Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas 12/27/24

Kevin is in for Brian this morning talking about the news and issues of the day. Also, Tech Friday with Dave Hatter!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And now Kevin Golden filling in for Brian Thomas on
fifty five KOs the talk station.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Four minutes after five o'clock. Surprise, I'm here again. Well,
we had a little change in schedule around here, and
so I got the call and if I could fill
in today for Brian, and I'm glad to be here.
If you went to my Facebook page, which you should
on a regular basis, and if you're not, why not,
you'll notice that the guests are a little bit slight today.

(00:41):
I've got Dave Hatter coming up at six point thirty
I believe if that's still on the schedule. We're kind
of in a flux here. Of course, some of the
guests that I talked to earlier, I guess that's to
be determined whether or not they can make it. But
for the most part, you're going to be dealing with
me news and views for out most of the day,
and you know, I'll get a few opinions in there,
because as you know, I have an opinion, I'm not

(01:03):
afraid to use it. We're seeing some information regarding those
a bunch of things in the news as far as
travel plans this weekend. There's some reports of some severe
weather coming in, and if you're out and about and
if you're going to be traveling, especially by air, you
want to make sure and I'm sure if you're a
seasoned traveler that you'll be aware that you need to

(01:25):
check those listings, make sure that the flights are on time.
You don't want to get to the airport and realize
that it's been your flight's been canceled hours before. And
this gives me an opportunity to talk about flying. It's
been a long long time since I've flown.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
I normally, if I'm going to travel, I don't travel.
I would say probably within a five hour radius of
the area. Don't do a lot of traveling, but when
I do, it's usually by car, and I prefer by
car because I can control when I can stop and
go to the bathroom or see certain attractions along the
way of making a little detour and going, hey, I

(02:05):
wonder what that looks like, or I wonder what that
little attraction would be like. Unless I'm on a time
frame and I want to get from point A to
point B. But I figure that by the time you drive,
and in my case, it takes me probably about twenty
five minutes to a half hour to get to the
airport you part the car, probably by the time you
get into the terminal itself is probably another fifteen to

(02:29):
twenty minutes thereabouts. And then you're supposed to be at
the airport an hour and a half to two hours
ahead of time, and during the holidays, they once you
be and people suggest you get there three hours ahead
of time. So as I look at it, I could
be three and a half hours into whatever trip I'm doing,
And three and a half hours will get you from here,

(02:50):
get you down to Nashville, get you up to Toledo,
get you almost to get you up almost a way
to Cleveland, You probably within striking distance of Pittsburgh. Certainly
can get you to Columbus two hours away, Indianapolis, and
so a lot of those areas that I go to,

(03:10):
they're all within that three and a half to five
hour radius. Five hours to gets you from here to Chicago.
So by the time you get the delays at the
airport and that the flight is delayed, then you get
to your destination. You got to get when you get
off the plane, even if you've got your rental car
picked out ahead of time, and you can just go

(03:31):
to the kiosk or if you got people picking you up.
There's going to be the travel time from the airport
to wherever you're going. And unless you rent a car,
then you're going to be at the the whims of
whoever you're with as to whether or not you're going
to be able to go unless you want to do
uber and all that. So I figure, excuse me, the

(03:53):
flexibility of having the car with me, either renting a
car or taking my car if you're going to be
five and a half hours away, get rid of all
the aggravation as far as the airports are concerned. Now,
of course, I'm sure Delta and the rest of them
don't like what I say there, But again, you hear
all these horror stories around this time of the year.

(04:15):
So plan ahead, make sure that you're cognizant of what's
going on, and making sure that you call ahead of time. Now,
if there's going to be weather conditions, obviously then the
road conditions come into play, and you want to make
sure that you plan ahead on that. You want to
make sure that the road conditions are such that'll be
safe travels, and as you're traveling, recognize the fact that

(04:36):
there's going to be an awful lot of other people
on the highway. I don't know what your particular expertise
with driving skills would be, but there's an awful lot
of people that are on the road that they generally
aren't on the road. So it's kind of like rookie
season if you will pay attention to what's going on.
People are not driving as well as they used to.

(04:59):
I call at the pandemic crazies because it seems like
people forgot how to drive over COVID and then now
there seems to be a lot more aggravation with people.
They seem to be a little bit more aggressive behind
the wheel. I'm sure you've seen that. If you've driven
around a little bit, you notice how some people will
be you know, even in a urban area like you know,

(05:21):
Cincinnati greater since northern Kentucky speed limit on the freeways
until you get out into the counties and a little
bit further away from the cities, we're all fifty five
miles per hour. And if you're going fifty five miles
per hour on a lot of those freeways, you're almost
standing still because people are passing you left and right.
And what the experts will say is that it's not

(05:44):
necessarily speed that kills its differential speed. So if you're
going considerably slower than the rest of the traffic, you
in effect are kind of an impediment to that traffic
and could create an accident because if somebody comes roaring
up on you, If somebody's doing seventy seven five miles
an hour and they come up on somebody doing fifty five,
that's going to be a problem. So keep pace with

(06:06):
the traffic, make sure you're surroundings. If you're not very
adapt at driving well, you know, put your head on
a swivel a little bit and make sure you're aware
of your surroundings. Also, when you're out on the highways,
recognize the fact that when you are driving down the road,
and yes, you get into traffic jams or heavy traffic,

(06:27):
and it seems like the eighteen wheelers are the ones
that are holding things up. But recognize, folks, that you're
out celebrating, you're out having a good time, you're out
visiting family and friends, and you're on vacation having a
great time. And the people behind those wheels, they're not
on vacation. They are working, they are the ones that
are delivering the groceries to the store, the clothing to

(06:49):
the shelves. Seventy percent of everything that you buy is
brought to you buy a truck, it's brought to you
at the retail level. Even if you buy off of Amazon,
if you're buying online, the truckers still have to get
that merchandise to the warehouse and then from the warehouse
to a holding facility, and then the final mile vehicles,

(07:11):
the UPS trucks or the Post office trucks then have
to deliver that. But all of that merchandise is delivered
by a truck, and so even if you're buying online,
the trucking industry is involved, and so be a little
courteous to the trucks out there. You see these public
service announcements from time to time. Don't travel in the
blind spot because when they have to change lanes, they

(07:33):
put their turn signals on, and if you're in their
blind spot, they can't see you. And you know that
when you're driving down the road and you look in
your rear view mirror or you look on your side mirrors,
there are certain times when you have a certain blind
spot there and you have to kind of look over
your shoulder and make sure that there's nobody in that lane.
In a truck, you can't do that. That's why they

(07:54):
have those large side mirrors. But even there there are
some blind spots. Aware of the surroundings. Be a little
bit more courteous of the truckers out there. If you
stop for gasoline and you go into the truck stop,
or you go into the convenience store and you run
into a trucker, do him a favor, say thank you
for being out there, because they're out there instead of

(08:15):
being with their friends. They're on the job. They're working,
and they're bringing the merchandise to you. So be a
little bit courteous out there. Be aware of what's going
on on the highway, and everybody gets home safe because
getting if you're out on the highway, getting home and
getting home safe is job one. I got a lot
of stuff going on today, not too much going on.

(08:35):
The only guest we have is at six thirty I
mentioned was is Dave Hatter. I always look forward, well,
I kind of look forward to talking to Dave Hatter,
But then I don't like talking to Dave Hatter, not
because I don't like him. Dave is one of the
nicest guys and one of the friend and he's very

(08:56):
good at what he does, but man, he scares the
hell out of you when he talks about all this
cybersecurity and all the stuff that where people are trying
to get into your devices, and how you can hang
yourself up online and all the various land mines that
are out there, and some of the things that you
need to be aware of when you're out, when you're
on the computer, and certain things you need to protect

(09:18):
yourself and your family from any of these cybersecurity threats
that are out there. Fishing and I'm sure you're aware
of a lot of those fishing scams, but it's amazing
how many of those are tripped up. They're getting better,
the crooks are getting better at the disguising that they
are putting out a phishing email, or they're getting very

(09:41):
good at being making it look like it's an official
text or an official email from a reputable company. But
the bottom line is, if you're buying a lot of
stuff online, and I run into this this Christmas season
more than anything else. With my wife and I we've
been per saying some things online. But you might want

(10:03):
to make a list of everything that you just a
handwritten on a note or maybe on a word document
that items that you've purchased, and making sure that you
know what is the method of that delivery going to be.
Is it going to be UPS, is it going to
be USPS, is it going to be any well, if

(10:25):
it's coming from Amazon, whatever device or whatever transport mode
of transportation is coming to you, make a list of
that so that if you get an email that says,
oh well, first of all, the post Office, how would
they have your email address and send you an email
that says we can't deliver this package to you because
the address is wrong, And a lot of time United

(10:49):
Postal Service they may not have that information as well.
Sometimes you'll get a text that says that you've got
a particular package that can't be delivered. Be aware of
those things. Go to your list, make sure that oh, well,
I don't have anything being delivered by UPS, or I
don't have anything that's going to be coming from the
Post Office, And so that'll save you a lot of
bit of a whole bit of aggravation along those lines,

(11:11):
and make sure that you're dealing with reputable companies when
you go online and make sure that you're making your
purchases from companies that aren't just there trying to steal
your information. Phone numbers five one, three, seven, four nine,
fifty five hundred one, eight hundred eight two three talk one,
eight hundred eighty two three eight two five five pound
of five point fifty AT and T wireless phone. Kevin
Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five KRC, The Talk Station,

(11:46):
five nineteen in the morning. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas,
fifty five KRC, The Talk Station. You know, I was
reminded last night when I was flipping around the channels.
Uh just I mentioned this on another program that I'm
I'm on, and this, you know, the Corona Extra commercial

(12:07):
that comes on every year where they have the island
there on the peninsula. You have that cabana and then
all of a sudden, the lights come on on the
palm tree and then the whistle about oh Christmas Tree,
Oh Christmas Tree, and I thought, wow. The first time
I saw that this season was this past weekend, which

(12:28):
was kind of shocking because you know, the Christmas season
has been going on for a long period, well at
least the Christmas shopping season today being the third day
of Christmas. And to explain that, I'll bring that up
in a moment. But during the Christmas shopping season, you
have all these different ads for Christmas, and one of

(12:51):
the iconic ones is this Corona advertisement. And I thought,
my goodness, that thing has been around for a long time.
And I thought, well, gosh, how long that's been. And
I looked it up and I found some interesting things
about that. Is that that palm tree that commercial now
is something it's about forty years old at this point.

(13:13):
That first appeared back in nineteen ninety. The forty four
years that that commercial has been going on, that is
just absolutely phenomenal. And every time I see that commercial,
that commercial seems fresh to me. It seems it's unexpected.
It doesn't say much. It doesn't have the glitz, the glamour,

(13:34):
the pyrotechnics, it doesn't have a lot of people. They're
no actors, there's no dancing, there's no nothing. It's just
a very basic scene with a palm tree and all
of a sudden it lights up and somebody's whistling in
the background doing the old Christmas tree song, and so
the song, like I said, the commercial has been around
for forty four years. And some interesting things about that

(13:57):
is the fact that back in the day when they
were trying to come up with this commercial, a lot
of stuff, a lot of thought went into that. The
person fell by the name of Mike Rogers who chose
to shoot this commercial wanted to have some sort of
an iconic that would blend in with the brand itself

(14:18):
and with Corona being tied to Mexico and that. So
he was looking for something around the Yucatan Peninsula and
figured out a place where he could go for that.
And the commercial even though it has and I didn't
what I didn't know this until I read this article
on it is the fact that it was obviously it

(14:39):
was filmed in Mexico, and so it has this although
it has this Florida flavor, but if you look off
to the distance and you look behind the cabana there
and then off to the side, you'll actually see some mountains,
and that is unusual because obviously you don't have mountains
in Florida. So what he did is that, you know,
he wanted this scene and he wanted to have a

(15:01):
Florida edge to it, but he found this scene in
Mexico Yucatan Peninsula. He was able to find this location
because he had been there on a family vacation. Said
that it had been to Accamol, which is where this is.
It's about two and a half hours south of one
of the resorts there that he used to go to,

(15:22):
especially where was that on here Aruba. He would go
there occasionally. And so he found this location and decided
to shoot this. And what is also interesting is that
we don't usually equate alligators with Mexico. You usually take
that into consideration with Florida. But where this location was

(15:46):
where they chose to set up the shot. Apparently the
cameraman was scared to death. Where they set the camera up,
there was this school of alligators all swarming around, and
they actually had to hire alligator wranglers to keep the
alligators back. They had to get them out of the way.

(16:08):
The cameraman jumped in there, set the shot and then
ran for his life. And here we have this iconic commercial.
And I just thought that was an interesting take. And
again every year I see that commercial, it kind of
signifies to me the beginning or we're at least in
the Christmas season, and it's to me, it's as fresh

(16:29):
today as it was years ago. It's still a very
clean commercial, gets across their message and gets it away
in a very novel way, and after forty four years,
it's still relevant, which when you look at a lot
of different products, when you look at the advertising campaigns
that people spend millions and millions of dollars on on

(16:52):
an annual basis. And sometimes I don't know about you,
but a lot of times when I'll watch commercials and
I will sit there and I'll go, you know, at
the end of it, what were they selling? Because there's
so much distraction within the commercial itself, I don't really
know what they're selling or it's kind of a stupid
commercial and it doesn't make any sense. So, uh, this

(17:12):
commercial hits the nail on the head. And what they
refer to this as the oh tannan palm commercial coming up,
I get a little bit of Uh, let's step out
here for a moment. Phone numbers five one, three, seven,
four nine fifty, five hundred one, eight hundred eight two
three talk one eight hundred eight two three eight two

(17:32):
five five pound, five point fifty AT and T wireless
phone Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC
The Talk Station, five point twenty nine in the morning.
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC the

(17:56):
Talk Station. Take a look at some local headline we're
covering for you. I saw this earlier today out of Florence, Kentucky.
Three men are being investigated after police say they stole
a barbecue. Stole a barbecue restaurants cooking equipment on the
night of Christmas. Mary freaking Christmas. There folks smoking this

(18:18):
and smoking this and that barbecue in Florence. It's around
eight pm on Wednesday, when men swipe their stuff. There's
not any good day to steal from somebody, but at Christmas,
that's kind of horrible. At eight oh five come and
says that two men carry off this commercials meat slicer,

(18:42):
and over the fifteen minute period frenzy they allegedly sold tents,
food warmers and so on. So just you know, never,
it never ceases to amaze me, how during certain times
of the year when people will try to take advantage
of other people, and especially around the Christmas season. We've

(19:07):
seen a lot of reports over the last couple of
weeks of these porch pirates. And I don't know if
you saw the video, but it was pretty funny that
there was a fellow. I don't know where this town was,
but he went out and he bought a flat screen
TV to replace obviously to replace the one that he had,
and he thought, well, geez, what am I going to

(19:28):
do with this flat screen TV? So instead of taking
it or trying to find someplace to take it, he
just put it back in the put it in the
box that he just removed the new TV from, wrapped
it up, put it on his porch, and set it
out there for about a day and it got stolen. So,

(19:49):
you know, I've seen these things a couple of times.
I've heard of people that have taken gift wrapping or
gift wrap packages and they put their garbage in it
and then put that on they're you know, not stinky garbage,
but garbage and put that on their back seats. And
people have stolen that those packages and big surprise when

(20:09):
they actually get home, and that not quite what you
bargained for, according to police threats sent to homes of
Ohio Republican lawmakers. Of course, the FBI is investigating this
out of West Chester. The FBI is now investigating after
several Republican lawmakers in Ohio received threatening letters. State Representative

(20:34):
Jennifer Gross Westchester said she was one of the several
Republican politicians targeted. Several House members and senators received envelopes
from the from the same we've determined fake address of
a person, and that has addressed to both us and
the spouses of our private residences. According to Gross, in

(20:56):
some of them there was let me see, in some
around the state, Gross the envelopes contained wipe substance. In
some of them there wasn't. There wasn't. But this is
going back to years and years ago with those rice
and envelopes that would go to Congress and right after
nine to eleven, and we had those threats at the
time of Terrorist Act, and they didn't know what was

(21:19):
going to be going on, whether or not those were
actual terrorist threats. And this is the whole thing has
screwed things up. As far as you know, in the
old days, you could send a letter to your congress
member or senator, congressman, or somebody within the government, and
now you have to rely on email or phone calls
to their office, to their switchboard, because if you happen

(21:42):
to send a letter to somebody that now, since nine
to eleven, and since that Rice and Scare back in
the beginning of two thousand and two thousand and one,
all of those letters go to a holding facility until
they are actually reviewed, looked at, investigated to see if
they contain any substance. Then they are eventually forwarded onto

(22:02):
the congressman or senator or wherever you're sending that to,
and that can take up to two to three at
least two weeks for that process to take place. So
if you're sending a letter to a congressman or a
senator based on a current piece of legislation that is
coming up for a vote in a week, you're better
off calling that switchboard. And I got to tell you

(22:24):
from my experience calling those switchboards. We had a caller
yesterday talk about that, the fact that if you want
a piece of legislation passed, sometimes it's good to call
the congressman or senator's office. Now you can call the
congressional switchboard. They're very friendly, very accommodating. They'll only ask
you some questions about where you live, and only because

(22:47):
they can put you into the mailbox or the voicemail
of your state representa or of your representative or your congressman,
and so they make sure that the message gets there,
and then you can give the message that you want.
And of course, if you're sending messages now, you can
send them to anybody. But I got to tell you
that most congressmen and senators, they will pay attention to

(23:10):
a certain extent, but if it's from a constituent, they
sit up and take notice more often and in talking
to them. If they receive phone calls or they receive
emails to their office about twenty to thirty emails on
a particular bill a lot of time, that gets their attention.
And I know that at least with our Kentucky legislators

(23:32):
that when they get about fifteen to twenty different comments
from people, they do pay attention. And even though there
may be a lot of lobbyists out there that are
lobbying these senators and congressmen, their job won in most cases.
There are a few exceptions that look out for the
people to put the people first, but their name number

(23:53):
one job is to get reelected. And if there's a
lot of their constituents that are unhappy with a piece
of legislation and they don't vote in the right way.
That could cost them their jobs. So caeping in touch
with their congressman senators is very important. So phone numbers
five one, three, seven, four nine, fifty five, hundred one,
eight hundred eight two three talk one, eight hundred eighty

(24:14):
two three A two, five, five pound, five point fifty
AT and T wireless phone. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas,
fifty five K see the talk station fifty five the
talk station.

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Speaker 2 (27:01):
The nine first morning forecast this morning rush hours starting
off the day with cloudy rain doesn't appear until late
in the morning, a low of forty one. Showers begin
around noon. High for the day is going to be
fifty four. Rain tapers off early evening Lola fifty one,
and by game day tomorrow again that game time has

(27:23):
shifted to four thirty and it's going to be cloudy
and a little bit warm, a high of sixty right
now forty two degrees fifty five kr. See the talk
station Chuck Ingram has our traffic.

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(27:59):
wide open a cop Chuck INGRAMOT fifty five KRC. The
talk station.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Five thirty nine in the morning, Kevin Gordon in for
Brian Thomas fifty five krs. The talk station phone numbers
five one, three, seven, four nine, fifty, five hundred one,
eight hundred A two three talk one eight hundred A
two three eight A two five five pound, five point
fifty AT and T wireless phone. It with this budget

(28:42):
bill that was passed last week. Remember there was going
to be this government shutdown and everybody was freaking out,
and the cable news networks were all talking about, oh,
you know what happens. And they always do this every
year because as we see, Congress does not do their
during the year. They always wait till the last minute

(29:03):
to pass these appropriations bills to fund the government for
the year. And as Thomas Massey has pointed out on
my congressman from Northern Kentucky and talks about on this
program numerous times with Brian, that each one of these
bills is supposed to be passed individually. There's nine spending

(29:23):
bills that are supposed to be passed. I see no
reason and really, as he talks about, there's no reason
that these that the Defense bill can't be a standalone
bill and passed the agriculture bill can't be a standalone
bill and passed. But no, when you combine all of
these bills together and then when they start packing in
this pork. We talked about the Festivus Report last week

(29:45):
or yesterday, rather that Ran Paul puts out every year
and talks about the waste, fraud, and abuse. The government
Office of Management and Budget does the same thing every
year where they come up with certain items that are
wasteful spending as far as the federal government is concerned.
And isn't it amazing? Two senators, one senator and one

(30:06):
congressman from Kentucky are the people that are leading champions
on trying to cut the deficit. Now, there are others
in there, but some of theo at the forefront of
this argument are Thomas Massey and Ran Paul. Now, in
the Festivus Report, it was what over a trillion dollars
in cost savings that could be done just by eliminating
some of these programs that he points out in there. Now,

(30:27):
when they get to these budget and they get to
these last minute to continuing resolution or to fund the government,
they're talking about the government shutting down and oh, you know,
the welfare checks aren't going to go out, the Social
Security checks aren't going to go out, the military isn't
going to get paid, all these scare tactics that go on,
and a year after year after year, they wait till

(30:48):
the very last minute they wind up coming some sort
of a compromise and kick the can down the road. Now,
remember the fact that the budget, the new year for
the congre or for the fiscal year of the United
State the States, begins October first, So the approach, appropriation bills,
and the spending should be in line before you start
your new year. So now we're talking about October November

(31:11):
to the middle of December, right before well almost the
end of December, around Christmas time, when these bills have
to be passed in order to keep the government afloat
now three months. Can you imagine in your company not
knowing what your budget's going to be for the coming year,
not having your spending, not making sure that what you're
going to be doing, what your operations are going to

(31:31):
be doing, what your salesforce is going to be doing,
any of that sort of stuff. You put that off
until right before Christmas. You wouldn't have a business. And
yet the federal government does this time and time again.
And the dirty little secret when they start talking about
all these poor government employees, they're not going to be
well it's around Christmas time, so they're not going to
be paid, and they're going to be without a paycheck. Well,

(31:52):
you know, they're paid at the fifteenth and the thirtieth
of the month. So the fact that this is towards
the end of the month, and looking at how some
of these bureaucrats are paid, I'm sure they're not sitting
there waiting working paycheck to paycheck like a lot of
us out there are doing, where the month is much
longer than your paycheck. So I'm not feeling a whole
lot of sympathy for that. But they also have the

(32:16):
ability to go on unemployment, and they can file for
unemployment because they're technically off the job. And then once
the government opens back up if it's shut down for
any period of time, their pay is retroactive. So the

(32:36):
unemployment that they collect while they're off is basically a bonus.
And so I'm sure there's a lot of the people
that said, well, first of all, what are we seeing
something like what are the number that I saw the
other day. They were talking about that only on any
given day, only ten percent of the employees are in

(33:01):
any of these different offices, whether it be commerce department,
labor department, any of these departments, only ten percent of
the people are there. And then they say that, well,
if you extract out of that the security, the maintenance people,
the janitorial and other people like that that have to
be there to maintain the presence, and there's only about

(33:24):
four to six percent of the actual workers there. So
all of these people are working from home anyway, and
the amount of money that they are paid. They don't
have to pay for commuting, they don't have to pay
for the gas, they don't pay the wear and tear
on their car. They don't have their hour or so
tied up in traffic because traffic in Washington, DC can

(33:45):
be a nightmare, So they don't have that aggravation. They
don't have the parking hassles, they don't have the wardrobe
that they need to have in order to go to
the office on a regular basis. So their expenses have
been cut down considerable, and no wonder a lot of
them want to stay from home. But I wonder the efficiency,

(34:05):
and I've talked to a lot of people that have
worked from home and don't work from home, and it's
interesting how the split is on that the percentage of
people to say, I would much rather be in the office.
I would much rather have that face to face, being
able to talk to somebody about a project or something
that you're working on, rather than the text, rather than

(34:28):
the email, rather than the third party type of communications.
That the face to face and getting a certain amount
of camaraderie, a certain amount of personal interaction with the
employees makes for a better workplace. And now there's some
businesses I've talked to the people who are actually more

(34:49):
productive being at home. But when you talk to a
lot of people, they talk about how there's constant eruptions
when they're at home. They're distracted about other things that
need to be done, and so it's not as efficient.
I say, get the government employees back to the office,
get them back in there doing their jobs, and then

(35:09):
see from there. And I've got a thought on how
if they're you know, Vivek Ramaswami and Elon musk are
trying to weed out some of the employees, I've got
an idea how to do that. Coming up. I'm Kevin
Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five KR. See the
talk station five fifty two in the morning. Kevin Gordon

(35:38):
in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KR. See the talk
station five one, three, seven, four nine fifty five hundred one,
eight hundred eight two three talk one eight hundred eighty
two three eight two five five pound, five point fifty
AT and T wireless phone. For the idea of you know,
they're talking about the waste fraud abuse in the government.
They're talking about trying to streamline the government, trying to

(36:00):
see what employees are unproductive and can lay them off.
I mean number one, and you can start off with
just look at the snow days, look at the emergency days,
and when you look at the people that when they
say that only the necessary workers show up, that would
be a good start right there, because if somebody is
not necessary for the functioning that maybe that would be

(36:22):
a person that could not be in for the day.
Maybe that's a job that could be eliminated. Also, one
of the things that has been brought up over the
last couple of years is that what about having some
of these departments being moved out of Washington, DC and
into the heart of the country. Now you can have

(36:43):
obviously the secretary of those particular cabinet positions, those departments,
and some administrative staff there in Washington because of having
to go to testify at congressional hearings or because they
need to attend meetings with the President. But does the
entire Energy Department need to be washed working out of Washington,

(37:06):
d C. Maybe they should be near where the energy
is produced. How about maybe Texas, how about Oklahoma somewhere
in that neighborhood. How about the Department of Agriculture. How
about moving that out to the agricultural belt. Maybe Nebraska,
somewhere Iowa, somewhere where crops are grown and the majority

(37:26):
of the crops are are are grown, is what I'm
trying to say. How about the Transportation Department? Should the
Transportation Department be more centrally located? Say pick the spot,
what is it? Something like there's like a town about
one hundred miles away from Saint Louis, Missouri, which is
the actual center of the country. And there are an area,

(37:49):
there are several areas where you have major highways that
all come through a certain area. You know, you look
at the greater insane Northern Kentucky area. When you have
I seventy one seventy five I've coming together. You have
ICE seventy and I seventy one hooking up at certain points.
Know how far over I seventy go, how Interstate forty goes.

(38:13):
You can pick a spot where in the middle of
the country where a lot of these roads come together,
east west, north south, and maybe put the Department of
Transportation there. Obviously, if you put that along the Mississippi
River or in Saint Louis or somewhere along those lines,
maybe hey, even in Cincinnati, you've got the barge traffic,
you've got rail traffic, You've got Mississippi River with the

(38:36):
barge traffic. There, have the Transportation Apartment closer to that.
How about anything having to obviously, anything having to do
with the defense. You've got the Pentagon there, But where
there are some large military bases or wherever out in
the middle of the country, maybe put the Department of
Defense out there. How About as far as the Commerce Department,

(39:00):
picking a area such as maybe close to maybe New
York because of the stock market or the commodities market
in Chicago, and do it there. Any of these departments
can be moved out of the areas, and if the
people don't want to move there, then that's a great
way of saying, oh well, thank you very much, sin Arra,

(39:20):
thank you very much for your service, and go on
about your life. So it'd be interesting to see if
this takes hold, how much it could be weeded out
that way. Coming up, we're gonna be talking about a
couple of other I've got the word of the day
and I'm going to tease you with that. Duncle Fluata,
Duncle Fluata. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty

(39:42):
five k SEE the Talk Station.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
And now Kevin Golden filling in for Brian Thomas on
fifty five KOs the Talk Station.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Five minutes after six o'clock and surprise, I'm back. I
wasn't scheduled to be in here this morning, but got
the phone call and I'm glad to be here because
you know, I love being on the radio. I love
spending time with you, and I love listening to the
callers and talking about the issues of the day because,
as you know, I have an opinion and I'm not
afraid to use it. Coming up at the bottom of
the hour, are going to be talking to my friend

(40:24):
of mine and friend of the station here, friend of
the show Dave Hatter, cybersecurity expert, expert, Cincinnati's premier cybersecurity expert.
We've been talking about things that, well, you know, the
things to scare the heck out of us during the
day and the things that you know. I love talking
to him, but he scares the heck out of me.

(40:45):
So anyway, we've got that going up and really don't
have any other guests other than you, me and the
telephones and talk about some of the issues. Now. I
want to bring this up in a couple of seconds here,
but I want to get to the phone calls first.
But last week when the Congress, I was talking about
this in the previous hour about how Congress waited till
the last minute again and uh didn't do their job

(41:06):
in passees appropriations bill. But one of the things that
have been bouncing around Washington for a number of years,
actually going on almost two and a half years now
is this bill called am Radio for every car, and
so we'll be talking about that coming up. Let's get
to the phones right now. By the way, phone numbers
are five one three seven four nine fifty five hundred
one eight hundred eight two three talk one eight hundred

(41:27):
eight two three eight two five five pound, five point
fifty AT and T wireless phone. So let's get to Evelyn, Evelyn,
fifty five case. How are you this morning?

Speaker 9 (41:37):
Oh, well, I'll be you worried about everything, but about
the topic of perhaps moving some of the agencies out
of Washington. Yes, all I could hit all I can picture.
I mean, it's probably in the long run necessary, But

(41:57):
all I could picture is they would decide they needed
to have new facilities built for them, you know, and
they would be even more elaborate and secure. And so
I don't see where we could just you know, gain
any anything from moving moments, because it would probably cost

(42:22):
billions to do that.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Well, one of the things that they can do is
that as a result of what we've seen from the pandemic,
there's an awful lot of retail space, an awful lot
of buildings that are not fully occupied currently. There are
a lot of office buildings that have not been well,
in some cases fifty percent vacant at this point because

(42:45):
a lot of people are still working from home and
they haven't pushed people coming back to work. That may change,
but there is an awful lot of vacancy rate around
the country. And if you're doing this, and you do
it in a reasonable fashion, you can build some of
these buildings and they don't have to be as tremendously elaborate,
they don't have to be as fancy as some of

(43:07):
the buildings in Washington. But the buildings in Washington are
extremely expensive and expensive to maintain. And what you have
is kind of this permanent bureaucracy in Washington, d C.
Where they have somewhat more of a liberal mind, if
you will. And so when you look at the surrounding

(43:27):
areas Washington, d C. I think, what is it. The
percentage of votes that go to Republicans in the city
of Washington, DC is like ten percent of the vote.
Ninety percent is done for the Democrats out in the
suburbs where a lot of the federal workers work or live.
That is where a lot of these pockets of Democratic

(43:47):
voters are and kind of skews the election results in
Maryland and is Virginia and the surrounding areas. So breaking
that up a little bit wouldn't be a bad deal,
but it would have to be looked at and have
to be done in an organized fashion. Make sure that
you find some of the locations in some of these
cities that have been decimated by the pandemic where they're
not in the office, and just go about it that way,

(44:11):
in a more organized fashion, so to speak.

Speaker 9 (44:15):
That was expensive to me.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Okay, well we'll see. It'll be interesting to see. Thank
you very much for the phone call, Evlon, I certainly
appreciate it. Let's get to Linda, Linda fifty five Krose,
Thanks for calling. How are you today?

Speaker 10 (44:29):
Hey, I'm good. How are you?

Speaker 2 (44:30):
Very good? Very good?

Speaker 10 (44:32):
Happy New Year? And I just have a couple of questions.
One is what do they do with the buildings in Washington?
And those are enormous, Yeah, and I told Jim maybe
we would house the illegals in them. Any questions, what
are we going to do about offices? But we'll get
Elon Musk to make a whole bunch of tiny homes

(44:54):
and we'll put those all over the country and that
can be their office. They don't need much now.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Well, you know, there's all kinds of options on the table,
and I know there's some things that we can do
that they're kind of funny about that. But we have
all these offices in Washington, d C. And a lot
of them. I mean, if they're sitting empty, they're not
really doing anybody any good. We're spending a lot of
money maintaining those, and maybe move some of these jobs,

(45:21):
these Washington DC jobs, out of Washington, and then the
need for those buildings wouldn't be there, and the amount
of money to maintain those aren't there because that's very
expensive to live there and live in that area. So
I don't know. At least at least the ideas should
be thrown on the table and all things should be discussed.

(45:42):
You know, in most businesses, when you have a problem,
people get together and they discuss all discuss all the
various options. Rather than just doing the same thing over
and over and over again, once in a while it's
necessary to kind of shake things up and say, okay
about thinking about this, thinking about that, how about trying this,

(46:03):
trying that. And it's amazing some of the stuff that
comes up.

Speaker 10 (46:08):
I agree with you, I really do, and I do
think it's something we should look at. It just hit me,
you know, those you've been there, Those buildings are enormous
and whether they're in there or not, somebody's going to
maintain them. So somebody's going to address that before we say, okay,
we move everybody out, right, I mean, I know they're

(46:28):
not there now, right. Make it go back to work first.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
That's a first step, and maybe you weed out a
lot of the employees that may not want to go
back to work, want to do that commute, and so
then you kind of thin the herd that way as well.
So I and I really, you know, kind of on
a different subject, I think you saw probably a couple
of weeks ago that Biden has put forth some sort

(46:52):
of contract with these federal workers where they can stay
living or working from home for the next four years
or something along those lines. I don't know that that's
something that could actually be done by the White House
or a contract. I think since that's kind of an
appropriation bill that possibly should be passed by Congress, and
so if the bill didn't come through Congress, I don't

(47:14):
know that that's enforceable, and that could be broken. Also
the fact that anything that Biden has negotiated, anything, any
executive order that he's signed pretty much since the day
he took office, should be under review because the fact
that his mental capabilities haven't been there and they've been
covering up for him who's been running the show. It's illegal,
I mean, it's treason us that you have somebody else

(47:36):
making the decision, in my opinion, other than the president.
And so I think we need a whole investigation as
to what's been going on over the last four years here.

Speaker 10 (47:46):
I think investigations are good if we have the right
people doing on this. Yes, of course President Trump is
putting a bunch of good people in there.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
That's for sure.

Speaker 10 (47:55):
Anyway, call your congress people, keep on them, you bet.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah. And we got another one to talk to about
coming up, this AM Radio for Every Car and I'll
talk about that coming up. Lenda, Thank you so much,
certainly appreciate the phone call before we go. Well, we
got a couple of minutes here. As part of this,
you know, this continuing resolution and this funding of the government,
there was a bill in there AM Radio for Every

(48:19):
Car now on the show that I do on WLW
America's trucking network. That bill came up almost well in
May of twenty twenty three. And what was happening at
the time is that these car manufacturers that have the
electric vehicles. They were finding that the AM waves interfere

(48:43):
with the efficiency of the battery, and vice versa, the
waves from the battery itself for the automobile interfere with
the radio signal. Now there is a quick fisk fix
to that. There is a from what I understand, a
very ineff an expensive block or panel that could be
put in there that it doesn't cost a lot of money.

(49:06):
Because when this started being talked about and people started
thinking about this, there wasn't all this pushback that oh, well,
this is gonna do. This is going to be very
difficult to do. It's going to add you know, ten
thousand dollars to the cost of the vehicle. It may
add you know, I didn't see any estimates, but if
they're not squawking about it, it can't be more than

(49:26):
a couple of hundred bucks. So the fact that nobody's
squawking about this, it's just an easy thing. If you
just don't have to do it, you don't do it,
and rather than solving the problem, you just do away
with the problem. Now the importance of that is, of
course the liberals would like that to happen, because AM
radio is the bastion of conservative talk. And we know

(49:47):
liberals do not like conservative talk. They've been trying to
kill Fox News for how long, They've tried to kill
AM radio ever since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene
and brought back AM radio to the force that it
is today. And because of the you know, obviously the
liberals don't have I mean, they have control of NPR, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN,

(50:15):
and all the alphabets out there. They have control of
most of the major newspapers, and so anything that they
can squash as far as conservative content, they would want
to do that. And because AM radio has been a
very important component of conservative talk and religious radio, it's
been a target of the left. And so the killing

(50:37):
this or not putting these AM radios in cars is very,
very appealing to liberals. However, in the event of an
emergency like what we experienced with Milton and Helene, the
way of communicating with people very quickly is through AM radio.
And those signals for AM radio can go out of

(50:58):
seven hundred miles and you can get it in tunnels,
you can get it in buildings, and when you've got
a natural disaster. When you have an emergency, that is
the best means of communication. And to take that out
of a radio as people are out of a car,
as people are traveling down the highway, I think that
puts people at risk. So we'll talk a little bit

(51:20):
about this coming up, because this legislation needs to be passing.
As Linda mentioned, call your congressman, call your senators, get
them on board with this, because the ground swell, the grassroots,
begins with you and me. Phone numbers five one, three, seven,
four nine, fifty, five hundred one, eight hundred eight two
three talk one eight hundred eight two three A two

(51:41):
five five pound, five point fifty AT and T wireless phone.
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRS the
Talk Station. Six twenty one in the morning, Kevin Gordon

(52:03):
in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC the Talk Station. Now,
I mentioned this earlier that before the break that this
AM radio for every car is extremely important. Not only
is it important from the standpoint of getting the word
out in the event of an emergency, but also from
the standpoint of where has been a lot of the

(52:26):
talk about conservative thought could be coming from and it's
been AM radio. And when you look at the balance
of the coverage in this last election, when you see
that the major news outlets, as I refer to them,
the spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media, the propaganda
arm of the DNC. When ninety five percent of the

(52:47):
coverage of Donald Trump was negative and ninety three percent
or more was positive having to do with Kamala Harris,
then you know that the balance shift of this balance
of power. Now the MAINSTA media is losing their influence.
They have basically lost all credibility. They have lost a
lot of their actually, to a large extent, even their

(53:11):
influence because people have been tuning them out, they've not
been watching them. Their ratings are not the greatest, and
even now once the election is over, their ratings have tanked.
You've seen some of the reports where their ratings are
down forty fifty percent. Talking about CNN being spun off
into a separate company. Once the premiere news network, the

(53:32):
people were the network where people used to go for
their news, how they started going downhill? You remember the
days when people used to refer them as a Clinton
news network. So this has been going on for a
long period of time, MSNBC, the Comcast is talking about
splitting them off and jettising them. So there's going to
be a rude awakening as far as a lot of

(53:54):
these major news outlets are concerned. And if you I'm
a little bit more prone to go to those websites
or to those news outlets now that the election is over.
Before the election, I just couldn't stand the constant drum
beat and all the lies that were going on. Now

(54:14):
it's kind of funny to tune in to see how
they keep trying to cover themselves, trying to make excuses
for their coverage, and the fact that the nonsense that
they're bringing up about how to criticize this incoming administration.
They still don't get the idea that this was a
extremely unique circumstance. Nowhere in the history of this country

(54:36):
has something like this, a phenomenon like this happened. The
amount of people that are in support of Donald Trump,
the fact that he's coming in with not only the presidency,
but the House and the Senate and a right leaning
if you will, and not all the time Supreme Court,
that things could be very interesting if they do it right,

(54:58):
and if the House and Senate can stay combined if
they can stay together, and you know, get together when
they can. Now, obviously, on certain ideological issues, I can
understand standing up and taking a stance. But for the
good of what has to be done in order to
turn this country around, sometimes some of the things that

(55:19):
may be a little bit impalatable and palatable to talk
about or to vote for may be necessary. But looking
forward to this incoming administration coming up bottom of the arp, well,
I'll sell you what can we can we squeeze into? John? Okay,
all right, John, how are you this morning? They know
if you can squeeze in before the bottom of the hour.

Speaker 11 (55:39):
I thinks, appreciate it. I know you're busy, but real
quick here. So I lived in Cincinnati, you know, I
listen to your radio station. It's kind of wean on
your radio station exactly by what you're talking to another
AM radio station. So I now basically live in Saint John's, Florida,
And it's funny should bring this up. I cannot get

(56:01):
an AM station between here and Jacksonville, all the way
to Orlando. I can't get an AM station any place,
not one none.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
On your land based radio radio. Car radio really I'm like.

Speaker 11 (56:17):
Not one AM station will come up. It's so great
because I have been thinking about this for like the
past three weeks. Not one AM station will come up
on my search vand or anything. The only kind of
talk radio I might get, you can't it's nothing like this.
It's like WOKV out of Jacksonville, which is one oh

(56:41):
five point four, but it's nowhere like you can't call it.
I mean, it's just the weather and basics, and it
is somewhat conservative. But no AM stations, whatsever No call
in stations, no interact nothing.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
That's sounds like an It sounds like a market ready
to be tapped down there, it seems to me because I'm.

Speaker 11 (57:04):
That's what I was thinking, exactly, or a market that's
been shut down one or the other.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
I'll have to look into that. That that's curious. Make
that now you've got me curious. I am. I'm curious
about that. I'm very curious about that. Well, John, thank
you very much. At least you're living in the lap
of well, at least you're living in paradise down there. Anyway,
we've got Dave Hatter standing by what we're talking to him.
When we get back I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian
Thomas fifty five krs the talk station, six thirty one

(57:40):
in the morning. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty
five krs the talk station. Joining me is my friend
Dave Hatter. How are you this morning?

Speaker 12 (57:48):
My friend, good Kevin, how are you doing?

Speaker 2 (57:51):
Very good? Very good? Dave Hatter, of course everybody's familiar
with is Cincinnati's premier security cybersecurity expert. And uh, you
got the scare of the day or the scare of
the week. I was telling everybody earlier. I said, you know,
I love talking to Dave because he's a friend and
he's a very interesting guy. But Manny scares the hell

(58:11):
out of me. So I guess that.

Speaker 12 (58:15):
I hate to always be the Deemsday guy. Kevin, you know,
but sadly, you know, everything is digital now. We spend
a dollar time online, we bank online, we shop online, and
the criminals know this. The even bigger threat is because
everything is digital now, all these systems are interconnected. You know,
all your critical infrastructure is controlled by this stuff. So again,

(58:36):
I really do hate to be the Deemsday guy, but
it's so important. You know, people are losing tens of
thousands of millions of dollars individually. Companies are going out
of business. And then there's again the larger societal threat
of you know, knocking out water plants and things like that.
And this isn't just old deems date Dave's theory. You
get people like the FBI that have been warning about
this for some time. So, yeah, sadly that's where we're at.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Well, you know, I'm sure you've heard it before. The
difference between a conspiracy and fact is time.

Speaker 12 (59:05):
Yeah, sadly, that seems to be increasingly true, Kevin, Yes,
you know. And here's scare of the day. Here's one
for you. Now, I've found this story and this guy
is pretty well known cybersecurity expert, a guy named Brian Krabs.
He has a blog. I encourage people to check it
out because he'll find these kind of stories and out them.
And it's really important for folks to understand that while

(59:27):
I fully get people say, come on, Dave, this will
never happen to me. I don't have anything we're stealing,
my business is too small, or I'm just one person,
And you have to understand that the bad guys are
very smart, very creative, very devious. They're usually not thinking
h today, I think I'll try to steal all Kevin
Gordon's money or all Dave Hatter's money. Let's put you know,

(59:48):
Dave Hatter's company out of business. They're looking for low
hanging fruit type opportunities. They work at scale, you know,
things are automated. They're using scanning tools to just go
out and scan what they can find, and then if
there's a vulnerability deep to exploit it. But this particular
story is really one that gets to the heart of
what most of this crime evolves around. Now, another well

(01:00:11):
known security expert, a guy named Bruschneier, a cryptography guy,
very well known, and he has a great quote I'm
going to paraphrase herea I can never get it quite
right unless I read it. But basically, the bad guys,
I mean, they will attack your systems. You know, they'll
try to find flaws in your systems and exploit those.
But that's a lot harder to do generally than using
spoofing and social engineering. Couple with a bushing its mission

(01:00:35):
to catch people off guard and get into the systems
through human error rather than trying to hack the system itself.
I mean it's certainly no matter happens. But that's a
lot more difficult, right. And this Brian krab story, here's
the headline, how to lose a fortune with just one
bad click, and he points out two different stories of
people who had similar types of theft. Now this involves cryptocurrency,

(01:00:56):
but let me just say, even if you don't have
cryptocurrency or don't even know what cryptocurrency is, it doesn't
mean they couldn't use these same techniques to get to
your bank account. So in this case, the guy who
lost five hundred thousand dollars at crypto and it involved
in elaborate scam where the bad guys use legitimate Google tools.

(01:01:16):
But this is not a called Google. Although I'm not
a big Google fan, kem. You know, they use any
any site that has these kind of capabilities. They've used
the form on a Google website where and a form
meaning like you can set up a form and send
it to someone and have them go in data and
capture It's fairly common. People do this all the time.
It's a great way to capture information online. And I

(01:01:38):
don't know how much time we got left in the segment, because.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Talk about thirty seconds or so Dave Hatter and want
to take a break now and pick it up on
the other side, do a little tease.

Speaker 12 (01:01:47):
Why do we take a break? Yeah, and I'll finish
the rest of the story.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Then, very good. My guess is Dave Hatter very good
friend of mine. Love talking to him, but hate talking
to him at the same time. Since the premier is
security expert, I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty
five kresee the Talk station six thirty eight in the morning.

(01:02:14):
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fits five kresee the
Fox station and continue our conversation with Since as cybersecurity expert,
Dave Hatter got a one bad click cost somebody about
five hundred thousand dollars, So you previate this. This is scary.

Speaker 12 (01:02:35):
Yeah, it is pretty scary Kevin. And again even you know,
I encourage people go read this Tom Cell. The headline
is how to lose a fortune with just one bad click?
And I'll put this on my notes for the show
when I posted this stuff. Brian crabs he's a pretty
well known internationally right now security expert. But he goes
into a lot of detail here and again even if
you have no crypto currency, even if you do know

(01:02:55):
a little crypto currency is The techniques the bad guys
use in this paricular attack could be used on anyone.
So they use a Google form and first off one
of the things they did, and again this is easily done.
Google has a variety of products and this is not
again the slam on Google. There are other companies that
offer these same sort of free online products to create forms.

(01:03:16):
You know, Let's say Kevin and I wanted to invite people.
I just want to do a simple office survey or something,
but I don't want to build a specific software applications
for it. Well I could use these online forms to
do it. So it starts out where he gets a
call right now. Google is quoted in here, and you
can find many examples of this online Google, Microsoft, Apple.

(01:03:36):
These people are not going to call you. I noticed.
I'm sure shocking you, Kevin, But I tell people this
all the time. You try to call Apple or Google
or Microsoft and see if you can get them the
answer the phone. They are not going to call you
as an individual and say, oh, there's some sort of
fraud on your account. That is not going to happen Okay, so,
but the bad guys are smart and they use the

(01:03:59):
side be spoofing. It's very easy to spoof create a bonus,
you know, call from a legitimate phone number. If I
can go to Google's website or whomever and find a
phone number, there are tools that will allow me to
make a call from that phone number, just like I
can send an email that looks like it came from
any email.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
We get those all the time, all the spam phone
calls and these marketers, you get those all the time.

Speaker 12 (01:04:22):
Yeah. Yes, that's the same kind of concept. But these
guys took it one step further. They actually used a
Google service and made a call that came from a
number that when this guy looked it up, it looked
like it was a Google phone number. Okay, wow, this
was using something called Google Assistant. Again, they're smart, right,
they're trying to create that air of authenticity. They're trying

(01:04:43):
to catch you off guard, some sort of urgent thing
you need to attend to. So he gets a call
and then you know, basically he they tell him, you know,
some blah blah blah saying, and then you know he's skeptical,
which is what the right thing to do. The right
thing is always be skeptical, take a brad, slow down,
think about what's happening, and remember these big companies are

(01:05:04):
going to call you. So then he gets an email. Okay,
So they use Google Forms to basically send him an
email where they completed the form, but it came from
a Google email address. So again they're trying to cover
their tracks with this air of authenticity by using legitimate
tools to send messages through Google. Less likely they get
caught by spam filters and creates that extra air of authenticity.

(01:05:26):
Now they've got him concerned, then they send him some
push notifications for his MSA, They take over his email account,
they get into his coin base account, they steal five
hundred thousand crypto. I mean, that's the short version of it.
There's a lot more detail in here.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
But the point I actually in this it was he
made the phone call to the return to the phone call, right.
He was polite, patient, professional, reassuring. Told guy by the
name of Ashton told Griffin he was going to receive
a notification, allow and regain control of his accounts. It's
just it's amazing the elaborate detail that these people go

(01:06:02):
to and like you said, this is an important thing
to read. It's a very long article, but it's still
a lot of good information.

Speaker 12 (01:06:11):
It really goes into a lot of detail. And again
my point is, even if you have no crypto, they
could use this same kind of technique on you to
get to your bank account or wherever your money iss.

Speaker 11 (01:06:22):
Right.

Speaker 12 (01:06:22):
They're common, they're organized, they're smart, they know how to
use these tools to create that air of legitimacy. So
if Google calls you, if Apple calls you, or any
of these big companies, just assume it's a scam. And
then if you feel like you just simply must go further.
Don't use any phone numbers they gave you, don't use
any links they send you. Go to Google dot com,

(01:06:44):
go to Microsoft dot com or wherever, and you then
use that's the legitimate site that you instance you initiated,
and go from there. Anything that you get sent could
be bogus, could be spoofed, and they'll lead you down
a rabbit hole like this and steal your money if
you make it easy.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Order absolutely well. And you know, I'm sure you've talked
about this with Brian before about I've seen where I've
been getting periodically. That doesn't happen very often, but I'll
get a text that says, this is the USPS and
we have a package we can't deliver. The addresses is incorrect,
or from US Postal Service or UPS United, you know

(01:07:27):
parcel service where you get those contacts. Sometimes you get
an email from those and I think, you know, it's
important to know who you're buying from, who you bought from,
maybe keep a list of it, and how these packages
are being delivered because it looks legitimate, and you say, well,
wait a minute, I didn't order anything, so how the
heck can they be not delivering a package because of

(01:07:50):
a bad address because I didn't order anything. So that's
a little easy. But if you're doing a lot of
online buying, I can see how people will be tripped
up by that. I don't think that any post office
is going to all you, although that I did that
was weird because we did have a situation. I probably
shouldn't say this, but the post Office actually did. I
don't know how they got my wife's phone number, but

(01:08:12):
actually did call and there was a problem with the delivery.
But you know, if it's if you don't trust it,
let the thing go back and then the seller will
contact you and say, hey, this was returned undeliverable you know.

Speaker 12 (01:08:25):
So yeah, those kinds of fake delivery notifications happen year round,
but they usually accelerate around the Christmas holidays when they
know more people are shopping online, they know people are
anxiously waiting for gifts and so forth. Again, so much
of this kevin is really social engineering. It's not technical
at all. I mean, yes, they're using technology and technological

(01:08:46):
tools to reach you, but it's it's stooping. It's social engineering.
It's trying to catch you up guard. It's trying to
play on the you know, a sense of urgency fear,
something that you wouldn't do if you just step back
and said, that doesn't really seem legit.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
Yes, you got to take as you mentioned before, you
got to take that deep breath, Dave Hatter, because if
you take that deep breath, then it'll give you you know,
it's just like an impulse by. You know, if you
go to the store and there's something there that is
supposed to be an impulse by, you think twice about
sakaish store, I really need that, and then you pass
it up. Some of these fishing scams and some of

(01:09:22):
these fake accounts. Sometimes you got to do that. And
as you said, make sure you call the individual company,
not the phone number they presented, but see if you
can get a phone number from that particular company. So
all great advice on that. You mentioned that you don't
use and I know we've talked about this before, but
for people that are not familiar with it. You say

(01:09:43):
that you don't like Google and you don't use Google, Well,
what search engine do you use? Or search engines?

Speaker 12 (01:09:48):
Should I say? Yeah, that's a good question, Kevin. Actually
I have an article on my LinkedIn blog. I'll put
that in the notes to conveniently what I'm using from
my personal technology, because you know, what we're doing for
interest is different than what I'm doing personally. But yeah,
what my advice to people would be, whenever possible, avoid

(01:10:10):
these companies where you are their product, not their customer.
You know, all tech companies are collecting your data to
some extent, but you know the business model of people
like Alphabet which is the parent company at Google, and Meta,
which is the parent company of Facebook, is you are
their product, right, It's your data. So I tend to
prefer more privacy and security friendly companies. You know, Duck

(01:10:31):
dot Go, start Page, Brave has a good search engine
out and a lot of people will get confused because
Google makes Chrome, the web browser, and Google makes the
Google search engine. These are two different things, right, You
could use Chrome with any search engine like the Brave
search engine. Brave also makes a web browser. Web browser
is the software that allows you to view web pages
over the internet, right, and then a search engine is

(01:10:54):
a platform that's design to allow you to find things
on the Internet. So the two are connected, but they're
not the same. Again, Google makes Chrome. I would recommend
instead a browser like Firefox or Brave, or if you're
on the Apple platform, it's Afari browser. And then again
as far as search engine, mojiq, start Page, Brave, I'm

(01:11:14):
liking the Brave search engine more and more. Duck Ducto,
these are all, I mean, their business model is different,
generally more privacy friendly than Google. I would suggest, you know,
stop using Gmail, that's the Google product, use something like
proton Mail. But yeah, I'll put that out there because
I've got a list of all fantastic I use some
of my personal stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
Okay, fantastic people can take a look at great TeV
because you know, a lot of these things that we
talk about, you know, you've talked about them before, and
if people haven't been paying it or haven't listened in before,
it's good kind of go back and refresh on some
of that. You got another thing that we need to
talk about, twelve cybersecurity can scams of Christmas twenty twenty four, correct,
and we can talk about that coming umber. All right,

(01:11:53):
we'll get to that when we come. My guest Dave
had Or, cybersecurity expert, the premiere cybersecurity expert in Cincinnati,
Dave Hatter. It's my guest, Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas,
fifty five KR. See the talk station coming up on
six point fifty two in the morning. Kevin Gordon in
for Brian Thomas fits five KR. See the talk station

(01:12:14):
continuing our conversation with since an premier and cyber security expert,
Dave Hatter. Dave, we've got well, you see about three
minutes left here, got another story here, twelve cybersecurity scams
of Christmas. And by the way, thank you for being
with us today.

Speaker 12 (01:12:31):
Yeah, my pleasure. Haven't always good to chat with you.
So this was a little blog post I put together
right before the holidays, but everything in it is it's
evergreen stuff that all ramps up, like the delivery notification
scams you've mentioned in the last segment, which I talked
about in here. You know again, I'll post a link
to this. It's on my LinkedIn blog. I'm easy to
find out there on LinkedIn or x and you know,

(01:12:53):
constantly trying to share this sort of stuff so that
people can avoid these things. But you mentioned the delivery
notification I get those. I'm sure every one of your
listeners has seen these, and I just want to our
mind folks again. Fishing, spoofing, social engineering altogether, it's hard
to look at the text and know whether it's legitimate
or not. And as more people use text, you couple

(01:13:13):
with that with the fact that it's difficult to know
whether it's legit, it's it's the perfect tool for scammers.
If you get the notification telling you the package is
delayed or whatever, just ignore it. And if you're concerned,
then you go to the retailer where you think you
bought something. You know, you log into their system, you
look at the status of the order, you get the
tracking numbers from them. And then you go to ups

(01:13:35):
dot you know co exactly you have. You know, you
go to the legitimate website with that tracking number. Don't
click the links, don't call those numbers. As we discussed
in the first segment, in many cases, these scammers have
call centers set up and they're waiting for your call.
They're going to pretend to be ever whoever they need
to be. They're going to tell you whatever lies they
need to say. I don't know if we've talked about

(01:13:56):
this or not, but it will help people understand. There's
a guy named Kit that's what he goes by. He's
got a YouTube channel ki T b O g a
dot com and he just scams these scammers. But he
films it all and it's not only funny, but it's
very insightful because you see the lies and how they'll
pivot and say or do anything to try to get
to your money. So you know that fake delivery notification

(01:14:20):
is a big one. Social media gift exchange where it's
some kind of pyramid scam and you send the gift
and you're gonna get more gifts, you know, Kevin, the
bottom line is and so I know we're almost out
of time. If it seems too good to be true,
it probably is. These big companies aren't going to call
you the deal seems too good to be true. Then
you go to the site you know it's a Target
or Deal or Amazon or whatever. Don't click the links,

(01:14:42):
don't call the numbers in an email or text or
anything you got social media, all of that is easily spookable.
You go to Target dot com or Amazon dot com
or wherever, and then you know, start digging into there.
That's by far the easiest and best way to ensure
that you don't end up getting scammed, because again, these guys,
they go where the people are. They're smart, the debis,
they're creative, and you know they will use whatever techniques

(01:15:05):
they can to try to get to your money, no
matter whether you're an individual or corporation. So be careful out.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
There, Dave. I'd be willing to bet that if you
had a dollar for every time you said deal's too
good to be true, you'd be retired by now and
living someplace else other than the greater Cincinnati area, probably
own an island somewhere somewhere. War Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 12 (01:15:26):
Do you know I understand how people get caught up
in this especially around the holidays. You know you're looking
for that oft the gift. The timer's kicking, you have
a deadline, and you just got to understand these people
are very smart and they will tell.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
You any lie exactly. Well, David, it was great talking
to you. We haven't run into each other in a while,
and there's about time though for a while. Yeah, it's
way too long, but always appreciate talking you. Always appreciate
meeting you when we're out and about and it's always
a good time talking to you. And you're a great
guy and this fan and a lot of great knowledge
and I appreciate your time here on Tech Tech Friday,

(01:16:04):
so always my pleasure. Have yourself happy new Year, be
safe out there, and thank you so much for the information.

Speaker 12 (01:16:11):
Yeah, thanks Kevin, having new Year to you and your
family and all your listeners.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
All righty, thank you so much. Dave Hatters, Since's cybersecurity expert.
I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five KRC,
the talk station