Microsoft’s Surprise Announcement – New FCC Study Doesn’t Look Good: AS HEARD ON: WTAG: [02-19-19]

On This Episode…

Craig is on the Jim Polito Show. This morning they talked about Microsoft dragging the Internet Explorer to the trash. They also talked about robocalls and how you can avoid them. And a little friendly teasing about Craig being Canadian.

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TRANSCRIPT

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

Airing date: 02/19/2019

Microsoft’s Surprise Announcement – New FCC Study Doesn’t Look Good

Craig Peterson: 0:00
Hey, hello everybody. You might hear my little Roomba going in the studio in the background. I was on with Jim Polito this morning. We talked about a couple of different things. One is what’s up with all of these phone calls we’re getting? The FCC has some new statistics out talking about what’s going to happen here in 2019. And we also had a little bit of fun because, you know, Jim and I were kind of those kind of guys, right. So first of all, he was teasing me more than a little bit about be Canadian now, which is, you know, come on really, really Canadian. And then we also talked about Microsoft and their crazy surprising admission. So all of that and more stick around here we go. And thanks everybody. By the way, who signed up for the master course and who attended the classes last week. I think things went great. So here we go with Jim.

Jim Polito 0:57
He really is one of my favorite segments of the week because we all bask in the genius that is our Tech Talk guru Craig Peterson. And here is the aforementioned bright star. Good morning, Craig.

Craig 1:13
Hey, good morning, Jim. And we had a lot of people here over the last week, get on those little seminars, webinars, training that I had put on for free we had we had about I think it was about 400 people. So that’s fantastic. And we went through backups and what to do and how to do it and how to configure the Wi Fi to make it secure. You know just some basic security stuff that everybody needs so i i was tickled pink that that many people were happy to be there. And of course, a resolve free by the it was phenomenal. And then I offered afterwards if they wanted some more help. But anyways, it’s it’s great to see the interest Jim and we got the bad guys on the run.

Jim 1:59
Yeah, that’s great. And folks, at the end of this segment, we’re going to tell you how you can get on Craig’s list. And again, see how we offer this free webinar. He’s not going to try to sell you anything. He’s not going to hound you. And he’s not going to give your name to other companies so that they can try to sell you something. It is a free service that our Tech Talk guru provides and will tell you how you can get on board. And and while he did this webinar, when there’s a big crisis, he’s the guy you want giving you the straight story because if he can explain it to me, he can explain it to anybody. So hey, I want to go with something funny to start with. And that I want to get into robo calls. But Microsoft is telling people to drag Internet Explorer into the trash. I mean, I’m surprised that there’s still people who haven’t done that. But why don’t you, why don’t you explain? I mean, I mean, I look at Internet Explorer. Now, the way I look at Netscape, does Netscape even exist anymore?

Craig 3:09
Yeah, well, it Yeah, no. Internet Explorer, of course, was the the kind of pivotal, their key product. In fact, it was based on some of the Netscape stuff from way back when, and, and some others, but anyways, it is a piece of trash. There’s no two ways about it. I’ve been telling people to stop using it for forever. And there are so many reasons for it. And one of the big reasons is, it’s not supported anymore, which means two things for everybody Jim. What it means that people are not going to get the full internet experiences they want to get. Because frankly, there are people who are designing websites and web apps and things are not testing against Internet Exploder, I mean, Explorer. 

Jim 4:14
Did you just say what I thought you just said?

Craig 4:17
I did. Yeah, Internet Exploder. That’s kind of our pet name for it. So they’re not developing forward, so you don’t get the good experience anymore. In fact, if you are a developer, you know that for at least 10 years, you have to develop a website for everything else in the world, Google Chrome, and Firefox, and Opera and Epic and all these different browsers. So that’s great. You got one website, and then you have to upload another website for Internet Explorer, which is crazy. So you’re not going to be getting the right experience. And it just doesn’t have the security updates anymore. So Microsoft’s Chris Jackson said he was talking about this uses the perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser. Now, there are a lot of people who are listening, who might work for medical, you know, like a hospital or something, and they’re still stuck in the Exploder world, in those cases, because again, they develop their own software, and the people who are developing it weren’t very good and didn’t realize maybe I shouldn’t say that, because some of them might be listening. They’re the best in the world. But they were stuck with Internet Explorer. And you know, in this day and age, you’re using Chrome or you’re using Firefox or use Epic if you’re really concerned about your security out there. Who would have thought that Microsoft and finally admit that you should drag Internet Explorer into the trash?

Jim 5:42
The thing is, now, if you have antivirus software, it will to some extent protect you. But if Microsoft themselves if they’re not fixing Explorer, there’s only so much you’re antivirus software can do, right?

Craig 6:03
Yeah, you’re absolutely right about that. Because what we’re really talking about here is a huge, huge problem for for people. Microsoft is warning you that you’re not going to get the right experience. Many websites don’t even work with Internet Explorer anymore. You don’t get the advanced. Yeah. And then on top of it, there are vulnerabilities so yeah, you’re right about the security side. Jim. 

Jim 6:26
All right. We’re talking with Craig Peterson, our Tech Talk guru. And at the end of this segment, I’m going to give you, well, he’s going to give you a number that you can text my name to, and you’ll get a lot of great free information and standard data and text rates apply. But don’t worry about it. You get all this great stuff. Okay. robocalls. And phone scams are all the rage in 2019. I can attest to this and we’ve talked about this before. Bye. I get at least three calls a day from a number in the Brockton exchange. Now let me explain why. When I lived elsewhere, for some reason, when I changed my phone number, and this was a long time ago I got a Brockton exchange. And if you know anything about Brockton is a little bit of a rough town, nothing against everybody in Brockton. But it’s a little bit of a rough town. So the first time I call people on my cell phone, generally they see a Brockton exchange and I say, I’m not talking to this guy. I don’t know why I got Brockton. But I got that number decades ago and I don’t want to give it up. But I get these calls from a Brockton exchange all the time. And I know it’s a scam. And it’s interesting how they think, well, we’ll make it a local call. So Jim will pick it up, when in fact, it’s probably what in the Ukraine, I’m getting the phone call from?

Craig 8:04
Yeah, there are a lot of places all around the world, they typically user A team. And what this is, is a spam call, right? So they’ve got someone who speaks English usually quite well. And they represented their debt collector, or they’re from the IRS or they’re from your bank. And the list just goes on and on. And the FCC just released a study they put together and the FCC saying that nearly half of all cell phone calls, and nearly half of them are going to be spam.

Jim 8:44 
Are you kidding?

Craig 8:46 
Half of them. Now, I can say for me, you know, I use that Hiya app, which is really helpful. But for me, I would say it is closer to 90% of my calls, or spam.

Jim 8:54
Danny is saying, Danny, you use the Hiya app.

Danny 8:57 
I use the Hiya and it stops a lot of them. But like that one, I have a Framingham exchange number, and I get a Framingham call every day it won’t stop that one. It stops a lot of the other ones.

Craig 9:07
Yeah, it should give you a little warning, Danny that says possible.

Danny 9:11
It does. Yeah, and I know exactly who it is. But yeah, some of the other hires, you can just cut it off completely.

Craig 9:16
Yeah, I don’t even see them. You and I would have ended up doing, and people might consider this themselves. And I kind of hate to say this, but I, you know, there’s a lot of people I know. And I have all the people I know in my contacts includes everybody from LinkedIn, all of my customers and stuff. So I have like 5,000 contacts in my phone. And what I’ve done is I went into settings on my iPhone, and I put it into Do Not Disturb mode. And then so what happens is, you don’t get any calls. You don’t get any text. You don’t get anything. And then there is an option in Do Not Disturb that says, but allow calls from my contacts.

Jim 10:00
Oh.

Craig 10:02 
Yeah. Tricky eh? So now if somebody.

Jim 10:04
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You just said eh. Danny caught it too. Danny looked right at me when you said eh, Craig. You can take you can take the boy out of Canada, but you can’t take the Canada out of the boy. Go ahead. Go ahead. Mr. Peterson

Craig 10:25 
It’s a beauty eh? 

Jim 10:28
There it is. There it is. Talking Bob McKenzie.

Craig 10:30
Yeah. Exactly. Oh my gosh, back in the day, Anyways, what I do is I put my phone into Do Not Disturb mode. And then I say allow my contacts to come through. So anybody who’s a contact of mine, if they call or text it’s going to come right through to me. What that means is, everybody else is going to be blocked by Hiya entirely, like I never even knew they called unless I go into the app. Or they’re going to get pushed over into voicemail because my phone isn’t going to even alert me that someone’s calling. And then I have to call them back which in this day and age how many people actually expect to speak to a person as opposed to voicemail anyways? Yeah, so so that’s been my work around and with 50% of calls this year projected to be spam calls, junk calls, scam calls. You know, something people might want to consider

Jim 11:28
And look, is there any risk was one of these apps of me losing an important call. There can’t be. Oh, there is

Craig 11:37
There is. There is because it’s it. First of all Hiya is based on calls that people are reporting so if someone calls from 555-1212 and the call comes through to somebody and then they report it as a scam call if a couple of more people report that numbers a scam call then Hiya is gonna say okay this is a scam because they don’t do any real investigation into it. There’s just too many of them and there’s hundreds of thousands of numbers now in Hiya. So yes, if you’re if you’re waiting for that call from your your new great job, you’re not going to want to have Hiya turned on and you’re not going to want to have your phone on do not disturb mode because they can get blocked and no question about it.

Jim 12:23
Okay. Now, Craig, as we said, if you want to get this information and have access to the genius that is Tech Talk guru Craig Peterson what you do is text my name Jim to this number

Craig 12:38
855-385-5553. That’s 855-385-5553.

Jim 12:47
That’s right. Standard data and text rates apply. But you’ll get great information and like this free webinar that was done over the weekend by Craig Peterson. Great information. Craig. Always a pleasure eh?

Craig 13:04
Hey, take care. 

Jim 13:05
Take care. Bye-bye. Yeah. You hoser, right. Craig. Thanks. Craig Peterson, everybody. Our Tech Talk guru. I got to make sure that I send him a card on July 1 Canada Day. Yes, they have Canada Day on July 1 because they wanted to be like us.

Craig 13:24
It was funny. Anyhow, I hope you’re enjoying these let me know what you think. I’ve gotten a lot of great comments from people. You can leave a comment on iTunes that really helps to get the word out. The more people that subscribe to my podcast and leave five star reviews and hopefully you would as well on iTunes. The more people that find out about this podcast so go to iTunes while actually here’s the easiest one, http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. How’s that for easy? http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. I’d really appreciate it then it’s going to help to get the word out. Take care. Have a great day and we will be back tomorrow.