May 27, 2022 • 45 mins
With everything going on on the internet, navigating the digital waters of the internet with your children can be a real challenge. You want to may sure they are safe and that they don't get hacked, but how?
In this episode, we give you practical tips and tricks to help keep your kids (and their devices) safe from hackers!
Hosts: Craig, Erin, and Blake
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Erin (00:00):
Welcome everybody to another episode of the PTG
podcast today.
It is myself and Craig and ofcourse Blake,
Craig (00:11):
the one and only
Erin (00:12):
the one and only Blake.
Blake (00:13):
That's right.
Erin (00:15):
Yup.
I've never met another Blake.
yeah.
So today we're going to talkabout.
Your kids, but not really yourkids in a creepy way.
we're going to talk about yourkids and how you can teach them
about cybersecurity and make itfun.
Blake (00:28):
think this is going to be good one.
I don't think anyone's evertalked about this.
Erin (00:31):
I think we've discussed it.
Craig (00:33):
Yeah.
I think we broached the topic acouple of times.
Really the type of school thatyour kids go to as well.
I think that private schools areahead of public schools in
regards to technology.
Obviously busy households thathave a lot of technology and a
lot of devices, a lot of endpoints maybe Amazon Alexa or
Google or whatever devices onthe network.
(00:54):
Depending on the age of the kidsor children in your house will
depend on a lot of differentangles and factors.
But I would start off withproper training I think a lot of
kids like to tinker andexperiment maybe it's the drive
to play a new video game orboredom to try to find something
to do I think there's a coupleof different angles around this
(01:14):
topic, but I would start withsecurity awareness training.
We have various curriculum thatwe've built for all types of
scenarios and situations on ourcompliance, armour.com website.
It's very inexpensive, butproven audited and effective
training, not only for kids andchildren and families, but also
for consumers and for businessesalike.
(01:35):
Obviously at the household levelthere's probably not any really
regulations or anything likethat, but good hygiene, best
practices with passwords neverwrite your passwords down on
sticky notes and keep themaround the computer.
But would start from the endpoint level.
A lot of families havetechnology.
That's a various age andquality.
(01:57):
And obviously withcybersecurity, the older, the
end point, the older device isreally, as it.
ages, it becomes less secure.
And the reason for that is themanufacturer.
After a period of time calledend of life, the manufacturer is
no longer going to patch andupdate and provide security
updates, which is why it's avery bad idea to have old
(02:20):
devices on your network becausethat's how people get hacked.
Moving on from there there's Iguess, a myth around people
thinking that apple devices aremore secure than windows
devices.
There are viruses and malwarethat exists for Mac as well as
PC.
Of course, I think that it'sreally just a matter of.
The hackers are targeting bymarket share.
They are going to write virusesand malware and various threats
(02:45):
for Microsoft first and thenadapt to other platforms like
Linux and Mac.
So I would start off with if youhave an old computer, now's the
time better to, than ever toupgrade that device.
If it can be upgraded whichmeans you can load new software
on it, that's an option, but ifit's really over five years old,
(03:05):
it's not usually worth fixingdoing anything to you're better
off getting a new device.
The recommendations are reallypersonal preference around that
whether you are a Mac or anapple fan or a Microsoft fan, or
maybe a Linux fan just reallydepends, but getting modern
devices that are supported andmaking sure that they're patched
and up to date, because even ifyou get a brand new computer, if
(03:26):
you go down the road, you pickone up if you have an insecure
network and you plug that thingto your internet and it's
unpatched, it can right out ofthe styrofoam get infected.
So you have to follow a processfor making sure that all updates
are applied and just really becareful with that period of time
as it's brand new until it'sfully patched up.
And then obviously enablesecurity software in the
(03:49):
Microsoft world.
There's windows defender.
You can choose other productsthat are out there like
Malwarebytes, for example.
Those are some options as well.
Blake (03:57):
So I guess probably most parents, what they do is they
hand down their devices to theirchildren.
I'm assuming that's probablythem smartest ideas, maybe.
Craig (04:09):
Again, I think it depends on the age window.
so if, a parent wants a newcomputer and the device that the
parent is using it's within thewarranty or support period, then
that's, that's okay to do that.
But if the device is five yearsold already, and then they hand
it down to their kids.
Erin (04:24):
just asking for trouble.
Craig (04:25):
Yeah.
Because, here's the thing you asa parent are probably not going
to the same website, says kidmight go to and sadly, the
reality is that a lot ofhackers.
Prey on kids and they injectmalware and video games and
social media sites and differentthings that kids would search
for, or navigate to may differfrom what you may have navigate
(04:46):
to.
So my point is that if it's notsupported and it's not in
warranty, You're asking fortrouble.
by handing it down if, and onlyif, and I'll say this with a
caveat maybe the kid is, ofolder age and is quite
technically savvy and canformat.
And re-install a modernoperating system on it, like
(05:07):
windows 11 or Linux, or if yourkid can do something like that
and modernize the software, thenthat's okay to repurpose.
But most people and most kids.
That's a lot of trouble andthat's a technical path that
opens a whole new can of worms.
So my point is that if you'vegot windows XP, just take hard,
drive out beat it up with ahammer and throw the rest of it
(05:27):
away, or use it for targetpractice you know,
Blake (05:30):
take it to Goodwill the local recycling bin.
so, what age do you think is theprime target to start
conditioning your children?
And the best cybersecuritypractices
Craig (05:42):
So I think if your kids are actively needing to use the
free Google services and Gsuites, or if Google is the
choice of the school and thatstarts with Second grade then
that's the tie.
I would say the timing is reallydependent on when they go
online.
If they're going online beforeschool and they're going online
because the parents are busy andthey need to work or they need
(06:05):
to get stuff done.
And it's kind of a here playedthis game kind of thing.
While there should be someparameters set around what
device they should be given andwhat access they should be
allowed and what they should beable to do.
And it should be supervised ifit can't be supervised, then
there needs to be some duediligence on The parent's side
to make sure that the device isproperly secured, patched up and
(06:26):
supported before just handing itover to the kid because
otherwise what'll happen isthere could be nasty malware or
infection that could happen.
that just takes seconds.
So going back to our eat, yourvegetables, eat more onions.
It's all about the layershardware layers, software
layers, human layers
Blake (06:43):
heard a rumor and I don't know if this is true, your man,
probably you could vouch forthis, but a lot of schools are
starting getting kids involvedin technology and they're
putting them into the Chrome oh,S ecosystem.
I don't know if that's true.
That's what I heard her that along time ago.
Craig (06:58):
for schools, you said?
Blake (07:00):
Yeah.
public schools little Johnny hasgot to do this or that or
something.
We need a laptop as a part ofchecklist.
Craig (07:07):
So I, think that's true.
I think that some schools haveadopted the Google Chromebook
model, but I also heard.
And maybe some schools do itbetter than others, but I heard
that they caused a lot oftrouble too.
And what I mean by that isChromebooks are kind of like
thin clients they're reallystripped down And optimized for
Google and Google's ecosystem.
(07:28):
They're just really basicdevices typically with low CPU.
They're just really strippeddown to use Google G suite and
Google, Gmail and other types ofservices, and it's fine for
that.
I think once you get out of thatecosystem though, and maybe want
to play a game or want to dosomething, that's more
multimedia driven.
(07:50):
I think that's where thosedevices struggle.
for example, running zoom on aChromebook by.
Really have the best amount ofresources to properly do video
and audio as well as maybe a,full-fledged laptop, for example
Blake (08:04):
I remember I was at best buy and this is unrelated, but
still I was going through andthey have a section for
Chromebooks.
And I literally look over inGoogle somehow some way you
probably know exactly where I'mgoing with this.
Somehow some way they thought itwas a good idea to make a
thousand dollar Chromebook.
(08:25):
I don't know.
It looks like a little applelaptop.
That's a thousand dollars, butthe reason why I'm just balking
here is promo S is a super lightoperating system.
Like you said, it's like a thinclient.
it takes nothing to run.
most of the Chromebooks, theyhave four gigs of Ram or gigs of
solid state or EMC or, whatever
Craig (08:42):
it's, optimized for an always online connected
experience.
So if you use it within thebrackets or parameters of what
it was designed to do, then itworks great.
But once you try to go outsideof that, where you're stuck in
an airport, or you're stuck in aremote location and you don't
have stable internet, then thatdevice is no longer a great
(09:06):
tool.
You don't have the ability ornot very easy.
There are some features thatallow you to work offline.
But my point is that optimizedfor an always connected, always
online internet.
Experience like within clients,then clients are great devices
for businesses.
They have usually nowadays thesolid state hard drive, they
have minimal CPU and Ram they'rereally built for the long haul.
(09:30):
They don't have a lot of movingparts.
Some of them don't have anymoving parts.
So they're solid state.
The whole thing is solid state.
Oftentimes they're fan lists, soreally not much to fail or die
on it.
So when you connect a thinclient properly to a private
cloud or a public cloud, forexample, a terminal server,
remote desktop services orvirtual desktop infrastructure
(09:51):
powered by VMware or Citrix ifyou connect to those cloud
properties, you're getting allof the compute power from the
cloud.
Again, it's reliant upon analways on line connected
experience.
By itself, it's pretty barebones and minimal.
I can't really do much, but whenyou connect it to the cloud, it
(10:12):
opens the door and makes it agreat tool for certain
situations.
So I think that's what wastrying to be done with the
Chromebook experience withGoogle Google was like, okay,
we'll give our online tools andour online experience, Gmail G
suites online collaborationaround editing documents at the
same time all the great stuffthat Google has produced in that
(10:34):
fashion.
But once you, again, you stepout of that box and now you want
to load some other kind ofsoftware or you want to do more
audio visual work.
Now that device, or that toolmay not be the best tool for the
job.
It depends on a deep study andassessment on what are you using
the tool for?
(10:54):
And what's the best tool for thejob?
Blake (10:56):
Yeah, I think probably the coolest part.
again, this isn't a Chromebookplug, but this is a good segue
point.
It does have the built-inparental controls, which is
probably advantageous to, mostparents.
And I think that's probablyeasier to set up.
But it probably has itsadvantages internally versus
let's just say you have a childand they're running windows 10,
(11:18):
11 Mac I think out of the box,so what would be an alternative
there for parents who want tomonitor their kids' online
activity,
Craig (11:27):
yeah, that's a good point with the parental controls and
the built-in functionality Ithink that functionality is
good.
Oftentimes I feel like dependingon the ecosystem, whether it's
Google or Amazon Alexa orwhatever it is I think that they
give parents a decent set oftools, but none of them are
perfect in my opinion.
Nothing's perfect nowadays, butguess none of them are very
(11:50):
granular.
And what I mean by that, for myown experience with Amazon
devices and Kindles, for exampleapple seems to, in my opinion,
do a better job of the parentalcontrol side of things.
But I think it also puts a lotof pressure on parents too,
because now the parents have tohave crash course on how do they
configure this thing properly sothat their kid could do what
(12:11):
they need to do if theyauthorize it, but then not be
troublesome.
And I know for me, at least forpersonal experience that I'm
technical the Amazon Kindle man,that thing is a bit of a
learning curve even for me.
And I guess my point is that ifyou have access to parental
controls, definitely as aparent, studied them and see
what you can and cannot do withthem.
(12:32):
Sometimes there's no controlthat is available to do what the
child needs to do.
So you have to use your profile.
And then you have to beavailable to revoke it.
I know, with my family, I've hadto change my pin numbers and
have different things in placeto prevent accidental purchases,
or maybe they said it was anaccident, but there wasn't, but
(12:52):
that's a whole nother story, theby a different video game or
whatever it is, or an add on toa video game.
My point is that as parents, wehave to research and explore the
tools that are available to uslike parental control, for
example.
But also make sure that thedevice is the best suited for
what she wants your child tohave access to as well.
I know for example, I don't knowif you guys know this, but There
(13:15):
was an issue with YouTube,Google, and YouTube where
YouTube wasn't properlysegmenting certain content for
kids.
And kids were getting access tocontent.
That was really bad.
Do you guys remember any ofthis?
Blake (13:29):
I heard about it.
Craig (13:30):
what is the recent thing?
The tick-tock challenge orsomething?
It was almost like that only itwas on YouTube And it was
suicidal kind of stuff.
And it was just really awfulstuff the hackers or the bad
actors in this case wereexploiting flaws in the tagging
or segmentation of what a childcan and cannot see.
Erin (13:49):
that's disgusting.
Blake (13:50):
They were using hashtags and sand tacks.
it goes outside the algorithmapparently of YouTube.
I could be entirely wrong, butwhoever was uploading, the
videos could mark them askid-friendly and yeah, it would
be like creepy pasta stuff orreally dark.
Scary stuff.
Erin (14:08):
That's really messed up the kid.
Craig (14:09):
Yeah.
As a parent, when you givetechnology or a device to your
child, there's someresponsibility that the parent
has to have.
And sadly you can't trust themake model or manufacturer of
the endpoint or device to doThat job for you.
It's really a responsibility atthe parent level to still police
(14:29):
and monitor.
One of the recommendations thatI have is.
have the device in an area whereyou are as a parent so you can
kind of glance over and seewhat's happening.
Cause kids are curious, they'regoing to want to click on stuff
that pops up.
And sometimes those popups arenot necessarily good popups.
So my point is that the parentcan catch things at the human
level that maybe shouldn't havehappened at the technological
(14:51):
level because of a parentalcontrol, but maybe there was a
flaw in it.
So my point is you can't overlytrust a parental control to do a
human's job.
Erin (14:59):
That makes sense.
Blake (15:00):
Right.
Something, to that, I guess thisis my experience, right?
Cause I grew up on technology.
I grew up in the age ofcomputer.
my parents never monitored myinternet.
I could do whatever.
But something that never reallylike dawned on me until now.
And I think maybe because I grewup in the computing, boom, but
at the time there wasn't a lotof research about how damaging
(15:23):
computers are or technology,cell phones, tablets, they're
everywhere.
You know how damaging they areto your eyes laptops and
posture.
I grew up living with thesethings and living on these
things.
And now at 32, I feel like death
Craig (15:38):
well, pretty bad,
Erin (15:40):
That's a
Craig (15:42):
Stop what you're doing right now.
Call 9 1 1, go straight to thehospital.
Blake (15:47):
no, no.
Think about it though.
So like posture, right?
It's really important physical,mental wellbeing and blood flow,
blood circulation, yada, yada.
Erin (15:54):
Yeah.
That's a really good point, too.
Blake (15:56):
Within The past three to four years they started figuring
out about the blue light thataffects sleep rhythm.
So these are things that nobodytalks about, unless like Hey
look, little Tammy, don't useyour phone an hour before bed,
Craig (16:08):
That's because what Facebook, for example, in the
social experiments, everybody'sa Guinea pig.
Erin (16:12):
Yeah.
Blake (16:13):
right.
Craig (16:14):
claim they didn't anticipate or know that when
they released their platform,that it would have negative
impacts of depression and allsorts of stuff on kids and
miners.
And you're absolutely right.
back when I started my parentsdidn't really police it really
for TV back when I was growingup, I remember watching all
sorts of stuff.
Erin (16:33):
Well, and Craig, We're a similar ages.
and I know I did not experiencethe internet for the first time
until I was 15.
And I was like, this is crazy.
I can talk to people all overthe world, what is going on?
And so, yeah, my parents didn'teven know to monitor the
internet
Craig (16:50):
well, they probably didn't know the capabilities of
it.
Erin (16:52):
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think that, probably makesa difference.
Blake (16:56):
think nobody knew.
People just realized howpowerful this is how you can
connect people.
And then essentially you'reinviting intruders into your
home now.
Erin (17:06):
Yeah.
Blake (17:07):
If you think about it from this perspective, everybody
who's got a computer now has agateway into their personal
private and their home.
Hackers can get in withouthaving to have a key before
computers, people had to likephysically break in.
But now you have an access pointfor, people with bad intentions.
Erin (17:23):
Yeah.
Blake (17:24):
But yeah, I just don't think anybody could have
predicted and how computers canbe so integrated with everything
now.
I think about IOT.
Now everything is wificonnected, everything cars,
right?
Cars have wifi hotspots.
there's a bunch of other stupidthings that wiper hotspots, but
you know what I mean?
Craig (17:41):
yeah, I think that's a good point.
When I was growing up, when Ifirst was tinkering with at that
time bulletin board systems orBBSs it was all modem driven,
right?
So it was a one-on-one handshakeconnection now where in seconds
connected to the worldwide weband in the reality is in
seconds, you can connect toanything in the world that's
(18:02):
connected to the same internetyou are.
And I don't think a lot ofpeople stop and think about that
for a minute of how easy it isfor somebody hidden in the world
that wants to do bad things thatcan be anonymous and
unidentified connect to yoursystem.
Blake (18:17):
everything that you own, everything of importance is on
your computer.
what do you think is worse?
getting your wallet stolen orgetting your computer stolen?
I think computer, not because ofthe cost, but because of the
sensitivity and the information.
if you get your credit card,driver's license, whatever
stolen, you just cancel it andyou can go get another driver's
license.
But, if your computer getsstolen, and you've got thousands
(18:39):
of files or terabytes or gigs orwhatever you got on there, your
work stuff, your personal stuff.
The scans maybe you've got scansfor jobs or scans of your birth
certificate or, it's all there.
Craig (18:51):
That's right.
Blake (18:52):
Everything's digital.
So yeah, just my 2 cents, but itis scary to think about,
Erin (18:56):
It is
Craig (18:57):
Absolutely.
Blake (18:58):
tell us about your growing up in computing.
Aaron.
Erin (19:00):
Oh me.
I remember the first time I everused the internet.
I've used a computer, right?
I actually in middle school, I'msuch a nerd, used to love
wearing the world is Carmen SanDiego.
I lived out in the country.
Blake (19:12):
I played that all.
Yeah, it's awesome.
Erin (19:14):
I couldn't necessarily just go out and play.
So I would play on the computer.
But I wasn't like Craig and Iwould love to hear Craig talk
about that a little bit more,but I wasn't like Craig, like I
didn't take anything apart.
I was really into books.
I did enjoy some games.
Obviously I also played theoriginal Oregon trail, so that
was fun.
We took computer classes and Iremember I took a typing class
(19:36):
in high school, which I'm sothankful because my boyfriend
love him to death.
He's a pecker, he pecks.
And I just can't imagine workinglike that.
Blake (19:46):
is so funny.
Cause my growing up andcomputing experience obviously I
grew up in, Pretty connectedfamily.
My mom had a little VHScamcorder that we used to do
home movies on like Christmasand Thanksgiving, them yada,
yada.
I was skateboarding.
So I used that camera to filmskateboard videos.
And then something got damagedor something got stuck in there.
(20:07):
So I took it apart my mom openedthe door and saw the camera and
like,
Erin (20:13):
Blake.
Blake (20:14):
yeah, hundreds of parts or however many parts just
scattered.
I literally would put them inlittle segments and lay them out
into kind of like a little minidiagram,
Erin (20:22):
Huh?
Blake (20:22):
Across my floor.
So there's no place that youcould walk on the floor without
stepping on camera parts.
I think it was my mom.
I was kind of using everybodyelse's computer.
you started off with a familycomputer.
Nobody had personal computers.
Erin (20:36):
No.
Yeah.
Blake (20:37):
And me and my brother would argue about whose time it
was to like, get on thecomputer.
Erin (20:41):
Yes.
Blake (20:42):
and my mom had a computer in, my mom would sell stuff on
eBay she was huge on eBay.
So she literally had thiscomputer just eBay, just
e-banking stuff.
My mom was an epic eBayer.
And yeah.
Then of course everything kindof went digital.
And I started editing my skatevideos on her computer I took a
part-time job, so it wasn't muchmoney as I could.
I got my first computer and itwas a I book an apple, I book G
(21:08):
three,
Erin (21:09):
Okay.
Blake (21:09):
which at the time was.
five or$600, like I'm sayingamount of money to me.
Erin (21:13):
Yeah, that's a big purchase.
Blake (21:15):
yeah, no, I worked three summers to get it.
and then, yeah.
I've been rocking it ever since.
Erin (21:20):
Nice.
Yeah.
So Craig used to take partcomputers, right?
Because when you're talkingabout what to do with old
computers, I just got a flash inmy head of little tiny Craig
with his mom's old computer,just sitting around the living
room in the eighties, takingapart,
Craig (21:34):
yeah, so actually it's a funny story.
So my sister was going tocollege and she gets this brand
new Dell computer.
And I think at the time it waslike$3,800 or$4,000, so she
financed it.
So it was super expensive.
Erin (21:49):
Wow.
Blake (21:49):
My God.
Craig (21:50):
and I get ahold of it and I take the damn thing apart.
Blake (21:54):
Oh God,
Craig (21:55):
So I have it all apart, all over the floor.
And my sister's like, I am goingto kill you.
Blake (22:03):
I'm surprised.
She said, she's going to tellyou.
Erin (22:05):
I know.
And then just do it.
Craig (22:07):
I said the only killing back together and it doesn't
work.
I put it all back together andit of course worked fine, but I
wanted to learn about it andfigure out how it worked and
everything.
And after my parents saw that Iwas able to disassemble the
whole damn thing and put it allback together,
Erin (22:25):
Maybe we should encourage this.
Craig (22:26):
yeah.
They ended up buying a computerfor the quote unquote family.
And they kind of got ripped off.
At the time there were a lot ofcompanies that were building
computers and Most people, Iwould think that don't know a
lot about something it's easyfor that to happen.
I was grateful to have anythingso I took that thing apart and
Erin (22:46):
This is how I show my gratitude.
Craig (22:48):
right.
Yeah.
And learned about how the videocard and all the components
worked and everything, andstarted upgrading the components
to make it more powerful and dowhat I wanted it to do.
I liked video games at the time.
So I actually started onCommodore 64 that my brother
had, that my family bought.
and you literally had to type inload quote and commands to make
the thing work.
(23:08):
And it was a floppy disk typeset up.
don't know if you rememberfloppy disks.
Erin (23:12):
Oh, yeah.
Well, not that much younger thanyou.
Blake (23:14):
I do too.
Craig (23:15):
Yeah.
So there were five and a quarterinch floppy disks.
And yeah, if you didn't type thecommand the right way, didn't
load.
And at that time there was justso many things that could go
wrong.
It was really rare actually forsomething not to go wrong and
for things to just work.
So this was like right aroundthe time when Nintendo and Atari
were popular and honestly theedges of those console systems
(23:36):
were really, it just works.
You get the cartridge, you plugit in and it, you turn it on.
And it works at least most ofthe time or more often than the
computer, but the computer gamesat the time were different and
they were more robust and theywere more in depth than the
cartridge systems, which is whyI liked them better.
that was my experience takingthings apart and putting things
(23:56):
back together and then shortlyafter.
My parents got that computer forme.
And I started upgradingcomponents.
That's when I was like, okay, Iknow how to play pretty much,
most video games, but how do Itake this to the next level?
And that's when I startedlearning about how to connect my
computer through a modem.
And it was literally relivingthe movie war games.
(24:17):
I don't know if you ever saw wargames, the movie, but it's great
movie.
So I learned how to use modemand I learned how to install the
modem to my computer and connectthe modem to my dad's fax line
at the time.
And literally took over his faxline and I remember many times
he would be like, what the hell?
Why is this thing busy all thetime?
I can't even send a damn fax!sorry, I'm just waiting for
(24:40):
something to finish.
He can't do it yet.
And I was waiting at the timeeverything was all about what's
called parody pieces to, buildup one thing.
So what I mean by that is themodems were slow.
Even the fastest ones at thattime, were slow.
So you had to break up gamesthat were large into small
pieces, and sometimes thosepieces might be files to build
(25:02):
up that one game.
you would send the files at thetime, the size of a floppy disc
was 720 kilobytes, anddensities, 1.4, four megabytes.
So sometimes the video gamemight be 15 or 20 megabytes, so
you'd have to break it upaccordingly.
So anyway, it would take areally long time to transmit
over a modem connection.
so why the line was busy all thetime.
(25:22):
So would literally run this.
I started at BBS and I learnedhow to customize it and get it
online and gave it a name andstarted marketing it and people
to trade games.
And, yeah, it was just a wholehidden underground world that
your average person had no cluethat it even existed.
It was like the cool factor forthat time period.
(25:44):
Yeah Cause you're talking aboutthe eighties, right?
Late eighties, early nineties.
Erin (25:48):
I was 15.
The first time that I ever sawthe internet.
And I was absolutelyflabbergasted, but here's Craig
over here.
He's like this old news.
Craig (25:58):
So, what was cool was after I built the we're going
off on a big tangent, but afterI built the computer started the
BBS and things like that betatesters would send me like in
beta format and I started toevaluate and games before they
even hit the shelf.
I would literally have gamesthree to six months before the
public had them.
at the time it was likeelectronics boutique, and I
(26:19):
would go through electronicsboutique games were expensive.
still.
It was like 60 bucks still forgame on computer 50,$60.
I would literally go down thewall and I would have most of
the games that were there.
would have had them for months.
Blake (26:32):
It's pretty awesome.
Craig (26:33):
Anyway, reel it back in.
My parents had no idea about anyof this stuff.
So it goes back to watching yourkids or whatever, and not
necessarily that it was a badthing.
it was a priceless experience togo through and I certainly
encourage it for children now itjust needs to be supervised.
because now
Erin (26:52):
Times have changed.
Craig (26:53):
yeah.
There's just a lot of differentrisks that didn't exist back
then.
So it's just a different periodof time.
So my point is that well, theyhave even cool stuff now,
though, that if you're atechnical parent, you can get a
raspberry PI device and you cando experiments and you can get a
book and do labs and differentkinds of exercises with your
child or children.
If they like that tinkering kindof stuff, So there's all
(27:15):
different stuff that didn'texist that help create that safe
environment to do so.
But my point is, now, if youunpolice a device and you just
leave it, there's just a lot ofrisks now you really need to
have, training just really aprocess that's best for your
family on how to make sure thatyou're being safe online.
(27:37):
one of the things that a lot ofpeople don't know about, which
would probably benefit a lot oflisteners is when you go to the
internet, you're oftentimesleveraging a service called DNS
or domain name system.
Most people are not going toremember the IP address to
Google.
You're going to type in Googleand you're going to get there
because your computer is goingto use DNS to translate it into
the IP address.
And that's how humans surf theinternet or.
(27:59):
If you just change your routersDNS settings to quad nine, which
is really nine dot nine.
And I know that's technical andit sounds super complicated, but
it's really not that bad.
If you go into your routersettings and you change the DNS
address to four nines, nine dotnine dot 9, 9, 9, you
immediately protect yourself andyour kids because all of your
(28:19):
traffic is now routed throughquad nines network and quad
nine.
If you just Google search quad,none.
I think it's just quad type itout Q U a D space nine.
If you go there, you'll see thatthey do a lot of filtering at
the DNS level and it's all forfree.
So quad nine.net is actuallythe, website.
(28:40):
So it's a public and free DNSservice and it has security
baked in it.
It immediately protects you formalware and a lot of threats and
things.
Right now I'm on their websiteand it says a hundred million, a
hundred million with an M ouraverage daily blocks.
So they're blocking a hundredmillion plus malware threats, 20
plus threat intelligenceproviders, 150 resolver clusters
(29:02):
in 90 different countries.
So if you just listen and youdid this one thing, this one
layer as we call it your onions,this is a huge layer to protect
you and your family.
But this is why it's soimportant to do training, to
stay on top of this stuff.
And you can get your training atcompliance, armor.com.
It's inexpensive, but it'spriceless because you learn
about these little things thatcan be done oftentimes for free.
(29:26):
And it's just a couple settingschanges and you're off to the
races and you have a much moresecure experience.
Erin (29:33):
That's really good advice
Blake (29:34):
Yeah.
Craig (29:35):
Yup.
Erin (29:35):
and a great way to help protect your family.
Blake (29:38):
We kind of obviously showed our growing up in
computers, so felt like atangent, but it really wasn't.
In my opinion, and this is letme reel it back in here.
But when we grew up incomputers, it was exciting.
It was an exciting place to be.
It was an exciting space.
It was exciting technology.
It was emerging.
And now it's just scary.
Erin (29:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a really good point.
Blake
Craig (30:01):
I think it's only scary to the people that, are aware.
if you ask your average kid, doyou think the internet scary?
They'd probably say no
Erin (30:08):
right, they don't understand.
Craig (30:09):
That's right.
Blake (30:10):
they don't know what can happen on the internet.
Erin (30:12):
There's a lot more insidiousness
Blake (30:14):
I bet you, if you ask that one kid or maybe several
kids that stumbled across aYouTube video.
Erin (30:21):
Oh yeah.
Blake (30:22):
That was supposed to be YouTube kids and saw something
like slender man or somethinghe's, going to say yes,
Erin (30:28):
Not to make it dark or whatever, but did you hear
there's these middle schoolgirls, they're like 12 or
something
Blake (30:34):
I watched the film on that.
Yeah.
The documentary.
Yeah.
Erin (30:36):
terrible.
that girl, she ended up dying.
Blake (30:38):
No, she didn't die.
Erin (30:40):
they like lured her for slender man or something
Blake (30:43):
Yeah.
there we go.
These two girls read about astory on the internet, in a dark
place.
And then they lured this girlout into the woods to try and
kill her because the internetsaid, so,
Craig (30:53):
My gosh,
Erin (30:54):
yeah, this is a few years ago too.
Blake (30:56):
Six or seven years ago,
Erin (30:58):
it's just sad.
Craig (30:59):
That stuff is just, sickening,
Erin (31:01):
It is.
Craig (31:02):
But it's also, for a parent really difficult to track
that, you literally would haveto be doing active surveillance
to know and to be able tointercept your kid is probably
not going to talk to you aboutall the stuff that they do on
the internet.
an, I'm not saying that youshouldn't trust your kids.
I'm just saying it's, not reallyabout that.
It's that you can't trusteveryone else on the internet.
(31:25):
my point though, is that thereare technologies and there are
solutions that we haveexperience with, to do the
surveillance in a way where youwould know about something like
that.
We're reliant upon the FBI and alot of law enforcement to
intercept these types of things.
But I think we, as parents needto do more too, because if we
(31:49):
are able to intercept somethinglike that and then hand It to
the authorities and say, look,we created a honeypot and they
almost Lord my kid into thissituation, go arrest him.
That would, I think for societybe a good thing.
Erin (32:03):
Yeah.
Blake (32:04):
Yeah.
Craig (32:04):
think most people wouldn't even know where to
start with something like that.
Erin (32:08):
I wouldn't.
Blake (32:08):
I wouldn't either.
Craig (32:10):
my point is that there are things like key loggers that
obviously a lot of hackers, likekey loggers, but key loggers can
be a good tool to use becausenow you can track your child's
text messages and things likethat.
You could consider getting ahardened device instead of
giving your kid an iPhone theyhave new devices now where
they're locked down, wherethey're not allowed to call
(32:31):
anybody unless the parent putsthe phone number in there and
authorizes it.
So there's all these differentthings that you can do.
As a parent help with thissituation.
Erin (32:40):
I think about it sometimes just how grateful I am I think
my space came out when I was inmy mid twenties.
Right.
So, cell phones with cameras,didn't come out until around
that time to rose living in theVirgin islands at the time, this
is so cool.
But just imagining the pressurethat kids must feel with social
media and everything being ableto be recorded.
(33:02):
And, oh man, I'm just so glad.
I'm so glad I missed that.
I don't have kids, but I do havenieces and nephews and just
thinking about ways to keep themsafe.
it's a lot for parents.
I imagine that that's a realchallenge on a regular basis,
Craig (33:16):
Oh, absolutely.
Erin (33:17):
What do you teach your kids about the internet Craig?
Craig (33:20):
Stay away from social media.
Blake (33:23):
I'm curious too.
talked about like how you limityour children to the devices
that they can use and thefrequency at what they can use
that.
So maybe you could elaborate on.
Craig (33:34):
Yeah I think, every situation is different.
And there's no necessarily rightor wrong way to do it.
It's really personal andindividualized, but for me and
my wife, we allow them screentime.
we don't even allow it everyday.
On the weekends, we'll let themwatch like a show on TV or
something on their Kindle or ontheir iPad or whatever device.
(33:57):
And it's usually no more than anhour.
And that's it.
I've heard other parents tell mesimilar things, but when a kid
plays a video game or watches ashow, it actually changes their
behavior.
Depending on.
what it is, sometimes the brainreleases dopamine and that
affects their behavior.
(34:19):
For example, if I give my son 30minutes or an hour to play a
video game first of all, hedoesn't want to stop.
So if I ask them, okay, yourtime's up?
Nope.
Just two more minutes.
Just two more minutes.
He doesn't want to stop, butit's almost like an addiction
and then it's withdrawal becausedoesn't want to stop.
And then he becomes angry.
And his behavior is not good.
(34:41):
Sometimes he's angry because hehas to get off.
So my point is that we limit theamount of time now, if we're
doing like a road trip orsomething, we'll give them their
Kindles or whatever, and theycan use them in the car.
And that'll be the maximumscreen time or altogether in the
car kind of thing.
But they don't come home andplay video games.
encourage them to go outside.
(35:01):
We encourage them to play withtheir friends.
We encourage them to go in thepool or whatever there's
different things that they couldbe doing aside from sticking
their phrase in front of a game.
It's not that we're antitechnology obviously or anti
video games.
it really does.
change their behavior They havefriends that literally will just
stay inside and play video gamesand we would just prefer them to
(35:24):
be playing with friends outsideeven when I was growing up and I
took stuff apart and things likethat, I would still go outside.
I wouldn't be locked in a cave,I would like to go outside and
play with my friends and playbasketball or baseball, whatever
it is.
so my point is I think the bestadvice I could say is try to
make it as balanced as possible.
And I know that with someparents that are working or
(35:45):
working from home, or maybesingle parents they kind of use
the technology a bit likebabysitter.
And I'm not saying that'snecessarily wrong.
It's just that if you canbalance it and, I think the end
result would be better than withan unbalance..
Erin (36:00):
Yeah that makes sense.
Blake (36:01):
Yeah, no, that's clear.
And then one thing too, is teachyour children about safety,
obviously physical safety, Ifeel like the hunchback of Notre
dam now,
Erin (36:12):
yeah.
Blake (36:13):
something, take it from me, teach your kid about my
parents said, Hey, don't sit tooclose to the TV.
They used to say that, but Istill did it anyways.
They never stopped me from doingit.
And now I wear glasses.
Or, I've been working from mycomputer, a laptop and I was
like, oh it's a laptop is meantto be my lap or it wasn't meant
to be on a little table.
And I'd be been bending over,working from a laptop.
Probably within five years, I'llprobably have carpal tunnel or
(36:35):
maybe I have to at least havesurgery for it.
Yeah.
I think if I could leave ourlisteners with something, teach
your children about posture thenegative effects that these
devices have.
don't even know yet.
We don't even know.
We really don't know.
Erin (36:47):
The long-term effects that it could have.
Blake (36:49):
You're putting radio waves.
If you're talking on a cellphone, you're putting radio
wastes your brain,
Craig (36:53):
it's all about balancing too, right?
Blake (36:55):
For sure.
Craig (36:56):
it's hard to say if that really caused you to have to get
glasses, but obviously thatmight not be in anyone's best
interest to stare at a computerfor eight hours straight it
might be a good idea to lookaway.
What does that thing that yousaid before.
Blake (37:11):
20, 20,
Craig (37:12):
Yeah.
Blake (37:13):
every 20 minutes look, 20, feet for 20 seconds.
I doctor taught me that.
Craig (37:17):
I don't think I even do that consistently, but it's all
about good habits
Blake (37:21):
Yeah.
Or, obviously not using yourcomputer and dark that's another
one.
I went to the doctor today, theneurologist and it was like,
dude, how old are you?
you've got all the symptoms nineto five or on the computer and
yeah, that's how I make aliving.
And that's how I provide for myfamily and provide for my dogs
and whatever but anyways youshould never be using a laptop
in your lap that's the reasonwhy they make the stance, so
(37:44):
you're supposed to elevate yourscreen to your face level, to
eye level and not be lookingdown at it.
Erin (37:49):
Oh man.
Blake (37:50):
So yeah, I went on like an epic adventure here in
Tbilisi trying to find a laptopholder and now I got on.
and now I'm starting to get intothe phase where like out order,
144 degree, ergonomicalkeyboards, they're tilted in 144
degrees.
So that way it doesn't straincause the street keyboards, is
not good.
And then they've got theergonomical mouses where your
(38:10):
hand is sideways.
So it's like, you're holding acop or something Instead of the
flat mouses, whoever designedthese, they didn't consider
those things.
The prolonged use right over thecomputer.
And of course I've got a blueblock of blue light blocker
screen protector.
I got one on my phone now, sostarting get there.
Craig (38:29):
Back when I was growing up, it was CRT cathode, Ray
tubes, right?
big of boxy monitors.
And it was radiation.
They literally would give offradiation.
You had a try to pick a modelthat didn't give off too much
radiation, but again know, it'sall about how much time you
spend in front of it.
And I don't think anybody doesit perfectly.
It, my point is that, like youpointed out Blake you don't want
(38:50):
to have a laptop in your lap fora long period of time.
Does it mean it, you can neveruse it on your lap?
No, it's just not ideal for ahealth situation.
You have a warm to sometimes hotlaptop device on that's really
close to your skin and yourbody.
You can get burned if somethinghappens with the battery, which
is most likely lithium ion, itcould catch fire.
(39:10):
And there's all sorts of Googlestories online with malfunctions
of people getting burned andthings like that.
So same thing with your cellphone.
You Don't want to keep your cellphone in your pocket for long
periods of time, if it overheatsor whatever the cell phone could
explode and cause you physicalharm so there's all these
different things that canhappen.
as far as our podcast for today,I think that if people could
(39:32):
make sure to take the parentstake the training.
Have your kids take thetraining.
It's not a lot of time.
We're talking about maybe twohours of your time to get really
good training at compliance,armor.com and go through the
testing.
And then you get micro trainingsevery week and every month to
keep you up to date and you andyour children should go through
it.
That's nowadays.
(39:54):
Aside from that patches, updateyour systems, make sure you're
not wasting time and oldoutdated systems.
Erin (40:00):
give your kids old computers unless they want to
take it apart.
Craig (40:03):
yeah.
And here's another thing too.
Don't give your kids or don'tgive anyone your old computers
or devices without propersanitization.
And what I mean by that?
You don't want to give yourcomputer that you were maybe
doing banking or financials on,and if you don't know how to
properly sanitize it and formatit and do all the work to prep
it that's how people stealidentity as well.
(40:24):
They'll garage sale it orwhatever.
And so you need to make sure youremove the hard drive or you
physically destroy it, or youpay for a certificate of
destruction from a companythat's well known and reputable
that can give you theattestation that it has been
properly destroyed.
Personally, for me, I justripped the hard drive out it
Blake (40:43):
Something I was just thinking about you Aaron.
If we wind back the clock andthis is probably going to be
counter intuitive to how Craiggot into cyber security, but if
you see your child taking apartelectronic device stop
immediately.
The reason why I say that isbecause there is, power supplies
in there..
I was looking at one of the, Ifix it tutorials for a Mac book
and some of the Mac books orsome of the Mac computers, like
(41:03):
the IMAX and stuff.
they have a 280 or somethingwatt power supply or 400 watt
power supply inside of thatcomputer.
So If a child touches the wrongarea, Hey, you're going to go to
light city.
Erin (41:17):
yeah.
Blake (41:18):
obviously we got lucky we're here.
Right.
But just a disclaimer.
So if you see your child takingit apart and an electronic
device, not a good idea.
Craig (41:25):
not necessarily a bad idea.
It just needs to be supervised.
Erin (41:29):
Make sure it's turned up.
Blake (41:30):
Let them take apart and let them get a can of kit.
Let him get a can a kit thatdoesn't have a power supply.
And let them build a little, araspberry PI there's safe ways
to do it, but yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
And then yeah, get monitoringsoftware so you can see what's
going on time usage and wherethey're visiting and where
they're spending their time.
Craig (41:47):
I remember back I think it was like 20 years ago now
when I got certified fromWebsense at Websense was
technology was like brand newstuff back then.
And it was surveillancetechnology for businesses to
monitor their employees and makesure they weren't going to
social media or whatever onlineshopping.
I think what it was 20 yearsago, social media wasn't really
(42:08):
a thing yet.
So anyway we would install thisstuff and oftentimes a lot of
businesses, they would justinstall it just to kind of
monitor and kind of see do wehave a problem at our company or
not?
And it gives them that depth andvisibility.
And it's just so interesting thepeople that you would think
wouldn't really do that, that doit.
(42:29):
it's just an eyeopeningexperience.
So that might be kind of a wayto start with children.
Like I said, it's not that youdon't trust them.
It's just that you want toprotect them and keep them safe
because the deck is prettystacked for things are bad to
happen and how easy it is forsomething bad to happen.
Erin (42:47):
Yeah.
Craig (42:47):
So in my opinion, I don't think it's a bad idea to.
Have technology like that totell you what's happening, where
people were going or where yourkids are growing or whatever.
But Yeah.
It's different for everyone.
It's a personal preference.
it's balance there's a lot toit.
But there are solutions likequad nine I recommended earlier
that are good solutions.
Now you don't get any kind ofgranular control with quad nine,
(43:08):
quad nine is free.
So if you want granular controlover, Hey, I don't want my kid
to go to weapon websites, or Idon't want my kids to go to the
bad websites or whatever.
You can get that granularcontrol with different kinds of
filtering technologies.
but the free stuff it is what itis.
You don't have any control forit, but it's better than
nothing.
Blake (43:28):
Yeah we, had a podcast where we mentioned encrypted
DNS.
And if you get encrypted DNSfrom us it was like the five
cheapest things you can do tosecure yourself today or
something is around$120 an endpoint per year.
Erin (43:42):
Yeah,
Craig (43:43):
Yeah, it's very inexpensive.
Blake (43:45):
go to compliance, armor.com and choose how many
end points you got.
Erin (43:49):
Boom.
Blake (43:49):
boom, 120 bucks a year.
It's less than your coffee.
Erin (43:53):
Yeah.
That's true.
Cheaper than your T
Blake (43:58):
That's right
Erin (43:59):
Turkish tea.
Blake (44:01):
We've done our hour here, paid our dues for the day.
Erin (44:04):
Yeah that was good.
And I think, Really informativeand I think that could be really
helpful for people and help tosecure the younger generation.
It's always a good thing.
Craig (44:13):
We just touched on the onion layers, but there's many
more layers that could be donethat these are just kind of easy
tips.
Some of them free that you couldimplement right away, but yeah,
be sure to reach out to us andwe can give you a more
customized approach.
Erin (44:25):
Yeah.
If you have any questions hit usup, you can also email us.
We do have apodcast@petronellatech.com email
now, too.
So feel free to use that youhave any questions or give us a
call and we'll be happy to helpyou out.
Blake (44:39):
We're here.
Erin (44:40):
We're all here because we're not all there.
All right, Have a good one guys.
Craig (44:47):
Alright.
Take care.
Welcome everybody to another episode of the PTG
podcast today.
It is myself and Craig and ofcourse Blake,
Craig (00:11):
the one and only
Erin (00:12):
the one and only Blake.
Blake (00:13):
That's right.
Erin (00:15):
Yup.
I've never met another Blake.
yeah.
So today we're going to talkabout.
Your kids, but not really yourkids in a creepy way.
we're going to talk about yourkids and how you can teach them
about cybersecurity and make itfun.
Blake (00:28):
think this is going to be good one.
I don't think anyone's evertalked about this.
Erin (00:31):
I think we've discussed it.
Craig (00:33):
Yeah.
I think we broached the topic acouple of times.
Really the type of school thatyour kids go to as well.
I think that private schools areahead of public schools in
regards to technology.
Obviously busy households thathave a lot of technology and a
lot of devices, a lot of endpoints maybe Amazon Alexa or
Google or whatever devices onthe network.
(00:54):
Depending on the age of the kidsor children in your house will
depend on a lot of differentangles and factors.
But I would start off withproper training I think a lot of
kids like to tinker andexperiment maybe it's the drive
to play a new video game orboredom to try to find something
to do I think there's a coupleof different angles around this
(01:14):
topic, but I would start withsecurity awareness training.
We have various curriculum thatwe've built for all types of
scenarios and situations on ourcompliance, armour.com website.
It's very inexpensive, butproven audited and effective
training, not only for kids andchildren and families, but also
for consumers and for businessesalike.
(01:35):
Obviously at the household levelthere's probably not any really
regulations or anything likethat, but good hygiene, best
practices with passwords neverwrite your passwords down on
sticky notes and keep themaround the computer.
But would start from the endpoint level.
A lot of families havetechnology.
That's a various age andquality.
(01:57):
And obviously withcybersecurity, the older, the
end point, the older device isreally, as it.
ages, it becomes less secure.
And the reason for that is themanufacturer.
After a period of time calledend of life, the manufacturer is
no longer going to patch andupdate and provide security
updates, which is why it's avery bad idea to have old
(02:20):
devices on your network becausethat's how people get hacked.
Moving on from there there's Iguess, a myth around people
thinking that apple devices aremore secure than windows
devices.
There are viruses and malwarethat exists for Mac as well as
PC.
Of course, I think that it'sreally just a matter of.
The hackers are targeting bymarket share.
They are going to write virusesand malware and various threats
(02:45):
for Microsoft first and thenadapt to other platforms like
Linux and Mac.
So I would start off with if youhave an old computer, now's the
time better to, than ever toupgrade that device.
If it can be upgraded whichmeans you can load new software
on it, that's an option, but ifit's really over five years old,
(03:05):
it's not usually worth fixingdoing anything to you're better
off getting a new device.
The recommendations are reallypersonal preference around that
whether you are a Mac or anapple fan or a Microsoft fan, or
maybe a Linux fan just reallydepends, but getting modern
devices that are supported andmaking sure that they're patched
and up to date, because even ifyou get a brand new computer, if
(03:26):
you go down the road, you pickone up if you have an insecure
network and you plug that thingto your internet and it's
unpatched, it can right out ofthe styrofoam get infected.
So you have to follow a processfor making sure that all updates
are applied and just really becareful with that period of time
as it's brand new until it'sfully patched up.
And then obviously enablesecurity software in the
(03:49):
Microsoft world.
There's windows defender.
You can choose other productsthat are out there like
Malwarebytes, for example.
Those are some options as well.
Blake (03:57):
So I guess probably most parents, what they do is they
hand down their devices to theirchildren.
I'm assuming that's probablythem smartest ideas, maybe.
Craig (04:09):
Again, I think it depends on the age window.
so if, a parent wants a newcomputer and the device that the
parent is using it's within thewarranty or support period, then
that's, that's okay to do that.
But if the device is five yearsold already, and then they hand
it down to their kids.
Erin (04:24):
just asking for trouble.
Craig (04:25):
Yeah.
Because, here's the thing you asa parent are probably not going
to the same website, says kidmight go to and sadly, the
reality is that a lot ofhackers.
Prey on kids and they injectmalware and video games and
social media sites and differentthings that kids would search
for, or navigate to may differfrom what you may have navigate
(04:46):
to.
So my point is that if it's notsupported and it's not in
warranty, You're asking fortrouble.
by handing it down if, and onlyif, and I'll say this with a
caveat maybe the kid is, ofolder age and is quite
technically savvy and canformat.
And re-install a modernoperating system on it, like
(05:07):
windows 11 or Linux, or if yourkid can do something like that
and modernize the software, thenthat's okay to repurpose.
But most people and most kids.
That's a lot of trouble andthat's a technical path that
opens a whole new can of worms.
So my point is that if you'vegot windows XP, just take hard,
drive out beat it up with ahammer and throw the rest of it
(05:27):
away, or use it for targetpractice you know,
Blake (05:30):
take it to Goodwill the local recycling bin.
so, what age do you think is theprime target to start
conditioning your children?
And the best cybersecuritypractices
Craig (05:42):
So I think if your kids are actively needing to use the
free Google services and Gsuites, or if Google is the
choice of the school and thatstarts with Second grade then
that's the tie.
I would say the timing is reallydependent on when they go
online.
If they're going online beforeschool and they're going online
because the parents are busy andthey need to work or they need
(06:05):
to get stuff done.
And it's kind of a here playedthis game kind of thing.
While there should be someparameters set around what
device they should be given andwhat access they should be
allowed and what they should beable to do.
And it should be supervised ifit can't be supervised, then
there needs to be some duediligence on The parent's side
to make sure that the device isproperly secured, patched up and
(06:26):
supported before just handing itover to the kid because
otherwise what'll happen isthere could be nasty malware or
infection that could happen.
that just takes seconds.
So going back to our eat, yourvegetables, eat more onions.
It's all about the layershardware layers, software
layers, human layers
Blake (06:43):
heard a rumor and I don't know if this is true, your man,
probably you could vouch forthis, but a lot of schools are
starting getting kids involvedin technology and they're
putting them into the Chrome oh,S ecosystem.
I don't know if that's true.
That's what I heard her that along time ago.
Craig (06:58):
for schools, you said?
Blake (07:00):
Yeah.
public schools little Johnny hasgot to do this or that or
something.
We need a laptop as a part ofchecklist.
Craig (07:07):
So I, think that's true.
I think that some schools haveadopted the Google Chromebook
model, but I also heard.
And maybe some schools do itbetter than others, but I heard
that they caused a lot oftrouble too.
And what I mean by that isChromebooks are kind of like
thin clients they're reallystripped down And optimized for
Google and Google's ecosystem.
(07:28):
They're just really basicdevices typically with low CPU.
They're just really strippeddown to use Google G suite and
Google, Gmail and other types ofservices, and it's fine for
that.
I think once you get out of thatecosystem though, and maybe want
to play a game or want to dosomething, that's more
multimedia driven.
(07:50):
I think that's where thosedevices struggle.
for example, running zoom on aChromebook by.
Really have the best amount ofresources to properly do video
and audio as well as maybe a,full-fledged laptop, for example
Blake (08:04):
I remember I was at best buy and this is unrelated, but
still I was going through andthey have a section for
Chromebooks.
And I literally look over inGoogle somehow some way you
probably know exactly where I'mgoing with this.
Somehow some way they thought itwas a good idea to make a
thousand dollar Chromebook.
(08:25):
I don't know.
It looks like a little applelaptop.
That's a thousand dollars, butthe reason why I'm just balking
here is promo S is a super lightoperating system.
Like you said, it's like a thinclient.
it takes nothing to run.
most of the Chromebooks, theyhave four gigs of Ram or gigs of
solid state or EMC or, whatever
Craig (08:42):
it's, optimized for an always online connected
experience.
So if you use it within thebrackets or parameters of what
it was designed to do, then itworks great.
But once you try to go outsideof that, where you're stuck in
an airport, or you're stuck in aremote location and you don't
have stable internet, then thatdevice is no longer a great
(09:06):
tool.
You don't have the ability ornot very easy.
There are some features thatallow you to work offline.
But my point is that optimizedfor an always connected, always
online internet.
Experience like within clients,then clients are great devices
for businesses.
They have usually nowadays thesolid state hard drive, they
have minimal CPU and Ram they'rereally built for the long haul.
(09:30):
They don't have a lot of movingparts.
Some of them don't have anymoving parts.
So they're solid state.
The whole thing is solid state.
Oftentimes they're fan lists, soreally not much to fail or die
on it.
So when you connect a thinclient properly to a private
cloud or a public cloud, forexample, a terminal server,
remote desktop services orvirtual desktop infrastructure
(09:51):
powered by VMware or Citrix ifyou connect to those cloud
properties, you're getting allof the compute power from the
cloud.
Again, it's reliant upon analways on line connected
experience.
By itself, it's pretty barebones and minimal.
I can't really do much, but whenyou connect it to the cloud, it
(10:12):
opens the door and makes it agreat tool for certain
situations.
So I think that's what wastrying to be done with the
Chromebook experience withGoogle Google was like, okay,
we'll give our online tools andour online experience, Gmail G
suites online collaborationaround editing documents at the
same time all the great stuffthat Google has produced in that
(10:34):
fashion.
But once you, again, you stepout of that box and now you want
to load some other kind ofsoftware or you want to do more
audio visual work.
Now that device, or that toolmay not be the best tool for the
job.
It depends on a deep study andassessment on what are you using
the tool for?
(10:54):
And what's the best tool for thejob?
Blake (10:56):
Yeah, I think probably the coolest part.
again, this isn't a Chromebookplug, but this is a good segue
point.
It does have the built-inparental controls, which is
probably advantageous to, mostparents.
And I think that's probablyeasier to set up.
But it probably has itsadvantages internally versus
let's just say you have a childand they're running windows 10,
(11:18):
11 Mac I think out of the box,so what would be an alternative
there for parents who want tomonitor their kids' online
activity,
Craig (11:27):
yeah, that's a good point with the parental controls and
the built-in functionality Ithink that functionality is
good.
Oftentimes I feel like dependingon the ecosystem, whether it's
Google or Amazon Alexa orwhatever it is I think that they
give parents a decent set oftools, but none of them are
perfect in my opinion.
Nothing's perfect nowadays, butguess none of them are very
(11:50):
granular.
And what I mean by that, for myown experience with Amazon
devices and Kindles, for exampleapple seems to, in my opinion,
do a better job of the parentalcontrol side of things.
But I think it also puts a lotof pressure on parents too,
because now the parents have tohave crash course on how do they
configure this thing properly sothat their kid could do what
(12:11):
they need to do if theyauthorize it, but then not be
troublesome.
And I know for me, at least forpersonal experience that I'm
technical the Amazon Kindle man,that thing is a bit of a
learning curve even for me.
And I guess my point is that ifyou have access to parental
controls, definitely as aparent, studied them and see
what you can and cannot do withthem.
(12:32):
Sometimes there's no controlthat is available to do what the
child needs to do.
So you have to use your profile.
And then you have to beavailable to revoke it.
I know, with my family, I've hadto change my pin numbers and
have different things in placeto prevent accidental purchases,
or maybe they said it was anaccident, but there wasn't, but
(12:52):
that's a whole nother story, theby a different video game or
whatever it is, or an add on toa video game.
My point is that as parents, wehave to research and explore the
tools that are available to uslike parental control, for
example.
But also make sure that thedevice is the best suited for
what she wants your child tohave access to as well.
I know for example, I don't knowif you guys know this, but There
(13:15):
was an issue with YouTube,Google, and YouTube where
YouTube wasn't properlysegmenting certain content for
kids.
And kids were getting access tocontent.
That was really bad.
Do you guys remember any ofthis?
Blake (13:29):
I heard about it.
Craig (13:30):
what is the recent thing?
The tick-tock challenge orsomething?
It was almost like that only itwas on YouTube And it was
suicidal kind of stuff.
And it was just really awfulstuff the hackers or the bad
actors in this case wereexploiting flaws in the tagging
or segmentation of what a childcan and cannot see.
Erin (13:49):
that's disgusting.
Blake (13:50):
They were using hashtags and sand tacks.
it goes outside the algorithmapparently of YouTube.
I could be entirely wrong, butwhoever was uploading, the
videos could mark them askid-friendly and yeah, it would
be like creepy pasta stuff orreally dark.
Scary stuff.
Erin (14:08):
That's really messed up the kid.
Craig (14:09):
Yeah.
As a parent, when you givetechnology or a device to your
child, there's someresponsibility that the parent
has to have.
And sadly you can't trust themake model or manufacturer of
the endpoint or device to doThat job for you.
It's really a responsibility atthe parent level to still police
(14:29):
and monitor.
One of the recommendations thatI have is.
have the device in an area whereyou are as a parent so you can
kind of glance over and seewhat's happening.
Cause kids are curious, they'regoing to want to click on stuff
that pops up.
And sometimes those popups arenot necessarily good popups.
So my point is that the parentcan catch things at the human
level that maybe shouldn't havehappened at the technological
(14:51):
level because of a parentalcontrol, but maybe there was a
flaw in it.
So my point is you can't overlytrust a parental control to do a
human's job.
Erin (14:59):
That makes sense.
Blake (15:00):
Right.
Something, to that, I guess thisis my experience, right?
Cause I grew up on technology.
I grew up in the age ofcomputer.
my parents never monitored myinternet.
I could do whatever.
But something that never reallylike dawned on me until now.
And I think maybe because I grewup in the computing, boom, but
at the time there wasn't a lotof research about how damaging
(15:23):
computers are or technology,cell phones, tablets, they're
everywhere.
You know how damaging they areto your eyes laptops and
posture.
I grew up living with thesethings and living on these
things.
And now at 32, I feel like death
Craig (15:38):
well, pretty bad,
Erin (15:40):
That's a
Craig (15:42):
Stop what you're doing right now.
Call 9 1 1, go straight to thehospital.
Blake (15:47):
no, no.
Think about it though.
So like posture, right?
It's really important physical,mental wellbeing and blood flow,
blood circulation, yada, yada.
Erin (15:54):
Yeah.
That's a really good point, too.
Blake (15:56):
Within The past three to four years they started figuring
out about the blue light thataffects sleep rhythm.
So these are things that nobodytalks about, unless like Hey
look, little Tammy, don't useyour phone an hour before bed,
Craig (16:08):
That's because what Facebook, for example, in the
social experiments, everybody'sa Guinea pig.
Erin (16:12):
Yeah.
Blake (16:13):
right.
Craig (16:14):
claim they didn't anticipate or know that when
they released their platform,that it would have negative
impacts of depression and allsorts of stuff on kids and
miners.
And you're absolutely right.
back when I started my parentsdidn't really police it really
for TV back when I was growingup, I remember watching all
sorts of stuff.
Erin (16:33):
Well, and Craig, We're a similar ages.
and I know I did not experiencethe internet for the first time
until I was 15.
And I was like, this is crazy.
I can talk to people all overthe world, what is going on?
And so, yeah, my parents didn'teven know to monitor the
internet
Craig (16:50):
well, they probably didn't know the capabilities of
it.
Erin (16:52):
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think that, probably makesa difference.
Blake (16:56):
think nobody knew.
People just realized howpowerful this is how you can
connect people.
And then essentially you'reinviting intruders into your
home now.
Erin (17:06):
Yeah.
Blake (17:07):
If you think about it from this perspective, everybody
who's got a computer now has agateway into their personal
private and their home.
Hackers can get in withouthaving to have a key before
computers, people had to likephysically break in.
But now you have an access pointfor, people with bad intentions.
Erin (17:23):
Yeah.
Blake (17:24):
But yeah, I just don't think anybody could have
predicted and how computers canbe so integrated with everything
now.
I think about IOT.
Now everything is wificonnected, everything cars,
right?
Cars have wifi hotspots.
there's a bunch of other stupidthings that wiper hotspots, but
you know what I mean?
Craig (17:41):
yeah, I think that's a good point.
When I was growing up, when Ifirst was tinkering with at that
time bulletin board systems orBBSs it was all modem driven,
right?
So it was a one-on-one handshakeconnection now where in seconds
connected to the worldwide weband in the reality is in
seconds, you can connect toanything in the world that's
(18:02):
connected to the same internetyou are.
And I don't think a lot ofpeople stop and think about that
for a minute of how easy it isfor somebody hidden in the world
that wants to do bad things thatcan be anonymous and
unidentified connect to yoursystem.
Blake (18:17):
everything that you own, everything of importance is on
your computer.
what do you think is worse?
getting your wallet stolen orgetting your computer stolen?
I think computer, not because ofthe cost, but because of the
sensitivity and the information.
if you get your credit card,driver's license, whatever
stolen, you just cancel it andyou can go get another driver's
license.
But, if your computer getsstolen, and you've got thousands
(18:39):
of files or terabytes or gigs orwhatever you got on there, your
work stuff, your personal stuff.
The scans maybe you've got scansfor jobs or scans of your birth
certificate or, it's all there.
Craig (18:51):
That's right.
Blake (18:52):
Everything's digital.
So yeah, just my 2 cents, but itis scary to think about,
Erin (18:56):
It is
Craig (18:57):
Absolutely.
Blake (18:58):
tell us about your growing up in computing.
Aaron.
Erin (19:00):
Oh me.
I remember the first time I everused the internet.
I've used a computer, right?
I actually in middle school, I'msuch a nerd, used to love
wearing the world is Carmen SanDiego.
I lived out in the country.
Blake (19:12):
I played that all.
Yeah, it's awesome.
Erin (19:14):
I couldn't necessarily just go out and play.
So I would play on the computer.
But I wasn't like Craig and Iwould love to hear Craig talk
about that a little bit more,but I wasn't like Craig, like I
didn't take anything apart.
I was really into books.
I did enjoy some games.
Obviously I also played theoriginal Oregon trail, so that
was fun.
We took computer classes and Iremember I took a typing class
(19:36):
in high school, which I'm sothankful because my boyfriend
love him to death.
He's a pecker, he pecks.
And I just can't imagine workinglike that.
Blake (19:46):
is so funny.
Cause my growing up andcomputing experience obviously I
grew up in, Pretty connectedfamily.
My mom had a little VHScamcorder that we used to do
home movies on like Christmasand Thanksgiving, them yada,
yada.
I was skateboarding.
So I used that camera to filmskateboard videos.
And then something got damagedor something got stuck in there.
(20:07):
So I took it apart my mom openedthe door and saw the camera and
like,
Erin (20:13):
Blake.
Blake (20:14):
yeah, hundreds of parts or however many parts just
scattered.
I literally would put them inlittle segments and lay them out
into kind of like a little minidiagram,
Erin (20:22):
Huh?
Blake (20:22):
Across my floor.
So there's no place that youcould walk on the floor without
stepping on camera parts.
I think it was my mom.
I was kind of using everybodyelse's computer.
you started off with a familycomputer.
Nobody had personal computers.
Erin (20:36):
No.
Yeah.
Blake (20:37):
And me and my brother would argue about whose time it
was to like, get on thecomputer.
Erin (20:41):
Yes.
Blake (20:42):
and my mom had a computer in, my mom would sell stuff on
eBay she was huge on eBay.
So she literally had thiscomputer just eBay, just
e-banking stuff.
My mom was an epic eBayer.
And yeah.
Then of course everything kindof went digital.
And I started editing my skatevideos on her computer I took a
part-time job, so it wasn't muchmoney as I could.
I got my first computer and itwas a I book an apple, I book G
(21:08):
three,
Erin (21:09):
Okay.
Blake (21:09):
which at the time was.
five or$600, like I'm sayingamount of money to me.
Erin (21:13):
Yeah, that's a big purchase.
Blake (21:15):
yeah, no, I worked three summers to get it.
and then, yeah.
I've been rocking it ever since.
Erin (21:20):
Nice.
Yeah.
So Craig used to take partcomputers, right?
Because when you're talkingabout what to do with old
computers, I just got a flash inmy head of little tiny Craig
with his mom's old computer,just sitting around the living
room in the eighties, takingapart,
Craig (21:34):
yeah, so actually it's a funny story.
So my sister was going tocollege and she gets this brand
new Dell computer.
And I think at the time it waslike$3,800 or$4,000, so she
financed it.
So it was super expensive.
Erin (21:49):
Wow.
Blake (21:49):
My God.
Craig (21:50):
and I get ahold of it and I take the damn thing apart.
Blake (21:54):
Oh God,
Craig (21:55):
So I have it all apart, all over the floor.
And my sister's like, I am goingto kill you.
Blake (22:03):
I'm surprised.
She said, she's going to tellyou.
Erin (22:05):
I know.
And then just do it.
Craig (22:07):
I said the only killing back together and it doesn't
work.
I put it all back together andit of course worked fine, but I
wanted to learn about it andfigure out how it worked and
everything.
And after my parents saw that Iwas able to disassemble the
whole damn thing and put it allback together,
Erin (22:25):
Maybe we should encourage this.
Craig (22:26):
yeah.
They ended up buying a computerfor the quote unquote family.
And they kind of got ripped off.
At the time there were a lot ofcompanies that were building
computers and Most people, Iwould think that don't know a
lot about something it's easyfor that to happen.
I was grateful to have anythingso I took that thing apart and
Erin (22:46):
This is how I show my gratitude.
Craig (22:48):
right.
Yeah.
And learned about how the videocard and all the components
worked and everything, andstarted upgrading the components
to make it more powerful and dowhat I wanted it to do.
I liked video games at the time.
So I actually started onCommodore 64 that my brother
had, that my family bought.
and you literally had to type inload quote and commands to make
the thing work.
(23:08):
And it was a floppy disk typeset up.
don't know if you rememberfloppy disks.
Erin (23:12):
Oh, yeah.
Well, not that much younger thanyou.
Blake (23:14):
I do too.
Craig (23:15):
Yeah.
So there were five and a quarterinch floppy disks.
And yeah, if you didn't type thecommand the right way, didn't
load.
And at that time there was justso many things that could go
wrong.
It was really rare actually forsomething not to go wrong and
for things to just work.
So this was like right aroundthe time when Nintendo and Atari
were popular and honestly theedges of those console systems
(23:36):
were really, it just works.
You get the cartridge, you plugit in and it, you turn it on.
And it works at least most ofthe time or more often than the
computer, but the computer gamesat the time were different and
they were more robust and theywere more in depth than the
cartridge systems, which is whyI liked them better.
that was my experience takingthings apart and putting things
(23:56):
back together and then shortlyafter.
My parents got that computer forme.
And I started upgradingcomponents.
That's when I was like, okay, Iknow how to play pretty much,
most video games, but how do Itake this to the next level?
And that's when I startedlearning about how to connect my
computer through a modem.
And it was literally relivingthe movie war games.
(24:17):
I don't know if you ever saw wargames, the movie, but it's great
movie.
So I learned how to use modemand I learned how to install the
modem to my computer and connectthe modem to my dad's fax line
at the time.
And literally took over his faxline and I remember many times
he would be like, what the hell?
Why is this thing busy all thetime?
I can't even send a damn fax!sorry, I'm just waiting for
(24:40):
something to finish.
He can't do it yet.
And I was waiting at the timeeverything was all about what's
called parody pieces to, buildup one thing.
So what I mean by that is themodems were slow.
Even the fastest ones at thattime, were slow.
So you had to break up gamesthat were large into small
pieces, and sometimes thosepieces might be files to build
(25:02):
up that one game.
you would send the files at thetime, the size of a floppy disc
was 720 kilobytes, anddensities, 1.4, four megabytes.
So sometimes the video gamemight be 15 or 20 megabytes, so
you'd have to break it upaccordingly.
So anyway, it would take areally long time to transmit
over a modem connection.
so why the line was busy all thetime.
(25:22):
So would literally run this.
I started at BBS and I learnedhow to customize it and get it
online and gave it a name andstarted marketing it and people
to trade games.
And, yeah, it was just a wholehidden underground world that
your average person had no cluethat it even existed.
It was like the cool factor forthat time period.
(25:44):
Yeah Cause you're talking aboutthe eighties, right?
Late eighties, early nineties.
Erin (25:48):
I was 15.
The first time that I ever sawthe internet.
And I was absolutelyflabbergasted, but here's Craig
over here.
He's like this old news.
Craig (25:58):
So, what was cool was after I built the we're going
off on a big tangent, but afterI built the computer started the
BBS and things like that betatesters would send me like in
beta format and I started toevaluate and games before they
even hit the shelf.
I would literally have gamesthree to six months before the
public had them.
at the time it was likeelectronics boutique, and I
(26:19):
would go through electronicsboutique games were expensive.
still.
It was like 60 bucks still forgame on computer 50,$60.
I would literally go down thewall and I would have most of
the games that were there.
would have had them for months.
Blake (26:32):
It's pretty awesome.
Craig (26:33):
Anyway, reel it back in.
My parents had no idea about anyof this stuff.
So it goes back to watching yourkids or whatever, and not
necessarily that it was a badthing.
it was a priceless experience togo through and I certainly
encourage it for children now itjust needs to be supervised.
because now
Erin (26:52):
Times have changed.
Craig (26:53):
yeah.
There's just a lot of differentrisks that didn't exist back
then.
So it's just a different periodof time.
So my point is that well, theyhave even cool stuff now,
though, that if you're atechnical parent, you can get a
raspberry PI device and you cando experiments and you can get a
book and do labs and differentkinds of exercises with your
child or children.
If they like that tinkering kindof stuff, So there's all
(27:15):
different stuff that didn'texist that help create that safe
environment to do so.
But my point is, now, if youunpolice a device and you just
leave it, there's just a lot ofrisks now you really need to
have, training just really aprocess that's best for your
family on how to make sure thatyou're being safe online.
(27:37):
one of the things that a lot ofpeople don't know about, which
would probably benefit a lot oflisteners is when you go to the
internet, you're oftentimesleveraging a service called DNS
or domain name system.
Most people are not going toremember the IP address to
Google.
You're going to type in Googleand you're going to get there
because your computer is goingto use DNS to translate it into
the IP address.
And that's how humans surf theinternet or.
(27:59):
If you just change your routersDNS settings to quad nine, which
is really nine dot nine.
And I know that's technical andit sounds super complicated, but
it's really not that bad.
If you go into your routersettings and you change the DNS
address to four nines, nine dotnine dot 9, 9, 9, you
immediately protect yourself andyour kids because all of your
(28:19):
traffic is now routed throughquad nines network and quad
nine.
If you just Google search quad,none.
I think it's just quad type itout Q U a D space nine.
If you go there, you'll see thatthey do a lot of filtering at
the DNS level and it's all forfree.
So quad nine.net is actuallythe, website.
(28:40):
So it's a public and free DNSservice and it has security
baked in it.
It immediately protects you formalware and a lot of threats and
things.
Right now I'm on their websiteand it says a hundred million, a
hundred million with an M ouraverage daily blocks.
So they're blocking a hundredmillion plus malware threats, 20
plus threat intelligenceproviders, 150 resolver clusters
(29:02):
in 90 different countries.
So if you just listen and youdid this one thing, this one
layer as we call it your onions,this is a huge layer to protect
you and your family.
But this is why it's soimportant to do training, to
stay on top of this stuff.
And you can get your training atcompliance, armor.com.
It's inexpensive, but it'spriceless because you learn
about these little things thatcan be done oftentimes for free.
(29:26):
And it's just a couple settingschanges and you're off to the
races and you have a much moresecure experience.
Erin (29:33):
That's really good advice
Blake (29:34):
Yeah.
Craig (29:35):
Yup.
Erin (29:35):
and a great way to help protect your family.
Blake (29:38):
We kind of obviously showed our growing up in
computers, so felt like atangent, but it really wasn't.
In my opinion, and this is letme reel it back in here.
But when we grew up incomputers, it was exciting.
It was an exciting place to be.
It was an exciting space.
It was exciting technology.
It was emerging.
And now it's just scary.
Erin (29:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a really good point.
Blake
Craig (30:01):
I think it's only scary to the people that, are aware.
if you ask your average kid, doyou think the internet scary?
They'd probably say no
Erin (30:08):
right, they don't understand.
Craig (30:09):
That's right.
Blake (30:10):
they don't know what can happen on the internet.
Erin (30:12):
There's a lot more insidiousness
Blake (30:14):
I bet you, if you ask that one kid or maybe several
kids that stumbled across aYouTube video.
Erin (30:21):
Oh yeah.
Blake (30:22):
That was supposed to be YouTube kids and saw something
like slender man or somethinghe's, going to say yes,
Erin (30:28):
Not to make it dark or whatever, but did you hear
there's these middle schoolgirls, they're like 12 or
something
Blake (30:34):
I watched the film on that.
Yeah.
The documentary.
Yeah.
Erin (30:36):
terrible.
that girl, she ended up dying.
Blake (30:38):
No, she didn't die.
Erin (30:40):
they like lured her for slender man or something
Blake (30:43):
Yeah.
there we go.
These two girls read about astory on the internet, in a dark
place.
And then they lured this girlout into the woods to try and
kill her because the internetsaid, so,
Craig (30:53):
My gosh,
Erin (30:54):
yeah, this is a few years ago too.
Blake (30:56):
Six or seven years ago,
Erin (30:58):
it's just sad.
Craig (30:59):
That stuff is just, sickening,
Erin (31:01):
It is.
Craig (31:02):
But it's also, for a parent really difficult to track
that, you literally would haveto be doing active surveillance
to know and to be able tointercept your kid is probably
not going to talk to you aboutall the stuff that they do on
the internet.
an, I'm not saying that youshouldn't trust your kids.
I'm just saying it's, not reallyabout that.
It's that you can't trusteveryone else on the internet.
(31:25):
my point though, is that thereare technologies and there are
solutions that we haveexperience with, to do the
surveillance in a way where youwould know about something like
that.
We're reliant upon the FBI and alot of law enforcement to
intercept these types of things.
But I think we, as parents needto do more too, because if we
(31:49):
are able to intercept somethinglike that and then hand It to
the authorities and say, look,we created a honeypot and they
almost Lord my kid into thissituation, go arrest him.
That would, I think for societybe a good thing.
Erin (32:03):
Yeah.
Blake (32:04):
Yeah.
Craig (32:04):
think most people wouldn't even know where to
start with something like that.
Erin (32:08):
I wouldn't.
Blake (32:08):
I wouldn't either.
Craig (32:10):
my point is that there are things like key loggers that
obviously a lot of hackers, likekey loggers, but key loggers can
be a good tool to use becausenow you can track your child's
text messages and things likethat.
You could consider getting ahardened device instead of
giving your kid an iPhone theyhave new devices now where
they're locked down, wherethey're not allowed to call
(32:31):
anybody unless the parent putsthe phone number in there and
authorizes it.
So there's all these differentthings that you can do.
As a parent help with thissituation.
Erin (32:40):
I think about it sometimes just how grateful I am I think
my space came out when I was inmy mid twenties.
Right.
So, cell phones with cameras,didn't come out until around
that time to rose living in theVirgin islands at the time, this
is so cool.
But just imagining the pressurethat kids must feel with social
media and everything being ableto be recorded.
(33:02):
And, oh man, I'm just so glad.
I'm so glad I missed that.
I don't have kids, but I do havenieces and nephews and just
thinking about ways to keep themsafe.
it's a lot for parents.
I imagine that that's a realchallenge on a regular basis,
Craig (33:16):
Oh, absolutely.
Erin (33:17):
What do you teach your kids about the internet Craig?
Craig (33:20):
Stay away from social media.
Blake (33:23):
I'm curious too.
talked about like how you limityour children to the devices
that they can use and thefrequency at what they can use
that.
So maybe you could elaborate on.
Craig (33:34):
Yeah I think, every situation is different.
And there's no necessarily rightor wrong way to do it.
It's really personal andindividualized, but for me and
my wife, we allow them screentime.
we don't even allow it everyday.
On the weekends, we'll let themwatch like a show on TV or
something on their Kindle or ontheir iPad or whatever device.
(33:57):
And it's usually no more than anhour.
And that's it.
I've heard other parents tell mesimilar things, but when a kid
plays a video game or watches ashow, it actually changes their
behavior.
Depending on.
what it is, sometimes the brainreleases dopamine and that
affects their behavior.
(34:19):
For example, if I give my son 30minutes or an hour to play a
video game first of all, hedoesn't want to stop.
So if I ask them, okay, yourtime's up?
Nope.
Just two more minutes.
Just two more minutes.
He doesn't want to stop, butit's almost like an addiction
and then it's withdrawal becausedoesn't want to stop.
And then he becomes angry.
And his behavior is not good.
(34:41):
Sometimes he's angry because hehas to get off.
So my point is that we limit theamount of time now, if we're
doing like a road trip orsomething, we'll give them their
Kindles or whatever, and theycan use them in the car.
And that'll be the maximumscreen time or altogether in the
car kind of thing.
But they don't come home andplay video games.
encourage them to go outside.
(35:01):
We encourage them to play withtheir friends.
We encourage them to go in thepool or whatever there's
different things that they couldbe doing aside from sticking
their phrase in front of a game.
It's not that we're antitechnology obviously or anti
video games.
it really does.
change their behavior They havefriends that literally will just
stay inside and play video gamesand we would just prefer them to
(35:24):
be playing with friends outsideeven when I was growing up and I
took stuff apart and things likethat, I would still go outside.
I wouldn't be locked in a cave,I would like to go outside and
play with my friends and playbasketball or baseball, whatever
it is.
so my point is I think the bestadvice I could say is try to
make it as balanced as possible.
And I know that with someparents that are working or
(35:45):
working from home, or maybesingle parents they kind of use
the technology a bit likebabysitter.
And I'm not saying that'snecessarily wrong.
It's just that if you canbalance it and, I think the end
result would be better than withan unbalance..
Erin (36:00):
Yeah that makes sense.
Blake (36:01):
Yeah, no, that's clear.
And then one thing too, is teachyour children about safety,
obviously physical safety, Ifeel like the hunchback of Notre
dam now,
Erin (36:12):
yeah.
Blake (36:13):
something, take it from me, teach your kid about my
parents said, Hey, don't sit tooclose to the TV.
They used to say that, but Istill did it anyways.
They never stopped me from doingit.
And now I wear glasses.
Or, I've been working from mycomputer, a laptop and I was
like, oh it's a laptop is meantto be my lap or it wasn't meant
to be on a little table.
And I'd be been bending over,working from a laptop.
Probably within five years, I'llprobably have carpal tunnel or
(36:35):
maybe I have to at least havesurgery for it.
Yeah.
I think if I could leave ourlisteners with something, teach
your children about posture thenegative effects that these
devices have.
don't even know yet.
We don't even know.
We really don't know.
Erin (36:47):
The long-term effects that it could have.
Blake (36:49):
You're putting radio waves.
If you're talking on a cellphone, you're putting radio
wastes your brain,
Craig (36:53):
it's all about balancing too, right?
Blake (36:55):
For sure.
Craig (36:56):
it's hard to say if that really caused you to have to get
glasses, but obviously thatmight not be in anyone's best
interest to stare at a computerfor eight hours straight it
might be a good idea to lookaway.
What does that thing that yousaid before.
Blake (37:11):
20, 20,
Craig (37:12):
Yeah.
Blake (37:13):
every 20 minutes look, 20, feet for 20 seconds.
I doctor taught me that.
Craig (37:17):
I don't think I even do that consistently, but it's all
about good habits
Blake (37:21):
Yeah.
Or, obviously not using yourcomputer and dark that's another
one.
I went to the doctor today, theneurologist and it was like,
dude, how old are you?
you've got all the symptoms nineto five or on the computer and
yeah, that's how I make aliving.
And that's how I provide for myfamily and provide for my dogs
and whatever but anyways youshould never be using a laptop
in your lap that's the reasonwhy they make the stance, so
(37:44):
you're supposed to elevate yourscreen to your face level, to
eye level and not be lookingdown at it.
Erin (37:49):
Oh man.
Blake (37:50):
So yeah, I went on like an epic adventure here in
Tbilisi trying to find a laptopholder and now I got on.
and now I'm starting to get intothe phase where like out order,
144 degree, ergonomicalkeyboards, they're tilted in 144
degrees.
So that way it doesn't straincause the street keyboards, is
not good.
And then they've got theergonomical mouses where your
(38:10):
hand is sideways.
So it's like, you're holding acop or something Instead of the
flat mouses, whoever designedthese, they didn't consider
those things.
The prolonged use right over thecomputer.
And of course I've got a blueblock of blue light blocker
screen protector.
I got one on my phone now, sostarting get there.
Craig (38:29):
Back when I was growing up, it was CRT cathode, Ray
tubes, right?
big of boxy monitors.
And it was radiation.
They literally would give offradiation.
You had a try to pick a modelthat didn't give off too much
radiation, but again know, it'sall about how much time you
spend in front of it.
And I don't think anybody doesit perfectly.
It, my point is that, like youpointed out Blake you don't want
(38:50):
to have a laptop in your lap fora long period of time.
Does it mean it, you can neveruse it on your lap?
No, it's just not ideal for ahealth situation.
You have a warm to sometimes hotlaptop device on that's really
close to your skin and yourbody.
You can get burned if somethinghappens with the battery, which
is most likely lithium ion, itcould catch fire.
(39:10):
And there's all sorts of Googlestories online with malfunctions
of people getting burned andthings like that.
So same thing with your cellphone.
You Don't want to keep your cellphone in your pocket for long
periods of time, if it overheatsor whatever the cell phone could
explode and cause you physicalharm so there's all these
different things that canhappen.
as far as our podcast for today,I think that if people could
(39:32):
make sure to take the parentstake the training.
Have your kids take thetraining.
It's not a lot of time.
We're talking about maybe twohours of your time to get really
good training at compliance,armor.com and go through the
testing.
And then you get micro trainingsevery week and every month to
keep you up to date and you andyour children should go through
it.
That's nowadays.
(39:54):
Aside from that patches, updateyour systems, make sure you're
not wasting time and oldoutdated systems.
Erin (40:00):
give your kids old computers unless they want to
take it apart.
Craig (40:03):
yeah.
And here's another thing too.
Don't give your kids or don'tgive anyone your old computers
or devices without propersanitization.
And what I mean by that?
You don't want to give yourcomputer that you were maybe
doing banking or financials on,and if you don't know how to
properly sanitize it and formatit and do all the work to prep
it that's how people stealidentity as well.
(40:24):
They'll garage sale it orwhatever.
And so you need to make sure youremove the hard drive or you
physically destroy it, or youpay for a certificate of
destruction from a companythat's well known and reputable
that can give you theattestation that it has been
properly destroyed.
Personally, for me, I justripped the hard drive out it
Blake (40:43):
Something I was just thinking about you Aaron.
If we wind back the clock andthis is probably going to be
counter intuitive to how Craiggot into cyber security, but if
you see your child taking apartelectronic device stop
immediately.
The reason why I say that isbecause there is, power supplies
in there..
I was looking at one of the, Ifix it tutorials for a Mac book
and some of the Mac books orsome of the Mac computers, like
(41:03):
the IMAX and stuff.
they have a 280 or somethingwatt power supply or 400 watt
power supply inside of thatcomputer.
So If a child touches the wrongarea, Hey, you're going to go to
light city.
Erin (41:17):
yeah.
Blake (41:18):
obviously we got lucky we're here.
Right.
But just a disclaimer.
So if you see your child takingit apart and an electronic
device, not a good idea.
Craig (41:25):
not necessarily a bad idea.
It just needs to be supervised.
Erin (41:29):
Make sure it's turned up.
Blake (41:30):
Let them take apart and let them get a can of kit.
Let him get a can a kit thatdoesn't have a power supply.
And let them build a little, araspberry PI there's safe ways
to do it, but yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
And then yeah, get monitoringsoftware so you can see what's
going on time usage and wherethey're visiting and where
they're spending their time.
Craig (41:47):
I remember back I think it was like 20 years ago now
when I got certified fromWebsense at Websense was
technology was like brand newstuff back then.
And it was surveillancetechnology for businesses to
monitor their employees and makesure they weren't going to
social media or whatever onlineshopping.
I think what it was 20 yearsago, social media wasn't really
(42:08):
a thing yet.
So anyway we would install thisstuff and oftentimes a lot of
businesses, they would justinstall it just to kind of
monitor and kind of see do wehave a problem at our company or
not?
And it gives them that depth andvisibility.
And it's just so interesting thepeople that you would think
wouldn't really do that, that doit.
(42:29):
it's just an eyeopeningexperience.
So that might be kind of a wayto start with children.
Like I said, it's not that youdon't trust them.
It's just that you want toprotect them and keep them safe
because the deck is prettystacked for things are bad to
happen and how easy it is forsomething bad to happen.
Erin (42:47):
Yeah.
Craig (42:47):
So in my opinion, I don't think it's a bad idea to.
Have technology like that totell you what's happening, where
people were going or where yourkids are growing or whatever.
But Yeah.
It's different for everyone.
It's a personal preference.
it's balance there's a lot toit.
But there are solutions likequad nine I recommended earlier
that are good solutions.
Now you don't get any kind ofgranular control with quad nine,
(43:08):
quad nine is free.
So if you want granular controlover, Hey, I don't want my kid
to go to weapon websites, or Idon't want my kids to go to the
bad websites or whatever.
You can get that granularcontrol with different kinds of
filtering technologies.
but the free stuff it is what itis.
You don't have any control forit, but it's better than
nothing.
Blake (43:28):
Yeah we, had a podcast where we mentioned encrypted
DNS.
And if you get encrypted DNSfrom us it was like the five
cheapest things you can do tosecure yourself today or
something is around$120 an endpoint per year.
Erin (43:42):
Yeah,
Craig (43:43):
Yeah, it's very inexpensive.
Blake (43:45):
go to compliance, armor.com and choose how many
end points you got.
Erin (43:49):
Boom.
Blake (43:49):
boom, 120 bucks a year.
It's less than your coffee.
Erin (43:53):
Yeah.
That's true.
Cheaper than your T
Blake (43:58):
That's right
Erin (43:59):
Turkish tea.
Blake (44:01):
We've done our hour here, paid our dues for the day.
Erin (44:04):
Yeah that was good.
And I think, Really informativeand I think that could be really
helpful for people and help tosecure the younger generation.
It's always a good thing.
Craig (44:13):
We just touched on the onion layers, but there's many
more layers that could be donethat these are just kind of easy
tips.
Some of them free that you couldimplement right away, but yeah,
be sure to reach out to us andwe can give you a more
customized approach.
Erin (44:25):
Yeah.
If you have any questions hit usup, you can also email us.
We do have apodcast@petronellatech.com email
now, too.
So feel free to use that youhave any questions or give us a
call and we'll be happy to helpyou out.
Blake (44:39):
We're here.
Erin (44:40):
We're all here because we're not all there.
All right, Have a good one guys.
Craig (44:47):
Alright.
Take care.
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