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Security isn’t about luck—it’s about strategy. In this podcast, we break down how to protect your home, family, and business from threats most people don’t even think about. We’re not here to fuel fear—we’re here to help you prepare.
Hosted by security professionals, Michael Johnson, a retired law enforcement captain with 29 years of experience and James Kerr an expert from Boss Security Screens, this podcast delivers real, no-nonsense advice. We know what truly stops burglars—not just locks and alarms, but layered security strategies that keep your home and business safe.
What you'll learn in this podcast:
✅ Why the concept of “layered security” is the only way to protect your property.
✅ Guns for self-defense: myths, reality, and what you really need to consider.
✅ How to build a safe space for yourself and your family while minimizing risk.
✅ Real-life stories of break-ins and assaults - and why some homes remain impregnable.
📢 Subscribe now and stay one step ahead of those who rely on luck.
🛡 Ready to take home security seriously?
Visit https://bosssecurityscreens.com/free-consultation for a free consultation.
your personal data is a commodity Everyone is buying it Everyone is selling it And the bad guys are trading it And it's a high value item She thought she was doing what I was asking her to do but is someone just pretending to be me every app that you have Yeah is trying to access your personal data So always be cognizant of what is in your pictures
[Music] Hey welcome back This is James with Boss Security Screens and this is MJ expert of all things law enforcement or security related And today we're talking about social media Security of social media Security of social media Your personal data is a commodity Everyone is buying it Everyone is selling it And the bad guys are trading it and it's a high value item and you need to do everything in your power to make sure that you are protecting your personal data and uh think of all of the things that you fill out online all of the information that you submit Um all of that's being tracked and it's out there Uh there are some services that are available so that you can um try to scrub some of the information your personal information any of those off of the dark web Have you tried any of those services i haven't tried them personally I know they work well Um but uh I do have uh a way of that I monitor for myself as a private investigator As a private investigator there's just some things that I do for myself that I I always make sure that I'm checking and looking for And uh I have a a host of databases I use as a private investigator to you know kind of track these things But for the consumer uh who doesn't have that kind of access what you have is services that will help you scrub your personal information But bad guys are out there trading your personal information like a commodity So personal info would be like age phone number date of birth address places of ownership anything that is connected to your identity uh connected to your methods and modes of communication your email addresses um your social media handles Um bad guys are surfing the the web uh as much as anyone and they're looking for those vulnerabilities And so there's little things out there that we do we don't even think about And I'm going to probably talk into more than just the financial impact that comes into these things Personal safety is another one I'm going to pick something simple Um you are somewhere you're taking a picture and you post it on social media Hey look at me I'm here A lot of times your camera embeds data inside this picture Every picture has data like location time location time I can reverse engineer those photos and find out exactly where you were So you have tools where you just drop the photo in there and it it gives you the metadata and it gives you the metadata Um I actually use that quite a bit in my private investigation If I'm trying to find somebody I had a guy that I couldn't find I couldn't find I looked forever and I found a picture that he posted and it was at a beach and at this beach was a very unique sculpture very unique and uh so I just put that sculpture in as a search engine and I checked it and it came back with a location and then once I got the pictures of the location I actually got the exact sculpture where they were at and it was able to help me uh you know resolve that case So um there's a lot of information that gets posted that we don't even know about Your uh location device on your phone all that information is tracking you Uh every app every app that you have is trying to access your personal data right i mean that's that's a commodity again and they have the ability in these lengthy agreements that we don't ever read and we just click yes at the end because we want to get in and get to using it but we forget to read all those disclaimers about what they do with your personal data Now some of that personal data is probably fairly benign um where it's not going to cause you a lot of issues It's more for marketing purposes than it is for theft But the problem is is that we unsuspectingly and unknowingly we give out a lot of our personal information and that personal information gets used Now the other way the bad guys get this information is through data breaches Um so now you've got uh say your doctor's offices your banks and financial institutions All of those guys have a lot of data on us and that data once it gets stolen I know personally that I get these notices all the time from companies that say "Oh you were part of 20 million people who you know just got compromised right?" And uh you know that's a little unnerving So one of the things that I would tell you to do is to make sure that you have a service that is monitoring your credit If you're not going to monitor it yourself uh you know go out there and put freezes on your credit because that also is a free service That's right you can put a freeze on your on your credit and it will also notify you when somebody's trying to use your personal data But from a social media standpoint um think about all the information that you provide that you don't even know Um I'm going to say talk about children here This is child safety Now uh we all love toh post a bunch of pictures of our kids right and a lot of times we'll have t-shirts uh from our school or from our church or from areas that are private to us And unbeknownst to us we just broadcast it to the world that my student is a honor student And what about those bumper stickers you know my I got an honor student at this school Yeah you know it makes it very easy for bad guys to target a child and then know where to go uh and to narrow that search down rather quickly And you know from a private investigator standpoint I use all of those little clues that you put on your cars and on social media as means to track you And so you know the good thing is is I'm one of the good guys I'm on this side of the law But if I was a bad guy and I took all the knowledge and skills that I have which probably still even maybe pale in comparison to some of the bad guys because they're really operating in that dark web you know they're in the deep web and they're out there doing all kinds of illegal activities and they're always looking for vulnerabilities Now along the same lines of those vulnerabilities uh think about router safety um internet safety Uh I am sure that businesses are are keenly aware that they have to have very secure systems encryption to make sure that all the information you're transporting or uh transferring back and forth is secure Yeah Banking info credit card info all of those things info Client info uh you know and we have to be very careful about that cuz we don't want to send out an email that says hey I'm just letting you all know that my data was breached and I you know all my customer information was compromised I I like uh story time So the more stories you can share the better and I'll just share one real quick Yeah share one Uh so in spirit of data security we had someone spoof me and contact an employee and say "Don't tell anyone in the office but I want to buy uh gift cards as a you know as a surprise." And she went down that path Someone was pretending to be me It looked like it was from me and she was just trying to do what the boss was saying And uh that person whomever it was said "Hey I want you to go out and buy like five gift cards Don't tell anyone It's going to be a surprise." And she did it Hundreds of dollars thousands of dollars Yep She thought she was doing what I was asking her to do but as someone just pretending to be me So that's a very popular scam Still a very popular scam And I think everybody's probably gotten uh some form of a text message uh it'll say "Hey I haven't talked to you in a while." And that's all it says I get three of those a day Yeah You get those all the time You know if you click into those or if you respond you've got a real problem Um if you don't put who you are what this was about and was I expecting this as a text message uh I'm not going to respond back to you And if you really want to get a hold of me then you probably better call me You know how right you know there's there's ways if you know me you know how to get a hold of me Those those scams are so prevalent and I guess they're so effective They're very effective What surprises me is everybody knows about them We're all ultra aware of them but they still pull on the strings that make us curious Yeah The human component there They pray on the human component and uh they'll say things that uh are too good to be true You know I don't know how many DeWalt uh tool sets I've won in the last 6 months but apparently I'm the luckiest guy on the planet I've never got one of those but yeah I get a lot of DeWalt tools Uh you know so uh I don't know you let me know But I think say an older generation that didn't grow up with computing maybe they're more trusting especially on a digital level And then you have really young uh like my 12-year-old he's also very trusting He hasn't been you know put through the ringer on scams or whatever So you have this older demographic like senior citizens Uh they didn't grow up with computing They're very trusting in general So I feel they're easy target for these scams And a lot of these scams are automated So it's not like one person sending one text It's like a software that's referencing a database and sending out thousands of these a day and you just need like a two or three% response rate Absolutely Right To make the numbers work And that and that data that you we just talked about was obtained through phone numbers through social media uh email addresses all of those things that the bad guys are getting a hold of is what they use against us Easily scraped Easily scraped easily put in a database easily cross reference by another database So I was looking at a tool It's a cookie that resides on a website and it tells you who's on your website first name last name email phone number expected income and expected residence because it's looking at who you are right now your digital signature and it's starting to cross reference these other databases that match up and it can serve up this information And that goes to speak about the power of AI technology Uh AI technology we've talked about it in some of the other segments Uh AI is changing the game uh in terms of access to information uh the ability to process it quickly And so that also creates uh not only vulnerabilities but opportunities on the other side uh to help us gather information So it's a it's a two-edged sword You know the technology has always been a two-edged sword Uh it works well for us to protect ourselves but bad guys quickly uh learn to adapt use that information and then use it against you I think the scariest part here is how easily it scales right so if it were just one person attacking one person uh that's not as bad as one person attacking 100 million people at the same time right just through like a push of a button Here here's an idea Maybe there's no way to stop the tide There's just too many databases out there Maybe what we should do is pretend to be someone we're not Well that has a danger there buddy And I like where your head like I'm not really James Kerr I like where your head's going but uh you know pretend to be someone else Those can be dangerous games Uh so I I don't know that I would advocate that for the average person um you'd have to be pretty techsavvy uh to make sure that you you're not who you seem you are that you that you're able to conceal that identity One of the things that I also wanted to talk about is the dangers of social media the pictures you post Um not in terms of just your kids but your your personal assets Uh we take a lot of pictures around our home We take pictures of in front of our cars in front of our Harley-Davidson whatever it is you have You are advertising broadcasting You are broadcasting You're telling the world this is what I own You know all the pictures from inside your home or you know what you don't realize is that your safe is in the background And now the bad guy just has to blow that photo up and he can see what kind of safe you have Now he can go and research how to break into that safe And then when he gets there he already has the tools He already has everything ready to go and he is breaking into your system So always be cognizant of what is in your pictures what is in the background what are you including that you don't even think about that you're including It's that information that is dangerous and it's that information that ultimately comes back to get you So with that we're going to go ahead and end our segment today We always appreciate you guys tuning in and uh following along If you have any questions of us please reach out Uh let us know We also would love to hear about any topics that you would like us to cover specifically But until then see you tomorrow We will see you again