AS HEARD ON - The Jim Polito Show - WTAG 580 AM: Apps, tracking, selling info and election security

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning and as you know today is Primary Day in New Hampshire it is the Big Day for our State Sport - Politics.  That means it is the day to address voter manipulation, voter fraud, low tech solutions and why apps are not the answer. So, here we go with Mr. Polito.

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

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig
You've got this free little cute little game, isn't this fun to play? Well, that game is tracking you everywhere you're going. They sell that information to Marketers. Now the Department of Homeland Security is even buying that data of where you are which apps you're using. Just because you have these apps installed on your phone.

Craig
Good morning, Craig Peterson, here. That's me with Danny, and it was pretty much all about voting technologies, the new stuff that's coming out the problems we have right now. And my predictions for not just this election, but frankly for the next two or three presidential cycles.

Danny
Yes, it is Tuesday. 840 You know what time that is? It is time for tech talk guru Craig Peterson. Hi Craig.

Craig
Hey, good morning, Danny.

Craig
I've got a little clarification about info from one of your former guests this morning. An earlier guest, I should say this morning. He was talking quite rightly by the about all of these apps and what's been in the news, in fact, just this week about apps and how dangerous they can be how they've been tracking, Google just removed a whole bunch of extensions from the Google Chrome Store. I want to go into slightly more detail if you want it to be secure. Don't download an app you don't need.
Another thing I've said forever, Danny, is that you should go through your phone, at least every month, and delete apps you're not using. You know, most of us have a lot of apps. I think the last stat I SAW said that about 95% of the apps that we've downloaded only get used once. It's like we're never using them. Delete them off of your phone, off of your tablet, whatever it is you have. I want to add one more thing from a safety standpoint. Even if you are using an app fairly regularly, go ahead and delete it anyway, and then reinstall it. When you reinstall it now, it's going to ask for permission. You're going to be able to have a closer look at that app that again. It may be one you use every day like Google Maps. Believe that when you reinstall it and pay close attention to the permissions that it wants to access. By the way, just because it doesn't ask for permission to share some of your information doesn't mean it's not going to, all right. But as a general rule, those permissions are correct. It's more confusing on Android than it is iOS. Android kind of pushes you on to you the decision about whether or not you should be installing that app. On the iOS side, it's a lot more straightforward than Apple's a little bit better about it. He had some super points. But I go one step further. Just delete the silly things, mainly if you're not using them, as you mentioned, bringing up the app and permitting it.

Danny
So what kind of permission should people be looking for Craig to allow it not to?

Craig
Yeah, there you go. Well, let's have a look at the most costly divorce in history, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago. Right. So you have Bezos. Yeah, exactly. Billions of dollars in a divorce settlement. How did that all start? Well, that started because he was using WhatsApp, which is an app that is now part of Facebook's family. What WhatsApp had done here is accepted a video, and Jeff Bezos had allowed WhatsApp access to his photos and his videos. Even though you might think, oh, what's the harm and giving it access to my pictures or videos, maybe you're not going to get the virus the Jeff Besos got, but the app has access to your photos, your videos or other things. If there's a bug in the app, if there's something malicious going on, you're going to lose that data. What should you give an app permission to do? That? I think one of the worse things you can do is to permit access to know your location. That data is used and sold. You know, you've got this free little cute little game. Isn't this fun to play? And that game is tracking you everywhere you're going it's been sold to Marketers. Now the Department of Homeland Security is even buying that data of where you are which apps you're using, just because you have these apps installed on your phone. In answer directly to your question, do not give them access to your location unless you absolutely want to. I'm even reluctant to give Google Maps access to my location. Right? But slightly paranoid on that front. As far as photos and videos and things, again, just don't give them access. I think we're at the point now, where the bottom line is, you should only have a half a dozen apps on your phone on your tablet. And they should be apps from the big guys. You know Apple's apps, Microsoft apps, Google's apps, they are moderately trustworthy. And pretty much everything else. I think you shouldn't say bye-bye to them. ya know,

Danny
Ya know, that's kind of it sounds like a good plan. We are talking with Tech Talk Guru Craig Peterson, all about apps, and the security behind apps and then allowing permissions and them using your data to sell, and basically, you become the client. Correct. So these free apps not necessarily free, buddy.

Craig
No, they're not. And here's another trick, right? If you want to use something, and the app is available, most of the time, there's a website you can go to instead. So, for instance, you might download The let's use Iheart as an example. All right, so IHeart Radio has an app. I use it all the time, right? I'm, I listened to it to listen to my favorite radio shows listen to the gym in the morning. Iheart also has a website that you can visit. Okay, so rather than having the app, just use the browser that comes with your phone, use Safari, which is a good browser on iOS, use one of the Firefox browsers from Mozilla, those are all very good. If someone's twisting your arm with a gun to your head, use Google Chrome. Use the browser to get the data you want to you can stream music from your browser, you can listen to it hard from your browser, you can do all of the reading of news that you might want to do from your browser and avoid the cute apps. Aren't they wonderful? Aren't they fun? But you know what? There are so many Very few apps that can be classified as safe, that it's just not worth it.

Danny
Speaking of Google Chrome, speaking of extensions, speaking of people, basically using your uploading your private information, the Google Chrome extension, Craig. There were some issues there aren't there.

Craig
Yeah, absolutely. Now I've got some tutorials coming out starting next week, and about some extensions that you might want to use, and they will improve your browsing experience will improve your security, etc. What I think they're talking about here is a problem, Danny, where 500 Chrome extensions, Google Chrome extensions, were identified as secretly uploading people's data, millions of times. These things get downloaded. It's incredible what's happened, more than 1.7 million installations. So again, I still know people who are downloading browser bar extensions for Google Chrome for all of their different browsers, right. And it's a little browser bar extension that gives you a feature to search quickly or watch the stock market, etc. Those are the evilest things and prone to guys. Don't install, never install these little browser extensions that are just going to show you one or two things, because so many of them are sketchy. Many are fraudulent. Some of them are advertising as a service. Some of them will automatically, just from your browser, be clicking on ads on other websites you are not even visiting. Yes, they can click on an advertisement on a site you're not visiting just to increase their revenue. The estimate is that 40 to 60% of all paid advertising Non the internet pay per click advertising 20 60% of that is fraudulent. It's these. Yeah, these extensions, Danny, that we're installing that is supposedly giving us some sort of advantage or some neat little thing. Don't install those. Make sure if you're on my email list, you'll find out about this next week. But make sure you are on that list, which is just a Craig Peterson dot com. You can attend these tutorials for free. I'm not selling anything, right. It's all about the extensions that are going to make you safe. Not these 500 identified as making you less safe. You know what, Danny, some of them are even doing Bitcoin mining using your computer and slowing down your computer. They're making your browsing experience horrible because it's so slow. Things are happening in the background that you don't know are being done. They're using your electricity. We have some of the highest electric rates in the nation here in the northeast. And it's all for their benefit and gain and nothing for you. I'm glad you brought it up. Danny, don't install an extension unless you have to. It's kind of like the app thing.

Danny
Yeah, we try to keep yourself as safe as possible. But something you have to do is make sure it's something that isn't going to come and backfire on you ultimately. Because we are talking with our tech expert Craig Peterson. Craig, we only have a few minutes left. But the one story I did want to get into here, the mobile voting app. Who would have thought this is ever a good idea?

Craig
heard off and on about what's going to happen Saturday in Nevada with their caucuses. They paid I think it was $60,000 to the same company that completely messed up the Iowa caucuses and they're saying yeah, we're going to do it. No, we're not going to do it. You're going to do it with the latest I heard yesterday was there not going to do it again. But there is an app called a vote to VOA t z. And this is something that supposedly allows you to vote from home vote from overseas. They've been trying to sell this to the military, for our military personnel stationed overseas. And this is crazy. The election is promoting its use of blockchain technology, which is like a vast buzzword nowadays. And people associate blockchain technology with absolutely safe, nothing could go wrong. They ignore the man behind the curtain. It is not secure. There are four states right now that are still planning on using this votes app that is being used in West Virginia. And it has some of the most basic security flaws in it. It allows other people to Steve votes intercept votes change votes, as they're being transmitted from the mobile phones to the company's voting server. If you can This is absolutely crazy. MIT put together a research paper that was released last Thursday. We're not there yet. Don't use these things. You know, the only thing that's really safe is a pencil or maybe a felt tip pen. Because you can't hack, a felt tip pen and a piece of paper. Right, much harder to do, obviously, this imbalance studying before, but you can do it on a wholesale basis like you can with some of these voting apps.

Danny
Yeah, what's this one right here? Just say someone to be able just to change votes like that. It seems as though the security and some of the features and noted have a voting type app. They have far away from Craig.

Craig
Oh, yeah, end up partner of Homeland Security's warning against it New York Times, even covered on it. They were the first ones to report this research out of MIT. We're going to see a lot of problems of voting over the next few cycles, maybe ten plus years, frankly, as you know, You know, the idiocy tends to tie down in the money, right? Who owns the company, for instance, with the backhoe debacle that happened overnight Iowa, the disaster that was going to happen this weekend in Nevada and still may have been that company that made that software to tally the votes was owned and operated by Hillary Clinton staffers. Okay. So, yeah, accurately. And now the democratic Democratic Party says, Oh, it's great. We know you, Hey, buddy. Yeah, we're going to do it for you, right? Until we can get rid of this phony crony capitalism stuff, which exists all over the place, and we make real decisions. This voting stuff just isn't going to work. Right. And you know, Danny, I hold a zero trust. The government's going to be able to get this right. But you know, another five to 10 years, I think, maybe we will have a reasonably smooth roll road ahead of us. There's a $10 million funding project that came out of the Department of Defense to make an unhackable voting system. So I got my fingers crossed because I know these guys are on the right track.

Danny
Well, I'm sure when they come up with something, you'll have a forest Craig Craig is always some great stuff, unfortunately, to get to everything. If somebody wants to hear more, how do they do so?

Craig
Well, you can go to Craig Peterson, dot com or they can text Danny, to me at 855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553.

Danny
As always, data rates do apply. Craig, thank you so much for the time. We'll talk to you next week.

Craig
Take care, Danny, bye-bye.

Danny
It's Craig, always with some great stuff can be scary. But Craig gets us through it. As he said, watch out for your extensions. Watch out for the app to clean up the apps, and yeah, what's the make you think that Hillary Clinton can get a voting app? Right? But yeah, our servers were secured in New York. Yeah, okay. Everyone believes that one. Anyways, I'll take one last time out. Well.

Craig 
We've been working on this now for six weeks, eight weeks, we've got some fantastic free tutorials coming up. Frankly, these are going to improve your security posture. By what at least 90%. I'm serious about that when you are online, so it's going to help with security transformation plus a course and everything else. So free stuff, and some paid material, but you are going to love it all. I guarantee it. I've never been so excited about something before. Anyhow, keep an eye out. Make sure you're signed up. Craig Peterson, dot com slash subscribe. We'll be back tomorrow. Bye-bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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