HS 129 - Internet Security & Data Privacy with Phil Alexander

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It's my pleasure to welcome Phil Alexander to the show. He is an Internet security and data privacy expert. I think this is an area of survival and prudence in our life that is very much overlooked by most people. And I'm glad that we have him here to tell us what to do and things we should be aware of today. Phil, welcome. How are you?

I'm fine, Jason. It's great to be here. Thank you.

Well, likewise. Great to have you. So what are some of the biggest challenges people are facing in the world of Internet security and privacy?

Well, it's just that there's so much data out there. And especially with the Internet. On the plus side, it's determined as access to information, but needs to be used with due care because it does expose people to dangers of identity theft, credit card theft. And of course, as a parent myself, you know, I want to make sure my kids are safe online.

And so what are some of the things that people are really, really doing wrong? Like some of the big egregious problems that can probably be easily fixed, I bet.

Right. There are a lot of things you can do without necessarily being a computer expert or an IT expert. For example, a common one, what I call scammers. They'll send you emails saying there's a problem with, say, your online banking account and your account will be frozen. Please send us your username and password to resolve this issue.

But nobody really. Does anybody really fall for that? I've had that email, and I think, Phil, it came right after the email about the person trying to get the money out of Nigeria. Right.

That was a Nigerian attack.

Yeah, well.

But from a risk, you know, from the scammer's point of view, if I send out 10,000 emails, which doesn't cost me anything, if I only get 1% back, I can still get a certain amount of fraud.

It's amazing, though, that even that anybody is that dumb. That's just scary, isn't it?

You know, it is. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who, like you said, you're right. That particular, what's called a phishing attack has been around for a long time, and there are still people that fall victim to it.

I think one of the ways that people could fall really pretty easily is they sometimes, if they're good phishers, they create the air of legitimacy because there will be a link in the email that takes you to a site. So if you bank with bank of America, for example, it'll take you to a site that looks like bank of America site, but if you don't actually look at the URL in the address bar, you could mistakenly put your password into this fake banking website. Right, right.

I mean, the scammers have gotten very clever, though. You're right. You'll click on the link. It takes you. I mean, I'll stick with your example of bank of America. And the website will mimic bank of America very closely. And the only difference will be when you actually enter a username and password and hit enter or send, it sends it to the scammer site and not to legitimate bank of America. No bank's going to ask you to email them username and password. And if you're not sure the email is legitimate, just call your bank or go into a local branch.

Okay, so phishing attacks. And there are probably. Do you want to mention any other types of phishing attacks? Right.

There's one. It's actually labeled the granny phishing attack. And what is. They'll call seniors with grandkids saying your grandchild is in trouble, say, and got in trouble south of the border in Mexico, and they need $1,500 to get out of jail. And there's a processing fee of $100 for us to do that. Well, that's now a granny phishing attack that's been labeled. You know, if you get that kind of call, my advice is not to do that. And then you'll make the calls to your family to see if your grandchild really is, you know, in some kind of trouble and respond that way and not just from that kind of, you know, what's called a granny phishing attack.

Right, right. So do you want to move on to another subject beyond phishing? I mean, I'm still sure it boggles the mind that people really fall for that stuff, but it happens. They only need a few people.

Right? Yeah. Also, like online credit card online shopping. I mean, it's January now. We just got through the, what we call the Christmas buying season. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, myself included, you know, did a fair amount of purchasing of items online. And, you know, there's a risk there because, you know, a lot of times you'll purchase an item with either a credit card or a debit card. The safety of your credit or debit card is specifically tied to how secure that online company protects the data. You know, if their protection, you know, security posture is weak, your data is at risk. One thing I recommend, you know, instead of a credit card or a debit card, consider using a gift card. You know, If I use $100 gift card and buy something for $75, the only risk out there is the $25 still left on it and not, you know, my whole credit card or my whole debit card.

I just had some credit card fraud again. I've had it a few times. On my last statement, someone put $221 on my credit card at a merchant I didn't recognize and don't shop at. But the nice thing is with a credit card, see, I think the debit cards are very dangerous. I don't like debit cards at all. But the credit card, you're not liable for It I think technically you're liable for $50, but I've never been held liable at least.

Right, you're absolutely correct. By law, you're liable for $50. But most of them, if you can prove that it was in fact a fraudulent charge, it will give you back all your money. But you touched on something very important. The need to check your. If you don't recognize a charge, call the company. If it's legitimate, they'll have a record of the purchase and they can send you the receipt. And if I could real quick, you're also very correct that a debit card can even be more dangerous because it generally comes out of, say, your checking account. So not only can the scammer get your money, but you also risk bouncing checks. So checks you're writing for legitimate bills. And you can bounce check fees on top of everything else.

Okay, so using a gift card rather than a credit card. Now, do you agree with me that debit cards are more dangerous than credit cards?

Well, I do, as I said, because in addition to the financial loss, you're also looking at bounce check fees and potentially even hit your credit score. So, yeah, there's even more risk with debit cards. Well, as far as online shopping, it depends on. I also ask, look at what data the online realtors ask you to provide. Now, a certain amount of data is necessary. For example, where do you want it shipped to? But if they say, I'll say Amazon, which they don't do. They're a very reputable online company. An online company doesn't need, for example, your Social Security number just to make an online purchase. Social Security numbers are very risky, can lead to identity theft. So don't provide pieces of information about yourself that aren't specifically necessary. In fact, one of the features that Walmart has, for example, they have what's called a ship to store, where you don't even need to send them your home address to ship it to. You can ship it to a local store and just pick up the item there, Right?

Apple has that too. Yeah.

Mm, yeah, absolutely.

So. So that there's probably a lot of fraud in that ship to store stuff because someone can go and somehow hack your account, have stuff shipped to the store, pick it up. It's already been paid for as far as the store is concerned. And you've basically paid for what they just purchased, right? Is that what you're going to say?

Well, you still need to be careful, right? Like I said, if someone gets, you know, can hack your account or can get to your Credit card. They can shop as you get shipped to the store, shipped to their address. So, you know, protecting your data is. It's everyone's responsibility to be diligent about the data.

Let's talk about hacking accounts for a moment if we can. I remember when Sarah Palin was the VP nominee, someone hacked her Gmail account and it was in the news. And I get spam emails from friends and people in my address book. That's obvious their account has been hacked. They would never send me that email. I know that, you know, I always tell them, and I also see that on Facebook as well, that you know, where it's obvious someone's Facebook account has been hacked. There are programs out there that can go and try to log into a website and they basically just guess passwords, right? And I've heard that these programs, I mean it is insane how quickly they work. And the websites must have some safeguards which I'm sure you're going to talk about, right? But I've heard that these programs can, and I don't remember the exact number, so forgive me, but it's a huge number that they can guess like within a couple of minutes. It can run millions of password combinations and try to guess a password, right?

What you're talking about is like a dictionary attack or a brute force attack. And you're right, with modern computers they can very quickly go through tens of thousands of potential password combinations. That's why a way to help prevent that is after say 3 to 5 invalid password attempts, lock out the account and then send a reset to your email address that you've registered before. But you brought up another important point. A lot of free Internet based email accounts or even social networking sites, you're not in charge, you the user, you're not in charge of the security or it's not like a major corporation has an internal email account where they are in charge of the security. It's basically the Internet company that's in charge of security. And you don't know what their posture is. You don't know if they're going to lock out your account after failed attempts. You don't know if they enforce any kind of password complexity. You know, could my password be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5? Could the password be my first name? I don't. You know, probably in some sites you could, and you're right, it wouldn't be very hard to hack it.

So what do we do about that? How do we protect ourselves? I mean, we can't control, you know, all of the websites we like to use and what they do. What do we do?

Well, I think you brought up an important point. Even if it comes, if you get an email from someone you know, but it's out of character for what they do, check with them and what I do say, if I have, you know, like a Hotmail or Yahoo account, I'm still going to use a complex, you know, what I consider a hard to guess password. And I'm not going to because it's an Internet based account. I'm not going to put things in there that are sensitive. You know, I'm not going to start discussing extremely personal things there. I'm not going to be talking about my financial information with my wife, you know, through a Hotmail account or Yahoo account just because I don't control the security of those accounts. So I'm not going to put data that I consider very sensitive there.

Yeah. So obviously be careful, don't put sensitive data. But do you have any recommendations on which companies are maybe better than others or is there a website that can. The problem is I don't know if you could even keep a list like that because it's a moving target. The companies are changing their policies all the time, I'm sure.

Well, that's one of the challenges is companies are changing their policies all the time. I take a very cautious eye to free Internet email from any provider, even well known ones. Going back to the online shopping, not only do I exercise due diligence there, but I try to stick with very well known companies that are mature and who want to defend their reputation so will have a certain level of security that's in their own best interest versus an unknown site that I have even less of a good feel that they have a strong security posture.

All right, what else would you like to cover?

Well, once we talked about was knowing what your kids are doing online as parents.

Yeah, good point.

One of the things I tell people, ignorance is not bliss here. Who are your kids chatting with online? Who are they emailing? Do you know who they're texting? Do you know what social media sites they're on? Do you know if your son or daughter has a Twitter account or a Facebook account? Do you know who their friends are online? If you don't, you really should. Are they being bullied online or. I guess it's hard being my kid because I'm one of the parents because of the business I'm in. I know more about computers than my teenage son does. So as a parent, be involved and monitor who they're Emailing who they're texting, who they're chatting. I tell them under no circumstances let your mom or child friend someone who they only know online. And yeah, I never agree to meet someone, you know, especially as a child, never agree to meet someone in real life that they've only met online.

Oh yeah, very scary. Of course, I guess Facebook, I believe their policy is anybody over 13 is allowed to have a Facebook membership. Is that correct?

I believe so, yes.

It's really, I mean, what a Pandora's box. I mean most people don't have enough time to monitor their own voicemails, emails, text messages and social media, much less their children's. And I mean there so much damage can be done so quickly. I mean, how do you do that?

Oh, like I said, it's, you know, it can be a lot of work. And you know, you brought up another interesting point. You said, and you're right, but there's little bots I Certify I'm over 13.

Yeah, who, who cares? I've always thought those things were funny. Like you go to an alcohol website. Yeah, I'm over 21.

Right. You know, at least when I was a kid and I tried to walk into a bar, I had to have an ID with me, right. To get into the bar. And now, I mean if I say, yeah, I'm over 13 or depending on size, yeah, I'm over 18, but they don't check, they don't have to enter in some kind of verification to prove. So yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of nine year old kids with their Facebook accounts.

Scary stuff, definitely. But I assume those children accounts are set up by the parents and they offer some degree of control that maybe the general public hopefully can't see your kid's profile and maybe parents have to approve all friend requests or something like that would be a good idea.

No, absolutely. I tell my, you know, for my son, you know, I'm in charge and what he can do on Facebook, I don't want, you know, at least at this point. This is, you know, my personal preference as a parent that right now I don't want him on Twitter. I'm not saying all parents do that, but that's in the Alexander household. And watch and watch his etiquette. Don't email someone or text someone or post something online. Then you wouldn't talk face to face like to a parent or to your teacher as a student. Don't get quote unquote vulgar or disrespectful just because, wow, it's only an email or I'm only posting online so it doesn't matter what. Yeah, it does.

Yeah, there's a person behind that that sees that and there may be. Absolutely. There may be consequences. They may get back at you. So you got to be careful.

Yeah, absolutely.

I just, I got to tell you personally, I just hate bullies. I mean, I just despise the concept of bullying. I, it is so nasty. And I remember hearing about that case a couple of years ago, how this teenage girl, I believe it was, was bullied by a parent posing as one of her peers. I don't want to say friends that did all kinds of mean things and I believe she ended up committing suicide. I mean, what a tragic, tragic story.

It's a heart wrenching story you're referring to. It was a young girl named Megan Meyer.

And that's, that's. Maybe we need another Megan's Law.

Yeah, perhaps we do. Because it was basically a mom of someone who Megan had a falling out with, was posing as a 16 year old boy named Josh Evans. And so they were having this friendship online and the quote, unquote, Josh Evans broke up with Megan and the poor girl wound up committing suicide. It's a tragedy. One thing that I tell people, not only, you know, through data privacy network, but like I said in the community, just as a parent, you know, if you see cyberbullying, stop, don't respond, don't hit reply. Your response is to tell your mom and dad this is what's going on and ignore it and let your parents respond accordingly. Does it rise to the level, say to notify authorities or not? But in those circumstances, start getting into an online battle with a cyberbully. If you see it as a child, tell your parents. I tell my kid there is nothing, I mean nothing that he can't bring to my attention. I'm here for him no matter what. And that includes if something bad happens online, you come to dad and I'm here for you 100%.

Anything else on bullying that you want to say? Any other tips or anything?

Well, I would say. And you know, and the opposite is true too. Like I said earlier, you know, etiquette works both ways. Don't respond to cyberbullying, you know, don't be a bully yourself. Watch your etiquette in your conversation with people and that includes your online electronic conversations as well.

Yeah, good point. Anything else that people should know about the privacy and you know, online security?

Yeah, I would just say like on your computers itself, depending on your program, keep it up to date with, you know, simple things like patching and antivirus and they have spam filtering. Just like if, like this time of year, you know, we encourage people get a flu shot so you don't get the flu virus. Well, keep your computer healthy can help it from getting viruses and sometimes those viruses steal information. So if, you know, more robust computer, more up to date computer will help protect it and then yourself from, you know, attacks that may lead to data loss.

Are you a Mac or a PC user?

Actually, I use both Mac.

Which one do you prefer?

From an Ease of Use more of a Mac.

So I asked you that because I wanted to know where you're coming from before this next question and maybe we could just kind of wrap up with this And I'm a Mac user, by the way, just so you know where I'm coming from. But I use PCs for many years and I like the Macs better. But if you talk to Apple, they seem to think that a Mac never gets a virus. And I think they're just toeing the company line. I think it's ridiculous. Any computer can get a virus. But in the broader scheme of things, I mean, are Macs more secure? Probably are.

Right, right. Macs are more secure. But I agree with you, no computer is 100% virus proof. You know, I believe for the longest time, I do believe they have a more robust operating system. But I think quite frankly, especially in years past, the reason there were less viruses attacking Macs, because there were less Macs out there. Now as they're grabbing a larger portion of the market share, they become a.

Bigger target for bad guys. Sure, no question about it. Yeah. Well, good stuff. Well, hey, give out your website and tell people where they can learn more.

Sure. Well, they can look at my website at www.dataprivacynetwork.com, have a lot of good information there, some informational articles and there's also a form how to contact Data Privacy Network and me directly if they'd like to do so.

And are you located in Phoenix? I noticed your area code.

Yes, I am located in Phoenix, Arizona.

Fantastic. Well, so am I. Well, good stuff, Phil. Hey, thanks for joining us today. And everybody out there, don't neglect this area of your life. It deserves some attention. There's some pretty easy things you can do and save yourself a lot of potential aggravation in the future.

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