Latest / Brian Thomas / Tech Friday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 11/06/2026
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: 629-55-KERCETY-TALK-STATION. Friday, appointment listening. Podcast listening, too. Later, you can
- 0:07Speaker 1: cut and paste and forward it to your friends. 55-KERCETY.IHEART.COM.
- 0:11Speaker 1: InTrustIT.COM to find Dave Hatter and his crew. Employee-owned company
- 0:15Speaker 1: looking out for your business needs, especially, I mean, with
- 0:18Speaker 1: regard to computers. They'll keep you, get best practices, fix
- 0:21Speaker 1: stuff that's broken and look out for your best interest.
- 0:23Speaker 1: And Well, Dave will show up today and scare the
- 0:26Speaker 1: living crap out of at least me. Dave Hatter, welcome back, man.
- 0:29Speaker 1: I appreciate IntrustIT.com sponsoring this segment, and I always heed
- 0:33Speaker 1: your advice, and this is something that's really, really, really
- 0:36Speaker 1: been worrying me for a long time. AI agents getting
- 0:40Speaker 1: into bank accounts. Dave, welcome back.
- 0:43Speaker 2: Hey, Brian. Always good to be here. Yeah, I'm concerned
- 0:46Speaker 2: about this as well. The good news is large banks have...
- 0:51Speaker 2: been paying attention to this, have been talking about this.
- 0:54Speaker 2: It looks like several have banned this. And the real
- 0:57Speaker 2: issue here, and I think I can just summarize this
- 1:00Speaker 2: very easily. It's now possible with AI agents to have
- 1:05Speaker 2: an agent that will just go do things on your
- 1:09Speaker 2: behalf or on behalf of whatever credentials that are given
- 1:11Speaker 2: to it. And what I mean by that is you
- 1:13Speaker 2: give it a username and password credentials. It assumes that
- 1:17Speaker 2: identity and it does stuff. You've seen stories here in
- 1:21Speaker 2: the recent past about agents that have gone rogue and
- 1:25Speaker 2: done things they weren't supposed to do, things they weren't
- 1:27Speaker 2: asked to do. So what the banks are saying is
- 1:31Speaker 2: it appears that there's activity like this in their networks.
- 1:36Speaker 2: I've seen stories where someone is like, oh, hey, it
- 1:39Speaker 2: might be a great idea if I set my AI
- 1:42Speaker 2: agent loose and let it act on my behalf to
- 1:44Speaker 2: buy me things or something. Now, I don't think this
- 1:47Speaker 2: is going to come as a shock to you or
- 1:48Speaker 2: anyone that's ever heard me talk about this before. There
- 1:51Speaker 2: was absolutely no way I would give any kind of
- 1:54Speaker 2: AI agent the capability to act as me in any
- 1:59Speaker 2: sort of financial way. Because as a reminder, folks, AI
- 2:04Speaker 2: still hallucinates. It makes things up. It's probabilistic, not deterministic.
- 2:09Speaker 2: So there is literally no chance I would allow something
- 2:12Speaker 2: to do this.
- 2:13Speaker 1: Okay. Well, walk me, the ignorant person that I am,
- 2:16Speaker 1: pretend I'm seven. And you're trying to explain how this
- 2:19Speaker 1: goes about. Because what you just said to me suggests
- 2:22Speaker 1: that I, a logical, reasonable thinking human being, would give
- 2:26Speaker 1: artificial intelligence like what, Grok or ChatGPT, my account information
- 2:31Speaker 1: along with instructions to act on my behalf? Is that
- 2:33Speaker 1: what I heard you say?
- 2:34Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
- 2:37Speaker 1: Oh, man, you're going to get me to break the
- 2:38Speaker 1: FCC rules. That is blanking insane, Dave. Why would I
- 2:42Speaker 1: ever do that?
- 2:44Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. Maybe because you don't understand the risk.
- 2:47Speaker 2: Maybe because you think this is cool. This all sort
- 2:51Speaker 2: of started, the first article I saw about it anyway
- 2:53Speaker 2: was from Axios. Unvetted AI agents are accessing bank accounts, right?
- 2:58Speaker 2: And then it goes on to say, you know, banks
- 3:00Speaker 2: detecting unauthorized activity from third-party agents operating within customers' online accounts.
- 3:07Speaker 2: Some of the biggest financial institutions in the U.S. say
- 3:09Speaker 2: customers have given their personal agents, which are unvetted by banks,
- 3:14Speaker 2: access to their financial accounts. Yeah. And so here's the thing.
- 3:20Speaker 2: I wouldn't do this in general, okay? And if I
- 3:25Speaker 2: were going to use an AI agent in this way,
- 3:27Speaker 2: I would make sure it had the least amount of
- 3:30Speaker 2: permissions possible. Because here's the real issue, Brian. Besides the hallucination,
- 3:34Speaker 2: besides the fact that these things will do things you
- 3:37Speaker 2: didn't necessarily want them or expect them to do, If
- 3:40Speaker 2: and when it goes wrong, if you wake up tomorrow
- 3:43Speaker 2: and you've done something like this and all of your
- 3:45Speaker 2: money's gone, well, whose fault is it? Is it the
- 3:47Speaker 2: bank's fault? Is it your fault? Your fault. Is it
- 3:51Speaker 2: the AI company's fault? Well, I would agree it's your fault.
- 3:53Speaker 2: But when your money's gone from a legal perspective, because
- 3:57Speaker 2: as you know, this stuff is all still relatively new
- 4:00Speaker 2: and relatively immature, you know, there's no legal framework around
- 4:04Speaker 2: any of this.
- 4:05Speaker 1: Well, artificial intelligence companies at least prudent enough to give
- 4:08Speaker 1: some sort of, you know, I'll even call it half-assed
- 4:11Speaker 1: warning ahead of time that bad things can happen and
- 4:14Speaker 1: use at your own risk, caveat emptor kind of stuff, Dave.
- 4:18Speaker 2: One would hope. One would hope. And, you know, again,
- 4:25Speaker 2: you can make a distinction here between, again, like some
- 4:28Speaker 2: rogue thing versus you giving an agent like a Muse
- 4:32Speaker 2: or something, Grokbot, other things folks have probably heard of,
- 4:36Speaker 2: the access to your bank account.
- 4:39Speaker 1: Who's smart enough to know the restrictive parameters sufficiently enough
- 4:43Speaker 1: that they could prevent it from going outside of them?
- 4:46Speaker 2: Well, I would argue, even if you knew how to
- 4:50Speaker 2: set the guardrails correctly, the idea of them going rogue,
- 4:54Speaker 2: the idea of hallucination, again, it comes up with something
- 4:58Speaker 2: that's wrong. Well, if that's only 1% of the time,
- 5:02Speaker 2: but it's catastrophic, well, then what?
- 5:05Speaker 1: Well, and aren't you also putting into the ether, not
- 5:08Speaker 1: that it doesn't exist out there somewhere else, but the
- 5:11Speaker 1: information you'd need to access an account, which would include
- 5:13Speaker 1: the account information along with passwords to get it, that
- 5:15Speaker 1: goes out into the world, I guess.
- 5:17Speaker 2: I don't know.
- 5:18Speaker 1: Dave, it troubles me that anybody would consider doing this
- 5:22Speaker 1: in the first instance.
- 5:22Speaker 2: I don't know.
- 5:23Speaker 1: Maybe I've just learned too much from you to know
- 5:25Speaker 1: that that just sounds like an extraordinarily dumb idea.
- 5:29Speaker 2: Know it would be one thing to say okay if
- 5:32Speaker 2: it had read-only access and you wanted to know like
- 5:34Speaker 2: your spending patterns or whatever but if it has full
- 5:38Speaker 2: read write access if it can truly act on your
- 5:40Speaker 2: behalf transfer money make purchases etc um in my mind
- 5:46Speaker 2: the risk of that is way way way too high
- 5:49Speaker 2: now some banks so again Banks are talking about this.
- 5:53Speaker 2: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan, recently expressed concern
- 5:57Speaker 2: about this. This is a quote from him. We're not
- 6:00Speaker 2: going to allow just any outside agents to come inside
- 6:02Speaker 2: the company because it's just too risky for clients and
- 6:04Speaker 2: for J.P. Morgan, unquote. Charles Schwab, CEO, said they're just
- 6:09Speaker 2: going to block it outright, at least for now. So again,
- 6:13Speaker 2: the good news is people are, banks are paying attention
- 6:16Speaker 2: to this. Hopefully they're warning customers. I think it's an
- 6:19Speaker 2: important topic to talk about. At some future point, when
- 6:22Speaker 2: this stuff is more mature and it's more proven to
- 6:25Speaker 2: work right in a consistent deterministic type fashion, okay, I
- 6:29Speaker 2: might consider something like this. Literally no chance I would
- 6:32Speaker 2: do something. Absolutely no chance I would give any kind
- 6:35Speaker 2: of agent access to anything with my credentials, my identity
- 6:38Speaker 2: that could do anything financial. And that would be my
- 6:42Speaker 2: advice to anyone listening to this. You are taking enormous
- 6:44Speaker 2: risk if you do something like this.
- 6:47Speaker 1: And my life is not complicated by the fact that
- 6:49Speaker 1: I have to do things like this myself. It hasn't
- 6:51Speaker 1: ever been a problem. It's not difficult. It's not time consuming.
- 6:55Speaker 1: I just don't understand people's gravitating, gravitating toward this kind
- 6:58Speaker 1: of just because it's there.
- 7:00Speaker 2: I think they just don't understand the risk. It sounds cool,
- 7:03Speaker 2: and they think they're going to save time or be
- 7:05Speaker 2: more productive, and I think they just don't understand the risk.
- 7:10Speaker 2: That's my best guess.
- 7:12Speaker 1: I guess that's a good guess, man. It sounds to
- 7:13Speaker 1: me stupid. 637 more with Dave Hatter, including the Ohio
- 7:18Speaker 1: Auditor's website, apparently got hacked.
- 7:20Speaker 2: Super.
- 7:21Speaker 1: It is 640, interestit.com. That's where you find Dave Hatter.
- 7:25Speaker 1: Also a Rush fan. Dave Hatter, they played trees at
- 7:29Speaker 1: Rush when I saw them the other night. And I
- 7:32Speaker 1: thought of you immediately and actually took photographs and a
- 7:34Speaker 1: little bit of video from that, which I'll pass along
- 7:35Speaker 1: to you at some point. Rush is going to be
- 7:38Speaker 1: performing at the Sphere in May. So out in Vegas,
- 7:42Speaker 1: wouldn't that be great?
- 7:43Speaker 2: That would be very cool. I'm sure it will be
- 7:45Speaker 2: an amazing show. Oh, my word. That is the backdrop. Yes.
- 7:48Speaker 1: Anyhow, since you're a fellow Rush geek like me, thought
- 7:51Speaker 1: I'd pass that along to you as we pivot over
- 7:53Speaker 1: to the Ohio Auditor's website getting attacked. What's going on here?
- 7:59Speaker 2: Well, Brian, to me, this just illustrates nicely the things
- 8:02Speaker 2: that we talk about all the time. And I'm not
- 8:04Speaker 2: here to throw the Ohio Auditor under the bus, just
- 8:07Speaker 2: to be clear. I just want to point out, especially
- 8:10Speaker 2: for local governments, since you know I'm involved in this myself,
- 8:13Speaker 2: local governments are increasingly under attack. Now, interestingly enough, And
- 8:17Speaker 2: I say this all the time. Ohio, in my opinion,
- 8:20Speaker 2: is a real leader in this space, just across the board.
- 8:23Speaker 2: Ohio has a law that requires local governments to do
- 8:26Speaker 2: certain things. You'll see how this ties in a second.
- 8:29Speaker 2: Ohio has something called the Ohio Cyber Collaboration Committee that
- 8:33Speaker 2: It's the home for the Ohio Cyber Reserve and other
- 8:36Speaker 2: organizations and agencies trying to raise awareness, trying to provide support,
- 8:40Speaker 2: trying to keep these sorts of jobs in Ohio, and frankly,
- 8:44Speaker 2: trying to protect the Ohio community through the Cyber Reserve,
- 8:48Speaker 2: which is a public-private partnership between civilians and the Ohio
- 8:51Speaker 2: National Guard. So in almost every way, certainly compared to
- 8:56Speaker 2: your neighbors, like us down here in Kentucky, Ohio is
- 8:59Speaker 2: leading on a lot of these things. But to me,
- 9:02Speaker 2: this is just illustrative of the fact that A, any
- 9:05Speaker 2: sort of government agency is increasingly under attack. And B,
- 9:10Speaker 2: the Ohio auditor's office under Ohio revised code 9.64, the
- 9:14Speaker 2: law that requires Ohio governments to implement a cybersecurity program
- 9:18Speaker 2: amongst other things, is the office responsible for enforcing it.
- 9:22Speaker 2: So here is the office that is supposed to ensure
- 9:25Speaker 2: that your village, your township, your city, your county, whatever,
- 9:29Speaker 2: is doing what the ohio 9.64 rules call for has
- 9:34Speaker 2: been hacked now think about that for a second and
- 9:38Speaker 2: again i'm not here to throw them under the bus
- 9:40Speaker 2: sadly these kinds of hacks are increasing everywhere every day
- 9:44Speaker 2: on every type of organization i think we talked about
- 9:47Speaker 2: the refrigerator thing out of france physical world yes more
- 9:52Speaker 2: of these attacks in the eu Our physical and digital
- 9:55Speaker 2: world are now increasingly interconnected. One of the reasons why
- 9:59Speaker 2: the AI agent banking story is concerning to me. Again,
- 10:03Speaker 2: no chance, no chance I would do that, Brian, at
- 10:06Speaker 2: this point. But the auditor's office website has been down
- 10:12Speaker 2: for some time now. Yeah. If you look, as best
- 10:19Speaker 2: I can tell, it still is down, right? I'm going
- 10:22Speaker 2: to try it while I'm talking to you. And assuming
- 10:25Speaker 2: I'm typing it in right, because it's early and I'm
- 10:27Speaker 2: old and blind now, Brian. It's still down, I believe.
- 10:33Speaker 2: Let me try to confirm that. It doesn't seem to
- 10:36Speaker 2: be responding to me. I mean, and this has been
- 10:38Speaker 2: in the news. Like, here's a story. Ohio Auditor's website
- 10:41Speaker 2: and online accounts down after cyber attack. That story was
- 10:44Speaker 2: published on the 27th. And unless this problem was on
- 10:48Speaker 2: my end somehow, the auditor's website is still not working
- 10:51Speaker 2: for me. Now, that doesn't mean their other backend services
- 10:54Speaker 2: are down. And it's not entirely clear to me exactly
- 10:57Speaker 2: what happened at this point from the reporting I've seen.
- 10:59Speaker 2: In this article, it says, quote, out of an abundance
- 11:03Speaker 2: of caution, we took the web server and online accounts
- 11:06Speaker 2: offline while internal and external experts scrutinized the threat activity, unquote.
- 11:11Speaker 2: The bigger point I'm trying to make is, to me,
- 11:14Speaker 2: this just illustrates, again, Governments specifically under attack and as
- 11:21Speaker 2: an organization of any type, as a business, as a government,
- 11:26Speaker 2: I just can't stress enough, folks, you got to take
- 11:28Speaker 2: this stuff seriously. There are defenses against this. You ran
- 11:33Speaker 2: the commercial where we talk about resilience. Resilience has never
- 11:36Speaker 2: been more important. Resilience is the idea that things break.
- 11:40Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be a cyber attack. It could
- 11:41Speaker 2: be a hard disk failure. It could be your internet
- 11:44Speaker 2: is taken out. It could be your cloud service provider
- 11:46Speaker 2: that does X, Y, or Z for you is down
- 11:48Speaker 2: for some reason. It's thinking about planning for what are
- 11:53Speaker 2: you going to do when something stops working and understanding
- 11:56Speaker 2: what's critical in your organization, right? Not everything has to
- 11:59Speaker 2: have the same level of protection. Not everything has the
- 12:02Speaker 2: same impact on your organization if it stops working for
- 12:05Speaker 2: some reason. So, you know, this to me just illustrates, again,
- 12:09Speaker 2: the idea of resilience. Unfortunately, resilience costs money. It might
- 12:12Speaker 2: be duplicate systems. It might be three or four different
- 12:15Speaker 2: backups stored in different locations. There's something called the backup
- 12:18Speaker 2: rule of three, two, one. There's literally nothing you can
- 12:22Speaker 2: do at this point, Brian. Nothing that will make you
- 12:24Speaker 2: completely impervious to these kind of things. And we're seeing
- 12:28Speaker 2: that more and more. But you can defend against it,
- 12:30Speaker 2: and you can prepare for something bad happening.
- 12:33Speaker 1: Well, Christine sent me an email while we were talking
- 12:35Speaker 1: in the last segment. She said, keep asking about AI
- 12:37Speaker 1: getting passwords even without permission. It scares her. It scares me.
- 12:40Speaker 1: And that's why you always emphasize the importance of two-factor authentication.
- 12:45Speaker 1: Even if they were able to hack in and get
- 12:46Speaker 1: your password through some nefarious means, They can't do it
- 12:49Speaker 1: unless they have your cell phone to enter the code
- 12:51Speaker 1: with a two-factor authentication. Well, that's not as true as
- 12:55Speaker 1: it used to.
- 12:56Speaker 2: Be, unfortunately. So multi-factor authentication, a.k.a. two-factor authentication, a.k.a. two-step verification,
- 13:03Speaker 2: depending on what platform you're on, is still absolutely critical.
- 13:07Speaker 2: I don't want people to walk away from this understanding.
- 13:09Speaker 2: You should turn on multi-factor authentication now. on every account,
- 13:13Speaker 2: certainly any account that has access to sensitive data and
- 13:18Speaker 2: or your money, your retirement account, your bank accounts, that
- 13:21Speaker 2: sort of thing. Absolutely critical. However, and we may run
- 13:24Speaker 2: out of time in this segment, there's a new sort
- 13:27Speaker 2: of attack called a man in the middle or adversary
- 13:29Speaker 2: in the middle attack where the bad guys sit between
- 13:32Speaker 2: you and whatever you're trying to log into and they're
- 13:34Speaker 2: proxying the communication. So you enter your username and password,
- 13:38Speaker 2: it goes to them, they send it to your bank
- 13:40Speaker 2: or Microsoft or whatever. When the request for the one-time
- 13:43Speaker 2: passcode or the MFA code comes back, they get that request,
- 13:47Speaker 2: send it to you. You have no idea they're in
- 13:50Speaker 2: the middle of this. You enter that code. It goes
- 13:52Speaker 2: to them. They send it to your bank or Microsoft.
- 13:56Speaker 2: When that clears, they say, here's your session token, the
- 13:59Speaker 2: thing that tells them you've logged in. Now the bad
- 14:01Speaker 2: guys have it. This is real. And there are defenses
- 14:04Speaker 2: against this. Fish-resistant MFA, pass keys, hardware keys. There are
- 14:09Speaker 2: ways to defeat this, but they require a little more
- 14:12Speaker 2: knowledge and, frankly, a little more friction. But sadly, that's
- 14:16Speaker 2: where we're... That's where we are. Fish resistant. Yeah. Fish
- 14:19Speaker 2: resistant MFA. And that is where we are today.
- 14:21Speaker 1: Unfortunately, interest it.com to reach Dave and the crew. Don't
- 14:24Speaker 1: go away. Delta targeted in federal investigation. It's six 50,
- 14:29Speaker 1: 55 care city talk station at the Friday tech Friday
- 14:32Speaker 1: with Dave Hatter interest it.com. You can find Dave and
- 14:34Speaker 1: all the articles he relies on for the segment at
- 14:37Speaker 1: linked in.com. Just search for Dave Hatter and you should
- 14:40Speaker 1: probably check him out throughout the week. He's always posting
- 14:43Speaker 1: great stuff. And you know, I don't, I don't like this, Dave,
- 14:45Speaker 1: but here's one of the reasons they have established and
- 14:50Speaker 1: created these files on us, hoovering up all the data
- 14:53Speaker 1: that we give them voluntarily through these free apps and
- 14:55Speaker 1: every other form. They know who we are, how much
- 14:58Speaker 1: we make, what we buy, and now these major organizations,
- 15:02Speaker 1: and there are a lot of allegations about this, are
- 15:04Speaker 1: adjusting pricing based upon what you can afford. Now, that's
- 15:08Speaker 1: our tax system, isn't it, Dave? You know, the more
- 15:10Speaker 1: you make, the more they tax. Well, the more you make,
- 15:12Speaker 1: the more they're going to charge you for any given
- 15:13Speaker 1: product or service.
- 15:15Speaker 2: So what you said about why they want your data
- 15:17Speaker 2: is absolutely right. That's a big part of it. And
- 15:20Speaker 2: I also need to get my plug in, Brian, for
- 15:21Speaker 2: Queen City Con. The premier Midwestern cybersecurity conference starts next Friday.
- 15:26Speaker 2: In fact, probably when I talk to you and Joe,
- 15:28Speaker 2: I will be on site there at the Hyatt, November
- 15:31Speaker 2: 13th through 15th, queencitycon.org. Look it up, folks. But yeah,
- 15:34Speaker 2: this is a thing that Really rubs me the wrong way.
- 15:37Speaker 2: Surveillance pricing. I wrote an article about this back in
- 15:40Speaker 2: February when I learned about it. Primarily, I mean, I
- 15:43Speaker 2: knew it was a thing. Yeah. But because Maryland banned it.
- 15:47Speaker 2: So I did a little research for this and then
- 15:49Speaker 2: I want to come back and explain it. But so far,
- 15:51Speaker 2: from best I can tell, four states have actually banned
- 15:54Speaker 2: this practice. Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.
- 16:00Speaker 1: All Democrat states.
- 16:02Speaker 2: Several other states looking to ban it. California, Washington, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Minnesota, Tennessee,
- 16:08Speaker 2: and Vermont. I can tell you, based on the article
- 16:11Speaker 2: I wrote and the research I've done into this, I
- 16:13Speaker 2: have reached out to legislators in Kentucky and I'm working
- 16:16Speaker 2: to try to get something going here. But that said,
- 16:20Speaker 2: I mean, as recently as yesterday, Brian, here's an article.
- 16:23Speaker 2: Digital price tags at grocery stores raise surveillance pricing fears.
- 16:28Speaker 2: There's always been the concept of dynamic pricing. Yeah.
- 16:31Speaker 1: Oak Park, River Forest. Listen, we joked about it all
- 16:36Speaker 1: the time. I lived in Oak Park, and the next
- 16:37Speaker 1: neighborhood to the west of Oak Park up in Chicago
- 16:40Speaker 1: was River Forest. River Forest, a much wealthier neighborhood than
- 16:43Speaker 1: Oak Park. There was the Oak Park price to get
- 16:45Speaker 1: your furnace fixed, and then there was the River Forest
- 16:46Speaker 1: price to get your furnace fixed. It was more. Why?
- 16:49Speaker 1: Because you're in that neighborhood. This is the same damn thing,
- 16:51Speaker 1: except they do it, well, electronically.
- 16:54Speaker 2: At a lot larger scale with a lot more detailed
- 16:57Speaker 2: information to really hone it in. So again, things like
- 17:00Speaker 2: surge pricing on an Uber would be an example of this, right?
- 17:03Speaker 2: If you use Amazon or Walmart online, as they collect
- 17:06Speaker 2: more data about you, they know your zip code, whatever,
- 17:08Speaker 2: of course they could adjust the price. But in my opinion,
- 17:11Speaker 2: this goes much deeper than that. Now, thanks to digital
- 17:14Speaker 2: price tags, as they mentioned in this story, so I'll
- 17:16Speaker 2: just quote from this article, from websites to brick and
- 17:18Speaker 2: mortar stores, it's easier than ever for companies to target
- 17:21Speaker 2: shoppers with prices based on their personal data. Now, a
- 17:24Speaker 2: recent change at many grocery stores is raising concerns about
- 17:26Speaker 2: so-called surveillance pricing.
- 17:29Speaker 1: Right.
- 17:30Speaker 2: You walk in the store. It it recognizes your phone.
- 17:34Speaker 2: They have beacons. Your phone is pinging off of them.
- 17:36Speaker 2: Your phone is connected to you. They know it's you.
- 17:40Speaker 2: So you go over and pick up a can of
- 17:42Speaker 2: spam or whatever. And the price you see on the
- 17:45Speaker 2: digital price tag is different than the price I get
- 17:48Speaker 2: because they think you make more money than me.
- 17:50Speaker 1: Then get a Faraday Faraday bag. What would the default
- 17:53Speaker 1: pricing be, the lowest price?
- 17:55Speaker 2: Who knows? Good question, Brian. But again, at one time,
- 18:00Speaker 2: certainly they could do this if you were only an
- 18:02Speaker 2: online shopper. And it was called dynamic pricing. That's been
- 18:06Speaker 2: around for a long time. But now this idea is
- 18:09Speaker 2: with even more data than ever before. And it's not
- 18:12Speaker 2: just e-commerce. It's not just online. Now in physical stores,
- 18:15Speaker 2: because of this technology. And again, when you walk in,
- 18:18Speaker 2: Your phone, if you have the Wi-Fi turned on, if
- 18:20Speaker 2: you have the Bluetooth turned on, a Faraday bag is
- 18:23Speaker 2: a great option. I recommend GoDark. Yes, I have one
- 18:26Speaker 2: of these for my phone. Shocker option, Brian. Maybe we
- 18:29Speaker 2: do a whole segment on that and how to find
- 18:31Speaker 2: these things because they're not all the same. And if
- 18:33Speaker 2: you go buy one off Timu for $ 5, it probably
- 18:35Speaker 2: won't do what it purports to do. But yeah, I mean,
- 18:39Speaker 2: other than states banning this, your only real defense is
- 18:42Speaker 2: don't take your phone with you. Turn off the Wi-Fi
- 18:44Speaker 2: and the Bluetooth. Or drop your phone in a Faraday purse, pouch, bag, whatever. But,
- 18:50Speaker 2: you know, until this is banned, you're only going to
- 18:53Speaker 2: see more and more of this. And again, folks, I
- 18:54Speaker 2: want to be clear. This is not just you go
- 18:56Speaker 2: online and they know your zip code. You go online,
- 18:59Speaker 2: they know everything about you now. Yes, they do. And
- 19:01Speaker 2: it's not just online. You walk into a retail store.
- 19:05Speaker 2: They have these systems installed. You may get a higher
- 19:08Speaker 2: price than me. Again, four states have banned it. Several
- 19:11Speaker 2: more are looking at it. I'm going to push this
- 19:13Speaker 2: as hard as I can in Kentucky. come January, we'll
- 19:17Speaker 2: see what happens. But, you know, I'll put all this
- 19:18Speaker 2: in the show notes. Again, I wrote an article about
- 19:20Speaker 2: this back in February trying to raise the awareness about this.
- 19:23Speaker 1: This sounds like a Marxist dream. I'm surprised that Democrat
- 19:26Speaker 1: states have banned it because if poorer people pay less
- 19:31Speaker 1: and richer people pay more, isn't that what they're pushing
- 19:33Speaker 1: for constantly with me going back to the tax rates
- 19:36Speaker 1: that we all pay as a relative argument?
- 19:39Speaker 2: Well, there's another interesting angle to this, Brian, which is
- 19:42Speaker 2: at the end of the day... all of your data
- 19:44Speaker 2: that they've collected about you may not even be right.
- 19:46Speaker 1: That's true.
- 19:47Speaker 2: So you might be getting different pricing that's not even
- 19:49Speaker 2: accurate because the data itself is not correct.
- 19:52Speaker 1: That is true.
- 19:53Speaker 2: To me, this is just wrong across the board, and
- 19:57Speaker 2: hopefully more states will jump on the bandwagon.