Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette. Hey, girl.
And you are tuned in to Tweed Trends. It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Can you see yourself in cyber? Let's get started.
Hey there, welcome back to Tweed Trends. Let me start by apologizing to my loyal listeners. I dropped the ball, and I heard it hit the ground on Tuesday. A lot happened on Tuesday, and although I dropped the ball a while ago, it's been falling, but it did not make contact with the ground until Tuesday.
So let me apologize, one, for dropping the ball in the first place, but then in that moment that it made contact, that was like that extra blow. It's like, ah, man, it got me. I'm going to share all of the information with you, because that's what I do. So starting with the idea of dropping the ball in the first place, I feel like I have been chasing my tail for the past couple of months now.
It's been a while. And I feel this way, because I've got a lot of iron in the coal. I've got a lot of moving parts, places, and those plates are spinning. And in a conversation with my husband this morning, he made a comment about plate spinning and how we started a plate spinning over here.
And then we were like, OK, that one's good. Let's start this plate spinning. And then in that moment of that plate spinning, we never went to check on the other plate. And so it stops spinning a long time ago.
And it's like, ah, man, get this one going again. Get this one going. And juggling the plates is difficult. That's just bottom line.
Juggling the plates is difficult. So a couple of episodes back, I told you that I'm in the process of starting up a business. And so that's one of the plates that I have spinning. Of course, the podcast, I actually have a job outside of all of that.
And then there's the nine-year-old and the household and the things around the house that need to get done on a regular basis. And it just seems like there are so many different ways that my attention and my energy is being pulled that something is going to feel the effects of all the chaos. And unfortunately, it was the podcast just recently. So whereas at one point, I would have all of my stuff laid out and I know well in advance of what I'm doing and when I'm doing it, I let that fall by the wayside.
And in doing that, then what happened is I got to a place where Tuesday something happened, rock my world, blew my mind. And then it was like, I was done for the day. I could not put it back together. I attempted to come and do it the next day, but because I already had that day laid out that it just never came together.
And so here we are on Thursday. And I'm still thinking back to Tuesday, like, how did I let that happen? So I'm going to do better. I am in the process of getting my stuff better organized.
And hopefully that is going to put me in a better position with all of the plates. And hopefully I can stop some of the plates moving intentionally because those things have been taken care of and they're now on autopilot or whatever, what have you. But let me tell you what happened on Tuesday. At the start of today's show, I ask the question, can you see yourself in Cyber?
Well, that just happens to be this year's campaign theme for Cyber Security Awareness Month, which just happens to be this month, October, which just happens to be the type of situation that I dealt with on Tuesday. It was a serious cyber situation. So here's what happened. I was on my computer.
I was actually doing work for work. And while I was there, a phone call came in. So I stopped my regular work. While I was on the phone call, I pulled up Facebook.
And was just kind of lightly scrolling through, just kind of liking things here and there while I was on the phone call. And I saw a message from a friend. And it was something along the lines of, look who recently died or something. And then it had the shock face emoji.
And I was curious. I wonder the person whose account it was and was somebody that I worked with back home when I was working in radio. So in my mind, I'm thinking it's one of the radio personalities that we worked with. I clicked on the link.
And y'all, when I tell you, I was scared, telephied, shook, whatever word you used to describe just being completely rattled, that was mean. I clicked the link. And then all of a sudden, this thing popped up on my computer screen. This lady starts talking and she's saying, your computer has been used for your IP address has been used for whatever, this any other thing, blah, blah, blah.
Don't attempt to turn your computer off. Just it was a lot. And it had the pop-up screens. It was maybe three pop-up screens.
And the one on top had like, call Microsoft to get this situation, rectify before the people get into your computer and steal your data. And oh my gosh. And it was loud. And I went into a panic.
Now mind you, remember, I told you I was on the phone. I was actually on the phone with my husband. And he hears it. And he's like, what's going on?
What's going on? And I'm just like, I don't know. I don't know. It's saying this and it's doing this.
And he's like, do I need to come home? And I'm like, I don't know. And he's like, do this. I can't.
It's not giving me. I cannot do it. Oh my gosh. So he's like, all right.
I'm all the way home. I'm like, OK, well, I'm hanging up the phone. I got to figure something out. So I go to my phone and find Apple support.
And load it, find the number, call them. And the guy that answered, he's like, I see you got some trouble on your hands. But he said it like so calm and cool and whatnot. It caught me off guard because I was frazzled at this point because this lady is talking me like, I've already hit the button to turn the computer off.
My screen is black. But I can still hear her talking. She's still telling me all these warnings. And it's in a loop.
It's just keep saying it over and over again. And so he's like, OK, so I'm going to walk you through. It's going to be OK. Calm down.
And so I was like, OK. So he's like, OK, first, can you mute that? And I'm going to go, I don't know. He's like, it's OK.
Take a deep breath. See if you can mute it. And sure enough, I can mute it. And it's like that right there took a lot of the stress and the pain and the confusion out of the equation.
Because now she wasn't talking to me and talking all out and I could think. And so then he's like, OK, what browser are you in? I was in Safari. He's like, OK, go to the top left hand corner.
We're at Safari, click on that, quit Safari. And so I do that. And he's like, OK. And we're sitting there for a second.
And he's like, that's it. And I'm kind of like, so I don't need to do a search, a check, and nothing on my computer. And he's like, does this happen to you a lot? And I'm like, no, this is the first time this has ever happened.
And he's like, well, by your reaction, I could tell that this probably never happened to you before. But you're fine. He's like, the whole purpose of that was to scare you into calling the number that they had on the screen. And at this point, I was relieved.
I was happy. I was still a little scared. And I started boo-hoo crying on the phone with this man. And he's kind of giggling.
He's like, ma'am, I'm not laughing at you. Please know this. He's like, I do this a lot. This happens.
And I was so grateful, so out of sorts. But like I said, I was shook to my core. And after that, I had to go outside, get some fresh air. I had to go sit down, get something to drink.
I was done. Pretty much that did my day in. And that happened probably around 10 in the morning, maybe? It was fairly early.
So the stuff that I got done after that was little to none. And I've just been reflecting on it, because that was the scariest moment that I could think of. And it was because I used my computer for work, and I'm just thinking of all the different things. Like, oh my gosh, I hope my work stuff doesn't get corrupted.
I hope this doesn't get corrupted. I need this computer. I hate to spend the rest of my day trying to get a new computer, because I just ruined this one, because I clicked to see who died. So all of that to say, that was the beginning of the end of the productivity for my day on Thursday.
So clearly, I'm still discombobulated, because I said for my day on Thursday, which I actually meant Tuesday, because today's Thursday. But anyway, all of that to say that because of that experience that I went through, I have decided that at some point this month, I want to actually bring somebody on the show and talk with them about cybersecurity, somebody in that field, because I want to have my own awareness campaign, because this was so simple. And I should have known better. I should have known better.
But because I was multitasking, I was doing more than one thing at a time, I didn't really pay attention to the idea that why would this person have put this message here among these people? When I think back on it, it was a lot of strange things. And I went back to see the link, and now the link is gone. So it's almost as if I used it, and it had self-destruct typing, and the message is there, but the link that was with it is gone.
Don't see it at all. So that's the game plan. The game plan is now to bring somebody on to talk to them about what all we can do, especially on the individual and family level. Because the more I think about it, our nine-year-old has a computer, and she likes going on there, she likes doing things.
And it would be so easy for her to see a link that said, hey, want to see pictures of kittens and puppies getting along together, snuggling or something. And she would be like, oh, I love kittens and puppies. Let me see. And to tap on a link that maybe she shouldn't, or something along those lines, and end up corrupting her computer.
Because then I know her. She would probably want to try to fix it herself, thinking, oh, let me do this. Let me do that. Now, granted, in my situation, it gave a phone number on the screen to call.
I don't think she would go that far to be like, oh, let me just go ahead and call this and not say anything to my mom and dad. But you never know. And then on the other hand, I've got my mother, opposite spectrum. She's in her 80s.
And although she's very kind of hands off when it comes to technology, I could see her saying, well, it said tap here. So that's what I did. And then I don't know what this thing did. And so my mom, I think she would just kind of put it off to the side.
Like, yeah, I don't know what's happening. I'm going to walk off from this, and I'll come back and see, is it still cutting up? Or what? Now, I do know that she would eventually say something.
But in the beginning, to actually not tap the button or not do this out of the third, that would be the thing that I feel like now I need to have those conversations with both of them to be like, hey, so when you're on the computer, these are the types of things I want you to keep an eye out for. If you didn't ask for it, if you didn't inquire, don't click on just random stuff. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. When I tell you that Tuesday took me back to like the early 2000s, when I remember being in the computer lab at the College of Charleston, and that would be the thing that everybody feared was that while you're working on the computer, working on an assignment, that you click on something and then all of these pop-ups come up.
And back then, it used to be pouring things that would pop up on your screen. And it was just like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And you couldn't close out a screen fast enough before more things were popping on there. And so it kind of took me back to that type situation.
Although it was only four screens that popped up. Still, the fact that I would try to close out one and it would pop right back up. It'd pop right back up. So it wasn't like I could close them all out.
It was like, no, before you can even consider trying to close these things out. It's going to come right back to you. And so once again, because of that ordeal and the fact that this is Cyber Security Awareness Month, we are going there. We are going to talk about this in more depth, more detail with somebody who this is their lane.
And we're going to get some tips and tricks on how we can protect ourselves, how we can protect our loved ones, and protect our stuff. Okay. So until then, take care. Have a great weekend.
And I'll see you back here again on Tuesday.