Best Web Browsers to Protect Your Privacy & Preventing Payment Card Fraud

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
International authorities, bust a major hacking group. Why rice might
not be the best way to dry out a wet smartphone,
Don't fall for a funeral scam. Plus your tech questions answered?
What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is rich
on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast.

(00:26):
This is the show where I talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open
up those phone lines. Give me a call triple eight
rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. That is a direct

(00:49):
line right to this show. Give me a call. If
you have a question about technology. Email also an option.
Just go to rich on tech dot tv. Hit content
act that will make its way right to my inbox.
And of course, if you comment about the show, we'll
read it in the feedbag segment later on. Feedbag, of course,

(01:10):
is a mix of feedback and mail bag. Yes, now
you know. Guests this week Arthur Edelstein of Privacy tests
dot org. He can tests. He conducts open source tests
of web browser privacy that's going to be an interesting conversation.
Neil O'Farrell, founder of the Center for AI Crime, will

(01:34):
share the ways that AI is accelerating all kinds of
scams and frauds. Well, this week got me thinking. We've
had a couple of major things that happened this week.
First off, if you have AT and T, maybe you
didn't have a signal for a while. AT and T

(01:54):
had a network outage impacting wireless customers in the US.
You know they have about two hundred million of them.
This outage went on for hours, and of course people
wondered why it was happening. They woke up to an
SOS signal on their iPhone or their Samsung or their
Pixel or their Android and didn't know what was going on.

(02:15):
People were restarting their phones. They thought it was a
problem with their house. Who knows. It's confusing when you
wake up and you just don't have a signal. But
it came out later on that it wasn't outage. This
was pretty widespread. It was caused by a software update
that went wrong during a network expansion, and of course
people wondered if it was a cyber attack. That's always

(02:36):
a consideration Now that was not but this was Change Healthcare,
part of United Health's Optium business, suffered a cyber attack
suspected to be by a nation state. The company was
forced to disconnect services, which caused outages to prescription processing

(02:56):
systems for over sixty seven thousand pharmacies. So if you
needed a prescription that day, you probably couldn't get it.
So this got me thinking, with all this stuff happening,
and as these companies get bigger, and as we get
more connected, and as we become more nationwide with everything.
Remember everything used to be local. Now everything is nationwide.
When I first moved to California, there was not a

(03:18):
bank that you could go to that was both in
New York City and in Los Angeles. There wasn't any
It wasn't heard of. Now banks are everywhere. It's the
same chain across the entire United States, across the entire world.
The question is, as these issues get bigger, things are
going to have more of an impact. Right when we

(03:39):
have an issue, when there's an interruption, where there's a
something goes wrong, more people are impacted. So do you
have a plan. That is my question for you today.
What if you woke up and you had zero signal
on your cell phone. Now you might say, Rich, I've
got WiFi. I'm okay, okay, Well what if the Wi
Fi didn't work? So, first off, a lot of people
were confused when they looked at their iPhone when this

(03:59):
thing had happen, because there is an SOS icon on
the iPhone and there's also a satellite icon. Only the
iPhone fourteen and fifteen have that satellite icon. That means
that you can get satellite service for an emergency. So
if you have an emergency, you're still covered as long
as you can see the sky. That's called SOS Emergency

(04:19):
over Satellite. The SOS icon means that your phone can
dial nine one one, and one thing to note here
in the US, your phone, whether it has service or not,
can still dial on nine one one. And it doesn't
necessarily just dial nine one one on your carrier. It
can also reach out to the other carriers. Here in
the US, we have three major carriers. We have T Mobile,

(04:41):
we have AT and T, and we have Verizon. Your
phone can dial nine one one on all three of those.
Hopefully you're not in a place where all three of
those are gone, but some places are so AT and
T during this outage said to turn on Wi Fi calling,
So if you haven't set that up on your phone,
it's probably a good idea to do that before you
need it. So when cellulars on a vail, your phone
can use Wi Fi for both calls and texts, which

(05:04):
is really nice. And that also works overseas, so if
you ever go overseas and you have a Wi Fi signal,
you can still use your phone without charging roaming fees.
Just make sure that roaming is turned off. Now. When
it comes to the backups in your home, so you
might have a hot spot from work, you could use
that perhaps if your cellular isn't working on your main

(05:26):
account on your phone. Ring also has something called Backup Cellular,
so they offer a subscription where you can get twenty
four to seven backup Internet, which means if the Internet
goes out in your home, you can still use cellular
data through their router and it will send it. If
you have eros in your house. You know that's also
owned by Amazon, which also owns Ring, you would be

(05:48):
able to use their cellular signal throughout your house. Now
it's only a small amount, it's three gigs, but it's
mostly for the fact that if you don't have a
Wi Fi signal, which is what your alarm system typically uses,
it would fall back to cellular and then if you
had an emergency, it would still be able to get
that signal out, but you'd also be able to surf
on your devices as you typically would in that time

(06:11):
period where the cellular doesn't work. Do you have one
of these a portable power station? Because I do, and
my father in law actually texted me a picture of his.
He said, I'm prepared for anything. Companies like Jackerie anchor
Blue Eddy, they all make these things. They cost anywhere
from one hundred and fifty to up to thousands of

(06:31):
dollars depending on how much power they hold. But I
think this is something that you should absolutely have. It's
something like a portable battery pack for your phone, but
it's for all of your gadgets in your house, so
you can plug things in, you know, emergency stuff, whatever
you need. Some of them even have built in lights
on them so you can use it as a light
as well. But I highly recommend you get one of

(06:52):
these things. Also, a whole house battery is also becoming
very popular. This is something you install in the garage.
You could work off solar, or it could just be
plugged in and it powers your entire house. Now, if
you have an electric car, a lot of these cars
are coming with something called bidirectional charging. So if you
have an electric car, a lot of them can plug
you can plug your house into the car, and then

(07:15):
that car would provide power for your home, and an
average of seventy kilowatt hours of energy in a average
electric car might provide backup power for about two days
to your house. So that's another option you've probably seen
the commercials Ford was advertising that heavily where you can
plug your whole house into the F one fifty lightning.

(07:35):
Now I mentioned the iPhone SOS over satellite. This is
if you have the iPhone fourteen or fifteen models, get
to know this service. You can go into your settings
and try a demo. Basically, if your phone has a
clear view of the sky, you'll be able to call
for help, and it goes through a relay center. It
doesn't dial directly, but you can also send your location
via satellite. So if you're going on a hike or

(07:56):
something and you're in a place where there's no cellular
you can update your friends where you are via the
find My app on the iPhone. Now, this is a
feature that's really really handy. It's built into the iPhones.
We're still waiting for that to come to Android, but
in the meantime, you can get a third party device.
So there's a device called the Moto DeFi and this
is a small satellite messenger device and you can use

(08:18):
it on its own, or you can link it to
a phone where it will send and receive messages and
all kinds of updates through satellite. And that's about one
hundred and fifty bucks. And then another one that a
lot of the rescue folks like is the Garment in
Reach and this works on its own. I think the
Motorola DeFi needs to be linked up with Bluetooth on
your phone. It runs through that. But the Garment in Reach,

(08:41):
I believe will work all by itself. And then the
SOS features on your phone, you should really make sure
they're set up before you need to use them. So
I'm Samsung. They have the Emergency SOS. You can press
the side button five times after you set it up
and that will send it alert to your emergency contacts.
Attach a five second audio recording and also pictures from

(09:01):
both the front and rear cameras. Be very careful when
you set this up. Don't make the mistake I did
where I sent a picture of my legs to my
mother in law because it took a picture and sent
it when I was setting it up. So be careful.
Look at those settings very carefully. Apple Watch has fall detection,
The iPhone has crash detection. Make sure that's turned on.

(09:23):
The pixel phones have crash detection. Make sure that's turned on.
You do need a simcard in your phone for that
to work. And then taking it a step further. You
know my kids, and you know we always I don't
know why my kids are so morbid, but they always
talk about what happens when I'm not around anymore. But
you have to think about this stuff as morbid as
it is. Apple has the ability to set up a

(09:45):
legacy contact, someone who can get access to your data
after your death. This can include photos, messages, notes, files,
all kinds of things. Google has something called Inactive Account Manager.
This lets you share parts your account or notify someone
if you've been inactive for a long time, so it
kicks in after I think it's like ninety days or

(10:06):
six months of not using your account, it will send
a message to a loved one that you set up
in advance, saying Okay, here's my account. And then Facebook
has something called a legacy contact. You can set that
up and let someone post on your behalf in the
unlikely event of your demise. Oh, I say unlikely, but
I guess it is not unlikely. It's going to happen,

(10:27):
just a matter of when. But they can't read your messages.
I think that's important to know. And they can't log
into your account, and they can't friend and unfriend people,
so they can't act like a ghost on your behalf,
but they can post something on your page. And then finally,
if you're using one of these password apps, this is
kind of tricky because you do need to if you
want someone to have access to all of your accounts,

(10:47):
you need to let them know how to get into
your password manager. And so I looked up one password
actually has kind of a cool thing. It's called emergency kit.
This is a PDF document that lists out all the
details on how to get into your account. Fill it out,
and that's a physical piece of paper that you would
keep up in a safe place. Other password apps might
have something like a recovery key. But again I'm telling

(11:08):
you all of this not to be morbid, but we
need to plan ahead. We need to think ahead. The
digital world presents new complications for our data, for our information.
And if you have something like a photo collection, it
used to be in a box that maybe your kids
would find in the garage, but nowadays that's all locked
up online. And could you imagine not letting them have

(11:30):
access to that after you pass? That would not be
a good thing. So think about this stuff in advance.
I gave you some ideas here. I hope you run
with them, and I don't want to be morbid, but
I just think like it's better to be prepared for
this stuff than to not be prepared. All right, Coming
up on today's show, Authorities Bust a major ransomware hacking group.

(11:50):
I'll tell you why you might be able to get
your files back if they were locked up. But first
it is your turn. Give me a call triple eight
Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
two four one zero one. Give me a call if
you have a question about technology. My name is Rich
d'muro and you are listening to rich on tech. Welcome

(12:15):
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Give me a call if you have a
question about technology. This week, international authorities busted a major
ransomware hacking group. This involved arrests, indictments, seizures of their infrastructure,

(12:41):
and they also developed a free decryption tool to help
victims recover their files. This is the lock Bit ransomware group.
They arrested a bunch of people in Poland, Ukraine and
some other places, retrieved over one thousand decryption keys to
help them create this free software. They seized over two
hundred crypto wallets with a bunch of money in them,

(13:03):
probably money from victims, I'm guessing, and took down thirty
four servers, identified over fourteen thousand rogue accounts used in attacks.
Oh my gosh, this is just a lot. But I
tell you this because if you, you know, were affected
by this, maybe you run a small business or any
kind of business and you just want more information. There

(13:24):
is a website that they set up, no more ransom
dot org, No more ransom dot org. That is where
you can find the free decryption tool. So if you
had your files locked up by this lockbit ransomware group,
you might be able to unlock them for free. Again,
I'll put that on the website website Rich on tech

(13:44):
dot TV. Thurman in Winchester, Massachusetts. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yes, I had you some problems with the Thunderburl. It
crashes but maybe once every other day. And what I
like about it is that it does separate. I have
many email accounts and off of my my various r
r ls, so it nicely separates the the scent, the trash,

(14:12):
and so forth sub sub boxes by your your email account.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
I've looked at some other alternatives, but they all seem
to collapse all the in all the input inboxes over
in one place. I don't wonder if you might know
of a Windows based email client that can can can
be either does or can be made to us separate
out the various activities within the email account.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Okay, so instead of having all like a unified inbox,
you want them separate. Okay, got it. Well, I'm going
to direct you to a website that I like that
helps me find some of these software alternatives, And you know,
you mentioned Thunderbird, which obviously is a very popular free
email app for I think it works on various platforms.

(15:02):
But the website that I like to look at for
this kind of stuff is called Alternative two dot net.
Alternative two dot net, and so if you have an
app that you like and you're kind of curious what
else is out there, this is where you can pop
in the name of that app and it will give
you the alternatives to that app. And so, for instance, Thunderbird,

(15:23):
if you type that in, it also separates it by platform,
So you can look at iPhone, Android, Windows, Open Source
iPad and you just tap that I tapped Windows, and
then it comes up with some of the other alternatives.
And so the alternative that it likes the most is
clause Mail claws Mail, and then there's one after that

(15:48):
called cea Monkey, and then there's of course Microsoft Outlook,
which sounds like I'm sure you've tried. And then there's
mail Bird, which is clearly play on Thunderbird, and so
that's kind of probably similar to what Thunderbird offers, but
maybe they'd looked at some of the things that people

(16:08):
don't like about it and they made those features better.
And then there's one called mail Spring and postbox, spark Mail.
I mean it goes on and on. I've used spark Mail.
Actually that's a pretty good one. But there's so many
of these, and I think that that's the best way,
because when it comes to recommending software, it's really tough
to know what you like and what you specifically want.

(16:28):
You mentioned the different inboxes, separating them out, so I
would go through and kind of see what which one
of these works for you. It's kind of like me
with my note taking app situation. I've been using, you know,
for the past year, every single note taking app. I
downloaded every single one you can think of, because I
was using ever note and it was like one hundred

(16:50):
and thirty bucks a year to renew, and I was
just like, I'm not going to do that, and so
of course I downloaded every single other app. And what
did I do after all these months, I've come back
to ever note And by the way, I talked about this,
sent out a new newsletter this week for the first
time in a while. So if you want to get
on the newsletter list, go to rich on tech dot
tv on the homepage. It says, sign up for the

(17:11):
newsletter rich on Tech Newsletter. It is free. All you
have to do is put in your email address and
you'll get the newsletter. I'm gonna try to do it
weekly this week. For the first one, I kind of
talked about my journey with all the different apps and
things that I currently like. So Thurman, hopefully you find
something on that website again. It's called Alternative two dot net,

(17:32):
Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at Triple eight rich one O one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(17:55):
Email Just go to rich on Tech dot tv hit contact.
Of course, that is the website and the way to
follow me online at rich on Tech. Coming up in
the show, we've got Arthur Edelstein. He runs a website
called Privacy tests dot org where he conducts open source
tests of web browser privacy. So you're gonna find out

(18:18):
which web browser is the most private, which one protects
your information the most, And we're gonna ask him about
incognito browsing to find out where your info's going when
you do that. Let's go to Bill in San Diego. Bill,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (18:33):
Got to go into a canyon. But maybe I'll listen
off the air. My sister passed away and she has
a bunch of messages on her Soul eight and I'd
like to save.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Oh we lost you. Okay. Sounds like you want to
save the messages from the iPhone, the text messages. So
the way to do this now, you have to have
access to the phone. So I'm not sure if you
have access to the phone or not, but if you
have access to the phone, it's quite easy. Actually, the
app I recommend is called I Amazing mazng Oh. I

(19:09):
just got a word from Kim that he does have
access to the phone, okay, and that case is pretty easy.
There is an app called Imazing I Mazing, and this
is sort of like the app that Apple should have
put out with the iPhone, but they never did. Apple
made it very, very convoluted to get files on and
off the iPhone and to get data on and off

(19:31):
the iPhone. There might be a reason for that, but
I don't know. It just seems very, very unnecessarily complicated.
But this app does it a lot easier because you
can drag and drop stuff on or off. So a
lot of people when they had like an iPod or
an iPhone, they realized after a certain period of time
that getting music on that device was very easy. Getting

(19:51):
music off that device not so easy. Getting your own
files onto that device not so easy. So this app
amazing makes it much easier. Imazig dot com. You will
have to pay for it, but you can at least
test it out. I think there's like a free level
of service before you have to pay, and let me
see how much this thing is. But I use this
the other day to kind of test the I get

(20:12):
a lot of questions about text message extraction from the
iPhone because you would think you'd be able to do
it in an easy way, but no, you can't. Device
license one device is forty bucks. So for forty bucks,
you plug this device. You plug your iPhone into your computer.
It will scan the iPhone. It does take a while
to do that initial scan, but once you scan it,
you can download all of the text messages, some of

(20:34):
the text messages, whatever you want, but it will make
them all into a nice, easy to understand file. You
can export that as a PDF, comma separated value whatever
you want. This does it all. So I will put
the link on the website in the show notes rich
on tech dot tv. Keep in mind, if you go
to the website rich on tech dot tv, right at
the top, there is a big red banner it says

(20:56):
heard it mentioned on the radio. Links here. You can
tap there to get links in real time to anything
I mentioned on the show. So if I mentioned a
good website like before the alternative to dot net, you
can find a link right there. Great question. Sorry for
you're a loss. Thank you so much, Bill and San Diego.
Sorry that you want to do a canyon right as

(21:16):
we came to you. Let's go to Rose in Los Angeles.
Rose in Los Angeles. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 5 (21:24):
Hi, Rich, thanks Lord for taking my call. When we
want to remove our name and information like data bird
as is from Google, when we go to results about
you goog he'll ask whether you want to remove information

(21:46):
you see in Google Search or events content from the
show in in Google Search. So what is the difference
which one should we click? Makes sense?

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah? Well, actually I haven't seen the option where it
says do you want to prevent it from showing up
in Google Search. That's interesting. Usually it just it just
shows you results that are already out there. So well,
I mean to bring your question kind of a little
bit bigger here. So there's two things you're talking about.
Your information is floating out there online, no matter what

(22:23):
it is, out there in a million different ways. Any
sort of public record that you're ever involved in, or
database that gets breached. All this information makes its way
to the web. And then there's companies that scoop it
all up and make it easy to find and it
comes up in search results. So when you search for
someone's name or address or whatever, it will say, oh,
we've got their information, and sometimes it is there. Sometimes

(22:45):
it's kind of you know, like these Spochio sites and
all that, they make you jump through hoops to kind
of see some of it, and they want you to
pay to unlock it. But Google, what you're referring to,
Google results about you lets you see if your personal
contact information, including your home address, phone number, and email address,
is in search results, and you have the option to
ask Google to take that out of search results when

(23:08):
you say that. So basically the way this works is
you go on Google, you sign up for this service.
It is free. Google will ask you for your name,
your address, your phone number, your email address. You could
put a bunch of women in there, and then when
it goes out on the web and it searches for
that information in search results. When it finds that, it says, hey,
we noticed that your information is on this search result.

(23:29):
Would you like us to take down that search result.
It does not take down the original information from that website.
It only takes down Google's link to that website when
people search. If you want the information to be removed completely,
and I think the results about you is a good
first step because most people are just going to do
a quick casual search and find the information on Google

(23:50):
and then click. But some people will go directly to
an information broker to find information on you. If you
want to do that, there are ways of doing it.
There are many many services that will do this. But
if you want to do this yourself, there is a website.
Let's see if I can find it. Diy. I think
it's called delete me. Okay, here it is so delete

(24:14):
me is a service that does this for a couple
bucks a month. I think it's like ten dollars a month,
where they will go out and actually delete requests that
you that your information is deleted from these broker websites.
But they also have free guides that can help you
do it yourself. So it has a whole bunch of
guides that will you can request to remove yourself from

(24:36):
all of these different places. And so they have basically
DIY guides for all these things and tell us been
verified spokio and it gives you a step by step
way of how to request removal from those websites. And
they're actually pretty good now I will tell you it is.
It's a game of whack a mole. So you can

(24:57):
take this down from one website and it's going to
pop up on an and another and another. So there
are services I mentioned one last week like Mozilla Monitor
and Norton has one Experience has one where they will
and this delete me where they will constantly monitor for
your information and try to get it off these websites.
So I've been using this Mozilla Monitor as a way

(25:20):
to test it and it has taken my information off
of a couple of websites so far. Spokio, id True
dot com, Background Alert dot com, peoplewin dot com. But
there are still so many more. I mean, there's just
a list of ninety that they still have my information
on that they're trying to get taken down. But again,
these services are going to cost you money each month,

(25:42):
and whether they work or not is you know, it's
kind of up in the air. Sometimes they work, sometimes
they don't. But most of the websites, if you find
your information on a website, you can ask to have
that information taken down. But these these sites are so
shady that a lot of times they don't even do it,
or they don't you know, it takes so long, or
you can't get someone on the phone, or sorry, not

(26:04):
on the phone. But you know, it's tough to make
these requests. So that's the best way that I know of.
I'll put those two links on the show notes so
you can look up Google results about me or results
about you, and then also the other websites that have
this stuff. But it's it's really it's a lot. It's
there's so much information. The other website I talk about

(26:25):
is have I Been pooned? H a ve e I
beIN pwned dot com? Have I been poned? Pwned? Like
owned but with a P and you can put in
your email address and it will tell you if that
email address has been available on a website. So my

(26:46):
email address has been in twenty seven data breaches and
three pastes and pastes are when they just take all
this information and they compile it and hackers just use
that to kind of figure out email addresses and passwords.
So it is it's a lot when you start searching
for yourself online. Believe me, you're gonna find a lot
of stuff, and it is not easy to take it down.
But remember back in the day, people had the white

(27:07):
pages right and you can look up anyone in their address,
and that was just thrown at everyone's doorsteps. So it's
just a lot easier to find this stuff these days.
Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one coming up. I'll
tell you about Ring. They are gonna stop selling one
of their popular items. People are trying to get a

(27:27):
hold of them, and I guess they can't anymore. You
are listening to rich on tech.

Speaker 6 (27:40):
Well.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
Ring has confirmed it has stopped selling its Ring carcam.
This is sort of a dash cam slash security camera
for cars. It was announced at CS twenty twenty three.
It's been kind of tough to get ever since it's launch.
I did a review and they actually sent me one
to review, and uh, I like it. I mean, it's
a really nice little device. There were a couple of

(28:01):
flaws with it in a design, but overall it works
like a video doorbell for your car. Ring does not
give a specific reason for stopping sales, but it's said
that there were ongoing delays. So does that mean a
component of this was not working or maybe I don't know.
I mean, I really I don't see anything that is

(28:22):
wrong with the device, but it just I don't know.
People couldn't get them apparently, So it looks like people.
Emails from Amazon show orders for the ringcarcamp placed in
recent months are now being canceled. Some people have been
waiting since January twenty twenty three for the device, with
delivery pushback multiple times. We do not know if they
are going to resume Ring Carcam sales. I don't know.

(28:46):
We'll see Ringcarcam if you want one, It's gonna be
tough to get, so we're gonna have to look into
some other car cams that are good. People love dash
cams nowadays, so we'll have to find when that works.
Pretty well, let's go to Vivian. Vivian in Menefee, California. Vivian,
you'r on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (29:03):
Hello.

Speaker 7 (29:04):
I am having trouble with passwords and seems like every
three months, Apple is making me change my password.

Speaker 8 (29:20):
I'd rite it down in the day that I put
in the new pass words, and they keep knocking me
out Apple, They.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Keep locking you out. Well, yeah, I don't think, uh,
I don't What do you mean they lock you out?
Are you putting? Are you putting in the wrong past?
Is it the password to your eye cloud or is
it the past code on your iPhone?

Speaker 8 (29:47):
Past code.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Past coode? Okay, well the past code, if you type
it in wrong a number of times, it will disable
that phone for a bit before you can try again.
Is that what's happening?

Speaker 8 (30:02):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (30:03):
Okay, okay, Well we need a good way to remember
this passcode.

Speaker 7 (30:10):
Well, I've been writing it down. What I thought I
heard them say?

Speaker 1 (30:17):
And what you what? Who said?

Speaker 7 (30:21):
What?

Speaker 3 (30:23):
What?

Speaker 8 (30:24):
Apple?

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Okay? Well, Apple doesn't set the passcode on your phone.
You set that and I will tell you how to
do it right now. So if you go into your phone.
Do you have access to your phone now or is
it you don't have access?

Speaker 7 (30:37):
I'm on the phone with you, okay.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Okay, so it's unlocked at this point.

Speaker 8 (30:43):
Now there's still locked.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
It's still locked. Okay, how are you making a phone call?

Speaker 7 (30:51):
I don't know that. To us, we couldn't get into Apples.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Okay. It sounds like it sounds like there's a little
confusion here because between the passcode on your phone and
the iCloud account. So couple things. Number One, if you
do have access on your phone to face ID, I
would recommend using that because that's going to be a
little bit more fail proof. It's you know, it's going

(31:17):
to recognize your face and it's going to unlock the
device that way. When it comes to the passcode, it
sounds like if you're able to make a phone call,
you're able to unlock the phone. So to me, this
seems like it's more of an iCloud issue. And yes,
with iCloud, if you forget your log in, which Apple
doesn't set by the way, and they don't ask you

(31:38):
to reset it. Ever, as far as I've seen, you
can you know, leave that passcode indefinitely or password on
your account. But what I would do is I would
get a trusted friend or family member to help you
set this up. I would ask them to help you
change your iCloud password to something that you can remember,
and something that you might write down in a physical

(32:00):
piece of paper and keep in a safe place that
you can refer to. And then I would also change
the passcode on your phone to something that you can remember,
and I would keep that on a different piece of
paper and in a different safe place, so that if
you need to or if this trusted friend, if you say, oh,
I've gotten locked out of my phone again, this will
be the way that you can get back into those devices.
So that's frustrating for sure. I totally get it. And

(32:23):
you know, it's one of these things where if you
lose the passcode to your iPhone, there is really no
way of getting back in. You have to reset the
entire phone factory reset it. And that's why I always
recommend that you also have a backup of your phone.
So if you do have a backup and you do
forget the passcode, you should be able to get that
once you have access to your phone again and you

(32:43):
get back into your eCloud, you should be able to
bring that backup of your phone to your phone again.
So oh man, it's tough to remember this stuff sometimes.
And this actually happened to me. I set up, you know,
I'm always setting up something like for you know, testing out,
and so I set up this tablet and I always
set up I've got like a couple of passcodes that
I used, and I set up like kind of a

(33:05):
test passcode that I used for my test devices, and
I put it on the tablet and then I didn't
think about it for a little bit, and then I
was going to access it again, and I just kept
putting in the pass code and it would not work.
And I was like, I'm like going, you know, in circles,
like what is going on here? And so I finally
realized after I started typing in because I have a
couple of different variations, I realized that the tablet was

(33:28):
accepting as many like numbers as I typed in, Like
usually a pass code is either four or six digits. Well,
at first I was just putting in four, and then
I put in six, and all of a sudden I
just started typing more and accepted them. I was like,
wait a second, and That's when I realized that the
passcode was longer than the four digits I kept trying
to type in, and so as soon as I typed

(33:50):
in the six digit code and unlocked, and I was like, oh, well,
one time I was testing a phone and I forget
it was T Mobile or someone, but they sent me
a test phone and I must have set it up
in my sleep and forgot about it. And so all
of a sudden one day, I'm trying to use this
thing to test on air and I cannot unlock it.

(34:11):
And I email them like, hey, did you guys set
a passcode on this phone before you sent it to me?
Like what's going on here? You're like no, we never
do that. And I was going through all these circles
and hoops before I finally realized, like, oh, I kept
putting in my personal passcode instead of the tester one
and it unlocked, and I was so embarrassed I had
to like send them an email and be like ooh sorry,
just kidding. By the way, this week, Google had to

(34:34):
make an apology for its Gemini image generation. This is
you know AI image generators or all the buzz right now.
So Google recently launched one called Gemini that could create
images of people. Well, it was producing inaccurate or even
offensive images in some cases. Google said, all right, we're
going back to the drawing board on this one. We

(34:54):
have paused image generation of people in Gemini. I guess
the problem arose from an over correction. They tried to
tune the model to show a wide range of diverse
people and it it backfired on them, and the model
would sometimes just flat out refuse to generate images of
some people. So Google says, we're going back to the

(35:16):
drawing board. We're going to bring this thing back out
when it can actually create the images that people want
it to create. You know, humans are programming this AI,
and humans are you know, they're not infallible, so we
make mistakes, and apparently so does AI. Eighty eight Rich
one on one eight eight eight seven four two four
one zero one ZJ in Anaheim, California, ZJ. You're on

(35:44):
with Rich.

Speaker 9 (35:45):
Good afternoon, Rich, and I Before I start my question,
I just want to say you are the most patient
and gracious host on KFI. And I don't know if
it's because you're still young and fresh. People who have
been on a long time just don't have the care
and patience you have, including the previous show that precedes you.

(36:09):
We've been listening to the Lost show my wife and
I and two of my kids, and the host gets
very grouchy at times. So thank you for your patience
and your care for your listeners.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
Thank you well. I try, and believe me, you know
it's I try to make this fun and informative and insightful,
but it is frustrating. It's frustrated. The thing that actually
frustrates me the most is the fact that we are
being bombarded from all angles by a million different scams
and you know, rip offs and all kinds of stuff

(36:43):
thanks to tech. And as much as I love this stuff,
it's easy for me to navigate, but it's very complicated
for a lot of people. And that's why I try
to remain calm here as much as possible. How can
I help today's j But here's my issue.

Speaker 9 (36:59):
I called last year, spoke to you on this show.
I wanted to obscure on Google Maps my home, and
you told me how to do that. I went in
and I did that, and I got confirmation that they
have it. And I'm not on Google Maps all the time.
You know, maybe three or four times a month. But

(37:20):
I was on there about ten days ago and I
noticed my home is not obscured. So I went back
to what you had told me, and I obscured it
again ten days ago, and as of yesterday, my home
and my automobile is a license plate number. Are all
stills showing on Google Maps street view. I don't know

(37:41):
what to do to have them accept my request.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Interesting, so when they when you first did it, they
took it down. No, oh, they never took it down.

Speaker 9 (37:52):
They never Yeah, we received your request, we're working on it.
That's the message I got when I completed it correctly
the first time.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Okay, so they never actually took it.

Speaker 9 (38:03):
Down and never that should go down. And then I
repeated those steps ten days ago and I got the
same message, Okay, we've got your request. You know, we
have to make sure you are the homeowner whatever and so,
but still ten days. I guess it would be day
eleven since I did it last the second time and
it's still not obscured.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Okay, Well, I mean a couple of things going on here.
Number one, I'm just gonna kind of explain how to
do this if you want to so that you know,
people know exactly how to do this if they want. So,
you know, Google drives these cars around town called street View,
and they take pictures of things, and it used to
be you know, once in a while. Now they're happening

(38:45):
much more often than before, but it does, you know,
So they're getting a lot of these houses and things,
and they have systems in place that automatically blur kind
of information that might be identifying. So think about it
this way. If someone was driving down your street, they
can see your house. I mean, it's it's public domain,
it's right there.

Speaker 10 (39:05):
But the.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Car that's in your parking lot, or a person that's
outside your house, they will go through and they will
blur the license plate and they will blur the person's
face that's walking by. For privacy, because if you're just
a you know, you have to think about this stuff.
You're just a regular person. You could walk down the street.
You may not memorize every license plate, but with Google,
you could run that through a software program and get

(39:27):
every license plate and figure out where they park the
most or whatever. So they do give you this ability
to remove your information. And what they do is they
will blur out your house. So if Google is a
photo owner, you can report a photo or request it
to be blurred if it contains your face, your home,
or other identifying information, or anything that violates the street

(39:50):
view policy that they have. So that is the only
ask that Google requires. They don't say you have to
prove anything that say that you have to say that
you're under threat or something like that. It just says
your face, your home, or other identifying information. You can
report the photo, request it to be blurred. So you

(40:13):
can do this by going searching your address on Google
and then clicking little street view, so a little picture,
not the map. You have to click the actual street view,
so it brings up the view of your house. And
then in the lower right hand corner, in tiny, tiny letters,
it says report a problem, and you click report a problem,
and now it will give you your street view your address.

(40:35):
It will give you a preview of the image, and
you can actually adjust that image so that you can
blur out your entire house, and it will say why
are you reporting this image? Request blurring face, my home,
my car, my license plate, a different object, what is
wrong with this image? You can do image quality and
then you put in your email address, and you put

(40:56):
in a test that you're not a robot, and you
press submit, and generally that should work. People usually have
pretty good success with that. If that is not working,
in the case of U ZJ, I would just continue
to submit the request. You did it eleven days ago.
Google does not give a guarantee of how long it

(41:17):
will take, but it says it generally, quote will review
your report as fast as we can. If you entered
your email address in the form, we may contact you
to get additional information or to update you on the
status of your report. So personally, I would just continue
to submit that, and that would send a signal to
them that you need business and you want this thing

(41:39):
figured out quickly. By the way, I will say that
I did do this for a couple of these other
sites like redfin and Zilo. They will also allow you
to take your information off of those sites as well,
So a lot of times when you sell your house,
the pictures of that listing will be on these websites
like a Zillo or a redfin, So if someone knows

(42:00):
your address, they can just go right into your house
and take a look at all the rooms and the
bathrooms and see exactly what's going on in there, so
that may be an option too to take your information
down from there as well. Now for me personally, I requested,
you should be able to do it yourself, but that
would not work. I kept logging into my home dashboard
on one of those websites and it just was not working.

(42:21):
It said delete your pictures. I said delete. I deleted
them all. They'd be gone for one second and they'd
all pop up again, and so I just went through
and I emailed. There's a help link at the bottom
of the website. I emailed. I said, here's my address,
here's my house, here's the listing. Can you please take
these pictures off? And I'm not kidding. Within a couple hours,
I got an email from someone at was It was

(42:43):
either redfin or Zillow or one of those, and they said, okay,
we took your stuff down, thank you for doing business
with us, And I thought that was pretty good. So
the reason I tell you this DJ is I don't
think that they are trying to actively not take this down,
but I think that they are probably swamped with stuff
and they just need some more pushing. So I would
maybe even go to another There are some ways you

(43:06):
can chat, you know with Google as well, so you
might try to chat with them to do something. I
know that in you know, with different services, they have
some chat applications, So maybe go into Google Maps and
see if there's any contact info there that you might
be able to get a chat person on chat. But
that's I think the only way they're going to take
that that request is probably through the approval the official channels.

(43:29):
Let's put it that way. Triple eight rich one o
zero one. That is the website. Now you got me
on this whole street view thing, and there's a website
Google dot Com slash street view. And I don't know
if you've seen these little cars going down your street,
but you can actually see where they're going next. So

(43:50):
it says where we are mapping this month. We drive
and trek around the world to bring you imagery that
enhances your experience and helps you discover the world around you.
If you want to wave at our team, check out
below where they'll be coming to a location near you,
and you can put your state in, so I put
let's put California, and they'll tell you where they're driving

(44:12):
these little cars from one, twenty twenty four to twelve,
twenty twenty four. And it's basically every county in California,
so it's not very exact Los Angeles County. Oh, they'll
be here sometime this year. That's real good information. Maybe
if you live in a smaller state, let's try Kentucky. Kentucky,
they'll be in Jefferson, Bullet, Nelson, Spencer, Anderson, Mercer, Boyle, Lincoln. Anyway,

(44:35):
Google dot Com slash street view and again, if you
want those directions on how to remove the Google Maps information,
open up Google Maps. Look for your street view. Bottom
right hand corner says report a problem. Complete the form,
click submit, and ZJ keep me posted if they get
rid of it. I can't believe it's been a year
since they took that down. Eighty eight rich one on
one website, richon Tech dot tv. Coming up we will

(44:59):
talk about Apple's new mission to make I Message even
more secure and the bone I have to pick with
I message. Yeah, we'll talk about that coming up. You
are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich

(45:21):
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with Chris in
Long Beach. Chris, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 11 (45:29):
I don't really have a specific problem other than not
remembering all my passwords.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Yeah, well that's a common problem.

Speaker 11 (45:36):
Yeah, I think everybody has it. But my question is
what do you think of these computer generated strong passwords.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
I think they're excellent. How are you generating them?

Speaker 8 (45:51):
I haven't been.

Speaker 11 (45:52):
Okay, I haven't been because I wasn't. I don't know
about them. I don't know quite how it works. It
just would be easier so I wouldn't have to remember. Yes,
I'm currently using a password manager on Google, okay, and
that for the most part works well.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
Yeah, and I like that a lot. I think that that.
So here's what I typically recommend when it comes to passwords.
Number one, you should absolutely be using a password generator.
The main thing is that you have to protect that
password generator with a password that you remember, but also
two factor authentication. In the case of Google, since it's
built in, you already have access to your Google account,

(46:33):
there is a level of you know, it's a little
dicey because if you lost access to your Google you
would lose access to these passwords. So that's a consideration.
But other than that, my recommendation typically is use what's
built into your apps. So if you have iPhone and
you're only using iPhone, then iCloud keychain is excellent because

(46:53):
it works with Apple. They just put in some new
security restrictions that make that where I can recommend it
again before I couldn't, now I can, So iCloud Keychain
is really good there. And then I recommend if you know,
if you want free, by the way, and if you
want free and you're using Android or you're using an
iPhone with Chrome web browser, both on your iPhone and

(47:16):
or on your desktop, the Google Password Manager works really
well because they added a feature where Google can fill
in the passwords across all of your apps on the iPhone,
not just on Chrome. So that's really nice and you
can turn that on in your settings. There is an
option to auto fill with Google Password Manager, so that's
really easy. Those are two free options. They're very simple,

(47:38):
they're built into a lot of the things that we
use today. The other option, if you want free, is
called Bitwarden, and that will work across all devices. It
is cross platform, it is open source, and so a
lot of people like that because they do offer a
nice free version of that software and people seem to
like it and then you can get into paid software.
So there's a lot of paid apps that will do this.

(48:00):
Y the ones that I like, dash Lane is a
great one. There's also one called one Password that a
lot of people like that's really good as well. But
again those are going to cost you money. You're in,
you're out. So, Chris, the advice I have is if
it's working for you, that's great. I would just make
sure that you use it consistently, and that you use

(48:22):
it across all of your apps and not just you know,
selected ones. Are you using this thing most of the
time or just some of.

Speaker 11 (48:29):
The time the same password or the same app?

Speaker 1 (48:32):
No, the same app? I hope you're not using the
same password.

Speaker 6 (48:35):
Well, I kind of.

Speaker 11 (48:36):
Have a little bit because it's so hard to remember,
you know, when you've got a lot of places that
you go, it's it's just so hard to remember. That's
what I was, and my daughter came over and set
up the Google Okay password.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Manage you do you have an iPhone or Android and
iPhone okay? You have an iPhone okay, So there is
a setting you need to turn on to make this
work much better. So if you go into settings on
the iPhone and I've got to find this. Oh gosh,
it's gonna take me a second to find this. It's
it's a feature called autophil and so let's see here.

(49:14):
I got to remember where this is on the iPhone.
Let's see autofill. So basically, the way that the iPhone
is set up, it's typically set up to use iCloud
keychain to generate this, but you can change it. Okay.
So we're gonna go into settings and then password and
accounts and so let's find that. So there's passwords, okay,

(49:35):
So you go into passwords and then there's an option
where it says password options. There it is, Do you
see that? So if you go into setting settings passwords,
do you see that?

Speaker 11 (49:48):
I'm trying to get to passwords.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
It's all the way down. It's passed like all the matings.
You see it, right? Okay, Now you tap there, and
now you do Now you tap word says password options.
Do you see that?

Speaker 11 (50:01):
Okay, I'm still not finding passwords.

Speaker 12 (50:03):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
So if you go into settings and scroll down past general,
past privacy and Security, past the app Store, it's right
at the top of like where it says mail, contacts, Calendar, notes,
and it says passwords. So if you tap in there
and I guess this, you know, even if you don't
find it right away, you can always look for it later.
But there is when you go inside there, there's a
thing called password options, and it says use passwords and

(50:28):
pass keys from.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
Oh here we go.

Speaker 11 (50:31):
Okay, I password okay, got it?

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Okay. So now when you tap password options, what does
it say there? Which one is selected?

Speaker 3 (50:39):
Give me?

Speaker 11 (50:40):
It says iPhone unlocked, iTunes, app store, wallet, Apple paste
password auto fill yep, and I do have that turned on?

Speaker 1 (50:48):
And which one is it turned on with? Does it
say Chrome or does it say Google or does it
say iCloud?

Speaker 11 (50:53):
It doesn't say, but I use Google Chrome.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Okay. So what you want to do is you want
to make sure that Chrome is selected in the autofill
in the password options, because that is going to make
it much more magical for you. So when you go
to an app to log in, you'll be able to
use Chrome to autofill that password and to not just
autofill but also auto generate that password. And so what

(51:17):
you need to do is just basically get into a
routine of when you set up a new account you're
using the Google Password manager to not only create that password,
but also save that password, and that autofill is going
to be a key part of that. By the way,
you can also go Chris to Google has their password
manager online, So if you want to look at passwords

(51:39):
dot Google dot com on your Chrome web browser will
actually show you all of the passwords that you have
saved with Google. So if you want to access those
on your computer, you can do that. And then inside
Google Chrome you can also go into your tools and
your settings and it says passwords and autofill and you

(52:00):
can find your password manager in there as well. It's
a little complicated, but it's one of those things you
just have to get used to, and once you make
it a routine, it is much safer. I'm glad that
you're looking out for this though. Coming up, we're going
to talk privacy of web browsers. You are listening to
Rich on tech. Arthur Edelstein runs a website called privacytests

(52:26):
dot org where he does open source tests of web
browser privacy. Arthur, thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 12 (52:33):
Thanks for having me so first off.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Tell me about the website Privacy tests dot org. What
made you start this.

Speaker 10 (52:40):
Well, I've been working on browser privacy for about ten years,
since twenty fourteen, and developing new privacy protections for web browsers,
And after doing it for a few years, I was
thinking about, well, how can we share this work that
we're doing, because it's actually really hard for anybody to
tell which browsers are protecting their privacy or what kinds

(53:00):
of privacy protections there are in reality. So I thought,
wouldn't wouldn't it be great if we could objectively evaluate
browsers to compare them and to look at those privacy protections.
So my thinking was to create a variety of automated
open source tests that would basically do leak tests of
browsers and see what kinds of private information are leaking

(53:24):
from different browsers and be able to compare those browsers,
and then I could share those results with everybody with
the public on a website. So the website that I
put together has a large number of tests on a
variety of different kinds of leaks. And if you look
at the website, you'll see that every column in this
big table that I put together is representing a different

(53:46):
web browser, and every row of the table is a
different leak test, and if a browser is leaking something,
then it's failed the test and it gets the red X.
But if the browser is protecting your privacy and prevents
a particular kind week, then it's going to show a
green check mark. So at a glance, you can basically
compare all the browsers and see what the state of

(54:07):
browser privacy is today and over time. I'm repeatedly running
these tests every couple of weeks because browsers are working
on their privacy and things are changing over time, so
we get also a longitudinal view of what's happening to
browsers and the privacy on the web.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Yeah, it wasn't something a lot of people thought about,
and now it's kind of like front and center when
it comes to browsing the web. So what do you
think some of the biggest privacy threats are facing the
typical web surfer.

Speaker 10 (54:37):
Well, most websites that you visit are tracking you, and
they have invisible trackers embedded in them from a variety
of companies. Some of them are big tech companies, some
of them are companies that you've never heard of, but
they're tracking you around the web. They are recording every
web page you visit. Sometimes they're recording things you do

(54:58):
on each web page, super invasive. And when they record
all this data, then they're using that to build up
personal profiles of every person. They have, you know, very
complex databases that include all sorts of information about you,
often really personal information, including your interests, who you likely
voted for, who your relationships are, really almost anything you

(55:21):
can think of. They are holding that data and they're
using that their goal is to target you with advertising.
But that's a huge amount of data that's really sensitive
that nobody really agreed to have held by these companies.
And what's also quite alarming is that in the past

(55:43):
year we've heard there's been a couple of revelations about
the US government has been buying up all this data,
buying these databases, including a Defense Department and the NSA.
And so they're collecting this information indirectly through these advertising companies,
and they get all this without a warrant, And to me,
that's a very scary thing for our democracy.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Wow, that's interesting. So they're getting it kind of in
a roundabout way. If you said, if the government came
to you and said, hey, do you mind if we
track all the stuff that you do on the Internet,
you'd say absolutely not. But if Macy's is doing it
in Amazon and they're all feeding into this giant database,
and you're like, okay, well it's fine, it's just for ads,
but that information could be used in different ways exactly. Wow.

(56:26):
So what are some of your findings Which browsers I'm
looking down the list here this Brave browser. I mean,
it seems to check a lot of the boxes, but
which browsers tend to have the worst protections out of
the box and which ones seem to have the best.

Speaker 10 (56:41):
So full disclosure, I currently work for Brave. Oh okay,
but I run this website independently. I've actually built it
before I started working for Brave, and I try to
keep it absolutely objective. So if Brave is doing something wrong,
I'm going to show it on the in these results.
But I never recommend any specific browser because I'm focused

(57:02):
on just providing the impartial data. But what I would
say is that you do see some clear trends that
some browsers are making a big effort to hide a
lot of data that is leaking from from your computer,
and other other browsers are not and they really have
a long way to go to protect your privacy. So

(57:23):
no browser is perfect. There's you know, failures among all browsers,
but it's it's very clear that some are doing a
lot more than others.

Speaker 6 (57:33):
Right now.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
So I'm looking at this this little section that says
which browsers block important known tracking scripts and pixels, and
it's got Adobe, Adobe Audience Manager, Amazon app Nexus, bing
ads chart be So these all have nice names that
you know, seem friendly. Is that really what's tracking us
the most? All these little trackers, these scripts?

Speaker 10 (57:56):
Yeah, so that list of trackers is just a small
part of the actual list is many thousands of different companies.
But those are the biggest companies that track on the
most websites, and that was found by another study independent
of me called who Trackstop Me? So I took the
top twenty trackers from their list and I used that
to evaluate, Okay, our browsers walking the tracking.

Speaker 12 (58:19):
From the very most important trackers.

Speaker 10 (58:22):
And yeah, they are you know, they're companies often that
we've heard of. I mean, the biggest tracker is Google,
and you know Google is of course the search engine,
but they also build them. By far the most popular browser,
which is Chrome, and they also are involved in tracking
users on most websites you visit through a few different services,

(58:45):
and they do that to show ads and also to
provide analytics to those websites to see, you know, who's
who's visiting my website and where did they come from.

Speaker 12 (58:55):
And so on.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
So I guess my question. You know, when you think
about this privacy situation, you know we want to be
Let's say you want to just browse everything anonymously. That
might be ideal, but would the web continue to work.

Speaker 10 (59:11):
Well, it's a difficult challenge. I think the answer is basically, yes,
you can increase your privacy a lot by choosing a
browser that protects your privacy. And yeah, you can visit
most websites anonymously, but you can't do it with the
default browsers. They are going to leak your identity generally speaking.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
And I've noticed too that a lot of websites, and
I've heard that more and more websites are making you
log in so that they can know exactly who you
are before you, let's say, read an article or do
something like that, so that they have a better idea
for not only the advertising, but collecting that data.

Speaker 10 (59:49):
Yeah, that's right. And there are a couple of services
now it's becoming more popular that will allow you to
generate anonymous email addresses, so you can try to bypath
that kind of thing. But obviously that's quite a bit
more effort for people to take.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Yeah, I mean some of it's built in. I mean
to like, you know, like I really feel like Apple
is doing a nice job of kind of bringing this
stuff to the forefront and making people at least aware
of what's happening. You know, when they did that app
tracking transparency situation, I mean that really changed kind of
like a huge portion of the web and how we
were tracked, did it not?

Speaker 12 (01:00:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (01:00:25):
Absolutely? That was that was super interesting because in part
they asked users, you know, are you okay with being tracked?
And the answer was was, you know, resoundingly no, We're
not okay with it.

Speaker 12 (01:00:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
I mean, who's gonna who's gonna say yes to that answer?
I mean, I exactly every time I download an app
on an Apple device, like last night on Apple TV,
I downloaded something that was like, hey, can we track you?
And it's like, who's going to say yes to that?

Speaker 12 (01:00:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (01:00:50):
Yeah, it's kind of a funny question. But it's good
to hear the answer. It makes it a little more
solid that everybody, everybody wants privacy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
And finally, any advice, anything, any takeaways you wanna you
want to give before we have to go here about
privacy on the web.

Speaker 10 (01:01:07):
Yeah, I think you know the most important thing beyond
choosing a browser that is generally doing everything it can
to protect your privacy, is you want to pick a
VPN because your IP address is a big way that
websites and third party trackers can can follow you around
the web and collect your browsing history. So a good
browser isn't quite enough. You also need a VPN.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Interesting, all right, We're gonna leave it there. Arthur Edelstein
of Privacy tests dot org. That's the website where you
can check out the different browsers for desktops, iOS, Android
and see which ones are sharing the most information about you.
Thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 10 (01:01:46):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
All right, the website if you want to link to that.
Rich on tech dot TV phone number for the show
eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four two four one zero one. Coming up, we'll
talk about new app from Apple. We'll talk about what
Samsung's doing with their phones and much more right here
on rich On Tech. Let's go to Pam in Ventura, California. Pam,

(01:02:18):
you're on with rich Hey.

Speaker 6 (01:02:20):
Thanks for taking my call. So I have concerns about
my credit card that was compromised. I just saw and
they already shut it off from the bank. But now
I have a linked to like my Amazon account, my
you know, utilities and my I'm wondering should I what
should I do? Well, change the passwords for everything, or
just I don't even know how people get that card.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Now, Yeah, it happens, and it's it's odd because it
does happen quite often. So they got okay, they got
your credit card or debit card number. Credit card okay,
so it's a credit card number and they so, how
did you figure this out? You saw a charge or what?

Speaker 6 (01:02:56):
I checked my account probably twice a day, and I
saw a teacher and the bank called me, and then
I was skeptical about taking the call or even giving
an information, But then when they verified themselves, I verified me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Okay, well that's good. I'm glad you did that, because
we do need to be concerned about that. So the
bank called you and said hey, uh, is this a
transaction that you're trying to make?

Speaker 6 (01:03:21):
No, they said, did you make this transaction?

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
Okay, and you didn't.

Speaker 6 (01:03:26):
No. Okay, So like to one in Florida, one in
New York, and somewhere else that of Chipotele.

Speaker 13 (01:03:33):
Oh wow, I'm like, I never eat at Chipotle.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
I was going to say, someone someone's eating good.

Speaker 6 (01:03:38):
Yeah, right, but it was like five hundred and five
hundred and then twelve.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Five hundred out at Chipotle.

Speaker 6 (01:03:45):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
No, at these other places.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
I was going to say, they must have added the
guacamole on that one, right man. Okay. So I mean,
here's the thing with a credit card number one your
your number has been deactivated, so it doesn't really make
a difference at this point.

Speaker 6 (01:04:00):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
So I would say for any account that you have.
Now here's the interesting little quirk with these credit cards.
Sometimes when they when they issue a new number, if
you have let's say on Amazon or something like that,
sometimes these rely like if you have a subscription on there,
that subscription may continue to work, so it may just
follow through without you doing anything. Now, on places that

(01:04:22):
you have this card, what I would do is probably
just go ahead and delete that card. Number from that system.
But I don't think that they got anything else other
than your card number. Like I don't think you need
to like change your Amazon account or anything like that. Like,
it's just a matter of deleting this card where it's saved,
and then when you get your new card, put that
card into the account. And that's basically it.

Speaker 6 (01:04:43):
Yeah, I was pretty freaked out. I am really good
about you know too.

Speaker 10 (01:04:52):
Yeah, the two factor two factor authentic.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Yeah, well yeah, it's it seems to be a mystery
how these people get these numbers. But I will give
you a couple of tips from now on whenever possible.
And I know this seems counterintuitive, but I would add
your debit card or your card too, or your credit card,
whatever you use. I would add that to your Apple

(01:05:16):
Pay or your Google Pay, Google Wallet or Samsung Pay,
and use tap to pay as much as possible. Tap
to Pay does not share your actual credit card number.
It only shares a one time number, and so that
will really protect your number from being out there when
you are out and about. If you don't want to
do that, you always use the chip when possible. Put

(01:05:39):
the chip into the reader instead of swiping. Most of
the time. You know, when you swipe your credit card,
your actual card number is being given to that retailer,
but when you put the chip in or you use
tap to pay, they're getting a one time number that
only works for that one transaction, so they really can't
get your number of your card from there. Otherwise, if

(01:06:00):
you are shopping online, when possible, if you can use
a one time card number, if you're some of the
credit cards and debit cards allow that they give you
like a one time number, they'll generate it for you.
If not, you try to use whether it's Google pay
or Apple pay or even PayPal on these websites as
like a third party kind of payment system, so they

(01:06:21):
don't actually get your real number. Or there is a
website called privacy dot com and you can put I
believe you have to use your debit card or your
bank accounts, so you do have to have a little
bit of trust in that to give that information out,
which I rarely do. But they can generate a one
time number for you, and that's actually quite handy for

(01:06:43):
signing up for subscriptions. So for free you can generate
up to twelve cards per month. And so let me
give you an example, let's say you sign up for
a free trial of Paramount Plus and it says we'll
give you seven days free and on the eighth day
we're going to charge you. Well, you can use this
privacy dot com to generate a one time number that
they can authorize the transaction, but the number is not

(01:07:05):
going to work after that. So when Paramount goes to
charge you on that eighth day, when you forget, by
the way, because you inevitably do, that charge will not
go through and you'll get an email from Paramount saying, hey,
there's a problem with your card. We can't charge you
if you're a subscription and you go, oh, let me
delete that subscription because I really am I'm okay, I
don't need that. So privacy dot com is a good
way to do that. It's a it's kind of a

(01:07:26):
little bit of a trick, a little bit of a game,
but it's it's one of those tools to have in
your back pocket if you want to protect your information.
Thanks for the call, Pam. I know that is always
always just the worst when your number is taken and
it really is not fun. I had this happen to
me years ago. It was someone made a transaction at

(01:07:47):
like a kind of like the Walmart of Spain. I
forget it's called it Carrie for or something, and I
was like, what, I'm not in Spain right now, and
they used, you know, they made a big transaction. Long
story short, When I went to Spain, I was walking
down the street and I saw the place like the chain.
I was like, oh, that's the place where they took
my number that time. Now it was like a chain store,

(01:08:09):
so it wasn't that exact location. Now, if I was
really wild, I would go to that anyway. Samsung, let's
give you some Samsung news. Samsung couple of announcements this week.
Number one, if you have the Galaxy S twenty four,
it got a major update, So go into your settings
and update the software for the Galaxy S twenty four series,

(01:08:30):
whether you got the S twenty four, the S twenty
four Plus, or the S twenty four Ultra. Samsung was
promising this first major update. They said, yes, we listened
to user feedback. We updated the screen. So they added
a vividness slider, so if you want to make your
screen look more vivid, you can, And they did a
lot of fixes for the camera. And I told you
that there was a lot of issues with the camera.
It's a great camera, but they needed to polish it

(01:08:52):
up a little bit, and they did do that, and
I've been using the update. Seems to be better, but
I'll have to use it for a little bit to
kind of see. But if you have an S twenty
four series, definitely check your settings uh. If you want
to check your software updates, you go into UH, let's see,
I'll do this right now. Go into settings, go into
software Update, download and Install and it will be there.

(01:09:15):
So it should be there. It was there on the
first day they said it would be. Now. If you
have an older Samsung device, the S twenty three series,
S twenty three FE and one of the new foldables,
the z Fold five, the z Flip five, or even
some of their recent tablets, you are getting the new
AI features. So that will come out in a software update,

(01:09:37):
and that is coming out in March, so sometime in March.
That gives them you know, March is just around the corner,
but that gives them a whole couple of weeks here.
But you will get all of those AI features that
came to the new phone. They are coming to your phone,
so are you happy you did an upgrade, because you're
getting the upgrade anyway. Eighty to eight rich one oh
one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to

(01:09:59):
one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich on Tech, rich DeMuro. Here the website for
the show rich on Tech dot TV. I did send
out a newsletter this week, So if you want to

(01:10:19):
sign up for the newsletter, it is free. You can
go to the website rich on Tech dot TV, pop
in your email address, you'll get the newsletter, could read
the current one, and if you don't like it, you
can on subscribe. It's not like one of these things
where it's impossible you just we don't share the email
or anything, and just you just get my thoughts once
a week and you get all the stuff I talk about.

(01:10:40):
You get a link to the show, you get the
TV segments I do, uh, you know, the little websites
that I think are interesting, or the tools, whatever it is.
I'll just put it all in there. It's like basically
me talking to you the way it is here, except
in a newsletter. So rich on Tech dot TV, put
your email address in, you can get the newsletter, and
while you're at the website. You can also prese past

(01:11:00):
segments see what I do for TV, and there's just
a lot there. Let's go to Elsa in Plia del Rey, California. Elsa.
You're on with Wretch Hi Rich.

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
I would listening to the segment about the credit card
being compromised.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
Yes, So in the.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
Past month, I had two credit cards compromised. One was
a Visa Costco card which I only used to shop
at Costco or get gaffs, and that would compromise about
two days.

Speaker 9 (01:11:25):
I got word two days later.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
But my son check an account from a credit union
also got compromised, and he got a call from them saying,
you know you got compromised. Well, come to find out
it was not the credit union. So my point is
that the bank won't call you. They'll email you or
text you and tell you what's going on, but they
won't call you. The caller is that the bank called her. Yeah,
they don't do that for that reason. As you say,

(01:11:50):
you suggest get your card and call the bank directly.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
Yes, And I actually wondered about that when she said that.
I was curious because most of the time, like for me,
like what's happening, and I've traveled like all over the place,
and ninety nine percent of the time, either my card
is declined just like straight out like the other day,
my card was declined. I was using it at Target,
and my card was declined when I used it for

(01:12:14):
my phone on tap to pay. But then when I
actually put my card in as a chip, like I
took the physical card out of my wallet and put
it in, it went through no problem. Other times I'll
notice I'll get a text immediately for my bank and
they'll say, hey, was this you that just tried to
make this transaction, and it'll give the transaction and the
number and the amount and all that stuff, and you press,

(01:12:35):
you know, say why or no, or you know, you'd
reply with a Y or an N. But calling I
I'm trying to remember if I have ever gotten a call.
Maybe banks did that in the past, and maybe there
are still some banks that do that. But also, you're
absolutely right, your your red flag scam alert should go
up and say hold on, is this really my bank?

(01:12:56):
Because what they're gonna do is they're gonna say, hey,
can you confirm your card number, can you confirm your
social oh, can you confirm your data? Birth now You've
just given someone three identifying pieces of information that they
can really use against you. And by the way, in
real time as you're telling them that, they're probably using
that number instantly before it gets turned off. So good reminder, Elsa.

(01:13:17):
And have you have you had any issues since?

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
No, what I was going to say, also with the
next day, he went to the credit union and they
have wiped out his checking account. Oh yeah, So what
we ended up doing is I went to the three
credit bureaus and sproze his accounts so they couldn't open
anything new. That was the other thing we did.

Speaker 1 (01:13:35):
And did he ever get his money back from the
credit union?

Speaker 9 (01:13:38):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
Oh well that's good. Now interesting, Okay, well, I'm glad
to hear that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:43):
I think they have to. I think they have to
guarantee your phone through I think it's two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars if they are the FDIC, So you
normally do get your money back.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
Wow, it might take a while. I mean, I know
with credit card versus debit card. Debit card, it's your
money that you're trying to get back. Credit card it's
you know, you just dispute it and you got to wait.
But good advice, Elsa, thanks for calling in today. Appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
Sure it helped to listen to you Rich, So thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
Oh well, thank you. Well, look at we're teaching each
other today. It's this is like a group effort today. Yes,
all right, Elsa, have a great day. Thank you. Let's
go to Alan Alan in West La Alan. You're on with.

Speaker 4 (01:14:24):
Rich Hie Rich.

Speaker 13 (01:14:25):
Thanks for taking my call. My parents, who are seniors
ninety five and eighty eight, are about to lose their
favorite cable slash satellite channel. It's going to go streaming only.
What I don't know is I don't think all their
TV sets are smart TVs. Is there any way for
me to easily allow them to still watch those stream
channels on those TV sets? Or do we need to
buy new sets?

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
No, you don't need to buy a new set. I
think the easiest way would be a stick like a Well,
did you say they're smart TVs or not?

Speaker 13 (01:14:53):
I'm not sure if all their TVs are smart teas.
I think they have one or two smart TVs, but
the other ones, I'm not so sure.

Speaker 1 (01:14:58):
And even if they are, if this channel, is this
channel going to an app?

Speaker 13 (01:15:05):
Yeah, we're going to go it has.

Speaker 4 (01:15:06):
Well, I take it back.

Speaker 13 (01:15:07):
I think it's just gonna stream online, but I'm not positive.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
Oh well, okay, that makes a difference because if it's
just streaming online, that's gonna be trickier to get on
your TV set, especially for your parents. You said they
were how old eighty eight? Wow?

Speaker 13 (01:15:21):
Good for you, healthy, still doing well, but not exactly
tech savvy.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Yeah, well, I mean so, I because here's the thing.
If this if this uh TV channel is going to
streaming only, which is like on a website, that would
require them to go to that website and press the stream,
which would be very complicated. Now, Amazon and some other
devices do have a web browser built in, but and

(01:15:46):
you could do that, but it's not easy. I mean
it's it's definitely not something that's like simple to do.
I'm guessing that if this channel is going streaming only,
they're probably gonna come out with an app that would
be available on all the major platforms. So what I
would do is I would go on to this whatever
this channel is, and I would see where it's going

(01:16:08):
to be streaming, So are they coming out with an app?
And I would check to see what platform that app
is going to be available on there's three major streaming platforms.
You've got you got a couple, maybe more than three.
You've got Roku, you've got Fire TV, You've got Google TV,
and you've got Apple TV. Those are kind of the
main four. So I think for your parents, the easiest

(01:16:31):
is probably going to be the Fire TV stick and
that you can get for about thirty five dollars or
cheaper on Amazon. You plug it into the back of
the TV. It comes with the remote and you can
easily just install this app on there and your parents
will have it in Is this TV Japan that you're
talking about or No.

Speaker 13 (01:16:48):
That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
I was gonna say because I I remember reading an
article about this, and all of the articles, by the way,
they all the headline was like the first network to
go streaming only, and I was like, what network is this?
And so I was remembering that I read something, but
it took me a second to find it and remember.
But yeah, TV Japan, So it's okay. It says the
company's going to move its offerings to a new streaming
service called JM. It's going to cost twenty five dollars

(01:17:14):
a month before taxes. Wow. That's interesting.

Speaker 13 (01:17:17):
How much they pay for cable though, so it's basically
about the same price.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
Okay, Well, and look and if this is something they
like and something they watch, then I mean it's gonna
be just fine. But I'm looking at this to see
what it's going to say. It says to go to
watch dot JM dot TV. It doesn't give details. Oh yeah,
it's gonna be available on internet connected devices, So I
have a feeling it's going to be on all the
main platforms that you can get, you know, like the

(01:17:41):
Roku's and the firetvs and all that. So I think
the easiest way is just going to be just going
with like a fireTV stick. Roku also makes a stick
that could be easy. But the bottom line is you're
gonna have to just, you know, teach your parents once
or twice how to get and open this app. And
once you figure that out, you know, with them, it'll
be pretty pretty smooth sailing from there. Are they ready

(01:18:03):
for this? What's that?

Speaker 13 (01:18:05):
That can be even done on a non smart TV set?

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
Oh yeah, you just get as long as it has
an HDMI connector on the back, you'll just plug. You'll
plug the little it looks like they call it a dongle.
I mean it's a really it's just a small little
device that everything is all in this little tiny device
that plugs into the back of the TV. You'll just
need to plug that into HDMI and then there's one
more cable that you'll plug into a power outlet that

(01:18:30):
will latch onto Wi Fi. Now that's the question. Do
they have Wi Fi?

Speaker 7 (01:18:33):
They do?

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
Okay, So there you go, good Son, this is what happens.
I'm providing tech support for the masses. You are providing
it for the one on one family members we do weekend.

Speaker 13 (01:18:47):
Thank you so much, Rich I really appreciate.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
All right, Alan, have a great day there. Thank you
so much for calling today. Triple eight rich one on
zero one. I talked about it last week. My mom
recently switched from fire TV to the Roku and she
actually likes the Roku better. So, and here's the thing.
You know, a lot of people are not necessarily tech savvy,

(01:19:09):
but they can be taught how to do what they
need to do, especially when they're trying to access something
like streaming TV network or you know, music on a
you know, smart speaker, whatever it is, give them the instructions.
Maybe they have to write it down, but they will
figure it out. And just check in with them once
in a while. Some people are too embarrassed to say
that they can't figure it out, and they'll go like

(01:19:30):
six weeks without watching TV. Literally just ask, just say, hey,
is everything okay with your streaming setup? Is everything working?
And they might say, now, I haven't gotten into work
for two weeks. Now, well give me a call. Just
let them know that, not me, but you if you're
helping them, but they can call me too. If you're
into sports, Apple has a new sports app called Apple Sports.

(01:19:51):
This is a free iPhone app that provides real time
score stats and more. It's very very easy to use.
You download it for the iPhone. It is free. It's
available now. It supports a bunch of leagues MLS and
NBA college basketball, NHL, a bunch of international leagues. The
first question I got from all the people that saw

(01:20:13):
this app when I announced that they came out with
this this week, they said, rich, where's football? Where's hockey?
I said, don't worry, it's going to come in time
for the season. So when you look at this app.
It is very simple to use. You choose your favorite
sports teams. It says yesterday, today, and tomorrow or upcoming,
and it just shows you when your teams are playing,

(01:20:36):
what time. It gives you all the stats you need.
It gives you the final scores, give you the live scores.
There is one controversial feature, or I guess I should
say somewhat controversial, but it does have live betting odds,
and some people were taken aback and said, there's no
way that Steve Jobs were to put this in an
Apple app. We don't know. But you can turn off
the betting odds in the setting, So if you are

(01:20:59):
don't want that to show up, go ahead, you can
turn that off now. Because I saw this on the iPhone,
it's so easy to use, I was looking on Android
to see if there is something similar, and there are
many apps that you can get sports scores from. I
think one of the biggest is Yahoo Sports. You can
install that, pick your favorite teams. It will show you
all those, but so will Google. If you just type

(01:21:20):
in sports on Google, it will give you all of
your favorite sports teams, and if you're in the Google app,
it will give you a link a shortcut that you
can then put on your homepage. And for me, I've
got my favorite teams and it does basically the same thing.
And I think one thing that Google does really well
when you look up a game is it gives you

(01:21:41):
where it's playing. So, for instance, tonight, there will be
a game that I'm watching it says TV and streaming,
and so I just tap there and I could see
exactly where it's streaming, which is ESPN and Fubo. So
I feel like Google does a really good job of this.
Of course, it's Google Apple. It's just simple. It's on
your phone, it's in an app. But it's kind of
cool that they came out with this because when they

(01:22:03):
met with me to tell me about it, which you know,
the way Apple works, they say, hey, Rich, we'd love
to meet with you. What about we can't tell you?
So I drive over there, I get into this room
and they have all, you know, their big executives sitting
there just talking sports. I'm like, who talks sports at Apple?
And so it was all to kind of set me
up for the fact that they were setting up this
sports app, and I was like, good thing. I just

(01:22:25):
started watching some sports with my kids. Because I kind
of was able to hold my own most of the time.
I'm just talking technology, but I know a little bit
about sports here and there. But anyway, Apple Sports is
the app. If you want to link to it, go
to the website. Rich On Tech dot TV. All right,
coming up, I told you the good about Apple. I'm
gonna tell you the bad. I told you I have
a bone to pick with Apple about I Message. I'll
tell you about that coming up, plus more of your calls,

(01:22:47):
your messages, and we've got an interview coming up about
AI crimes. You are listening to rich on Tech told
you have a bone to pick with Apple, and first
I'll tell you the good, then I'll tell you the bad.
So first off, Apple is making I Message even more secure.

(01:23:09):
They're launching post quantum encryption in I message through some
updates on iOS and mac os. And what is post
quantum encryption, you ask, Well, here's the answer. It's algorithms
that will protect against potential future attacks from quantum computers.
So quantum computers they're expecting to be so powerful that

(01:23:32):
they could crack current encryption methods. So we have a
form of encryption right now that is pretty good. But
the computers in the future that are going to be
so high powered they could potentially crack this encryption that
we already have. So that's coming to I Message, which
means that you know, Apple has been on this march

(01:23:52):
with their phones to make them very privacy centric, and
I do like that. I do appreciate that about Apple.
I think they've pushed the envelope in so many ways,
whether it is Safari, which is not really taken off
in a big way on the desktop, but on iPhone
that's the default, and it is a more private web
browser when you look at you know, you look at
those privacy tests that I was looking at earlier, and

(01:24:14):
there's just so many things that these browsers are getting
access to, not to mention, you know, things even like
your microphone and camera. So if the web browser is
not doing a good job protecting you from cookies and
all that stuff, you know, it could be a problem.
And you know, these marketers love it, but there could
also be more security issues there too, So I'm glad
that I Message is becoming more secure. I think that

(01:24:36):
messaging in general is a mess. There are ten thousand
different ways to message people, and that is not a
good thing. It's it's I mean, it's a good thing
that there's choice, but it's a bad thing that and
this is my bone to pick with Apple. I Message
has become such a force in the messaging industry. Right
every single person that has an iPhone has I Message.

(01:24:57):
It is pretty much turned on by default, and it's
an amazing thing. It makes your messages secure. It's end
to end encrypted from iPhone to iPhone. It lets you
send big pictures back in the day when you couldn't
send full resolution across SMS, full videos, lets you do
as little tap back things. That is all really nice.

(01:25:18):
The bad part is about I Message is that they
have made I Message such a proprietary thing for Apple
and the Apple ecosystem that when people that are outside
try to text an iPhone, people with iPhones snub their
nose and they really give these people a hard time.
And I was hearing a story the other day of
how this happens in the real world at high schools,

(01:25:41):
and we've heard the stories. I've actually talked to students
before how they will say with no problem that they
feel that people that haven't Android are lesser than the
people with an iPhone. And this happens across America. Blue
bubble versus Green bubble. We've heard of this before, and
so it's really heartbreaking to me when I hear of
actual stories of students being ostracized in their schools by

(01:26:05):
other students because they don't have an iPhone. There is
no reason why you need to have an iPhone. Android
is just fine. It used to be people thought they
were cheaper. They weren't as good. People say, oh, are
you going to get an iPhone so you can actually
text me properly. Let's not forget about the fact that
Apple has made I Message incompatible with other platforms out there.

(01:26:27):
Apple tomorrow could come out with an I message app
that works on Android or works on Windows computers. That
would immediately be the number one messaging app in America
and it would work across all things. People on Android
did pay ninety nine cents a month for access to
that maybe more. Apple don't do this. I asked people
on my Instagram. I said, hey, have you ever heard

(01:26:49):
of anything like this? One person said, it's awful. High
school teacher here, They purposely leave kids out when they
don't have an iPhone. Another person said it happens with adults.
I'm not surprised, it's so sad. Someone else said, that's absurd,
not unexpected. Kids can be terrible. An adult said, I've
been excluded from my entire first grade parent group because

(01:27:10):
I have an Android, so mature. Another person said, I
get that as an adult. Bullies will always be bullies
must be kids that don't have Snapchat, because that's the
only way kids communicate. That is true. You're listening to
Rich on Tech. Joining me now is Neil O'Farrell, founder

(01:27:33):
of the Center for AI Crime. He's been looking into
ways AI is accelerating all kinds of scams and frauds. Neil,
thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 12 (01:27:44):
Hey, great to be rich.

Speaker 1 (01:27:45):
Let's explain first off, what the Center for AI Crime is.
What's that all about.

Speaker 12 (01:27:51):
Yeah, this is the thing that messed up my retirement.
So I've been in cybersecurity and fought for forty years
and decided i'd retire a couple of years ago, and
then AI and chat GPT came along, and suddenly it
looked like fraud was going to just turn into an
entirely different beast. So I thought I would found this
to try and focus people's attention on what I think

(01:28:13):
is a coming info and crime epidemic.

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
Why do you think that? What do you think AI
is going to do for the threats we already experience.

Speaker 12 (01:28:24):
I think it's going to mean more criminals, more crimes,
and more victims. And I call it SAP, SAP scalability,
accuracy and plausibility. It's going to scale crimes at a
level we've never seen before. The accuracy accuracy will be
almost pinpoint, and the plausibility of the attacks will be
so hard to detect from from the real things. They

(01:28:47):
will claim more.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
Victims, So the accuracy part. So one of the big
telltale signs of some sort of like phishing scam is
misspellings and you know, a poor use of English. So
you're saying with AI that stuff is going to be
a thing of the past.

Speaker 12 (01:29:01):
Oh, absolutely, it already is. I mean, in the twelve
months after the arrival of chat GBT, phishing emails searched
about close to thirteen hundred percent. But more than that,
the quality was incredible. So the English is perfect, the
grammar is perfect. If you don't speak English, whatever language
you speak or they expect you to speak, will be perfect.

(01:29:25):
It will it will have so few of the giveaway
tell tales that we knew from before. And if it
mixes in good social engineering, like with spearfishing, so it
sounds familiar, it mentions something about your family, or your job,
or your social connections, it's going to be very easy
to draw you in.

Speaker 1 (01:29:43):
Okay, so spear phishing, I mean, what types of AI
scams do you think will be the biggest threat to
consumers over the next couple of years?

Speaker 12 (01:29:51):
Gosh, I mean, so we look, we look at at
how AI is changing crime, and so far we've come
up with more than twenty one different ways. So it's
going to to touch everything. It's going to accelerate bang fraud,
check fraud. You'll be able to print your own checks
that will be indistinguishable from the real thing. AI has
proven itself already capable of forging drivers, licenses, utility bills,

(01:30:16):
PERSH certificates so well that even government biometric systems can
tell the difference.

Speaker 1 (01:30:21):
Oh wow, we talked about that. By the way, there's
like a you know, it used to be when you
wanted a fake ID, people you know, you get one
when you're you know, under twenty one or whatever. Some
people would you know, you'd go somewhere and it would
look horrible. Now, we saw online a report the other
day that you know, they could generate these things in
seconds online and use them for online verification systems.

Speaker 12 (01:30:42):
Yeah, and for no more than fifteen bucks. And that
was the first version. You know, once competition kicks in,
it could be five books, it could be fifty cents.
Who knows. So everywhere you look at crime AI has
got a sticky little fingers already.

Speaker 1 (01:30:56):
So you mentioned this spear phishing attack, So this is
and this is where it all comes into play. The
information that's available about you online. You know, when there's
a data breach and you're let's say your social or
your address, like, there's so much there's a whole picture
of people available online. The spearfishing will use some of
that data to kind of target you specifically explain that.

Speaker 12 (01:31:17):
Yeah. So I remember having a conversation with a pretty
notorious identity thief a while ago, and I said, look,
there are hundreds of millions of our stolen personal files
on the internet, right, he said, absolutely, five times of
many humans, five times as many data records as there
are humans. And so why haven't we all been victim
of identity theft many times over, and he said, simply,

(01:31:39):
there aren't enough identity theves that thieves don't have the
time to get to all this data and make use
of it. AI is now changing that. So if I
want to mass market spear phishing emails, AI can be
used to pick out all the pieces of information about
you specifically or your family and craft that into the

(01:32:01):
phishing email so that the language is right, the cues,
the comfort cues, the social engineering feels right. It will
pick up on something in your past, your favorite teacher,
your first power, your first dog, and that makes the
spear phishing email or phone call or text message so
much more believable. You'll drop your guard for that precious moment.

Speaker 1 (01:32:24):
So what are some of the other ways you identify
that we're going to be hit with this stuff?

Speaker 12 (01:32:30):
I think senior scams are going to soar and again
because of the plausibility. I mean, if you think about it,
half of the phone scams that you that we see
today come from one city in India and it's near
the Bangladesh border. The the the accents are very distinct,

(01:32:50):
the way of speaking is very distinctive. You've heard these
calls every sentence begins with the word sir, which is
not typical of how you would speak in America. AI
will change all that, and that the recipient will will
get a phone call from someone with an accent identical
to theirs. We'll talk about the weather, we'll talk about
what their favorite team has to be doing at that time.

(01:33:13):
And for seniors who are a little bit more trusting,
who maybe are a little bit lonely or a little
bit bored, they're much more likely to be drawn into that.
And that romance scam can morph into an investment scam
and all kinds of things. So and that's part of
the problem too. We will see these combo scams right

(01:33:34):
where once they have the hook in, it might start
as a romance scam and send me money because you
care for me. Then as the trust is built, is well,
instead of sending me money, let's make money together so
I don't have to depend on you. And then finally
when they shut it down and say I have no
more money. As well, remember those racy photos that you
said of me, send me more money or everyone sees

(01:33:55):
those again. AI is capable of mixing and matching all
different attacks into the one.

Speaker 1 (01:34:02):
So at the end of the day, Are we Is
it hopeless for humans?

Speaker 12 (01:34:09):
You know what? I don't. I've never been this stumped.
I really haven't. And and this is just it's just
a little over a year since the arrival of chet GPT,
so we've all we're only were this is only the
tip of the iceberg, and yet we're seeing and so
many of the experts I talked to say they're stumped
as well. But we're no, we're not helpless. Obviously, we

(01:34:30):
should be doing everything we've been screaming about for years.
You know, shields up, be smart about passwords, be smart
about what you click on. Use multi factor authentication absolutely
everywhere it's offered, freeze your credit, all those things. Do them?
Do them now? Do them often. You've also got to
be skeptical and vigilant. But also the best defense is

(01:34:53):
the context. It's not who you think is asking you
to do something, it's what they're asking you to do,
and that's the Does that sound normal? You know that?
Does that person that you just met really do you
really believe they've fallen so head over heels in love
with you that they want you to send money for
a ticket to bring the family over if that, you know,

(01:35:14):
crypto investment scheme is so good, Why is this stranger
offering to bring you in on it? You know, since
when does your local police department accept zell Or a
gift card to pay a fine to make it go away.

Speaker 1 (01:35:29):
We just had that. We just had that story at
the TV station I work at. They you know, I'm
sure it's happening in other places, but you know, in
southern California, they they had, you know, the law enforcement
quote unquote was calling businesses and saying, hey, we got
a warrant for you. You gotta come and you gotta
pay this, but don't come to the station. Just pay
us via you know bitcoiner. I mean, that sense a
red flag to me. But clearly it must work if

(01:35:51):
they're trying this.

Speaker 12 (01:35:53):
Yeah, and again it's the social engineering part of it.
It's fear and panic, and they're they they they're they're
topping into the understandable human nature. Well, it's it's it's
it's from law enforcement. It's quote it sounds legitimate. I
really need to take take care of it first and
investigate it afterwards. And you have to flip that. It's
let me take a deep breath, let me just hang

(01:36:15):
up and verify this some other way. And that is
by far. I mean I always say that the most
powerful crime fighting technology of them all is wedged right
between your ears. Just switch the thing on.

Speaker 1 (01:36:28):
I get sad about this, though, when you tell me
that we have to be so skeptical, because I am
very skeptical of everything. Like my ask my kids, they
will I don't believe anyone. I don't believe anything. I've
got a girl scout that comes to my door selling cookies,
and I'm wondering what the scam is now getting. But
we need to be you know, you've got to be
aware of this stuff. And you know I talk about
it all the time, so I hear about it. But

(01:36:50):
the reality is what you just said is that sometimes
they catch you and it's something that's quick. It's something
that's hasty. And of course we've all heard haste makes waste.
That is very true when it comes to these scams
as well. People are just acting very quickly, and then
when you think about it, you're like, wait a second.
You saw that article with the woman the scammed out
of the fifty thousand dollars the financial columnist, I mean

(01:37:12):
that was a wild story, and every second of the
way you're like, how would someone fall for this? But
yet she did. All right, Neil, we're gonna leave it there.
I love this list that you came up with on
your website, the website Center for AI Crime dot org.
You've got twenty different ways that AI is going or
more than twenty actually that AI is accelerating all kinds

(01:37:34):
of scams and frauds. So thanks so much for joining
me today, Neil.

Speaker 12 (01:37:38):
Thanks ch appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:39):
All right again, website Center for AI crime dot org.
Educate yourself, Educate yourself, educate your friends and family. I'll
put the link on the website. Rich on Tech dot TV,
all right, coming up, we'll have a couple more stories.
Here'll tell you about the Facebook funeral scams and we'll
do the feedback segment you are listening to on tech

(01:38:06):
Have you heard about this latest scam? We were just
talking scams four or four media reporting. Facebook funeral scams
are now a thing. Scammers create fake Facebook accounts announcing
funeral live streams for recently deceased people. They use real
names and photos from legitimate funeral announcements, and when you
go there to watch the funeral, it asks you to

(01:38:28):
put in credit card information to watch the live stream,
and this is when they steal your financial data. So
obviously these scams prey on grieving friends and family when
of course they are emotionally vulnerable, and it causes a
lot of stress and confusion because people are wondering what's
happening here. Facebook has a policy that says this violates

(01:38:52):
the policy, but four or four Media found dozens of
active scam funeral live stream pages on the platform. By
the way, this also happens with sports and music events.
I actually heard about this with sports events like Little
League sports, I think, where you try to watch your kids'
sports on Facebook and they try to get you to
do this as well. So again one more thing to
be concerned with. Apple this week says putting your wet

(01:39:16):
iPhone in rice to dry it out is not a
good idea. Remember all the years we've heard how great
rice is for drying out your phone, and once you're
done drying out your phone, you can cook up the
rice and eat it. It's like a two and one.
Not yet, don't want to do that. But Apple now
officially advises against using rice to dry out a wet iPhone.

(01:39:37):
Why because rice particles can get into the charging port
and damage the phone. I've talked about this before. It
is Apple's goal to get rid of every single port
on the phone. They are down to just one, that
charging port. It will be gone. One of these days.
We will not have any sort of port. Remember when
you first got a phone, it had, you know, a
simcard slot, It had a earphone, you know, a headphone.

(01:40:00):
It had you know, the cable connector at the bottom
which was huge speaker grill, all that stuff. They want
to get rid of everything. So that's happening, but not
just yet. The last one is the port. Anyway, So
how do you dry out your phone? Tap the phone
gently against your hand to remove excess liquid. So point
the port down and then tap it. Get rid of

(01:40:21):
that excess liquid. Let the phone dry out for half
an hour. Plug it in. If you see a message
on your phone that says the charging port is wet,
take the plug back out. Let it dry out for
up to twenty four hours. Try again. Do not use
a hair dryer, Do not use a can of air.
Do not use a cotton swab or a paper towel
to dry the iPhone. You know, newer iPhones and pretty

(01:40:45):
much every smartphone is water resistant. They're not water proof,
and liquid damage can still occur. You just need to
make sure that you're drying this thing out if it
does get wet. But these are not underwater cameras. Let's
be real here, these things are not underwater cameras. All right, now,
time for the feedbacks feedback segment. These are the emails,

(01:41:05):
the comments, and the questions I get from you. If
you want to submit yours, go to Rich on tech
dot TV hit contact. We got a bunch about the
whole credit card situation here. While Anett writes in about
the I message I teach at the high school level,
kids bully for everything, not just iPhones. All the anti
bullying rhetoric does nothing. It's so difficult to be around

(01:41:27):
them as everything is driven by social media and what
others think about them. They are so addicted to their
phones and that's all they think about constantly, and they
cannot stop a net. I am not at a school,
but I agree and I hear it from my kids.
It is insane. The level of influence social media has

(01:41:49):
on children today absolutely insane. The stuff they do, the
things they do, the things they want the things, they'll
try the challenges. Everything is driven by social media. Now,
when I was a kid, we had the same pressures.
Believe me, I bought Zeke Cavalrici's. When I was a kid,
I had to have the parachute pants. But it was

(01:42:10):
a different way. It was his mainstream media that really
led the way. And so it was MTV and all
these things, and you watch the cool kids on there
and you want to what they had. Now it's anyone
that has a TikTok account that could influence your kids,
whether what they're saying is true or not. Bosmo says,
great bumper tunes today, Adam, look at that producer, Adam

(01:42:32):
playing some good tunes. They say. They agree with the caller.
That appreciates your tone and patience. We are learning together,
he mentions another radio person. They're not about patients, but
that's why we listen to them. Keep up the good work.
Let's see. PJ says about stolen credit card numbers. My
credit card issuers send an email notification for every transaction. Wow,

(01:42:53):
really that might get annoying. I check every notice. Twice.
I've had the number used fraudulently and have had to
get a new card. In one case, I was able
to stop the thief from getting their merchandise. Strongly suggests
not using a debit card for any type of purchase.
PJ the debit card. I love debit cards, and I
actually use my debit card by default. And I actually,

(01:43:14):
now that I think about it, I do have a
notification on my phone. Every time I use my debit card,
I get a notification from my bank that tells me
about the transaction. Percent of the time it's someone in
my house ordering something off Amazon. I'm like, now, what's
that for. But I do like debit cards because I
like to know the whole not going into debt thing.
But I get it. Credit card definitely feels like it

(01:43:36):
protects you more, for sure, Vicky says, listening to Today's
show and calls on identities of cards. In the past
ten days, I've had four credit cards opened in my name,
not only in my name, but in my social Security number.
I was notified by a credit monitoring service about hard inquiries,
and my credit scores started falling. I've spent over thirty
hours so far notifying the credit bureaus, calling the credit

(01:43:58):
card companies, reporting to the FTC and reporting to my
local sheriff and Social Security administration. I've had card theft
identity several times, so that was easy to fix. My
social Security number is a different matter. I've asked for freezes.
I got a new inquiry last night. Oh thanks, Vicky, Ah, Vicky.
I know this is the tough part. Once the information's

(01:44:18):
out there, it's really tough to recall it, and that
is a struggle for sure. And Shelby says, someone with
an older TV can buy you a smart DVD player.
The DVD player will be able to stream the channels.
The DVD basically turns the TV into a smart TV.
Don't be needing to use a DVD for it to work? Yes,
but I don't think the app will be on this

(01:44:39):
smart DVD player for sure. I don't. I don't really
think it would be there. So I think the the
fire sticks probably gonna be better. And finally, let's see here,
I had one more here. Rich sounds like you have
a great topic outdoor TVs. Oh well, we'll save that
for next week. But they say they use an now TV.

(01:45:00):
No problem, all right, if you can believe it, that's
gonna do it. For this episode of the show. You
can find links on the website richon Tech dot TV.
Find me there at richon Tech next week how AI
is being used to fight food allergies. Thanks so much
for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here
with me.

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