Learning Vocabulary: You’ve been hacked!

Introduction

Jack: Hello my name’s Jack

Rich: and I’m Rich and welcome to this week’s Premier Skills English podcast

Jack: Where we talk about football and help you with your English.

Rich: We recommend that you listen to this podcast on the Premier Skills English website because that is where we have the transcript, language examples, activities, quizzes and a discussion page to help you understand everything we talk about.

Jack: However, if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, you can leave answers to our questions in the review section. We do read all the reviews and would love to hear from you.

Rich: We are also looking for more people to interview in our podcasts.

Jack: If you want to practise your English skills and answer a few questions just email us at premierskills@britishcouncil.org and we’ll write back to you.

Rich: Don’t forget that we have our football English podcast called This Week that you can listen to at the start of every week. This week’s episode is about Matchweek 24 and the FA Cup - we speak about Liverpool’s surprise draw at Shrewsbury Town.

Jack: Some of the words and phrases we look at include: a replay, to slump to defeat and to be in form.

Rich: It’s on the Premier Skills English homepage, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and lots of other places right now!

Jack: In last week’s podcast, we spoke about Chinese New Year and asked you to use the BBC website to find out more about the year you were born in.

Rich: We found out that Shohei Komatsu from Japan and Wsanta from Argentina are snakes, Rafael Robson from Brazil is an ox, Milos from Serbia is a dog, Lakerwang from China is a rooster, Takuya from Japan is a dragon, Merseyake from Indonesia is a monkey, Alex from Ukraine is a tiger, and Elghoul from Algeria is a rabbit.

Jack: If you want to complete this lesson and learn more about the Lunar New Year and the adjectives we use to talk about the animals in the Chinese Zodiac, you need to go to our homepage, click skills, click listen and click podcasts. It’s called Learning Vocabulary: Personality Adjectives.

Rich: In this week’s podcast, we’re going to talk about computers and staying safe online.

Jack: That’s right. The eleventh of February is Safer Internet Day so we’re going to talk about computers and the words and phrases we use to talk about online safety.

Rich: In this week’s roleplay, Jack has a problem with his computer and I offer him some advice. To be honest, I don’t know much about computers that’s why we are going to focus on the language more than the advice!

Jack: Your task is to share your top tips for staying safe online. I’m sure most of them will be better than some of Rich’s.

Rich: Before all that though, we need to look at last week’s football phrase.

Last week’s Football Phrase

Rich: If you didn’t hear our football phrase last week we’re going to give you one more chance to guess now. We’ll give you the correct answer at the end of the show when we give you a new football phrase.

Jack: Big news Rich! Can we have a sound effect for this?

...

Jack: Last week for the first-ever time, nobody got the right answer!

Rich: Your phrase was too difficult for everyone? Do you think you should win a prize or something?

Jack: No, actually it was probably because my definition was too complicated.

Rich: You think so? Ah well, let’s have another listen now and we’ll give you the correct answer at the end of the show.

Jack: Remember you can also write your answers in the review section on Apple Podcasts if that’s where you listen to us.

Rich: The football phrase is to **** someone *** *** ****. This phrase means to be much better than the other team. In fact, it means to be so good that the other team should not even be on the same pitch competing with them. The final word in the phrase is the grassy area where kids often play games. Liverpool have been so good this season. They’ve ****** every team they’ve met *** *** ****.

Jack: We’ll give you the answer at the end of the show and we’ll have a new football phrase for you to guess.

Introduction to Roleplay

Jack: In this week’s roleplay, I have a problem with my computer and Rich is not entirely sympathetic.

Rich: While you are listening, we want you to answer two questions:

Jack: What advice does Rich give?

Rich: What action does Jack decide to take?

Roleplay

Rich: You OK? You look well hacked off?

Jack: Are you teasing? Do you know?

Rich: Do I know what?

Jack: I’ve been hacked!

Rich: You’ve been hacked? Oh, sorry, that was an unfortunate turn of phrase. What’s been hacked?

Jack: My laptop, I think.

Rich: How do you not know? Is there not a big flashing message on your screen saying cyberattack, you’ve been hacked, send me all your money now!

Jack: It’s not a ransomware attack. At least not yet! No one has asked me for money.

Rich: What’s happening then? Are your passwords not working?

Jack: No, I can still get in but some weird things are happening. My camera is on but I didn’t turn it on - look the light is on.

Rich: Do you think someone is watching you? That would freak me out! Put a sticker over the camera.

Jack: That’s not a very techy solution, Rich. Cybercrime is worth millions. If we could just use a sticker to stop it …

Rich: Yeah, yeah OK, why don’t you update your security software or something and run a scan?

Jack: Yes, I will but some of my settings have changed, too. They seem to have been restored to the default settings. And I’m getting these pop-ups everywhere - adware - malware I don’t want all this.

Rich: It says congratulations you’ve won a prize. Click on that!

Jack: I’m not clicking on anything.

Rich: Did you click on a dodgy link in some spam email or something? You shouldn’t do that you know.

Jack: No, I never click on anything like that - not even if it says it will make me a millionaire!

Rich: Well I reckon your computer is ill. It’s sick.

Jack: You mean a virus, don’t you. My laptop has been infected with a virus.

Rich: That’s it. It’s got a virus. Do you know what I’d do?

Jack: What?

Rich: Turn it off and on again. Might go away.

Jack: Yeah, it might or it might not but it might not be such a silly idea. Turn off my WIFI, unplug the router and then restart my computer in safe mode.

Rich: Safe mode? Why would you not always do that? Is there an unsafe mode instead? What if you want to start in really really dangerous mode?

Jack: Quiet. Then, I’ll remove the programmes I’ve installed in the last few days - that might work. Then reboot again.

Rich: It’d probably be worth resetting your passwords, too. You can’t use football123 for everything.

Jack: I thought that was you. I use a password management tool. It remembers all my passwords so I don’t have too.

Rich: Good advice.

Jack: OK, I’m going to shut down now. It’s so annoying.

Rich: Ah well, at least it doesn’t look like anything too bad. Do you want me to cheer you up while we’re waiting?

Jack: How?

Rich: With a joke! It’ll help you keep y our mind off things.

Jack: Really? If you must …

Rich: Here we go: Hey officer, how did the hackers escape? No idea, they just ransomware! Do you get it? They just ran somewhere. Ransomware.

Jack: Yes, I get it and it doesn’t keep my mind off things, does it?

Rich: Er … oh no, I suppose not. Funny though hey?

Language Focus

Rich: Did you get the answers to the two questions we gave you?

Jack: The first question was what advice did Rich give to me?

Rich: I gave you lots of advice - some of it was good advice and some of it maybe not. I told you to put a sticker on your camera so cybercriminals couldn’t see you, I told you to update your security software, to run a scan on your computer, not to click on any dodgy links, to turn your computer on and off and to reset your passwords.

Jack: Yes, all good solid advice, especially the sticker on my camera. Our second question was what action did I take?

Rich: It seems that you followed my advice - you decided to turn your laptop off and on again.

Jack: I kind of followed your advice but I also wanted to start my computer in safe mode and uninstall a few programmes.

Rich: OK, well our main focus this week is not to give you expert computer advice but to focus on lots of the words and phrases we use to talk about computers and online safety.

Jack: Let’s start with what happened to me in the roleplay - I was hacked.

Rich: To be hacked means someone got into your computer system without permission.

Jack: Normally hackers try to get into your email or other accounts.

Rich: My aunty is always getting hacked. She keeps sending me messages telling me to ignore any strange emails from her because her email’s been hacked.

Jack: The people who do this are called hackers. They often want to steal information or do something illegal. It’s a crime and the people who do it are criminals.

Rich: We spoke about cybercrime in the roleplay. This is crime that takes place on the internet.

Jack: A prefix is a letter or group of letters added at the beginning of a word to change its meaning like im changes possible to impossible or un changes likely to unlikely.

Rich: The prefix ‘cyber’ means related to the computers and the internet and we used it a few times in the roleplay.

Jack: We said that cybercrime is worth millions - these are a crime that is committed online. Hacking is a cybercrime and hackers are cybercriminals.

Rich: I also said that Jack was the victim of a cyber attack.

Jack: A suffix is a group of letters that is added to the end of the word to change its meaning or often the type of word. The suffix might change a word from an adjective to a noun, for example.

Rich: The suffix -ness (n e s s) creates nouns from adjectives. Happy becomes happiness, sad becomes sadness.

Jack: The suffix -ware (ware) is used for nouns such as software and hardware and other types of software too such as ransomware, malware and adware.

Rich: Software refers to all computer programmes and hardware refers to the machines and the electronic parts we can hold and touch.

Jack: We mentioned ransomware, adware and malware in the roleplay. All of these are specific types of software that are used for one purpose.

Rich: Ransomware is a type of computer programme or software that blocks your computer and demands money or a ransom to unblock your computer or return data to you.

Jack: Adware is software that downloads usually unwanted advertising on to your computer.

Rich: And malware is software that is generally designed to damage or destroy your computer or steal data from you. Ransomware and adware are two types of malware.

Jack: And malware, adware, and ransomware are all types of software.

Rich: Quite often we download malware by mistake when we click on a dodgy link in an email. Dodgy means something or someone that is not reliable, doesn’t work properly or possibly slightly criminal.

Jack: We often see these dodgy links in emails that are described as spam.

Rich: Spam is unwanted email that is sent to millions of people. Spam often contains viruses in the link. A computer virus is a programme that enters your computer and often attempts to destroy or steal information that you have stored on it.

Jack: OK, the words we’ve been looking at so far describe the problem, what about describing some possible solutions to these problems.

Rich: Two solutions I suggested in the roleplay were to update your security software and run a scan.

Jack: Both of these words can be nouns and verbs. To update something means to add the most recent information to something.

Rich: So, if you update a computer programme it will add the most recent software, check for bugs and generally work better after you have done the update.

Jack: The update - it can also be a noun. We can check for updates for software on our computer or we might turn on automatic updates.

Rich: To scan means to check or examine something. When you run a scan on your computer it checks, it scans all your data to see if there are any problems or viruses.

Jack: Let’s look at a final couple of words. Rich is no computer expert - the final bit of questionable advice he gave me was to turn my computer off and then back on again.

Rich: On most computers in English, we use another phrasal verb instead of turn off. We shut down our computers.

Jack: But there is another option if we want it to turn on again straight away. We can click on restart - this will shut down our machine and reboot it immediately.

Rich: Reboot. That’s a nice word.

Jack: I like it. It’s better than restart. Reboot - it means the same as restart but it just has more purpose, it feels right.

Rich: OK, so we’ve looked at lots of words connected to computers and the internet and we have more on the Premier Skills English website. You will find more examples and activities to help you on the homepage.

Jack: Or find this lesson by clicking skills > listen > podcasts and learning vocabulary: you’ve been hacked.

Task

Rich: In this week’s task, we want you to share your top tip for staying safe online.

Jack: In the roleplay, Rich gave me some strange advice like putting a sticker on his camera to stop cybercriminals knowing what I’m doing.

Rich: That was not my only bit of advice. I also mentioned passwords and security software and things like that.

Jack: Yes, you did maybe I’m being a bit mean. Anyway, we want you to tell us the one thing you think is most important for online safety.

Rich: Is it connected to software, is it about passwords, is it connected to chatting to people you don’t know, is it connected to sharing details online.

Jack: You might think it’s one of these things or something entirely different. Let us know your opinion in the comments section on the Premier Skills English website.

Football Phrase

Jack: Ok, it’s time for this week’s football phrase. It’s your turn this week. Let’s make it a little easier than last week.

Rich: I will. I promise. This week’s football phrase is *** which stands for ***** ******** *******. This technology is being used in the Premier League this season for the first time and it allows a referee watching a replay to change decisions made on the pitch. A couple of phrases that are now very common include ‘it’s gone to ***’ and ‘*** overturned the decision’.

Jack: That’s an easy one! If you’ve watched the Premier League this season you can’t have missed it! Let’s see who gets it right.

Rich: Before we leave you we need to tell you last week’s football phrase. It was really difficult but the answer was to play a team or someone off the park

Jack: Right, that’s all we have time for this week! Don’t forget to write your answers to our questions and make a guess at our football phrase in the comments below. If you get it right, we’ll announce your name on next week’s show..

Rich: If you have any questions or comments or suggestions for the podcast or anything football or English related, you can leave them on the website in the comments section, on social media, on apple podcasts or you can email us at premierskills@britishcouncil.org.

Jack: Remember you can also email us if you want to practise your English skills and answer a few questions for a future podcast.

Rich: Bye for now and enjoy your football!