AS HEARD ON - The Jim Polito Show - WTAG 580 AM: Cybersecurity Pandemic and HIB Visa Fraud - Modern Day Tech Slave Trade

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito.  We discussed the current Cybersecurity Pandemic and Phishing and what happened to Jim Polito, the host, this past week and then hit on travesty to the American worker through the H1B Visa program and how Facebook and other Big Tech is front and center with it. Here we go with Jim.

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

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Jim Polito: [00:00:00] I was afraid to answer the email. Cause I, I said, wow, has this been hacked. Have they been hacked? No, it was a valid email. Then I got some other emails from Google saying somebody used one of your email accounts, so I sent it to Craig. I said Craig help me here.

Craig Peterson: [00:00:21] Good morning, everybody.

Craig Peterson on with Mr. Jim Polito looks like we've picked up another station. That's kinda cool.  W H J J, I think it is down in Rhode Island. Well, Jim picked it up, but I'm along for the ride. So that's kind of fun. We talked a little bit about that this morning. Jim's problem where he got hacked so we went into that.

We also got into H1B visas and how they are hurting badly the US job market, and between you and me, I'm very concerned about what Joe Biden's going to do if he takes office with this whole program. So we got into all of that this morning. And here we go with Mr. Jim Polito.

Jim Polito: [00:01:05] Here he is the man. Every Tuesday at this time he joins us. Boy, he got me out of a jam last week. I am talking about our tech talk guru and good friend, Craig Peterson, Craig say hello to Rhode Island. We are now the network has expanded to W H J J, a landmark and legacy station in Rhode Island.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:33] Hey, good morning, everybody. Man, Rhode Island, of course, Central, Western mass parts of Vermont today. New England tomorrow, The world.

Jim Polito: [00:01:44] Well, I don't know about that. The guy who, kind of, coined that expression, I don't know if I want to be affiliated with him, but, Craig,  just so folks, I can introduce you to Craig Peterson,  in Rhode Island and we don't make this up. Craig Peterson actually wrote code that is still being used on the internet. So unlike Al Gore, he truly did play a role. In inventing the internet.

Now he has his own company and he graces us out of the goodness of his heart, with a great, great visit once a week. And he's got a show on  T A G and  H Y N. That is fantastic on the weekends. But the best thing is that he's here with us and  I'm his shall we say lab experiment because boy, Craig, did you help me out last week? Saved me.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:38] Oh, thanks. You know what Jim what happened to you, happens every day to people. So many people just don't understand some of the things. I look at it as the basics, right?

There's something that's known in expert circles. I'm going to put it this way. Knowing too much and not remembering too to not know this stuff.

I'm so glad to be able to be on every weekend. Talk about this stuff and really explain it in ways that I hope people can understand a little better.

Jim Polito: [00:03:10] Yeah. So let me just tell everybody what happened. I got an email from someone in corporate human resources. Now, remember iHeart is a very big company. We are very local in all of our stations and the iHeart radio app can go from the big, big stuff, like concerts right down to local with us. But here's the thing about getting an email from a company. I'm looking at it saying, is this real? I looked up the person in the directory Oh, okay, that person does work for the company. But it said someone has applied for unemployment. We have something here that you've applied for. I'm like, Oh my God.

Well, first of all, Craig.  My first reaction was, wow, I'm already out. That's it. This is how the company is telling me. Then the other reaction was, I was afraid to answer. Because I said, wow, has this been hacked? Have they been hacked, but no, it was a valid email.

I got some other emails from Google saying somebody used one of your email accounts, so I sent it to Craig. I said Craig help me here.  Lo and behold Craig, it was real. Somebody got my information and applied for unemployment.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:35] We looked up your email addresses and I found them in a whole boatload of breaches of other information out there. I think Jim didn't we find your name, your home address, obviously your email password? Weren't what, all of those in there, as I recall.

Jim Polito: [00:04:53] I think so. Yeah. I mean, somebody had really, somebody really got in there. Um, and you know, uh, I responded to human resources. They were great and right away, they sent me back an email, which was very helpful, Jim.

Here's what you need to do, get to your credit right now and freeze it, all of it, lock it down, you know?

And, uh, luckily so far, I don't think anything, you know, has been an issue. Um, but Craig, we talked about it, Massachusetts. It was an issue. In other states like Rhode Island, it's been an issue.

Um, you see it in the news, they're talking about people, uh, trying to take advantage of the, um, the benefits that came out earlier in relation to COVID and to scam, take someone else's identity and do something with it.

Craig Peterson: [00:05:47] Absolutely, we're calling it now a pandemic. This is a cybersecurity pandemic that's really been triggered by the lockdown, by the fear of COVID trying to understand that. Also of course the big deal with the lockdown is so many people are working from home, look at you, and pop they're at home. Right.

You've got the technology to connect to the radio station. But because of that, now employees are on insecure devices in their homes, utilizing their own networks.  We now have seen this massive pandemic of identities being stolen of all kinds of fraud, not just what we've known for a while called business email compromise, where you get an email and it's trying to trick you.

Into doing something, but it's not necessarily from someone you know.

Now we're seeing email account compromise where the bad guys are taking over an email account, using the information that they have found on the dark web about each one of us. Now you will get a legitimate email that is from someone legitimately in HR.

And in fact, it's really not a legitimate email, but everything about was. They took over HR's email account.

Jim Polito: [00:07:08] Yeah. I mean, the other thing I did is, you know, folks who don't have, you know, access to a lot of other, uh, checks and, you know, um, I called, you know, the best thing to do is, okay, I got an email from this person I called and said, Hey, what's going on here?

So that's always a good backup, but you know, I get so much of that email in accounts, you know, I'll have an, uh, an email come to me, you know? Uh, and then, uh, and then, uh, I've got about one, two, three, well with work and then like three other emails. And it's just because I've had them for so long. I just keep them.

But. Um, they're not as active, but I'll get an email to one of those accounts saying, Hey you need to reset your Amazon password. I was like, this is not the account I set up Amazon with,  like good try guys. This is not the account, but you do worry about some other things. You take a look at it and say,  I don't know for sure.

I'm worried. And a phone call is always a good thing for people to do. And I know you've recommended that in the past too. Unless the person on the other end of the line has an Eastern European accent. Right. And it could just be a coincidence that the woman in HR is from, I don't know, one of the Eastern European nations.

She, she could be Moldovan. Right. you never know, so, that's a good thing. And that's something people have to look out for.

But you know what I want to, I want to really discuss with you, other than bringing the attention of what happened to me, to everybody to be mindful of it. Watch out, somebody may try to get unemployment in your name.

Hey, what's this thing about Facebook hiring foreign workers over US workers, and isn't ole "Zucky" breaking the law by doing this.

Craig Peterson: [00:09:08] This has been a soapbox subject of mine forever. You talked about these people trying to deceive you. My daughter got a voicemail from the IRS.  They called her out of the blue and you're absolutely right. Don't respond to the email by all means. Don't click on the email. Pick up the phone. You did such the right thing.

The Zuck here, this has been one of the things I've been talking about, not specifically with Facebook, but for well over a decade.

We put a program into place to allow immigrants to come to the United States to do specific jobs. So here in New England, we have a lot of people that come to our Ski Hills, for instance, to work in the winters. Many of them are from in fact  Eastern European countries and they come here, they get exposure to the US and there we're able to bring those workers in because we can't find enough. People to work here on some of the ski Hills with these seasonal jobs, people want permanent jobs and I can understand that sort of thing. So that made a lot of sense.

Congress decided, Hey, you know what? We need tech workers because it happened forbid we just don't have enough tech workers in the US. Even though right now, there are many of US that are out of work and have been for ages.

So here's what's happened just on Thursday less than a week ago, the Department of Justice sued Facebook because apparently what they have been doing is they've been bringing in foreign workers to work in the US.

You say, wait a minute, Craig is isn't it people looking for work and the answer to that is yes.

And they might even want one of these jobs. Jim, did you see the average salary of more than $156,000 a year?

Jim Polito: [00:11:02] That's what they say is a good job at a good wage.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:05] Yeah, exactly. So what Facebook apparently has been doing, and this is the allegation in the suit is they've been advertising these positions as being open, which they're required to do under the law. Let's Americans know about the jobs and what the qualifications are, and then they can apply.

Well, apparently what they've been doing is advertising the jobs in little local newspapers that no one reads and looking at the statistics, the job between July 2018 and April 2019. Okay. 81% of these 1100 jobs, 81% did not receive a single applicant while another 18% received just one applicant such add that up 81 plus 18%. Oh my gosh. 99% of the jobs didn't get applicants.

So my gosh, we've got to go overseas to find people to work here.

Jim Polito: [00:12:05] That is that's so sleazy.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:09] Isn't that something. Well, yeah, the deal Jay said also earlier in 2018, Facebook advertised 22 openings for art director jobs and they had more than 2,600 applications for those jobs.

Okay. So obviously if they advertise in the right place, maybe even on their own platform, they get applications.

Jim Polito: [00:12:34] You know, I love that. So what you're saying is today, I need to pick up a copy of the penny saver if it still exists or the want ad advertiser and all those other things, uh, You know, like the automobile, uh, and boat and recreational vehicle one, you know, at the, at the convenience store, I got to grab one of those and all of a sudden I'll say, Oh, you know, what's open the position for the chief financial officer at Facebook.

I'm going to apply.

Uh,

Craig Peterson: [00:13:04] Make sure you go to Bath, Maine to pick that one up. Right.

Jim Polito: [00:13:07] I know, right, right. Our good friend, Craig Peterson, tech talk guru. Now listen, you can get him on WTAG and W H Y N, I believe Sundays at 11:00 AM. Um, and you can listen to my Rhode Island friends with the iHeart radio app, and then Craig, if people want to get in touch with you, how do they do it?

Craig Peterson: [00:13:31] Well, if you go to Craig peterson.com, you'll find lots of great information there.

I'm going to start a course on hardening windows. After the first of the year, we're going to get back to the basics. So we'll be doing some free webinars and other things, and you want to know about it. So the best way to learn about this is just going to Craig peterson.com and you'll see at the bottom of the page that you can subscribe, they'll get my newsletter.

Hey, I'm not some marketer out there hammering you all of the time. I just don't do that. I want to get the information out so you can sign up right there. You'll get my show notes and you'll find out about all of these pieces of training.

Jim Polito: [00:14:09] All right. Thank you so much, sir. And we'll catch up with you next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:14:14] All right. Take care of Jim.

Yes, it's true. I really am going to be doing the hardening windows course after the first of the year, we've got it all laid out. Karen and I have been working hard on that and making sure it's all in place. So keep an eye out for that. I had a lot of responses I can have casually mentioned it in a PS in my email this weekend.

And I got a lot of responses. I was really, really surprised. I anyhow, that's that?

And we'll be back in tomorrow. With a W G A N up there in Maine. We're talking to Mainers. All right guys, take care. Bye-bye.

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