Your information is online - hacks, data breaches, apps and more!

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal, medical, financial, legal, counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services of. Competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. The information contained in this podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individual professional legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled from vetted sources and references. However, Rose Resources' outreach to safeguard the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall.

0:47 Victim to a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the must-listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves and their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday at 8 a.m. Pacific time on K4HD radio, Joyce Petrowski founder of Rose and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And now here is your host Joyce Petrowski. Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us for let's talk about scams. Um, My name is Joyce Petrowski, and I'm the founder and board president of ROSE, Resources Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly.

1:32 We're a 501c3 nonprofit with a mission to prevent the financial exploitation and defrauding of older adults through advocacy and education. And we have a scam education and awareness program where older adults and really anybody can learn more about scams and learn how to protect themselves. And today we're going to talk to Gordy Siewert from Acacia IT. We're going to talk all about how your information gets out there. So Gordy has over 20 years in the telecom industry and more than three decades of management experience. Gordy is a seasoned technology professional with deep expertise in telecommunications, IT infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Throughout his career, Gordy has worked extensively with cell phones, voice-over internet phone systems, fiber and wireless internet data centers, and IT services, gaining a comprehensive understanding of the evolving tech landscape. Currently, Gordy is a business development manager at Acacia IT, an industry-leading managed services and cybersecurity provider, where he focuses on helping businesses safeguard their digital assets and streamline their IT operations. As a licensed cyber liability insurance professional, Gordy also brings a unique risk management perspective to cybersecurity, ensuring clients are protected from digital threats, both technically and financially. A lifelong technology enthusiast, Gordy shares his

3:07 passion for cybersecurity and scam awareness as the host of the podcast, What the Hack? where he educates listeners on the latest scams, cyber threats, and best practices for protecting themselves and their businesses in an increasingly digital world. In addition to his technical experience, Forti has extensive leadership and management experience driving teams to success through strategic planning, innovation, and mentorship. Whether implementing cutting-edge IT solutions or advocating for cybersecurity awareness, Forti is dedicated to making technology accessible, secure, and efficient for businesses and individuals alike. So let's welcome Gordy.

3:50 Thank you, Joyce. Thank you. That was quite the introduction there. How are you? I'm doing fine. Apparently, there's a ray of light sneaking in my window, and I apologize for that. You look like you have an aura of light coming down, you know, like a halo that has those light reflections. Hopefully, it'll last just a minute here. I don't know where that's coming from. Never happened that. That's never happened before. Well, you can be the angel today. How's that? There we go. There you go. Thank you for the intro. That was quite the intro. Yes. So thank you for being on today. And I thought it would be, for our first episode, it would be really great to talk about your information's out there.

4:33 Absolutely. Right. It's different for everybody. Like you might have more or less information out there than I do. Somebody else, right, could have different information out there. It's different for everybody. But I think it's a basic first step understanding that people need to take, really anybody, not just the older adults, that they need to understand that your information is out there. And so I wanted to dive into, well, how does it get out there? I think some of it is out of our control, but some of it we can control. So let's start with something that's out of our control. Right. So that's going to be data breaches and hacks.

5:14 Yes. Yeah, that happened. Explain, explain data breaches and hacks. Yeah. So data breaches. There was a big one. I don't know if anybody out there uses LinkedIn. That's a real popular one. There was a there was a breach that happened quite some time ago. And everyone's usernames and passwords got out there. And all the information that they loaded on top of that got out there into the public, onto the dark web. So if you've used, you know, and obviously if you sign into LinkedIn at one time, they would tell you, Hey, there's been a breach. We all get that every once in a while. We get that email from, it could be, you know, the auto, the auto zone down the street. It could be different, you know, the grocery store. If you, once you log in, it's going to tell you that there has been a breach and you need to change your, your password. So that's how that stuff gets out there. Just, uh, Companies getting breached. There was a breach that happened last year with a bunch of different cell phone companies. All their information, I'm talking text messages, pictures, everything got breached.

6:19 Oh, wow. I believe it was AT & T got hit pretty hard. They paid a ransom to make sure that the... And it was an agreement with the bad guys that they would destroy all the photos and all the information. So who knows whether that got destroyed or not, but... So that. That's quite interesting. And that's a little scary for me because I'm an AT & T customer. Yep. Yeah, it's a good thing I don't keep a lot. I don't keep sensitive stuff on my phone. So anyway, but so, you know, one of the things we talk about in our presentations is just giving people like an overview of how their information gets out there. And one of the things we say is, you know, when hackers get into these companies and they take the information, sometimes they hold them for ransom to get money from the company.

7:14 But they're already selling the information on the dark web, whether they get the money or not from the company, it's totally separate. So it's interesting that AT & T has an agreement, like you said, with the bad guys that the pictures and all that stuff weren't going to be released. I don't know. I've always been under the impression the bad guys don't follow the law. Bad guys are bad guys for a reason. Are they going to follow the contract? I guess it's really the only thing you can do. I don't know. AT & T is a big company. It's not just AT & T. Other cell phone companies have been hacked into as well. Really, no company, no matter what your business, is immune.

8:04 To being hacked into. Correct. I don't know how the cybersecurity people do it. It seems like it's a 24-7, 365-day job to always be on top of the game, you know, looking for those types of threats because it's become very frequent. Seems like it happens every other week. You're learning about stuff like that. So, all right. And also, like this happened with the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare last summer. They didn't get breached or hacked into, but they, if my understanding is correctly, that they contracted out, they contract part of their services out to another company.

8:45 And it was that company that got hacked into, which then breached like over a million people's Medicare information. And so I know my cybersecurity guy always says, you're only as secure as your weakest link. Right? And so when you're contracting with people and they have access to some of your information, that just adds another layer of now what happens if that company gets hacked into it. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. And we've often told people, just think about how much information would get out there if a medical office or a hospital got hacked into. Now, potentially all of your medical records right and and all of that stuff could get out there but um so.

9:37 What are i'm. Trying to think of which way i want to go here i think let's talk about some other ways that your information gets out there so like um we've got hacks and breaches but what about if you sign up and download an. App Yeah, that's voluntary. In fact, I think I did a list prior to it. show that some of the top apps that you would think, oh, this sounds like a fun app that you're giving your information to, and they're just selling it out there. It was part of the terms and conditions that you just blew, you know, you checked the box and blew right by, or you gave them permission when you downloaded the app. This came from last year. The top one was PixArt AI Photo Editor.

10:25 We've seen those ads as we're scrolling. There's neat little things. They can bring photos to life, or they could re-resurrect your old photos into sharper, crisper images, things like that. You could switch your face on a photo. That one was the worst offender with eight sets of information shared with third parties. Eight ball pool. Believe it or not, pie for third place was Amazon Shopping. Really? Here they are. Now, do I trust Amazon with my information? No. Pretty much do. I use the Amazon app probably every day. So do I. Yeah.

11:08 But they are sharing your sets of information, six sets of information on you with third parties. So, you know, they're going to they're going to Google and saying, hey, this person's been looking around for a new bowling ball. And the next thing you know, you're getting bowling ball ads popping up on your on your on your news feeds and your Microsoft, you know, your edge browser and things like that. So. They're out there sharing that stuff. It's only going to help them because they want you to go on. The more you see a bowling ball pop up on your screen, you're going to buy that bowling ball. So that's out there. Fruit Ninja, that's a game. There's several games out there. TikTok was a bad one, too, as we all know. And then Candy Crush, my wife plays a lot. That's popular, right? Yeah, that one is sharing with three different third parties.

11:58 And that's so speaking of the games, you know, the online games, that's not even like playing Candy Crush online in real time with somebody that you can talk to. That's just by virtue of downloading the app and clicking that you agree to all those terms and conditions. Absolutely. Yeah. So this is voluntary. This isn't illegal that, you know, you volunteer by clicking, you know, clicking through that app to play it. So do your research. I've come across some apps where I'll look at it. No, I'm not going to share that amount of it. I'm not going to download that game or that, you know, that particular app. Yeah. So it seems like it's, I don't know if standard practice is the right way to phrase it, but it seems like a lot of companies, unless you opt out of it, they're going.

12:48 To share or share. Sell right um your information i think called data brokers is that kind of is that the is that the terminology for them that. Is that is yeah so you've got legal and uh illegal you know stuff that's getting you know gained from breaches right. So if somebody's downloading an app is it going to come up and kind of go through and say you need to agree to these terms and conditions and then it's on you to read through. All of it to see exactly what's going. On In most cases, the sneaky ones, yes. I mean, the ones that are gathering all these information will typically have you check, you know, yes, I agree. Or by downloading that, by continuing your agreeing to our terms and conditions, you're going to want to stop for a second, you know, click on those terms and conditions and see what. See what you're downloading and see what permissions you're giving them.

13:42 I do know that Apple is a little bit more secure on the app side. You can control your privacy a little bit better than you can on the Android side. That's what I've heard. That's what I've heard from a lot of cybersecurity people is Apple has some inherent security things already on their phones. Not to say that Android's not secure. I think they are really good. you know, at security, but there's just a little bit more on, on Apple. And I'm guessing with that big hack that AT & T had, they've probably implemented the highest level of security, right? Yeah. Yeah. Probably now one of the most secure companies.

14:24 I had an interesting story. I had a gentleman coming into, when I worked for Verizon, he came into our store and he was just going over data. He goes, I hardly use my data. I hardly use my data. So we looked on his Android phone and there was something at midnight just downloading gigs of data. Like what's going on here? We tracked it down on his phone and it was a flashlight app that was made by a North Korean app manufacturer. It was just a flashlight app is all it was. And somehow it's transporting or transmitting gigs worth of data. Who knows what that data was? Who knows what he agreed to? So we really quickly canceled that.

15:09 And that's something that's as innocent as a flashlight app, right? That you would think it's a flashlight app. What harm can it do? But it's not necessarily the flashlight. It's the people behind it right that are that are doing all the software and all the programming to what it's going to do and everything but so that's. The difference between the amazon or the uh the apple and the google store google will allow i could create an you know an app that'll do anything and google use android store usually will let it go there where apple will say no no we have certain restrictions on you know that that you have to you know abide to in order to be on our app store Got it.

15:51 Okay. All right. Well then, so what about, let's go to websites, right? I know a lot of websites that I go to, whether it's for business or personal, and it won't be the first time I go there. It's like every time I go to the website at the. Bottom, it usually says we have cookies. And you need, you know, well, you need to agree to them or you can manage them. what's the best thing to do there? I would think it would be go in and manage those or else you very well could, they could be tracking you and marketing to you and selling your information to advertisers and.

16:32 Yeah. Yeah. So there are times where, you know, you could still not, you know, reject those cookies and still access their website. Some of them just won't let you go any further unless you do accept those cookies. So, you know, I would recommend look into it. You know, I for my first thing is I'll I'll usually reject it, you know, unless it's something that, you know, I find. For instance, I'm looking for if I'm looking for a car. OK, you know, I'll accept the fact that they know I'm looking for a car. Maybe a car will pop up on my feed that I'm looking for. You know, I do accept some of that, you know, that data brokering, you know, in our world we live in. you know, it's only going to help me in the long run.

17:17 So there's good parts about it, but there's also, you know, do I want some guy in China knowing that I'm looking for a car and try to scam me, you know, sending me send or, you know, Nigeria sending me links to a car on my, you know, to my textbook, to my phone. And, you know, and next thing I know it's, I fall into a scam, but a little bit more aware on that, but yeah, sometimes it is helpful. It is, right. So I'll go into manage and there's always the ones that say strictly necessary and those are always turned on and it's hit or miss, right? With the companies, some of them have all of the other optional ones turned on and you just have to toggle them to turn them off. And some of them have them automatically turned off and you need to be the one that turns them on.

18:06 Like there'll be targeting cookies, marketing cookies. And I think some of them will say functionality cookies or something like that. And I even turned those off wondering if that's going to inhibit my experience on the website. Like if it won't let me do certain things, if I turn the functionality ones off. Yeah. Usually it's mostly for advertising. I mean, that's how they're getting by a lot of these free apps that you, you know, the free, you know, to play this game kind of thing. And that's how they pay for it. Right. So you, you have ads, right? You have to have a paid version to get the ad free version. So you're going to have all these ads every so often, but then your information is most likely being sold to whoever those, those ads are.

18:58 Right. Also public. And you can't go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was just going to say, and you, like, if you're watching, if you have a streaming app on your phone, And you're watching a show or a movie and it's not the paid. Well, sometimes even with the paid version, it's just not a high enough paid version to take those ads out. You can't fast forward through those ads. Right. Right. I mean, some of them might let you go a certain amount of seconds and then you can hit skip. But some of you got to sit the whole 30 seconds and watch this ad. Right. They won't let you fast. But you can fast forward through the show or the movie. Right. Right. The world we're living, first world problems, right? Yes, right.

19:39 You and I remember the three channels in our hometown. That's exactly right, where you had to get up from your chair or your couch and you had to go turn the channel because we didn't even have refrigerators. Right? Right. As a kid, I was my dad's remote. Yes, absolutely. I think every kid was. Yeah. That's funny. Another thing is public record. There's a lot of legal public record out there. It's just a quick search. Someone could find out How much I paid for my house, how much you paid for your relatives, your age, your phone number, your address. It's out there. Now, there is something I've discovered recently where you can go into your Google settings. Don't ask me exactly how to do it now, but you can Google it, how to remove yourself from searches. for free through google so if anybody does search you you'll be alerted and then and then they will you they will ask you if you want those search engines reboot removing oh.

20:45 That's nice so that's that's directly through google yep you just have to go in and say how how to remove myself from the public. Search yes is it public search. Or like pub public people search. Public search. Just public search? Yeah, I don't know the exact method, but it works. I got an alert the other day that someone was searching for me on six different search engines that I didn't even know existed, you know, they're just public information websites. And next thing you know, I got offered a scam job, you know, I mean, that almost within five minutes of that alert coming up.

21:27 you know, someone's trying to offer one of those scam jobs, probably a money laundering mule or something like that kind of job. And, uh, you know, who, who just text someone and said, Hey, we want to hire you. So it was one of those types of things. They obviously did some search and, and find out where I lived, who, you know, what my phone number was and that sort of thing. So, so I, I went into and, uh, asked to remove myself from those particular websites. That's a free service. There are other service that you can do. Um, I think Aura is another service. It's a paid service. They'll go out and you can ask them to remove. They will proactively go out and remove you instead of wait for people to search. That's the thing Google does.

22:10 It'll wait for people to search you and then tell you, do you want to be removed from this site and that site? But you have to sign up for it. Yeah. Yeah, it's in your Google settings. It's not complicated. I just, again, I wouldn't be able to tell you step by step. It is a little. No, that's fine. It should be able. Yeah. So to get to the Google settings when you're in the Google search, is that like the three dots all the way over to the right? Yeah. You click on those and go into settings. Yeah. Settings, privacy, settings, privacy. Okay. Okay. So you mentioned Aura and this other company. So let's say that I go in and I pay them to scrub my information from the web. That's not like a once and done, your information's never going to be on the web again because you're probably going to visit websites, right?

23:02 To where they, if you aren't very careful with what they're doing with your information through those cookies, Or let's see, if you download an app or maybe some of the current apps you have, right, are already allowing that information, your information is going to get back or data breaches and stuff, right? It's going to get back out there. So it's not something that you do once and you're good for the rest of your life. You would have to, is there a, so say you do it and you scrub it and then you say, okay, every month, is there like a website that you can go to That will give you an idea just by putting maybe your name in that you can or maybe you need to have date of birth or something like that. I don't know that you can find out like how much of your information is out there.

23:52 That is a good question. But I know that these sites that you're paying, you know, that you pay for like Aura or Incogni. Oh, yeah. Incognite. Yeah. They'll go on. They're proactively continually searching for it. So they're continuing. OK, so you're probably paying a subscription. Yes. OK. And so they're every so often going out and scrub. Got it. OK, well, that that's better. And they're really good because they will also, you know, if you're about to click on a link, you know, if you're about if you click on something, it'll warn you, hey, this is this site has been, you know, linked to scams or something like that. So they give you a nice good, you know, update. updates about what's going on.

24:32 Oh, that's good. That's good. There's a lot of good features from them. In all honesty, I've never used one of them, but I'm thinking about checking into it. Yeah. Right? Just checking into it and see what it would cost for the monthly subscription and that way get to know it better. Right? Yep. Okay. So what, oh, you know what? Social media. That's a big one. Yep. That's a big one, right? That leads to a lot of fishing and a lot of, you know, you're going on vacation to, you know, going skiing this weekend and next thing you know, you've got people in the area knowing you're skiing and all kinds of other things. You know, there's just so much information out there on social media. And I'm guilty of it.

25:14 You know, I have a little social media account. I do have it pretty locked down to private, only friends only. I've had done a few posts. I do a cybersecurity tip. Of the week, typically. And my friends, hey, can you make this shareable? And the second I make it shareable, open to public, I'll get a scam. Within a day, I'll get a scam attempt, someone trying to hit me up. for some reason, and you know, a crypto scam or something like that. So I try to keep my lockdown pretty private. And is it more, is it when you say you're getting hit up, is it that they're commenting on that post that you made?

25:55 They'll comment on the post. They will. So I've got a lot that I've noticed. I've have some, some senior friends that have made, they have a pretty open profile. They've made friends with other people, you know, that there's, there's, my, for some reason, I don't know why there's a lot of Asian profiles of Asian women in, from New York city who are fashion designers. That's kind of the, it's the standard thing that I get hit with. I don't know, you know, maybe because I'm at a certain age, a certain profile, you know, uh, but, uh, you know, all of a sudden they'll try to befriend me. And I noticed, Oh, they're a friend of this, this older gentleman over here, they're a friend of this old. So I know, uh, they're fake. So I will reach out to them and say, Hey, this person's just, you know, they've tried to get you in a pig bittering scam. I'm living this beautiful lifestyle.

26:47 You too can do it. You know, if you sign into my crypto account and give me money and right. So, but yeah, they just pop up from my other friends account. Once, once I unlock my account or leave that post open, then they'll try to send me a friend request. It's pretty easy to tell nowadays. So, On social media, let's just say Facebook, right? And how could somebody go in to see if their profile is public or if it's, like you said, locked down private only to. That'll be in the privacy settings. It'll be in the privacy settings. To walk you through, it could take... it'd take a good 15, 20 minutes. I would say, uh, you're maybe a senior listening to this, you know, talk to your, talk to your kids, grandkids, something like that and have them help you help them lock it down. Yeah.

27:48 You want only your posts to be seen by your friends. You want your information only to be seen by your friends. I'd be careful who you befriend. Don't, you know, if it's stranger from, you know, uh, Los Angeles that just, uh, attractive person wants to be your friend or a movie star or something that movie stars just don't go out and proactively befriend anybody. So, you know, uh, be careful of that and don't befriend anybody you don't know or haven't met personally. That's, that's, that's my thing on it. I I've had my LinkedIn account for business that I kind of open it up to everybody. I'm cautious. They're out there too in LinkedIn land. I've recently opened up my, my Facebook to a little bit of business, a little bit of personal, uh, And, uh, and, uh, but as far as the business goes, I, unless I've met you, I won't, I won't just, you might be, I might have 20 mutual friends, but unless I've met you, I'm still not letting you in. Um, but once I meet you, then you're okay. Right.

28:48 And, and that, and that's tough when you have somebody like both of us that, um, are either working for a business or have a business. Right. And you have a personal relationship. Like with Facebook, we have the Rose Advocacy business page, but it's linked to your personal. So I can't have that business page without having the personal one. And you want to be able to have it open to the public to get the awareness and the information out to more people, which means you just need to be even more conscious about who is commenting on your post, who is trying to befriend you. I mean, I get those comments on my posts that I make personally, even if I share something from Rose or if I make a personal post, sometimes it's a month or two later. but then all of a sudden I get a notification that says so-and-so liked my picture or my post. And I look at the name and it's like, I don't really know that name. And then lo and behold, the next notification is they've commented. And I go into the comment and I'm like, yeah, that's a scammer. And so I just take my finger and hold it down on, on the message and it comes up and I can delete that message to get it out of, to get it out of the, um, the, the comment history, because I wouldn't want anybody else of my friends that are looking at it and seeing that person's comment and saying, Hey,

30:18 you know, I want to, I want to befriend you or, you know, or whatever. Right. You know, they look like a really nice person because, you know, loneliness, emotion, right. If you're in a financial hardship and you really need to make money, sometimes those scam jobs that you talked about earlier all of a sudden become more enticing and it's more difficult for you to get out of that emotion and say, this is really a scam, right? You're just excited that, oh my gosh, I can make the money. I need this money to pay my bills, to pay my rent, to take care of my kids, whatever it is, right?

30:59 And as you've brought out in many of your podcasts and information, these scammers are pros. They know exactly what to say. They could probably be psychiatrists at some point because they know how the human mind works and they know exactly what to say and how to say it. Play on your emotions. I would bet, you know, because they're big companies with a lot of people, right, working and doing this. is that they probably have some people that have gone through the whole psychology classes, right? And maybe they've done something online and gotten a psychology degree that is coming up with these scripts and teaching them, right, on how to play on emotions and stuff like that.

31:49 I wouldn't put it past them. I just told a group yesterday at a presentation, I don't put anything past psychology. Right. The scammers. And so you just have to be you just. Have to be very, very careful, especially with all of a sudden out of the blue stuff that comes in. And if there's one thing that I could stress as the cybersecurity person in me, you know, and then the insurance guy in me, I just put a multi-factor authentication on everything. I can't stress that enough. And I've noticed a lot more companies, because I think when that first came out, that multi-factor or two-factor authentication, I think a lot of the financial companies, the banks, the investment brokers, they were kind of one of the first ones to implement it. And maybe they weren't.

32:46 Maybe it was Amazon or something like that. I don't know. But it's one of the things. We tell them, make sure you have that on all of your financial accounts. I know it's a pain in the butt. It's an extra 10 seconds. if you don't have your phone sitting next to you and right, you got to get up and go get it, get up and go get it and get that code because it's an added. Layer of security. But a lot of, a lot of account, a lot of companies are now making that part of their settings. They don't necessarily, when you sign up for the account, ask you for it or ask you to set it up. But if you go into the settings in that account and, And scroll down and look at all the settings.

33:28 A lot of times it's in there. You just need to turn it on. Yes. Yes. On everything. So not just your financial, though, because what they'll do is they'll get into your email and then they'll know the passwords that you're setting up and they'll know the two authentication codes that you're getting. Um, I look at it as a, you and I are old enough to remember when seat seatbelts weren't legal and it was, Oh, it's just a pain in the butt to put a seatbelt on. And it's the same thing. You know, it's, it's once you start doing it, it becomes a habit. It's, you don't even think about it anymore. And I always say that small inconvenience. Of going and getting your phone from the other room or, oh, hold on, I got to get the code and put it in.

34:09 That is way, way better than that gut feeling you get when you open up your email and say someone has signed into your bank account or someone has signed into your Facebook account. It can save your life, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. It can, just like a seatbelt can save your life, you know, should you get into an accident, right? You have that risk when you're out there driving or riding in a car, you know, you have that risk. of, and it doesn't even have to be the person driving could cause an accident. There's all the other people. It's one extra small step. Exactly. If you're going to be online and you have a credit card and you're going to go use it, you have a risk that a scammer is going to get in touch with you.

34:52 And so you just have to put as much security as you can. And the other thing as to why you want to have multi-factor is, like you said, if they can get in and they get one username and password combination. If you've reused those which a lot of people do yep. They they have a computer system that just puts it into thousands of difference account knowing. That most people. Yep what was it a dictionary. Dictionary attack they will uh they'll do some social uh fishing on you and figure out your first pet's name and all that stuff on Facebook. And then they'll, they'll use combinations of your passwords and then they have software that does it all. So they'll, they'll run that algorithm.

35:39 Once I get one username and password, they'll just run an algorithm through throughout all of the, you know, the banks and the social medias and the emails and everything else. So use multi-factor. Even if they have your password, they can't sign in without that. Without that, which is confidential information, right? You don't just give it to anybody. You need to know for sure. And I would recommend having an authenticator app that works better than the text messaging code because they can hang out on your phone. Your text messages can be compromised. They can, right. Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator. Right. And the one thing with that that I found.... And mine was Microsoft Authenticator, but I'm sure it works with Google Authenticator. If you're going to get a different phone, whether you're switching from Apple to Android or vice versa, or just upgrading your phone, you need to make sure that all of that information in that Authenticator app transfers over.

36:35 Because one of mine didn't. And it took me a while, like months. I was finally able to get in. but it was a lot of work and a lot of headaches and frustration. So just make sure that that transfers over. We brought up, we've only got about maybe three or four more minutes, but I wanted to talk about one thing that I see on Facebook all the time is these surveys or there'll be these, I don't know what they call them, but it's like you answer some questions and they're going to tell you what type of person you are. Right. And it's fun. Yeah. Yeah people like to do that. And then they'll post it and other people will be like oh that's cool i want to do that now are they all legit are sorry about that for you guys that are watching and listening this to this um i've got to work on my connection with my internet because uh It's gone out three times, which was better than last week. I've connected it differently this time, but I've got to maybe do one more thing to get it to not go out. So anyways, apologize for those little interruptions. But you don't know, are they all legit?

37:49 Are they all scams? But you have to think about. When you're answering those questions, you know, well, what's your pet's name? Or what's your favorite pet's name, right? That's a security question. What was the first concert you attended? What's your mother's maiden name? Yeah. That's really easy to find out. Exactly. A lot of us put our maiden names. I'm a culprit of that. I have my maiden name on. My Facebook, right? So now all of a sudden, my kid's mother's maiden name, it's right there. So you really have to be careful about what you're doing. And you think, well, I'm only giving out my pet's name. Well, guess what? If your social media is set up and they like, they know that you're going to be a certain age on a certain day. How easy is, is it to figure out what year you were born? And now if you've used your pet's name and your birthday, you know, the, your date you were born as your.

38:45 Password, they've got your password. Yeah, absolutely. Right. It's, it's that, it's that social. Engineering and you don't even realize you're giving up sensitive information. Yep. Right. But, And that's another way, like you said, that they fish for information. They get you to play these nice little things. Games. Games. Yeah, yeah. Oh, time. Okay. All right. I guess it's time. All right. We're done. Okay. Tip, make sure everybody has a trusted tech support person. You can always call Gordy at Acacia IT if you don't have one, but have a trusted tech support person.

39:28 They are an invaluable resource. Tool. Absolutely. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Gordy. Thank you, Joyce. Yep. Well, that's all the knowledge for this episode. Tune in every Tuesday at 8 a.m. Pacific time on K4HD Radio at K4HD. com as Joyce explores a variety of knowledge so you have the power to make scam protection your healthy habit. And until then, feel free to reach out to Joyce and let's talk about scams.