Guarding Against Digital Threats with The Computer Exorcist, Marc-Anthony Arena

Are get-rich-quick schemes as tempting as they sound, or are they a fast track to disappointment? Today, we unravel the intricacies of such traps and emphasize the critical role of skepticism in business decisions. Our exceptional guest, Marc-Anthony Arena, joins us with a riveting narrative of his evolution from a tech-savvy whiz kid to a guardian angel for the elderly navigating the digital world. He passionately advocates for his clientele, aiming to shield them from the predatory sales pitches and scams that unfortunately run rampant in the tech universe. Marc-Anthony's distinctive business approach is a beacon for authentic customer service, as he makes house calls to simplify and secure his clients' technological experiences – all without the crutch of antivirus software that he boldly claims has lost its edge.

This episode isn't just about cautionary tales; it's a treasure trove of insights for anyone looking to fortify their digital life against the onslaught of modern threats. We dissect common myths about internet speed requirements and why the term 'high-speed' might not be the golden ticket for everyone, especially seniors whose online needs don't justify the hefty price tags. Then, we shift gears to the world of Linux Mint, a haven for users desiring a straightforward, no-frills computing environment. Marc-Anthony and Hank dissect the fallacies surrounding antivirus necessities and explore the landscape of current cybersecurity threats, aiming to equip you with the know-how to sidestep the snares of online scams. Amidst our tech talk, you'll find pearls of wisdom on cost-effective strategies for phone and cable bills, and a glimpse into my aspirations to expand this mission of empowerment through speaking engagements, all while providing a portal to further knowledge at thecomputerexercist.com.

Website: TheComputerExorcist.com
Facebook: https://facebook.com/teknosophy

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Oxygen America

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Transcript

Hank: 0:39

Welcome to the Home Business Success Show. Join us as we speak to home business entrepreneurs for tips, tricks, do's and even don'ts for running a successful home business. Welcome everyone, I'm Hank Eater, also known as Hank the PR Guy, and you're listening to bizradious all entrepreneurs all the time. This is the Home Business Success Show. We'll introduce our guest right after my two cents marketing minute. You know there are lots of schemes, scams and shiny objects out there all vying for your attention. Some are clunky and obvious, but some are slick enough to fool you. If you're not careful, you don't win contests you never entered. He really wants to give you big box gift cards. You know big box store cards just because you're a nice guy. The same is true in business. Beware of get rich quick schemes, magic funnels or other appeals to instant riches. You really got to work for it. If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is. Just don't fall for it.

Hank: 1:50

Our guest today, mark Anthony Arena, is a podcaster, author and public speaker. In 2009, he started doing in-home tech support for seniors as a way to help people put a roof over his head. That's admirable. Soon after he realized the world is full of intelligent, successful people who were just overwhelmed by technology. They suffer at the hands of incompetent computer guys, pushy big box stores and phone scammers. So he developed a method to simplify and bulletproof people's digital lives, which saves tons of time and money. Then he created his book, podcast and speaking tour to explain tech concepts, online scams and industry scandals to the world in plain English. Welcome to the show, mark.

Marc-Anthony: 2:43

I'm so happy to be here, hank. I love that you're the voice of reason. You're always out there and I've seen your MC, biz boomer, and you have a positive message and you're warning people about the instant riches and I love what you're doing.

Hank: 2:57

Yeah, we've all felt that lure to it ourselves, I'm sure Over the years I've looked at things and thought, gee, that sounds great, there's a magic funnel. If only I spend whatever it is $500 for this guy's magic funnel, my business will be on top of the world. But we know it doesn't work that way.

Marc-Anthony: 3:15

Anyway, if you would thanks for the props, though, if you would please tell us about your business so I was eight years old in Hollywood Beach, florida, and we were visiting my grandma's aunt and she had cousins who came in and said we're going to throw away our TV, it doesn't work anymore. So my dad said let me bring Mark over here. So my dad dragged me to these people's high rise apartment and he handed me the remote and he said do your magic. So I just I rolled the batteries around. You know, I replaced the batteries and TV turned right on and that was the moment when and it took me a long time to realize I could do this for a living, but that was the moment when I realized most people are throwing away their technology unnecessarily because of some tiny issue.

Marc-Anthony: 3:58

I did tech support for my friends and family my whole life and then one day in my mid-20s, around 2009, I went to a cousin's friend's house and I was there setting up a computer and my girlfriend at the time happened to accompany me and she observed hey, you're good at explaining stuff in plain English.

Marc-Anthony: 4:14

Why don't you do this for a living? I said I don't want to do this for a living and she said while you're broke, you might as well. So that was. It was a way for this broke guy to start putting a roof over his head, right I, just to feed myself, and it was a great way for me to help people and I was allergic to the corporate world. But after doing it for a couple of years, you know, and I had a vague feeling that the seniors were being ripped off by the pushy salesman at the stores, right. But I didn't realize how rampant this was, I didn't realize how deep it went until I was in this, doing this in the trenches with the old folks every day and realizing they're overpaying for everything products and services.

Hank: 4:53

I guess that at some of the big box stores, the ones that sell computers and computer services and other kinds of things, when they see older folks coming in they'd probably cash register symbols light up in their eyeballs. Hey look, there comes another one.

Marc-Anthony: 5:10

Exactly the money. So I always it's very cartoonish right and I usually say they put on a lobster bib and they get a fork and knife Right Like that wolf, like that wolf in the cartoon, whose tongue goes out, like you know, five feet.

Hank: 5:24

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I had a guy.

Marc-Anthony: 5:26

He was 86 years old. I forgot to warn him about a certain store. He goes in there, comes back with a monitor and he paid $487 for a monitor. And I said why did you? I said if I won the lottery I wouldn't spend more than $120 on a nice monitor. He said well, they told me I needed it.

Hank: 5:42

Of course they did, because they could hear the kaching. If you would, could you please tell us about the main products or services that your business offers?

Marc-Anthony: 5:52

Sure, what I do is I go into someone's home. 99% of the time it's in home service, so I don't have to make the seniors lug their computer tower to some store to leave it for an indeterminate amount of time. Right, that's the current situation that they're dealing with. So I go to their homes and just an hour ago I was at someone's house setting up a printer for them and of course, the wireless printing didn't work, you know so. So I will, I'll. I'll clean their computer. I'll remove any threats like no-artner, mac-a-fee or any kind of any kind of antivirus products that are out there. Antivirus products can only protect you against threats pre-2013. So I remove all antivirus products from the machine so they don't slow you down, because they're very good at slowing you down and making you think you need a new computer prematurely. So I'll rip out any antivirus products. Then I'll connect them to any printers they have. I'll give them brand recommendations for printers. Now look at their well. Then I'll do a proper backup.

Marc-Anthony: 6:46

Most people don't have backup and even the people who think they have backup have backup. That proves that it wasn't correct. You know, when they have a disaster they realize it wasn't actually backing anything up. So I make sure to do what I call proper verifiable backup. So if you have a computer and you have precious documents and photos, I do a proper backup to an external drive. I verify that everything is intact and then we disconnect it and put it in a fire safe. Nothing can get to it if it's disconnected and in your fire safe.

Marc-Anthony: 7:13

And then finally, I will say, hey, let's look at your cable bills and your phone bills, and in a lot of cases I'm able to chop people's internet bills right. These senior citizens are unknowingly paying for extreme packages for internet or they're paying for things they don't need with their cell phones. So I chop those bills, sometimes 50 a month or 150 a month, and that's a lot of money, right. And so they're thrilled and I'm personally responsible for saving people at least at least 1.1 million in cable and internet bills, and that's not even counting the cell phone bills.

Hank: 7:45

That's pretty amazing. I understand what you mean when you say they might be getting extreme internet services, because you know your average senior. What are they doing there? They're sending emails, maybe to their grandchildren, or they're getting online and watching TV shows, or something like that.

Marc-Anthony: 8:03

Even the cheapest, slowest, simplest plan is more than you need. So they have to give you 3, 4, 500 megabit to justify the extreme price, right, the whole industry is doing this, right? So when you call, they ask you what kind of things are you doing on the internet? And if you dare say you're streaming, that triggers the high packages. In reality I've, for the past 10 years I've used a 25 megabit connection to do all my streaming and zooms and podcasting and you name it.

Marc-Anthony: 8:31

Nobody needs more than 25 megabit so I never answer the questions when they ask them to you just say I don't use the internet a lot. Leave me alone.

Hank: 8:39

I don't know. You know how this connects. But back when I had cable you know we have a local cable company it's not one of the biggies because I live way out in the boonies it's not one of the biggies and I had a 25 megabit connection. But if I had to upload a it had a very slow upload. I think was the problem. If I had to upload an hours worth of video four hours later that that thing would still be uploading.

Hank: 9:07

Well, I found myself in a good position because our electric company out here is an electrical management corporation they call themselves their co-op, and they got a grant from the US government to give us really high speed internet over their fiber optic systems and stuff. So you know I did opt. They had two packages. One was 25 but I did opt for the. It's one gigabit synchronous broadband and it's amazing. I mean I can do an hour, an hour's worth of video, send it to a client in about three minutes. I mean that's, that's pretty incredible. And because of the way it comes through, I mean to me it's not that expensive.

Hank: 9:48

And then the telephone it's a voice over internet protocol. The telephone is bundled in with that too. So it all works out. You know we're saving like $60 a month on what used to be our phone bill and paying 25, you know, for the phone service on with the internet service. But that being said, you know, even though I'm MC biz boomer and I'm a boomer I'm not typical of boomers. You know, I do a lot of stuff with my computer and much of my livelihood depends on using my computer, my computer with a, with a reliable and fast internet service. But anyway, let me, let me move on from that. What do you mean by bullet proofing our digital lives and how do you help people do that great?

Marc-Anthony: 10:31

question. We, we all, live in fear, don't we? You know, in my opinion, it's because of the past 30 years of an industry that's just incompetent, really, it's just it's unable to protect us from anything. And they're always scrambling to play whack-a-mole, right, they're always. Oh, we need to contain threats and contain threats, right? If you have the mentality of house made out of straw, house made out of sticks, house made out of bricks, right?

Hank: 10:55

if you make your house out of bricks.

Marc-Anthony: 10:57

Big bad wolf can't get to you, no matter what. So it's a matter of relaxing and having that inner security, and I'm writing a personal book about this too. Right, just same thing in your personal life. If you relax and have an inner sense of security, you're not relying on these, these things out there to to pacify you and and always needing something more and needing the latest and greatest right. So if we simply bulletproof your computer, you don't need to worry about buying new equipment and paying for security fees. That really just give you a false sense of security, and worrying about the latest threats will just make your stuff invincible and you just don't have to worry, and people, people really are willing to pay for that right. That's worth something to people. So here's how I go about doing it again. Number one I start out with removing any kind of antivirus products, because they can slow you down massively and they can waste your money, but they can't protect you against any threats that have ever come out after 2013. There are new threats out there that have come out, but antivirus products can't protect you against anything after 2013.

Marc-Anthony: 11:58

Then I go through the machine. Look for any legalized spyware. Okay, no scanner is going to look for is going to be able to look for and point out legalized spyware, because then they'd be in trouble legally with those companies. So I go in there, I remove any companies that are spying on you and slowing you down legally, right, I mean, that's the definition of malware. Right is slowing you down, spying and and generally hassling you, begging for money and whatever. A lot of companies are doing this legally now. So we rip out the legalized malware and that I only need to do once, maybe twice.

Marc-Anthony: 12:29

Um, that's not a constant thing, right. As long as you promise me not to install anything that claims to clean your computer, you'll be totally safe, right? So it's really an issue of of less is more. Right, if you, if you install any kind of thing like optimizers or cleaners or scanners all of those nowadays are legal, but they destroy the machine and they can't protect you against anything.

Marc-Anthony: 12:51

So once I educate people on that, the other thing I do is I educate them on scams. As long as you promise never to answer the phone when the guy says hi, I'm microsoft, give me all your money, right, don't talk to him, don't let him in your computer, don't do any of that, then you'll be fine. The only so. So the new threats aside from the legalized stuff, the new threats are purely emotional. You get a scary, emotional sentence on your screen that says all the words that we fear. You have cookies, trojans, viruses, north koreans and firewalls right, we're just trained to fear that. That is a sentence, my friend, that's all it is. So as long as you promise not to heed that and and just ignore that sentence, you're fine. Finally, the other thing I do is so you have Windows and you have Mac right. There's a third thing called Mint, and I'm one of the few people in the world that offer it.

Hank: 13:39

And I can make like MIT mint.

Marc-Anthony: 13:42

Exactly Like the color of your shirt.

Hank: 13:44

Okay.

Marc-Anthony: 13:45

And so it's called mint and the idea is the third party. It's virtually bulletproof forever from all threats, right? You can't get the legalized stuff. The bad guys can't even remote in that easily. You don't get the worms and the whatever you know all the filth that Microsoft Windows machines usually accumulate. You just don't get any of that. There's no learning curve. It looks like a normal Windows machine. So for my seniors who just want internet email and some word processing, it's totally perfect. Right, it's not good for you because you're an expert and you're an advanced guy. It's not good for the couple of guys on Wall Street who do advanced spreadsheets and whatever, but for 99% of consumers it's perfect. So it's very difficult for a consumer to install. So find a local technician out there who's brave, and it's linuxmintcom is where the technician can download it.

Marc-Anthony: 14:38

I never say the word Linux because there's still a stigma, right? Oh, I heard Linux was scary. My computer guy said it was scary. So that was back in 91, right In the late 90s I tried it and I was intimidated by it. But now it's totally fine. So I just I avoid the word Linux because it still has that stigma. This mint product again, it's nearly identical. It's indistinguishable to a Windows XP computer, so a consumer wouldn't notice the difference. No learning curve.

Hank: 15:07

I see, I see. So it's something you install on someone's computer, just presupposing they're only going to surf the internet, send emails and maybe, you know, watch some YouTube videos or something like that. That's all those people want.

Marc-Anthony: 15:22

Everyone who calls me hey, mark, I'm intelligent, successful doctor, lawyer, business owner, so and so. And my computer guy said I was stupid because I couldn't keep up with the industry. I said, oh, that's interesting, right. And I kept getting these calls every day for 15 years from these intelligent people. I said you're not stupid, right? Your computer guy is just looking down on you because you don't know his industry. But people say all I want, mark, all I want is to be get online and be left alone.

Hank: 15:48

Right now for the rest of us I mean, you know, there's those folks who can do this Linux mint and for those of us who really, who really can't, because we have much more sophisticated needs. But you spoke of removing any virus checkers or anything like that. I mean, how does one stay clear of of anything?

Marc-Anthony: 16:06

virus scanners can only protect against viruses, which haven't happened since 2013. Right, so it's kind of like if you have a doctor and he's only protecting you from bubonic plague, feel free to get rid of him because he's not useful anymore. Does that make sense?

Hank: 16:19

It does, it does, but it's kind of counterintuitive for all the things we've been told about the need to keep an antivirus app on the computer.

Marc-Anthony: 16:30

And it's very scary right. So a couple of things with that Number one. Ask yourself when was the last time I saw a virus? When I sat there and did a scan and wasted an hour every day.

Hank: 16:38

Well, I've seen viruses. I mean, I don't know where some of them are coming from, but I've seen quite a few. And then with the one that I've got, I have the ability either it quarantines and gets rid of them more I've got the ability to show it in the finder. You know I click on show and finder and then I can wipe out the file. But I found the last year, I'd say I've found probably dozens of viruses showing up in my computer.

Marc-Anthony: 17:02

So they couple things there. They're probably modern style threats that walk through Safari. Viruses, by definition, will spread from machine to machine and those can't spread anymore. What those probably are are something that walked into Safari and it implanted itself in your library folder or your Safari cache or something like that, and that's fine, I mean I just I bleach Safari every once in a while. The bad guys are 10 years ahead of everybody else. So you'll see much, much, much more often.

Marc-Anthony: 17:34

You'll see either toolbars or those things that get into Safari or get into your browser because they don't get into the rest of the machines, so they're they're a little more undetectable. Toolbars record what you type and what you search for and your web history, and they do so legally. So, again, the bad guys are so far ahead. You might have a handful of guys are still doing those old style threats, but the bad guys the bad guys are doing toolbars because they're getting away with it right. If you go on on your web browser right now and if your web browser does not pull up, like if you do a search and the search results don't come directly from Google or Duck, then you've got a problem where they're hijacking everything you do in your browser, they get away with it. And again, the antivirus can't ever accuse them.

Hank: 18:18

But they're hijacking everything you type. I see this is. This is fascinating, but, believe it or not, you know I've enjoyed this so much. We're actually flying through the time that we have available, so I want to ask you a couple questions. One of them is how is it that you help people save money?

Marc-Anthony: 18:33

Great, question yeah, I'd say with with the phone bills and the cable bills, you know I look at them and shave off any extreme packages.

Hank: 18:40

And what do you think is the most unique problem you've helped a customer solve?

Marc-Anthony: 18:44

That's a good one, probably maybe multiple cloud services. So people don't know this, right? 99% of people who are involved in a cloud sucking service aren't aware of it. Right? You buy a new computer and the operating system starts sucking the documents and photos without your knowledge, putting them into a cloud service and then later on begging you for rental money. And I saw one lady's situation where she had, let's say, an Apple computer and then she also had Dropbox and OneDrive and they were all sucking copies of each other's things. So now she had duplicates and triplicates inside of other duplicates and triplicates, right? And she had a huge photo library to begin with. So now she had seven, eight copies of her photo library spread across several cloud services.

Hank: 19:29

That's quite a unique problem. You know we're practically out of time, so I'd like to ask you what is the very best way? Let me ask you a two-pronged approach, In 25 words or less. What are you looking to do going forward, and then how can our listeners reach you if they want more information?

Marc-Anthony: 19:52

Sure, thecomputerexercistcom is the way to get a hold of me. It shows my podcasts and it shows my email and all that, thecomputerexercistcom. So what I'd like to do is scale my business right. I found I'm a horrible boss. I'm not a babysitter, I can't have employees that's fine, and this is too big for just a guy and a couple of employees anyway. So what I'm doing in the next year is I'm going to give speeches. If you have any clubs or groups who want to come hear me talk, I'll come talk and explain all this technology in plain English. There's a lot of stuff. The fake Wi-Fi scandal I didn't get into. You know where a lot of people have fake Wi-Fi. So I think scaling it this way giving talks to people and teaching technicians is my future.

Hank: 20:36

Right. So teaching technicians, you are training the next generation of computer exorcists, exactly, that being said. That being said, I wish I had more time to delve into that, but if any of my listeners have an interest in possibly becoming a computer exorcist, mark is the guy to talk to. So you just said they can reach you at thecomputerexercistcom. That's right. Okay, that's great Thanks for being here with us today, mark, and to our listeners, tune in every Wednesday at 11 am for the Home Business Success Show right here on bizradious.

Hank: 21:12

Before I go, I want to tell you there are some great resources available to home business owners. You are not alone in the wilderness in your home business. The Home Business Success community has your back. We're an online membership support community of like-minded home business entrepreneurs. Contact me to find out how. Just go to bizradious, find my picture under shows and all my contact information is there. Remember you can achieve success, freedom and independence in your own home business. I've done it, mark has done it, and you can, too. See you again next week. This is Hank Eater, wishing all of you a fabulous day of home business success.