AS HEARD ON: WGAN Mornings with Ken and Matt: Election and Voting Technology, Phishing and Coronavirus Covid-19

Good morning everybody!

I was on with Ken and Matt. We had a good discussion about the upcoming Nevada Caucus and if they will experience some of the same issues as in Iowa. We also discussed the cybercriminal phishing emails being sent out with the warnings about the Coronavirus that if clicked on will infect your machine and network and also why you should delete apps that you do not use to protect your privacy.

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

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig
saying, Wow, cool new technology is going to be great. Hey, I have a buddy that worked for Hillary Clinton and ran this, and he's got this company, and he's got this voting software. That's what tends to happen. And they're looking for the latest the greatest the coolest the neatest and yeah, we can brag about how wonderful this all is. When in reality, it ain't there.

Craig
Hi everybody Craig Peterson here, of course, and I got into this thing. I don't know, and maybe it was too much this morning about technology. I was comparing what's been happening with some of the technology for voting to laserdiscs and Betamax, etc. But we went this morning with canon Matt talked about that couple of other things, including the Coronavirus. So here we go.

Ken
Back again 738 on the WGAN morning news with Ken and Matt. It's time now, ladies and gentlemen, to talk to Craig Peterson.

Craig
Is your phone working now?

Ken
Did that last-minute somebody was a tech expert series tell me how to fix his phone of a manufacturer.?We have a tech guru, and I would like to ask about that. But I am going to ask you a quick question. You know, we've had some primaries and the Nevada primaries coming up or the caucus, and it's looking like it's going to go smoothly, but there may be some security flaws. Can you tell us as a tech guru, what the hell is going on?

Craig
Well, you know, this whole thing with the voting and technology and what to do you know, we talked last week about you know, where the governor here in Maine and of course Secretary of State and John Richardson was on and on, I had said, you know, the, I think the smartest thing I think it was brilliant. Stick with an unhackable felt tip pen, Right? I still say that. I also get concerned when the government gets involved with consumer technology, and when they get involved with almost anything. But indeed what technology because the government ends up trying to pick winners or losers, right? And when I'm talking about tech, what's the best tech? And so the government gets involved and says, Oh, this is the best tech, or that's the best tech, and then you dig into it. And you find out that Hillary Clinton's former staffers are the people who founded and we're running the company that came up with a software that just thoroughly discredited the Iowa caucuses. This coming Saturday, as Matt was kind of jumping in there, looks like it's going to be a mess as well. How do we secure our elections because it's not like we can have the normal process of the best technology wins? Well, maybe that's not always the case because I'm sure Ken, you must have bought a Betamax video recorders

Ken
Betamax?

Craig
I don't know why anybody would buy a VHS Betamax was so superior to VHS.

Ken
I have had here this brand new mike 700

Matt
Am I correct? Betamax was better technology. There's no question, are we talking about the LaserDisc while we're at it? Oh yeah, that was even better. That was amazing that the laserdiscs amazing size CD that I had, you know, I had to put like seven of them just to watch a movie. Don't touch the surface. I remember for some reason, even though the school was crumbling, and a cockroach once fell from the ceiling and landed on my book. Okay, even with all that, they somehow found a way to buy a LaserDisc player, and I remember the occasional like, you know, Friday, you know, day, where you weren't, going to do anything. Where they would play a movie in class or whatever. They had to, like, take that thing out, and then put a new disk in like five times before the movie was over because it didn't have any sort of capacity to put a film on it. But I'm glad we spent all that money. It was worth it.

Craig
That's my point. Why did they buy the LaserDisc player? Because it was cool? Yeah, exactly. So now here we are looking at our Super Tuesday coming up. We're looking at all of these other elections that are happening. All of these people, these people, what do you mean, these people are out there saying, Wow, cool. New technology is going to be great. Hey, I have a buddy that worked for Hillary Clinton and ran this. And he's got this company, and he's got this voting software. That's what tends to happen. And they're looking for the latest, the greatest, the coolest, the neatest. And yeah, we can brag about how wonderful this all is. When in reality it ain't there. And now we're looking at another mobile voting app yet another one. It is being used in four different states this year, including West Virginia. What could possibly go wrong here? And this new voting mobile app, it's called Votez V-O-T-E-z. Isn't that cute? And it is just full of some of the most basic flaws ever. But you know what, guys? It's using blockchain technology, which is going to solve all of the world's security problems. This is sloppy. We need to stick with the standard. We need to have a government and a voting system people are confident in. The people say, yeah, our votes were counted. If there was a question about the tabulation or the ballots properly-being cast, you pull the silly things out of a closet, and you have a look at them. Let's not run headfirst. Over the cliff into some cool technology, and then with a whole bunch of Betamax tapes in our closet.

Matt
Do you know how many beta tapes I have in my closet?

Ken
I would say probably 500.

Craig
Yeah, yeah. And you know what those the quality of those is not quite DVD quality. It's still good, but you just can't find anything that well.

Ken
The other thing I don't have, I don't know where my Betamax is. Anymore. By the way, I don't want you to know I did not. I will bet every FBI instruction. I did not steal any movies. I just want you to know.

Craig
You know, you've got those things sitting there, Ken, and it was great technology for today, but it's gotten so much easier nowadays. Anyhow, that's my stance on voting. Stick with a piece of paper and unhackable pencil or felt tip pen. Keep the silly things after people have voted those wonderful little cards, keep those for at least a couple of years. Do spot audits, a lot of these states are their secretaries of state are not doing spot audits. I think that they have to do those just again to keep confidence in the system. And Matt, you're probably there with me. I am probably there with you, sir. We're talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us every once a while. Usually, Wednesdays, to talk about what's happening in the world of technology. Speaking of security, I have a lot of Chrome extensions on Chrome, and clearly, I am now surrendering all of my information to everyone. Tell me why.

Craig
Okay, my here's my general advice to everybody. I gave this out a little earlier in the week as well. The primary recommendation is not to have too many apps on your phones and other devices. Over the last couple of years, we have found that a lot of those apps are leaking data. And last weekend on my show, I talked about how the Department of Homeland Security is buying that data to track people say, Okay, so now we can find out where you are where you have been. It was about six, eight weeks ago, that the New York Times was able to track President Trump's whereabouts as he was moving around, because they were able to follow one of the phones of Secret Service personnel, according to the article that they wrote. This is a real problem. Now we've found that there are more than 500 browser extensions that have been secretly uploading our personal and private data to websites that are then selling it. The number one most evil thing to put onto your browser is one of those browser extensions, and it's a tab type thing. That gives you quicker searches and tells you there's a deal on this page on this site right now. A lot of people have installed those things. Well, if you have and I have seen so many people with this, get rid of them now. Delete your browser extensions, these Chrome extensions that you're not using, or that you don't need. Now, I've got some tutorials coming out in a couple of weeks about three Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, browser extensions that I absolutely love, that are not stealing your data. I've got some training on how to know what's what. You know if that if you guys have one of these Chrome browsers, it is just overloaded with extensions. You got to delete these things, because some of them are evil. Some of them are even mining Bitcoin for bad guys in Eastern Europe, and you don't even know it. You know, here we are talking about having the privatization. I shouldn't say, of the two major electric companies in Maine, to save Maine taxpayers are ratepayers, in this case, some money, which is always great to save money. Still, we got to have an in-depth look at some of these things. And we have some of the highest electric rates in the country. Analyze things up. Why do we want to allow the browser extensions that will show us a cute little cat video every day? What do we want to have that browser extension burning our electricity to make Bitcoin money for somebody else? We've got to stop doing this sort of thing. Just delete any apps you're using. Remove the browser extensions you don't absolutely need and be a little safer online.

Matt
We are talking to our tech guru Craig joins us every Wednesday at 730 dot com. Get the information firsthand or to listen to him on w ga and in the afternoon on Saturday at one o'clock. Before we let you go, Craig, I don't know if you've heard about the Coronavirus, and please do not play the Mexican hat dance.

Craig
Whatever I do, I will not play the Mexican hat dance.

Ken
I was the last thing I will do. I will not play it. I don't want to trigger. Any technological issues for Mr. Peterson

Craig
One of my sons is a teetotaler. There was a joke going around about something about lime and salt being the cure. But anyway. Yeah, be very, very careful, everybody. I'm glad you brought this up. Ken, we're out of time. So really, really quickly. The bad guys always Take advantage of things in the news. And one of the big things in the news now, and I'll be talking about this more on my show on Saturday at one, is the Coronavirus, Of course, you know it is called now called covid-19. Don't open emails saying hey, here's a tracker for the Coronavirus. Don't do any of this stuff. There are so many fake emails and now fake text messages coming out from these people. It helped us to get overwhelmed. That's a really really bad thing. Don't do it. People the bad guys are saying Coronaviruses that trying to get your open stuff. If you want to g, the Coronavirus goes online to cdc.gov simple site to remember cdc.gov, not CDC dash org.gov. There are so many fake sites out there, just cdc.gov right at the top they've got stuff on covid-19 this respiratory disease, and they have trackers. Still, you know what right now you're more likely to die from the flu, and we are at the height of regular flu season, and they're even tracking [email protected] so there you can keep an eye on everybody.

Ken
All right, that's Greg Peterson ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate it as always, Craig, and we will talk to you again very soon.

Craig
Take care, guys. Bye. Thanks, all right. Why don't we take a quick break quick

Craig 13:27
A Shout out to all of you guys out there listening to me, of course, every week it kind of goes up, which is terrific, and it's so so appreciated. I had contact by the way from one of our listeners, a longtime listener, and a bit of a friend frankly always enjoy chatting with him. He's a little bit older kind of like me, and he has been out there freaking out about what to do now with his career. He went to a small school that taught cybersecurity stuff for a few months and put some money into that. Now he's out looking for a job. Is anybody else in that kind of a boat, because I think this might make a fascinating series or segment or segments or however it turns out for the listeners here, what if you are a little bit older in life? You are looking to change careers, maybe, perhaps you've always been interested in the whole security side of things. And you want to get involved with that. Let me know just send an email to me at Craig peterson.com. And we'll kind of go from there and see where this takes us. But I find this fascinating I I want to help you guys and gals out there with, you know, making your life a little bit better and helping you to make other people's lives a little bit better too because I suspect you're a lot like me, frankly. And that's why you're such great and regular listeners. Anyhow, take care and everybody. We're getting closer and closer to having some of those tutorials ready. I got another one edited yesterday, he says making a sigh, Oh my gosh this has been so painful I've had to learn a different video editor because I when I was using just can't handle the type of content that I'm generating here for these tutorials. It is on some of the best things you can do for cybersecurity for your family, for your business all free, even the tools tutoring alone are free. So this is going to be a huge one I think for pretty much everybody anyways, me at Greg Peterson calm or sign up for my mailing list just at Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. Take care, everybody. We'll be back with a weekend show again this week. Bye-bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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