- Hey guys, this is Austin.
I was literally in the middle of working on a video
on hacking when my credit card got hacked.
So, I think this is a great time
to talk a little bit about cybersecurity.
And a huge shoutout to LastPass for sponsoring this video.
Great timing, guys.
So, I've been keeping all of my information safe
in LastPass for years, way before they ever reached out
and wanted to sponsor a video.
I think, like a lot of people,
I used to use a couple of passwords across all of my sites,
whether that would be for Twitter or for my bank account.
However, with LastPass, you can easily create
completely custom and random passwords
for each and every individual site
and keep them all locked up behind a single password
in the LastPass Vault.
So, even if one site gets hacked,
none of the rest of your logins are going to be vulnerable,
and that's available on the free plan.
Step up to LastPass Premium,
which I've had for like four years now,
and you get better two-factor authentication options,
the ability to easily share out your logins,
and it's only like two bucks a month.
Best of all, it works basically across
all of your different devices,
whether it be phone, tablet, computer, whatever.
So, LastPass is legitimately something
that I use every single day,
so if you guys wanna give it a try
and help support the channel, the link to check it out
will be in the description of this video.
When it comes to getting hacked,
there are a lot of ways that it can happen.
So, maybe it's something simple
like you open a fishy email attachment,
you're visiting a site
that you probably shouldn't be looking at.
Recently though, these hacks have become
much, much more ambitious.
So, take for example Equifax.
This is the credit agency
that recently had 143 million people's information leaked.
And this isn't small stuff
like your phone number or address,
this is really important information
like your Social Security number,
which makes it very, very easy for identity theft to happen.
- With growing fallout this morning
over its massive data breach.
- The biggest and most significant yet.
- Possibly putting 143 million Americans at risk.
- So, back in March, a major vulnerability
was found in Equifax's backend
and it wasn't fixed until the end of July,
meaning that for months
about one-third of the US population's information
was wide open for the taking.
This is hardly an isolated incident.
So, only a few weeks after the Equifax hack,
CCleaner had their own issues.
So, CCleaner is a very popular utility
to allow you to clean your computer.
However, for a short time,
the legitimate version was replaced
that you downloaded from their site
with a version that was loaded with malware.
The scary part of this is
is that there was actually no real way of telling
that what you were downloading was actually malware
and not the proper program.
You're going to the official site, you're downloading it,
installing it, everything looks completely legit
and the program even works.
However, in the background was a serious virus.
So, the popular DVD ripping tool HandBrake
had a very similar thing happen.
For a period of four days,
the legitimate download was replaced with a version
that had a Mac-specific version of malware inside of it.
Even worse is that hacks
are no longer confined to just software;
they're hitting close to home, literally.
With products like Amazon Echo and Google Home
being brought into more and more households,
these companies are getting closer and closer
to our personal lives than ever before.
Now, this can be a good thing.
So, it's nice to be able to walk into your house
and tell Alexa to turn the lights on.
Maybe if you forget to look your door when you leave,
you can just do it straight from your phone
with a smart lock.
And stuff like Nest security cameras
will give you a much better sense of security
when you can see exactly what's going on inside your house.
But like all good things in life,
it doesn't exactly work all the time.
And like a lot of people fear
when stuff like the Amazon Echo first came out,
there is a way to now hack this.
If you peel back the little rubber pad
on the bottom of an Amazon Echo,
you'll see a series of contacts.
So, using these,
if you have a little bit of technical knowledge
and about 10 minutes, you can actually turn an Amazon Echo
into a listening device.
The upside is,
as long as you don't have a super-nerd as an enemy,
this is not an easy hack to pull off.
Not only do you need that technical knowledge
but you also need to have actual access to the Echo in-hand.
And to Amazon's credit,
they actually have removed this vulnerability
from the most recent model.
The real issue here
is when there's an Echo in a public place.
So, take for example the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas.
They have an Echo in every single room,
and all it takes is for someone to hack it once
and they can listen in to the conversations
in that room pretty much forever.
All right, so what can you actually do about this?
Well, the first thing to understand
is that there's no way of keeping you
and your data completely safe.
If you applied for a credit card five years ago
and the credit agency gets hacked, too bad.
I'm probably never going to know
how my credit card got compromised.
It could've been something simple
like being skimmed at an ATM or gas station
or maybe some site that I used the card on was hacked
and I just didn't know it.
But there are some things you can do
to help protect yourself.
The easiest thing is to just check your credit.
So, if you live in the US, federal law guarantees
that you can get one free credit report
from each of the three major agencies per year.
On the digital front, it makes sense to have
some kind of antivirus and keep your devices up-to-date.
So, that includes those Windows updates
that you've been saying no to for the last six months
or you keep your browser up to date, your phone;
all of these things are constantly getting security updates
and they can really save you when these things come up.
Threats like this are never going to go away.
But as long as you're smart and keep an eye on things,
then you should be fine.
So, have you actually ever gotten hacked yourself?
Let me know in the comments below,
and I will catch you in the next one.