Speaker 1: How your phone and car are spying on you. The
Speaker 1: new website that reveals the best Internet in your area
Speaker 1: based on real life speed tests. Walmart sells an Apple
Speaker 1: laptop directly for the first time and it's quite the deal.
Speaker 1: Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on rich Damiro
Speaker 1: And this is Rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Coast to coast.
Speaker 1: This is the show where I talk about the tech
Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
Speaker 1: place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
Speaker 1: that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open
Speaker 1: up those phone lines at triple eight Rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Give me a call if you have a
Speaker 1: question about technology. Guests this week, we've got a couple
Speaker 1: of them, as we typically do. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: to doctor Scott J. White, Associate Professor and director of
Speaker 1: the George Washington University Cybersecurity Program. He's going to talk
Speaker 1: about the security concerns with TikTok Kashmir. Hill, technology reporter
Speaker 1: at The New York Times, is going to explain how
Speaker 1: our cars spy on us and Dwight Silverman, freelance tech
Speaker 1: columnists for the Houston Chronicle, will join to explain what
Speaker 1: you need to know about why five seven. Well, this
Speaker 1: whole debate over a TikTok band got me thinking just
Speaker 1: how much data are our phones collecting on us? Yes,
Speaker 1: we know they monitor things like our location. They know
Speaker 1: exactly where we are, but how is that information shared
Speaker 1: and what else do they collect? Now to find the
Speaker 1: answer for this, I went to the app privacy policies
Speaker 1: that both Apple and Google freely post online. These are
Speaker 1: pretty much meant for developers because they are supposed to
Speaker 1: disclose the types of information they collect using their apps
Speaker 1: and the categories they fall into. And these categories are
Speaker 1: quite revealing. So of course we know that Apple and
Speaker 1: Google will allow the collection of location data, including your
Speaker 1: precise or your approximate location. Now you've probably seen this
Speaker 1: message when you first open an app. It says, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to share your exact location or do
Speaker 1: you want to share your approximate location?
Speaker 2: I always choose approximate.
Speaker 1: Now, some of these apps have gotten pretty slick and
Speaker 1: they won't even function unless you say precise, So of
Speaker 1: course you have to go back and try precise and
Speaker 1: then they'll work, so be on the lookout for that now.
Speaker 1: Both platforms, of course, can collect personal information like your name,
Speaker 1: your email address, your phone number, also financial information, payment details,
Speaker 1: and with Google there's even a category for purchase history.
Speaker 2: Not sure what that one's all about.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Health and fitness obviously a growing area. Many of us
Speaker 1: are using our phones to count steps, work out, even
Speaker 1: monitor sensitive health conditions that we may have. This, as
Speaker 1: you might expect, is a treasure trove of information. Apps
Speaker 1: can also scan through photos, videos, and even audio files
Speaker 1: if we give them the permission. You might have noticed
Speaker 1: with the latest version of iOS it asks you, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to give access to all of your
Speaker 1: photos or just some of your photos?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 1: Well, because it turns out that some apps we're sort
Speaker 1: of looking through pictures for information that might help them
Speaker 1: GPS data. Where you took these pictures, where you go
Speaker 1: very often the people in the pictures. Now, what you
Speaker 1: tap inside apps and how you use these apps.
Speaker 2: Is also recorded.
Speaker 1: So every tap that you make inside an app, a
Speaker 1: developer can see where did you navigate to, what did
Speaker 1: you tap on first, what did you tap on second?
Speaker 1: All this information is collected and potentially up for grabs
Speaker 1: also the device identifiers, So what kind of phone are
Speaker 1: you using, what size screen are you using, what your
Speaker 1: phone is yours, what type of platform are you on?
Speaker 1: All of this diagnostic data is collected as well. Now Google,
Speaker 1: of course has They both have this thing like kind
Speaker 1: of a nutrition facts label I call it for their apps.
Speaker 1: So when you're looking at the app to download, look
Speaker 1: for that little box. It will show you some of
Speaker 1: these things that an app is collecting. And if you
Speaker 1: look at that, you'll realize why online marketing is such
Speaker 1: a booming business, because they are collecting as much as
Speaker 1: they can. Now here's where the two platforms differ. Apple
Speaker 1: sort of parses out an entire category for sensitive info. Now,
Speaker 1: this is what apps might want to collect on race, ethnicity,
Speaker 1: sexual orientation, pregnancy disabilities, religious beliefs, your union membership, your
Speaker 1: political opinion, and more. Google does not separate this information out.
Speaker 1: It lumps it into the much more harmless sounding personal
Speaker 1: info category. Google also has a separate category for messages.
Speaker 1: This will allow apps to read your email, your texts,
Speaker 1: and your other messages. Apple lumps this one in with
Speaker 1: a much more harmless sounding user content. Yes, apps can
Speaker 1: read your email and your texts and your other messages. Now,
Speaker 1: for some reasons, this may be a use case scenario.
Speaker 1: Say on Android, you download a third party app that
Speaker 1: you want to use for your text messages. That's why
Speaker 1: they would have to read it. But they also might
Speaker 1: just say, hey, we want to read your texts, and
Speaker 1: if you give them that ability, they could. Both platforms
Speaker 1: have categories that let apps tap into your web browsing history,
Speaker 1: although I'm not exactly sure how that one's used because
Speaker 1: I feel like that should be pretty well guarded.
Speaker 2: But that's an interesting one.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: On Android, any old app used to be able to
Speaker 1: see a list of other apps that you had installed
Speaker 1: on your phone, but now they've limited this again. These
Speaker 1: two platforms have gotten much more strict with these permissions
Speaker 1: because they've realized they've been abused over the years. Apple
Speaker 1: does not allow apps to look at your list of
Speaker 1: other apps. That's pretty nice. Apple sandboxes things, which means
Speaker 1: apps really can't see.
Speaker 2: What other apps are doing.
Speaker 1: Both platforms, of course, have a category for contacts, which
Speaker 1: allow an app to see even personal details like how
Speaker 1: often you contact someone, how long you talk to them for,
Speaker 1: and your call history. So yes, your app could no
Speaker 1: particular people that you call and how long you call
Speaker 1: them for. They also have a course calendar access that
Speaker 1: could be useful for travel journaling and health apps.
Speaker 2: But you could see how this could be abused.
Speaker 1: Apple's policy has some interesting new categories due to products
Speaker 1: like the Vision Pro. This includes environment scanning. So I
Speaker 1: realized this when I was using the Vision Pro that
Speaker 1: wait a second, this thing could see all around me.
Speaker 1: It can see my entire image of my house or
Speaker 1: wherever I'm using this. So environment scanning collects image detection
Speaker 1: of the user's surroundings along with head and hand movement.
Speaker 1: Think about that for a bit. All this sounds pretty scary,
Speaker 1: and yes, in many ways it is. These are some
Speaker 1: eye popping data points that go way beyond just your location.
Speaker 1: In reality, I think it's actually a good thing that
Speaker 1: Apple and Google have these categories because the more specific
Speaker 1: these categories get, the better it is for us as consumers,
Speaker 1: because we can say, yeah, you can do this with
Speaker 1: my phone, but my hand movement information rather or not
Speaker 1: you have that information. So as consumers, we need to
Speaker 1: be hyper aware of the permissions and app asks. For
Speaker 1: don't just download an app without looking, and don't just
Speaker 1: flip through all of those little screens that say, hey,
Speaker 1: can we have permission of this? Can we have permission
Speaker 1: of that? Everyone wants to speed through and just get
Speaker 1: to the app. Look at what those screens are asking you.
Speaker 1: They are very important.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Apps want to know about us as much as possible
Speaker 1: because the more they know, the more they can target
Speaker 1: us with better marketing or of course monetize this data.
Speaker 1: A lot of these apps share this data with third parties.
Speaker 1: They sell this data. So why do you think an
Speaker 1: app wants to get really popular, Because hey, we've got
Speaker 1: information on one hundred million people.
Speaker 2: That is very valuable information.
Speaker 1: And by the way, these people that are buying this information,
Speaker 1: they're mixing it with other databases so they can get
Speaker 1: a really good picture of who you are. So ideally
Speaker 1: an app can collect our information to run properly, but
Speaker 1: it would not sell this information to someone else, or
Speaker 1: it wouldn't share that information to someone else. So again,
Speaker 1: check those App store listings. Both Apple and Google have
Speaker 1: some information about this on the App store listings. That's
Speaker 1: what you want to check. Now here's the other thing.
Speaker 1: Here's the big takeaway. Get your pencil on paper out. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. You don't have to. You can just
Speaker 1: hear this and you can go for the link on
Speaker 1: the website. You can check on your phone to see
Speaker 1: which apps are using which permissions, and you can revoke
Speaker 1: these even after you've installed apps. So on the iPhone,
Speaker 1: you can go into Settings and then Privacy and Security,
Speaker 1: and you're going to see a whole bunch of categories
Speaker 1: like contacts, calendar, microphones. Tap one of those categories and
Speaker 1: you can see all the apps that can tap into
Speaker 1: this stuff. So for Instagram, if you're not recording stuff
Speaker 1: with your microphone on Instagram, take away the ability for
Speaker 1: it to tap into your microphone. Same thing with Facebook.
Speaker 1: It just makes sense if you don't need those things
Speaker 1: to have access to that. On Samsung's same thing, you
Speaker 1: can go into Settings, Security and Privacy and they call
Speaker 1: it Permission Manager, and you can tap into categories including
Speaker 1: body sensors, call logs, or location. Once again, you can
Speaker 1: tap an app to change its permissions. On the pixel,
Speaker 1: same thing, go into Settings, Security and Privacy, Privacy Permission Manager. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see how they kind of hide these things down
Speaker 1: many many ways. You can tap into a category to
Speaker 1: see which apps have access there. Again, tap an app
Speaker 1: to change its permissions. Hopefully, just by being aware of this,
Speaker 1: you will understand how much data about you flows through
Speaker 1: your phone, and you will help stop at least some
Speaker 1: of that flow if these apps do not need it.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I think that phone models, instead
Speaker 1: of the iPhone fifteen and the Pixel six Pixel seven,
Speaker 1: they should just call every phone model double o seven,
Speaker 1: because it's basically a little spy in your pocket. All right,
Speaker 1: Coming up on today's show, I've got the website that
Speaker 1: reveals the best internet service provider in your area. But
Speaker 1: first it is your turn your calls coming up next
Speaker 1: that eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Also,
Speaker 1: if you want links to what I just mentioned, sign
Speaker 1: up for my newsletter search rich on Tech newsletter. Sign
Speaker 1: up and you can get information about what I just mentioned.
Speaker 1: My name is rich Dmiro. You are listening to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you talking technology at triple A
Speaker 1: rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Website for the show
Speaker 1: rich on Tech dot tv. And if you want more
Speaker 1: information about what I just talked about. It's all in
Speaker 1: the newsletter. Just search rich on Tech newsletter and you
Speaker 1: can sign up.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: In a moment, I'll tell you about the new website
Speaker 1: that helps you find the fastest internet in your area
Speaker 1: based on real life speed test data. But first let's
Speaker 1: go to Shelley in Seal Beach. Shelley, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 5: Thank you for taking my call.
Speaker 6: Rich.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I am an Apple use all my all my
Speaker 5: devices are Apple compatible. I have been using an iMac
Speaker 5: since they came out. The one that I have now
Speaker 5: is twenty sixteen. I do keep them on the software updated. However,
Speaker 5: the hardware is complaining. Now I need to get another
Speaker 5: computer just because I need the hardware, and I decided
Speaker 5: I want to get a laptop. I do not know
Speaker 5: what laptop would be recommended. Also, I need a recommendation
Speaker 5: for a printer that would be compatible with the laptop
Speaker 5: that you recommend. I want an all function laser printer,
Speaker 5: and that it'll have a theater a theater, and that
Speaker 5: it'll have a color. Was that too much? Did you
Speaker 5: get all that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 1: You want a laptop to replace the iMac, So you
Speaker 1: want to stick with Apple.
Speaker 2: I take it right correct.
Speaker 5: All my devices our Apple, so they all think everything sync.
Speaker 5: I want to keep it that way.
Speaker 2: What are you doing on the computer. Do you need
Speaker 2: to use it for a home.
Speaker 5: I use well, I use the Microsoft that is compatible
Speaker 5: with AMPLE. I also use pages and.
Speaker 2: Any video editing.
Speaker 5: Video editor. No, I don't use. I don't use video editing.
Speaker 5: The videos that I use I take on my iPhone
Speaker 5: and then you're transferred to the computer, okay, and then
Speaker 5: I keep I keep the external hot drive along with it,
Speaker 5: so if anything happens, everything is in the cloud.
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like a MacBook Air is probably what
Speaker 1: you need. And they just yeah, they just came out
Speaker 1: with new ones a fifteen inch and a thirteen inch, So.
Speaker 5: I personally how much how many inches?
Speaker 1: Thirteen in thirteen and fifteen, So I personally would go
Speaker 1: with the fifteen inch because I have a thirteen inch
Speaker 1: laptop and I really can't deal with it. It's the screen
Speaker 1: is just way too small. And now here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Are you moving this laptop from your house ever? Are
Speaker 1: you taking it on the go, like outside or like travel?
Speaker 5: Reasons that I want the lamp, I like, the desktop
Speaker 5: is just comfortable to use, and I've been using it
Speaker 5: since for one hundred years. However, we need to go
Speaker 5: someplace or I need service on it, I cannot. I
Speaker 5: cannot move it. So I do want the laptop because
Speaker 5: it is portable.
Speaker 1: Well here's the thing. Okay, so you're gonna pay a
Speaker 1: premium because of the laptop. You're gonna get less ports
Speaker 1: on it, you're gonna get less specs, You're gonna get
Speaker 1: just less for your money because it is portable. So
Speaker 1: I would say, if you don't need that portability, then
Speaker 1: go with another iMac. But I think you're in luck
Speaker 1: because this this MacBook Air just came out with the
Speaker 1: new chip.
Speaker 2: It's the M three chip.
Speaker 1: And you're telling me your last computer lasted eight years.
Speaker 1: So that tells me that if you get even the
Speaker 1: base model of this computer, which you know is about
Speaker 1: you know, let's say it's twelve hundred dollars, let me
Speaker 1: look how much it is exactly. But I'm book MacBook
Speaker 1: Air fifteen, So i'd say the MacBook Air fifteen starts
Speaker 1: at twelve ninety nine. Are you in education or anything
Speaker 1: like that? Do you get any sort of discounts?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: So perfect, she'll get a little discount. Don't forget to
Speaker 1: shop at the Apple Education store. But basic specs on
Speaker 1: this are, you know, for twelve ninety nine, you get
Speaker 1: eight gigs of memory and two fifty six gig hard drive. Now,
Speaker 1: Apple likes to play a little bit of games with
Speaker 1: their with the lowest end because it has a good
Speaker 1: price that's advertised at twelve ninety nine. Personally, I think
Speaker 1: everything gets better when you go one step up with
Speaker 1: the Apple products. So it's fifteen hundred dollars that'll get
Speaker 1: you more hard drive, and it may be a faster
Speaker 1: hard drive too, I believe. Now, I personally would upgrade
Speaker 1: that memory to sixteen because eight at this point is
Speaker 1: kind of getting a little bit low for a laptop.
Speaker 1: So I think the base specs you want is sixteen
Speaker 1: five twelve.
Speaker 5: That's sixteen gigbytes, sixteen sixteen bit memory.
Speaker 1: Sixteen gigs of memory yep, and then five hundred and
Speaker 1: twelve gigabytes of hard drive. I think that's what undred
Speaker 1: and five, yeah, twelve, five hundred and.
Speaker 5: Twelve, five hundred and twelve.
Speaker 2: And then sixteen gigs of memory.
Speaker 5: Now that's what five hundred and twelve.
Speaker 1: That's the M three chip, which is going to give you, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's their latest chip. This is the same laptop that
Speaker 1: I'm about to purchase. So I think that's a great Now,
Speaker 1: that's one way of doing it. The other way to
Speaker 1: do it is if you don't want to spend that much.
Speaker 1: If you don't spend feel like spending fifteen hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: there is a new Mac or a new computer for
Speaker 1: sale at Walmart for six ninety nine. Now, that is
Speaker 1: going to be a computer that's a couple of years old,
Speaker 1: so it's it is aging a little bit. But if
Speaker 1: you just want to save money, I don't think you
Speaker 1: should go that route. Because you've kept your computer for
Speaker 1: eight years. So if you do the math on this
Speaker 1: computer and you keep it for another eight years, even
Speaker 1: if you're spending fifteen hundred bucks, that is still a
Speaker 1: fantastic deal.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That's you know, two hundred dollars a year. So I
Speaker 1: think that's a great way to go for it. Now,
Speaker 1: for the printer, I would just go with a lazy
Speaker 1: Jet from HP. I would check Wirecutter for that, see
Speaker 1: what their latest recommendation is.
Speaker 2: But I'm pretty sure that.
Speaker 1: HP is pretty much the game in town when it
Speaker 1: comes to the color laser printers. So and they most
Speaker 1: of them have that, you know that little thing you
Speaker 1: want to the feeder on the top. So, Shelley and
Speaker 1: Seal Beach, thanks so much for the call today. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Good luck with the new laptop, and I think you're
Speaker 1: gonna like it a lot. Let me tell you about
Speaker 1: this before we go to break. Here there's a new
Speaker 1: speed test performance directory directory from Oukla. They're known for
Speaker 1: doing the speed test. Everyone goes to speed test dot
Speaker 1: net to do a little speed test to see how
Speaker 1: fast their internet is. Well, now they've got they've taken
Speaker 1: all that data on the back end, and now you
Speaker 1: pop in your zip code on this website and it
Speaker 1: will tell you all of the providers in your area,
Speaker 1: if they have information on them, and the actual speeds
Speaker 1: that people are getting from these internet service providers. Because
Speaker 1: a lot of times the advertisements you see on TV
Speaker 1: are mostly for the download speed. But this will show
Speaker 1: you the upload and the download and the latency, which
Speaker 1: is the time it takes from when you click a
Speaker 1: link to something actually happening on your computer.
Speaker 2: The lower the number, the better.
Speaker 1: You might even discover a provider in your area that
Speaker 1: you weren't aware of, So the website speed test dot
Speaker 1: net slash performance check it out. I'll link it up
Speaker 1: on the website rich on Tech dot tv. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we'll talk TikTok and a potential ban on the rich
Speaker 1: On Tech Show. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple
Speaker 1: eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. You can find me
Speaker 1: on social media at rich on Tech. I am on X,
Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, and I think I'm
Speaker 1: on TikTok, but I don't really post there, which brings
Speaker 1: us to our next segment, TikTok. You have no doubt
Speaker 1: heard that the US is trying to ban this thing.
Speaker 1: This is a very popular app, one hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: million users. It's based out of China, which I guess
Speaker 1: is the concern with the US. And so far, the
Speaker 1: House has passed a bill unanimously to ban this or
Speaker 1: really divest it. We'll get into the details in a
Speaker 1: second here, but now it's headed to the Senate, where
Speaker 1: we don't know if it's going to pass or not.
Speaker 1: And then the President has also said that he probably
Speaker 1: will support this. So this is a very real thing
Speaker 1: and to talk about it. Let's bring on doctor Scott J. White,
Speaker 1: Associate Professor and Director of the George Washington University Cyber
Speaker 1: Security Program and Cyber Academy.
Speaker 2: Professor. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much.
Speaker 8: It's my pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about TikTok. This has been the topic
Speaker 1: du jour here for a while. We heard this, I
Speaker 1: mean I remember covering this a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: like I think it was during the pandemic, or right
Speaker 1: before the pandemic, there was a big to do about banning.
Speaker 2: This didn't happen. What's different this time around?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think, you know, it's a good question. I
Speaker 8: think there's a lot of things that are different. I
Speaker 8: think from our last election. You know, we had a
Speaker 8: fair election in the United States, but it was it
Speaker 8: was brought up by the intelligence community that there was
Speaker 8: definite interference from China and Russia, and that interference really
Speaker 8: came in the way of using social media, which both
Speaker 8: of those countries are very good at being propagandists in
Speaker 8: the worst possible way. So I think we're very cognizant
Speaker 8: of the power that these organizations TikTok can have on
Speaker 8: kind of manipulating people's decision making. But I think here specifically,
Speaker 8: I think when you start looking at you know, China
Speaker 8: being a surveillance society, it's the most surveiled society in
Speaker 8: the world. You know, with the social credit system, you
Speaker 8: could you could jaywalk across the street. Your picture gets
Speaker 8: taken by a camera on the street, it's digitized, your
Speaker 8: name comes off on a central database, and you lose
Speaker 8: points automatically, you know, no judicial procedure. This is the
Speaker 8: fear in a liberal democracy, and I think these are
Speaker 8: things that we have to be concerned of in a
Speaker 8: never shrinking world of liberal democracies.
Speaker 1: So we've got the app collecting data on you know,
Speaker 1: millions of American users, and it's collecting the same data
Speaker 1: that you know, many other apps like Instagram and Facebook
Speaker 1: and obviously these other apps on the same platforms are collecting.
Speaker 1: But what's different about TikTok. What are they doing differently
Speaker 1: as an app? Is it the fear of the connection
Speaker 1: to China.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, yeah, I agree with you. I think
Speaker 3: that's part of it.
Speaker 8: I mean, if you look at Chinese national intelligence law, specifically,
Speaker 8: I recommend Article seven ten and Article fourteen. It makes
Speaker 8: it very clear that all private sector companies must work
Speaker 8: with the intelligence services. There are no warrants for acquired
Speaker 8: it's a phone call or it's an automatic you will
Speaker 8: share your database with us. And again in you know,
Speaker 8: you like to think that, you know, the Internet is
Speaker 8: a democratizing force and you know really shouldn't be used
Speaker 8: as an intelligence gathering tool. But I think to your point,
Speaker 8: I think the scary stuff and we look, it's true
Speaker 8: that you know, Snapchat, necks and the rest of these
Speaker 8: do keep data, but TikTok keeps the most amount of
Speaker 8: data or tries to glean the most amount of data.
Speaker 8: If we think of it in football analogy, you know
Speaker 8: we're starting, you know, Facebook X is starting on the
Speaker 8: fifty yard line, and you know the the Chinese are
Speaker 8: starting through TikTok in the red zone. So, I mean,
Speaker 8: they just collect so much information. And the information they're
Speaker 8: going after is biometric face prints, retinal scanning, voice print identification.
Speaker 8: That is really deeply technical.
Speaker 1: So when I upload a video to talk, it's scanning
Speaker 1: my voice to understand to make a fingerprint of my voice.
Speaker 8: You're absolutely correct, that's exactly what's happening. They're also scanning
Speaker 8: your face and even your retina, So theoretically you could
Speaker 8: be anywhere in the world if the Chinese are eaves
Speaker 8: dropping through their surveillance system, they will pick up your
Speaker 8: voice print identification.
Speaker 2: Is that documented? Is that? Like, where's that coming from?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's the way they do business.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, that's all part of the surveillance society.
Speaker 8: And we know what's happening because they're doing They've already
Speaker 8: done it with their own people.
Speaker 3: We know what's occurring.
Speaker 8: Their social credit system is the basis of it.
Speaker 1: Now, here's what's interesting because I you know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of these things where a lot of
Speaker 1: people have made a living on TikTok, a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, there's been a lot of stars born out
Speaker 1: of TikTok. I mean there's you know, Justin Bieber, I mean,
Speaker 1: didn't he come from TikTok? I mean so many of
Speaker 1: these YouTube Pubo said, well, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of people that, you know, come
Speaker 1: from this. So obviously there is a lot at stake here.
Speaker 1: It's not just like, hey, let's get rid of this thing.
Speaker 1: Like small businesses have gone viral on this. So, but
Speaker 1: when I was in China, I remember that I couldn't
Speaker 1: use almost any social network based in the US over there.
Speaker 1: I couldn't use Twitter, I couldn't use Facebook, I couldn't
Speaker 1: use Instagram.
Speaker 2: It was a pain.
Speaker 8: So and you probably used a VPN and even the
Speaker 8: use of VPNs. Now they're they're starting to block those.
Speaker 8: You're correct, and the fact is that you know, our
Speaker 8: social media sites are not allowed in China, and as
Speaker 8: an American traveling in China, as you say, to attempt
Speaker 8: to connect to your social media even through a virtual
Speaker 8: private network is difficulty. Beginning to corrupt that system as well.
Speaker 8: So they're not playing fair. They're incredibly hypocritical in the
Speaker 8: way they do business. It's you know, will allow will
Speaker 8: allow this to occur in the United States, but not
Speaker 8: at home. H And that's not democracy. So I think
Speaker 8: we have to understand exactly what the Chinese Communist Party
Speaker 8: is doing here. They're not a friend of the United
Speaker 8: State and they're not a friend of democracies.
Speaker 1: What does this mean for other Chinese based apps? If
Speaker 1: you look at the top ten list of apps, I mean,
Speaker 1: Timu is a huge app.
Speaker 2: It's growing.
Speaker 1: It had a Super Bowl ad and you know, I
Speaker 1: get a lot of questions from people saying, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: is this safe for me to shop on? You know,
Speaker 1: you get a thing that maybe ten dollars on Amazon,
Speaker 1: it's thirty nine cents on Timu, So yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2: Is that next?
Speaker 8: Well, Timo is very interesting, isn't it, because you know,
Speaker 8: it's the fastest growing app of its kind through like
Speaker 8: Google Play or Apple Store. But if you look at it,
Speaker 8: it's kind of fundamentally on the based on the social
Speaker 8: credit system because in addition to the low prices that
Speaker 8: you talked about, Rich, it also gives freestuff to people
Speaker 8: who promote their app. So the more you use it
Speaker 8: and the more you disseminate that app to your friends,
Speaker 8: the greater credits you back. And it kind of it's
Speaker 8: a creepy way reminds me of their their kind of
Speaker 8: social credit system that if you play their game, you
Speaker 8: will be rewarded for it. And and you know, so yeah,
Speaker 8: it's I It's something we're gonna have to also look
Speaker 8: out for because the information you're supplying through your purchases
Speaker 8: is also collected by the Chinese government.
Speaker 2: So if this ban goes through.
Speaker 1: If this passes the Senate and goes to the President,
Speaker 1: president signs it, they've got to do either divest this
Speaker 1: this company to an American company, or just goes away
Speaker 1: like uh TikTok is saying, that's probably what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Does this have bigger implications for the US's relationship with China?
Speaker 8: Well, I think that any policy decision that that the
Speaker 8: United States makes that uh, you know, places China at
Speaker 8: a perceived or real disadvantage, will have some type of
Speaker 8: consequences to it. Look, I mean, as I say, the
Speaker 8: Chinese system is not a capitalist system. They don't have
Speaker 8: free and open elections. They you know, they don't have
Speaker 8: a free judiciary or an independent judiciary system. So you know,
Speaker 8: again you're getting a communist dictatorship. Basically, are they going
Speaker 8: to dictate to a sovereign liberal democracy? And I think
Speaker 8: we're just going to have to be prepared to take
Speaker 8: a few shots other countries have. We're just gonna have
Speaker 8: to prepare if we believe in democracy and through capitalism
Speaker 8: in a fair market system. If we believe in it,
Speaker 8: then we have to show it. Look, we've taken apart
Speaker 8: large companies before. Just look at Bell, you know, Bell,
Speaker 8: Bell Atlantic, Bell Pacific. It's not uncommon to take large
Speaker 8: multinational companies and diverse them. So asking TikTok to be
Speaker 8: purchased by an American company, fine closure doors will have
Speaker 8: the next day, you'll have an American competitor ready to
Speaker 8: start up and meet that market need.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to leave it there. Doctor Scott J.
Speaker 1: White, Associate Professor and Director of the George Washington University
Speaker 1: Cybersecurity Program and Cyber Academy. You want to make a
Speaker 1: prediction is this going to happen?
Speaker 6: You think it's going to be very interesting.
Speaker 8: I always said, you know, which is the political party
Speaker 8: that's going to make that many young people upset? I
Speaker 8: think the Senate is going to hold it. I don't
Speaker 8: think it's going to make it through the Senate in
Speaker 8: a quick amount of time. So even if it does,
Speaker 8: it may be the next election before we see that happening.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, it certainly has a lot of people talking about
Speaker 1: it and a lot of people wondering if something like
Speaker 1: this can happen. But again, like I said, I think
Speaker 1: it was three or four years ago that we were
Speaker 1: talking about this same exact thing, and it seemed like
Speaker 1: it was imminent, so we'll continue to watch it. Doctor
Speaker 1: Scott J. White, how can folks learn more about your
Speaker 1: cybersecurity program?
Speaker 8: Going to our website at the George Washington University College
Speaker 8: or professional Studies. All right, we'll be happy to answer
Speaker 8: any questions about the program.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for the insight, really interesting conversation. Eighty
Speaker 1: to eight rich one oh one eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Coming up, We'll take more
Speaker 1: of your calls and I'll tell you about the Roku
Speaker 1: data breach. What you need to know. You are listening
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Tomuro talking technology with you at triple eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Bobo's playing a little Beatles today.
Speaker 1: Watched a movie last night called Yesterday. Don't want to
Speaker 1: give away too much of the movie, but I think
Speaker 1: this is common knowledge. But basically it's a world where
Speaker 1: the Beatles were forgotten, I guess. And anyway, it's just
Speaker 1: a very interesting little movie. Like we only got halfway through.
Speaker 1: Of course I fall asleep, but that's just because I'm tired,
Speaker 1: not because the movie was bad. I tried to stay up.
Speaker 1: But it's a really good little movie. So if you
Speaker 1: have it, it's it's old, it's not like from twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: But if you're looking for something to watch, like last night,
Speaker 1: and I've talked about this before on the show, you
Speaker 1: sit down and it's like the amount of streaming services
Speaker 1: and the amount of shows, and the amount of reviews
Speaker 1: and the amount of opinions out there, it's just too much.
Speaker 1: And so I get this decision paralysis where I just
Speaker 1: can't make a decision on what movie to watch. And
Speaker 1: I've even gotten to the point where I'll start it
Speaker 1: and I'll be like, wait a second, let me, I'm
Speaker 1: rethinking my decision. Let me try something else, and then
Speaker 1: it just ruins your Friday night. So anyway, just pick
Speaker 1: something to watch it. I think you'll like that one.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Adam in Los Angeles. Adam, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 3: Hi. Rich.
Speaker 9: I love your program. Thank you for all the great
Speaker 9: advice that you've given other than to me. But I
Speaker 9: had a question about So I'm fifty four, I work
Speaker 9: at home. I do contracting work, compute a lot of
Speaker 9: computer work, and I have of a business computer from
Speaker 9: my employer, but I want to buy my own personal
Speaker 9: computer because I do some side work from there. And
Speaker 9: I am wondering about the difference between what they call
Speaker 9: those larger tower pieces and the desktop PCs. So I'm
Speaker 9: wondering about what's the difference that I can't find anywhere
Speaker 9: that explains the difference between those.
Speaker 2: Well, you call the right place, because I will explain.
Speaker 1: So it's funny, I just when you're talking, I realize
Speaker 1: that we used to have sort of a third form factor,
Speaker 1: Like right now everything is pretty much a tower, but
Speaker 1: there used to be that like sort of flat desktop,
Speaker 1: remember where you put the monitor, like.
Speaker 2: That giant monitor on top of that. But now most
Speaker 2: of are are.
Speaker 1: Either like a mini desktop, like a mini tower, or
Speaker 1: I guess they sometimes they can go either way. They
Speaker 1: can go flat on their side, or they can go
Speaker 1: up and down, or you have those giant tower PCs.
Speaker 1: And of course, if you know any gamers in your life,
Speaker 1: they're the ones that always have the giant tower PCs.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is mostly power and expandability.
Speaker 2: So if you have a.
Speaker 1: Big giant PC that has you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: storage and space inside, you can add the peripherals that
Speaker 1: you want, you can add the cooling that you want,
Speaker 1: you can add more hard drives, you can add more
Speaker 1: graphics cards, whatever you need to put in there. You
Speaker 1: can pop this thing open and put those things in,
Speaker 1: and it also looks pretty cool. So when you talk
Speaker 1: about a smaller computer, these you know, these profile or
Speaker 1: these slim line PCs, and of course down to a laptop,
Speaker 1: there is not as much expandability, there's not as much power,
Speaker 1: and you know they're gonna be quieter, they're gonna be
Speaker 1: just just a smaller, more you know, power efficient kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So it depends really what you need to do.
Speaker 1: So are you doing any kind of like drafting work
Speaker 1: or like architects stuff or anything that requires like a
Speaker 1: lot of computing power.
Speaker 5: Not really.
Speaker 9: I am doing mostly working on a on a web
Speaker 9: software or input information for a contractor that I work for,
Speaker 9: and also from home, it's just typing documents, opening PDF
Speaker 9: documents and reviewing items. So it's not it's not I
Speaker 9: don't think I need heavy processing power for that portion,
Speaker 9: although I will use it also to watch to stream
Speaker 9: movies from Netflix and things, you know, in my off time.
Speaker 1: Well okay, so but All the things you're talking about
Speaker 1: are not You're not adding like a graphics card. You're
Speaker 1: not adding like external a lot of different peripherals to
Speaker 1: this thing. Like you're not going to be adding extra
Speaker 1: fans or anything like that.
Speaker 9: No, No, I don't intend to see.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I think you'll be fine with a with
Speaker 1: you know, a smaller computer. I think the main thing
Speaker 1: for everything that you're talking about, you want to get
Speaker 1: good specs. And we were talking about this a little
Speaker 1: bit earlier. You know, the specs that I think or
Speaker 1: the baseline at this point for computers is you know,
Speaker 1: sixteen gigabytes of memory, if not more, especially on a
Speaker 1: on a desktop, you can do that for cheaper than
Speaker 1: a laptop. You know, a nice size hard drive, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a five, twelve or terabyte if you want. But
Speaker 1: the good news is with a with a desktop, you
Speaker 1: can just add what you need later on, you know
Speaker 1: with us B, so if you need more hard drive
Speaker 1: you can add that. Usually with memory, some of the
Speaker 1: computers you can pop them open and add. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: actually sort of attached to the motherboard if it's a
Speaker 1: if it's a really inexpensive computer. But I think for
Speaker 1: what you're talking about your needs, I think you'll be
Speaker 1: fine with one of these computers that's kind of an
Speaker 1: all in one. I always recommend Costco if you just
Speaker 1: need a computer that's an all in one that has
Speaker 1: pretty good specs.
Speaker 2: Costco.
Speaker 1: If you have a membership there, they generally have a
Speaker 1: pretty good system and it's usually one or two, but
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a very It's like you
Speaker 1: get a little bit more for your money there than
Speaker 1: you would get anywhere else.
Speaker 2: But I would look around. I don't think if.
Speaker 1: You're not building your own computer, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: need all these uh this, these extras because if you're
Speaker 1: not expanding it down the line, the stuff that you're
Speaker 1: talking about is pretty much just basic computer work where
Speaker 1: you're you're working on documents, you're watching movies, you're streaming.
Speaker 1: But you do want decent specs for that stuff. So also,
Speaker 1: you know, check out the process or that you're getting.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to go with something like
Speaker 1: a three, like a Core you know, Core I five,
Speaker 1: maybe a Core I seven. You want something that's going
Speaker 1: to be you know, that's gonna have some room to
Speaker 1: breathe if you want to use this thing for a while,
Speaker 1: but that's what I would do, and just you know, again,
Speaker 1: go with the most the best specs that you can afford.
Speaker 2: I think is the best way to do that, and
Speaker 2: I think you'll be fine. You know.
Speaker 1: The thing is with a lot of these computers, like
Speaker 1: the dream goal of companies is to have what's called
Speaker 1: like you know, almost like a dummy PC, where like
Speaker 1: the PC is actually not doing anything, like there's almost
Speaker 1: no process power whatsoever except just to run the Internet,
Speaker 1: and then everything is taken from the cloud. And so
Speaker 1: that's been kind of the dream of companies because it's
Speaker 1: much easier to manage things in the cloud than it
Speaker 1: is on a local system that needs to be updated
Speaker 1: every couple of years. So good question, Adam, Thanks for
Speaker 1: the call and appreciate the kind words too. Let's see
Speaker 1: Roku data breach. Fifteen thousand accounts effected, so not a
Speaker 1: ton of accounts here, but here's what you need to know.
Speaker 1: The main takeaway here is that you should not be
Speaker 1: reasoning your passwords. So Roku had a data breach between
Speaker 1: December twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, and February twenty first,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. So if you had an account and
Speaker 1: something seems a little off, This might have happened to you.
Speaker 1: So what happened was this was a credential stuffing, which
Speaker 1: means the bad guys found these usernames and passwords somewhere
Speaker 1: else on the open web, and then they tried them
Speaker 1: on the Roku accounts and a bunch of them worked,
Speaker 1: three hundred sixty three of them.
Speaker 2: And so what did they do.
Speaker 1: They got into these Roku accounts and they immediately purchased stuff.
Speaker 1: They tried to subscribe to things, which I think is
Speaker 1: really weird. So you're this is your goal as a
Speaker 1: as a you know, online cyber criminal. You're trying to
Speaker 1: subscribe to HBO Max on someone else's credit card. Like really, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, good for you, but it's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: But Roku said they took a media action to secure
Speaker 1: the affected accounts, which basically means they sent a reset
Speaker 1: password email to those accounts and canceled any unauthorized subscription.
Speaker 1: So check your credit card if you have anything that
Speaker 1: got there from Roku. This might have happened to you,
Speaker 1: and don't reuse your password. This is when it goes
Speaker 1: bad when they find it and they use it on
Speaker 1: a different website. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at eighty eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one one. I've got my kilt on Happy
Speaker 1: Saint Patrick's Day weekend. One of my favorite meals of
Speaker 1: the year corn beef and cabbage, and last year was
Speaker 1: a bust. We made it and it was not good.
Speaker 1: So this year we need to redo that and make
Speaker 1: sure that it is good. But it's up in the
Speaker 1: air at this point. So anyway, let's uh eight eight
Speaker 1: eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: Let's go to uh. Let's see Wayne in your Belinda. Wayne,
Speaker 2: you're on with rich Hi.
Speaker 10: Rich, thank you for your show.
Speaker 2: First of all, hey, thanks for listening.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I got the I fall ten and the eleven
Speaker 10: they both sixty four gigabye. So I do have a
Speaker 10: sumto and I don't know how to tangle or empty
Speaker 10: the stories.
Speaker 1: Ah, okay, well it's a little tricky on the iPhone.
Speaker 1: You have to have you plugged the what kind of
Speaker 1: what kind of connector do you have on your iPhone.
Speaker 10: I have the Lightning Yes, oh you do?
Speaker 2: You have the newest one. Okay, so you've got the
Speaker 2: Lightning and then what kind of thumb drive do you have?
Speaker 2: Is it lightning?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 10: They both like yes, okay.
Speaker 1: So you plug it in and nothing happens. You open
Speaker 1: up the files app and what happens?
Speaker 10: Uh? They have me downloaded the apps, which it's I
Speaker 10: bought my amzone way back.
Speaker 2: And what app do they have download? Is it sand disk?
Speaker 10: No, it's not stand up brand, I think? Okay, so
Speaker 10: they're swing into no external I'm the USB back at forth.
Speaker 10: Kind of confused me. So there's the reason I call you.
Speaker 10: And also possibly next maybe I need to operate to
Speaker 10: find a larger storage. Bigger storage and battery life. The
Speaker 10: battery life, there's really I also have the iPhone thirteen
Speaker 10: a life.
Speaker 1: Well okay, so just to look at the battery life
Speaker 1: real quick. You can go into Settings battery and check
Speaker 1: your battery health and see if that's okay, if it's
Speaker 1: you know, if it's giving you trouble that it'll tell
Speaker 1: you if the battery health is normal or not, and
Speaker 1: if you're having issues with the battery life, which by
Speaker 1: the way the iPhone has pretty incredible battery life. I
Speaker 1: would check and see what is running down your battery.
Speaker 1: So for me, I can see I've got Instagram using
Speaker 1: up most of my battery, my home screen X and
Speaker 1: then Chrome and then Google Photos background activities. So if
Speaker 1: there's something on that list that is eating up all
Speaker 1: your battery, you can go through and get rid of that. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to offloading stuff from the iPhone to
Speaker 1: the thumb drive, it's kind of tricky because there's not
Speaker 1: really like a simple way to do that on the iPhone.
Speaker 1: There are some apps that can help, the ones that
Speaker 1: I know of that work with this. Now, you said
Speaker 1: you got a third party thumb drive, so the only
Speaker 1: way that you'd be able to move things over is
Speaker 1: to kind of drag and drop them onto that drive.
Speaker 1: So you can plug that drive into your into your iPhone.
Speaker 1: It has to be formatted a special way for it
Speaker 1: to show up on the iPhone, So according to the
Speaker 1: Apple support website, you can format it as APFS, mac
Speaker 1: OS extended, or an x fat or a fat thirty
Speaker 1: two or a fat. My kids would laugh at the uh,
Speaker 1: you know, at these hard drive descriptions. But once you
Speaker 1: have it in those it would be able to would
Speaker 1: be able to see those, you know, would be able
Speaker 1: to recognize that. And then when you want to actually
Speaker 1: put stuff from your phone onto that drive, you can
Speaker 1: go into something like photos and select a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff and then copy it that way. But that's
Speaker 1: going to be kind of tricky. So you would you would,
Speaker 1: you know, select a bunch of photos and then you
Speaker 1: can files and you would kind of look and see
Speaker 1: like where you're saving it, and I would browse to
Speaker 1: that actual little thumb drive.
Speaker 2: That's going to take you forever. That's not going to
Speaker 2: be very easy.
Speaker 1: So the programs that I recommend the sand disc I
Speaker 1: expand they have their own little app that will help
Speaker 1: take pictures from your phone and put them off to
Speaker 1: the drive. Pn Y also has that. So otherwise, if
Speaker 1: you're if their app is not working that they gave you,
Speaker 1: you're kind of out of look because you're you're at
Speaker 1: the mercy of that app. So I would make sure
Speaker 1: you gave the appropriate permissions to that app so that
Speaker 1: it can look through these files and it can look
Speaker 1: through the photos. But this is what happens when you
Speaker 1: take a chance on a you know, on a random
Speaker 1: brand name that you don't really know if it's going
Speaker 1: to work if you get it on Amazon, So check
Speaker 1: to make sure that the drive is formatted in the
Speaker 1: proper format. That's what I would do first, and then
Speaker 1: maybe uninstall this app, reinstall it and see if the
Speaker 1: things will migrate over there. The other thing you could
Speaker 1: do is use a third party program, something like Amazing,
Speaker 1: which I really like, and that will help you look
Speaker 1: at your phone in a much easier way. So there's
Speaker 1: also I mean, you could connect your phone to a
Speaker 1: computer and you can drag the photos over that way.
Speaker 1: You can connect it to a Windows computer. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's many ways you can do this. You can use
Speaker 1: an app like Amazon Photos. It all depends on what
Speaker 1: you want to get off of this phone onto somewhere else.
Speaker 1: But I agree it is it is. It is an
Speaker 1: issue because it's not the easiest thing to do. But
Speaker 1: once you know how to do it and just tinker
Speaker 1: a little bit, you should be able to do it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call, Wayne, appreciate it. Let's go to
Speaker 1: Robert in Roseville, Michigan. Robert, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 11: Hey, how you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm doing fantastic.
Speaker 11: I have never downloaded TikTok. But my question is is
Speaker 11: this if it was created because I had an inkling
Speaker 11: that they had created it the well, the purpose of
Speaker 11: spying in the first place, But once it's on your phone,
Speaker 11: and of course there's going to if I had created it,
Speaker 11: I would create an algorithm where it would root itself
Speaker 11: into the operating system of the phone. And even if
Speaker 11: you remove the app, the phone is still infected. And
Speaker 11: if you get another phone and synk the new phone
Speaker 11: to it, it's also infected.
Speaker 1: Well, that is a valid concern I know, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people travel to China, people do have a
Speaker 1: legitimate concern of the phone or device that they're using.
Speaker 1: If you're connecting it to a network over there, you
Speaker 1: are you are somewhat at risk with that device. Now,
Speaker 1: I will say I do think that number one when
Speaker 1: it comes to the iPhone, Robert, unless TikTok is really
Speaker 1: really sly in how this thing is programmed, the iPhone
Speaker 1: is nearly sandboxed with apps, so that means that apps
Speaker 1: that are installed on the iPhone really can't access the
Speaker 1: deep memory systems that they would be required to access
Speaker 1: to do something like you're talking about now.
Speaker 2: On Android it is a little bit different.
Speaker 1: It can't access a lot more, although that's getting more
Speaker 1: sandboxed as well, And so I do think these are
Speaker 1: valid concerns. But I guess the bottom line is, you know,
Speaker 1: if you downloaded TikTok at some point to your phone,
Speaker 1: is your phone infected? Is it ruined forever? I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I don't think that the app is that
Speaker 1: nefarious as it is today, you know, as it stands.
Speaker 1: But I will say that if there are people that
Speaker 1: are deleting TikTok off their phone or getting rid of it,
Speaker 1: TikTok does have some options. They do have a way
Speaker 1: to download your data. So if you're curious what data
Speaker 1: they have on you, they do allow you to request
Speaker 1: a copy of that TikTok data. Now most of the
Speaker 1: large tech companies are allowing this these days, and people
Speaker 1: look into this stuff and it is pretty interesting. Like
Speaker 1: I remember Facebook people were downloading their Facebook history and
Speaker 1: they were kind of their eyes were open to how
Speaker 1: much information Facebook has. TikTok says your may include but
Speaker 1: it is not limited to your user name, your video history,
Speaker 1: your comment history, and your privacy settings. That all sounds
Speaker 1: pretty boring, but you know it could be interesting. So
Speaker 1: you can go in the TikTok app, press profile menu,
Speaker 1: settings in privacy account, download your data, and then request data. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want to delete the TikTok app from your phone,
Speaker 1: if you're worried about this thing, you can delete the app,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't delete your account.
Speaker 2: Remember these are two different things.
Speaker 1: When you delete an app on your phone that does
Speaker 1: not delete your account, you still have to go in
Speaker 1: and delete your account. So you would have to open
Speaker 1: up the TikTok keep calling it tiptop TikTok app. Go
Speaker 1: into the menu and settings in privacy under account there
Speaker 1: is a deactivate or delete account, so you can deactivate
Speaker 1: or delete the account. Robert, I do think it is
Speaker 1: you know, there are valid concerns here, and I think
Speaker 1: so much of this stuff that's happening around TikTok, there
Speaker 1: is some concerns that are rooted in reality. And I
Speaker 1: think these concerns are with all of the phones and
Speaker 1: all of the apps that we have on our phones,
Speaker 1: and then some of it is rooted in we just
Speaker 1: don't know, and I think it's kind of wild to
Speaker 1: imagine that something would be banned because we just don't know,
Speaker 1: but that seems to be what is happening here? Eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Website for the show
Speaker 1: richon Tech dot TV. There you can go to get
Speaker 1: links to anything I mentioned on the show. If you
Speaker 1: want to get my newsletter rich on Tech Newsletter, just
Speaker 1: search it up on Google. You should get the first
Speaker 1: link and you can sign up for the newsletter. And
Speaker 1: today in the newsletter, I talked about just all of
Speaker 1: the information that apps can collect on our phone. There
Speaker 1: is a lot of it. All right, We'll have more
Speaker 1: of your questions coming up after this. Plus I'll tell
Speaker 1: you why Airbnb is banning security cameras in certain places,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you why Walmart is selling a MacBook
Speaker 1: Air for its cheapest price yet you are listening to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you Talking technology. Phone line
Speaker 1: is eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. If
Speaker 1: you are in the market for a new MacBook Air
Speaker 1: and you don't need something that is the latest, greatest,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to spend a whole lot of money,
Speaker 1: Walmart has a MacBook Air for six hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: nine dollars. This is the first time that Walmart has
Speaker 1: sold an Apple maclaptop directly. They've sold them on the
Speaker 1: website in the past, but it hasn't been directly from
Speaker 1: Walmart like it's been a third party listing. So they're
Speaker 1: selling the base model M one MacBook Air online and
Speaker 1: some stores will get it in store for six hundred
Speaker 1: ninety nine dollars. That is fifty dollars cheaper than the
Speaker 1: previous cheapest price on this laptop. So during the holidays,
Speaker 1: this MacBook Air M one was basically seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars. I'm trying to figure out when this came out.
Speaker 1: Let's see launch date. It's a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: this November twenty twenty, so it's about four years old.
Speaker 1: But you know, here's the thing. The Apple products, especially
Speaker 1: the M one chip, is really powerful. So I have
Speaker 1: no problem recommending this if you're doing just simple things
Speaker 1: like surfing the web, maybe some photos, maybe lightlight video editing.
Speaker 1: It's basically an iPhone in a computer, so anything you
Speaker 1: can do on the iPhone, you'd be able to do
Speaker 1: on this thing. So six hundred ninety nine bucks. It's
Speaker 1: in brand new condition, so again not a bad deal.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of the start. I mean, Walmart
Speaker 1: is a huge retailer and Apple is a very popular market,
Speaker 1: so putting those two together, they're going to sell a
Speaker 1: lot of these things. Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras,
Speaker 1: so no more indoor security cameras in any listings globally,
Speaker 1: regardless of the location of the camera, the purpose, or
Speaker 1: even if it's on the listing. And if you have
Speaker 1: an outdoor camera, those have to be disclosed before booking,
Speaker 1: and you can't have those looking to the indoor spaces.
Speaker 1: So you can't have like an outside camera that's looking
Speaker 1: into the living room with the windows. And if there's
Speaker 1: an outdoor area that comes with an expectation of privacy,
Speaker 1: you can't have a camera there either. The example they
Speaker 1: gave was sort of like an outdoor shower. If you're
Speaker 1: at like an Airbnb that has that, you couldn't put
Speaker 1: a camera there. I mean that makes sense. Also, noise
Speaker 1: decibel monitors. Did you know that a lot of airbnbs
Speaker 1: have these things? They monitor the noise level in the
Speaker 1: airbnb so that the owner can figure out if there's
Speaker 1: a party going on, because parties are also banned at airbnbs,
Speaker 1: like big old house parties. You can have your friends
Speaker 1: and family, maybe you know a couple people over, but
Speaker 1: you can't have a giant, you know, rager. So those
Speaker 1: are allowed in common spaces, but they also must be
Speaker 1: disclosed on the listing and they can't record or transmit
Speaker 1: sounds or conversations, so you can't say, well, I've got
Speaker 1: this little two way speaker set up and I'm just
Speaker 1: listening in for the sound level.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, you can't do that. It has to
Speaker 2: be a decibel monitor.
Speaker 1: The updated policy takes effect on April thirtieth of this year,
Speaker 1: so I think that's you know, I know, I understand
Speaker 1: the need to monitor your place and keep it secure,
Speaker 1: and video door bells and things like that are still fine,
Speaker 1: and external cameras are still fine, but it's like it's
Speaker 1: really it became this thing where like everyone that's staying
Speaker 1: at an Airbnb is wondering if there's a hidden camera
Speaker 1: in there, and that's concerning, and you definitely don't want
Speaker 1: to be I don't know, it's just you want to
Speaker 1: have privacy, but you also want to have protection for
Speaker 1: your place. So Airbnb's got to ride these lines and
Speaker 1: that's the that's the new reality there. Let's go to Mike.
Speaker 1: Mike is in Riverside, California, Mic around with Rich.
Speaker 6: Hey, Rich, I'm a Christian.
Speaker 12: Was listening at the very beginning of your show with
Speaker 12: the TikTok controversy.
Speaker 3: Sure, what makes you think that Instagram.
Speaker 6: And Facebook and the other.
Speaker 12: Social media apps they all sell our data to third parties?
Speaker 12: What makes anybody think that China doesn't buy them from
Speaker 12: third parties?
Speaker 1: And they probably do, and like everyone does, and so
Speaker 1: I think that that is a valid concern, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of why I went through the beginning of the
Speaker 1: show to explain that, like, all these apps are collecting
Speaker 1: very similar data, but the difference I think with China
Speaker 1: number one, they've got it directly. And again it's a
Speaker 1: country that you know, we're frontemies with and so that's
Speaker 1: part of it. But also it's the compliance issue too.
Speaker 1: So like our expert was saying, you know, these companies
Speaker 1: that are based in China, if there's an issue, there's
Speaker 1: no procedure they say, hey, you got to do this,
Speaker 1: and they have to comply. We're here in the US.
Speaker 1: We've seen example time and time again where these big
Speaker 1: tech companies don't comply and they and they secure the data.
Speaker 1: In fact, Apple and a lot of these tech companies
Speaker 1: have been sort of what they've been doing with their
Speaker 1: data is they've been encrypting it and throwing away the
Speaker 1: key so that nobody has it. And that's smart because
Speaker 1: well for them, because it takes them out of the mix,
Speaker 1: right when someone says when they let's say, let's say
Speaker 1: you got a ring video doorbell, and you end to
Speaker 1: end encrypt that and nobody can access that except you,
Speaker 1: And so if someone wants that video like Ring, couldn't
Speaker 1: even hand that over because they don't have the key
Speaker 1: to that. And so that's not what they're doing by default.
Speaker 1: But you have the option as the owner of that
Speaker 1: camera to do that, and that we're seeing that more
Speaker 1: and more where the encryption levels are getting higher, which
Speaker 1: is also kind of scary because there are some you know,
Speaker 1: actual valid concerns of why we may need to tap
Speaker 1: into some of this info. But as for Facebook and
Speaker 1: you know, Instagram and all these other companies, I am
Speaker 1: sure there's a ton of data flowing that way.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's a lot of money being exchanged.
Speaker 1: But American companies are doing the same thing to us,
Speaker 1: where you know, when you walk into a grocery store,
Speaker 1: they know who you are, they know what you're buying,
Speaker 1: they know what you watched on TV, they know what
Speaker 1: you served on your phone, and they're mixing all those
Speaker 1: things together to come up with a pretty good idea
Speaker 1: of if you're going to walk into that store and
Speaker 1: buy kitty litter or if you're going to buy diapers.
Speaker 6: And yeah, a real quick second question, why wasn't there
Speaker 6: big up for when when my granddaughter and grandson we're
Speaker 6: walking around with.
Speaker 12: Pokemon about fifteen years ago, which was totally a Chinese government.
Speaker 1: Uh, Pokemon the game, the one that everyone's walking that
Speaker 1: is they actually licensed that. That's actually a US company.
Speaker 1: That's Niantic, which is spun out of Google. So that
Speaker 1: is as far as I know, that's completely Niantic is is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was spun out of Google.
Speaker 1: So now the interesting thing about Niantic is actually what
Speaker 1: their mission was and why they came up with these
Speaker 1: these things. And if you look at what Niantic's done
Speaker 1: over the years, everything has to do with AR and mapping.
Speaker 1: Their whole mo was collecting data about the US. They
Speaker 1: were by people walking around. They were getting real life
Speaker 1: and they still are real life information and live information
Speaker 1: about the world around them, which could all be monetized.
Speaker 1: Great question, Mike and Riverside, Thanks so much for the call.
Speaker 1: Eighty to eight rich one on one. Coming up, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about how your car is spying on you? Is
Speaker 1: everyone spying? What's happening here? You're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you. The website for the show richon Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. The phone number eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Joining me now is Kashmir Hill, technology
Speaker 1: reporter for the New York Times.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. Cashmere.
Speaker 1: The headline this week automakers are sharing consumers driving behavior
Speaker 1: with insurance companies. So explain how our cars are spying
Speaker 1: on us?
Speaker 13: Yeah, So, cars today are essentially computers on wheels. You know,
Speaker 13: they are usually Internet connected if you've turned on connected services,
Speaker 13: and they have all kinds of sensors and cameras in them,
Speaker 13: and so they can collect a lot of information about you.
Speaker 13: I mean there's nice things about being Internet connected. You
Speaker 13: can turn it on and off remotely, but it does
Speaker 13: mean that your car can spy on you, and that
Speaker 13: is what has happened to a lot of drivers, but
Speaker 13: particularly those who drive a car made by General Motors,
Speaker 13: which I'm sure you know if you're in one, but
Speaker 13: you know Chevrolet, Cadillac, Corvette, Camaro GMC. If you have
Speaker 13: one of those cars and you're enrolled in a program
Speaker 13: called smart Drive, then your information is being collected how
Speaker 13: far you drive, when and where you go on trips,
Speaker 13: you're breaking your acceleration, you're speeding, and it is being
Speaker 13: sold to data brokers who are sharing it with insurance
Speaker 13: companies and that.
Speaker 2: Might make your ray go off.
Speaker 1: So okay, So there's a lot to unpack here because
Speaker 1: there is so First off, the connected cars. So I
Speaker 1: was at a data conference years ago and they had
Speaker 1: a bunch of reps from different car companies, and one
Speaker 1: of the car makers said to me when I asked,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, because why is this company at
Speaker 1: a data conference, right? And they said, oh, the amount
Speaker 1: of data that we collect from your car is people
Speaker 1: would be amazed if they knew about it. And I said, wait,
Speaker 1: what like, you're collecting data on my car and they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so some of that is going back to the companies,
Speaker 1: like the car companies, and they're not really sharing that,
Speaker 1: but this is where they are actually sharing it without
Speaker 1: us knowing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 13: I mean so a lot of the car companies have
Speaker 13: in the last couple of years put a service center
Speaker 13: app that's called driver Scoring or driver Feedback, and in
Speaker 13: the case of General Motors it's called Smart Driver, and
Speaker 13: it's a way for you to to to basically like
Speaker 13: hear whether you're a good driver or not, and it'll
Speaker 13: tell you, you know, be gentler on the brakes or
Speaker 13: you know, uh, don't don't be so rough on your accelerator.
Speaker 2: Like it's like a report card for how you drive exactly.
Speaker 13: And with General Motors they made it really fun, like
Speaker 13: you could get digital badges like break.
Speaker 14: Genius and speed Limit Hero.
Speaker 13: But what was in the fine print with some automakers
Speaker 13: like Honda in Kia, but not so much with General Motors,
Speaker 13: is that once you turn this feature on, your data
Speaker 13: was actually going to either Lexus Nexus Risk Solution or
Speaker 13: another another data broker called Barrisk, and they in many
Speaker 13: cases were the one that were giving you the score.
Speaker 13: They were like running the program, but to you it
Speaker 13: just looked like your automaker was doing it.
Speaker 2: So it's like a credit report for your driving, for your.
Speaker 14: Yeah, it's exactly.
Speaker 13: And and in the case of General Motors, some people
Speaker 13: said they didn't even turn on Smart Driver, they didn't
Speaker 13: enroll it if they don't understand how they were enrolled
Speaker 13: in it, like it may have happened at the dealership,
Speaker 13: you know, when you're going through all that paperwork and
Speaker 13: the you're signing lots of things that maybe it got
Speaker 13: turned on then.
Speaker 14: But once it was turned on, these data brokers were
Speaker 14: getting your data. And then insurance companies go to these
Speaker 14: data brokers, like when you're.
Speaker 13: Trying to get quotes for auto insurance or renewing your policy.
Speaker 13: These are who the intern companies go to to figure out,
Speaker 13: you know, how they should should price your policy.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, And so they get this information and they
Speaker 1: notice that you're a heartbreaker or a speeder, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, your insurance price goes up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 13: I mean that's the way I discovered this story is
Speaker 13: that I decided this year I really want to look
Speaker 13: into what it means that cars are connected now and
Speaker 13: that are so much data is kind of leaving our cars.
Speaker 14: And so I was hanging out in car forums online.
Speaker 14: It's a there's a lot of people talking about their car.
Speaker 13: Online, and I was seeing these reports from people who
Speaker 13: drove like Chevrolet Bolts and Camaros and Corvettes that their
Speaker 13: insurance was going up by like twenty percent, fifty percent,
Speaker 13: sometimes doubled. And when they'd asked the insurance agent why,
Speaker 13: the agent would say, it's your Lexus Nexus report. You
Speaker 13: should go pull it and so you can request this
Speaker 13: under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Speaker 14: And when they would get the report from Lexus Nexus,
Speaker 14: it would have hundreds of pages of every trip they
Speaker 14: had taken in their car over the last six months.
Speaker 14: And they were just astounded. They had no idea that
Speaker 14: that was there. And when they looked at who shared it,
Speaker 14: it was General Motors.
Speaker 2: That is so wild.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing here to me is that we've seen
Speaker 1: ads on TV for these insurance company programs where you
Speaker 1: would install something in your car or use your phone
Speaker 1: as kind of a intermediary where it monitors you're driving
Speaker 1: to give you a better rate on your insurance. Right
Speaker 1: like if you only drive a certain amount or if
Speaker 1: you're a safe driver. And people have been pretty hesitant
Speaker 1: to sign up for those programs, I would assume, so
Speaker 1: to have this done in kind of a roundabout way
Speaker 1: where you're not even realizing that you're enrolled in that
Speaker 1: is even worse.
Speaker 14: Yeah, that's those kind of insurance programs.
Speaker 13: It's called usage based insurance, and those have been around
Speaker 13: for at least a decade now.
Speaker 14: And you do it very knowingly.
Speaker 13: You know, you'd get a dongle and you plug it
Speaker 13: into your car, or you download a smartphone app and usually, yeah,
Speaker 13: you get a discount on your premium. And the thing
Speaker 13: is that I talked to this one professor for the
Speaker 13: story and he was very in favor of usage based insurance.
Speaker 13: He said, when people sign up for these programs, the
Speaker 13: impact on safety is enormous. People who know they are
Speaker 13: monitored are better drivers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense, But.
Speaker 13: The problem with what General Motors and these other automakers
Speaker 13: are doing is that the people didn't realize that they
Speaker 13: were being monitored and how they drove was going to
Speaker 13: impact their insurance. So you don't get that that kind
Speaker 13: of benefit to public safety.
Speaker 14: You just have these people getting charged more.
Speaker 1: I mean in one way, you're getting the real life
Speaker 1: picture of how these people drive, and it makes sense
Speaker 1: that they would have to pay more if they're an
Speaker 1: aggressive driver. But on the flip side, if people do
Speaker 1: truly mine their manners when they are knowing they're being monitored,
Speaker 1: then that's better for everyone because of the safety aspect.
Speaker 13: Yeah, and then there's this other question of how reliable
Speaker 13: is this data that's kind of being siphoned from our car?
Speaker 13: The drivers I talk to and everybody overestimates how good
Speaker 13: a driver they are. So the people I talked to said, hey,
Speaker 13: I'm a safe driver. You know, I am not overly aggressive.
Speaker 13: I have not been in an accident, like you know,
Speaker 13: I do speed sometimes, I mean who honestly, who doesn't.
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 14: I do break sometimes. I have fun if I'm alone
Speaker 14: on the road.
Speaker 13: But they said, you know, generally that they weren't aggressive drivers,
Speaker 13: and they were. They were upset that they're their insurance
Speaker 13: rates were going up when it wasn't based on, you know,
Speaker 13: that they'd gotten an accent or done something that really
Speaker 13: should justify the insurance going up.
Speaker 1: What were the car company's response to your questions? What
Speaker 1: did GM say about this?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 13: GM said that people consent to this program, that they
Speaker 13: felt that they were doing this with the full awareness
Speaker 13: of drivers.
Speaker 14: And you know, I said, you're not.
Speaker 13: You know, I'm talking to these drivers who didn't know
Speaker 13: this was happening, some drivers who didn't even enroll in
Speaker 13: Smart Driver. And what they said is that people opt
Speaker 13: in three times. The first time is when they enroll
Speaker 13: in on Star, which is the Connected services suite for
Speaker 13: GM cars, said, the second time is when they turned
Speaker 13: on Smart Driver, which they did either in the app
Speaker 13: or at the at the dealership. And the third time
Speaker 13: is when what I was talking about earlier, when they're
Speaker 13: shopping for insurance. Generally an insurance company will tell you,
Speaker 13: you know, we would like to request third part Aready
Speaker 13: reports about you. And when those people said yes to that,
Speaker 13: they may not have realized it, but that was kind
Speaker 13: of opening opening the door to all of this this
Speaker 13: telematics data like flowing over to the insurance company. So
Speaker 13: GM said, you know, we don't think we're doing anything wrong.
Speaker 13: We think this helps people to be bad drivers. Yeah,
Speaker 13: I was surprised, and they also said they and I said, well,
Speaker 13: where do you disclose it? Like I actually have a
Speaker 13: Chevrolet bolt which is made by GM, and so I
Speaker 13: downloaded the my Chevrolet app, I connected my car to
Speaker 13: the app, and then I looked at the enrollment for
Speaker 13: smart Driver and all it said was like develop better
Speaker 13: driving habits, like get digital badges. It didn't say anything
Speaker 13: about Alexis Nexus and Barisk are going to get all
Speaker 13: your driving data.
Speaker 14: And I said, where is this disclosed to people?
Speaker 13: And the spokeswoman pointed to the privacy policy for on Start. Yeah,
Speaker 13: everyononder and then I she says, it's under third parties data.
Speaker 14: We share a third party.
Speaker 13: So I go read that and it's like, yeah, sometimes
Speaker 13: GM has has, you know, deals with third parties like
Speaker 13: Serious XM. You know they're in your car and they're
Speaker 13: going to get data for your car. And it didn't
Speaker 13: say anything about Lexus Nexus or Varus or how this
Speaker 13: is going to go to insurance company. So there was
Speaker 13: a class action lawsuit filed this week. I suspect the
Speaker 13: Federal Trade Commission is investigating. I do think there's going
Speaker 13: to be consequences for how they are running this program.
Speaker 1: Okay, real quick, I've got about thirty seconds. What do
Speaker 1: you think someone does to check if they're in one
Speaker 1: of these things?
Speaker 2: Or what should they do.
Speaker 13: Yeah, So check your app if you have a connected
Speaker 13: car app, see if this thing is turned on, and
Speaker 13: go to Lexus Nexus, go to Varis. You can actually
Speaker 13: request your consumer file and you should definitely do that.
Speaker 14: And CEEFA is you're driving data leaking out there?
Speaker 1: All right, Cashmere Hill, technology reporter for the New York Times.
Speaker 1: I'll link up the article on the website rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot tv. In the show notes, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today. Appreciate it.
Speaker 14: Oh my pleasure.
Speaker 1: All right, eighty eight rich one on one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, I'll tell you about the new social
Speaker 1: media scam where people are losing a lot of money.
Speaker 1: You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. This is the tech show where I
Speaker 1: talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
Speaker 1: It's also the place where I answer your questions. Phone
Speaker 1: lines are triple eight rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one,
Speaker 1: the website richon tech dot tv, and don't forget to
Speaker 1: sign up for a newsletter. Just search Rich on tech
Speaker 1: newsletter on uh Google and you should find it. Let's
Speaker 1: go to Mike in Royal Oak, Michigan. Mike, you're on with.
Speaker 7: Rich another one in Michigan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we must have a good station there.
Speaker 3: Nine times there we go.
Speaker 2: Thanks, thanks for listening there.
Speaker 3: It's a very it's a good station. And I came
Speaker 3: across you a little while ago. I gotta tell you,
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed the show. It's very informative. You explained
Speaker 3: things very simply, and it makes me take on more
Speaker 3: tasks than I think I was available to do.
Speaker 1: Well, keep talking, Mike, I appreciate it. Just keep going.
Speaker 1: We have another hour, so I'll let you take the floor.
Speaker 3: Kidding, I'll tell you this. I went on your website
Speaker 3: and the notes that you take from every uh all
Speaker 3: of your shows are real helpful. Because I was actually
Speaker 3: going back. I was able to go back to a
Speaker 3: couple of things that you talked about, and I've been
Speaker 3: able to use those to my business.
Speaker 2: So perfect.
Speaker 3: Really, it's it's a great it's a very uh useful.
Speaker 7: Show.
Speaker 2: Is that is the goal.
Speaker 1: The entire goal is to be helpful, and I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that you are figuring that out and other people
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: So what can I help you with today?
Speaker 3: Well, I am a newbie technology wise, and my sister
Speaker 3: has an old Galaxy G seven G. She uses it
Speaker 3: as a phone and also through our business for she
Speaker 3: takes a lot of photographs and videos. We own a
Speaker 3: jewelry store, a jewelry store, okay, and we're always putting
Speaker 3: pictures off and she's always taking several photos, doctoring them
Speaker 3: so we can put them up on Facebook and so forth.
Speaker 3: The phone's got to be five six years old. There's
Speaker 3: sixteen gigabytes on an internal storage. I went through and
Speaker 3: I would periodically pull all the data or all the photos,
Speaker 3: the images, what I could. I would jump it out
Speaker 3: of her treate on her PC to clear it up
Speaker 3: because right now internally it's fifteen point one gigs are
Speaker 3: used to run the phone.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, and only has sixteen gigs total. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 2: so you're always running up against the clock there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So what I did is I pulled everything off
Speaker 3: the phone that I could that were but videos or
Speaker 3: or photos. I put them on the SD card on
Speaker 3: it or pulled them off the phone. I went through
Speaker 3: and cleared the cash on every one of the apps
Speaker 3: in there, some of them that I knew of. I
Speaker 3: was able to either uninstall or clear the data on them,
Speaker 3: or just do a four stop. And right now.
Speaker 15: What I'm planning on doing is removing the context apps
Speaker 15: and then sending the phone back to factory spects, because
Speaker 15: I was told that maybe when she jammed all those
Speaker 15: photos and stuff in memory, it might just be constantly
Speaker 15: filled and it won't be able to clear that through
Speaker 15: the cash.
Speaker 3: What would you suggest, Well.
Speaker 1: In the in the long in the longer term, I'd
Speaker 1: suggest you probably got to get a phone with more memory.
Speaker 1: In the short term, does this take a memory card?
Speaker 2: Do you know?
Speaker 3: It has an SD card? But nothing can go on it.
Speaker 3: It's all, you know, nothing transfers over, it's all stuck
Speaker 3: in the internal.
Speaker 2: Okay, well there there should be.
Speaker 1: Gosh, it's been a while since I used a phone
Speaker 1: with a with a with an SD card. But you
Speaker 1: should be able to set the default on the camera
Speaker 1: to where it saves to save to the.
Speaker 3: That is on that photos and videos go to the
Speaker 3: s Okay.
Speaker 1: Okay, so photos and videos go to the SD card,
Speaker 1: right the other stuff stays on the internals. In that case,
Speaker 1: I mean the with the system memory taking or the
Speaker 1: system settings taking up fifteen gigs on a sixteen gigabyte phone.
Speaker 2: That's wild. And I'm looking here.
Speaker 1: So if you go into settings and then you go
Speaker 1: into whereas it here, I just had it settings device
Speaker 1: Care and then it says storage, that'll give you, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're using an Android phone is specifically Samsung Settings
Speaker 1: and then device care and then storage. That will give
Speaker 1: you an idea of what is taking up your storage.
Speaker 1: So these Samsungs do a really good job of this.
Speaker 1: I think on iPhone it's a little bit trickier because
Speaker 1: they try to, you know, make this stuff a little
Speaker 1: bit tougher to find. But on Samsung is really easy.
Speaker 1: So I can see I've got forty seven percent used
Speaker 1: right now. It gives me a breakdown of videos, images,
Speaker 1: installation files, audio files, documents, compressed files, apps, system. Now
Speaker 1: my system takes up sixteen gigabytes just like you said,
Speaker 1: other files and then trash and then there's so and
Speaker 1: then there's some things underneath that will that you can do.
Speaker 1: So you can delete the trash, which on my phone
Speaker 1: is three gigs. Unused apps. You can uninstall apps that
Speaker 1: you haven't used in thirty days, duplicate files you can
Speaker 1: get rid of those, and then large files. So that's
Speaker 1: one way of kind of going through and seeing if
Speaker 1: there's anything you've missed. I think, Mike, you're on to
Speaker 1: the right You're onto the right kind of path with
Speaker 1: reformatting that phone to see what you can do. Because
Speaker 1: what I would do is, if you want to keep
Speaker 1: using this phone, just reform at it, you know, factory
Speaker 1: reset it. That'll get everything back to the factory. You've
Speaker 1: got that SD card in there to take the picture,
Speaker 1: So if you're using this phone primarily as a camera
Speaker 1: to take pictures of this jewelry, then if the photos
Speaker 1: are going to the external memory, you're going to be
Speaker 1: just fine. But I would not install any new apps
Speaker 1: on this phone. I would not do anything extra on
Speaker 1: this thing because you're already out of memory before you
Speaker 1: even start. So in the long term, I'd probably look
Speaker 1: at maybe getting a device that has a little bit
Speaker 1: more storage, just because this is an older device and
Speaker 1: it definitely seems like you know that's an issue. But
Speaker 1: if you're only using it to take pictures, like I said,
Speaker 1: then I think you're going to be just fine by
Speaker 1: factory resetting it and then just you know, setting it
Speaker 1: up from scratch and making sure that you don't install
Speaker 1: anything new and making sure that the photos go to
Speaker 1: the external memory card. Or you can install if you're
Speaker 1: like an Amazon Prime member, you can install their Amazon
Speaker 1: Photos app and all your photos can go there and
Speaker 1: then you can just delete the photos once they go there,
Speaker 1: and that's free unlimited photo storage. If you're an Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime member, that's Amazon Photos.
Speaker 2: The other thing you do.
Speaker 1: Google makes a great app called the Files by Google App,
Speaker 1: and so I would download that on this device and
Speaker 1: use that before you format it just kind of see
Speaker 1: you can clean up your phone. They've got a lot
Speaker 1: of different things on there to help you clean up
Speaker 1: your phone. And that is made directly by Google. It's
Speaker 1: called Files by Google. And the way you can tell
Speaker 1: it's the official one, look at the publisher.
Speaker 2: It should say.
Speaker 1: Google LLC when you look it up in the Google
Speaker 1: Play Store. Because there's a lot of cleaner apps, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of helper apps, but you want to get
Speaker 1: the one that is directly by Google. Mike, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for the kind words there in Royal Oak, Michigan.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it and hopefully you can get that sorted out
Speaker 1: eight to eight rich one on one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Find me
Speaker 1: online at rich on Tech. I'll take more of your
Speaker 1: calls and tell you about this social media investment scam
Speaker 1: that actually has a lot of victims.
Speaker 2: Coming up next, well.
Speaker 1: Come to another hour of rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you, talking technology at eight and
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. The website for the
Speaker 1: show rich on Tech dot TV. I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: newsletter a lot. You can subscribe just search on Google
Speaker 1: rich on Tech Newsletter because number one, I love it.
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Speaker 1: putting a lot of effort into it. That's my main thing.
Speaker 1: Right now, it's just a you.
Speaker 2: Know, all these social media company are great.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got Facebook, I've got Instagram, I've got Twitter,
Speaker 1: but it's very discombobulated, and I feel like when I
Speaker 1: sit down and just create that newsletter every week, it's
Speaker 1: all of like the main things I think you should know,
Speaker 1: kind of like this show. Isn't that what I say?
Speaker 1: This is the tech stuff I think you should know about.
Speaker 1: That's really what I'm doing my newsletter as well. But
Speaker 1: it goes even further because I'll you know, it's all
Speaker 1: the links and things just a little like today, I
Speaker 1: was using this website and I was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: should include that in the newsletter. And it's just a
Speaker 1: handy little website stuff like that. Let's go to uh Tom,
Speaker 1: Let's see here.
Speaker 2: Line four. Tom is in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Did I
Speaker 2: say that right that? I had to look it up.
Speaker 1: I I have seen this name a million times and
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to pronounce it.
Speaker 4: That's French. Clear Water there we go?
Speaker 2: Is there clear water? There? There is very nice? Well,
Speaker 2: what can I help you with?
Speaker 13: So?
Speaker 4: I've got an old motor role with DROI turbo.
Speaker 2: Oh, one of my favorite you know. I okay, sorry
Speaker 2: I interrupted you on.
Speaker 4: That as hands down on the best I ever used.
Speaker 1: I switched to Android from an iPhone because of the
Speaker 1: artist helt me think about this. I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 1: That was the first phone that had turn by turn
Speaker 1: GPS navigation through Google Maps, and so I went out.
Speaker 2: I waited in line to buy that phone. Anyway, keep going,
Speaker 2: phenomenal phone.
Speaker 4: And it took a beating, but anyways I got. I
Speaker 4: got a Doge wallet on there, like the old Doge wallet,
Speaker 4: like before Dolage was anything. It's got about a half
Speaker 4: or five hundred thousand Dolge in it. But I've got
Speaker 4: a pattern lock on it. And I don't want to
Speaker 4: get into the reason why I would put a pattern
Speaker 4: lock on it.
Speaker 2: Well back in the day that we did, that's what
Speaker 2: we did. We put pattern locks.
Speaker 1: So you're talking five hundred thousand doze coins is at
Speaker 1: fourteen cents about seventy thousand bucks.
Speaker 2: Does that sound about right someplace in there?
Speaker 5: Ye?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. And big cod Crypto in general has
Speaker 1: been just on fire recently.
Speaker 4: So last month it's just it's just breathed.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're talking one month for dose up sixty
Speaker 1: six percent, one year, ninety seven percent up. Now we're
Speaker 1: talking fourteen cents for a coin. But still this is
Speaker 1: if you've got so many.
Speaker 4: Of them for all of it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, okay, so wait, this phone is locked
Speaker 1: and you can't access this.
Speaker 3: I can't access I forgot the pattern.
Speaker 4: I forgot the pattern. And it's the old dodwallet that
Speaker 4: you'd never registered. So there's no name on it, there's
Speaker 4: no email addressed to it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Okay, so uh, let's see. So this
Speaker 1: is a droid turbo, so there is there, there may be,
Speaker 1: and there may be.
Speaker 2: One way that you can do this.
Speaker 1: So number one, if have you tried a bunch of
Speaker 1: different patterns and does it lock you out after a
Speaker 1: certain point?
Speaker 10: Yeah, and it.
Speaker 4: Gets and I haven't. So the last time I did it,
Speaker 4: I got to the pattern number nine where so it
Speaker 4: was going to factory reset next and I haven't tried
Speaker 4: unlock it now in like six months. Okay, there is
Speaker 4: a safe start mode on it, but I can't get
Speaker 4: it to go into it. But even if I could,
Speaker 4: I don't even know if that safe start has you know,
Speaker 4: if I'm able to act as the map or the app.
Speaker 1: No, the safe start well, yeah, a safe yeah, but
Speaker 1: you'd still need to unlock the phone.
Speaker 2: It doesn't just go into it. You'd still have to
Speaker 2: unlock it.
Speaker 4: And that's yeah, but I can't get it to go
Speaker 4: into that anyway.
Speaker 1: Right, and then the other things are obviously to you know,
Speaker 1: all the other solutions would be to just format it
Speaker 1: to get it, you know, you know, back to factory,
Speaker 1: but that would ruin this, uh situation. So the only
Speaker 1: thing is that I'm just looking up some information here.
Speaker 1: So back in the day, Google used to let you
Speaker 1: reset your pattern with certain versions of Android, so version
Speaker 1: four point four and older. Now, this is the motoroladroid,
Speaker 1: you said, and according to.
Speaker 3: That on there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I know Deak what you're talking about. But
Speaker 4: the problem is my Google account doesn't recognize that bone.
Speaker 2: Your Google account.
Speaker 1: So when you try so, so you've gotten the message
Speaker 1: where it says forgot uh and log and recover with
Speaker 1: Google account and it won't let you recover.
Speaker 2: Yep, oh gosh, it's.
Speaker 4: Not It's not listed on my account anymore. Is that
Speaker 4: being an active?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, here's what you have to do.
Speaker 1: You've got to go on chat ebt and you've got
Speaker 1: to say, I've got a pattern I need to unlock
Speaker 1: on this phone. Give me the top most popular patterns,
Speaker 1: the first uh, the first one hundred most popular patterns,
Speaker 1: and you have to try five of those a day.
Speaker 2: This is your job.
Speaker 1: This is your full time job, because once you get
Speaker 1: to nine, it's gonna say, you know, we got to
Speaker 1: reset this phone.
Speaker 2: But you have you have to really did you set
Speaker 2: up this phone?
Speaker 4: I did? I did, and you know what I I
Speaker 4: never so I actually never put a never put a
Speaker 4: lock on any of my phones ever.
Speaker 2: But you did for this one because you had the
Speaker 2: doze on it. You wanted to secure it.
Speaker 4: No, that's actually and that's not might even put the
Speaker 4: lock on there. I actually had opened up my house
Speaker 4: to some unfortunate people. Will leave it at that, and uh,
Speaker 4: like they were, they started stealing some of my stuff,
Speaker 4: so I threw a lock on it. Oh well, you
Speaker 4: know while I was waiting to get them out of
Speaker 4: the house. And then in between that, I bought a
Speaker 4: new phone, and I just never never thought about it
Speaker 4: until you know, doats took off. I knew that doage
Speaker 4: was on there. I completely forgot I ever put the
Speaker 4: pattern lock on it oh like four years later like
Speaker 4: dogs started scream. Then I goes like, all right, what
Speaker 4: do I do? Now?
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of joking about the chat GPT stuff,
Speaker 1: but I do think you need to try a couple
Speaker 1: of patterns that you think might be it. Because I'm
Speaker 1: looking at this little icon on the website, and I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the pattern screen, which was very prominent and
Speaker 1: Android for a very long time, and I can remember
Speaker 1: like some of the patterns that I used to use,
Speaker 1: Like when I visualize it, I'm like, oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: used to use this kind of like pattern. So you know,
Speaker 1: stare at the screen, see if you can come up
Speaker 1: with something and try a couple and just when that
Speaker 1: thing unlocks, you're you're gonna have a u a very
Speaker 1: interesting reaction.
Speaker 2: So make sure you have a camera recording yourself.
Speaker 4: But you know, I know there's gotta there's gotta be
Speaker 4: a way because I mean, I know, like like the
Speaker 4: government or the police department or the FBI, they have
Speaker 4: to have a way to bypass.
Speaker 1: Well there, okay, so there is a there is a device.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm trying to remember what it's called.
Speaker 1: The gray uh said gray scale. Oh my gosh, hold on,
Speaker 1: it's a device that they use to unlock phones. Hold on,
Speaker 1: so yes, there is something. Uh, oh my gosh, they
Speaker 1: used it. Uh gosh, I gotta remember what the name is.
Speaker 1: It's not coming to me, but it's something gray. It's
Speaker 1: like either gray lock or gray great device to unlocked phones.
Speaker 1: I've got a great key. There you go, so uh,
Speaker 1: there you go, great key, and you may be able
Speaker 1: to find one of these things are somehow Now these
Speaker 1: are sold I think to law enforcement, but this is
Speaker 1: you know, that's just have you heard of that before?
Speaker 1: All right, So Tom, you got to do your homework.
Speaker 1: Check out great key. I don't know, make some friends
Speaker 1: with the uh, with the law enforcement in your area.
Speaker 1: See if they have one of these things and give
Speaker 1: them a cut. If they can unlock this.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's how it works, but uh,
Speaker 1: look up great key, try the coach. But I feel
Speaker 1: for you, and in having this on the show, maybe
Speaker 1: someone by you know, will email me and be like, rich,
Speaker 1: this is how you do it, and I will pass
Speaker 1: it on to you. So Tom, good luck with this
Speaker 1: with this And I feel for you, but I mean
Speaker 1: you had good taste in phones.
Speaker 4: One of the best cameras I've ever used.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the call today.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, and please keep us updated because that's
Speaker 1: that's one of the wildest things I've heard. But the
Speaker 1: takeaway when you set up an account, and I know
Speaker 1: that Tom mentioned that there is no sort of way
Speaker 1: to save this, but there are things called covery keys,
Speaker 1: and especially if you're setting up crypto. Here's what we
Speaker 1: all do, and I've been guilty of this. You set
Speaker 1: something up really fast and you just flow, you fly
Speaker 1: through all those screens that are like, hey, do you
Speaker 1: want to do this? You want to do this, you
Speaker 1: want to do that, here's the recovery code, and you
Speaker 1: just say whatever, I'm never gonna need that.
Speaker 2: But when you see.
Speaker 1: Something that says do you want to you know, especially
Speaker 1: when you set up like two factor authentication or a password.
Speaker 1: You know, password resets are pretty easy to do, but
Speaker 1: some of these accounts have a little bit stronger protection,
Speaker 1: especially when you set up that two factor authentication, and
Speaker 1: the only way to get access to that account if
Speaker 1: you forget your two factor, or you lose that device,
Speaker 1: or you somehow lose access to that code is something.
Speaker 2: Called a recovery code.
Speaker 1: So if you ever get if you ever presented a
Speaker 1: recovery code, sometimes it'll even give you like a PDF
Speaker 1: print out. It's like, print this out, keep it in
Speaker 1: a safe place. That is the only way you'll be
Speaker 1: able to get back into your accounts. Eighty eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you about
Speaker 1: this social media investment scam. I'll tell you how Google
Speaker 1: Chrome is stepping up security. And we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about Wi Fi seven. You're probably going to be hearing
Speaker 1: more about it. We've got great guests to explain what
Speaker 1: we need to know about Wi Fi seven. You are
Speaker 1: listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to comment real quick on the last
Speaker 1: caller in, uh, Michigan or Wisconsin rather, or wasn't Michigan.
Speaker 2: I don't know. They were both nice.
Speaker 1: But you know when people say that they like this show,
Speaker 1: the funny thing is this show there's nothing to it.
Speaker 1: It's me doing the tech show that I want to
Speaker 1: listen to. I just want to listen to the tech
Speaker 1: news of the week, the interesting stuff to know what
Speaker 1: I missed. I want to hear, you know, the common
Speaker 1: issues people are having so I can avoid them, or
Speaker 1: when I run into that, I can understand it. And
Speaker 1: I just you know, it's just smart and interesting and
Speaker 1: that's it. And then have guests that like I learned
Speaker 1: from that's it. There's no magic formulation to this show,
Speaker 1: and so I'm glad that you know, people are taking
Speaker 1: a liking to it. But it's very very easy. It's
Speaker 1: just the show I want to listen to. And believe me,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's it's pretty simple. Let's go to
Speaker 1: Gary in Irvine.
Speaker 2: Gary. You're on with Rich.
Speaker 7: Hi, Rich, how are you doing?
Speaker 2: I am doing fantastic. What can I help you?
Speaker 7: As I have a Windows ten machine and there's about
Speaker 7: eighteen three hundred emails on there, and there's about six
Speaker 7: people that have sent me some like legal documents and
Speaker 7: that I need to move out of there and put
Speaker 7: them into a folder or a file or something and
Speaker 7: then erase the rest of them. And I was wondering
Speaker 7: how I would go about doing that without trying to
Speaker 7: lose any of the documents on the way. I know
Speaker 7: it's pretty simple and I'm not too savvy at this,
Speaker 7: but if you could give me some direction, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: Are you using Outlook? How what's the email program? Is
Speaker 1: it like a proprietary program?
Speaker 7: The email is through Cox Cable?
Speaker 1: Okay, so is it a web mail program then yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So what I would do is I would get this.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if Cox has.
Speaker 1: The ability to sort by attachments, Like you basically need
Speaker 1: to do a search by anything that has an attachment.
Speaker 1: So for instance, on Gmail, if you go into the
Speaker 1: search bar, you click has attachment, then it will start
Speaker 1: to show you all the emails that has have an attachment.
Speaker 1: Now are these emails from a specific person?
Speaker 7: They're from like six different people, and they're basically all
Speaker 7: lawyers and some title company people that I need to okay,
Speaker 7: keep those.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's this is not very tough to do.
Speaker 1: It's just it could be a little time consuming, but
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty simple. So I would first off, go
Speaker 1: to the website, go to the webmail site and find,
Speaker 1: you know, get the six people's email addresses, put them
Speaker 1: in a little notepad document, and then what you want
Speaker 1: to do is you want to paste their email into
Speaker 1: the search bar. And so once you paste it in there,
Speaker 1: that should give you a list of all the emails
Speaker 1: that they've sent you. Now it could be hundreds, could
Speaker 1: be thousands, whatever. But then you want to narrow down
Speaker 1: by a search filter, and you want to filter by
Speaker 1: has attachment, and if they allow you to just narrow
Speaker 1: down even more by just PDF or something like that,
Speaker 1: you can go that route. And then once you do that,
Speaker 1: you should if you say there's six documents or eight
Speaker 1: documents that you need, you could just go ahead and
Speaker 1: manually download those.
Speaker 2: So that's one way.
Speaker 1: That's the easiest way, that's going to be kind of
Speaker 1: like the most straightforward using the tools you already have.
Speaker 1: Now you can also use external tools. So for instance,
Speaker 1: you can get like a program that downloads all of
Speaker 1: these email attachments. And so there are some programs that
Speaker 1: will download all of these email attachments for you, and
Speaker 1: you may have to pay for them, but you know,
Speaker 1: I would look for something like a mail attachment downloader. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's one option, and so you go in there,
Speaker 1: you put your email in there, and it will help
Speaker 1: you download all of the attachments from that email account.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Now, the one I'm looking at here is a free
Speaker 1: for personal use. It's completely free. So this is I'll
Speaker 1: put this in the list show notes. But it's called
Speaker 1: gear Mage Mail Attachment Downloader Free Edition, and you basically
Speaker 1: put in your email address and it will go in
Speaker 1: and it'll find all the attachments and it will download them.
Speaker 1: And it looks like there are filters as well, so
Speaker 1: you can put in the filters for the email addresses
Speaker 1: that you want to get those attachments from. And then
Speaker 1: there's also Email Attachment Extractor software and so that's similar
Speaker 1: to what I just mentioned, but that's separate software. Or
Speaker 1: it may be a plugin, but I don't think the
Speaker 1: plugins will work for you. So I think it's going
Speaker 1: to be either a manual job or you're going to
Speaker 1: get one of these programs to help you do it.
Speaker 1: I personally would look at this Mail Attachment Downloader program.
Speaker 1: This looks like it works pretty well. The only main
Speaker 1: thing you have to be concerned about is privacy because
Speaker 1: you do have to hand over your your credentials to
Speaker 1: this email account to this downloader, so just you know,
Speaker 1: make sure that it's legit. But i'll put that in
Speaker 1: the show notes. I think it's possible to do. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's you know, it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a Saturday project. But I think these programs will make
Speaker 1: it pretty easy.
Speaker 2: Does that help?
Speaker 7: And then and then also yes it did help. Also
Speaker 7: their cuts is changing over their email service. I guess
Speaker 7: to Yahoo. Okay, yeah, hopefully that I was going to
Speaker 7: get this done before they did it, because I know
Speaker 7: something's going to happen and lose everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would, I would switch it. I would if
Speaker 2: you can.
Speaker 1: I always recommend that you use like a third party service,
Speaker 1: so if you can, since you're going to be switching this,
Speaker 1: you might want to just download all these email and
Speaker 1: then switch to something like a Gmail or an Outlook
Speaker 1: or something like that, because or you can do you know,
Speaker 1: you can go on a website and pay you know,
Speaker 1: twenty bucks and get your own email address. But you know,
Speaker 1: I might just go with Gmail because it's a lot easier,
Speaker 1: and you could you can have Gmail go in and
Speaker 1: fetch all these emails from there as well, So it
Speaker 1: might be it might just be easier to get to
Speaker 1: get rid of this because the problem with having the
Speaker 1: Cox email is that you know what happens when you
Speaker 1: get rid of this, like how long do they give
Speaker 1: you to continue using that email after you're done paying
Speaker 1: with their service, But it sounds like you've got quite
Speaker 1: the job ahead. I think focus on the email attachments first,
Speaker 1: and then you know, when they do make that switch over,
Speaker 1: there may be an opportunity where they say, hey, here's
Speaker 1: how you can download all your emails from this service,
Speaker 1: and maybe just download them and be done and switch
Speaker 1: to something like Gmail. Great question, Gary, I'll link up
Speaker 1: the tools that I mentioned on the website. Rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. This is show sixty three, so just
Speaker 1: look for the notes for show sixty three. All right,
Speaker 1: real quick before we go to break here. Google Chrome
Speaker 1: has a new they're stepping up their real time privacy protection.
Speaker 2: So when you click a URL on Google Chrome.
Speaker 1: Instead of checking the site every half an hour, they're
Speaker 1: now checking it in real time. So they say this
Speaker 1: is going to block twenty five percent more phishing attempts.
Speaker 2: Basically, if you're using Google Chrome, that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: All right, Coming up, we're gonna talk why FI seven.
Speaker 1: What you need to know you're listening to Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology website richon tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: You can find me on social media. You guessed it,
Speaker 1: Rich on tech. Dwight Silverman is a freelance tech columnist
Speaker 1: for the Houston Chronicle and UH recently he wrote about
Speaker 1: why five seven this is the newest, latest, greatest flavor
Speaker 1: of Wi Fi and you're probably gonna be hearing a
Speaker 1: lot of it in the upcoming weeks and months, So
Speaker 1: I thought it'd be a good idea to kind of
Speaker 1: give you a little bit of information about it. So
Speaker 1: let's bring Dwight on and talk about WiFi seven. Dwight,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 16: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Rich So your second time on the show, so welcome back.
Speaker 1: And how are things going there in Houston? So you
Speaker 1: were full time for many many years, you did a
Speaker 1: column you wrote, you had this like I'm sure very
Speaker 1: strict deadline for your column and now your freelance which
Speaker 1: is probably a little bit nicer.
Speaker 2: So how are things going.
Speaker 16: Things are going great. I'm still doing that same column.
Speaker 16: I left for about twenty minutes to work for Forbes
Speaker 16: and decided not I didn't want to do that, so
Speaker 16: I retired and I'm doing this weekly still. My editors
Speaker 16: would still tell you that I have a pretty strong deadline,
Speaker 16: and this particular piece on Wi Fi seven actually ran
Speaker 16: in Jared Newman's Advisorator newsletter. Oh okay, okay, I had
Speaker 16: done I had done a version of it for the Chronicle,
Speaker 16: but this one is much more detailed. It's a paid newsletter,
Speaker 16: but I pay for it. To me, it's worth it,
Speaker 16: and it's the kind of newsletter I would do if
Speaker 16: I was doing one myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jared does a great job. He's been on the show.
Speaker 1: I think he's actually been on the show the most
Speaker 1: out of anyone. So let's talk about Wi Fi. So
Speaker 1: what is WiFi seven?
Speaker 16: First off, so, Wi Fi seven is the next generation
Speaker 16: of the Wi Fi protocol. It's what most people who
Speaker 16: have Internet in their homes allows it to come to
Speaker 16: their devices wirelessly. It has been for the past several years.
Speaker 16: It's getting it has gotten much more robust, much faster.
Speaker 16: In the In the newsletter piece I wrote, I start
Speaker 16: out talking about Wi Fi five, and then six and
Speaker 16: then six e. And the important thing about Wi Fi
Speaker 16: six to six E is that Wi Fi six boosted
Speaker 16: speeds and made things much more reliable. Wi Fi six
Speaker 16: E tacked onto, kind of bolted onto Wi Fi six
Speaker 16: a whole new frequency, these six gigahertz frequency, and this
Speaker 16: allows for much faster speeds, much faster, much faster connections.
Speaker 16: But the one problem with it is is that both
Speaker 16: the five gigaherts and the six gigahertz bands don't have
Speaker 16: much range. So modern Wi Fi today has still keeps
Speaker 16: that old two point four gigahertz frequency around. It travels far,
Speaker 16: but doesn't isn't as fast. Wi Fi seven takes everything
Speaker 16: that's in six and six E and then makes it
Speaker 16: just that much better. It has two particular feeatures that
Speaker 16: make it much more reliable, that make it better when
Speaker 16: you have a lot of devices in your home, and
Speaker 16: makes it easier for you to roam from one part
Speaker 16: of your house or your business to another.
Speaker 1: So you do think there will be a noticeable difference,
Speaker 1: because you know, I feel like we hear how Wi
Speaker 1: Fi just keeps getting better, and then people still have
Speaker 1: dead zones and you know dropouts.
Speaker 16: Well, and it's you know, for those people who have
Speaker 16: dead zones and dropouts probably have not investigated some of
Speaker 16: the latest technologies. So, for example, mesh network routers such
Speaker 16: as Amazon's Eero or TPE links Deco set up pretty
Speaker 16: much eliminate dead spots when you set them up properly.
Speaker 16: In the case of in the case of Wi Fi seven, yes,
Speaker 16: there are still these multiple router mesh network systems. But
Speaker 16: what's interesting about Wi Fi said it is, because of
Speaker 16: its new features, standalone routers will actually work pretty good
Speaker 16: and you may not even need these more expensive mesh networks.
Speaker 2: So that's good to hear.
Speaker 1: So even if you just like if you have a
Speaker 1: smaller house like let's say like a thousand square feet
Speaker 1: or something like that, you may not need to get
Speaker 1: the mesh network to get two of those access points,
Speaker 1: which is kind of nice.
Speaker 2: That'll save some money.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, so Wi Fi seven, So when you are
Speaker 1: doing your kind of investigation of this, what did you notice?
Speaker 1: Did you notice that this was better? Like, did you
Speaker 1: notice you get faster speeds and things, And do people
Speaker 1: need to rush out to upgrade to this or is
Speaker 1: it something to kind of be aware of.
Speaker 16: At this point, I would say, you don't have to
Speaker 16: rush out to get Wi Fi seven right now unless
Speaker 16: you're in a particular unless you have a particular scenario,
Speaker 16: most people could get along just fine with Wi Fi
Speaker 16: six at the moment. Wi Fi six E is great
Speaker 16: if you have a lot of devices in your house
Speaker 16: and they support Wi Fi six y. This is always
Speaker 16: critical and and you have the need for a lot
Speaker 16: of speed, you know, for gamers and for people who
Speaker 16: do you know, multiple video streams at the same time.
Speaker 16: That's where Wi Fi sixy and with the six gigahertz
Speaker 16: band comes in. With Wi Fi seven, what happens is
Speaker 16: it has this key feature called multi link operation or
Speaker 16: m l O if I can throw an acronym out there,
Speaker 16: and what this does. You know, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 16: you have these three bands two point four, five and
Speaker 16: six gigaherts and they typically have acted separately. Your device
Speaker 16: connects to one of them. With Wi Fi seven, it
Speaker 16: can connect to multiple bands at once. Yes, And so
Speaker 16: what happens is if you are let's say that you
Speaker 16: are you're in a particular spot and you've got a
Speaker 16: really good signal, and you have a Wi Fi compatible
Speaker 16: device like a laptop, computer or a smartphone, and you're
Speaker 16: doing something really bandwidth intensive. You may be using more
Speaker 16: than one.
Speaker 2: More than one frequency, so it's almost like bonds those
Speaker 2: together almost.
Speaker 16: Yes, and so but what also happens is if you
Speaker 16: get up and you move and you move into another room,
Speaker 16: it easily decides well, I think five would be better
Speaker 16: here than six, and so it'll switch you over at
Speaker 16: six and is much more intelligent about doing that. So
Speaker 16: it's a It makes the router a lot smarter. Another
Speaker 16: thing that helps with it is that it has the
Speaker 16: channels that your phone talks on in each of these
Speaker 16: In each of these frequencies, a channel is like a
Speaker 16: little section of the frequency that you get to use
Speaker 16: with your device. The channel is twice as big with
Speaker 16: Wi Fi seven. So you know, like in Jaws where
Speaker 16: they said we're going to need a bigger boat for
Speaker 16: Wi Fi, this is the bigger boat.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like it's it's promising. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I feel like people are just hearing about Wi Fi
Speaker 1: six E and now we have Wi Fi seven. So
Speaker 1: do we, like, I mean, do we just skip Wi
Speaker 1: Fi sixy or you know what? What supports Wi Fi seven?
Speaker 1: Is there any device that even supports this, like a
Speaker 1: laptop or you know phone?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 16: Yes, The most recent Samsung Galaxy phones support it wo
Speaker 16: as well as the S twenty three support it. They'll
Speaker 16: support it with an update. The one plus twelve that
Speaker 16: just came out it supports Wi Fi seven. There are
Speaker 16: a handful of laptops, mostly gamer laptops that support it.
Speaker 16: Right now, the iPhone does not. The iPhone fifteen Pro
Speaker 16: and Promax support six E, and probably with the iPhone
Speaker 16: sixty and they'll all support six E. It's not clear,
Speaker 16: of course, with Apple in the future, it's always murky
Speaker 16: what they'll do, but it is it's possible that you
Speaker 16: may see Wi Fi seven in the pros, but I
Speaker 16: suspect what will happen is that all of them will
Speaker 16: get six E. The thing to keep in mind about
Speaker 16: Wi Fi seven is that, just as is always the
Speaker 16: case with a brand new Wi Fi protocol, the routers
Speaker 16: are really expensive. They first started appearing last year after cees,
Speaker 16: and the early ones you know, approached one thousand dollars
Speaker 16: or more. Now they are much more reasonable. I mean,
Speaker 16: you can find some that run around the three hundred
Speaker 16: dollars range. But that means, of course Wi Fi six
Speaker 16: is now less expensive. Wi Fi six E routers are
Speaker 16: coming down. Personally, I knew that that seven was coming.
Speaker 16: I wanted to get a mesh network system for my home,
Speaker 16: and I chose Amazon's Eero six E pro routers and
Speaker 16: have two of those, and they're great and I probably
Speaker 16: will be completely happy with those you know, for years
Speaker 16: to come, and so you know, it fit the price
Speaker 16: point for me. It's fast enough, it covers my house well,
Speaker 16: so I don't need Wi Fi seven yet and probably won't.
Speaker 16: But the good news is is that if you are
Speaker 16: the type of person who prefers to rent your router
Speaker 16: and modem or a combination known as a gateway from
Speaker 16: your internet provider, there's a good chance within the next
Speaker 16: year or so, Wi Fi seven will come to you
Speaker 16: from their equipment.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, Dwight, We're gonna leave it there. Dwight Silverman,
Speaker 1: tech columnists at the Houston Chronicle. What's the best way
Speaker 1: for folks to follow you these days?
Speaker 16: Best place is probably on threads and that's thread dot
Speaker 16: threads dot net slash at d Silverman. If you just
Speaker 16: search for d Silverman on any social network, I'm there,
Speaker 16: except for X.
Speaker 1: All right, excellent, Thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it, so thank you for having me. If you
Speaker 1: see Wi Fi seven, you know, it depends what you need,
Speaker 1: but it's something to know about for the future. All right,
Speaker 1: coming up, we're going to do the feedback segment and
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you about this social media investment scam,
Speaker 1: plus some other things I still need to get to
Speaker 1: before the show ends, so we'll come right back. You're
Speaker 1: listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology.
Speaker 2: Richon Tech.
Speaker 1: Dot tv is the website you can find me online
Speaker 1: at rich on Tech. So there's this new social media
Speaker 1: investment scam. I don't think you're going to fall for it,
Speaker 1: but I want to tell you about it just so
Speaker 1: you're aware. So this pops up as it looks like
Speaker 1: ads on Facebook and other social media networks shows billionaire investors,
Speaker 1: investors like Bill Ackman, Kathy Woods, Steve Cohen, and the
Speaker 1: ads lure you into a WhatsApp group where you're encouraged
Speaker 1: to invest in penny stocks. Now I get it. People
Speaker 1: want to make money, people want to invest in things,
Speaker 1: but don't do this and don't fall for this. Of course,
Speaker 1: these are pump and dump schemes. Now, these real investors
Speaker 1: have told Facebook about this, they report the scam ads.
Speaker 1: Facebook takes them down, and what do you think happens?
Speaker 1: New ones pop up immediately victims. This is why I'm
Speaker 1: telling you this because I can't. You would think that
Speaker 1: nobody would fall for this, but they do. Victims have
Speaker 1: lost and estimated three point two million dollars, twenty nine
Speaker 1: victims three point two million dollars. And the reason why
Speaker 1: they're falling for it is I guess they use deep
Speaker 1: fake videos and personal touches. And so that's why I'm
Speaker 1: telling you this, because these scams are going to get
Speaker 1: tougher to understand because of AI.
Speaker 2: So be aware of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And again, it's something that gets you money really fast.
Speaker 1: It's probably too good to be true. The Apple Sports
Speaker 1: app got its first update.
Speaker 2: Remember this app.
Speaker 1: This is Apple's very simple sports app. You pop in
Speaker 1: the teams that you like, and it tells you when
Speaker 1: they're playing, gives you scores, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: when it first came out last month were like, rich,
Speaker 1: where's basketball, Where's baseball?
Speaker 2: Where's NFL?
Speaker 1: And Apple said, look, we're going to add these sports
Speaker 1: as the season starts. So Baseball is now on there,
Speaker 1: March Madness is on there. And so if you haven't
Speaker 1: downloaded this Apple Sports app, it's just called Apple Sports.
Speaker 1: It's very simple, it's free if you have an iPhone.
Speaker 1: It's a nice way of kind of keeping track of
Speaker 1: your favorite teams, and it tells you when they're playing
Speaker 1: in the upcoming games and the past games, and there
Speaker 1: is betting information on it. You can't bet through the app,
Speaker 1: but you can see what the odds are. You can
Speaker 1: turn it off in the settings if you disagree with that.
Speaker 1: Google Io is happening. They announced the date for their
Speaker 1: IO twenty twenty four. This is their big developers conference.
Speaker 1: It's happening May fourteenth through fifteenth, and this usually happens
Speaker 1: at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, which is
Speaker 1: where it's happening this year. I've been, I think, to
Speaker 1: almost all of these in past years, except for the
Speaker 1: years they didn't happen with the pandemic. It's always a
Speaker 1: great time. They do a good job. I think that
Speaker 1: Google is in a very precarious place, which is a
Speaker 1: funny thing to say for a company of its size.
Speaker 1: But I'm telling you the AI stuff, it didn't take
Speaker 1: them by surprise, but I think it might. It might
Speaker 1: have surprised them with just how fast these AI tools
Speaker 1: from other companies have taken off. Now, Google has their
Speaker 1: own flavor of AI called Gemini, and I think that's
Speaker 1: probably the least known AI out of any of these.
Speaker 1: If you ask someone, hey, what's an AI tool, they're
Speaker 1: probably going to say chat GBT. Now that's a company
Speaker 1: that came out of nowhere, and this is a huge company. Now,
Speaker 1: So what do we expect from Google Io? Android fifteen updates?
Speaker 1: New Pixel devices Pixel eight a that is their budget
Speaker 1: pixel device, Maybe a new foldable phone, the Pixel Fold two,
Speaker 1: and maybe a new tablet. They announced all those three
Speaker 1: things last year at the event, and we saw new
Speaker 1: ones last year, so we'll probably see new ones this
Speaker 1: year as well. And I thought this was interesting, this
Speaker 1: new Pew research study about how teens and parents view
Speaker 1: screen time. So the main takeaway seventy two percent of
Speaker 1: teens feel peaceful without their phones, but forty four percent
Speaker 1: feel anxious when they don't have their phones nearby. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that's just teens, that's probably adults too.
Speaker 1: Have you ever gotten that like ghost vibration where you
Speaker 1: think your phone is giving you a notification and you
Speaker 1: kind of feel your pants, pocket or whatever. You look
Speaker 1: at your phone, there's nothing there. It's like we're all like, oh,
Speaker 1: waiting for that next notification. Half of parents looked through
Speaker 1: have looked through their teen's phone. About forty percent of
Speaker 1: parents and teens regularly argue about phone time. I don't
Speaker 1: even have a teen, and we're arguing about screen time.
Speaker 2: This is the best part.
Speaker 1: Forty six percent of teens say their parent is sometimes
Speaker 1: distracted by their phone during conversations. Yes, this has happened
Speaker 1: to all of us. You're at dinner, their watch gets
Speaker 1: a notification or their phone gets a notification, and that
Speaker 1: sly kind of look to the side while you're talking
Speaker 1: to someone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's annoying.
Speaker 1: It's annoying for teens that are trying to talk to
Speaker 1: their parents when they actually do take the time to
Speaker 1: talk to them.
Speaker 2: Thirty eight percent of.
Speaker 1: Teens say they spend too much time on their phone,
Speaker 1: and seventy percent of teens believe smartphones provide more benefits
Speaker 1: than harms their age group. Forty two percent say it
Speaker 1: makes it harder to learn good skills. Now, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: My wife was telling me yesterday she works with teenagers
Speaker 1: and the smartphone is the connector. And I know that
Speaker 1: sound strange, but when these teens that didn't know each
Speaker 1: other got together, what do they want to do? They
Speaker 1: want to swap socials and they want to say, hey.
Speaker 2: What are you on?
Speaker 1: You on Instagram, you on TikTok, you on Snapchat, And
Speaker 1: that's how they keep up with each other. When I
Speaker 1: meet someone out and about, like someone at a conference
Speaker 1: or whatever, I will basically say, hey, what do you
Speaker 1: on Instagram? And I'll follow them on Instagram because guess what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep up with them, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to remember that I met them because I keep seeing
Speaker 1: their pictures pop up. This is the way things happen nowadays.
Speaker 2: So I get it.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a phone, you're kind of at
Speaker 1: a disadvantage. And finally, Krig is introducing compostable k cups.
Speaker 2: So you know, k cups get a lot of.
Speaker 1: Grief because they're convenient, but you throw out a lot
Speaker 1: of plastic and they're tough to recycle. So they have
Speaker 1: developed a new compostable coffee pod called the k Round.
Speaker 1: It's made from things that break down me throw them
Speaker 1: in the ground. The problem is they're only compatible with
Speaker 1: the new Kurrig Alta coffee maker.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming Alta because of ground.
Speaker 1: But the good news is this new coffee maker is
Speaker 1: backwards compatible with traditional ca cups.
Speaker 2: So these are coming out later this year. They're going
Speaker 2: to test them.
Speaker 1: I think this is a great thing because I always
Speaker 1: feel a little bit guilty when I'm using that CA cup,
Speaker 1: even though I love the CA cups. I mean, think
Speaker 1: about the first time you discovered the CA cup. The
Speaker 1: convenience of just popping this thing into a coffee maker
Speaker 1: and making fresh coffee. And you know, I go back
Speaker 1: and forth. On the weekends, I will brew a full,
Speaker 1: full pot with coffee ground grounds, and then during the
Speaker 1: week I will use the cake cups because they're convenient
Speaker 1: and they're quick. So I think it works both ways.
Speaker 1: And I'm not one of those people that peels off
Speaker 1: the thing and recycles. I know people like plant plants
Speaker 1: and them and stuff. But now it'll get a lot easier.
Speaker 1: All right, a little feedback here, Jeff says, I have
Speaker 1: a couple of suggestions for the callers that said they're
Speaker 1: going overseas and needed an international hotspot.
Speaker 2: How about Google Fi.
Speaker 1: You can work for free in one hundred countries free
Speaker 1: for seven days.
Speaker 2: Rich Such a great show, Jeff. All right, Jeff, I
Speaker 2: like that. All right. That music means that's going to
Speaker 2: do it for the end. Of the show.
Speaker 1: If you can find links to everything I mentioned on
Speaker 1: the website, go to richon tech dot tv. For the
Speaker 1: show notes. Find me at rich on tech. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible.
Speaker 1: My name is rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real
Speaker 1: soon