AS HEARD ON: WGAN Mornings News with Matt Gagnon: Cloud Jacking, Passwords, Data Aggregators and the Government

Good morning everybody! 

I was on WGAN this morning with Matt Gagnon and started this morning talking about Cloud Jacking what it is and how it is done.  Then we discussed how to prevent it and that is by having good strong passwords that are different for each site you visit.  We discussed password managers.  Then we got into how the Government is getting around laws on tracking you -- they are buying data from Data aggregators. Here we go with Matt.

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

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: Hey, good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I've got my early morning voice on this morning. It's a little cloggy.  I was on this morning with Mr. Matt Gagnon. We talked about a few different things, including the new Chrome and Edge browser. Features and why Microsoft edge picked it up.

[00:00:20] Also, the military intelligence is buying data on you. Where are they getting it? Why are they getting it? What's with cloud jacking and the rise of cloud jacking. Here we go with Mr. Matt Gagnon.

[00:00:35] Matt Gagnon: It's all things. Technology tech talk with Craig Peterson right now on news radio 98, five FM and am five 60 WGAN seven 36 Wednesday morning.

[00:00:49]Craig Peterson joining us as always on this time at this day, Craig, how are you this morning? Hey,

[00:00:55] Craig Peterson: I'm here now. I'm ready to go.

[00:00:59]Matt Gagnon: Well, let's get going on the topics of the day, if you don't mind. So you need to explain to probably the audience and myself, what cloud jacking is.

[00:01:07] Why don't we start there?

[00:01:08] Craig Peterson: Sure. This is a whole new problem. The cloud is just another word for somebody else's computer that you have no control over. It just amazed me how many companies thought, we'll just rush to the cloud. We'll use these cloud services and there's a lot of them out there now, and we don't have to worry about anything anymore. In reality, you do.

[00:01:33] Microsoft does not guarantee that if you're using their windows, their Microsoft three 65 and their licenses and their email. They don't guarantee that data is not going to be lost or deleted accidentally. In fact, there was a huge problem with Microsoft dropping all of the conversations in Microsoft teams for one of these fortune 100 companies and just shrugging their shoulders.

[00:01:58]The other problem has to do with security. You cannot assume that these cloud services are secure. Most of the businesses nowadays, and this is just no end of frustration to me, on trying to be first to market, they're not worrying about the longevity, the backups, the security, or anything that, really, they shouldn't be caring about. They're just worrying about having a product that mostly works and it's almost always in the cloud.

[00:02:30]That brings up this cloud jacking problem, even though we've got all of this great cloud computing and it's going to save the world. The bottom line is the hackers are going after it.

[00:02:43]They're going after it in a very big way. They're taking over business accounts that are up in the cloud. Remember, what about passwords, Matt? We've talked about it before, people are not using good passwords are not using password managers.  I have a friend who he's in his seventies now. He drives for grub hub. That's how he makes a little bit extra money. So he has his online cloud account with grub hub.  This is true for so many things. I'm just using this as an example. He noticed that he was due  700 and change payment. This was his wonderful paycheck coming in from delivering groceries in his seventies.

[00:03:25] He's climbing stairs, he's bringing stuff around, he's working hard for it. What had happened is someone went ahead used the email address that they found in one of these dumps from one of these hacks. Used his password that they found in one of these dumps from one of these apps and hijacked his account.

[00:03:46]There goes $700 of hard labor. It went right into the account or the bad guys, and he's kinda clamoring and I helped him out. I go ahead and go in with one password. You got to use a password manager.

[00:04:01]The bad guys have now access to over 1 billion accounts with email addresses and passwords. They are all online people. Check them out. You can go to  a website called, have I been poned pwn ed check there. Put in your email address. It'll tell you if the bad guys know your password.

[00:04:26] They're just stuffing them in, Matt, and their cloud jackin. They're taking over your cloud account because if it had been on his computers, his business computers, or had been on Grubhubs computers, it would have been harder for people to break into. But because it's just on the web, I was just like, "I'm going to use, why I have three passwords that I use across the internet." It drives me crazy.

[00:04:50]Matt Gagnon: We're speaking with Craig Peterson, our tech guru, who joins us on Wednesdays at this time.

[00:04:54]Speaking of passwords, if you're having trouble with those passwords generating a good one,  remembering them, et cetera. There is perhaps a solution with Google Chrome and Edge.

[00:05:04] Craig Peterson: Yeah, there are a lot, a lot of companies that are trying to help us here with this problem, because this is a very big problem. Microsoft and Google both have a goal of completely eliminating passwords and not a bad idea, but we're nowhere near that right now.

[00:05:21] So remember Microsoft Edge browser, isn't really Microsoft Edge. It is actually now Chrome under the hood. And both of them now, because Chrome has added it so guess what Microsoft gets it for free. They've added a nice little feature that tracks your passwords, what you're using, and also now helps you generate new passwords, safe ones, secure ones, and Google has gone an extra step, and I've got to praise them a bit for this. If you are saving your passwords using Google Chrome, it keeps an eye on the websites that are hacked and it keeps your an eye on your password and will let you know if your account has been effectively exposed with a username and password.

[00:06:13]Using this new password generator, I think is a good step. If you're not going to get a real password manager again, get one password or last pass. Chrome and Edge are going to come to the rescue, give you this password generator with passwords that are hard to guess.

[00:06:31]By the way, the current thinking on good passwords has nothing to do with an uppercase character, a lowercase, a special symbol, and number. Now a days the best passwords are little phrases that are joined together.  You might have three words, problem challenge, solution, all separated by like the number two or a dash. That's one of the best passwords you can get.

[00:06:56] This is great built in strong password generator. It could save you your paycheck and it would have saved the paycheck of my buddy.

[00:07:06] Matt Gagnon: We're speaking with Craig Peterson, our tech guru, who joins us this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening in the world of technology.

[00:07:12] You can also hear him on Saturdays at one o'clock for many of these very same topics in more depth.  Finally Craig, the military intelligence buying location data, instead of getting warrants, according to a recent memo here. Tell me more about this story.

[00:07:26] Craig Peterson: Ooh, this is something I've been warning about for a long time, right? If it's free, your probably the product.  That's very, very true because so many of these free little apps are doing things in the background you may not be aware of including keeping track of where you are.

[00:07:44] So Homeland security and now military intelligence agency, the defense intelligence agency have both been caught, if you will ,going to the data aggregators that are taking all of the data from all of these little apps that you have. That are they fun, they're free.

[00:08:04] You know, the I have a hundred apps on my phone and I only use six of them, which is pretty common, by the way, those other apps are leaking information about you. Even some of the ones that you are using are leaking it. So this is a very, very big problem.

[00:08:19] In the United States, they cannot monitor you , or your location without a warrant with some exceptions, but this is allowing them now to get full access to you where you are, where you're going. Thats sort of what Homeland security has been using it for.

[00:08:37]Now it turns out that's what the defense intelligence agency has been using it for as well. This is a big fat loophole. That they are driving massive trucks through. It's just incredible. Oh, and by the way, there are all the license plate scanners out there. You might not be aware of it, but in some areas, if you get tickets, they will issue a warrant for your car after a period of time.

[00:09:04]There's tow truck operators driving around that have license plates scanners on your cars and they'll drive to a parking structure or through a mall. They'll find cars that they can go ahead and tow and make some money on all of that license plate data. It Is also being set into this and many of the cities and towns that have license plate capture cameras or also selling it.

[00:09:29]Your data is out there and we've got to take this back, Matt, we've got to stop allowing them to collect all this data on us. Apple's taken a very good step towards that. Now in the app store, they're the first to show you everything that any app is collecting on you right there in the app store.

[00:09:49] Matt Gagnon: All right. That's Craig Peterson, our tech guru. Joining us at this time every Wednesday to go over the world of technology. Thank you as always, Craig, appreciate you joining us here and we will talk to you again next week, sir.

[00:09:59] Craig Peterson: Thanks again, Matt.

[00:10:00] Matt Gagnon: You bet. All right, so coming up next, we're gonna take a quick break here.

[00:10:03] Craig Peterson: I got some good news too on this course. Oh my gosh. It's been a labor of love. But this improving windows security course, it's almost done. Been busy recording. 21 different modules are covering every aspect of windows and security. We're probably going to do some other stuff too, as part of this on VPNs and firewalls and stuff too.

[00:10:29] Cause I think that's all needed. We may be a little longer than I had hoped, but I want a really, really great course when we're done with this.  It's not going to take us much longer.

[00:10:40] All right. Everybody, have a great rest of the week and we'll be back on the weekend.

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