 com slash never miss the morning news watch we need our policemen to respond to crime we need unions not to dominate negotiations at school boards so that taxes go down but right now the other side has all the powers and we the reformers if you want to call them that if not republicans haven't figured out how to argue those things in persuasive ways ted dobrowski from wire points  It's all about big rhetoric and big fights, not about persuasion, logic, and reason. And that's, I think, a big part why the other side continues to dominate and why the reform side can't find any traction.  Between the Consumer Price Index, inflation, and job reports, it feels like you need a Ph.D. in economics to fully understand the economic news happening around us every day. That's why you need the Everyday Economics Podcast. Join hosts Chris Krug and economist Dr. Orfeh Devangi as they help you understand the economic world happening around you every day. Listen to the Everyday Economics Podcast at americastalking.com or wherever you get your podcasts.  Breaking news, that's what the Center Square does best. The stories other media outlets refuse to report, the Center Square's breaking them all the time. Stories about government waste and political spending. Stories about partisan agendas that hijack your tax dollars. The Center Square has it all covered and delivers the biggest news to your inbox as it happens. Sign up now for your state's Center Square newsletters at thecentersquare.com. That's thecentersquare.com.  The impact of a meal goes well beyond feeding our bodies, because when people don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, they can truly thrive, like Marta. And now we'll hear from our class valedictorian, who with our hard work never ceases to amaze us. Please welcome Marta Moreno. And Alex.  Hey, Alex, how did the interview go? I did it. I got the job. I can't believe it. I knew it. Let's meet up later to celebrate. And Diego.  I got first place at the science fair with my volcano project. That's amazing, sweetie. Congratulations. Because when people are fed, futures are nourished, and everyone deserves to live a full life. Join the movement to end hunger at feedingamerica.org slash act now. Feedingamerica.org slash act now. A public service announcement brought to you by Feeding America and the Ad Council. Donors choose. Support a classroom. Build a future.  Did you know that every year, public school teachers spend nearly $500 of their own money for student supplies? Let's do the math. That comes out to over $1.2 billion a year. And that's just not right. At DonorsChoose, we want students and teachers to have the tools they need for a great education. And now, more than ever, they need your help. Here's what you can do. Go to DonorsChoose.org and choose from teacher's requests that support reading,  Math, science, history, and more. Once a request is funded, we'll take care of shipping everything directly to the teacher. It's that easy. You'll receive thank you letters and photos from students and teachers and a report of how every dollar was spent. Teachers' needs have never been greater. Learn more at DonorsChoose.org. DonorsChoose. Support a classroom. Build a future.  Your news radio WJPF First Alert forecast calls for sunny skies today with a high near 91. Partly cloudy tonight and a low around 69. For your Sunday, sunny with a high near 93. Mostly clear skies Sunday night and a low of 70. For Monday, sunny with a high near 96. Clear skies Monday night with a low of 73.  It's Kim Commando on the voice of Southern Illinois Newsradio WJPF. This radio program is a copyrighted production of Westar Multimedia Entertainment and protected by the copyright laws. Any rebroadcast or use of this program for commercial, business, economic, or financial purposes without the written permission of Westar Multimedia Entertainment is strictly prohibited.  Hey, coming up in just a few minutes, we're talking about your Social Security Administration. They sent out a mass email, and I don't know how many folks have been saying to me, is this a scam? Do I need to get a new login? We're going to be talking about that. As well as if you're out and about in public, how easy it is for somebody to just see exactly what you're doing on your phone or tablet or laptop and just some ways to fix that.  Now, joining us here on the Kim Commando Show right now is our very own Allie Seligman, our amazing content queen. Hi there, Allie. Hi, Kim. So I don't know if I ever told you this story, but years ago I had two IT guys, which we have two IT guys now. It's always good to have two IT guys, if you can afford it, or gals, so that if one gets sick, you always have a backup. Because in our business, for example, if the studios are not working,  If we're not sending out newsletters, we can't do any of our work. Yeah. I mean, it becomes a bad day. Totally. And we're going to lose a whole bunch of money. So that's why, you know, redundancy in your business, your key positions is always super important. Super important.  So one day I'm upstairs and I hear, I hear like screaming, like, you're a jerk. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, like, what is that? Okay. So Jackie, my lovely assistant, she said, you know, I think it's the two IT guys that are screaming downstairs. Oh, no.  So I come downstairs, and I open the door to the server room, and there they were, like, perched, like, looking down at each other like crouching tigers and, like, holding up their fists like they were going to punch each other out. Oh, what the heck? Okay.  And then me, because I'm always so smart in these situations, I go in there, and, you know, I'm a big girl, not, okay? And I go in there, and I, like, do, like, a jumping jack, and I'm like, stop right there. In between them? In between them. Yeah. And then I'm like, what are you two fighting about? He doesn't know what he's doing, and he bad-mouthed me, and I'm smarter than him, and... Oh, brother. Yeah. So then I said, and then I told him. You know what I told him? What? I said,  if you guys want to beat each other up, you can. But you better do it after 5 o'clock and off of my property. This is like when kids would wait to go fight after school. Yes, exactly. But your IT department is super important.  It sure is. And think about all the control they have over everything that we do. I mean, most businesses run on tech, like you just said, ours, right? If we didn't have our stuff working, we can't work. We can't put out the products that we do. And that's true for a lot of businesses. So we saw this story.  I've seen iterations of this before, but this one was particularly painful to read. So this guy is a software engineer, and he essentially is in control of all the remote desktops, remote computers. So you've worked on one if you've ever done, like, you know, you've logged in, like, this is my work machine, but I'm going to access it from home. Okay, so this guy has a lot of access at the company he works for, right? Because he can get into any computer.  Well, he used that access to do a ransomware attack on the company. On his own company? His own company. Nice. Yeah, he went through, he deleted all their backups. He deleted all of the IT administrators out of the system so nobody else could do anything. And then he said, yeah, just give me $750,000 and we'll call it a day. Okay, did they know it was him or was he pretending to be like some gang from Singapore or something?  Well, that's the thing. He was pretending to be someone else, but pretty quickly they figured out, oh, this is this jerk who works in this department. Did they go through how they figured it out? They didn't. They haven't released that. I know. Wouldn't you love to see the full in-depth? Yeah. Maybe that'll be like a miniseries someday. Yeah. I mean, because here, let's make some guesses. Okay. It could be like they hired a forensic team. For sure. Okay.  It could be that this person talks in a really specific way and they were like, wait, that sounds like, what's his name?  Yeah, they could be doing it that way. Or he told somebody. Sure. Or somebody in the IT department knew that he was like working late or logging in. I mean, you know, because you always leave a trail. Yes, exactly. There are all these clues, right? And so, yeah, really hard to get away with stuff like this, especially if it's an inside job. So dumb. But if you own a business and you heard that story and thought like...  Well, dang, what would I do if someone who worked for me and controlled all this stuff that maybe I don't know how to deal with? Like, how do I protect myself from that? And there are some things you can do. I've got three. Okay. Number one is backups because, okay, this guy went in and deleted all their backups. Well, the problem here, why did he have access to all the backups?  There is a rule in InfoSecurity, 3-2-1 backup rule. We've talked about it before. Basically, you want three different copies of your data. You want them on two different types of media. So maybe one's in the cloud, one's on a drive, right? And you want one copy that you keep off-site. Now, it used to be that we talked about this because what if there was, I don't know, a storm or the building got destroyed, a fire, whatever. Well, what if your IT guy's the one going,  Yeah. So a lot of companies will do maybe someone in HR, right? Takes an encrypted version and keeps it in a safe. Generally it's something like that where it's kept in a really safe place. You don't have to do this too often. You probably just need to do your documents, you know, your important stuff annually. You can do it more often if you want. And yes, there are companies that will help you figure out how to do this or even do it for you. If you're just like, I have no idea where to start with that.  And this is not like the most sexiest topic. I know some of you are sitting there going like, oh, God, backups. Who was talking about backups? Backups. Allie's here with backups again. But it might not be sexy, but trust me, if this is a thing that saves your business...  It's I mean, what's sexier than that, Kim? Yeah. And then you also have to make sure, like, you know, do certain people really need to have access to things where you audit accounts to say, like, you know, does Bob and accounting really need to have this? Absolutely. There's this thing. It's called the principle of least privilege. Say that to your I.T. person. They're going to be like, whoa, you are so smart. Principle of least privilege is essentially give people the access they need to do their jobs and nothing more.  So if I work in marketing, should I have access to all of the audio files for the show? No, probably not. I don't need that. Right? So you give people what they need and regularly, yes, you want to go through and make sure that nobody has access that they shouldn't, especially when you have people leave. That should be part of your process. And then finally, one more term that...  Seriously, say this to an IT person, and they're going to be super impressed. These are like your dork points for the week, and I say dork lovingly. It's called SEAM, Security Event and Incident Management. Oh, yes. This essentially means when certain things happen in your system, you should be alerted to that automatically. If passwords are changing, accounts are being deleted, certain things are being accessed,  You should know about it, and there are ways to set those up. Now, I would say if you are outsourcing all of your IT, don't have the same person who's running the day-to-day do that. Hire someone else. Exactly. Yeah. And then you get those updates. If you have someone on your staff that is a little more techie and maybe more involved with that, perhaps you have someone who is an in-house IT person. Okay. But then you all get those updates. So, you know, part of the problem here, this guy was doing so much stuff. He was doing everything.  Apparently nobody knew about it. Okay, so give us those two techno terms that we can leave people with. Okay. So that when they say these two, that I need from you, these two things, and that their IT person will be looking at them like going like, whoa. Yeah, okay. Principle of least privilege. Yes, okay, principle of least privilege. And then we've got security event and incident management. Yes, yeah.  So just, you just spout that out. Just say, you know, hey, you know what guys, I was thinking, I need these two things. Hey guys, could I review the seam? And they're going to be like, whoa, we're not messing with this person. And if they say, what is it? You got problems. Then you got problems. You got problems. Al, thanks as always for being here. We appreciate it because there's always changes and this is important stuff. I mean, you know, any size business, you need to make sure that you know exactly what's going on in the IT-verse.  Hey, do you need statistics to convince you to finally bite the bullet and get antivirus software? Well, here's the cold hard truth. Ransomware makes up 68% of cyber attacks. 72% of businesses were attacked by ransomware last year. Phishing scams are the most reported cyber crime in the U.S. And last but not least, AI-powered cyber crimes are rumored to make up 85% of these scams.  Now, when you're not using good, solid antivirus software, you are at a major risk, period. Don't wait for the worst to happen. Protect yourself. My pick for antivirus security software is the award-winning TotalAV. Go to protectwithkim.com right now, and you'll get protection just $19 for the first year. That's protectwithkim, protectwithkim.com. Hey, if you get an email from the Social Security Administration about creating a new account at login.gov,  It is legit. We have all the details over at commando.com. All right, still to come, we're going to go back to all of your phone calls here on the Kim Commando Show.  Burglars and thieves use the best technology available to target and map out the homes they plan to hit. One of their most important tools is Google Maps Street View. Using it, they can stalk your home at all angles without ever getting near you until the day they hit.  I'm Kim Commando for NetSuite. Attention business owners, get a one-of-a-kind flexible financing program at netsuite.com slash Kim. First things first, search for your own home using Google Maps Street View. Multiple photos of your home taken from Google's car cameras and showing all angles of your home will pop up.  This lets bad actors quickly check out your home online and plot a way inside. And look at the photos carefully. If your car's license plate is visible, that's where to start. Look for identifiable faces of family members or go all out. Request that all photos of your home be slightly blurred. At the upper left corner of the screen, you'll see a button labeled Report a Problem. This is where to put in your request.  You're going to love my free newsletter. Sign up at GetKim.com. Okay, quick math. The less your business spends on operations, on multiple systems, on delivering your product or service, the more money you keep. It's obvious. But with higher expenses on materials, employees, distribution, and borrowing, everything costs more. So to reduce costs and headaches, small businesses are graduating to NetSuite by Oracle.  NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With NetSuite, you reduce IT costs because NetSuite lives in the cloud with no hardware required. Access from anywhere. You cut the cost of maintaining multiple systems because you've got one unified business management suite. And you're improving efficiency by bringing all your major business processes into one platform, slashing manual tasks and errors. So do the math. See how you'll profit with NetSuite.  NetSuite has extended its one-of-a-kind flexible financing program for a few more weeks. Head to netsuite.com slash Kim. That's netsuite.com slash Kim. netsuite.com slash Kim. Never miss the Morning News Watch. I think the beauty is we have both worlds.  SIU Chancellor Austin Lane. And I was a community college president. I'm all for certificates and, you know, machining, welding positions where you can go right into work. Those are great. But, you know, I just have not seen from a higher education standpoint at the university that there's been any type of relaxing of, you know, not needing a bachelor's degree or a master's degree in some cases for an entry-level position. You know, it sometimes means we don't get along.  Hey, y'all, I'm Dierks Bentley. You know me as a country singer, but I'm also a longtime motorcycle rider. I take my safety very seriously, and you should too. So do what I do. Make sure you're properly trained, that you're wearing the right gear, and that your bike's in good riding condition. And always remember, don't drink and ride. For more information, visit StartSeeingMotorcycles.org. Brought to you by the Illinois Department of Transportation, Division of Traffic Safety. Tech questions? Get them answered with Kim Commando on NewsRadio WJPF.  Stop robocalls, spam texts, and junk email from blowing up your phone. Remove yourself from the Internet. It's at privacykim.com for my exclusive deal with Incogni. You're going to get 60% off right now at privacykim.com. Once again, that's privacykim.com. Marie in San Diego, California. Hi there, Marie. Hi. How are you? I'm good. Good. How can I help you? So I am helping a family member close his business.  And we'll be dealing with vendors and clients. And I do not want the phone calls coming to my cell phone because in closing the business, we canceled the business phone. And I need help. I need help. You sound so frustrated, Marie.  Oh, my God. You have no idea. Well, you know what? The gift is your emails with the funny pictures. Oh, good. It brings me joy. Right now, it's been a real storm. Well, it's a lot of work. It is. You know, it's a lot of work. Okay, I'm going to make your life easier. So, you ready? Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath. Ready? Okay, ready? Taking that deep breath. I don't hear it, Marie. Yes.  Okay, all right, okay. What we're going to do is we're going to, on your current phone, so you don't have to buy another phone, okay, or get another phone, is that you're going to set up a Google Voice account. Google Voice will give you a phone number for calls, texts, voicemails. You can use that number to make phone calls. You can get voicemail transcripts right in your inbox, like emails. You don't get spam messages. You can block unwanted calls.  The thing, too, is because of this business is that when somebody calls, that phone number is that you can screen that call before you answer. So you can say, who is this? You will say, like, that you've reached a Google voice number. Say who you are. And then you can hit one to receive the call, two not to receive the call.  And what's nice about this too is that you will hear this, it will be distinct ring from what you already have on your phone. And so you know when that Google voice number rings, you know it's coming in just for the business. Make sense?  Yeah. Is it possible, because I have someone else that's going to be helping me with some of the vendors, to have a separate phone? Well, you can give them access to the voice number, and you can give them access to the transcripts and the emails and things like that. But it's going to ring on your phone. That's what it's going to ring. You know, you can also set up a phone tree.  on a Google Voice number, which that may be another solution for you, is that press 1 if you're calling about this, press 2 about this, press 3. And then if somebody presses 3, that call could be forwarded to another number. Oh. So you have some different options there. Press 1 if you just want to know the mailing address or what the procedures are if you're looking for a form. I don't know what kind of business it is, so I can't really give you any specifics.  Other than, you know, you know how voice trees work. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the vendor calls can go to this other person. Yes. And the client calls can come to me. That can work. Yes. So I'm going to put you on hold.  And then Amber, who's screening calls today, she'll give you a direct link where you can get more information about Google Voice. It's really a terrific solution for a lot of different scenarios. We actually helped set a Catholic monk up with a Google Voice number in Virginia because, oh my gosh, the poor guy. At the food bank, everybody's calling his personal cell phone number even when he needed to give last rites at midnight. And so we facilitated with setting up his Google Voice number  and then setting up the phone tree in Spanish and English, and we are still taking care of whatever costs are associated with that to this day. It really is a very, very powerful, powerful tool out there for a lot of folks. Again, it's a Google Voice account. So, Marie, hang on the line and take another deep breath because life is good again. Let's see, Rick in Indianapolis, you're up next. Hi, Kim, Digital Goddess.  Finally, somebody shows me some respect around here. Thank you. There you go. Thank you for taking my call. You betcha. What's going on? I play this one really basic solitaire game just about every day.  I keep getting these pop-up ads, which I don't care to pay to get them out there. And the one that's really grabbed my attention is, you can make cash playing bingo or playing this solitaire. And it just, I was raised to think that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. What can you tell me about these things?  well i hate to break it to you but by playing solitaire or bingo or whatever that game is online you are not going to be able to pay your bills okay most of these apps you you gain points and as you get more points is that that's when you can turn it into a gift card and typically they won't even send you the gift card until you reach at least 10 or 15 or even 20 some folks the folks that i have spoken to the most that they make is probably 20 a month  And now if you do compete and sometimes in tournaments, there may be some cash prizes for the tournaments, but it's not like solitaire is going to be this big tournament play and it's not like e-sports. So so then you start thinking like, all right, so now I'm playing solitaire and I'm playing for free because I don't want to pay. So this way I don't see the ads. So what are they doing? That's where you have to look at your permissions.  And look at the terms and conditions, because this solitaire game could be getting a copy of, you know, anything that you have on your phone. It could be tracking your location. It could be tracking what you buy online, the ads that you see. And so in case you're ever wondering, like, you know, is Facebook really listening?  Because a lot of people think that, you know, like you say something and you're all of a sudden you're like, you start seeing ads for it on Facebook. Is that it's not necessarily that's Facebook's listening. It could be one of these nefarious apps that you're using. And the app is actually doing the listening and doing all the tracking, but then selling that information off to Facebook. So, you know, you used a very good phrase, Rick, and that was.  If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably bad, okay? So for you to sit there and play solitaire or whatever and to think that you're going to make a whole bunch of money, it's just not realistic. Now, if you do need to make money, there are legitimate ways for you to make money. Like, for example, you could sign up for Amazon Turk. And so instead of playing solitaire, maybe you sort...  I don't know, a list, or you say, what color is this on the screen? Things that AI just can't do on a regular basis with a lot of accuracy, humans are doing. Again, that's Amazon Turk. You can just sign up. And, you know, I actually interviewed a guy who's making like 40 grand a year in his spare time on Amazon Turk. So you want to look for legitimate opportunities. And if that doesn't float your boat, we have a whole list of them over at commando.com.  Just search for make money at home. And the worst thing you can do, though, is to Google search that. So don't do that because you will get scammed. So just do that search work for home over at commando.com because that's where you'll see a whole list of great opportunities. Hey, by the way, if you're too shy to come on a big time show or podcast, you're like, oh, I have a question for you, Kim Commando. Well, just go to the right place. Commando.com and hit the link at the top that says Ask Kim.  All right, still to come, a quick tip about protecting your screen in public here on the Kim Commando Show.  This year, Dell Technologies' back-to-school event is delivering impressive tech with an inspiring purpose. Learn how Dell is helping ComputerAid, whose work is helping solar community hubs with tech and AI literacy skills to empower remote, displaced, or disconnected communities around the world. Help Dell make a difference and shop AI-ready PCs powered by Snapdragon X-series processors.  At Dell.com slash deals. That's Dell.com slash deals. If you're 55 and up, T-Mobile has plans built just for you. Like two lines of talk, text, and data for just $30 a line. That's a 45% savings versus Verizon and AT&T. Experience all this and more on America's largest 5G network. At T-Mobile, customers 55 and up can get two lines of talk, text, and data for just $30 a line. Switch today.  You can listen to NewsRadio WJPF anywhere, anytime. Catch 1340 and 1020 AM on FM at 99.5 or 107.9. You can also stream from our website. Or you can download the NewsRadio WJPF app from Google Play or the Apple Store. It's free. It sounds great no matter where you are. The NewsRadio WJPF app.  Search and find it on Apple and Google and take us anywhere, anytime.  I met him when he was in his 30s. 15 years old with multiple disabilities. It was a traumatic brain injury. Several surgeries led to his swallowing disorder. His goal was to get back to work. Social interaction was the key to helping him. Oh, he was dedicated. When he ate, his friends cheered. And he made it back to work. Everyone has the right to communicate. Find an ASHA-certified speech-language pathologist today at ASHA.org slash public.  It's America's digital goddess. Back to Kim Commando on NewsRadio WJPN.  it's called shoulder surfing with just a quick glance at your screen a nearby stranger can compromise your privacy so how do you protect yourself something called privacy screen filters these are thin attachable films for your devices that will just obscure your screen here's how they work to anyone not directly in front of you the screen appears dark and so it keeps sensitive information just totally out of sight and if possible you want to face the wall or a corner to prevent anybody from looking over your shoulder  And if you are just leaving your laptop for a minute, if you're on Windows, hit the Windows key and the letter L. If on a Mac, Command-Control-Q. You automatically lock your device. Hey, don't forget to enter to win that brand new iPhone. You want to go to winfromkim.com. Once again, that's winfromkim.com. And good luck.  Hey Dad, how do airplanes fly? What's in this box? Is this tree good for climbing? How are babies made? What does this thing do?  Kids are curious about everything, including guns. Talking to them about gun safety in your home is a good first step, but you can do more. Always keep your guns locked, unloaded, and stored separately from ammunition. Safe gun storage saves lives. Learn how to make your home safer at nfamilyfire.org. That's nfamilyfire.org. Brought to you by N Family Fire, Brady and the Ad Council.  Need to replace your Social Security card? In most states, you can request one online with a My Social Security account. A My Social Security account gives you secure access to your personal earnings history and benefit status. You can also get a proof of income letter, estimate and apply for benefits, and more. Save time. Go online. Open a My Social Security account at ssa.gov slash myaccount. Social Security. Securing today and tomorrow.  You're listening to News Radio WJPF Heron, 1340 a.m. and 99.5 f.m. And WCIL Carbondale, 1020 a.m. and 107.9 f.m. A proud member of River Radio, a division of Max Media. From ABC News, I'm Michelle Franzen. Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams will spend two more seasons up at the International Space Station. NASA announcing today the two astronauts on board the troubled test flight of Boeing's Starliner in June.