Aug 28, 2021
You Need to Start Using Burner IdentitiesASAP!
In this day and age, if you don't have a burner identity, youare really risking things from having your identities stolenthrough these business email compromises. It's really crazy. That'swhat we're going to talk about.
[Automated transcript]
An essential part of keeping ourselves safe in this day and ageis to confuse the hackers. The hackers are out there. They'retrying to do some things. Ransomware, for instance, like[00:00:30]business email compromise, is one of the most significant crimestimes out there today.
It hits the news legitimately. It's terrifying. It can reallydestroy your business, and it can hurt you badly. If you're anindividual, you don't want ransomware. How about those emails thatcome in? In fact, I just got an email from a listener this week,and they got a phone. His wife answered, and it was [00:01:00]Amazon on the phone, and Amazon said, Hey, listen, your account'sbeen hacked.
We need to clear it up so that your identity doesn't get stolen.And there's a fee for this. It's a $500 fee. And what you have todo is just go to amazon.com. Buy a gift card, and we'll then takethat gift card number from you. And we'll use that as the fee tohelp recover your stolen information. [00:01:30] So she went aheadand did it, and she went ahead and did all of the things that thehackers wanted.
And now they had a gift card. Thank you very much. We'll followup on this and. Now she told her husband, and of course, this isn'ta sex-specific thing, right? It could have happened to either one.My dad fell for one of these scams as well. So she told herhusband, or her husband looked at what had happened and [00:02:00]said, oh my gosh, Don't think this is right.
Let me tell you, first of all, Amazon, your bank, various creditcard companies are not going to call you on the phone. They'll sendyou a message right from their app, which is usually how I getnotified about something. Or they will send an email to theregistered email app. No, that you set up on that account.
So that [00:02:30] email address then is used by them to contactyou, pretty simple. Or they might send you a text message. Ifyou've registered a phone for notifications, that's how theycontact you. It's like the IRS. I was at a trade show, and I was onthe floor. We were exempt. And I got no less than six phone callsfrom a lady claiming to be from the IRS, and I needed to [00:03:00]pay right away.
And if I didn't pay right away, they were going to seizeeverything. And so all I had to do was. Buy a gift card, a visagift card, give her the number and use that to pay the taxes. Andthis lady had an American accent to one that you would recognize.I'm sure. And it's not something that they do now.
They do send emails, as I [00:03:30] said. So the part of theproblem with sending emails is it really them? Are they sending alegitimate email to a legitimate email address? Always a goodquestion. Yeah. Here's the answer. Yeah, they'll do that. But howdo you know that it isn't a hacker sending you the email?
It can get pretty complicated. Looking into the email headers,trying to track. Where did this come from? Which email servers didit go through? [00:04:00] Was it authenticated? Did we accept? Didthe provider use proper records in their DNS, the SPIF, et cetera,to ensure that it's legitimate? How do you follow up on that?
That's what we do for our clients. And it gets prettycomplicated looking at DKMS and everything else to verify that itwas legitimate, ensuring that the email came from a registered MXserver from the actual [00:04:30] server. There is a way aroundthis. And this has to do with the identities, having these fakeburner identities.
I've been doing this for decades myself, but now it's easyenough for anybody to be able to do it. There are some servicesout. And one of the more recommended ones. And this is even the NewYork times; they have an article about this. They [00:05:00] prefersomething called simple login. You can find them online. You can goto simple login dot I O.
To get started now, it's pretty darn cool. Cause they're usingwhat's called open-source software, it's software. So can anybodyexamine to figure out this is legitimate or not? And of course, itis fair, but it's all out there for the whole world to see. Andthat means it's less likely in some ways to be hacked.
There are people who [00:05:30] argue that having open-sourcesoftware means even more. In some ways, you are, but in most ways,you're not; anyway, it doesn't matter. Simple login.io. Now, whywould you consider doing this? Something like simple login? Simplelogin is friendly because it allows you to create dozens and dozensof different email addresses.
And the idea is with a simple login, it will [00:06:00] forwardthe email to you at your actual email address. So let's say you'redoing some online shopping. So you can go ahead and set up an emailaddress for, whatever it is, shopping company.com that you're goingto use a shopping company.com. So you'd go there.
You put into simple login "I want to create a new identity," andyou tag what it's for. You then go to some shopping company.com and[00:06:30] use the email address generated for you by simple login.Now you're a simple login account. Is it going to be tied into yourreal email account, wherever that might be if you're using protonmail, which is a very secure email system, or if using outlook orheaven forbid Gmail or one of these others, the email will beforwarded to you.
You will be able to see that indeed, that [00:07:00] email wassent to you. So shopping company.com email address or your bank ofAmerica, email address, et cetera, et cetera, that makes it mucheasier for you to be able to tell, was this a legitimate email? So,in other words, if your bank's really trying to get ahold of you,and they're going to send you an email, they're going to send youan email to an address that you use exclusively.
For bank of America. In reality, you only have the one email[00:07:30] box over there wherever proton, mail, outlook, Gmail,your business Excel. You only have that one box you have to lookat, but the email is sent to simple login. Does that make sense?You guys, so you can create these alias email boxes.
It will go ahead and forward. Any emails sent to them, to you,and you'll be able to tell if this was indeed from the company,because [00:08:00] that's the only place that you use that emailaddress. That makes it simple, but you don't have to maintaindozens or hundreds of email accounts. You only have one emailaccount.
And by the way, you can respond to the email using that uniquealiased email address you created for the shopping company or bankof America or TD or whomever. It might be, you can send from thataddress as well. [00:08:30] So check it out online, simple logindot IO. I really liked this idea. It has been used by a lot ofpeople over, out there.
Now here's one other thing that it does for you, and this isimportant as well. Not using the same email address. Everywheremeans that when the hackers get your email address from shoppingcompany.com or wherever, pets.com, you name it. [00:09:00] They cannot take that and put it together with other information and usethat for business, email compromise.
Does that make sense? It's it makes it pretty simple, prettystraightforward. Don't get caught in the whole business emailcompromise thing. It can really hurt. And it has; it's one of theworst things out there right now, dollar for dollar, it's right upthere. It, by the way, is one of the ways they get ransomware intoyour [00:09:30] systems.
So be very careful about that. Always use a different emailaddress for every Website you sign up for. Oh, and they do havepaid plans like a $30 a year plan over at simple IO will get youunlimited aliases, unlimited mailboxes, even your own domain name.So it makes it pretty simple, pretty handy.
There are other things you might want to do, for instance, usevirtual credit cards. [00:10:00] And we'll talk about those alittle bit. As well, because I think this is very important. But,hey, I want to remind everybody that I have started puttingtogether some pieces of training. You're going to get a littletraining at least once a week, and we're going to put all of thatinto it.
What we have been calling our newsletter. I think we mightchange the name of it a little bit, but you'll be getting thoseevery week. And the only way to get those is to be on [00:10:30]that email list. Go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Please do thatright now. I am not going to harass you. I'm not going to be one ofthose.
And I've never been one of those internet marketers that sendingyou multiple dozens of emails a day. But I do want to keep you upto date. So stick around; we will be back here in just a couple ofminutes. And, of course, you're listening to Craig Peter's son.[00:11:00] And again, the Website, Craig peterson.com. Stickaround.
Cause we'll be right back.
One of the best ways to preserve your security online is byusing what we're calling burner identities, something that I'vebeen doing for more than 30 years. We're going to talk more abouthow to do that right now.
You can do some things [00:11:30] to help keep yourselfand your identity safe online.
We've talked about email and how important that is. I want totalk now about fake identities. Now, a lot of people get worriedabout it. It sounds like it might be sketchy, but it is not to usefake identities to confuse the hackers to make it. So they reallycan't do the [00:12:00] things that they.
To do, they can't send you fishing ear emails, particularlyspear-phishing emails. That'll catch you off guard because you'reusing a fake. How do you do that? I mentioned to you before that Ihave thousands of fake identities that I created using census data.And I'm going to tell you how you can do it as well.
There's a website out there called fake [00:12:30] name agenerator. You'll find it online@fakenamegenerator.com. I'm on thatpage right now. And I'm looking at a randomly generated identity.It has the option right on this page to specify the sex. And itsays random by default, the name set, I chose American the countryUnited States.
So it is applying both American [00:13:00] and Hispanic names tothis creation. And now remember it's creating based on census dataand some other public data. But, still, it is not giving you oneidentity of any real people. So I think that's important toremember, and you're not going to use these identities for illegalpurposes.
And that includes, obviously, when you set up a bank account,you have to use your real [00:13:30] name. However, you don't haveto use yours. If you have an actual email address, you can usethings like simple login that will forward the email to you, butwe'll let you know who was sent to. And if you only use that oneemail address for the bank, you know that it came from the bank orthe email address was stolen from the bank.
All of that stuff. We've talked about that already. So, in thiscase, The name that has come up with [00:14:00] for me is Mauricede St. George in Jacksonville, Florida even gives an address. Inthis case it's 36 54 Willis avenue in Jacksonville, Florida. So ifI go right now two, I'm going to use Google maps, and I will put inthat address.
Here we go. Jacksonville willows avenue, all the guests. What?There is Willis avenue in Jacksonville [00:14:30], and it showinghoes oh, from Google street view. Let me pull that up even bigger.And there it is. So ta-da, it looks like it gave me. Fairly realaddress. Now the address it provided me was 36 54, which does notexist.
There is a 365, but anyway, so it is a fake street address. Sothat's good to know some, if [00:15:00] I were to use this, I'mgoing to get mine. Am I male saying about I pass. Maurissa tellsyou what Maurice means, which is neat. It'll give you a mother'smaiden name. Gremillion is what gave me here a social securitynumber.
So it creates one that passes what's called a checksum test sothat if you put it into a computer system, it's going to do a realquick check and say, yeah, it looks good to me. So it was not justthe right [00:15:30] number of digits. It also passes the check,some tasks. Well-known how to do a checksum on their socialsecurity numbers.
So again, it's no big deal. And remember, you're not going touse this to defraud anyone. You're going to use this for websitesthat don't really need to know; give me a break. Why do you needall this information? It gives me a phone number with the rightarea code. And so I'm going to go ahead and look up this phonenumber right now.
Remember, use duck go. Some [00:16:00] people will use Googlesearch, and it says the phone number gave me is a robocall. As Islide down, there's some complaints on that. So there you go. Sothey giving us a phone number that is not a real person's phonenumber, country code, of course one, cause I said United statebirth date.
Oh, I was born October 7th, year, 2000. I'm 20 years old. Andthat means I'm a Libra. Hey, look at all this stuff. So it's givingme an [00:16:30] email address, which is a real email address thatyou can click to activate or right there. Again, I mentioned thesimple login.io earlier, but you can do a right here, and it's gota username and created for me a password, which is actually apretty deal.
Password. It's a random one, a website for me, my browser useragent, a MasterCard, a fake MasterCard number with an expirationand a [00:17:00] CVC to code all of this stuff. My height isfive-six on kind of short. My weight is 186 pounds own negativeblood type ups tracking number Western union number MoneyGramnumber.
My favorite color is blue, and I drive a 2004 Kia Sorento, andit also has a unique ID. And you can use that wherever you want. Sothe reason I brought this up again, it's called [00:17:30] fakename generator.com is when you are going to a website where thereis no legal responsibility for you to tell them the truth.
You can use this. And so I've used it all over the place. Forinstance, get hub where you have it's a site that allows you tohave software projects as you're developing software. So you canput stuff in, get hub. They don't know to know, need to [00:18:00]know who I really am. Now they have a credit card number forme.
Because I'm on a paid plan. I pay every month, but guess what?It isn't my real credit card number. It isn't the number that I gotfrom fake name generator. My credit card company allows me togenerate either a single use credit card numbers, or in this case,a credit card number for get hub dock. So just as an example,that's how I use it.
So we've get hub gets hacked, the [00:18:30] hackers, have anemail address and a name that tipped me off right away, where thisis coming from. And if the email didn't come from GitHub by no,they either sold my information to a marketing company, or this isa hacker. Trying to manipulate me through some form of his fishingscheme.
So I know you guys are the breasts and best and brightest. A lotof you understand what I'm talking about, and I'm talking about howyou [00:19:00] can create a burner identity. And let me tell you,it is more important today to create a burner identity. Than it hasever been at any point in the past, because frankly, burneridentities are one of the ways that you can really mess up some ofthe marketing firms out there that are trying to put theinformation together, these data aggregator companies, and also thehackers.
And it's really the hackers that [00:19:30] were off up againsthere. And we're trying to prevent them from. Getting all of thisinformation. So when we come back, I want to talk about the nextstep, which is which credit cards can you get? These single usecard numbers from? Should you consider using PayPal when my Googlevoice be a really good alternative for you?
So we're going to get into all that stuff. Stick around in the[00:20:00] meantime, make sure you go to Craigpeterson.com/subscribe. Get my newsletter. All of this. Is inthere. It makes it simple. It's a simple thing to do. CraigPeterson.com. And if you have any questions, just email me, Me@craigpeterson.com.
Having your credit card stolen can be a real problem for any oneof us. It gives the bad [00:20:30] guys, a lot of options to spenda lot of money very quickly. We're going to talk right now aboutvirtual credit cards. What are they, what does it mean?
Virtual credit cards come in two basic forms.
One is a single use credit card, which was quite popular backwhen these things first came out, and another one is a virtualcredit card that has either a specific life. In other words, it'sonly good for 30 days [00:21:00] or that can be used until youcancel it. If you have a credit card, a visa, MasterCard, Americanexpress, discover all of the major card issuers will give you theability to reverse any charges that might come onto your cards.
If your card is stolen or misused. Now that makes it quite easy.Doesn't it? I want to point out that if you're using [00:21:30] adebit card, as opposed to a credit card, there's not muchchallenging you can do with the credit card. You can say, I am notgoing to make my payment. And because of this, that, and the otherthing, this was stolen, et cetera, they can file it as a disputedcharge.
They can do an investigation to find out. Yeah. I'm you probablywere not at a bus terminal down in Mexico City, which happened tome. Because I was up [00:22:00] here in New Hampshire, quite a waysdown to Mexico City. And so they just reversed it out. That moneynever came out of my bank account because it was on a creditcard.
If I were using a debit card. That money would have come rightout of my account. Now, mind you, a bus ticket in Mexico city isnot very expensive, but many people have had charges of manythousands of dollars. And if you need that money in your checkingaccount, [00:22:30] and you're using a debit card, you got aproblem because your check for if you ever have to pay rent again,red check is going to.
Bound because they just empty it out to your bank account. Sonow you have to fight with the bank, get the money back. They willeventually refund it, but it could make some of you. Transactionsthat you might've written a check or something, it'll make thembounce. And that could be a real problem.
These, it could make them [00:23:00] bounce. So using a creditcard is typically less of a hassle online. So why would you want touse a virtual card or also known as is a master credit card maskedand may S K E D? The main reason behind this is to allow you.Control payment. I've used them. In fact, I use them exclusively onevery Website [00:23:30] online.
And I'm going to tell you the names of some of them here in justa couple of minutes, but I use them all the time. And part of thereason is let's say, I want to cancel. A service. Have you evertried to cancel a service before and you have to call them manytimes, and so you're arguing with somebody overseas somewhere whodoesn't want you to close the account.
And of course, Bump you up to the next level person who alsodoesn't want you to close the account. And [00:24:00] so you haveto fuss. Have you ever had that experience and I'm sure you have.It just happens all the time. So with using the virtual creditcard, the advantage to me is, Hey, if you are going to try andfight with me, I don't care because I'm just going to cancel thatcredit card number.
So I don't have to cancel my credit card. I don't have to havethe company reissue credit card for me. I don't have to do any ofthis sort of thing that [00:24:30] makes my life pretty easy.Doesn't it? And because of that, I am now I think in a much better.Place, because it just, I don't have to fight with peopleanymore.
So that's one of the reasons I used it. The other big reason isif it gets stolen, they can cause less harm. Some of these creditcard it's virtual credit cards are set up in such a way that youcan limit the amount that's charged on them. Do you like that?[00:25:00] So if you are using it on a site that maybe is chargingyou $50 a month, no problem.
$50 a month comes off of the credit card. And if someone triesto charge more bounces and then hopefully you find out, wait aminute, it just bounced on me. Then next step up is okay. Itbounced and. I'm just going to cancel the card, and then you issuea new credit card number for that Website.
So an example. In my case is [00:25:30] get hub.com. We keepsoftware up there, and they charge me every month if get hub wereto get hacked and that credit card number stolen I'm I really don'tcare because there's almost nothing that can happen. And if goodhub doesn't properly cancel. My account, I can just cancel thecredit card and let them come after me.
This isn't going to happen. So then it's also called a mastercredit card number, cause it's a little safer than using your[00:26:00] real credit card details. I also want to point outsomething about debit card. I went for years with no credit cardsat all. Nowadays, many of my vendors will take a credit card forpayment.
And in fact, give me a bit of a better deal. And then with thecredit card, I can get 2% cashback, which I use to pay down thecredit card. It couldn't get any better than that, but when you'reusing a debit card, what I always do. [00:26:30] Is I had twoaccounts that I could transfer money between at the bank.
So I had one checking account. That was my main operating, ifyou will account. And then I had another checking account where Iwould be. Just moving money out of it. Or you could even do it witha savings account, but some banks, they only let you do so manytransactions a month on a savings account. So the idea is I knowthat I have this much credit card [00:27:00] obligate while debitcard obligations for this month, that money is going to be comingout.
So I make sure that. In the debit card account to cover thelegitimate transactions I know are coming up and then I keepeverything else in the other account. And then I manuallytransferred over every month. So that's how I dealt with the wholedebit card thing. And it worked really well for me. Bottomline.
I think it's a really great idea. So there you go, who are thecompanies that [00:27:30] you can use to do this? I've used some ofthese before all of them have worked really well. If you have acapital one credit card, they have something called Eno, E N O, andit's available to all capital one cardholder. Eno even has anextension for your web browsers.
So if it notices you're on a webpage, it's asking for creditcard number, it'll pop up and say, do you want me to create a[00:28:00] credit card number or a virtual one for this Website youcan make your payment. Does it get much easier than that? Citibankhas something they call a virtual credit cards available to allCitibank cardholders, master pass by MasterCard.
That's available to any MasterCard visa, American expressdiscover diners club cardholders, credit, debit, and prepaid cardsby their way. So you might want to check that one out. Yeah,[00:28:30] so that's the only one I see on my list here. That willdo it for debit cards, master pass by MasterCard American expresscheckouts available to all American Express cardholders.
Chase pay available to all chase cardholders, Wells Fargo,wallet visa checkouts, available to all visa, MasterCard, andAmerican express and discover color cardholders, credit and debitcards. Plus. Prepaid cards. Okay. So it does [00:29:00] do thedebit cards as well. Final that's all owned by Goldman Sachs and isnot accepting any new applicants and entro pay.
Also not accepting new applicants. There's a couple online. Allright, everybody, make sure you check me out. Craigpeterson.com/subscribe.
We're going to wrap up how you should be using these burneridentities of [00:29:30] few more tips and tricks that are going tohelp keep you safe from the hackers that are out there. So here wego.
There are a lot of hackers out there.
The numbers are just astounding. The cost of these hackerscoming in and stealing our information is just unbelievable. And itgoes all the way from big corporations, from things like thecolonial [00:30:00] pipeline, the US government all the way on downthrough you and me. I want to tell you a little story about afriend of mine.
He is about 75 years old, and he supplements his income bydriving for Uber eats and one other company. And so what he'll dois someone puts in an order for food somewhere. He'll go pick it upand then he'll drive it to where whoever wanted, whoever orderedit. Now, [00:30:30] there are. Pricing number of scams withthis.
So he's very careful about some of that orders, a cookie, forinstance, because it's usually a bit of a scam anyway, we won't getinto those, but I'll tell you what happened to him. His informationwas stolen online as it was probably yours. Mine I know was aswell. So it's all stolen. What do you do? In his case, what endedup [00:31:00] happening is they managed to get into his emailaccount.
Once they're in his email account, they now had access to theemails he was getting from one of these companies. Now it wasn'tthe Uber eats guy. He was, there was another company. So let's justexplain this a little bit. Uber eats sends him a request for him togo ahead and do a deliver. Go to the restaurant, pick it up andtake it to this client's house.
[00:31:30] And in order for him to register, he had to registeran email address. Now, of course, he uses the same email addressfor everything. All of it. Now, personally, that drives me a littlebit insane, but that's what he does. And he has just a fewpasswords. Now. He writes them down a little book and heaven forbidhe ever lose the book so that he can remember them.
He [00:32:00] just wants to keep his life simple. He's 75. He'snot technophobic, he's not up on all of this stuff. What he foundwas a paycheck didn't show. And it was an $800 paycheck. We'retalking about real money that he should have had in his pocket. Itdidn't show up. So he calls up the company and says what happenedto my paycheck and a record show?
Yes, indeed. It had been paid. We [00:32:30] paid you, wedeposited right into your account. Just like you asked. Yeah. ACHinto the account. Great. Wonderful. What had happened is bad guyshad gone, gained control of his email address and use that now.Because they figured I see some emails in his account from thisfood delivery service, let's try and see if this email address thatwe're looking at right now.
All of his emails let's [00:33:00] look and see. Okay. Yeah.Same. Email address and same password as he used at this emailaddress? Yeah, it worked. Okay. Great. So now we have access tothis guy food delivery account. So they changed. The bank accountnumber, no easy enough to confirm. They change it, Mel. Hey, I wantto make sure that it was you until the bad guys, the hackers, clickout, yada.
Yeah, it was [00:33:30] me and then lead the email. So hedoesn't see it. And now his $800 paycheck. In fact, I think therewere a couple of different checks is deposited directly into thebad guy's bank account and. The money of course has transferred outpretty quickly. Now the, that guys, these hackers are using whatare called mules.
You might be familiar with that in the drug trade. They'll havea third [00:34:00] party deliver the drugs just to mule. They don'tknow what all is going on. They probably know the delivering drugsin this case. Most of the meals are useful idiots, of which thereare many in this country, unfortunately. Political andotherwise.
And these people are convinced that all they need to do istransfer the money into this account so that the hackers can thenpull it out. And now [00:34:30] they're gonna take care of theirgrandmother who is stuck in the hospital and they have no way topay for it. And they can't transfer the money out of the countrydirectly.
That's one of the stories they use for people. And in manycases, these mules know what they're doing. The FBI earlier thisyear arrested a whole group of mules out in California that werepurposefully transferring the money. They knew what they weredoing. So his money was now out [00:35:00] of the country. No wayto get it.
And this food delivery company was not about to pay him. So itisn't just the big guys it's you and me as well. So what I want totalk about right now is multi-factor authentication. Now. You guysare the best and brightest. I hope you understand this. If you havequestions, please reach out to me. I am more than glad to send yousome good material on this.
Just [00:35:30] me. M E add Craig peterson.com. I am here tohelp. What multi-factor authentication does is allows you to notjust log in by using an email address and a password, or maybe ausername and a password. Which is much better, by the way. I don'tlike it. When sites require an email address to log in.
Although as I use multiple email addresses, and I think youshould as well, a different email address for every site [00:36:00]out there beyond question, you should be doing that. So anyway,this is. You should be doing with multi-factor authentication. Theywill have you put in your email address, have you put in yourpassword, and then they'll do something that is supposedlysomething you have.
So the best security is something, along with something youphysically have. So in most cases, they'll use two factor[00:36:30] authentication by sending you a text message with acode. And then you type in that usually six digit code, and nowyou're in, and it only does that. If it doesn't recognize thebrowser, are you using, or in many cases of, it needs to be alittle more secure than that it's only good for 24 hours or maybe aweek.
That is not good enough. You should be using a code generator.Google [00:37:00] has one for free, but I want you guys to usesomething called one password. That's the digit one password.You'll find it online. You'll find it in all the app stores. It iswhat we use for the most part. It's great for families. And it'sgreat for businesses because you can have different vaults and youcan share them and control access.
Now there's a couple of reasons why that we're talking aboutmulti-factor authentication right [00:37:30] now. So the firstreason kind of the biggest reason is you can use it for generatingpasswords. Fairly random ones or fairly memorable ones. And thenwhen you go to a site, one password can pop up and give you thepassword for the site.
So you don't even have to look it up. You don't have to rememberit. You don't have to look it up. Isn't that phenomenal. And thenit also has built into it. Token this six digit [00:38:00] keygenerator. I'm trying to keep this simple. So you can then use thatfor the site. So it says, okay, what's the code go to your codegenerator.
So you just go to one password. There it is. Copy it and pasteit right in. And you're in that alone would have prevented mybuddy's account from getting there. It's that simple, one morething that you want to use one password. And that is thosequestions that you're [00:38:30] asked to verify. It's you manysites out there banks are really big into this and I don't get itcause it's not very good in most cases.
So they'll ask you things like where were you born? What's yourmother's maiden name? Where did you go on your first day to whatwas the car that you owned first? Or, your dog's name, et cetera.The reason, those things are so bad is because the hackers can goonline, look at your [00:39:00] social media and figure out theanswers to a lot of those questions.
Bad. So what you should be doing is using one password, and itallows you to put notes pretty much anything you want to in therecord for that Website. So you go to the Website and you log in,create your account right. To log in. So you're going to give ityour, probably your email address, which is a bad idea, but[00:39:30] that's, what's required use one password.
To generate a strong password for you that you'll put in. You'lluse one password. Hopefully they have multi factor authenticationthat allows you to use one of these code generators. Google hastheirs is called Google authenticator, and one password iscompatible with that. Microsoft has done. Own thing.
And it's not compatible with almost any Website online. So don'tuse the [00:40:00] Microsoft authenticator other than for Microsoftproducts, like using the, a windows 365 thing that they have doesuse Microsoft authenticator, but you can also use the Google oneand the one password one, and then in the notes section, make upanswers to the questions.
So it asks you, what was your mother's maiden name? And saysomething different insecurity, where, what is your high school? Itwas named [00:40:30] movie elementary school, make something up astream. Okay. Use random answers. Record them in one password.You're going to have to look them up. If you ever on the phone withthe bank or whomever, because you're not going to remember them,but that's good because they don't appear in your.
Social media anywhere and they don't appear anywhere else otherthan your secured encrypted one password fault. [00:41:00] Thanksfor being with us. I appreciate you guys listening, and you canfind all of this. I'm going to turn all of these and did a littlemini-courses here over the next few weeks, and there's only one wayyou're going to get it.
And that is by being on my email list. Craigpeterson.com/subscribe. Go there right now. Craigpeterson.com/subscribe.
As if this year and last year haven't been enough weirdness,[00:41:30] it looks like George Orwell is kind of lending some helphere. You won't believe what the us department of Homeland securityis planning on doing well, maybe it will.
If you missed the last hour, it is absolutely must-listenradio.
And so what I'm going to be doing is I will put it up online foryou guys. You can get it by going to Craig [00:42:00]peterson.com/podcast. Hopefully, I'll get it up soon after the showtoday, but I went through and explained ways. That you can protectyour privacy online. Absolutely protect it. So you don't get thatkind of advice or most people, most people are trying to sell you aproduct that just doesn't really work that well.
I I'm telling you what does work, what the experts do, whatEdward Snowden would do. What I [00:42:30] have been doing for morethan 30 years personally, in order to help keep my identity safe.So check it out again. Craig peterson.com/podcast. Now I want topoint out too, that if it's not upon you, look, make sure yourefresh your browser.
So you're going to want to do what's called a cache clearrefresh. So. And the browser by that URL bar, you'll see a little,it's usually a little circle [00:43:00] with an arrow on the end.That's your refresh, but you need to also reflect, refresh yourcache. So you're going to hold down the shift. And hit that littlecircle with the arrow on the end, and then you'll be able to listento all of that.
And I'm thinking right now, I'm probably going to try and turnthat into a series of emails so that you guys can just read.Through it over the course of a few weeks. Cause man, did I cover a[00:43:30] lot? And you can get that when those come out in. Andeven if I don't get around to this, I do do emails with training inthem.
And with of course the latest news. And you get that bysubscribing again, Craig peterson.com. We've got to help you guysout. You need to know this. Okay. Absolutely. You, you personallyneed to know that. Well, this whole or wellbeing thing is scary,frankly. [00:44:00] I just finished going through reading GeorgeOrwell's 1984 again, and it was just so eyeopening.
I read it many moons ago, and I learned a lot from it then, butnow I see it out in the streets. I see it with what's beenhappening with government and even businesses. And we've complainedabout them many times here on the show. Haven't we, some of thedeep [00:44:30] state, big tech ties that go between eachother.
It's no longer really the military-industrial complex. We'retalking about the deep sea. High tech complex. It's a bad thing.It's a scary thing. Well, what they're doing right now, and this isa great article from news busters.org is they've got this Alliancebetween the department of Homeland security and private [00:45:00]companies that they're trying to put together.
Now, news semesters, isn't saying. That it's already in place.They're saying this is what they're planning on, putting themplace. However, I know what they have in place, and they're alreadydoing a bunch of this. Again, it goes back to that app. Isn'treally free that app that supposedly is free, is doing somethingit's gathering information, data on you, and then it's sellingit.
And the people that are buying it are data. Aggregators is whatthey're called. [00:45:30] 20 years ago, I had some of the top dataaggregators on the show and I sat down with them and I said, well,let's look me up because they have information, public records,some private stuff, like obviously buying it from these appdevelopers.
And I said, let's look me up, find out what you have on me. Sowe looked me up, and I would say about three quarters of it waswrong. Which was really kind of interesting. And this is [00:46:00]data that was used back then, mainly for what's called skiptracing. So you have a bill to pay. You don't pay it. You move outof town.
That's the process to find do is called skip tracing. And that'swhat they would do nowadays. It turns out that local. Federalpolice departments and other agencies are buying this data from thedata brokers so that they can now track you. Now they're notallowed to, by [00:46:30] law track you, you know that, right.
But the government is doing what one might call lawyering.That's what we called it in robotics. I was part of a us roboticsteam with kids, and they would always look at the rules, and theywould get reprimanded. The teams would if they lawyered the rules.In other words, if they met the exact definition of what it was inthe rules, but they didn't meet the spirit of therule.[00:47:00]
They would get reprimanded. They might even get kicked out. Andthat did happen a few times. However, if you're the government andyou get to say which laws you want to follow, which court rulingsyou want to follow, think of what's been happening lately, right?We're not going to, yeah, I know. I know I can't do this.
I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. I have a penand a phone. I'm going to do it anyway. Or just reverse all of theactions of the prior administration. [00:47:30] And even though theSupreme court says, Hey, you cannot do this, but we're not going torule on it because the this policy is only in place for a couplemore weeks.
And then you do it again. Anyways, the government isn't, isn'teven obeying the rules. Th the strict letter of the law. They'renot even obeying, let alone the spirit of the law just drives mecrazy. The wall street journal just reported, uh, about a week[00:48:00] ago here last Sunday that the department of Homelandsecurity is considering hiring private companies to analyze publicsocial media for warning signs of extremist violence, spurringdebate within the agency over how to monitor for such threat whileprotecting American civil liberties.
Now I'm glad they're at least giving you. Lip service toprotecting our civil civil liberties, right. That I think is a verygood [00:48:30] thing. They should be protecting them, but thisjust has the tendency to continue to inch forward again and againand again. So this effort has not received approval and has notbeen.
But it's going to involve. According to the wall street journalis sifting through large flows of internet traffic to help identifyonline narratives that might provide leads on developing taxweather from home [00:49:00] or. Eh, this is, this is just amazing.Now I mentioned on the radio, uh, previously that I have personalexperience with one of these large federal law enforcement agenciesthat has been doing what I considered to be completely unreasonablethings with people's information and also completely unreasonablethings [00:49:30] in defining.
Where the thread is. You've probably heard it all over the newsthat, that it's all these conservative groups that are the realthreat. Well, it's not the conservative groups that have been outthere, burning down cities, demonstrating, beating people withclubs, pulling people out of cars, and BD. No, it's not.
So where, where are these people coming from, and how do theydefine these [00:50:00] extremist actions? How do they define it?Right. Well, you can tell that there's obviously some extremisminvolved when there's a riot, but they will respond to a riot inWashington, DC after Trump rally, but they don't respond to riotsall over the country and major cities.
And in many cases they don't even do arrests. Oh, it'sabsolutely amazing what's going on. So I'm very, [00:50:30] veryworried about this fusion of big tech and deep state government,because it's become really kind of a hallmark of the Bidenadministration. Senator Josh Holly's Republican from Missourireally went after the Biden administration for pressuring privatecompanies to help spy on the techs of American citizens.
This is back in July and he said that the big government, bigcorporation [00:51:00] Alliance is the real danger here. And.Absolutely have to agree. This is going to be a problem. And givingthe government access to more personal data is going to be an evenbigger problem in months and years to come. Particularly if we justlet them do.
Willy nilly and that's kinda what's happening. What kind ofoversight is there really think about the Pfizer courts that are[00:51:30] supposed to be providing oversight for monitoring, uh,people who are not citizens. And yet it looks like. Our lawenforcement agencies. We're targeting citizens specifically throughthe Pfizer courts who are playing games.
So I absolutely don't want this to happen. I don't want anyadministration, Republican-Democrat, you name it. I don't want anyof them to have access to [00:52:00] this type of deal. And I goright back on this and a, here's a great quote to explain why I'mgoing to use a quote from lever inti barrier. He was the mostruthless and longest-serving secret police chief in Joseph Stalin'sreign of terror.
He said, show me the man and I'll show you the crime. Thatshould scare all of us, because even though the administrationtoday, isn't doing that [00:52:30] types of things Stalin wasdoing, obviously we don't know what's going to happen in the futureand we cannot let the hackers gain access to this informationbecause believe me, they're going to be going after it as well.
So don't collect it in the first place.
Let's do think that surveillance on citizens, criminal andotherwise, is a rarity. We're going to talk about the New Yorkpolice department [00:53:00] and their secret funds used forsurveillance tools alone.
Here we go. This is from wired magazine, you know,definitely not a right wing entity.
They have been reporting on a number of situations where thegovernment has really overreached when it comes to our informationand our privacy. And they have this report now that has been[00:53:30] released. And. Yeah, that and some other documents andSydney fossil wrote this article, and he's saying that thedocuments are showing that police bot facial rec recognition,software vans, equipped with x-ray machines and stingers.
Cell site simulators with no public oversight. And I'm going toexplain what each one of these things is and what they aretypically used [00:54:00] for. But this is amazing. No problem.Oversight now that's according to documents released last Tuesday.So when all these documents are showing that the New York policedepartment spent at least $159 million over the last 15 or so yearsthrough this little known special expenses fund, the did notrequire [00:54:30] approval by the city council or any othermunicipal official.
Frankly. I think one PP has something to answer for here. We'llhave to ask Tom Selleck about it. Right? The documents are madepublic by two civil rights groups, the legal aid society and theirsurveillance technology oversight project would says that what theN Y P D was doing amounted to our surveillance slash fund.
[00:55:00] It's just crazy, um, stops director, which is again,the, uh, surveillance technology oversight project stop. Theirexecutive director said that the police are still blocking otherrecords needed by the public to understand the way New York isbeing policed. This is just something out in 2018, the New Yorkpolice department awarded almost $7 million to the [00:55:30] ideasolutions company, which by the way, sells biometric tools,including facial recognition.
So what they have done in essence now is set things up in NewYork. Kind of like they are over in China where they have cameraslocated all over the place. And those cameras are capturingpictures of pedestrians. How the only kind of saving grace nowadaysis a lot of people are wearing [00:56:00] face mask, although, andbecause a lot of people were in face masks, there's new softwarethat will recognize people, even if they're aware.
A face mask obviously depends on the type of face mask, but youknow, it's still doing that. So they have all of these cameras.They have this facial recognition software. And they can track youas you're walking around the city. In fact, they can do it inreverse, [00:56:30] which frankly is kind of cool that there arealso these airplanes in the sky, over many of our big cities.
Now, New York, they're concerned about it. Of course of whathappened on nine 11. People get really nervous seeing airplanesover there. So they're using high flying drones that can't reallybe seen with the naked eye or heard, and they are taking continualvideo of the entire city [00:57:00] and of all of the streets.
So let's say a bank gets robbed, they can try. Those robbersback in time using these drones or airplanes, along with thesurveillance software in the cities, mash of cameras and find outwhere they came from. Okay. So it looks like this was the stagingarea for the bank robbers, and then they can go back further intime and see where the bank robbers came from.
What were they [00:57:30] doing? Where did they go? Thattechnology all exists. Now, it's not that good yet, but you know,it ended up, it will end up being that good. But this goes rightback to what I was talking about a little earlier with, uh, show methe man, I'll show you the crime. What happens if those cameraspick you up on a street where a drug deal was going down?
Now you've seen it on TV. You've seen it in the movies wherethey poem money back and forth a POM, [00:58:00] the drugs, youwouldn't even know that a drug deal was happening and now you getpulled into it. How about what happened on January six inWashington, DC? There was a riot. We all know that the Capitolbuilding, but now the FBI and other law enforcement agencies arepulling people in who cell phones pinged in the general area.
In Washington, DC. So if you were down there and you [00:58:30]were part of a school tour that day, and you went to maybe theTrump rally, maybe you didn't maybe just went to the reflectionpond down there. They investigated you. If you were in our hotel,they investigated you. If you used a credit card in the area, theyinvestigated.
And that's being alleged right now by some of these people thatwere investigated and have had minor charges brought [00:59:00]against them that this was a total witch hunt. It was fabricatingthe crime. Again, show me the man. I'll show you the crime. I mean,under Stalin, the dictator over in the Soviet Union, you know,socialist government for those that aren't familiar with it.
These contracts that were received through kind of a freedom ofinformation request to buy these civil rights groups were heavily[00:59:30] redacted. And so I made it very difficult to understandhow many single tool functions were purchased, how they could worktogether to create a surveillance Dragnet. Over people in New YorkCity, this secrecy also blocks a more complete understanding of therelationship between the New York police department is vendors inthe public.
So again, it's a double-edged sword it's yet. You want to catchthe bank robber. You [01:00:00] want to catch the murderer, butmost of the time, those people know how to. Fool the system, don'tthey, uh, in 2014, the New York police department signed afive-year $800,000 contract with Elbit Systems, which is Israel'slargest defense contractor.
And by the way, they aren't just in Israel. They're also, theyhave a plant in New England. Uh, kind of all over [01:00:30] andElbit provides a wide range of surveillance tools used by customsand border patrol on our borders, including cameras and sensorsthat make up this virtual border Raul wall that we have on ourSouthern border.
It, this is not good. And I want to add one more thing. I said,I explained what these things are, you know what x-ray is. And someof these trucks are using millimeter-wave stuff and are our x-rayand people [01:01:00] walking down the street, supposedly to see ifthey have a weapon. Huh? Okay. So just walking past one of thesevans expose you to health risks, no warning about that cancer risksfrom these mobile x-ray vans and these stingray devices are fakecell phone towers.
So they capture your information. Who you're calling whereyou're calling and your text messages, whether you are a target[01:01:30] of an investigation under court order, or just someonewalking around the streets in New York, check me out online. Craigpeterson.com.
Investment money is rolling into these high tech startups. Thatmeans if you're looking for a new job in high tech, it may be yourlucky day, particularly if you want a job with a startup. So herewe go.
Jobs in tech have always been [01:02:00] pretty good. Generallyspeaking, technology is what drives the economy. It is what boostsproductivity, and it is right now, a really hot job market there.More small businesses, startups are being funded by angels andventure capitalists than there have been for a few years.
That means we've got money now pouring into [01:02:30] theselittle startups. There's a great little article in ARS Technica byAriel pod dress. And she's talking about this company calledrevenue. This is a startup. They just closed their Series B, whichmeans they had their second investment round. And this is aplatform for managing in-app subscriptions.
They just got $40 million in the idea behind this $40 millionseries [01:03:00] B series B is to grow the company and. To hiremore people. And of course, it's hard to grow the company withouthiring more people, even if you're in the software business. Sowe're talking about a 35 person. Startup that's getting $40million.
That's more than a million dollars per existing employee. Theywant to get another 50 employees by the end of the year and ahundred by the end of next year. [01:03:30] Now I've got to say, I,I had a startup, it was me and it was me and it was me. Right. Istarted it. I worked really hard, and I built it up to 50employees.
I didn't have a dime of investment money, but now thisinvestment money is out there like crazy, but revenue, cat's havinga hard time along with most of these other startups, hard timehiring people. So, what they've done now [01:04:00] is they've gota whole bunch of extra perks. Things like unlimited vacations.
Yes, indeed. No more. Two weeks you earn an extra day for everyyear. You work there or a seven. These other rules that around fora very long time unlimited vacations. They'll give you a stipend.If you have an office at your home that you're working. Plus,they're also providing equity and salaries on par with some of[01:04:30] the big tech companies, regardless of where youlive.
Right now, Facebook is, and Google are both looking at saying,Hey, listen, you know, you live a hundred miles outside of SiliconValley. You don't deserve to be paid as much as an employee thatlives right here in San Jose. So now we're going to cut your pay by10%, 15%, sometimes even more. So these little guys are saying,Hey, listen, you can [01:05:00] work for us.
We don't care where you live. Timbuktu in Northern Africa justdoesn't matter. As long as you can work from home, we'll pay youthe same as if you're living right here in Silicon Valley inCalifornia. And we'll even give you extra money because we know itcosts you money to be able to work from home because you'reprobably going to have to get a better internet line.
You're going to have to have a phone that works so that we cancall you. Maybe you have to call customers. [01:05:30] These typesof offers really weren't around before the lock. But now we'reseeing high-tech salaries, being driven, even higher benefits thatare really being massively beached up, uh, beefed up, I shouldsay.
And companies that are offering incredible salaries andflexibility. So there you go. These companies are basicallycompeting with Google, [01:06:00] Facebook, et cetera. So what doesthat mean? Well, these small startups like revenue cat are gettinga lot of money, almost $300 billion invested in these startupsworldwide.
And it's really hurting the big guys because they're talkingabout cutting salaries, even though they don't need to. It's not asthough they're suffering. They're these big companies, they'restill sitting on [01:06:30] billions of dollars in cash. Isn't thatsomething. And so they are starting to really hurt because thesmall guys are stealing employees, quote-unquote, from the dice,which is, has this industry career database is saying overall techjob postings are up 16% this year.
We're seeing also, by the way, a whole [01:07:00] bunch cutbacks because of the technology in how many people, these companiesneed to have a look at restaurants. Now they're doing QR codes forthe menus QR codes to pay your bills. So there's even fewer people.That have to work in restaurants going forward. We've got meetingsthat are being held on WebEx or zoom.
You don't go see the doctor anymore. You're using telehealthsoftware programmers. [01:07:30] Engineers are being used morebroadly between March and July. There are more than 300,000openings for software and, uh, other types of computer high-techengineers. It's 13% higher than even 2016. It is absolutelyamazing.
I had one person who responded. And when I offered, maybe itmakes sense for me to do kind of a career [01:08:00] webinar onhigh-tech jobs. Right. What would it take to get into specificallythe cyber security industry? Because it's something I know it'ssomething I've been helping to drive the whole industry now forover 30 years.
And I had only had one person respond. Uh, although I know of. Ihave a few listeners that have actually done that. They went andgot themselves qualified in cyber security, but only one personmakes me [01:08:30] think that, you know, what does one personrepresent maybe a hundred listeners. So there are some of you.
I don't think I'm going to end up doing this little thing. CauseI was going to just do a free webinar and what it takes to become acybersecurity analyst. Uh, but uh, we'll see what happens here kindof going forward, but there's a lot that can happen. There's techco-workers out there who are leaving some of these high techfirms.
There are also [01:09:00] lawsuits about the golden handcuffs,so that have been put on people, you know, that say, Hey, you can'tcompete with us or you can't even be in the same industry. Some ofthose. Contracts are being knocked down in some states. Uh, it'skind of interesting to see what happens. Um, there's a couple morethings.
Yeah. Here, different hedge funds, but it's a really greatarticle. It's in ours. Double-check [01:09:30] your newsletter thatI sent out or is going out this weekend. If you haven't received ityet, you should get it at some point this weekend. A veryinteresting one. If you're considering high tech jobs, ARS,Technica, Vicky.
Now, if you want to track technology and cybersecurity, youknow, already I go through thousands of articles every week. Nowyou can talk to my wife about it right in the evenings. And evensometimes you're in the day I'm [01:10:00] sitting there reviewingarticles and all these sites, I put them together for you guys.
So, you know, what's happened. And cyber security, what thelatest breaches are, what you can do about it. I am going tocontinue with some of the trainings, pick them up again here withinthe next couple of weeks so that we can keep you guys up to date,but there's only one way you can find out about them.
There's only one way that you can get involved, and that's, bymaking [01:10:30] sure you subscribe to my show notes newsletter,and you can get that by going to Craig Peter sohn.com/subscribe.You'll get all of these free trainings. You'll find out aboutwhat's going on, what you need to do in your. Small business dooralso in your home computers and environment, but everything fromthe CEO on down Craig peterson.com/subscribe.
[01:11:00] I've been complaining about Facebook and what theyhave been doing to potential competitors for years, the same typesof complaints I can make against Microsoft and Google to a lesserdegree. While now the federal trade commission's coming out,agreeing with me.
This is something that I think has been a long time coming.
And this is the federal trade commission's lawsuit againstFacebook. Now, lest you think that this is a Trump thing.[01:11:30] This is a Biden thing. Trump administration had filedsuit, and then the suit was dropped, and now the federal tradecommission has refiled the lawsuit against Facebook and hasincluded some additional proof.
That it hopes is going to Boyce bolster its case. The last onewas rejected by the court. Great article by ARS Technica as Tim Dchant. You'll find that in [01:12:00] my newsletters as well. Craigpeterson.com/subscribe. You can get my show notes for absolutelyfree. Well, this refiling is in response to the federal tradecommission's initial case thrown out in June by us district, judgeJames Boasberg, who didn't think that the agency provided enoughinformation or a real strong definition, what you might call abright line in [01:12:30] legal terms of Facebook's market in itsfirst five.
This is really kind of an interesting problem here becausebasically, the federal trade commission is alleging that Facebooklacked the business and human and technical talent to survive thetransition to mobile. That's according to Holly Vedova, she's theacting director of the federal trade commission's bureau of[01:13:00] competition.
She also said after failing to compete with the new innovators,Facebook illegally bought or buried them when the popularity becameany sense. Or existential, she said threat. Now, this is the sametype of thing we've seen Microsoft do for decades and worse,frankly. It's similar things that Google has done tocompetition.
Although I think Google hasn't been as bad at this as [01:13:30]Microsoft or Facebook have been, but the federal trade commissionfiled this original lawsuit in December. And that was underJoseph's Simmons, who was appointed by former president Trump, ofcourse. And he cast the Simmons, the deciding vote in the initialfiling with the two Republican commissioners voting against it.
Now that to me is surprising because I'm all for free trade. Inthis [01:14:00] case of Facebook has been doing all kinds of anticompetitive things. And it's interesting to see the statement herefrom the federal trade commission that FAPE spoke, lacked thebusiness acumen and technical talent to survive. So that againtells you that Facebook might have a lot of really great politicalpeople in there working and censoring and deleting posts and somegreat marketing [01:14:30] people, but they sure don't have it.
The technical talent. I love that. I would love to see the judgeultimately rule that way, but here's the problem. Facebook acquiredInstagram and WhatsApp. And I've talked about this on the showbefore. And the other thing that they did and the way they acquiredthem was a problem. We'll talk about that in a second.
The other thing they did that I haven't talked about before is.The way they blocked [01:15:00] competitors from accessing the APIAPIs now API APIs or application programming interfaces. It's whatall of us programmers use nowadays. So rather than that,developing. For where that does, what Facebook does. I just goahead and use Facebook's published interfaces.
So the idea is I call an API using some methodology, and I say,I want this post to go. [01:15:30] In my Craig Peterson account orin my tech talk channel, right. Our group is actually what Facebookcalls it. And then Facebook says, okay, great. And it publishes itfor me. And that saves me from having to have to go to everyWebsite out there that I post my radio show that I post my blog,Kat, my blogs on too.
The podcast. It saves me from having to go to every one of thoseplaces online and repost, everything [01:16:00] manually. Those areAPI APIs. So I actually use a service that does that for me, usingAPI APIs from Facebook and other places. I use it to publish ontoYouTube. I use it to publish onto some of the instep platforms, etcetera, et cetera.
But what happened here is Facebook invited developers to startusing these APS, the eyes that they had put together, and thenlater trained the API [01:16:30] policies to actually be an antiquecompetitive weapon. Developers could only access Facebook'splatform and its user base. If they agreed to not compete withFacebook or the other thing that they could not do, if they wantedto use API APIs from Facebook is they could not helpfacilitate.
The growth of rivals. That is absolutely amazing. So the FTClawsuit [01:17:00] says Facebook recognize that the transition tomobile posed an existential challenge and that Facebook had a briefwindow of time to stymie emerging. Threats. This is right in thelawsuit. Failing to compete on business talent. Facebook developeda plan to maintain its dominant position by acquiring companiesthat could emerge as or aid competitive threat by buying up thesecompanies, Facebook [01:17:30] eliminated the possibility thatrivals might harness the power of the mobile internet to challengeFacebook's dominance.
So when we look at things like WhatsApp, for instance, here's asmall company that they acquired. Okay. So let me see. This is fromInvestopedia online and the title is WhatsApp. The best Facebookpurchase ever. Question mark. Okay. [01:18:00] Facebook acquiredWhatsApp in 2014. Now, how much did they acquire for how much wasWhatsApp really worth at the time?
It's hard to say, but you can compare it with other companies ofsimilar size and it was probably worth 20 million, maybe 50 millionat most. Right. Um, initial bid from Facebook for WhatsApp was $16[01:18:30] billion for a company that was probably worth $50. Okay.Yeah. Uh, it brought in 10 million in revenue.
WhatsApp did at the time, and it lost 150, $38 million in thatsame period. So let me see. The company loses $138 million onrevenues of $10 million. And Facebook buys it for 16 billion intheir initial offering. Well, [01:19:00] that was the, that was theinitial purchase price. You can read up all you want on this.
There's lots of information. So why did Facebook do it? Becausethey wanted to buy it potential competitor to Facebook messenger.And that's exactly what they did. And they've done that again andagain, paint far more than what the market would really dictate sothat they could get rid of a competitor.
Another one is [01:19:30] an ANOVA, O N a V O. This was a VPNservice that tracked users activities that they bought back in 2013and Facebook called the Novo. Cool. This is a quote from thelawsuit. Again, according Facebook execs that the acquisition ofthe VPN service would be really cool for identifying acquisitiontargets.
With our acquisition of a Nova. We now have insight into themost popular apps. We should [01:20:00] use that to help us makestrategic acquisition. So in other words, by having a VPN server,so what have I said about VPN. Don't use these public VPN servicesbecause no matter what, they're promising you, it's not true.
I did a whole webinar on this. In fact, I did it like two orthree times last year. Um, but they buy the VPN service. They getpeople using the VPN service. They're tracking everything that'sgoing on [01:20:30] on that VPN service. And now they know what'spopular out there and anything that's popped. Facebook buys.
Why are they buying it? Well, the allegation here by the federaltrade commission and from me for years is that they're buying themso they can stay in business because they can not. Move around.They don't have the talent according to Biden's now federal[01:21:00] trade commission, a T-Mobile. I got to mention this.
I am a T mobile user, and T-Mobile now has been breached andprobably about 53 million customers. Personally, identifiableinformation was breached as part of this. Yeah. So we'll know more.T-Mobile says it's notifying customers whose information was outthere as part of the breach. This is part of the reason I don't[01:21:30] like giving my social security number to these peoplebecause by the way, If it's stolen, the social securityadministration will not issue a new social security number.
That's part of the reason I want you to be on my email list.Craig peterson.com/subscribe. I have a bunch of techniques that youcan use. To help keep your information safe, your real informationsafe. That [01:22:00] is by the way, T-Mobile has had six otherdata breaches in the past four years. How are they still inbusiness?
I'm looking for a new company to move to Waymo has now releasedinformation. It's 6.1 million miles of self-driving car data inPhoenix, 6.1 million miles. 18 crashes 29 near miss [01:22:30]collisions during 2019 and the first nine months of 2020. Most ofthese, by the way, were rear Enders, some vehicles swipes, and evenone incident when a Waymo vehicle was T-boned at an intersection byanother car at nearly 40 miles an hour.
Nobody's seriously hurt there. So congratulations to Waymo, ofcourse, a Google alphabet related. And it's kind of interesting tosee they've actually begun offering rides [01:23:00] in fullydriverless vehicles to the general public. So they're way ahead outthere. You saw what Musk said this week about their, theirautonomous stuff over at Tesla?
Yeah. Not quite ready yet. Hey, thanks for joining me today.Make sure you joined me online. Craig peterson.com/subscribe to getmy weekly show notes for free.
