Our loss of privacy is bigger than you think - and what to start doing about it

[As heard on WTAG, WHYN, WHJJ on 2021-06]

You might have an idea of how much privacy has been lost. I went through a lot of the details today. The idea is to help you understand what you're doing to yourself by using all of these different new technologies and what can you do right now to start getting your privacy under control? So here we go with Mr. Polito.

[00:00:29] Jim Polito: Our good friend tech talk guru Craig Peterson has talked about this before. When you click that, "I accept" in the terms and conditions for something online, he is always explained what's going on there. And how, in many instances, as you are the product for that app, the app is in the product.

[00:00:48]Now there are more concerns about just clicking "I accept." Joining us now. We accept our good friend here every week at this time, Craig Peterson the tech talk guru. Good morning, sir.

[00:01:02] Craig Peterson: [00:01:02] Hey, good morning. Click away. It's quite a thing. Isn't it. Where does this article come from? We're talking about, did you notice this?

[00:01:10] The daily mail came out of the UK, not in America.

[00:01:15] Jim Polito: [00:01:15] Yeah, I know. Very interesting. And I just happened to have the daily mail app on my phone because it's one of the stops I make in show prep. So there's a warning. And of course, Greg, this doesn't come as any surprise probably to regular listeners because you've been talking about all the things that are included in there.

[00:01:36] And but what's the latest concern.

[00:01:38]Craig Peterson: [00:01:38] What they did is they put it all together and it's rare that you see this. So they started Dawn. What's the first thing you do while you check at your phone, I would actually put it back even a few hours. What do you do at night with your smartphone? You plug it in and it's sitting right there next to you.

[00:01:57]So now you've got all of these busy bodies that the tech companies cause remember. Apps, many of these are tracking use. They're not free. They're gathering information about you. So they know every night Jim puts his phone here and oh, buys the ways. So does this woman and this guy. Oh, okay. That's where Jim Pollito lives, right?

[00:02:21] So it's your smartphone manufacturer, particularly if it's Google, but it's true for apple app developers or mobile phone company, intelligence agencies. If they're watching you, which happens all the time. But all they're doing is collecting metadata.

[00:02:43] Yeah. That's exactly what it's used for, what time you're waking up where, who you're sharing your Baird bed with? Where are you going when you go to work? If you're speeding, when you're going to work, right? It's anybody's guess where all of this stuff is ending up at now. We're adding ring doorbells that we have on the front of our home.

[00:03:04] Please more than I think it's 1500 right now. Police departments are taking these feeds from ring. So now they have cameras in all of the neighborhoods. We have facial recognition from those ring cameras and from all the other cameras are putting around our home. So they know where we are, who we are.

[00:03:23] Vizio. A TV manufacturer has been caught. Watching us through a camera, hidden camera and the TV, listening to what we're saying. And even if the company isn't doing now, like your Samsung TV, they are tracking exactly what you're watching, where it's going. Facebook has been accused with. They're a wonderful little portal device, which is a, something that allows you to talk to someone.

[00:03:50] Face time. They've been accused of listening in on everything you're saying, because people including my son last week, he was at his girlfriend's house. She has the two of these Facebook portals. They started talking about maybe getting a hammock. Talking about it, not on a conversation on the portal at all.

[00:04:09] And all of a sudden what starts happening, their feeds are showing ads for hammocks, even though they hadn't looked for them before. So our cars are logging the places we're going. They're tracking how fast we're going. We have legislators right here in mass who are looking at it saying these electric cars, oh my gosh, we're not getting our gas taxes, which we don't bother using to fix the roads.

[00:04:34] That would be a terrible. It was electric cars. Aren't paying gas taxes. We want the cars to report on you and tell them how many miles you drove in math. And from that, they will send you a bill every year. If you want to, re-register your electric car. We were doing DNA testing kits for health reasons.

[00:04:55] Maybe we were trying to find out if we truly are Italian or. That genetic information is up for grabs anybody who's willing to pay for it. This is a surveillance state at something even the Staci weren't able to do. They only had files on about a third of the population of east Germany intelligence agencies today here in the us.

[00:05:17] Remember. Our information that was being kept by the federal government, including all the background check information for people that have secret top secret and other clearances, all of that information was stolen by China. We're giving this away. We are not keeping it safe. We're on top of all of this, Jim, we're telling people we're going on social media.

[00:05:40] Oh yeah. I'm going away for a week. We're going to a w wherever on vacation, it's going to be a great time. So now even the bad guys know this is amazing. We have right now started to enter the days of artificial intelligence. Yeah. And it's not like you and I, the way we think it's putting pieces of a puzzle together, that's what computer artificial intelligence is all about.

[00:06:06] And all of this stuff that we're allowing to be tracked from the national health service all the way on down in the UK and in the UK. This is really something we've got to start pulling our wings. And we're talking

[00:06:20] Jim Polito: [00:06:20] with our good friend tech talk guru, Craig Peterson, Craig here's the thing.

[00:06:25] So the reason that Facebook and these other places can offer all these services for free is because we are the customer and then they sell that information. You've just laid out the scenario about how those things get stolen, but they sell that information. Is this something where the government steps in with better regulation?

[00:06:47] Or is this something where the marketplace says, Hey, do you want something like Facebook? Okay. Pay me $5 a month and you can have it, and then we won't try to do all this stuff, you've got to pay you to have this service.

[00:07:01]Craig Peterson: [00:07:01] Facebook did try that at one point they were floating the idea.

[00:07:05] But I want you to consider one other thing here, Jim, when you're talking about this, when has government ever decided they needed less information about the people?

[00:07:21] Jim Polito: [00:07:21] Yeah. Yeah. You're rife. They don't, they want to know everything. Cause then they want to tax it. They want to regulate it. They want to, whatever. And here I am just bringing up regulation, but yeah.

[00:07:33] Craig Peterson: [00:07:33] That's exactly what they're going to do. That's what they do. The job of a bureaucrat data.

[00:07:38] I have Ribeiro grad in this country, whether they're working for the town of pod talk at Rhode Island, or they're working for the federal government, every bureaucrat in the country has one job don't get fired. And then the second job is grow my faith. Yeah. And that means that even if they were to pass laws, you remember, we already had laws about the federal government not watching us.

[00:08:04] And then we found out, oh, wait a minute, eight T and T had been feeding the federal government, all of the information about all of the phone calls in the country since 1950. Yeah, there were laws against it. Okay. It, even if they say, okay, you can't use this information, you're gathering from marketing is what I'm more at about, frankly, because if I'm looking to buy an F-150 truck, I'd love to see offers on F150 trucks.

[00:08:32] Okay. So being able to track me in my searches make sense. I'm extremely worried about. Everything else. And I'm very worried about this artificial intelligence being used, frankly, for evil. And it already is with some of these phishing attacks. It's this is just something it's something Facebook, by the way, even teams shadow profiles on people who don't even have accounts, because when you join Facebook, Facebook says, Hey, you want me to find your friends so you can link into them?

[00:09:05] Yeah. Just upload your contacts to. Who did

[00:09:11] Jim Polito: [00:09:11] so Craig, in the short time we have left what do you do? What do you do.

[00:09:16] Craig Peterson: [00:09:16] I'm having a meeting about that today. In fact, there's some friends, I have a couple of attorney friends, and some other friends who are looking at this and saying, this is nuts.

[00:09:25] What do we do? Apple is the only one. So you've found manufacturers out there that really does have your privacy in mind to a large degree. They have mostly been keeping us safe. That is generally speaking the best thing that you can do, but don't volunteer information, post himself up on Facebook.

[00:09:47] You're posting pictures that have the GPS coordinates of where it was taken. Facebook has based. So recognition don't do that. Get away from doing that sort of thing. Also be careful with the information that you're sharing with any other company out there, Google some of these free photo services, et cetera, et cetera, that pulling it all together.

[00:10:10] Facebook's given Microsoft search engine, the ability to see Facebook friends without their consent. It gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read and even delete Facebook users. Private messages. Don't use these companies, mark Zuckerberg, the allegations are all out there that Facebook was started using illegal methods.

[00:10:32]Crazy illegal methods scraping the the horrible. Book, if you will, of students and having people rate how good looking that woman is. Okay. All well and good, I guess if you were a teenager, but come on, this is not an ethical company. Google is not, they've even removed this slope.

[00:10:52] Don't be evil from their website, stop using them things like duck, go for your searches posted up there. Don't make sure you turn off GPS tracking on everything you can paying attention. Apple now has this new feature that will tell you every app. Exactly what that app is supposedly doing in collecting data and doing with your data and make intelligent choices.

[00:11:19] Jim Polito: [00:11:19] I got it. Craig, how do folks get more information?

[00:11:23]Craig Peterson: [00:11:23] The easiest way is just go to Craig peterson.com. That's Frank Peterson with an o.com and you can subscribe to my newsletter. You'll get all of this stuff. You'll get also links to all of them like podcasts and nerves about I do about a dozen a week.

[00:11:39] Believe it or not. Wow. And you'll be able to listen to those and you can listen to them on the iHeart radio app. Just go to Craig peterson.com/iheart or click on the iHeart logo. On my homepage,

[00:11:51] Jim Polito: [00:11:51] Craig Peterson, everybody. He's the man, Craig. Thanks so much. We'll talk with you next week.