 Yeah, welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech Tech Talks. And today we're responding on an expedited basis. Attila Suresh of SIPAC has agreed to join us on short notice. And we're going to talk about Maui, of course, Maui. What a sad story for Hawaii. This is really a tremendous tragedy. All those lives lost and all that property destroyed and all the effects of the Maui economy in the state, it's pretty scary. If you thought that we were exempt from climate change, think again. Welcome to the show Attila, nice to see you. I'm sorry about the circumstances. Yeah, Jay, it's always nice to see your face, but today's an especially somber day, especially this close to the tragedy. So our hearts and prayers go out to the victims and just, you know, our aana as a whole. I mean, this is not something that just affects Maui. We're all going to feel this on every island. Not only affects tourism, but the economy. And, you know, it's my hope that even though there was a lot of damage, at least the loss of life wasn't worse than it was. And, you know, homes can be rebuilt, the lives can't. So I'm hoping that, you know, everyone does stay safe. And again, our prayers are out there with them. You know, they keep saying the fire is 80% contained, but that means 20% is not contained. It's a national emergency to see this loss of life and loss of property. And you're right, you know, it has significant effect on the people who died, of course, the people who survived, the county of Maui and of course the state. So we can, you know, I think we have to make the point that Hawaii is not exempt. Hawaii is not exempt from secondary effects like the economic effect. Not everybody who thought they had insurance will have insurance. And not everybody who would like to rebuild will be in a position to rebuild. Not everybody who has the money to rebuild will be able to rebuild right away. You know, there's a lot of them out there, but query are there contractors who are available to rebuild. And everybody has a significant problem in getting his or her life together. Some of those families are gonna suffer for years. You know, if you were planning out how long it takes to get back to the way it was a couple of days ago, it's years. It's not only you with the people around you with the mesh of social society around you and you won't be able to function at home or in business, but with your family or all the connections you have every day for a very, very tragic. So Attila, you know, we should talk about how this does affect the economy. We should talk about how this affects the tourism industry, for example. If I'm a potential tourist out there and I see this happening, what's my reaction? And how much less likely am I to visit a law estate? Well, the hope is, I mean, just, you know, obviously, just from my opinion, I'm not an economist, but I think we can all agree that it's safe to say that Hawaii is a pretty big place and hopefully the tourism will continue and maybe they'll go to other islands giving Maui a chance to rebuild. Of course, that's gonna become a problem for Maui's economy, but, you know, the hope is that the tourism will continue to go. Hawaii as a brand should stay strong and, you know, Waikiki's still here, Kauai, Big Island, plenty of places to visit and hopefully the tourism will keep coming in. Would you agree? I would. And I think that people will have to ask themselves whether they think Hawaii is as safe as it was, you know, because climate change has been wrecking the country, the world. And we have been exempt. We have thought that we have nice trade winds and, you know, generally good weather. Somehow we're far away from the madding effects of climate change, but this is kind of a shock. We're not far away and it can reach us. And what's more, and this is the point of my comment anyway, why can't this happen again? It can. Climate change is accelerating. It's, you know, it's getting worse all the time. And if you say that we are vulnerable in one way or the other, that vulnerability isn't going away. It'll be back. So this is a kind of wake-up call for the state in general in terms of its brand and its marketing, but also every single individual, you know, are you prepared for a storm? Are you prepared for a fire? Do you have a plan? I doubt that a lot of people are now even thinking like that. Didn't they have a plan? What are they gonna do now? You know, you can't spend too much time in the community center. You have to find a way to rebuild your life. And a lot of people have no idea how they're gonna do that. Well, one thing you can bet on is change. You know, as a society, as human race, I mean, if you open up any history book, things change a lot over time. And sometimes it's climate, sometimes it's political. Who knows? Sometimes it's biological, right? We've had, what, COVID? That was a biological change we sure all went through. Now we're going through a technological revolution that, you know, 10 years, 15 years ago, didn't exist. So there's different threats. There's different problems, right? Climate change, like you said, is accelerating. I'm not a climate scientist, but I think all of us have a pretty good understanding of the way that the basics of the world works in terms of climate. You make it hotter, it messes things up. And in this case in particular, from what I understand, it was a very hot summer and we got the tail end of a hurricane that went by and it kicked up a bunch of wind and all it took was one down telephone pole to ignite a spark. And then that spark was carried over by 50 mile per hour winds over miles and miles and it just kept igniting sparks all along the way. And, you know, from what I'm told, that this is our coolest summer to come. So expect more hot summers. And it's just the way it is. You know, if you wanna argue with someone about it, you can argue with the globe, I guess. There's no way around it. We're gonna have hotter summers and colder winters and everyone on the planet is going to be affected by climate change. There's no safe place to go. There's no climate refuge. It's just how bad is it gonna be where you are? Yeah. Yeah, never forget, you never argue with mother nature. That doesn't work. You know, one thing you said, I think it bears for the comment and that is the way the Maui economy, the Maui condition, the Maui, you know, full, full-throated disaster affects Maui. It also affects the rest of the state. Like it or not, we are interdependent. Like it or not, every island depends on every other island. And to the extent that Maui's economy is damaged in so many ways, we don't even know how many ways yet, Oahu will be affected. If you wanna sit back and think, oh gee, those poor people in Maui doesn't affect me. I live in Oahu or Kauai for the big island? No, it's gonna affect you because the economy is all interdependent. And so it's the same kind of question as with climate change. If you think you're going to be exempt, think again. If you think that Maui is not gonna affect your island, your other island, think again. And I also wanna open the discussion with you about the bad guys, the vultures, who take advantage of disasters like this. They sort of, they revel and they take advantage of people who have experiences like this disaster. Sort of a joy in the other guy's misfortune. They're coming, aren't they? Yeah, and you know what's good about this is that it's been around a long time. So no surprises here. And in fact, I was talking to a contractor that just this morning about what's going on in Maui. And he said, you know, this reminds me of Iniki. He says, when Iniki came, this was a long time ago, there was all these scams happening too and a bunch of people lost money then as well. And my response was, I hope that in today's world where we're better connected than ever and more tech savvy than ever, that we're gonna be more skeptical than ever too. And hopefully not fall for those same scams that the folks back in the Iniki days fell for. And so just yesterday, it was yesterday or the day before when the big news broke, we all had like an all team meeting. And usually in the mornings we have our huddles and we talk about the things that nerds talk about. But this time it was completely different conversation. I said, okay, how can we be of service? We're all smart guys. We're great with keyboards and screens and all that other stuff behind it. How can we help get the word out or help in some way? Because I think someone who's just lost their home, maybe they don't need some other, something shipped to them, a physical thing. Maybe they just need a little bit of knowledge or harm themselves with something that will prevent a bigger catastrophe from happening. And then that's where we put together a bunch of resources, put it up on our website. It's on the SIPAC DeepWatch blog page. So it's SIPAC.com, C-Y-P-A-C. And in short, we're trying to assemble resources that everyone can use everything from how to reach 911 operators to where to take their pets who have been displaced because there's a lot of pets and horses and other four legged animals that need a place to go when their home is burned down to shelter in place locations and so on. So we've tried to put those resources together and what we found is that folks have been reaching out to us telling us that they've already firsthand experienced some scammers starting to operate. And I'll explain what that means. So if you ever walked into an FBI field office, you'll see that they have a lot of TVs on the walls and it's because they're watching the news. They want to see what's going on. If there's a bombing, right? Be nice to know about it. And in the same vein, these bad guys, these bad actors, they have access to the same news you and I do. And when they see a disaster like this, thousands of people displaced and extreme property damage, what do you think they start to do? Where's that Mr. Burns thing, right? They do this. They get ready to, they get ready to palace. And the first phase is to do information gathering. That's part of the OSINT framework. So they want to get information about, who the decision makers are, who they could impersonate in order to try to scam someone out of some money. And the Honolulu Board of Realtors just recently had an incident and they published it. They reported it to the FBI's Internet Crime and Complaint Center, whereby unknown actors were aggressively calling different locations of theirs trying to find out principal brokers and those who might be in charge of properties on Maui. I don't know what the end game is here, but the fact that they're doing this and they're trying to impersonate those principal brokers, that could be an issue because those are trusted members of the community. They have experienced some real estate and obviously the real estate on Maui has changed. So I don't know what they're after, but this is what ground zero day one of what's going on. What we've seen in the past are scams for insurance. So they'll say something like, for example, I'm from FEMA in order to process your application, I need a $1,000 fee. They will never ask for that, especially by phone. And if you are ever approached by someone who is claiming to be a federal official, even if they show identification, they are not allowed to ask for money. So if they ask you for any sort of money, face value, then there's something's up and it's not legitimate. And we expect that these scams are gonna become hot and heavy. One of the calls I had just yesterday was about another lady who brought in a lot of money to a nonprofit. And the question remained, well, let's see if there's six figures in this nonprofit on this GoFundMe or page, then where does that money go? How can we guarantee that of those, let's say $100,000 was raised, of that $100,000, how much of that actually goes to help the people of Maui? Is it 90%? Is it 99% or is it 50%? There's a big difference, especially when we're dealing with tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. So from a person personally who wants to be able to help the community, it's important to ask those kind of questions to those funding sources where you may be, say buying t-shirts. I just got on my inbox about 20 minutes ago. They're trying to sell t-shirts to raise money. Hawaii Food Bank is, for example, a really strong place to put your funds. Maui Food Bank, they have a good proven track records. But some of these pop-ups or nonprofits, even though they may mean well, once the money actually comes in, it could be mismanaged. So having clear transparency is super important. Asking those hard questions upfront and having that distinction between the two, right? That's gonna be really critical. So. You know, people in Hawaii are very caring and especially at a time like this, they remember what happened in Hilo in the 40s and they want to help their fellow. They want to extend the Loha spirit. And so they're kind of vulnerable that way. Because if I get out into the media and I try to raise money on the notion that I'm the person you should give your money or your goods to because I'm gonna help those who have been disadvantaged in the Maui disaster, then a lot of people without thinking too much about it would give the money because that's Hawaii. Hawaii cares. And the problem is we make ourselves a kind of target. I'm pleased to be in a state where people care. And I see all the television appeals to give money to this and that and whatnot. But you're right. You have to give it to somebody with some degree of reputation with some level of confidence. Otherwise you could be, you could be scammed. But you know, one thing, Attila, yesterday, in the waking hours after the fire, that previous night, friend of mine lives on Maui calls me up. This is six o'clock in the morning and tells me what happened. And I'm just broke it over it. Yeah, he lost his house. All gone. And all the memorabilia, all the collection, all the stuff he'd accumulated in his lifetime. Oh, all gone. And you don't realize just how much pain that is emotionally. So I said, hey, let's talk some more. I wanna hear the detail. And he said, you know what? I'm really having trouble talking to anybody because my computer's down. My computer was burned in the fire. I don't have a computer. And if I did have a computer, there would be no broadband. So, you know, I think we should distinguish between scams that depend on people who still have broadband and people who have lost broadband, lost their electronic connection to the community in every way and query, you know, what do they do? What do they do to get the benefit of people giving and expressing aloha? And, you know, how do they function without a computer? A lot of them don't have phones either. Nothing, they're isolated. And so a scammer would have a lot of trouble reaching that person. On the other hand, that person would have a lot of trouble, you know, deriving the benefit of all the gift giving. Yeah, I mean, from a technology standpoint, you know, smart phones are essentially computers. I mean, there's not much difference anymore. And social media has been a real strong medium. One thing that I have observed, and I wasn't really sure how to bring this up, so maybe you can help me, Jay, is that folks are putting a lot of personal information onto Facebook, understandably so, because they are, you know, they're looking for loved ones. They're, it's something that, you know, at a time of emergency, you just put it out there, right? The only thing I would caution is just be conscious that that information you put out will be there forever, whether you delete the post or not, like all this stuff gets scraped and cashed and it's dark-eyed. So just be aware that, you know, after things have calmed down and the emergency is over and we're rebuilding, if there's something that you put out on social media that was maybe really private information, that's still gonna be out there. So just be conscious, right? Yeah. Sure, let me add a point to that, is that it's out there, it's floating around, and it may be just a little piece of information about you, just one data point about you. And, you know, you could, you know, you could think, well, you know, that's just one little data point. And yeah, I made a mistake by providing that to somebody, but, you know, they don't really care about me and I'm not gonna worry about it. However, however, and I would like your opinion on this, that little one piece of data is being floated in the dark web. And if somebody is collecting data on me, using, you know, technology, using database technology, just this little one piece of data and it floats around to somebody who is collecting data on me, all of a sudden they have that and now they have one more element to scam me. And so you can't be cavalier about losing one piece of data because you were silly. You have to assume, not only is it out there forever, but that while we are sitting around, there are people using and developing very sophisticated programs to accumulate my profile, right? Well, let's go simpler than that. Because what you're describing is data mining and it's a whole conversation on its own. That's how Amazon functions, eBay and every other major retailer. Let's say you put your cell phone out there, right? Your cell phone number. This is me, this is my cell phone number. It's now very easy for a scammer to say, oh, I'm looking for Alex. Oh yeah, this is Alex, this is my cell phone number. Great, I am an insurance adjuster for your home. In order for us to get the process started, we need $2,000, right? Now that's kind of hard to stop once you've put your cell phone number out there. There's a quick, you know, correlation between the two, easy to gather data. However, if you put out there that to contact me through Facebook Messenger, I'm using Facebook because everyone's on Facebook, you know, please instant message me on Facebook Messenger if you find my dog, for example, instead of calling my phone if you find my dog, right? So have some like discretion on that. So I think that's the simplest way to start because everyone's putting their cell phone numbers on the Facebook groups that I've been seeing, which under normal circumstances, they wouldn't do, right? Because, you know, you're putting out a lot of information. Everyone's panicked and I get it. But if you do have data service, then which most, I don't believe the data service is completely down. There are some parts of the island where data service is disrupted, but overall it is still working. Use Facebook Messenger to communicate instead of your cell phone, that's all I'm saying. Yeah, you know, but you make me think about one other aspect of this thing. Instead of people will use their phones and use Facebook to connect with family, for example. I think one of the biggest social impacts of a disaster, an emergency like this, is that people are isolated. They don't have their regular connections. Their regular lives gone. They may not have their dog for comfort. They may not have their family for comfort. They may not be able to, you know, have a social experience which gives them some comfort in their ordinary lives. Now they don't have an ordinary life and they are scared and they are concerned about the future and they need comfort. So they go on Facebook for love. They go on Facebook to find people in the bubble of that pain. They wanna share their experience. And there are people out there who are worthy people to share the experience with. But there are also people out there who would take advantage of that. Okay, who capitalize on love or the need for love. Yeah, I think we talked about a few episodes ago about romance scams and how that all works. And it's true, I'm thinking you get hundreds of thousands of dollars out of vulnerable people. I think in this case though, Jay, there's plenty of people to commiserate with on your experience. It is a massive, massive event. And everyone is affected on Maui, even if they weren't in the danger zone or if they made it out, I mean, everyone is 100% effective. And when you're sheltered in place and you've lost everything, there are other people that are there to comfort you. And I really like what you said earlier, by the way, which was that, you know, you're really proud to live in a state where people care so much because people do. And like you said, it's not just a Maui problem. This is the entire state, everyone here. It's a major tragedy. And just know if you are listening to this and you were affected by it directly, there are people out there who are caring about you that you don't even know about. It's true, but also there are people out there who are looking to take advantage of you. And I wonder if we could get a sort of a profile on a black hat here. Who is this person who would take advantage of somebody who's just been the victim of a disaster like this? Maybe the family of someone who died or a person who lost his home and everything who will not be able to replace it. And somebody would come in and take advantage of him or them. And is this person, this black hat person, a Hawaii resident? Or is this somebody from Bulgaria? How does that work? Well, it's probably neither. I don't think anyone who lives in Hawaii is gonna try to pull a fast one on someone who's lost everything because of the fire. Or if they do, then they deserve what's coming. But yeah, generally, these are folks in third world countries. Some of them are human trafficked victims. They're gone. They go through really bad experiences before they end up on the far end of this scam. Luckily, I believe that we are a little bit smarter as a society here than we were even just 10, 15 years ago or back in the time of Iniki when folks were a lot more trusting of folks that were coming to them, asking for money and impersonating law enforcement and so on. But yeah, these bad guys are out there. And in fact, if you wanna get a good laugh on YouTube, there's lots of videos on scam baiting. And what these guys do is they impersonate little old ladies. Oh, really? Oh yeah, impersonate little old ladies. They have voice modulator. They don't need anything fancy. Just even a microphone like this, it'll do it. Right, voice modulator sound like a little old lady and they say, oh, hello, who are you? Oh, you're the IRS. Okay, what do you want me to do? And they say, oh, go to Walmart and buy some gift cards. Otherwise we're gonna come arrest you. And then they go to Walmart and they play little background noises and they're like, I can't pay at the register with a check for a gift card. They drive the scammers crazy, the scam baiters. And so it is called scam baiting, which is where kind of I got the name, the Maui oils is scam bait for scammers. It really is. And sure enough, at the end of it, they flip off the voice modulator and they say, oh, hey, I'm so-and-so person and you weren't talking to an old lady the whole time. How could you do this to a little old lady who barely has any money to survive based on the story I gave you? And why would you behave like this? And they feel completely entitled and there's no remorse in any of these videos. So yeah, those people out there, they're bad people out there. Sorry, guys. And, you know- What would you say to them? You can't stop that. You can't stop the bad guys. Well, yeah, take a moment. Talk to them. Talk to them now. Let's say they're listening to what you have to say. What would you say to them about taking advantage of people who are vulnerable because of these fires? Well, you know, what comes around goes around. It's not in this life than the next one. So, you know, just don't do anything you wouldn't want done to you. So, you know, golden rule. That's pretty much it. And I can only hope that, you know, through the small efforts that we take with these, you know, ThinkTech videos or blogs or community education, that they will be less successful over time. And hopefully they can go on and try to make an honest living elsewhere. Is it possible to catch them? Is there a kind of, what am I, kind of scenario now where they would be not so careful and they could make a mistake, taking advantage of somebody thinking they could get away with it because of the fires, where they become more vulnerable to prosecution. Well, as far as I know, criminal behavior has been around since the time of the Greeks. Maybe before then. Probably before them, yeah, okay. So, I don't think this human nature and this is a part of the human condition. And what you can do is if you don't fall into that camp, if you're not a criminal and you decided that you don't want to live your life in this way, to educate yourself against those that will. You know, when I was a little younger, I used to say, don't take candy from strangers. Well, same rules apply. Don't take, you know, digital bait from the bad guys. Because they'll throw you in your van and you'll disappear, right? You don't want that. Yeah. Well, I just wanted to ask you one other thing. Is it right now we're kind of predicting that, you know, that this is likely to happen simply because of your experience and what you see little things that you have learned over the years that make you know the human nature involved and how some people, you know, do this? And my question to you is, we're here one day out. We're here, the fires haven't been put out yet. The people who lost their homes, you know, have not settled down even where to go and sleep. People who have died are, you know, so tragic. Their families hardly get used to it. And so let's look forward for it a day or two or a week or a month. Is the scenario that you're describing the shot in front of people come and take advantage, is that going to increase over time? I think it's always gonna evolve. And I think that's fair to say, right? No, the strategies do evolve, but there are genuine human fallacies that we all have. And one of them, for example, is a sense of urgency, right? When we're stressed, right? Because of a natural disaster or because we've been in a car accident or because we've gotten some bad news, right? When we're stressed, we can't make good decisions. I don't care who, how smart you are or who you are or whatever, brain doesn't work. So in those circumstances, you don't want to be making big financial decisions, big decisions that could involve your future. And scammers will find new and novel ways to get you into that point of stress. An example I gave you earlier with the old lady, they say, oh, you know, the police are coming to get you unless you send us gift cards to the IRS. I mean, come on, sounds preposterous, right? But to someone who's been trusting their entire life of the government and maybe had government jobs for many years, that kind of thing, they're gonna, it's not that they're gonna fall for it, they're gonna go into that state of panic where they're gonna make some bad choices. And so be aware, be conscious that this does exist for all of us, you too, Jay, and me. And if you're conscious of it, you can do something to bring yourself out of there, ask a friend, it's always a great idea to talk to someone, have a sounding board, just say like, hey, I wanna make this gift card purchase for this person who's coming to promise me that they're gonna expedite the, I don't know, my insurance claim, for example. That friend may look at you and say, there's that Think Tech episode I heard sometime back that I really talked directly to this problem and I think you shouldn't do that, right? Just a friend to sound board off of that. And it doesn't have to be anyone with a genius level of discernment, but just a friend or a sounding board and find out what they think about this kind of problem. Now on the flip side of that, sometimes some scams depend on you talking to others and talking them into the scam. So in those kinds of circumstances, really be sure to go a little broader outside of your community. Don't go with someone like, you know, let's say for example, you wanna scam your sister or brother or the scammer thinks that they can talk you into scamming a close family member. Talk to a distant, maybe a friend that you don't talk to very often, see what they think about it. Because if they are not drawn in and they can give you that level of discernment that you might not have had otherwise, then that really helps. An example of this is Pig Butchering. And Pig Butchering, I've talked to first hand people who have been scammed out of crypto. They were looped in by a social media post who promised them riches and returns based on putting money into a crypto fund which turned out to be completely bogus, fake. And they watched the numbers on the screen rise when really there was no money in there at all. They were just throwing their money into the ocean. And they got scammed out of millions of dollars because they looped in their family members and friends and close individuals. But someone who would have been a little bit outside of their circle, right? They wouldn't have been looped in so easily. So I always had that suspicious hat on, nothing wrong with it. Yeah, when you talk to somebody as you get third party advice, make sure it's somebody you trust. And it's not somebody who is recommended to you by the scammer himself. Yeah, Rick just gave us a call, we get it every day. There you go. Is this too good to be true? It is. Right, if something is too good to be true, it isn't. That's probably about a hundred percent of the time. You know, I like to volunteer something until I'm ready, I'm available to serve on any jury that sits on the prosecution of any of these scammers, federal or state, you name it. Any charge whatsoever having to do with scamming and I'm available. If I could put my application in, I would. If I could somehow encourage the authorities to call on me, I would, but I'm available and I hope at some point I get my chance. You know, I'll take that little sound bite and I'll send it to our friends at the FBI. I'm sure they'd appreciate it. Thank you. I tell us the rest, thank you for coming out on short notice to talk about this really terribly tragic thing that happened to Hawaii. That is something that will affect us all and hopefully we have the strength, the resilience, the heart, the aloha to deal with it. Thank you so much and tell us. Thanks, stay safe out there. I'm gonna, huh? Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.