AS HEARD ON: WGAN – Details of the Equifax Hack – Apple iPhone X What’s the Bionic Chip: AS HEARD ON – The WGAN Morning News [09-13-17]

On This Episode…

Joined Ken and Matt to find out more about the Equifax breach and how to get checked for attacks. 

Plus, what is the Bionic Chip in Apple’s new iPhone X, and what edge does this give the new iPhone over other phones in the market?

 

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TRANSCRIPT

WGAN_2017-09-13_Details-of-the-Equifax-Hack

 

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

 

Airing date: 09/13/2017

Details of the Equifax Hack – Apple iPhone X what’s the Bionic Chip

 

 

Craig Peterson: Ok, they got me going this morning. I was on live throughout the state of Maine, in fact, on a few stations there. And I was talking about Equifax and what to do, how to do it. What the hack consisted of. I talked about some information I never talked before. So, wow, the hack. And we talked also about the new iPhone X, or is it iPhone 10?

 

Matt Gagnon: The WGAN Morning News and 7:38 on a Wednesday means Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us. He is here to give us many updates. I think we’ve got some topics this week, don’t we Craig?

 

Craig: Yeah. There’s a few this week.

 

Ken Altshuler: Before we start, with the only important one which is the iPhone, let’s talk a little bit about Equifax.

 

Matt: Equifax.

 

Ken: I like Equifax.

 

Matt: Equifax.

 

Ken: I’m an equal-opportunity person. And…

 

Matt: I like equity.

 

Ken: A service that you guys are extending on a free dark web search. So why don’t you tell us about both of those, Craig?

 

Craig: Alright. Well, yeah. Man, where do I start with all of that? The dark web is a place on the internet that accounts for about 3% of all the internet activity. And it’s a kind of place you should not hang out in because the dark web is where the hackers sell and buy your information. So for instance, we’ve got this Equifax hack that I’m sure everyone’s kind of heard of by now. We’re talking about 75% of all adults in the country, that includes you, Matt and Ken, by the way, being adults. 75% of all adults have had their personal, private information stolen. And we’re talking about Equifax. This is a credit rating company. They have your social security number. They know you home address. They know about every loan that you have. They know about every bank account that you have. They know about your car. They know everything. And they got hacked. Now, they’re also in the business of providing you security for all of your credit information. And your social security number. And all of these wonderful stuff. Right? And it turns out they have failed everyone miserably and they deserve to go out of business yesterday. This is terrible. It’s absolutely terrible here. And you know, and you look at the numbers and Equifax is saying, we’re talking about some 200,000 people who had credit card numbers exposed, and roughly 200,000 people that had personally identifiable information exposed. But you know guys, all you need is a little bit of information to steal someone’s identity, to steal their bank accounts, etc. The last time you called the bank asking them about something, what did they ask you for? The last four digits of?

 

Matt: Your social security number. Yes.

 

Craig: And of course, your social security number, as I’ve said again and again, was guaranteed by the federal government to never be a personally identifiable number. They were not assigning numbers to us. This was only for social security. Our social security number, we were guaranteed by the federal government, would never be used by anyone other than the Social Security Administration. They guaranteed the IRS would never use our social security number. They guaranteed banks would never use it. Why were people…

 

Matt: I remember my posting grades with social security numbers actually. Believe it not.

 

Craig: Why weren’t we concerned at that time, Matt? It was because of this. We didn’t want to have a number stamped on our foreheads. So now our social security numbers have been out for a while, ok, different hacks. This is one of them. Our PINs now are the last four digits of our social security numbers. Excuse me, no. They’re not anymore. Now the PIN, when you call Equifax, is the last six digits of your social security number. Well wait a minute. If they have my social security number, what difference is it if it’s four digits or six digits? Ok? We have to do a couple of things.

 

First of all, we have to start using something secure. Even Estonia has smart cards that are used when you go online to a website to verify that you are who you say you are. They’re using technology right. What do we do in the US? At most, we send a text to your cellphone, which can also be faked on both ends. Ok? This is crazy. So here’s what I’m doing here. And Ken kind of mentioned this, but one of the things that we do for our business clients is we run dark web searches on their employees every month. So the idea is we go out into that part of the internet that you don’t want to be. That bazaar where they’re selling your personal information. And we have a look at the email addresses that their employees use to see if it’s out there. And then we generate a report for them showing that what hacks have their personal information in them, based on their email address, and what personal information is. So, for instance, we tell them hey, your social security number is out there. Your personal contact information is out there. Your bank accounts. Whatever it is that we find online.

 

So, we’re extending that to all of your listeners here today. We’re not charging for it. It’s absolutely free. And we’ll put the report together. You just have to give us a little bit of time to do it because we have to manually go out there. We have to search the dark web. Put the report together. And email it off to you. If you’re a business and you want to sign up, by all means, sign up. We love to make a couple of bucks here, because it takes a long time to put all this information together. But it’ free. It’s absolutely free today for your listeners.

 

So if people want to do a dark web search on their email address, they can do it two different ways. They can text me, and I’ll give you that number. Or they can go to our URL. And the website to go to is https://craigpeterson.com/darkweb. Now I understand Danny’s going to post it on your webpage here. So again, it’s https://craigpeterson.com/darkweb. You can go to the station’s website. You can find it there. I don’t know, Danny, are you guys putting it up? Also on, do you have a Facebook page or something?

 

Matt: Yes. Facebook page and Twitter.

 

Craig: Ok. Alright Matt. It’ll be up on both of those. Or you can text me with your email address at 855-385-5553. That’s 855-385-5553. And we’ll put that together for you. So, we’ll tell you what hacks we found your email address in. We’ll tell you what that hack exposed, which is, man. Some of these are crazy. Now we don’t have the Equifax information yet. Apparently there are some guys that are trying to hold it hostage, that have contacted Equifax, they’re asking for ransom of a couple of million dollars or they’re going to expose all of these information. Let me tell you guys, they got the crown jewels. There’s no way they’re going to not expose this. They’re going to be selling this for years to come. And this is really bad. This is probably a worst case scenario. This hack is worse than when the IRS was hacked and had their information stolen. This is just crazy. Equifax, you need to go out of business. Don’t use them. That’s my opinion.

 

Matt: You think they will?

 

Craig: Well, you know, I don’t know.

 

Matt: Well, nobody has a choice though. I mean everybody uses them like passively. You know, I mean, they get our information basically. I mean, not without our own permission but kind of without our own permission. I mean.

 

Craig: No. Without your permission. Absolutely. You know, credit report companies…

 

Matt: I mean, your participation in the system sort of gives them implicit information but it’s not, you’re not interacting with them at all. It’s not like you chose to go to Equifax or something.

 

Craig: Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. Even retailers give information to Equifax. Anybody you pay a bill to is likely to be giving information about your account to Equifax. Right? Your participating whether you want to or not. This information is also used by employers to check your credit before you’re hired. You know Matt, you’re right. People are involved in Equifax, their information is there whether they know it or not. And they, Equifax, did not keep it secure. I’m pounding on the table over here. Ah!

 

Matt: So you’re fired up about this, Craig.

 

Craig: Well I’ve been doing internet stuff here. I was first hacked, remember I’ve been in the internet since 1982, ok? And I was first hacked in 1991. And was the Morris worm back then. But how long ago was that? 1991, and it’s 2017. And this crap is still happening. And it’s happening to a huge company affecting 75% of all Americans. So anyways, part of this report that we’re putting together now, we’re finishing up this part. But we have what to do in there, and how to do it. Step-by-step, how to lock your credit down so that people can’t misuse your credit. How to use monitoring services. Who to sign-up for. How to do it. Exactly where to go. I’m going to show you everything that you need to know and do to try and lock some of this down. And we’ve got to make, as a country, a concerted effort to stop this stuff from happening. You know, 26 years later, and it’s still happening? This is unreal.

 

Matt: We’re talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru, and we’re talking about the Equifax hack obviously. Craig, we don’t have very much time left with you but the last question I’d like to ask you would relate to that thousand-dollar iPhone that Ken have mentioned.

 

Ken: Yeah. We’ve got to talk about this.

 

Matt: And Ken had mentioned at the top here. Should anyone but this? Should you be fooled into buying…

 

Ken: Well I am buying it. I am buying it.

 

Matt: You sell it for a thousand dollars…

 

Ken: I don’t care if I should or not.

 

Matt: Because you can now unlock the phone with your face instead of your thumb.

 

Ken: Because it’s an iPhone.

 

Matt: It’s an iPhone, I’m going to buy it.

 

Craig: The way Apple is doing it is very, very good. They’re doing the face unlock by taking a 3D picture of your face. So they know if it’s a photograph. They know if it’s been faked. It’s much better technology than I’ve seen in any other phones.

 

Ken: One in a million they said.

Craig: Oh it’s crazy good. I have identical twin daughters by the way. And they want to see if they can unlock each other’s phones.

 

Matt: Oh, that’s an interesting idea. I didn’t even think of that.

 

Craig: Yeah. Isn’t that something? So here’s the trick. It’s a thousand bucks. This is the future of phones. It has this bionic chip in there. It’s really the first step in artificial intelligence.

 

Matt: Oh great. Here comes Skynet.

 

Ken: Terminator. Yeah.

 

Craig: It’s machine learning. And it’s very smart. It’s being used for the facial recognition.

 

Matt: Hello Dave.

 

Craig: But it’s also being used to open the pod bay doors. So it’s really very cool technology. Google’s working on similar stuff, so is Samsung. So is the Huawei, the Chinese firm. So this is the future. And Apple’s first to the game again. It’s really, really cool.

 

Matt: Are you going to spend a thousand dollars on this?

 

Ken: Well he’s got to do it for research purposes. I mean. Craig Peterson is a tech guru. He has to.

 

Craig: I will record that and play that for my wife. Absolutely.

 

Ken: And by the way, because I have to talk about it on the radio, I must buy one.

 

Matt: You must. You have no choice. Okay. So if you’re one of the peasants out there, would you buy it?

 

Ken: And by the way, Craig, I should mention that the $999 is not accurate because the larger capacity for one is like $1149. So.

 

Craig: Right. Yeah.

 

Ken: And I would buy the biggest and the best.

 

Craig: It’s going to cost real money. And it’s great by the way. For those of us like Ken and I that have older eyes. You know, once you’re past 30, it’s downhill Matt.

 

Ken: Yeah.

 

Matt: I know. But my Galaxy Note has a rather large screen. So, I mean.

 

Ken: But it’s a Galaxy Note you know.

 

Matt: I’m just, you know, is this amount of money really worth getting one of it?

 

Ken: Yes.

 

Craig: Get rid of it Matt.

 

Matt: Ok.

 

Ken: Is a Rolex worth having?

 

Craig: It’s a nightmare.

 

Ken: Yes. And by the way Craig, I should mention, the iPhone X, which people are referring to as 10, is that an iPhone 10? Is it or is isn’t? Or iPhone X as in, I mean because we’re skipping 9.

 

Craig: It is an X. it’s kind of like MacOS went to MacOS X.

 

Ken: Yeah exactly. Exactly. It’s not 10.

 

Craig: It’s not MacOS 10. Although in the case of MacOS what’s interesting is it really, the prior version was 9. But it is X. It was referred to, I watched the whole thing yesterday, he called it 10 and he called it X. And so I’m not sure if there’s some internal conflicts going on. We might see a military coup, maybe a silent one over at Apple as whatever camp wins. But Ken, yeah. It’s an X.

 

Ken: Thank you for that.

 

Craig: But a lot of people are going to call it a 10.

 

Matt: You put his mind at ease. Thanks a lot, Craig. Unfortunately we have to let you go there. We’ll talk to you next week, Craig.

 

Craig: Take care gentlemen.

 

Matt: Thanks a lot.

 

 

 

 

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