 Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. And more specifically, this is Think Tech Tech Talks, where we talk about tech. We talk about tech with guys like Adela Sures. Adela used to be a host for Think Tech, so we know him well for many years. And he is kind of an expert of what's going on in information technology, and especially in information technology that affects our business and residential communities here. Welcome to the show, Adela. Nice to see you smile and face. Oh, sure. Well, that's one of the advantages of working from home. You get to smile more, right? Truth is, a lot of people are not smiling at all these days, no matter what the circumstances, because they're worried sick about what's going on. That's not a pun. And before the show, we were talking about, you know, you asked me whether we talked to frontline medical healthcare people. And not recently, and I wanted to get your, you know, your understanding of what they are saying. What are they telling us about, you know, the medical process, the medical experience with COVID patients? Can you tell me that again? Well, I can't tell you all the, you know, MD type stuff, because I'm not a doctor. But to be fair, we are talking with all the business leaders in the community. And some of them are in medicine. And they're telling us that there's going to be a lot of new information coming out over the next few weeks, as the virus is becoming better known. Obviously, there's rumors circulating about cross contamination between species. They're talking about the kind of things that are happening to people as they patch it and the process of it going through the body and what it does to the body. So, you know, we're hearing everything from the fact that there are people who are having heart attacks because the combination of how the virus is able to get into the lungs and then it affects the temperature and then the heart spikes. And we're also hearing that people who are healthy are succumbing to the virus and, you know, and dying from it. So, it's not really clear what this is. And, you know, I think that the best advice that I can give is the advice you already know. Wash your hands, stay indoors and stay away from anything until you're sure of what this is. And there's a good medical solution to this problem. That's the advice that, or should I say that's the mandate we have for our staff is all of us are meant to stay away from each other because this can affect the business if one person catches it and spreads it to someone else. So, you know, let's just do what we can to stay safe. And also this climate of fear is unfortunately going to be around for a while. And that's where we're getting really busy is all the scams and all the problems that are happening. Jay mentioned that you folks went through the Hawaiian Electric scam. You know, that's not a new one. But a lot of the COVID ones are scams that have already been around for a long time. And they're just adapting it to COVID. And the reason that they're adapting it is because they know that these scams work. And I know it's despicable, right? You know, we have this fear climate. The world is on lockdown. Everyone's afraid for their jobs. A lot of people are unemployed. And these criminals are taking advantage of this circumstance to steal our money, to steal our information. And we're just at the beginning of all this, right? I mean, you have to become more conscious of our circumstance and what you're going to do to protect yourself from these guys taking advantage of you. Well, that's pretty scary. By the way, despicable is the right word. You know, taking advantage of the misfortune of others is despicable or worse. And I hope they are prosecuted and thrown in the who's gal for a long time. I wouldn't catch some of them to make examples. Anyway, yeah, that's going to happen. That's the human condition, I suppose. Not everybody is straight, not as though most of us are. Let's talk about some of the scenarios. In the case of the Hawaiian Electric, what they do is they call up and say, oh, your electric bill, your electric service is about to be terminated because you pay the bill, pay us. Okay. And then the guys get ripped off. They don't want to have this service terminated. That's simple enough, but a lot of people fall for it so much so that Hawaiian Electric wants to put the word out not to take those calls. Those calls are not legitimate. But I'm sure there's a lot of other things you've written up in your newsletter. Can we talk about some of them? Give us a hypothetical. Give us somebody who is at home behaving himself in a lockdown or rather a shelter in place circumstance, being a good person, making his contribution to the community effort to drop the curve. And then something happens. It's a call. It's an email. What happens? What is your favorite scam today? You know, you hit on a key point, which was that we go through a lot of scans and we try to just educate the community. Truth be told, there are so many scams right now. It's kind of hard to pick what we should even tell people about. So we try to pick the ones that you can actually do something about. And people are sending me scams like new ones daily. So that Hawaiian Electric one, right? That one's new, but it's been around for a while, right? Some scams that we're seeing are Red Cross impersonators. And this is going on not just locally but internationally, where folks show up, they say, hey, we're volunteers with the Red Cross and we're selling these COVID-19 testing kits. And it's just, you know, ziplock bag, a couple of Q-tips inside. And they say, look, you know, we're just going to put this up your nose. We're going to get your contact info and we'll let you know if you got COVID. $50, please. And it works. So they're either doing that or they are just- They show up at your house. They show up at your house. So your house is closed. You're staying inside. You're sheltering in place. You're not even going outside except to shop for food. And these guys actually show up at your house. That should be a telltale thing right there. Nobody, nobody, you know, does go to door in the time of an epidemic. No. That should be telltale. You should see that happening, see that coming. If they were real, it would be by some method other than knocking on your door. Yeah, you would think, and you know, probably a good place to start is, you know, if you see someone showing up at your door that you don't recognize, maybe a good sneeze or cough into your elbow, it's a good way to kind of see how, see how committed they are to their job. Extend your hand out to shake it. You're going to wash your hands right after. Yeah, don't get too close. You know, these guys are also saying that they're from the right cross and they'll just turn around and just straight up rob you. I think last week was the physical robbery. Yeah, they're just breaking your plate. Yeah, that can let me dwell on that just for a minute. You know, it's very interesting because there's not a lot of people in the streets. You know, and there's something dangerous about that. So you could be taking a walk, for example, in a quiet neighborhood, and all of a sudden there's somebody driving around the neighborhood. Next door neighborhood internet online is kind of interesting and there's somebody driving in the neighborhood and you're alone. And it's them and you. And there's nobody else around. You know, you could call for help. I'm not sure it would mean that much. Nobody wants to come out. So I think you run into the risk of that kind of thing where they knock on your door. We had one in this area like that. They just, you know, knocked on the door pushed their way in and they robbed the house under cover of COVID. And so I think there's a certain risk of robbery, as you say, not so much burglary because everybody's home, but robbery. And so you can't you can't deal with anybody you don't know. There it is. Sorry, go ahead. Well, I mean, this is not new. So let's just be clear about scams, right? Things that work for hundreds of years, people are going to do over and over again. So there's a story of thieves oil. I don't know if you've heard of it. We heard of the story of thieves oil? No, no, it's this stuff right here. I have a little video on it. I talked about the story. The 1400 at the time of the bubonic plague, four thieves were caught breaking into, into sick people's homes and stealing their possessions, right? So they're sick in bed with the bubonic plague. They go inside, they steal their stuff. They're caught. The judge says, look, you know, the penalty for this is being burned at the stake. But, you know, I'm trying to figure out how is it that you were able to rob all these homes without catching the bubonic plague yourself? And in exchange for the information, they said, okay, we'll give you the secret, but we don't want to be burned at the stake. So the judge said, okay, give us your secret. The secret is these guys, these four thieves were out of work spice traders and they would take a mix of essential oils that was, I think it was lavender, eucalyptus, clove, and I think something else. And they would take that, that, that four, those four spices and put it over their mouth in a mask, right? So they put the oil on there, they put the oil, there's oil, they put on their mask, put on their wrists and over their, over their ears and they wouldn't catch the plague. And sure enough, the judge who, you know, stuck to his word, he did not burn them at the stake. He ended up instead hanging them, but because it was still a crime. But after that, you know, the doctors, you see with the long beak right into those goggles, you know, they had this little rag stuffed into that beak, and they would put it all over themselves. And that's how they were able to see patients during the time of the bubonic plague. So that's the story of these oil. And you can get it on your, you know, diffuser and put it into your environment. Good way to get rid of those little particulates. It's anti-microbial. This stuff's been around for a long time. And, you know, in fact, a lot of the stuff kind of goes multi-generational. I mean, the reason that I'm in cybersecurity myself is because my family was escaping terrorists, the Russian terrorists in particular, from Hungary back in the 50s, moved here. And then now those terrorists are still around. And, you know, we're doing our best to protect the community from them. They're still Russian, unfortunately, a lot of them are. And they've moved into cyberspace. So, you know, that's my story as to why I'm in cybersecurity in the first place. And, you know, these stories, they just go on and on and on for generations. And unfortunately, scammed, you know, they just got more sophisticated, but it's the same stuff. The dark web, which is that invisible hidden part of the internet where, you know, threat actors live, they're all the pedophiles, terrorists, and everyone else who's bad does their drug trading and human trafficking on there. They're selling COVID-19 stuff on there. And I think we could show a couple of the pictures if you want to bring them up, but we can talk about them. Because these are just hitting the dark web, which means they're going to start hitting public notice very soon. They're selling coronavirus vaccines. So these are actual image captures from the dark web. It's from monopoly marketplace, but it's probably the most, you know, popular place right now to get this stuff. We're seeing coronavirus COVID-19 infected blood that they're selling. And this is kind of an older scam, right? So they used to sell HIV infected blood. And they say, Hey, you can get this stuff, you can get my blood and spread it all over the poor people's neighborhoods. I mean, it's really, it's really mean. But, you know, they're saying you can spread the virus yourself. There's some other scams there. If you want to go to the next slide where they're, yeah, we have the COVID-19 quick tests, which really looks like a pregnancy test over there with, you know, some ambiguous lettering on there. So you can probably pee on it and they'll tell you, you don't have COVID, but you're probably not pregnant either. So they're selling those. Or I can tell you that you do have COVID and you're pregnant. Oh, that'd be the worst right there. Let's not wish that on anyone. One thing we didn't have a picture of over here was the COVID-19 sound machine. So the idea is that you get like a sound machine and make a certain tone and then it destroys the COVID virus. So we're seeing scams like that. I think that's probably one of my more favorite ones, because, you know, that's that's the one thing I want to have with some sounds like that. But probably annoy your dog. Turn that on. And let's see here. You know, these things you're talking about, I caught the on the first slide for the quote vaccine and quote, that's an amazing picture. Amazing. I mean, like this, what we're all waiting for, a thousand dollars, something a thousand dollars for this, then you can save your life and everybody, you know, it's quite amazing. But, but you got to get them the money. So we use your credit card, you use PayPal, what are you going to do? And if you do that, and you find it's a hoax, don't you have some protection to reverse the transaction, even though you were really being dumb about it? I mean, this is this is so gross that you think that you could reverse it if they are collecting this money in the ordinary fashion. How does that work? So you've hit on an important point, which is how does how did the criminals get paid? So if you're buying things on the dark web, that's all done through Bitcoin. You know all about Bitcoin. It's anonymous. It's all anonymous. You don't know who's getting your money. That's right. And it fluctuates in value and it's very difficult to actually trace some of that. Now, the good news is if you do fall for a big scam, we work pretty closely with the FBI. So I encourage anyone who has fallen for a scam to register that scam at the Internet at the IC3, which is the FBI's Internet Complaint Center. And that's where you can register if there's been an issue. And then if you want to reach out to us, we can get in touch with local office and we can work together. But the first step is to register that crime on IC3. Then afterward, the other method of payment is of course bank transfer. If the bank transfer is caught within 72 hours, it can often be stopped or reversed, at least some part of it. A recent scam out of one of the Florida local, just one of those small localities in Florida, one of the state offices, they were scanned out of $750,000. And they were able to intercept that within 72 hours and they got like everything but $15,000 back. So it was pretty good. So there is kind of that delay when it comes to ACH transfers. And then the third way, which is probably the easiest and the most exciting is the gift cards. And that's an old scam, right? So folks will call up and say, hey, we are the IRS and we're going to come get you unless you pay us your back taxes and gift cards and go to Walmart and send us your gift card numbers. So there is some of that going on as well, prepaid cards, that kind of stuff, which should be a red flag for you too, by the way. If anyone asks you to pay for something by a gift card, that's just, you know, or prepaid card, just don't do it right there. And you know, a lot of these stuff, you know, yeah, there are scams, but you know what it is when people are afraid, they'll believe just about anything. And you've got to keep your wits about you during this time of crisis. When people are afraid, they're going to believe things that they might not normally believe, that they're under threat when they're really not in any sort of danger. And the key thing you want to look out for is anything that creates a sense of urgency, right? That's your big red flag that it's a scam. You need to call us right now, otherwise your power is going to get cut off, which by the way, they're calling from 808 numbers, so they are calling from local numbers. Anyone calling you to say, hey, you know, limited supply of COVID-19 vaccine or texting, testing kits, pay us now to reserve your spot? No, it's not going to happen, right? Limited supply of COVID-19 sound producing devices, don't do that. And also look out for price gouging, right? I went on eBay, I probably should have sent this to you guys as well. I found a four pack of, I think it was Bounty toilet paper that sold for $9,200 two weeks ago. I mean, people are just going toilet paper, toilet paper. Yeah, four pack of toilet paper for $9,200. That's expensive. That's probably, you know, $10 a square at that point. But so people are going and making choices that they wouldn't normally do. So think about anything that's a sense of urgency, right? I got to get my toilet paper. You'll be fine. Most of the world doesn't use toilet paper the way we do. There are other options. You know, if they're pushing for limited supply on things, that's your key to look, to stand back for a moment and say like, look, wait a minute, this could be a scam that could be trying to take advantage of me. And in this kind of fragile economy, it's a one-two punch. And this is not just individuals with businesses, right? Imagine if the economy has a downturn and then the business has an infection and is required to close down either a branch or multiple branches or the head office, because there's been a COVID-19 outbreak, right? That can be the end of that business, whether they've been around 100 years or not. So high stakes. It's very high stakes. And imagine if it's a one-two-three punch, which by the way, statistically, we're still not out of the clear. We still have climate change on the board. You know, what if we have the COVID-19 outbreak, everyone's, you know, the economy's down. You have a COVID-19 at your business outbreak, and now you're forced to completely shut down operations and lay off everyone. And then an environmental disaster occurs, which you name it. You know, there's a movie about every single one. It can happen. Well, I've got a lot of movies lately. But you know, I want to raise one of the thing. This is the snake oil, the snake oil thing. You know, for example, I mean, this is at the extreme example, but so Donald Trump is selling, he's hawking hydro, what is it, hydro chloroquine? Hydroxychloroquine. He's hawking it. He's repeating it over and over again and telling your buddy that, you know, it works. And you know, there's no evidence that it works on a trial basis on a pharmaceutical trial. And of course, Fauci is to say, wait, wait, wait, you know, there's no evidence of that. And yet I believe there's probably places in the dark web and otherwise, maybe everywhere where you can buy this stuff, maybe at an inflated price, and you can take his advice and do it. And his advice is, it's not backed up by medical science, sorry. So the question there is, if you open the market to people who will charge what the market will bear, and they'll buy this stuff, that's just as much a scam, isn't it? It's snake oil. We don't know that it really works. It's snake oil. And unfortunately, in this case, it's being sold by our illustrious president. And you go from there to other snake oil salesmen who are trying to sell you other things. I'll give you another example. In hospitals, they use ultraviolet light to kill viruses and other and bacteria and whatnot. And they have expensive machinery that will send it into a room like a robot and scan the whole room, throw light all over the room, and then come out again. Nobody's supposed to be in the room while the ultraviolet light is big, because that could be deleterious to your health. And these are expensive. Now, there are lots of smaller units on the market. See ads for them all the time about how they're going to do this for you at home. Nobody knows the manufacturers. Nobody knows the efficacy of these items. Nobody knows whether it works. And yet, there it is for 50 bucks, 100 bucks, and sometimes much more. Now, that may not be completely wrong, a complete lie. It's based on the fact that hospitals use ultraviolet light, but somebody's taking advantage. It's kind of a semi-scam. What do you think? I don't think this is anything new. Corporations do this. This is what marketing is all about. And you're absolutely right about price gouging. In fact, we have a slide up that will show the chloroquine being sold for $1,000 for a dose. And yeah, there it is. Same with medical masks, actually. The N95 masks, you can see them there on the dark web going for $280 each. You'll see them going even today on eBay for $130 to $200 a piece. We're just seeing a little mass that would be $2 on any other given day, two months ago. So you'll do people who are price gouging, they're also hoarding, and then selling them on the black market. So we saw, I'm sure you saw it also on the news, how they were doing raids on these guys who were hoarding N95 masks. And if you talk to some of these medical workers, kind of circling back to how we started, many of them are saying, look, we used to put on a new mask before we see every patient. Now, we're just using the same mask through the entire shift. So if they come across a patient who has COVID, then it's going to be on their mask and they could potentially expose the next patient who doesn't have COVID to the virus. The whole mask affair is very troublesome because the government has been telling us, had been telling us for weeks, that you only needed a mask if you had the disease, but not if you didn't have the disease. That was wrong. That's not good advice. I mean, I don't think you had to be a PhD and research to know that's not good advice. And yet the country was following that because the government was telling them, I think the real reason was, there wasn't enough masks. This is the way you cover up the fact you don't have enough masks. It's really tragic. The same thing with the tests. So this tests everywhere, but they're not everywhere. That's not true. Anyway, I think it's a really big problem because it opens up to hoarding. It opens up to price gouging. So I wonder if you ever get into this, Attila, what about price gouging? What about hoarding? It should be against the law. I'm not sure that there are statutes in every state that make it against the law, but certainly at a time like this, you really wish it were against the law. Is it against the law? I believe it is. I'm not an attorney, obviously, but I believe that price gouging is still against the law. So you shouldn't be doing it. Plus, you know, I don't know if you believe in karma or not, but things eventually kind of catch up to you. There's a legitimate thing in business called markup, which is understood, but if your markup is 10,000%, then even in business, the market will speak and turn you away. It reminds me of Katrina. I remember how there were the folks who were showing up with generators that they had purchased in neighboring states and were showing up in Katrina and selling the generators for outrageous sums. They got shut down and arrested because they were always illegal. And, you know, the whole idea of snake oil, which is what you were asking about before, it's been around a long time. I mean, we got Disney Plus and we turned on Pete's Dragon the other day with my son because, you know, I remember seeing it as a kid and it's a goofy movie, but they have a snake oil salesman in there who's just classic, like curly mustache, top hat, the whole thing. And he's talking about these products, you know, like, oh, look at this, this is from France. You can trust me. Look at this testimonial. It's all the same marketing formula from day one. Dude, is there a good testimonial? Is there an exotic story behind the product? Is it in short supply? These are the kind of marketing things that we see over and over again from big corporations to the guy who is selling the little bottles with the mystery cure inside of them, right? So, I mean, my only advice is not to focus on the negative or I don't focus on the scams. They're going to keep coming and they're always going to keep coming. When this is all over, they're still going to keep coming. They have been coming before this, so don't worry about that. So, use common sense and focus on strengthening, right? From a health perspective, can you strengthen your immune system from a, you know, from a cyber security perspective? Can you strengthen your overall hygiene and security posture to minimize the potential problem that threat actors can have? Have you brushed up on your security education on how to identify scams? Have you brushed up on all these things that are the most important to keeping your health, to keeping your security all that healthy and safe? I mean, you got to focus on the safety bit. And so, you know, we can all do what we can to stay away from the virus, but you never know. You know, someone can just sneeze and you'll walk through it five minutes later and who knows? You're exposed, right? So, it's really hard to focus on those kind of unknowns, but it's really easy to focus on how you can strengthen your security and your health. And use common sense, but I'd like to add a point, though, and I'd like your reaction to my point. You know, this is a country of individualism. It's a country of buyer beware. It's a country of, there's a sucker born every minute. And, you know, we've seen this in our history, in our business history, in our economics history. If you can get it, do it. Let the other guy shake his head later. And a lot of people got rich in the history of this country doing that. But we are in a transformation. We are transforming our way of doing business, our economy, our way of engaging with other people, everything. This is a transformation of the country. And nobody could doubt that. And at the end of that transformation, we're going to be different. And one of the things I would like to see different is no more of this kind of rampunctious individualism, this exceptionalism, this you can cheat him if you can, you know, this one born every minute kind of thing. I would like to see the laws, federal laws, maybe state laws clamped down on this sort of thing. So if you're caught doing a scam, you pay a price. If you caught doing something dishonest or misleading on the internet, you pay a price. And after a while we'll discourage this kind of conduct. But I think we have to change our system. And I think maybe that may happen in the difficulties of this pandemic. What do you think? I think anyone who's a target will always be a target. If you're talking about change, well, if you're interested in targeting rich Americans, and there's a lot of fewer rich Americans out there, that's a change right there. You're going to see a lot less scams coming across, because these guys are not operating within our borders. After a while, there'll be nobody with any money. And therefore crime will not pay anymore. Tell the thank you very much. You tell us the rest. What's the end of your company and your website? I want to give you that opportunity. Sure. Our company is called Cylanda. Yes, I know it sounds like a fantastic place. My name is Attila, President of Cylanda. I know it's not made up, I promise. Cylanda is short for cybersecurity, LAN and data. And we help people with implementing best practices to protect their businesses, because cybersecurity is hard and we're here to help. Thank you, Attila. Always nice to talk to you. We're done now. We've run out of time, but I sure enjoy this conversation. And I only have one piece of advice for you. Go wash your hands.