hey everyone welcome back to today in tech we are talking about smart homes
security what steps you should be taking to make sure that all those devices in
your house are secure and whether or not you are comfortable with it today I have
PC and Mac world's Mike Symon stick around alright Mike thank you so much
for coming in now you are a smart home device user dare I say lover so I want
to talk a little bit about what's been going on lately in the news about ring
cameras they're sort of I almost feel like the the hallmark smart home device
though the video doorbell cameras you ring the doorbell you get you get an
alert something that your door it's you know your friend or your neighbor or
someone delivering a package yeah they're kind of a poster child yeah
that's because they're affordable and they're you know somewhat you know
they've kind of caught on quicker than the nest cameras because they were you
know cheap relatively cheap our ring cameras much significantly more cheaper
than nest cameras yeah the like especially since they're they're more
affordable their service packages are more affordable all that stuff and
they're good you know they're HD they're you know they're known you're not really
sacrificing quality for the price yeah Mike and I are on opposite sides of the
spectrum when it comes to smile but I can open my garage door right now if you
like me to but with all of that obviously with widespread use comes it
becomes a really attractive target to be for security flaws and security
vulnerabilities and with that have been a whole slew of hackers taking over
cameras coming over microphones but there are there are size reports if
there have been not so but there was one the one that started this all okay was
that poor little girl in her bedroom so she was like 6 or 7 years old and her
had a ring camera in her room like kinda like a baby cam mm-hmm so somebody
somewhere was able to hack i used the word hack loosely but for lack of a
better term i'll explain later what that means yeah I'll say hack hack into their
account use the two-way microphone to speak to his girl yeah and say you know
pre awful things sir and try to get her to do things and you know thankfully she
was mature enough and smart enough to say hey what are you who is this person
and call her parents yeah that blew up it was all over the
news Oliver went and went viral as you know you probably shoot yes now ring
took a massive hit for that not entirely fair
why because so what happened there was somebody logged into let's say the
website or an app mm-hmm using this person's credentials that they got from
somewhere they say the dark web I don't know where people get these guys with
and users from but but it happened it's a common thing when yeah when a new
streaming service launches like me plus for example Apple TV plus people will
use other people's emails to get access because they they buy them they try them
and they work why because people don't use different paths yeah it's a
situation where there's a big data breach and then there becomes a a
database of username or emails and password if you're use them for
everything because people are aren't changing their passwords or even using
different that's yeah use different passwords so that that's the number one
thing number two ring author's two-factor authentication which these
people didn't have on mmm-hmm now it's mandatory yeah that's yeah but what
two-factor authentication is for people who don't know is when you log in to a
device for the first time or or a website you get a code yeah to your
phone or to your email or to an app or to a security key or whatever you're
using it's different for everything ring only
allows phone and email which is unfortunate but hopefully that'll get
stronger so if I were to log in on your computer for example because I've never
used it before ring would say you can't get into this
account before first I gotta have the password right right once I have the
password correctly it sends me a code to my phone I have it set up for my SMS to
text message yeah sure and if I don't enter that code I can't get into my
account so if you're trying to get into my ring account to mess with me you
can't because you don't have that code yes that's what two-factor
authentication is the problem is it was optional most people 95% I'll even sign
I don't I don't have these figures I'm gonna say most people including people I
work with don't turn two-factor authentication on
even though we write articles telling anyone to do it we don't have it I have
it turned on for all my accounts because of this reason I'm I'm not yeah I swear
I you know I trust that I have these things in my account and maybe Alexis
listening to me all the time I don't know but I will take whatever security
steps I'm offered I'm going to use yeah to protect myself yeah so maybe it
wasn't necessarily a slew but it was certainly a pattern of this is how
people got access to these rings and that was the pattern the pattern was
consistently mm-hmm people were using these username and passwords to get into
accounts yes and it's you know it's it's slightly unfair to ring to get branded
as a security risk they weren't hacked they were never
hacked mm-hmm rings servers it were fine they never you know no one know what
there was a database of ring servers of ring users floating around the internet
like happened that happens often that didn't happen what happened was these
people didn't have the best security ring authors they also didn't have the
best security that you know IP experts offer so it was an old password an old
username yeah somebody was able to get why these people were targeted I don't
know maybe they knew the person maybe the pro who was random yeah easy targets
yeah yeah I don't know why and I'm not I'm not you know I'm not blaming these
people you know this is what people do you know you we we're not taught enough
as consumers when we buy something the risks and the protections
sure sure I was talking to my brother my brother Rizzo as a lawyer in New York
City and he we were talking about um some some account that he got into and I
said oh do you know your Paris ago so yeah I use the same password for
everything I'm like dude like you got it like get a password manager I have I
don't know last time I checked almost 200 different passwords in my password
manager yeah I don't know them all yeah I know but I have them all so I just I
log in with my fingerprint and I can look for it find it does it take an
extra five or 10 seconds yes is it absolute yeah it may sound
counterintuitive to not all know all of your passwords but it's not necessarily
about that and most password managers are you know they it's a small fee there
are some free ones I would recommend paying for one because you know you're
going to get the better security better updates the better support but you know
what it does is it stores all of your passwords in an encrypted Locker that
only you can get into with either a passcode or a biometric on your phone or
something and you their story they're locked yeah and they're on all your
devices when you got a new phone that's the first thing I setup I use one
password first app I set up on every new phone I use which are a lot of them is
that one so yeah so let's talk a little bit now about what the guidance should
be when you have all of these IOT smart home devices in your home which can be
in many ways really appealing really helpful I mean you can obviously speak
to the benefits of them like you said you can open your garage door right now
but it's just because you have all these devices in your home it doesn't mean
that you're automatically going to get hacked exploited maybe most people won't
yes but you want to make sure that you're taking these important steps so
and I think that I imagine that that will become hopefully maybe more of a
pattern with the you know when you have the doorbells or you have the I mean I
think this is also a ring feature the flood lights and anything that is linked
up to the Internet you should have these added securities yeah well there's the
main thing you want to do is obviously put a WPA on your router what you want a
password so people can't drive by your home and log into your router
get access to your home that's number one okay that's fairly common at this
point mm-hmm most ISPs force you to do it yeah your
cable company whatever they want you when you sign up for the service they
make you do a password and you can turn it off the most people are gonna do that
so that's number one number two is the biometrics on your device on your phone
okay so if somebody you know you lose your phone or somebody takes your phone
they can't just go you know logging into your smart home devices yeah I'm sorry
you're smart no Maps and your devices and the other one is whatever security
is offered use it go into the settings you know whatever the whether its nest
or Amazon or ring mm-hmm and and click click those boxes yeah click biometric
click to FA click whatever you need to click to turn them on yeah because
they're important now the other thing is privacy there's a two different things
yes so this is this is all security these are things that you can do privacy
now ring can be blamed because they've they've done some not-so-great things
with privacy by the by privacy I mean selling your information yes third-party
data mostly advertisers mm-hmm for you know marketing use they say yeah that's
in those lengthy privacy notices that you just click yeah I click them to no
one no they generally say that we have the right to sell whatever it is
whatever the language is ring wasn't really disclosing that so well yeah so a
month ago I want to say they were particularly there Android app was
called out for forever having trackers built into it yeah which means that you
know like there were third-party places that were kind of looking at your
account and taking bits of it and sending it here and sending it there
ring has stopped all that thankfully yeah and they say they're gonna be
updating in the next couple of months their their policy and adding do not
track goggles or checkboxes or whatever it is
to their app which is also getting better because they added a new control
center that kind of puts all this stuff front and center so ring has gone from
kind of being the the bruised and battered part of this to really kind of
leading the way all right and saying you know listen re some of it's not our
fault some of it is our fault yeah but we are going to take the steps
necessary to make sure that you're protected going forward is it perfect no
are they still gonna get criticized absolutely mm-hmm and we'll see how that
privacy stuff works and how it rolls out and when it rolls out and all that other
stuff but I'm confident in the company and the product that they are at least
working and moving in the right direction to restore faith and to
restore trust in their devices which is important in this you know when you're
putting cameras in your home you won't trust the couple's exactly that's and
that's what I was just about to let everyone know it's if you want to have
these items in your home yeah there's only you can probably do a lot to make
sure that these devices remain secure like you said multi-factor two-factor
whatever you want to call it but you also need to make sure that you're
understanding what what sort of price you're paying or what that's the best
you're inherently giving up exactly the price you're paying what you're losing
for this convenience and if that's a worthy worthy exchange then that's where
the exchange for you we could argue about that for four hours I'll never
convince you you'll never convince me it's just the way it goes yeah so I
that's about it use different passwords multi-factor and make sure that you know
what you're getting into all right that's that's that's that's it
in a nutshell and you know I think it's
a stretch it's a stretch but I don't think I'll have you having to ring
doorbell anytime soon thanks Mike thank you and thank you all so much for
watching this episode of today and tech if you'd liked this video be sure to
give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our Channel if you have any questions
thoughts comments about IOT security rig security and I want to know whose side
you're on if you have a ton of devices in your house like Mike let us
know if you have nothing like I do also let us know thanks again for watching
and see you next time