morning, Alicia was sitting in for Jackie. And he Jeff, she and I had a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun talking a little bit about some of the technology and Justin McIsaac, of course, he jumped in. If that names familiar, and what reminded me of that when I said he jumped in, You might understand because Justin used to be a professional wrestler, which is funny. Very, very, very, very left-wing guy, but Great guy, you can discuss with him, right? He's not one of these people that just totally blocked you out. It's like the old days where you could have a political discussion. Anyways, we talked about a couple of tech things, what's going on new warnings from the FBI and security at the airports and a couple of others. It was a fun morning. I hope everything's going well with you guys. Take care. Here we go with Alicia.

Alicia Preston
Joining us. Now we have Craig Peterson. He is going to help us with some tech talk this morning, Craig, how are you?

Craig Peterson
Hey, good morning, Alicia. I am doing really, well.

Alicia Preston
So there's some surprising stuff in the news where that I would call creepy. It concerns some facial recognition programs at a company. What is up with this?

Craig Peterson
Yeah, there's so much going on right now. When you start looking into all of the details behind it, it gets frankly, even scarier. Right now, facial recognition is in our kind of all over the place. We know the Department of Homeland Security is, but these facial recognition cameras in at some of the airports, in fact, right at the gate. So far they've arrested them probably about 12,000. People who, when they approach the gate, the DHS Homeland Security goes ahead and double-checks to see if the facial recognition data that they have on file for them matches who is approaching the gate, right. In other words, it makes sure you are who you say you are, while those here illegally and previously arrested get stopped at those gates. But we're seeing that more and more of a lot of the more prominent buildings in Boston and New York City require you to have an idea of paths of some sort that you might swipe for instance, when you open when you go into that building, a lot of businesses have those types of cards to keep safe. Now they're moving more and more towards Hey. We'll give you the option here that you can use facial recognition. So, they'll take a picture of your face, and when you approach that little turnstile, the computer recognizes you and just let you go through. The problem with this type of biometric data, Alicia, mainly when we're talking about our faces and has to do with data theft. You know you can change your password when it gets stolen. You cannot change your face. And that gets to be such a huge, huge problem, I think for everybody.

Alicia Preston
Well, with this facial recognition, you know, this seems that 20 years ago would have been a futuristic movie we all would have opposed.

Craig Peterson
I was going to say there was a movie about this with Nicolas Cage and John Travolta called Face Off.

Justin McIssac
That could change your face, right, Craig?

Alicia Preston
That was a scary, scary movie.

Craig Peterson
Scary, back in the day, and now we've got the FBI coming out guys. The FBI is warning about that smart TV you bought on Black Friday. What they're saying now is that in these new Smart TVs, security is almost non-existent. Now on my show on Saturday, I was talking about what's happening compared t iPhones. For instance, like the most popular iPhone out there by Samsung to an apple, I mean iPhone, I mean, Android phone to an iPhone. And what we're finding now is that the Android phones are coming pre-shipped with about 120 backdoors installed ways for hackers to get in not backdoors is not quite the right term, but methods for hackers to get right in right when you buy it right when it's new. And Samsung takes about five to six months to provide updates on the latest phone attempts on has security updates. And then on top of it, they only support the phone for two years. It's crazy. And the security is so bad in Android versus Apple, where it's available the next day after they released the fixes. You know, it's just crazy. Most Android phones don't even get security updates. When was the last time you updated the software on your internet-connected smart TV? These TVs have built-in cameras that watch you recognizing the faces of the people in the room and identifies that you're looking at the TV or not. These units come with a full Android computer onboard, and because of that, they act as launchpads to attack everything in our home network. So the FBI came out and said, Hey guys, be very, very, very careful because so many people using Netflix using Hulu, other streaming devices. And these smart TVs are not getting security updates or even worse than Android phones.

Alicia Preston
Well, I do not have a smart TV. I don't have an Alexa. Heck, I don't even have an easy pass because all this creeps me out.

Craig Peterson
Justin, that's true. But the smart TVs in the cameras Craig is when I was watching the Patriots yesterday, my TV said to me, Justin, do you need that seventh beer and I said what?

Justin McIssac
Stop judging me.

Craig Peterson
At least the TV should bring you the beer right.

Alicia Preston
Craig, thanks for joining us with your tech talk. Good stuff.

Craig Peterson
Take care, guys. Have a good day.

Alicia Preston
Matt Mayberry still in the house.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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