Welcome!
Good morning, everybody. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning and I told him about Windows 7 no longer being supported with security updates and why all his listeners should definitely upgrade to Windows 10 if they were using Windows 7 to protect themselves. We talked about Apple and the FBI and the privacy and security that Apple has and why it is a bad idea to ever have a backdoor in an iPhone. So, here we go with Mr. Polito.
For more tech tips, news, and updates visit – CraigPeterson.com
—
Automated Machine Generated Transcript:
Craig
This USB drive into the computer. And what it does is it uses the power coming from the computers like USB drive usually does. And it stores it up in a capacitor, and then it releases it all at once back into the computer.
Craig
Hey, good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here had a great little discussion with Mr. Polito this morning. He let me do a bit of freewheeling, and we usually don’t do this. I suspect he lost my email between us, but we’ll see what ended up happening. I may never find out, which means you may never find out either. But we didn’t talk this morning about a couple of different things. A warning is an old warning. Hey, have you been listening to me for a long time you already knew this about USB devices, but I went over it again. Because somebody else pitched Mr. Polito with a story, I released it. Why broke what, like three or four years ago. And we also talked a little bit about chat. And an article in the Wall Street Journal this week. So here we go with Mr. Polito.
Jim
Here he is, folks, our tech guru. I’ll tell you what he told us a long time ago, I think, Hey, you know, those public charging stations where you can charge your smartphone, hey, you might want to be careful with them because that’s the way the bad guys can get into your phone. And lo and behold, checking my email this morning. And there’s an email from some other person who considers them a tech themselves a tech talk guru, saying, hey, you should watch out for that woman. Come on. You show. No, thank you. We’ve already got the Tech Talk guru Craig Peters on our good friend. Good morning, sir.
Craig
Hey, good morning. I think that was what about that, at least two, maybe three or four years ago.
Jim
It was a while ago because Danny and I were looking at it and said, Hey, Craig talked about this a long time ago, we knew this already. Yeah, you plug your phone in there, the bad guys can get into your phone.
Craig
Yeah, there. There’s an article this week that I shared with everybody about the FBI hacking into iPhones. Of course, the FBI right now is trying to get into some iPhones. They’ve done this before with the murder that happened down in San Bernardino. And that that became very, very high profile about three or four years ago. And the way they do that is the way they’re able to hack into the older iPhones. It appears that they cannot get into the newest ones, but the older iPhones are exactly that connecting to the USB port on the iPhone. Wow. That’s how they do it. So yeah, here, let’s just tell everybody so they know we’ll keep them up to date. There are a few problems that can occur. First of all, they can purposely destroy your device. Yeah, nowadays, a lot of computers use USBs, right? If you plug it in, there is a particular type of device that’s very, very cheap. You can get them online, sometimes about less than ten bucks. And you can get them as a USB thumb drive. So you plug this USB drive into the computer. And what it does is it uses the power coming from the computers like USB drive usually does, and it stores it up in a capacitor, and then it releases it all at once back into the computer. And the very least it destroys your USB port, but more often it ruins the whole machine. So that’s one problem with plugging into the power plugs or USB plugs at the airport. The other is your device could get hacked, just like the way the FBI has been trying to do it. And apparently Can’t do it right now.
Jim
Yeah. Interesting. I did see that. So what’s on the top of your agenda today?
Craig
Oh, man, there are so many things to discuss. But the first very first thing is everybody. We’ve had major, significant patches released on almost everything. Windows had critical security patches out, including the announcement that Windows seven is no longer getting security updates. It’s about $80,000 a year for security updates for Windows seven, so unless you pay that you will not be getting them. Okay. Yeah. So this is as of last week. So last week was on set no more windows seven support. And then the day after the National Security Agency came out and said, Hey, by the way, there’s a specific type of encryption so that if you try and encrypt/decrypt this, it isn’t going to work, and it’s completely fine passable. So a huge, huge problem, and it is the day after standard support for Windows seven. So step one this week update upgrade, okay, if you’re running Windows seven, upgrade to Windows 10, Toronto.
Jim
Toronto. Wow. Wow.
Craig
So Good to know, and if you’re not running Windows 10, update right away. Windows 10 has the same patch. Now, couldn’t it be that you have a piece of equipment a piece of hardware that is so old that it will only run seven? Could that be the case? Yeah,
Jim
Could that be the case? Yeah,
Craig
Yeah, that’s entirely possible. Now, it’s not like it used to be where there’s a new release of Windows, and it needed a much faster process, much more memory that is kind of behind us. But yeah, you might I have to tell you off, and I think this may be where you’re coming from, that a lot of people don’t upgrade. They just buy a new computer. And that’s not A terrible, terrible idea to do to get a new computer and then make sure you patch it up. But if you’re running anything older than Windows eight upgrade and if you’re running Windows eight upgrade to Windows 10. I say upgrade!
Jim
Spoken like a genuine Apple guy. We’re talking with our good friend Tech Talk guru Craig Peters on and at the end of this segment, we’re going to tell you how you can get all this information from Craig and other updates essential updates, and no, he won’t bother you, and won’t send something to you that will fry your motherboard. No, he’s not that kind of a guy. He’s a good guy. Yeah, of course. Update to Apple because you love apple. Well, most people in the know who are smart like you love Apple. It’s just those of us who don’t want to pay for it.
Craig
Yeah, when you know you get right down to it when you’re talking about paying for the Apple equipment, the hardware itself, if you were to configure a Windows computer, this with the same type and quality of hardware that Apple uses. We’re talking about the same cards, with the same types of GPUs, and the same type and size of memory. Remember, it’s not; it’s not the size that necessarily matters is the speed of the RAM. The same kinds of drives, you know, the SSDs, and the superior Wi-Fi chips and everything else. So if you look at it as apples to apples just on the hardware, not talking about the operating system, when I’ve done this before, and every breakdown I’ve ever seen shows, Mac hardware is cheaper than Windows hardware equivalent windows hardware. Think about that when you’re considering buying when a Windows machine. If you’re going to a big box retailer, and you’re paying, you know, 400 to 500 bucks for that laptop, you can now see why the expected life cycle of the average Windows laptop lasts is seven months. It is due to these cost reductions. Okay, so it’s more expensive. Yeah, it is undoubtedly upfront. But these things typically last for five to 10 years. And they will serve you well during that time. So if you’re looking to update up from Windows seven, indeed anything earlier, you probably want to get a new piece of hardware and to be very careful, because the cheap stuff out of China is exactly that, cheap. It is not very good. And if you want to kind of do a bit of an upgrade, go to a commercial computer provider of some sort. You can even call some of these companies right now. I have to say Dell is probably the best. But don’t get the consumer version, get the professional version that’s going to last you way longer serve you a lot better. And you’re going to have fewer problems, frankly. That’s why I recommend going to the next level, don’t, but even if you’re a home user, don’t buy just the basic big box consumer-grade, if you can afford not to.
Jim
All right. A good bit of advice. We’ve got time for another important update. What else? What do you think would be most important to share?
Craig
Any but I think the most right now important for people to be aware of is what the Wall Street Journal has this week. They have an article called Meet Chet. Now Chet, is this fictitious guy is going about doing the ordinary things we all do. And it’s kind of a neat little graphic that they have. But they’re pointing out shets employer knows everything about him during the day. Even if he’s not using a company issued a smartphone, right, so he wakes up in the morning, and what does he do? He does email, so the business knows, okay, Chad at 631 this morning, check this email. It says Nick logs into the guest Wi-Fi connections at the coffee shop in the morning because they have software on his smartphone to help protect the company data. You must have the type of authentication that a lot of them are tracking Bluetooth, even the big box retailers, all of them. When you walk into the store, they’re following your device. So does the office know because they’re tracking him everywhere he goes in the building? They’re using it to figure out if he is a critical employee because he’s going into other people’s offices and helping them and tracking his email. We got to remember that everything that we do nowadays unless you unplug entirely, and you’re living in the middle of nowhere, writing these manifestos On an old provider, everything is tracked, including from your company. So check your company’s policies on all of this. We have security policies that we can provide to companies that they can use. Many of the companies we work for doing this, and it is entirely legal, as long as they’re telling you about some of this stuff that you don’t want them to do. So it’s not just the bad guys that are watching you they are. It’s like President Trump, with the New York Times, was able to track President Trump’s movements, and they through secret service and find out who the people were. And if your phone every night goes to the same place and stays there all night long. They can reasonably assume that you’re at home. We’ve got to start being more conscious about stopping this stuff.
Jim
Fascinating. Alright, so you can get more conscious about this. You can do this by connecting with Craig Peterson, not only during this segment every Tuesday at this time, but connected so that he can send you up to the day, relevant information. That’s easy for folks like us to understand. So what you do is you text my name, Jim J-I-M to this number
Craig
855-385-5553. So text Jim, to 855-385-5553.
Jim
All right, standard data and text rates apply. And Craig won’t bother you, and it’s good to have him on your side. Craig. Excellent segment as usual, and we’ll talk to you next week.
Craig
Hey, thanks, Jim. Take care
Jim
You too, Craig Peterson, everybody. Okay. When Return
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
—
More stories and tech updates at:
Don’t miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:
Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:
