Transcription
Announcer: This is News Talk 1260 WFTW, Fort Walton Beach, a Cumulus station. The following program is paid for by Bit-Wizards Information Technology Solutions.
Dan: And good morning. It’s 8:30. Dan Diamond here with you. And in the studio with me, you already heard from Vince, Vince Mayfield. Vince is with Bit-Wizards, as well. He’s just a multitasking guy. Also we have Ben in studio with me. Ben, we haven’t heard from you yet. Good morning.
Ben: Good morning, Dan.
Dan: And we’re glad you’re here, this morning. And what do you do for Bit-Wizards, Ben?
Ben: I am an infrastructure engineer for Bit-Wizards. I handle our clients ’ IT needs, and actually, also the IT needs internally for Bit-Wizards. So if anybody has an issue, they call us and I remote in and take care of it.
Dan: Oh, that’s pretty cool. And you are prior military, is that right?
Ben: Yes, sir. I spent four years in the Air Force, 2002 to 2006.
Dan: Oh, you did? Did you deploy, at all?
Ben: No, I actually had orders to deploy to Iraq, but there was a manning change in the equipment we were maintaining over at Baghdad International. And so they came down, kind of at the last minute, and said,” You’re no longer needed.” But they didn’t relay that to the people in Iraq, and so they called me when I was at Scott Air Force Base, and they were like.
Dan: “Where are you?”
Ben: “Where are you at?” “In the middle of a cornfield.”
Dan: “Well, I’m not there. I’m not getting sand in my teeth, thank you very much.” All right, so Vince, what have you got going, this morning, for us. I know there’s always something very interesting Vince has got going with his Bits and Bytes.
Voiceover: Bit-Wizards Bits and Bytes.
Vince: Well, Dan, last week, we talked about the Consumer Electronics Show and the new gadgets that were coming out. And we also mentioned that Bit-Wizards, that the Consumer Electronics Association is a customer of ours, and that we work to build, and update, and refresh the website and their integrated systems for the show, each year. But one of the things that came out of that show, this year, is that there’s a number of new televisions out called smart TVs. And consumers are being enticed to buy these relatively inexpensive smart TVs, which they’re really bright, and they look really good, and they’re large, and they’re thin. And they’re just buzzing with media streaming apps. But the dirty secret in the industry is that these low prices are fueled, in big part, by the payment for user data. So while you’re using these TVs, they are mining all of your information, all of your viewing habits, everything that you do on there, in order to serve up ads back to you and to guide your television preferences.
Dan: Oh, so they’re kind of like Google?
Vince: Yes, very much like Google.
Dan: They’re doing the same thing Google is. Now your TV is after you.
Vince: Well, they are, and a lot of people don’t realize that these TVs are built on, in part, by Apple. They use Apple firmware built into them, and then also Android, which is also owned by Google.
Dan: Google, yeah. Can you imagine how they’ve got their fingers into you, in your TV, now?
Vince: So, at the core of these TVs, they’re typically powered by software, as we talked about. And again, they’re selling your data. They have a feature…A feature, yeah.
Dan: A tool.
Vince: And it’s called automatic content recognition. And ACR is turned on by default on your TV via the agreement, whether you’re using Sony, or Samsung, or a Roku, or whatever it is that you’re using.
Dan: What’s ACR?
Vince: It is automatic content recognition. So, basically, what it is, is it’s a series of things that you, basically, agree to when you sign in to your television. And it turns on all these things where it collects data on your viewing habits and what you do. And the ACR is built by both Google, and then it’s tied in with something called Samba TV, which is a company that gathers analytics on viewers ’ habits that allow advertisers…They sell your data and your information for targeted ad campaigns.
Dan: Man, it doesn’t ever end, does it? There’s no way turn that off? Is there any way to turn that off, Vince?
Vince: Absolutely. So I’m glad you asked.
Dan: Oh, how about that? We’re getting into the good meat of it, here.
Vince: So the meat is, is that what we tell people, whether you’re corporate or whether you’re personal, is to, first of all, pay attention to the EULAs, the licensing agreements. We’ll talk about those, a little bit later, and the things that you do when you buy a television or when you’re going through that setup process in the beginning. And what you want to do is you want to go into the privacy settings. You want to pay particular attention to the privacy settings. You want to go in and take a look at things like device usage data, collected app and over-the-air data, interest-based ads, things like that. Read them and make sure that you turn them off. Now, I told you to turn them off, but here’s the deal. Every time they update those things, and those smart TVs are constantly updated because they connect to wifi, they push out new software updates to them. You need to go back periodically and check often to make sure that they have not automatically turned this stuff back on.
Dan: Right back. Yeah.
Ben: I was going to recommend, on some TVs, about the updates and everything, some TVs, they have automatic updates turned off. So I was going to recommend that if you do have a smart TV, make sure automatic updates are turned on, and then periodically, yes, go back and check those settings to make sure they didn’t re-enable themselves.
Dan: Okay.
Ben: Because they do do that. You push an update to your TV, and then it starts checking those boxes again for you without you knowing. So it’s good to go back and have a look.
Dan: They are sneaky. They’re like,” Oh, they turn it off, but we’ll just turn it right back on again.” Because that’s probably the default, right? That’s going to be the default setting. I’m sure they built that in there.
Ben: Yeah, they want that information.
Dan: And since it’s default, when they update, all the defaults maybe pop back up, right? And that would be…I don’t know. Because now…Because we’re going to get into Windows just a little bit, but with Windows, the same thing. They just send you the updates, and you update everything, right? And the same thing with the TVs. They’re going to update that, as well. And something else is even Xbox, they do a lot of updates on the games, too. So there’s people looking at your stuff, all over the place.
Vince: Oh, they are, and it doesn’t stop there. A lot of the consumer devices that people are buying now. You now go out and you get a Nest, which don’t get me wrong, Nest is a great thing. It helps you save a lot of money on energy. But Nest is now owned by Google, so they’re monitoring what you’re doing there, and then, again, they’re collecting that data. And if you don’t believe me, you can look at all the different things that Google collect on you as it goes through. We’ll go over those, a few of those, in the next segment.
Dan: Okay.
Vince: This isn’t anything new. Basically, at Bit-Wizards, we’re fond of telling customers,” Free isn’t free.” All those free apps on your iPhone and Android phones, they’re collecting your data and information because, let’s face it, Google and Apple are in the data business, and that’s how all of these little app manufacturers can give you free apps or charge you 99 cents or a nominal fee. They sell all of your data and make big money off of that.
Dan: I always wondered about that because even with these…for your…What am I trying to say? When you have credit, for your credit score.
Vince: Yes.
Dan: They’re selling your data to other companies. They’re using your data to make money, but that’s your data, that’s your information.
Vince: Yep.
Dan: And the same thing with this. That is your information, but there’s no way you can protect and keep your information because it’s out there, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Vince: Well, Congress has made it real easy for them. All they have to do, instead of you opting in on a lot of these things where you actually have to check and say that I opt in, Congress has made it where they just send you a privacy statement or something like that, and then you have to opt out, right? So that’s why.
Dan: If you don’t opt out, you’re automatically in, right?
Vince: You’re automatically in. Exactly. And so a lot of people don’t pay attention. Americans have traditionally given up a ton of their privacy in the name of getting free stuff.
Dan: Well, it’s kind of like when you get new software and you have 30,000 pages that you’re supposed to read for information about it. Nobody reads that. I mean, not really.
Vince: No, not at all.
Dan: And then they go, “Okay, fine.” And they click it, and then just move on and install the software, right?
Vince: Yep, absolutely.
Dan: And so, anyway, that’s good information to know about your info.
Voiceover: Bit-Wizards: What’s Up Our Sleeve?
Vince: So I want to transition this into another thing that is a big privacy concern that we’re looking at, and it’s using social media responsibly. We all use…People are using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and even your basic search engines. They are all mining your data. That’s why those apps are free. And so when you sign in to those apps, you accept the terms of service. And pretty much everybody basically casually accepts them, meaning that you’re giving up almost all of your rights to privacy because you’re giving away your data in exchange for the free use of that application. And these businesses, as I’ve said before, are in the data business, not necessarily the software business. In fact, Google has a statement they used to say in the beginning that they want to stay one step above the order of creepy.
Dan: And I think they’ve dipped down into creepy already. But yeah, I understand that. So when they get your information like that, who do they sell it to?
Vince: Advertisers predominantly. Anybody that wants them. I mean, heck, even…There was a big thing here. I don’t know if they’re still doing it now, but when you got your driver’s license in Florida, they were selling your information that you’ve got from your driver’s license to other people around the country and even outside the United States.
Dan: That doesn’t seem legal to do that.
Vince: Yeah, I think it’s been challenged in court. I don’t remember all the details, but I vaguely remember that happening. I mean, the other thing that concerns me is a lot of the help desks that you have now, not just for technology, but insurance and other things, those are all being done overseas. And my question is, who’s protecting your data, and who’s protecting your privacy there with those call-in centers?
Dan: Sure. Overseas would be China, it could be Russia, it could be who knows who, overseas with your data.
Vince: Well, just think about just something as basic as the search engine. Let’s talk about what Google knows about you.
Dan: Oh, no.
Vince: So, first of all, anytime you go and you do travel plans, you put that in your email, right? And so Google scans all of the content in your emails. Free isn’t free. You get a free email, right?
Dan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Vince: And they scan everything, all the content in that email. Why? So they can figure out and they can use AI and other information to serve you back up ads. They are in the ads, and they are in the data business.
Dan: Makes sense. Because oftentimes when I purchase equipment for my business, I’ll purchase the equipment. And then, all of a sudden, I’m getting ads from that particular place on my computer. Constant ads. I mean, no matter what I’m in, an ad will pop up for that company.
Ben: Yeah. I’ve had conversations with people, and then, about 15 minutes later, you get a relevant ad to that conversation that you had.
Dan: Yeah.
Ben: So kind of the joke around the office is to walk by people’s phones and yell,” Swedish Fish,” hoping they’ll get an ad for the Swedish Fish candy. But yeah, they know quite a bit about you. Other companies, they store all types of data. Huawei is a smart home company that sells a little cheap camera. And part of getting it that cheap is the data you turn over. They had a production database out in the open, and it was accessible by security for…They pulled your name, your SSID, the name you gave the cameras, a little bit of insight to your actual home network, and any kind of…like your bone density, weight, and anything related to that because they were testing a smart home scale.
Dan: Oh, my gosh.
Ben: So yeah, the data you’re turning over, you have to worry about it being accessible from people that they’re not selling it to.
Dan: With that data, I guess it also includes phone numbers. It’s got to, because I do a lot of business with a lot of people, and I order equipment, and so on. And it seems like the more I do business with companies, the more phone calls I get for ads, people trying to call in and sell me things.
Vince: Well, not only do they know your phone number, but they usually know your age, or your approximate age. And typically any type of product that you use for Google, you fill out and give them information about you. You freely give it in order to get access to that stuff. Things like your address, maybe your age, your children’s names, your wife’s name. And now it’s gotten even worse because now we have these little devices in the home like the Dot. And you ask it questions, and it listens in real-time to what you do. People don’t realize every site you visit, everything that you did on those sites is all mined, and that information is there. So if you’re off looking at Pornhub at 3:00 in the morning, Google knows that you did it, and that is stored somewhere. So if you think you’re being sneaky or whatever, you are not.
Dan: You’ll start getting ads for that, too. Uh-oh. That can be bad.
Vince: Don’t get yourself in trouble.
Dan: Your wife is sitting on the computer, and all of a sudden, the ad pops up. Uh-oh.
Vince: Either that or you know that your 13-year-old has been in there.
Dan: Or that, too.” Oh, we’ve got a problem, here.” Oh, by the way, I got to say something, I do like that bow tie you’ve got on.
Vince: Oh, thank you.
Dan: Yeah. Vince has got a bow tie on that’s red, white, and blue. It’s got the stars and stripes on it. You’re a true American patriot, I can tell.
Vince: I am. I am. I love this country. It’s a great place to live, and we don’t really realize all the freedoms that we have unless you’ve been overseas and been to some of the other places.
Dan: Absolutely. And kind of getting to that, sort of, with all of our information that is out there to all these different companies, a lot of that you would think might not be in your best interest, either.
Vince: Well, that is true. But fortunately there are some things that you can do to try to make sure that you protect your data. The first thing is be aware. Pay attention and read the privacy settings. Read the end user license agreements or things like that. I know it’s a lot, but at least scan them over and know something. Turn off things like ad personalization inside of your Google. Use in-private browsing, use a VPN, turn off the location setting.
Dan: VPN, what is a VPN?
Vince: We talked about this, once before. It’s a virtual private network. And, basically, what it does is it masks, point-to-point, between you and that other point that you’re connected to, and it encrypts that information back and forth.
Dan: Right, so that nobody else can break in and hack into it, and get your information.
Vince: Yep. So they can pick up and read those packets as they go across the network.
Dan: So when you are working with your clients, you can give them a VPN.
Vince: Yes.
Dan: You can also check and make sure that all those privacy things have been checked and taken care of so they don’t get hacked in. Their information for the business isn’t being taken, and all the users that use that, all their information isn’t being taken. So you can protect them from that.
Vince: Yeah, we do our best. I mean, it’s a never-ending job of being vigilant, all the time. But yes, we do. We try to do all the best practices to make sure that we are using…First of all, we look at using…We ask our customers not to use free open-source software. That’s the first thing. We try to get them to use commercial-grade business software that has, basically, a roadmap. It’s got a company that stands behind it. And then, on top of that, we pay particular attention to the license agreements, the privacy settings, and things like that. And then we also help provide your employees training on what they need to be aware of.
Dan: What not to put in there, probably, too.
Vince: Yeah, what not to put in there.
Dan: Yeah, because if you look…The first thing that struck me when Facebook first came out is all the information that people were putting in Facebook. It’s like,” Oh, my gosh. This is open to anybody that wants to get in there and hack all of your information.”
Vince: Yeah. It’s interesting, I had a buddy of mine that had a picture of his mother and baby daughter. And he was driving down the interstate, and there it was on a billboard. And so, basically, they had shared that through Instagram or one of the other social media networks. And when you put those pictures up there, you don’t own them anymore. They belong to them.
Dan: Wow, on a billboard.
Vince: Yep.
Dan: That’s insane. You just never know where this whole thing could lead to. And I guess that’s probably the biggest reason why you don’t share that information. You just never know where it’s going to end up.
Vince: Well, you do. And the thing of it is, is that a lot of the things, a lot of the software, a lot of the hardware that’s out there, they try to make it cheap. And I would say that there are a lot of IT vendors out there that try to keep IT super low-cost by getting free software or hardware that’s based on open-source, things like that. And what they don’t realize is open-source software is maintained by the community. That’s anybody out there on the internet, so there’s no technology roadmap, there’s no financial incentive for them to keep that safe. They typically don’t…They have no responsibility, no government regulation about what they do or they don’t do. And this is why we want you to have commercial-grade applications, commercial-grade hardware. We want these companies that security is an important part of their business, that they have a product roadmap, and that they have an incentive to keep your data and your information safe.
Dan: It sounds like a good idea because, right now, it sounds to me like trying to safeguard your information is priority one because you never know where it’s going to lead from there.
Vince: Yeah. And the probably, though, too, is that if you turn off some of these privacy settings and some of the things, then you don’t get the full function of the app. You don’t get full function of your smart TV. But what I would tell people is to be vigilant. Think about what you’re doing. Think about what data that you put in there. I know some people that put bogus data in about…like they give a fake email address or some other things. But now a lot of those vendors have gotten savvy to that, so.
Dan: They check.
Vince: They check. Right. So vigilance. I really say vigilance. Think about what you’re doing. You’re not going to be able to unplug from the world, but be careful what you choose, and what you don’t choose. And make sure you go through and monitor the settings yourself when updates happen. Go back and check, re-check them again, and make sure that your stuff stays safe.
Dan: So yeah, it’s not one of those where you just set it up one time and walk away. If you want to protect your information, you’re going to have to go back and double-check it and make sure that it didn’t go back to default or whatever it might be, right?
Vince: Right.
Dan: That sounds good to me. All right, guys.
Voiceover: Bit-Wizards, From the Spell Book.
Dan: Oh.
Vince: Yeah, From the Spell Book. So today, we’re going to talk about, and we’ve already mentioned it before, is EULA, E-U-L-A. It stands for end user license agreement. And this is the agreement you typically enter into when you start up an application or you buy an application. Or sometimes if it’s a retail box software, you’ll get a little terms and conditions sheet. And that by accepting or by simply buying the software and utilizing it, it implies your consent to the end user license agreement. And it specifies the rights and restrictions that you have in which to use the software. It also is meant for the software vendor to limit their liability, and warranties, and things like that. But basically, it also talks about the privacy and some of the other things that are in there. So anytime you get a piece of software, there’s typically an end user license agreement, or EULA. It’s important that you take a look at them. I know that they’re written in legalese, and there’s a lot of stuff in there. But be familiar with them, know who your vendor is, know where the software comes from. My son thought he was going to be really cool to buy his dad a set of VR goggles that he got for $26 in some sort of a fair to raise money for the school.
Dan: Oh, no.
Vince: So he took his hard-earned money and he bought it, and he brought it home. And, of course, I know that top-of-the-line brand, stuff like that…And I’m glad my son took it upon himself to do that. He’s a very giving kid. But Oculus and some of the others that are out there, but this was some cheap knockoff that he paid and wasted his money for. And as soon as I opened it up and looked at it, it went out to the Chinese version of Google. And I had to go download an app, specifically from one of those stores in order to do it. I just didn’t even do it. I packed it up and put it away.
Dan: Right.
Vince: So you have to be really careful about what you purchase, what you use. Again, free isn’t free, and cheap isn’t cheap. I mean, that’s.
Dan: I wonder how many people actually know that, Vince, that free is not free. Because people put apps on their phone, all the time.” Oh, it’s a free app. I got a free app. This is wonderful,” not realizing that not only is it just free to you, but it’s great for them because they can mine all of your information, sell your information. On one cheap little app, they can make tons of money on, it sounds like.
Vince: They can. They can make a lot of money on it. And I don’t begrudge them to make money. The problem is that…Steve Jobs kind of established this when he came out with the iPhone. They told developers,” Run out and make a gazillion dollars. You can sell an app for 99 cents.” Well, that business model doesn’t work. It’s very expensive to build an app, to keep the app up-to-date, keep it patched, keep it secure. And so they had to look for ways to, basically, support the app. They started giving them away for free. You see that a lot of apps have gone to subscription services, at least the commercial ones have. But you still have a lot of free apps where developers have developed them, put them out there. And the way that they make their money is by serving you up ads. They build them into the application itself. And then they also mine your data and your information, and they sell it.
Dan: Everybody’s got to make money, somehow. Free, like you said…I mean, honestly, how could they make a free app, and continue to make free apps, and stay in business?
Vince: Well, you’re absolutely right. It’s kind of funny. We sometimes have customers that will come to us and say,” Hey, I want you to build me a website, and I want a search built into it that’s just like Google,” where it’s predictive search. And what I have to tell them is,” Google spent billions of dollars developing that search engine. And it takes a lot of effort to go and do that. I can’t develop you a 25 to $50,000 website and build a Google-based search in it. What I can do is we can take things like Lucene and some of the others, and we can put that in it. But you’re not going to get a Google-like predictive search out of them.” Now, some of that stuff is getting better. Over time, they’ll improve upon that, and then some of that technology will move down the pike, and they’ll make a package of components that we can put into it. But writing one from scratch is out of the question.
Dan: So I don’t understand exactly what kind of a search engine they would want. Now, the search engines that I’ve seen on some websites, like for example, I use auto parts. Go to an auto parts website, say,” What do you want?” “Well, it’s for this particular year, and a water pump,” let’s just say. And it goes through, and it finds that for you. So they want something more than that?
Vince: Yeah. We had a hospital that wanted us to write a special search engine that when…They had a lot of doctors that had unique names, and so they wanted us, if a person started to type in the name wrong, to try to predict what that name would be, like Google’s predictive search, so that they could find their doctor, rather than know the typical way you might do that is have an A, B, C, D, through Z, and you would at least narrow it down that way, then look down the list. They didn’t want that. They wanted it to be just like Google. And so,” Sorry, can’t do that. Not for the kind of money that you’re paying to do it. I’ll write it for you, or our team will write it for you, but you can’t afford it.” Another one that people will do is they’ll try to say,” Well, can you build the Google search engine into my website?” And you can do that. But the problem is, is that…Let’s say you want to do, like you said, the auto parts. That’s not necessarily going to be germane to your data store, your stuff that has your auto parts data in it. So we have to write a specialized search, just to pick up the auto parts or whatever it might be.
Dan: Right. I see. That’s interesting that people would want that in their website. But I guess I could see the use for it.
Vince: Well, they get the tech. It’s kind of like somebody will come to us to ask us to build custom software, and they’ll say,” Hey, I want you to build me a piece of custom software.” And I’ll go,” Okay, no problem.” And they’ll say,” Well, how much is that going to cost?” I said,” Well, tell me what you want me to build.” “Well, I want you to build me my own accounting system.” And I’ll go,” Have you heard of QuickBooks?” And they say,” Well, yeah. QuickBooks only costs $400, right?” And I’m like,” Yeah.”
Dan: “Yeah, and?”
Vince: “Yeah. Well, they sell it to millions and billions of people, and they can spread that cost out over a lot of people. If I write that one unique piece of software, just for you, I’m going to spend a ton of money to do that.”
Dan: And you’ve got to recoup that.
Vince: Yep, and I’ve got to recoup that. And then, once you do that, you are in the software business, so you have to maintain that software. It’s not you build it once, and it’s done. All these different technologies and things carry on, so you’ve got to constantly keep that stuff up-to-date, and do your best to…Again, you become a software company.
Dan: And it’s not like building a website. They probably equate that to building a website. You build a website, and you can help maintain that. Much easier to do than building in something from scratch.
Vince: Well, websites are built on content management systems, and so typically we use commercial off-the-shelf content management systems. But even those, websites are very sophisticated, these days. They’re not static anymore. If you have a static website, it’s a waste.
Dan: What would be an example of a static website?
Vince: A website that never changes. You type it in like a document, you put it on the website. It never changes, it never updates. From Google’s perspective, you don’t exist.
Dan: Oh.
Vince: So they’ll index your base site, and it’ll be there. But what fuels Google is content. So, to give you an example of content, it’d be things like,” Are you putting news articles out there about your company? Are you producing blog articles or information that’s relevant to your particular business?”
Dan: Basically, if you’re updating it.
Vince: Yep, you’re updating it. And that’s how Google measures you. It’s one of the ways that it measures you.
Dan: And so when people want to be first or second when they google whatever business you’re into, Google’s going to measure that as far as you’re active, what relevant information you have, is it up-to-date. They can figure all that out, it sounds like.
Vince: They do. They have sophisticated algorithms that always change, because remember, Google is into data mining, and they’re job is to serve you ads. And so what they want to do is they want to get more and more information about your browsing habits and what you do. And then they also want to serve up relevant content to the users of their search engine.
Dan: Well, Vince and Ben, we only have a couple minutes left if you’d like to highlight one of your clients.
Ben: Yeah, I would like to send a big…Bit-Wizards would like to send a big thank you and shout-out to Southern Traffic Services. I’ve been with Bit-Wizards for about two years, now, and I’ve been working with them ever since I started. And they’re a good group of people, out there. They’re a traffic engineering and transportation planning firm which specializes in traffic data collection, traffic studies, engineering design, and construction and maintenance services for permanent traffic-monitoring sites. Thank you, STS, for choosing Bit-Wizards to provide your managed IT services and for using us to do your software development for your traffic monitoring systems. Yeah, thank you for letting Bit-Wizards serve you.
Dan: And you guys have a lot in our area, but you don’t just stick to our area. You’re all around the U. S., I know.
Vince: Well, that’s absolutely correct. So I would say probably 80% of our business is outside the area.
Dan: 80%?
Vince: Yeah.
Dan: And nationwide, almost worldwide. Are you outside the U. S., at all?
Vince: Our SAAS application, Talking Parents, for co-parenting is utilized outside the United States. But Bit-Wizards doesn’t do any software development outside the U. S.
Dan: No? So you’re U. S. That’s why you have the tie on, the bow tie.
Vince: That’s right.
Dan: Red, white, and blue, man. Vince is the all-American guy. We thank you both for coming in, Vince and Ben from Bit-Wizards, The Tip of the Wand. We love having your show, every Tuesday. Always looking forward to it, and we’ll see you, next Tuesday.
Vince: See you, next Tuesday, Dan. Thank you.