When You should use VPNs and when you shouldn't and more on Tech Talk With Craig Peterson today on Maine's WGAN Saturday Show [10-12-19]

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We are continuing our discussion on VPNs and VPN usage.  Be sure to listen in.

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

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Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

Craig 0:05
Hi, everybody, welcome back, Craig Peterson here on WGAN am and FM new FM frequency. By the way, I am so glad to be here you hear me every Wednesday morning as well during drive time. With canon matters. We discuss some of these topics, the latest in technology and security and stuff. I'm on with Ken and Matt, during their morning show at about 738 8am every Wednesday, so I invite you to join me there. I included as part of my security summer cheat sheets, a whole sheet on VPN. And it told you what you need to know what changed to do help you save time. I also if you're on my email list, you would have gotten this about three weeks ago, I had a listener who had asked some great questions about VPN. And I wrote up a big response to him and thought, you know, since VPN questions are my number one question I get from listeners lately, right? I wrote up a big response kind of explaining it. What, why should you have a VPN? When Shouldn't you have a VPN? What kind should you use? How come some of them are so cheap, and some of them are much more expensive. So I went through all that, and I wrote a big email, I sent it out. So you should have received that if you're on my email list. And now, if you're not on my list, make sure you get on it. Because I'm sending out stuff like this every week, sometimes a couple of times a week stuff that's really useful to you, as a home user, and particularly as a business user. Okay, so some of the business advice that I give is really applicable as well to home users. So you should have a look at that. But it's, you know, again, take it all with a grain of salt, because everybody has a different situation. But at least you're going to have awareness of what to do and how to do it. So to sign up, the easiest thing to do is just go to Craig peterson.com. Right there on the homepage, there's a sign up. Now, this week, as you heard in the last hour, I have a special report, a 10 page special report, that's going to help you save time when it comes to this whole password issue. There is no charge for this stuff, guys. And it's phenomenal stuff. What I'm giving you is stuff that I charge for or will charge for, and I'm giving it to you for free. Okay, so that's a very big deal. And I'm not going to harass you, I'm not one of these internet marketers who's going to send you two emails a day for the rest of your life. Okay, when I do have things these, like the security summer, which was 100%, free 28 different cheat sheets, over 100 pages of information, well give it to you all for free. Okay, but the only way you find out about some of this stuff, and the only way you get it, then you get the clickable links to get it right away as if you're on my list. So this VPN thing went out to people on my list, they signed up on my homepage. And you know, I love it. I love the feedback that I've gotten from it. And if you would like a copy of what I wrote about the VPN, send me a quick email just me me at Craig peterson.com. And what I might try and do is tidy this up, pull all the VPN information into one document, and then make it available for for you guys, right, just like I have this password sheet. But we'll see what we have what we have for you guys next week, because we'll have something else for you listeners. So let's give a really quick rundown then, on what this is all about. I mentioned in the last segment about the National Security Agency issuing advisories on some of the enterprise, some of the commercial products that we're using for VPN. So if your business, you probably have these now, I didn't mention some of the other guys that weren't in this NSA release, like Sonic wall and others. But all of them require software updates. And many of them require manual intervention on your part to do the software updates.

So what you might have to do, if you're using a an inexpensive Wi Fi router, or little inexpensive firewall, or even some of these more expensive ones from companies I don't like you're going to have to go to their website, you're going to probably just do a search online. Now whether you use duck, duck go or you use Google or Bing, whatever, do a search for your the maker of your device, the model number of your device, which should be on the bottom or the back of the device, and then from firmware, and then download. So those are the words you want to use when you're doing the search for this stuff. So you will hopefully be able to find a download that you can use. Now normally, you're going to have to download it to your computer. Some of them require windows, they do not work on a Mac. Others of them are just fine on a Mac or finding another computers as well. But find out what you need the software and put it on your computer, you're going to have to follow the instructions from the manufacturer, many times you're going to have to connect the device directly to your computer. So you're going to have to get a USB cable of some sort, plug it into your wireless router or you know your firewall, whatever it is, plug it into your computer, and then run the special software that you got from the manufacturer. And then it will update the firmware on the device. Now a slight word of warning. Bottom line, sometimes these things fail. And hopefully you can do a hard reset on the device. So if it fails and the device isn't working anymore, you're going to want to look up a hard reset. But the odds of it failing compared with the odds of it being hacked mean that you really need to try and do an update on these things. Okay, so take the time do the update. Sometimes you don't have to hook it up by USB, sometimes it will do it over the network. In some cases, you log on to the administrative console of the device. And in many cases, it's just you know, again, on the low end side, you're going to connect to the network, your computer's on with a dot one at the end. So usually that's 192 dot 168 dot zero dot one. So you're going to connect to that, and you'll be off and running, you'll follow the instructions. Once you log in, hopefully you've changed your business password on your Wi Fi or your router or your firewall. Because the default passwords are used for hacking all of the time, make sure you have the default, the remote login disabled, you turn off some of the and there's a whole bunch of stuff, right and it's all there and that VPN cheat sheet. So make sure you have that cheat sheet and follow along. Now the VPN services are is the other thing I want to talk about. And, and they are very prevalent, you'll find them basically all over the place. But there are pros and cons to using these VPN services. So let me just explain briefly why you would want to use a VPN. If you are connecting to a public Wi Fi network, you are usually better off using a VPN when you do that. Now what does the VPN do? a VPN takes all of the data that's coming from your computer. It encrypts it, and it sends it to a remote location. So if you're going to Google or Facebook or your company's website, doesn't matter, it all goes to this one remote location in that remote location is typically controlled by the company that is selling you the VPN. Now, the reason you want to do this, if you're on a public Wi Fi is at the very least, that Wi Fi, and the other people that are on that same Wi Fi network cannot see what you're doing. They can't see where you're going. They can't see what you're doing. Because all of

your data is going through this one remote access point. The negative on all of that is all of your data is going through that one remote access point. And that can be a very negative thing. What are you trying to do with that VPN? That's the really big question here. Bottom line? Are you trying to protect your data from prying eyes? At that coffee shop? At the airport on the plane? Wherever you are? Is that what you're trying to do? Or are you trying to have real protection for your data? So we'll talk about that when we get back. What are the differences? What are your options? How can you use VPN? How should you use VPN? All right, so stick around because we will be right back we're going to talk about this VPN thing we're talking about Microsoft's latest warning. And we have a couple of fun things about autonomous vehicles coming up here. You're gonna love this. You're listening to Craig Peterson and WGAN and online at Craig Peterson. com stick around. We'll be right back.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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