Announcer: Are you ready for an open discussion with the best of the best and the best of what's next? Welcome to the Tony DUrso show. Join in on a great conversation today with some of the world's great influencers as they showcase great advice and techniques that made them the game changers they are today. Now here's Tony DUrso.

Tony:

Welcome. I'm your host Tony DUrso. I interview some of the most successful people in the world, and I thank you for joining us. This show is dedicated to helping you turn your vision into reality, and here's a successful entrepreneur who provides insights and guidance you can use to move along your vision path. And you can listen to all of my shows on most podcast platforms. If you have Apple podcasts, aka iTunes, please subscribe, and if you like what you hear, a kind review really makes my day. Now before we get going, here's a big thank you to some amazing sponsors of our show. Please stay tuned for an important message from Remrise® and take their sleep quiz to help you sleep really good. More on that shortly, and coming up is a significant message from Dollar Shave Club®, who provides the right items for us to get the most amazing shaves. I'll talk more about that later as well. More info on them just ahead, so please stay tuned. Today's show is with Trip Elix, from hacker To security advocate. Let's see what we can learn today. Here's some info on Trip. Over the last 30 years, Trip Elix worked privately as a consultant, investigator, forensic technician and a skip tracer. The author of three books he says, "being spooked by your own devices is not okay." At the end of this interview, I'm going to do a summary recap of what we went over, so stay tuned for that. Here we go. Welcome to the show once again, Trip. So great to have you on with us.

Trip:

Thank you so much, Tony. It's really great to be here.

Tony:

Trip, there's so much insecurity. The world has changed since our last interview. I think about a year or so ago.

Trip:

Yeah, it has.

Tony:

It's just mind-blowing. Now you're starting to tell me right before the show about robots doing all sorts of things on their own dear audience. You got to check this out. My jaw is still on the ground with what Trip was saying just before we started thi., But before we do - hang on everyone - let's introduce Trip. There are some new members of the audience. Let's find out, who are you Trip and how did it all start for you? What's your backstory?

Trip:

Well, my backstory is that I have been in the security "game" for a really long, long time, and I noticed that when I went to hacker cons or whatever, I was starting to be the old guy. So what I did is I wrote a book and we talked about that book the last time I was on and I made a classic mistake. And I'll tell you, if you're going to write in the fictional arena, do not ever take your book to a niche market. Because what I did was, you write a novel and most people write a novel and they try to sell it for the rest of the life. They sell about 100 to their family and friends. They stick it on Amazon; it doesn't go anywhere. Their entire life, they sell a hundred, and that's really the end of the story for most. I took mine. It was called Extortionware: A Hacker's Tale to a hacker con out in Las Vegas, the biggest in the world. It's called DEF CON. Now it's more like line con and has about 47,000 people that attend it. I took it and I sold it out of my backpack. I gave stacks to the people that were in the vendor area and told them, I'll give you five bucks to sell my book for every copy. And the guy looked at me like I was crazy. What he didn't know is I own the book, so I was making money anyway. So the end story is I took 500 with me. I brought back 26, and then I tried selling things on the Internet. Two titles in a row, pretty much go nowhere. But I learned some things about publicity along the way, reaching out to Tony and developing a relationship with Tony. We've communicated. Although I haven't been on his show in a year, we've communicated several times in between, because he knows he can come to me. And the lesson that I learned, the lesson that I didn't spend...l know a lot of people spend lots of money, but the lesson that I really learned is the relationship that you have with other people, the relationship that you build with your "audience and friends", because your audience have to really be your friend for them to trust who you are and really be able to consume whatever it is you're trying to create. It doesn't matter if you're making a book or making a lamp or making a tee shirt. It really doesn't matter because it's not that thing you make. Nobody goes out and looks at a rack and says, look at that great, awesome design that's in the middle of that t-shirt. I got to have that. No, actually they got to have the guy that made it, and then they recognize that the shirt is something that they want. And that's true for your writing as well. How have you been, Tony?

Tony:

I've been great. Thank you for sharing that on your backstory and what the audience doesn't know yet is what an extraordinary hacker you are, and we're going to go into that in quite a bit, but I've been good. Show is booming. Going crazy, huge audiences. I'm blessed and I'm pretty certain it's because I really nailed down my vision, my purpose, my long-term objective, so that my actions and my efforts would actually go along towards something of what I really love to do my purpose. And so I want to flip it back to you, Trip and ask for what you're doing now as a consumer security watchdog, what's your purpose for what you're doing now?

Trip:

Well, really what I'm after right now in this mode, and I've been doing YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. I'm going to start doing some podcast stuff, and I built a studio in my home, which works out pretty well. But my end goal is to have enough people around me that I meet. I've been hanging out on Twitter a lot lately, and I've developed some rapport with the people that are out there, and it really is a two-way street. In other words, it's not that I'm pushing a thing to them. They're commenting and reacting back with me, and that's what we all need to build in our lives. The other thing that I reached out to Tony about before too, is we both going to be more proactive in sending out emails and receiving emails from the people that we know and what we call our audience, because you can reach me if you want out on the internet. You just look up Trip, TRIPELIX, and you can see me. I'm on every single system - by design. If I find a a new website out there, I sign up just so that I have an account there, but the main things that I'm on. I use Facebook very sparingly now. Did you know that by the way, that what the address of Facebook book is?

Tony:

Is this a trick question? Cause it's www.facebook.com, is it not?

Trip:

No. I mean their physical mailing address.

Tony:

Oh, I believe I could do a search and find, but they actually have multiple offices.

Trip:

1 Hacker Way. They renamed the street in front of their world headquarters Hacker Way. So they could be 1 Hacker Way.

Tony:

Wow. Amazing.

Trip:

Facebook is run by hackers. They violate every single principle that you would consider decent. They've been found to listen to devices, record people without their knowledge, turn their camera on as a joke.

Tony:

Okay. Right there. Trip, when I go on Facebook, just so I understand it also for our consumer audience here, I didn't turn on my microphone. I don't have my video camera on, but Facebook through the Facebook website, the social media app, they can turn it on and actually listen without me knowing?

Trip:

There's a lot of sites that turn your mic on, and for a wide variety of reasons. More specifically, the Facebook app that goes on your phone, the Messenger app, I removed. I removed it because it does turn on its mic all the time and listens. Now you got to remember something about computers and AI and the way that these things work, if you're sitting at home and you're listening to this, or even in your car, it's not like some little short fat guy is sitting with the pair of headphones, listening to every word you say, because truth be told, all of us are boring as hell. Okay? Get over it. We're not. If you believe that everything you have you say is interesting, you've got a bigger problem and you probably not here anyway.

Tony:

I just hope some things I say now and then are interesting, but I'm already like greeting. It's not a person listening. It's impossible. A billion, 2 billion people, users that they have a month, but they have a computer listening. But what's the point? I podcast. I talk to my family. I say innocuous things, germane, nothing special. Talk about groceries, dinners. Who cares? What's an AI going to do with that, Trip?

Trip:

Extortion.

Tony:

Extortion? Oh, now you've got something interesting to say. Talk to me.

Trip:

Really, I want you to think about this. Okay? So you're already being extorted in a couple of different ways, but we as a society have accepted extortion as a acceptable business practice. The credit system, as we know it, the credit cards, the credit on your home loan is tied to the credit on your car loan, which is tied to the credit and the cards that you have in your wallet. And if you go to the doctor and he orders a test and that test goes to a third-party lab that you've never heard of, then your insurance tells you that they're not going to cover that third-party lab because they're not in network. You are obligated to pay them because if you don't pay them, they sell it over to a collection company and that collection company will put it on your credit report that you didn't pay. That's extortion, just like when you go into ...and I've done this... gone into a CVS and picked up breath mints and found out that the breath mints without the CVS card or $4.50 cents. With a card, they're 99 cents.

Tony:

Oh my.

Trip:

So yeah, you got to use the card, but that's extorting who you are to make a purchase. So let me tell you...

Tony:

You know, that actually ...what you just said earlier actually happened to someone I know. Got a ding, whatever you want to call it on the credit saying that a bill wasn't paid and it's on the credit report. Yet that bill was never received, and the person has no idea of who put this bill on, but it could only have been a third-party person. But the silly thing is going through all that work, putting it on the credit report instead of just sending the bill and saying, hey, please pay this amount of money. It wasn't a whole lot of money, but it got put on the credit report. Just very silly.

Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you could learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is with Trip Elix, from Hacker To security advocate. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. Announcer: This is the Voice America Influencers Channel. Be inspired.

Tony:

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Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you could learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is with Trip Elix, from Hacker To security advocate. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. Trip says "the sanctuary of our homes is being invaded by companies that sell what we do, and it’s not just what you do online. Children’s information is for sale. Anyone can the buy the name, address & phone number of the children in your neighborhood. The same companies that bring us spam, harassing telephone calls & junk mail are now endangering you and your children". All right. And now back to the chat with Trip.

Trip:

Well, I do something odd. I don't believe in actually having credit. I don't use it. I'll tell you what happened to me. We started out and yes, I hang out with hackers, but I'll tell you something that happened to me personally, in that one day, I went outside to get the mail and I saw a business card from the police and it was actually from a police detective and it had "please call me" written on the reverse. And I looked at that and I was really wondering what was going on. I called a couple of attorneys that I know and told them that I got the card and what did they think? And they both told me not to respond to it and I didn't listen. So I called the guy up and he told me that I had been a victim of identity theft. In fact, everyone that lived five blocks to my east, four blocks to my west and nine blocks to my south we're all victims of identity theft. What this group had done is they had bought all of our private information from one of the companies - and I believe it was a credit reporting company, but I can't prove it - signed us up for Sprint, compromised the FedEx ground driver that was supposed to deliver the brand new iPhone that you get with signing up for Sprint. And well, they arrested that driver. The police found out about this because the FBI contacted them because this group had done this in six other states. You see, this problem ... that's what opened my eyes to just openly selling literally every aspect of your life. I went to a talk the other day, there was a group. Are you familiar with the new constitutional Congress group?

Tony:

I'm familiar with a little, very, very little, not too much.

Trip:

Title 5 of our constitution says that we can convene as representatives from our states and override and write and change and alter everything that comes after the originating writing of the constitution. Like, I mean, right now...

Tony:

Like laws?

Trip:

Like all laws. So at any rate, I went to see somebody talk about that and who was involved in the... He was involved very heavily with the Tea Party movement. And if you don't remember, the Tea Party movement was persecuted by our IRS, and they were all persecuted because they believed in a political policy. Not because they had any particular skin color, but they were persecuted for politics by the IRS. There were hearings; nobody went to jail and they should have, but I said to this guy who had been contacted by the IRS years ago and gone through all this nightmare, and it was a nightmare for a whole bunch of people. I said, how did you think the IRS knew about your members? And he said, well, we all filed 501Cs, which was a nonprofit filing. And I said, no, not everybody that was tracked or gone after by the IRS filed one of those. And he looked at me for a second. And I said, you know how the IRS knew you were in the Tea Party? And he said, no. And I said, Axiom Corporation. Axiom changed its name to LiveRamp, and right now Axiom's old name, Axiom China is involved with the Chinese government in their surveillance network. They are partners with Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, cable TV, the credit companies.

Tony:

All the favorites!

Trip:

If you go out to www.liveramp.com/partners on a web browser and just look through all the companies that you need to avoid.

Tony:

This is the consumer security watchdog with Trip Elix, and you can find him at www.tripelix.com, and I'll spell that. www.TRIPELIX.com.

Trip:

If you remember the Patriot Act, there was a lot of flap about the NSA getting all your data and the government getting all the data. Snowden talks about this all the time. But what really happened was the government doesn't receive your data for free. It buys it. It buys it from Facebook, it buys it from Google, it buys it from Twitter. It's to their advantage to have more subscribers on their systems because they get more money from the government. And then when they advertise, why? That's cream off the top. They're already paid for their service.

Tony:

Very interesting. We have two points that kind of are unanswered, and I want to make sure that I don't miss on them. One is, what you're doing is you're providing a great service to people and you've changed in your careers. You're very successful in what you do, and as an instruction and guidance and some help to our entrepreneur audience, very strong solopreneur, small business owners, and so forth, we'd love to know. Did you hone in on a purpose like of what you love to do, what you really want to do, and is that the fire let's call it, the passion to what you do and to your success is your purpose. What is your purpose and how often do you work on that purpose?

Trip:

Well, the thing that I really want to do to Tony is I want to be a storyteller. I really do. I write in a method that's intriguing. I know when I go places, people ask me to talk about something and I'll talk and I'll see that it's not only the people that I'm interacting with, but it's the people around and the people that I don't even know. So that passion of being able to do that and receive some kind of monetization in return is what feeds me, but how I get there and how I meet great people like you and get you into my life is by doing the other things that I just know how to do by happenstance, because I'm gifted in being able to be a computer/carpenter/pipefitter/sculptor/woodworker/cabinetmaker. I'm an animator. I write programs. Did I leave anything out?

Tony:

And this is all in alignment with addressing the internet and hacking and security, and little disclosure for the audience. Since our first interview about a year ago whenever it was, I've had probably at least two hacking instances, one pretty serious one, not so serious and Trip is one of the first people I went to and said hey, this happened and blah, and through his expertise and his knowledge and a very good friend here, he guided me through to some of the steps and I rebounded, rebuilt back and for my podcast audience, you would never know because I didn't miss a heartbeat in the radio podcast world. And that's just how good Trip is. It's that calm person that knows what you're going through right now and can steer you. You still have to do the work. You still have to put the fire out, but you know much more quickly the end result of where you're going and it's very, very helpful and I highly recommend. Read his book, check out what he's got going at www.tripelix.com. He really knows his stuff. I find him very humble, but he's extremely knowledgeable, so I wanted to give that little disclosure.

Trip:

Well, let's talk about a couple of things that... You've got people that are entrepreneurs that are in your base of followers, so let's talk about a couple things to just keep you all safe, and I'll give you a couple tips to save some serious cash too. One is backing up your data. The computer that you're using, the cloud is not dependable. So what do you do is honestly go out and buy yourself an external hard drive or a couple of them, copy your entire computer, all your documents and pictures to that hard drive, then unplug it, put it in a closet or whatever, and then have the tenacity to go back next month, do the same thing. Do the normal cloud backup, whatever crap that you want to do, but you can find yourself starting to delete stuff off the cloud because you know you got a backup. Have two or three of those backup devices. I mean, they're not expensive. You can get it down to about $70 each and you'll have a backup that you can use anytime you want. Now, if you've got one that you've been using for a while, take it to your friend's house and ask him to hang on to it for you, called an offsite backup. It doesn't cost you anything, somebody that you trust, of course.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues with Trip Elix, from hacker to security advocate, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. Announcer: Change starts here. Change starts now. Join us. The Voice America Influencers Channel.

Tony:

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Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you could learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is with Trip Elix, from Hacker To security advocate. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. And now back to the chat with Trip.

Trip:

The internet of things comes up a lot and I don't trust the internet of things, and you shouldn't either. Any kind of device that you have on the internet can be hacked and I'll tell you why. The electronics industry is not the computer industry. Duh! The computer industry has updates, anti-viruses, anti-malware. When's the last time you saw an update for your TV?

Tony:

Exactly! Great point!

Trip:

Updates for your refrigerator now that they hook onto Wi-Fi and updates, even to your security system, that monitor who comes and goes around your house. These things I don't trust, especially Alexa and like we said on Facebook. So I'll tell you how you can separate the internet of things. Your security system, you want to leave on the outside but you don't want your data, in other words, the access to your computer to be on the same network, physically as your security system. The refrigerator and Alexa and all those other things, the automatic light dimmer, those all use Wi-Fi. So what you do is you get another Wi-Fi box that's separate and you set up a wireless network for all those things and all my life... I grew up with TV. How about you?

Tony:

I did, but not anymore. I'm too busy. And my computer is now my TV.

Trip:

Well, you know that the computer has made its way when we start seeing clapper ads on the computer.

Tony:

Exactly. And by the way, Trip, this goes to another point I made earlier or wanted to make earlier, which is, again, what I talk about at home is so germane. So simple stuff. It's not rocket science. I podcast, I'm not political. I'm not high profile or anything. Who cares if someone spies? They're just spinning their wheels. Why should I care?

Trip:

Well, a lot of times, it has nothing to do with you. It has more to do with the people that you know. You probably know people that are within government or defense contractors or whatever. It's knowing who you're close to for a foreign government. You see, when you plug in that internet at home, that computer that you have, and we're on this website right now and we're recording this, all of this is connected to the same internet. We're about five hops away from the brothels in Bangladesh. The warlords in China are about four and a half hops away. The people in North Africa with all the gun running, they're like six hops away on the internet. The only thing that separates them from you is them knowing who you are, honestly, and in America, we're all doxed. The rest of the world is not like we are. You can't look up by sticking the phone number in of somebody that just called you and get their life history. There are laws in other countries. We need them here. We need to get this stuff off because it is putting all of us in mortal danger unless you don't have two pots to piss in. The people that don't have anything, the cartels target them because they live in the United States and what'll happen is - I'm not kidding. I've heard this twice now. Somebody that had no money getting rousted by the FBI because they put $80,000 across a wire transfer over to Africa and they want to know why. Because their identity was stolen, that's why.

Tony:

Wow. Trip, absolutely astounding. Let's go into another aspect of the internet - internet silos. What are they, Trip and why should we care?

Trip:

Yeah. Well, the silos, as it stands on the internet is not my term. That's from Lord Berners-Lee who invented the internet. And what he meant by that was that these companies like Facebook that has your data and LinkedIn that has your data, each of these is a little silo. They want to force all the data to be shared among them in the open. So every aspect of your life is out there and it really shouldn't be. As far as recording your stuff and knowing what it is that you want to buy and turning it so that if you don't buy it, we'll charge you anyway. Did you know that that's the basis for the background of all of the things in our society, all of the crazy laws that you hear in the federal government? Did you know that that was the background of it?

Tony:

I'm still trying to think with that. No, I didn't.

Trip:

There was a, I think he was a Polish wheat farmer in Ohio that during the 1930s, didn't sell ... The government had a cap on how much wheat you could produce, and I don't remember the name of the case, but what happened was he went over the amount and the government fined him for it. And his argument before the Supreme Court was that he wasn't selling it so he didn't affect the market. And the argument back to him was that's right. You weren't buying any from anybody else. That's how you affected the market. And that point in our commerce clause is the basis for why we have laws about how much water can be in our toilet. I'm not kidding you. This is the basis of all of that, but let's get back to the silo. The silo effect for all of these companies and its base, the information that you give or don't give on the internet is your information. You can tell any one of these companies to shove it. You can shut them off. You can use Facebook and force them not to share your data. Just because it's their terms of agreement, you can change that term. Let me tell you this really quick, your audience. Do you use a drug store at all?

Tony:

For like medication or prescription?

Trip:

Sure.

Tony:

No. No, not really.

Trip:

Do you have a loyalty card for a drug store?

Tony:

I do. I got one a long time ago but I don't really use it. I don't really.

Trip:

There's a lot of people that use it. That's okay. You're just not in that marketplace, but a lot of people are going to relate to what I'm about to tell you. There are different systems for gratification. The instant gratification systems you can take advantage of, and the way that they're set up, the way that they work is if you go into a chain drug store, you give them your card. The computer looks up and sees how much you spent over the last blank days and then gives you coupons or goodies based on the revenue that it received from you. Well, what happens if you spent 20 times what you normally spend with that company, you would receive literally 20 times the give back. In fact, you get free stuff - free milk, free eggs. How I know that is I took one of those loyalty cards and I stuck it on a photocopier and I cut the bar code out. And then people that I didn't know, and mostly people that I did know glued the little bar code to the bottom of their cards. So the computer believes that all 25 of us are one person. So the computer sees that we all go into the store, in a wide variety of stores all the time. We frequent and spend lots of money and I get free pantyhose. I don't know what to do with it. I give it to a woman that I know. I got the wrong size a couple of times for her, but when I get the free one. It's not that I get them on coupon either. They give you instant gratification, like here's a coupon. It expires today for some of this stuff with one drug store chain. I don't know if the other one does that or not. I have the same thing set up with them, but I don't really use them all that much. These systems we should take advantage of because they take advantage of arts. You know, get somebody that's got Amazon and use the Amazon account, share it between four or five people. The Prime account. It has to be people you trust because you put a credit card on it, but even so, why pay individually for these services? There's no reason to. Comcast you can get into with an email address and a password. So anybody that's got Comcast or Time Warner just set up another email address on that system and you can give it to your extended family to watch TV on the internet.

Tony:

Very interesting. I like that. And Trip, tell us about bots. We've talked a lot about this, but tell us more about bots and AI. Is it the same thing now? Is it all just AI bots or what's the difference and what should we be wary of?

Trip:

Well, we're at the beginning of AI and artificial intelligence is not the Terminator movies. At least, I don't think so. What it is is computers are right now individualizing Google for... Yeah, it heard me and it turned its microphone on because I said that word.

Tony:

Wow!

Trip:

That was the beep you heard. It was my phone.

Tony:

That was an automatic microphone being turned on?

Trip:

Because I said that word.

Tony:

Amazing.

Trip:

Okay. Sometimes it doesn't kick on. That's why I don't put Facebook Messenger on my phone because I know very well it listens, and what happens in the background and let's talk about AI and how this stuff works. So you've by now pressed a button on your phone and left somebody a text message in it, made a mistake and you have got to back over it and fix it. Well, when you're doing recording of an individual, there is no fixing it. So if you put in a foul word, for example, or some racist verbiage, that gets confused out of your mouth, you are now a racist forever on that system, and I am not kidding. These systems work that way. If you put Facebook messenger on a phone, a device and watch what happens to the advertising that you see on the internet in general, on any web page, because it's all tied together through Liveramp.

Tony:

This is the consumer security watchdog with Trip Elix, and you can find him at www.tripelix.com. This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues with Trip Elix, from hacker to security advocate, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. Announcer: We don't follow; we lead! Join us. The Voice America Influencers Channel. Announcer: You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with key influencers. We'd love to hear from you via email. Be sure to send questions and comments to Tony@Tonydurso.com. Now back to Tony and his guests.

Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you could learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is with Trip Elix, from hacker to security advocate. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. Trip exposes the abuses of those that are using big data to threaten our lives and are the direct causes of Identity theft for millions. And now back to the chat with Trip.

Trip:

Yeah. And the other thing that you can do too, is if you get Trip_Elix on Twitter, if you want to meet up with me there, I hang out there a lot. You asked me about bots and hopefully the bots that I'm arguing, I'm fighting with right now on a war, by the time you guys hear this, it'll be over with. I hope, I really hope. There's a company that has an AI program that is creating bot accounts and sticking them on Twitter, and what it's doing is it's spieling out links that is trying to trap somebody that's mentally ill to commit a heinous act. It's targeting accounts, but we don't know why it's targeting certain accounts. I know why it targeted me because I broke part of its system to let it know I was out there. I really did. It had 89 web servers and I took some of them away from it by complaining.

Tony:

Good for you, Trip.

Trip:

I mean, the websites had links on them on building explosives, blowing up dams and other things that shouldn't be on anybody's server. Things that are nasty. I mean, if you want to look up that information, go look it up in a library. Don't put it where crazy people can get their fingers on it really easy.

Tony:

Agreed. Trip, we have just about two minutes left so we'll have to wrap this up. We have so much still to talk about.

Trip:

Yeah. So how you been, man? What are you in? Where is it that we can work together to make your dream happen for you?

Tony:

Well, we could talk about that offline. My biggest dream is just getting more audience and sharing with audience with entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners, especially my purpose. My goal, my passion is to help them build something successful because it's through successful ventures and enterprises, inventions, and so forth that this great country is built upon, that we have the items that we have, and there's so many great products and services out there. I want to see people be successful. And the way I do that successfully, I do hope is connecting successful people such as you with my audience so that people get inspiration. We're learning about security. We're learning about Facebook and Messenger and bots and AI, but we're also learning how to be more successful and we're getting ideas. We're getting ideas about your vision, your purpose, your goals, what you want to go achieve and that inspires us. And it makes my day when someone says that they learned something from one of these shows, so I just love that. And I want to get my show more out there. It's growing so that's my thing. And that's what I love to do. That's one of mine, but the show really is I want to hear more about you and what you have going. And perhaps is there any key resource perhaps that you can share with our audience visionaries that would help them in their day to day life, in their aspirations?

Trip:

Yeah, sure. Follow my Twitter feed. I put a lot of stuff out there all the time. It's automated. I have a bot. Bot is an overused/underused word. What it means is that it's an automated system to put out communication. So if I have an automated system that sends you an email, that's a bot. If I have an automated system that creates a tweet or a Facebook post, that's a bot. When I get involved and I post on the same system and I have a bot on that same system, then it is called a cyborg. It means that it is a combination between a computer and a person. So what's going on on Twitter right now is all this bot farm has last night put up 189 new accounts. I already know what accounts they are and we're trying to get them off. Just tweeting out really awful stuff. But what your base can take away from you and away from this is that I do all these things and I've got all these folks around me that are really just wonderful people. But you yourself have somebody right now that is on your phone that you haven't talked to for a while, that could give you some advice or give you some work, and I don't understand for the life of me why you don't call them and you know who they are. I certainly don't. These beeps that you're hearing by the way are reactions because I'm on your system. I've never seen them before, but I'm getting a series of popups and I've got all kinds of pop-up blockers.

Tony:

From my recordings system that's recording this interview right now?

Trip:

This web page.

Tony:

Okay. That I don't know. I'm using a third-party company, so I'm not getting any popups to myself. Trip, it's time to go. Another great interview. We've learned quite a bit. I've learned some things and I ask the visionary audience here - replay this, listen to it again. There's really good stuff here on your security, and let's see what you can find that will help you and inspire you to do better at your job. Once again Trip, want to thank you so much and we will catch you. We'll have to catch you another time when there's a good update.

Trip:

Sounds great, Tony. And don't forget. I'm Trip_Elix on Twitter. I'm out there all the time. You can get me 24/7.

Tony:

To my visionary audience, thanks for hanging out with me while I featured an elite entrepreneur who took his vision to reality. I hope this was as inspiring and educational for you as it was for me to do this interview. I learned so much; the insights are so valuable. So how did you like this interview Trip Elix, from Hacker To security advocate. For any authors out there or would be authors, did you catch the beginning of our interview on how trip sold 474 books in just a few hours? He created an amazing sales force by paying $5 to the vendors who sold his book for him. Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant. Now that's seriously out of the box thinking. There's an underlying current in what Trip was saying about relationships. You may have caught it depending on how focused you were on hearing the earlier interview, or if you got distracted. I had Trip on my show about a year earlier. He and I continued periodic chats, also called building a relationship. And during that, I invited him back on my show. Now you may or may not see how big of a deal that is. What if I was to tell you that I get some 400 requests a month to get on my show, of which there are only four available slots, and that my show has grown and probably doubled an audience since last time Trip was on? Now that really changes things, doesn't it? All of a sudden, you have a deeper meaning and understanding of relationship building that Trip was talking about, and I guess for those that want to get on my show, that gives you some clues too, huh? And by the way, there is an interview button on my homepage of www.tonydurso.com but then you probably knew that, right? That's very humorous on the physical address of Facebook being 1 Hacker Way. Did you know that the Facebook messenger app, as well as other sites can turn your microphone and your camera on without you knowing about it? Imagine that, and it had happened when he said "that word". You'll have to replay to hear it, but his microphone turned down when he said "that word" and Trip says it does this all the time. I removed the Messenger app right after this interview. As you heard, I have nothing important to say, so what's the big deal to spy on me? And then Trip dropped the bomb. Extortion. This is an eye opener. Our society is accustomed to extortion. When you look at it in a new unit, yep. Trip is right. It is extortion. No question about it. Trip mentioned he does not use any credit. Do you use credit? Good points there. And the number of companies that are monitoring you and I are insane. And any device you have on the internet can be hacked. There's so much more I got out of this interview. What did you get? I would love to know how you use this information to help you in your business or career. Tell us, tell the world. Tweet me @tonydurso. Now grab hold of your vision. Decide you're either going to start something great or take it to the next level. You have to decide first. You know this. It always starts with a decision and you can get my Vision Map to help you along the process. The free eBook is still there on my home page. You know I created my empire just a few years. That is all it took and I had the Vision Map as my guide. I wrote it all up so that you can do it too. Please follow me on social media. You can find most of those links on the homepage at www.tonydurso.com, and of course, yes, the Vision Map is there. And if you have iTunes or access to any Apple device, look up my name, Tony Durso and subscribe to my show. That's right. A kind review there will get you a tremendous appreciation back in return. Thanks, and remember: just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds, do good deeds and join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso Show. Announcer: We hope you've enjoyed this week's edition of the Tony DUrso Show with his key influencers. Be sure to tune in again next Friday at 4:00 PM Eastern time, 1:00 PM Pacific time on the Voice America Influencers channel.