You've Been Pwned!!!

Intro

Jeff Battersby (0s)
and I'm talking a lot Tom, this is the Jeff Battersby show, you could have gone on vacation

Intro music (2s)
♪ I don't wanna know about your imperfections ♪ ♪ I don't wanna know about your imperfections ♪ Factions don't prefer to leave you

Tom Anderson (12s)
Hello and welcome in once again to The Basic AF Show, Tom Anderson and Jeff Battersby broadcasting live during the heat dome.

Jeff Battersby (20s)
Yeah, baby. "In the cool basement, presently."

Tom Anderson (25s)
I'm in the closet. It's even hot in the closet today. That didn't sound right, Ben. Yeah, zesty out there, spicy, hot, hot.

Jeff Battersby (26s)
Well, you know what they say about the closet, Tom.

Jeff Battersby (31s)
Yeah, it is. It's, uh, we're sitting out on the front porch, having coffee, reading with the cat, prepping for this. It is, by the way, not our normal recording day, because you, sir, are going on a vacation.

Tom Anderson (46s)
yes vacation next week so when this show releases on the Monday I'll be at the beach so

Jeff Battersby (52s)
Dipping his toes in the uh

Tom Anderson (52s)
and I think the heat dome will be out of here by then so yeah

Jeff Battersby (55s)
Hope so for your sake because I wouldn't want to be at the beach in 10 million degree weather

Tom Anderson (59s)
no

Jeff Battersby (1m)
I've got a wedding this coming weekend. So it would have been hard for me to record anyway because of that

Tom Anderson (1m 5s)
there you go so it worked out

Jeff Battersby (1m 6s)
For the same same reason so and hopefully we're supposed to get rain so that'll be good talking about the weather We must be 150 years old [laughing]

Tom Anderson (1m 14s)
We are combined us pretty close.

Tom Anderson (1m 19s)
And, uh, once again, thank you for the ongoing support, the follows, the likes, the sharing of things we post on social.

Tom Anderson (1m 25s)
That is always appreciated.

Tom Anderson (1m 26s)
Feedback at Basic AF Show is how you can get in touch with us.

Tom Anderson (1m 29s)
Also right there in your podcast app, send us a text message.

Tom Anderson (1m 33s)
There's a link.

Tom Anderson (1m 34s)
Um, and if you'd like to do that and we encourage you to do that.

Tom Anderson (1m 38s)
And also there's a, uh, uh, if you want us to get back to you on something,

Tom Anderson (1m 42s)
just drop your email address in there.

Jeff Battersby (1m 44s)
Yep, really simple and uh, we really do like to hear from you so

Tom Anderson (1m 44s)
We do.

Jeff Battersby (1m 48s)
Please do that also might as well do this at the top of show

Jeff Battersby (1m 52s)
um The show artwork the beautiful stuff that you see the two goofy headed robots. That's us

Jeff Battersby (1m 58s)
Um, that's randall martin design. We highly recommend that you check randall out for any of your uh, artistic needs

Jeff Battersby (2m 6s)
And then music is uh, psycho kinetics celsius seven

Jeff Battersby (2m 10s)
and we're grateful to both.

Jeff Battersby (2m 12s)
Uh...

Jeff Battersby (2m 14s)
Randall, into Celsius 7 for the good work and for letting us use it.

Tom Anderson (2m 19s)
Indeed we are. So thank you to them. And Jeff, what do we have on tap for this episode?

Jeff Battersby (2m 23s)
Dude, you've been pwned.

Jeff is PO’d!

Tom Anderson (2m 25s)
Probably. 100% sure.

Jeff Battersby (2m 26s)
Yeah, 100%.

Jeff Battersby (2m 29s)
So, uh, let's lay this out.

Jeff Battersby (2m 31s)
This has been, um...

Jeff Battersby (2m 32s)
I'm going to say this gently.

Jeff Battersby (2m 34s)
Pissing me off.

Jeff Battersby (2m 35s)
Was that gentle?

Jeff Battersby (2m 36s)
Um...

Jeff Battersby (2m 37s)
For several months.

Jeff Battersby (2m 38s)
And I'll tell you what the deal is and why it pisses me off.

Jeff Battersby (2m 40s)
And then we're going to give you some direction as to...

Jeff Battersby (2m 42s)
as far as what you can.

Jeff Battersby (2m 44s)
Do to make sure that you you don't get a few weeks back.

Jeff Battersby (2m 48s)
I get a frantic call from my mother-in-law.

Jeff Battersby (2m 51s)
She has just returned from the bank and she had received an

Jeff Battersby (2m 56s)
email from her bank.

Jeff Battersby (2m 59s)
We'll call him out chase and chase sent her a message that

Jeff Battersby (3m 4s)
said credit journey dark web.

Jeff Battersby (3m 6s)
Your info was found on a suspicious part of the web head

Jeff Battersby (3m 10s)
over to credit journey to find out what this means and see

Jeff Battersby (3m 14s)
what steps you can take to protect your identity click get

Jeff Battersby (3m 17s)
details.

Jeff Battersby (3m 19s)
So

Jeff Battersby (3m 21s)
doesn't it it's it's a little freaky going to I'm going to

Jeff Battersby (3m 24s)
say that you know that

Jeff Battersby (3m 26s)
that's true now credit to my mother-in-law.

Jeff Battersby (3m 30s)
She did not click the get details link.

Jeff Battersby (3m 32s)
Although I will tell you this was a legitimate email from

Jeff Battersby (3m 36s)
chase.

Jeff Battersby (3m 37s)
It was not some funky someone trying to trick you into doing

Jeff Battersby (3m 41s)
something.

Jeff Battersby (3m 44s)
Went to her bank and sat down with the bank manager

Jeff Battersby (3m 48s)
and the call that I've gotten was that she needed to get a

Jeff Battersby (3m 51s)
new email address.

Jeff Battersby (3m 53s)
She had to get a new email address set it up with Gmail

Jeff Battersby (3m 55s)
because

Jeff Battersby (3m 57s)
you've you've got a problem with your current one

Jeff Battersby (4m)
which is to say that the bank manager first of all had no

Jeff Battersby (4m 3s)
idea that this email was going out second of all had no clue

Jeff Battersby (4m 6s)
what the real answer was which was this is a marketing tool

Jeff Battersby (4m 10s)
that Chase is using to get you to use their new.

Jeff Battersby (4m 14s)
Whatever it is, credit journey tool.

Jeff Battersby (4m 15s)
And this happens a lot of places.

Jeff Battersby (4m 17s)
I have a client just yesterday, or day before yesterday,

Jeff Battersby (4m 22s)
sent me a message from McAfee that said pretty much the same thing.

Jeff Battersby (4m 27s)
Identity monitoring report.

Jeff Battersby (4m 28s)
We found your info on the dark web.

Jeff Battersby (4m 31s)
We did find your email address,

Jeff Battersby (4m 33s)
but don't worry, we're right here with you.

Jeff Battersby (4m 36s)
When you review the results,

Jeff Battersby (4m 38s)
we'll help you secure your identity.

Jeff Battersby (4m 42s)
So here's the thing.

Jeff Battersby (4m 44s)
We've got now a marketing tool using scary words,

Jeff Battersby (4m 49s)
dark web. And this is a means of these companies, whether it's McAfee, whether it's Chase,

Jeff Battersby (4m 58s)
trying to get you to buy into some other tool,

Jeff Battersby (5m 1s)
perfectly legitimate tools, by the way.

Jeff Battersby (5m 4s)
Both McAfee and Chase are offering it in some cases for in some cases, you know, for a couple of dollars a month,

Jeff Battersby (5m 12s)
we'll make sure that none of your information gets.

Jeff Battersby (5m 14s)
on the web, or if it does, we'll help you to deal with it.

Jeff Battersby (5m 17s)
So this is, this is a, um, you know,

Jeff Battersby (5m 20s)
a legitimate service, uh,

Jeff Battersby (5m 23s)
that these companies are using scare tactics to get you to buy into. Um, nobody knows what the F sorry, I didn't say the word,

Jeff Battersby (5m 33s)
um, the dark web is, and, and the use of that,

Jeff Battersby (5m 38s)
you know, unless you've been watching,

Jeff Battersby (5m 41s)
watching some show on TV that talks about it.

Jeff Battersby (5m 44s)
The purpose of that is to really get you to think, "I need to be aware of this.

Jeff Battersby (5m 47s)
I need to do this and be safe."

Jeff Battersby (5m 51s)
To my mind, the way these things are being marketed is no different than the actual scammers that are trying to get ahold of you, other than the fact that those scammers are going to take your information and use it for something else.

Jeff Battersby (6m 3s)
Chase and McAfee, in this case, are going to take your money to provide you with a service,

Jeff Battersby (6m 8s)
a legitimate service, but they're using scare tactics to do it, to give you an aside, like like a slightly different.

Jeff Battersby (6m 14s)
Idea of how this could be done, other than the way that that McAfee and Chase have done this.

Jeff Battersby (6m 20s)
Hudson Valley Credit Union, which is a place that I bank up here, send out an email similar but providing a slightly different tact, which is fraud prevention. The number of scam and fraud reports continue to grow, typo in their in their document, continue to grow in our region and nationally.

Tom Anderson (6m 40s)
Are you sure this is legit?

Jeff Battersby (6m 45s)
I don't know, usually typos are a sign that it's a problem.

Jeff Battersby (6m 49s)
But I do know that this is legit.

Jeff Battersby (6m 51s)
In today's digital age, understanding how to recognize, report, and prevent fraud can save you and your loved ones from financial disaster.

Jeff Battersby (6m 58s)
And this is really very true.

Jeff Battersby (7m)
Understanding how easily it is to get scammed,

Jeff Battersby (7m 7s)
how easily you can be scammed, is important,

Jeff Battersby (7m 9s)
which is what we're going to talk about in a little more detail today.

Jeff Battersby (7m 13s)
But at my first call

Jeff Battersby (7m 15s)
That is how ridiculous it is for for chase and McAfee and these other companies to

Jeff Battersby (7m 20s)
Use scare tactics rather than doing what Hudson Valley Credit Union did which is say hey, we've got some tools

Jeff Battersby (7m 27s)
Let's let's let us help you make sure that you don't get scammed now

Jeff Battersby (7m 34s)
tied to this

Jeff Battersby (7m 36s)
Related to this is some banks

Jeff Battersby (7m 40s)
Not being so cool about making sure you get your money

Jeff Battersby (7m 45s)
back if you have been scammed in such a way, and we'll have this in the in the show notes. But a couple of things that that have happened with regard to, you know, these kinds of problems is Wells Fargo. We have an article here, yep, we're calling out Wells Fargo by name as well. We have an article from the Daily Mail that we'll have a link to. Two more Wells Fargo customers have revealed how they lost their life savings to scammers.

Jeff Battersby (8m 15s)
As the bank faces a spate of lawsuits questioning the robustness of its anti-fraud measures.

Jeff Battersby (8m 22s)
And the downside to this, the really sucky thing about this is the two people that are listed in this particular article, one woman, retired opera singer, Jolinda Crocker, 63 years old, says that she was conned out of $60,000 by criminals.

Jeff Battersby (8m 43s)
Judy Bird, who's 75, said--

Jeff Battersby (8m 45s)
She lost $23,000 in a similar ruse.

Jeff Battersby (8m 49s)
Neither of the women, both grandmothers,

Jeff Battersby (8m 51s)
has received a refund from the bank.

Jeff Battersby (8m 55s)
So bank's happy to hold your money, use it to make money,

Jeff Battersby (8m 58s)
but they're not happy to pay you back in these cases when you're legitimately scammed.

Jeff Battersby (9m 8s)
I guess my understanding is that some of these things are not covered by FDIC insurance.

Jeff Battersby (9m 13s)
So it's, you know.

Jeff Battersby (9m 15s)
That's not a, not a thing that gets done.

Jeff Battersby (9m 17s)
So you really do have to be thoughtful about these things.

Jeff Battersby (9m 20s)
You have to be thoughtful about your finances and you have to be thoughtful about, about, um, what's,

Jeff Battersby (9m 26s)
what's going on and how it is that you're going to, you know,

Jeff Battersby (9m 32s)
get scammed, you know, what it is that people are going to do to scam you.

Jeff Battersby (9m 36s)
So what we want to do is first of all,

How to Protect Yourself Against Scammers

Jeff Battersby (9m 40s)
give you some good ideas about what to pay attention to.

Jeff Battersby (9m 45s)
and who to talk to in instances where you get either a legit message like my mother-in-law did from Chase, or it's some fake message from somebody that's trying to rip you off.

Jeff Battersby (10m 2s)
So thing one, my mother-in-law did do the right thing.

Jeff Battersby (10m 7s)
She did go to her bank and she did talk with them.

Jeff Battersby (10m 11s)
So one of the things.

Jeff Battersby (10m 15s)
That you always want to do in any instance when you are being called by quote unquote called by your bank to tell you about some illegitimate issue taking place.

Jeff Battersby (10m 26s)
You want to go directly to the source not to the person who called you.

Jeff Battersby (10m 33s)
I'll give you another example of some crazy stuff that went on a couple years ago.

Jeff Battersby (10m 37s)
My father who has a Mac got called by Microsoft who said that there were viruses coming from his computer.

Jeff Battersby (10m 45s)
And God love you dad I know you listen to the podcast at that point in time he rather than calling me and saying hey I'm getting a call from Microsoft.

Jeff Battersby (10m 56s)
He left these guys control his computer thank God nothing worse than that happened but first choice always.

Jeff Battersby (11m 7s)
If you have someone in your life who's tech savvy for my mother-in-law me for my father me Tom for you.

Jeff Battersby (11m 15s)
People around you that I'm sure can use you check in with those people first.

Jeff Battersby (11m 21s)
It's very very easy for particularly those of us that deal with this stuff on a day-to-day basis to see you know through through the ruse.

Jeff Battersby (11m 34s)
But ask ask somebody else I know that you feel like you're probably inconveniencing the people that you're talking to you know.

Jeff Battersby (11m 42s)
Because I always call you when there are tech issues and I just don't want to...

Jeff Battersby (11m 45s)
I love that you think that way, but also feel free to talk to the person that you know because

Jeff Battersby (11m 52s)
Oftentimes we can pick this stuff out quick. It can just be a quick email. It says is this BS or is this real?

Jeff Battersby (11m 59s)
So encourage you to do that and I'm talking a lot Tom

Tom Anderson (12m)
Well, I'm mailing it in man, I'm just here to hit record and then edit.

Jeff Battersby (12m 3s)
Listen, it's this is the Jeff batters be sure you could have gone on vacation already

Jeff Battersby (12m 13s)
You're right, edit me completely out.

Jeff Battersby (12m 16s)
Let me hand it off to you for a second.

Jeff Battersby (12m 17s)
Since I'm ranting like a maniac, as I often do, um, give us some other, uh,

Jeff Battersby (12m 22s)
some other good ideas as far as what it is that you can do to be able to negotiate the fake, the real and, uh, and, and how to handle.

Tom Anderson (12m 29s)
Yeah. So you mentioned there, you know, reach out to someone that you, you know, and trust get, uh, you know, there's, uh, that, that has some wisdom around the topic, reach out to them and, uh, and just have a discussion. Um, as Jeff said, more than likely they won't mind, uh, because it's, it's looking out for your best interest. Um, also like any, I would,

Tom Anderson (12m 51s)
I always treat any incoming message or call. Well, first of all, if somebody calls and and I don't recognize the number.

Tom Anderson (13m)
That's probably a good first practice, right?

Tom Anderson (13m 2s)
If you don't know it, don't pick it up.

Tom Anderson (13m 3s)
If they leave a voicemail,

Tom Anderson (13m 4s)
don't call the number back in the voicemail.

Tom Anderson (13m 7s)
If they say it's your bank, so they say,

Tom Anderson (13m 9s)
"Oh, hey, this is, you know, Apple Bank,

Tom Anderson (13m 12s)
and we've got a problem with your account.

Tom Anderson (13m 14s)
You need to call us."

Tom Anderson (13m 16s)
If that happens to be your bank, go to the bank's website

Tom Anderson (13m 21s)
or use the app if you have the app,

Tom Anderson (13m 23s)
and there's contact info in there.

Tom Anderson (13m 25s)
Use that as your contact info.

Tom Anderson (13m 29s)
Because that way you know it's legitimately the bank's info, call them and tell them what message you got and see what they have to say. I would start with that. You can always go to the local branch if you have one around. Sometimes that's not always possible, but if it's there, it is something you could do. And honestly, something that I do is I like to go with local or are regional banks versus the big banks.

Jeff Battersby (13m 59s)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (13m 59s)
I just feel like they still have a little bit of a soul left where the major ones don't really.

Jeff Battersby (14m)
Bye bye.

Tom Anderson (14m 7s)
There's one just up the street from us, and a lady that works there, worked there when I opened my account with them, I don't know, 2006, whatever it was, we took my son in there to open his account.

Tom Anderson (14m 19s)
She's like, "Oh, wow, I can't believe how much he's grown and everything."

Tom Anderson (14m 22s)
She's remembered that.

Tom Anderson (14m 24s)
That's not to say that a big bank doesn't have long-term employees.

Tom Anderson (14m 26s)
I'm sure they would at their branches, too.

Tom Anderson (14m 30s)
And to be honest, the reason I stay with the bank,

Tom Anderson (14m 32s)
like their website isn't all that great for banking and everything,

Tom Anderson (14m 35s)
but their support has always been excellent.

Tom Anderson (14m 38s)
Like, you know, always get the same for people,

Tom Anderson (14m 40s)
and which is nice.

Tom Anderson (14m 42s)
So I would do that as well.

Tom Anderson (14m 44s)
Use the apps on those emails that come in.

Tom Anderson (14m 48s)
Jeff mentioned his mother-in-law there did the right thing.

Tom Anderson (14m 50s)
She did not click the link

Tom Anderson (14m 54s)
because you just don't know where the links are going.

Tom Anderson (14m 56s)
And the scammers, it used to be those things

Tom Anderson (14m 59s)
that were obvious.

Tom Anderson (15m)
It would be like me writing, you know,

Tom Anderson (15m 3s)
something in Japanese and trying to scam someone.

Tom Anderson (15m 5s)
It just wasn't very well,

Tom Anderson (15m 6s)
they weren't very well-written or anything like that.

Tom Anderson (15m 8s)
But they've gotten pretty advanced with those.

Tom Anderson (15m 10s)
And a lot of them actually look pretty good these days.

Tom Anderson (15m 14s)
So again, message comes in.

Tom Anderson (15m 16s)
If you're unsure, just go to the source.

Tom Anderson (15m 19s)
You know, don't use the link.

Tom Anderson (15m 20s)
Don't call any numbers people give.

Tom Anderson (15m 22s)
And just hit the bank directly.

Jeff Battersby (15m 26s)
Yeah. And just to say, AI is going to make those scams even better, um, you know,

Jeff Battersby (15m 33s)
whatever benefits Eric is going to bring us, which Tom's on the gravy train and I'm on the,

Jeff Battersby (15m 40s)
I'm not quite sure yet story train, but, um, AI definitely going to make these, uh, the,

Jeff Battersby (15m 47s)
the language in these emails and the information sound and seem much more correct than they have have in the past.

Jeff Battersby (15m 54s)
So that is, that's definitely.

Jeff Battersby (15m 56s)
something that you want to do that would be the hope.

Tom Anderson (15m 57s)
and hopefully on the flip side help with detecting those too. Yeah, we'll see.

Jeff Battersby (16m 2s)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (16m 3s)
So hopefully there's some good detection and that's, that would be one of the great benefits of AI being able to filter out the garbage before it gets to you.

Jeff Battersby (16m 11s)
Um, not everybody has access to something like this, but, um, if you run a domain,

Jeff Battersby (16m 19s)
in other words, if you're in charge of, of, you know, your, your company's website and you're getting information.

Jeff Battersby (16m 26s)
like this through company email and I highly recommend a service called MX GuardDog. It is free. All it needs is a link from MX GuardDog on your website and what that will do is that will filter out a great majority of junk mail. It's a free filtering service. Highly recommend it and that's a tool to keep you from being able to do that. Most people don't have that option. You have a

Jeff Battersby (16m 56s)
Gmail account, you have, you know, in some cases a Yahoo account, you know, any of these other accounts and you don't have the ability, because you don't have control over your own domain or your own website, you don't have the ability to be able to to control that. But the assumption that you need to make is no one who's going to call you proactively to tell you that there's a problem with your computer. That's not, that's not going to be the case. You're never going get a phone call, pop.

Jeff Battersby (17m 27s)
And this is particularly true in Windows environments.

Jeff Battersby (17m 30s)
But if you're on a Mac, one of the things that you'll note is, um,

Jeff Battersby (17m 35s)
if you're getting messages that say that your Windows, uh,

Jeff Battersby (17m 38s)
password is incorrect and you need to change it on your Mac, clearly

Jeff Battersby (17m 43s)
you should know that you don't have a Windows password that you need to mess with. Uh, nor should you click that link,

Jeff Battersby (17m 49s)
but your websites have no means of directly detecting what's going on on your computer either. So if you see.

Jeff Battersby (17m 57s)
Some site like that close the browser window open it back up again and see what happens if you continue to get those kinds of messages.

Jeff Battersby (18m 6s)
It may be that you have some kind of malware on your computer.

Jeff Battersby (18m 10s)
And in this case for quick free malware scanning can highly recommend malware bites.com for both Macs and PCs.

Jeff Battersby (18m 19s)
They offer a free scanning service that you can subscribe to if you like the if if you like the application later on.

Jeff Battersby (18m 26s)
But you can download that and it's a it's a nice for free service.

Jeff Battersby (18m 30s)
And they're not, you know,

Jeff Battersby (18m 33s)
going to continue shilling for your money after after you

Jeff Battersby (18m 39s)
after you download that.

Jeff Battersby (18m 41s)
And it will do a quick scan and eradication of any malware that's on your computer.

Jeff Battersby (18m 46s)
So I can highly recommend that.

Jeff Battersby (18m 47s)
And that's often what happens.

Jeff Battersby (18m 50s)
You know, you accidentally find your way to some site that's problematic and it's going to pop Windows up to tell you that you're a computer.

Jeff Battersby (18m 56s)
is infected with a million viruses and you need to fix it so you can you can you know handle it in that way but the important point is nobody is going to proactively contact you to tell you that there is a problem so whether it's via email or whether it's via a phone call which you know as with Tom I don't answer numbers I don't know if they leave me a message and it's somebody I

Jeff Battersby (19m 26s)
need to talk to that's a different story the other thing that you can pay attention to and even though Hudson Valley Credit Union did have a typo missing a word in their in their document oftentimes there will be misspellings or kind of weird language in terms of how it's written so I got a mailbox notification alert for my email address full storage notification. So my storage is supposedly full.

Jeff Battersby (19m 56s)
I, by the way, know that I have infinite storage on my email.

Jeff Battersby (19m 59s)
So because I administer that email address,

Jeff Battersby (20m 2s)
but I got a message here that says you have used up all your storage capacity to

Jeff Battersby (20m 8s)
prevent message from being clutered C L U T E R E D and deleted.

Jeff Battersby (20m 14s)
You must clear the cache immediately to free up space. First of all,

Jeff Battersby (20m 18s)
that's a bunch of jibberish clear, clear up the cache.

Jeff Battersby (20m 21s)
but you would have to delete email, if that was the case.

Jeff Battersby (20m 25s)
It has a link for--

Jeff Battersby (20m 26s)
And so if I were to click that link, I'm sure it would have taken me to some website where I would have logged in with my email address and password, and it would have then taken that information and done something bad with it.

Tom Anderson (20m 44s)
Right trying to farm some credentials. Yep

Jeff Battersby (20m 44s)
And then action required immediately.

Jeff Battersby (20m 47s)
So again, in most cases, if you're talking about business email or email where someone is managing your...

Jeff Battersby (20m 56s)
Managing your domain. Talk with your administrator and say, "Hey, listen,

Jeff Battersby (21m)
I got this email message. Is this correct?" Pretty much any business admin is going to tell you don't click links in emails from people you don't know. This one comes from No Reply.

Jeff Battersby (21m 14s)
So read the messages and pay attention to them to make sure that they're using

Jeff Battersby (21m 24s)
Proper English

Jeff Battersby (21m 26s)
Not misspelled words like cluttered

Jeff Battersby (21m 31s)
Clute good movie, but spelled with a K

Jeff Battersby (21m 34s)
So, you know, we want to pay attention to those kinds of things. We have some links in the show notes

Jeff Battersby (21m 42s)
One from the New York Times and I'll double yeah, that's a gift link so that's we'll be able to have it

Jeff Battersby (21m 49s)
And one of the things that that

Jeff Battersby (21m 52s)
It was stated in this particular article, this New York Times article, is that...

Jeff Battersby (21m 56s)
The legitimate world looks so much like a scam these days that it's much easier to make a scam look like the legit world.

Jeff Battersby (22m 8s)
And it really is very easy to make information coming to you via email appear to be legit.

Jeff Battersby (22m 18s)
So you always, always want to visit your local bank, as Tom said.

Jeff Battersby (22m 22s)
call the bank at the number that you have, go to their site.

Jeff Battersby (22m 26s)
There are various apps that you can use to handle that.

Jeff Battersby (22m 30s)
If you have the option for multi-factor and or biometric authentication, which, you know,

Jeff Battersby (22m 38s)
a lot of banks now when you log in,

Jeff Battersby (22m 41s)
they require you to receive a text message or to use a pass key or something of that nature.

Jeff Battersby (22m 47s)
You want to use that and do not click the links in your email.

Jeff Battersby (22m 50s)
Now with regard to the McAfee email that my client

Jeff Battersby (22m 56s)
that we found your info on the dark web.

Jeff Battersby (23m)
And we'll say that when you click the review results,

Jeff Battersby (23m 3s)
what they're really doing is, Oh, we haven't found anything yet, but let's check.

Jeff Battersby (23m 6s)
Let's do it now. So that wasn't trying to sell you on something.

Jeff Battersby (23m 10s)
The reality is so many companies have had

Jeff Battersby (23m 14s)
serious breaches of data. For example, LinkedIn did a couple of years ago.

Jeff Battersby (23m 19s)
You know,

Jeff Battersby (23m 19s)
and you will read regularly several companies that have that have somehow

Jeff Battersby (23m 26s)
used personal information to get caught out in the wild.

Jeff Battersby (23m 29s)
If you want to check and see whether or not your email address or your email

Jeff Battersby (23m 35s)
addresses,

Jeff Battersby (23m 36s)
if you have more than one have ever been released in a breach,

Jeff Battersby (23m 41s)
there is a site you can go to called have I been pwned.com.

Helpful Resources

Jeff Battersby (23m 48s)
Sounds so close to something else that we won't say, but you can hear it.

Tom Anderson (23m 51s)
Yes, owned.

Tom Anderson (23m 53s)
Yes.

Jeff Battersby (23m 53s)
if you say it fast enough.

Jeff Battersby (23m 56s)
And that client's email, uh, I did plug into this, into this site.

Jeff Battersby (24m 1s)
And, uh, I will say that, uh, there were four instances where that person's email address had been released in the wild.

Tom Anderson (24m 11s)
Yeah, that's a great tool that's been around for.

Tom Anderson (24m 14s)
Geez, I don't know quite a long time now.

Tom Anderson (24m 16s)
Troy Hunt sent that up and 1Password's integrated it into their service.

Tom Anderson (24m 20s)
I don't know if Apple uses it like when you go into system settings, passwords and like if you store passwords through Safari there, there's a section there where can detect leaked passwords and it will show you any that it that it's found.

Tom Anderson (24m 34s)
I don't know if it uses that same database.

Tom Anderson (24m 36s)
And it's it's a huge database because he's constantly updating it every time something happens.

Jeff Battersby (24m 39s)
Yes.

Jeff Battersby (24m 40s)
Yes.

Jeff Battersby (24m 41s)
Yes.

Jeff Battersby (24m 41s)
Yes.

Tom Anderson (24m 41s)
On 1Password, they call that Watchtower.

Tom Anderson (24m 44s)
And I imagine Chrome has I don't use it.

Tom Anderson (24m 47s)
I probably Chrome has something Firefox has something.

Tom Anderson (24m 50s)
I mean, it's pretty standard now to do these sorts of things.

Jeff Battersby (24m 52s)
It is and the good thing about that is Apple's built-in and as you said one password and I think all the other ones. Although we'll say here LastPass got a bunch of their data exposed. So I don't know that I'd be using LastPass. Yeah I would I would be avoiding LastPass. But all of those tools also like Apple's built-in password tool which is going to be an app in the next version of the

Tom Anderson (25m 7s)
They did a couple of times, I think.

Jeff Battersby (25m 22s)
operating system of all their operating systems. They provide you with tools to be able to go to those sites and change your passwords and that's typically all you really have to do to resolve the issue is go to the site where your data has been exposed. In a lot of cases when I've gone through my list of exposures it's not even stuff that I'm using presently. So I just delete the you know delete the account if it's possible.

Jeff Battersby (25m 52s)
Or you know, delete my connection to that.

Tom Anderson (25m 55s)
Yeah, and I would just preface, you know, go back to that real quick.

Jeff Battersby (25m 58s)
Preface no no.

Tom Anderson (25m 59s)
If you go to that site, or if you see it in your Apple system settings or in one password,

Tom Anderson (26m 4s)
whatever it is, there's no reason to panic over that.

Tom Anderson (26m 8s)
I mean, everybody at this point, I would say, has had their data breached, because there's just been, it just happens so often.

Tom Anderson (26m 18s)
And there've been some that are really huge and I wouldn't panic over it, but just, you change the password if you still need it. If not, you can close the app.

Tom Anderson (26m 25s)
But nothing to panic about with just that piece. That just shows your information was in a breach somewhere. It doesn't necessarily even mean they got the password. In certain circumstances, they just have maybe the email address and depending on how the passwords are hashed out, maybe they got it, maybe they didn't. So they kind of err on the side of precaution and say, "Go ahead and change the password because we don't know. So we'll assume that because it's It's been leaked, it's been exposed.

Tom Anderson (26m 55s)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (26m 55s)
Correct. Yeah. And that's, that's really the insidious thing about those,

Jeff Battersby (26m 59s)
you know, the, the email that came from chase and the email that came from McAfee is the way that that is being marketed is, um,

Jeff Battersby (27m 7s)
it designed to freak you out. And as Tom said,

Jeff Battersby (27m 11s)
there's no reason to be freaked out. It's really kind of simple.

Jeff Battersby (27m 16s)
Change the password on the site or get rid of the site if it's not something that you're using anymore. Nice thing,

Tom Anderson (27m 22s)
Yep. So pro tip, a pro tip, because that's where you turn to this show for, um, if you're not in the habit of looking in these sections for these types of things, just set a reminder once a quarter, just go and look at your passwords, see if it's got any security recommendations.

Jeff Battersby (27m 25s)
right?

Tom Anderson (27m 38s)
And, uh, and you can do it more frequently if that makes you feel better, but, uh, you know,

Tom Anderson (27m 41s)
just take a look at it and just add it to kind of your digital management processes that you have there to stay on top of. Not a big deal, but just make it something you check in on every

Jeff Battersby (27m 50s)
Yeah. And, and the, uh, like the old song from the seventies,

Jeff Battersby (27m 56s)
the first cut is the deepest, um, the, uh, Tom,

Jeff Battersby (28m)
you're supposed to smile at that. You didn't even, you gave me like,

Tom Anderson (28m 2s)
I nodded.

Tom Anderson (28m 3s)
I was wondering if there was a follow-up.

Jeff Battersby (28m 4s)
where's he going next to this? Yeah. There's a follow-up.

Jeff Battersby (28m 9s)
It typically the first time that you go through this is the time that you're going to see the most, uh, passwords that have been exposed.

Jeff Battersby (28m 20s)
And once you clean it up once, uh,

Jeff Battersby (28m 21s)
it's pretty simple to go back and clean it up afterwards. You know, when,

Jeff Battersby (28m 24s)
when there, if there were one or two things, like for example, um,

Jeff Battersby (28m 29s)
a couple of years back when LinkedIn got their data exposed,

Jeff Battersby (28m 32s)
I went in and changed my password. That game was fixed. You know,

Tom Anderson (28m 34s)
That's it. Yep.

Jeff Battersby (28m 34s)
it's all been taken care of. It's as simple as that. So it,

Jeff Battersby (28m 37s)
and these apps, one password, Apple's built in password manager,

Jeff Battersby (28m 42s)
all pretty good about proactively telling you where there's a problem,

Jeff Battersby (28m 46s)
But big thing is not to panic.

Jeff Battersby (28m 50s)
Because even if your bank or your security software is flakking you for money and for a service and using bad marketing to do it, don't panic. It's not as big a deal as it seems.

Jeff Battersby (29m 7s)
Never let someone you don't know control your computer. Never use the phone number that you get in the email. And I will tell you, I spent a couple of years.

Jeff Battersby (29m 20s)
While I was teaching Apple certification classes online, I had another computer set up because I was regularly getting calls at my house and I had a VM set up and I would let these guys play with it and I would behave like a bonehead the whole time.

Jeff Battersby (29m 35s)
And it always goes bad. It always made them really angry, which was half the fun.

Tom Anderson (29m 37s)
Just to see where it would go.

Tom Anderson (29m 46s)
Mm-hmm, which is beautiful, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (29m 50s)
I wish I'd known that I could make a mint recording those things. I would have started a YouTube channel then, but I guess that's correct.

Tom Anderson (29m 55s)
That's why we're not businessmen, we're podcasters.

Jeff Battersby (30m)
And with that, Tom, yeah.

Tom Anderson (30m)
All right.

Tom Anderson (30m)
So quick recap, Jeff, as we said, don't give your information out over the phone or through an email.

Tom Anderson (30m 7s)
Uh, if you get these types of messages or phone calls, contact your local branch,

Tom Anderson (30m 12s)
if you have one, or go into the app on your phone, um, that, you know, is legit

Tom Anderson (30m 18s)
like for city or chase or Hudson Valley, whatever the bank is.

Tom Anderson (30m 22s)
So go direct to the source, basically, and...

Tom Anderson (30m 25s)
...confirm with them, rather than the random person that just showed up in your inbox or on your phone.

Tom Anderson (30m 30s)
So I like to say, "Use the apps if they've got them."

Tom Anderson (30m 33s)
Multi-factor is big. We were talking about those data breaches, so if your password does get out, at least with multi-factor, you're not completely compromised, necessarily.

Tom Anderson (30m 42s)
Do that. Avoid clicking the links, and also contact that trusted friend that might be a little more versed in these types of things, and get a bit of advice from them.

Jeff Battersby (30m 48s)
Yeah. Yeah, it really, it really is. If it's Tom or it's me or it's, you know,

Jeff Battersby (30m 58s)
someone else in your life who is tech savvy, we're mostly happy to do that. Mostly.

Tom Anderson (31m 4s)
We are.

Jeff Battersby (31m 9s)
Now with, yeah, yeah. It's absolutely something that we're happy to do. And, and frankly, it's.

Tom Anderson (31m 9s)
If it's the 10th time on the same question, then it's like, we've already talked about this, but.

Jeff Battersby (31m 18s)
Saves us all time and money, um, you know, to say, Nope, that's BS. And I have a lot of clients that just send me a quick screenshot of stuff, uh, legit or not. And, uh, you know, give them the thumbs up or thumbs down and that's the end of it. So all very simple. And that's that Tom.

Tom Anderson (31m 33s)
All right, and that is that we have done it

Close

Jeff Battersby (31m 35s)
Look at us back to 30 minutes. Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome.

Tom Anderson (31m 37s)
Back to 30. It's been a while since we've been a 30 dirty 30. We're back at it

Tom Anderson (31m 42s)
So, all right that will do it for this episode as always we gratefully

Tom Anderson (31m 48s)
Appreciate gratefully and gratefully I guess appreciate you being here with us

Tom Anderson (31m 53s)
And spending some time with us. We know as we've said previously There are lots of places you can go to get information like this. So we do appreciate that you

Tom Anderson (32m 1s)
Choose to spend some time

Tom Anderson (32m 3s)
with us.

Jeff Battersby (32m 3s)
Yeah, thanks very much

Tom Anderson (32m 5s)
Alright, so until next time,

Tom Anderson (32m 7s)
have a great rest of your day and rest of your night.

Jeff Battersby (32m 8s)
And a good vacation, see ya

Outro Music (32m 10s)
♪ I don't wanna know about your imperfections ♪ ♪ Dude, prefer to leave you on a pedestal ♪ ♪ So I'll improve ♪ ♪ 'Cause if I'm finding out you know ♪ ♪ That I'm just like you ♪ ♪ That gon' smash my whole world ♪ ♪ Lost in illusion ♪ ♪ Drowning myself up in the sauce ♪ ♪ Put my glasses on backward ♪ ♪ And rewind my watch 'cause ♪