AS HEARD ON NH Today WGIR-AM 610: Tips Staying Safe Online

Welcome,

Craig Peterson here. I was on with Chris Ryan on NH Today. We talked about the Lockdown and the effects it is having on our kids and the amount of time they are spending online.  I shared some tips about staying safe online, for kids, yourself, and our senior parents. Here we go with Chris. 

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit.

- CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Bad guys know this as well. And they've been taking this as an opportunity to get our kids to do things that, as parents, we really don't want them to do.

Hello everybody, Craig Peterson here. I was on this morning on New Hampshire today. I didn't realize it. There are actually got five stations or six stations in the network. It's pretty good.

Chris Ryan. He is a new host here. I don't know that he's permanent. I'm not sure they've found one permanent, yet. He's been doing radio for a lot of years. Pretty good guy. I've been listening to him this morning.

We had a quick chat about what should be going on with our kids and what are they doing online?

Many of us are looking to get them some of these online games and gaming. What should you do to really protect yourself. What's the one thing that you could do that's going to make all of the difference from a security standpoint, whether you are a home user or a business user.

So here we go with Mr. Ryan.

Chris Ryan: [00:01:02] Joined right now on the program by Craig Peterson joins us to discuss what's taking place in regards to technology, as well as, gaming here on the program today.  Your kids, boys, and girls, or anything like mine, the appropriate screen time went from one hour to 12 hours per day during the course of the pandemic. As Craig joins us.

Craig, how are you?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:23] Hey, good morning. There's a whole lot of screen time going on. A lot of bandwidth getting eaten up.

Chris Ryan: [00:01:28] There is. It's been both a blessing and a curse I think for most parents. It's been great that my 10 year has been able to talk with his friends and maintain levels of communication as they have not been able to partake in activities. But most parents have very little idea as to what their kids are doing. They're doing such at a much younger age with kids have tablets. They have the ability to communicate via the Xbox or PlayStation, in addition, to using messenger or other items as well. Parents or grandparents are mostly just in the dark and they don't know what to do about it.

Do you embrace it? Technology is so important. Kids learning how to code and to utilize those skill sets can be extremely beneficial down the road. Many times I think of our parents or grandparents, when they don't understand something. They want to be apprehensive about it.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:19] Well, first of all here, we've got the little gift-giving season coming up. Many people are looking for these video game consoles. The bottom line is pretty much all of them are sold out already. So if you're looking to get someone one of these video game consoles to play online, you might have a very hard time getting them. Many of them are being sold at a substantial premium over even the list price.

When we're talking about these kids and going online and being younger and younger. We actually have a problem starting primarily with generation Z, which is now in their twenties and going all the way down where they just don't understand the reality of the world. Their world is very, very focused on this online world.

Talking with friends, chatting with friends while they are on playing these games and they are ready to share information. In fact, Chris, you or I, we would look at giving away our email address twice or three times, our personal private information. But studies have shown that these younger kids would give away their email address in exchange for a donut.

So, yeah, you're right. We gotta be very careful about what they're doing online and the basic tips of don't share your personal information. Make sure that your home network is relatively safe, that means to keep everything up to date. Have a good firewall. Use multi-factor authentication.  This is a hard one because, man, I don't know what's going to happen to these poor kids because of the lockdown. They want to reach out. They want to chat.  Bottom line, bad guys know this as well and they've been taking this as an opportunity to get our kids to do things as parents we really don't want them to do.

Chris Ryan: [00:04:14] And I think that's across the board. In some cases, I think that I trust kids more with maintaining information and not talking to individuals than I trust my dad to be in cyberspace and exposing himself.

Not exposing himself physically, but exposing his information and things of that nature to various individuals. I think that's a good point and not just for kids, but across the board, as we have moved into a virtual environment. You have individuals in many different business aspects working from home.

I think that we all have to be cognizant of making sure that our information is safe. So what in your view are some of the best ways to do so. Basically cause I think that hackers, as you mentioned, a tremendous knowledge of what's taking place. What's vulnerable and things of that nature. What can we do to protect ourselves in your view?

Craig Peterson: [00:05:04] Well, you mentioned for instance, your father. And I had an instance with my dad who was having problems with his computer and he had gone online. He did some searches and he called a phone number. It turned out it was hackers who had a website up that looked like it was Microsoft support. It wasn't. They got onto his machine with his help. He keeps all of his usernames, passwords, bank account information in a spreadsheet, which is such a no-no. That's what these guys were looking for.

My stepmother called me up almost right away and said, wait a minute, this is what your dad is doing. We had them cut the conversation. We got on his machine, remotely, and removed this malware that was grabbing all of his documents and spreadsheets and everything. It would have been absolutely horrible.

I think that's one of the biggest tips I have for people, besides all of the normal up-to-date and good firewalls is to use multi-factor authentication. Use a password manager. I recommend looking at LastPass is one of them. The other one, the one that I use, and I use for my business is called one password.

Both of those will generate passwords for you for each website. They will store the passwords, highly encrypted. So that it's almost impossible for the bad guys to get access to it. You only have to remember one password and that's the password to this little vault that has been created, and they also provide this multifactor or two-factor authentication.

So that's probably the best tip for the holidays. Do yourself a favor Last Pass and one password, both have free versions. Start putting all of your passwords into that kind of a vault. Have it generate a random password for you and you'll be much, much safer.

Chris Ryan: [00:07:01] Well, Craig, I appreciate your time. Look forward to chatting again soon.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:03] All right. Take care. Chris

Chris Ryan: [00:07:04] Craig Peterson, joining us here on Hampshire today. I am Chris Ryan. Justin McIssac joining across the great state of New Hampshire.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:12] Karen and I spend time this weekend going through some of the coursework. What we should be doing. You probably noticed some changes in the newsletter. I did not get one out. I'm so sorry on Saturday, but it's just been absolutely crazy around here.

we're trying to do some new things for the new year. We'll be starting as soon as we possibly can. Including some of these courses that we've been talking about you. Might've noticed last week in my newsletter, I talked about the new hardening courses.

We're also, by the way, this is something new. We're what's called a Master Managed Security Services Provider. What that means is we are providing security services through these break-fix shops and these managed services providers for their clients. We've been doing this now, effectively for a room six months, maybe a bit longer, and have had just amazing results. Have really helped our partners that are providing security services. we're kind of the man behind the curtain if you will. Because the cybersecurity stuff can just be very, very difficult to do.

We're going to have a newsletter for those people who are following me, and that's going to be a different one than the main one.

If you are interested in this security partner newsletter where we're going to be doing some basic training, but specifically on providing security services for businesses. If you're interested in that, let me know, just email me M [email protected] and I'll get back to you soon.

Take care, everybody, and we'll be talking again real soon.

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