Siri Settlement, $60 Fitness Tracker & WiFi Password Worries

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Is your iPhone spying on you? We'll dive into Apple's
evesdropping settlement. Plus, Samsung's got a new fitness tracker that
won't break the bank. And I'll explain the connection between
Turo and two recent attacks. It's all happening right here,
right now on rich on Tech. What's going on? I'm
rich Dmiro and this is the show where we make

(00:22):
tech interesting, useful and fun. Got a burning tech question?
Need some expert advice. The lines are now open for
the first time in twenty twenty five. Dial up eight
eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four to one zero one, or

(00:42):
you can go to the website rich on Tech dot
tv and hit contact guests. This week, got a lot
of great guests to kick off the new year. Kaiitwan
Move from All Trails is gonna share expert tips on
exploring the outdoors with one of my new favorite apps.
Then later we've got professional photographer Christa Kowalchek. She's going

(01:05):
to share how to preserve and organize both your digital
and print photos. And later on Gerald Cassulis from nord
VPN war REVIALE twenty twenty five's top cyber threats, the
stuff to watch out for, from dark web dangers to
AI driven scams. Well, I hope you had a great

(01:29):
holiday season. It is the new year. Happy twenty twenty five.
This is the first show of the new year. Very
happy to be back in this seat talking with you.
Got some good time off. In fact, towards the end,
I was like, I'm ready to get back. I am
ready to get back to work. You know, as much
as I love my family and I love the time off,

(01:50):
I always feel like I'm unemployed after a certain amount
of time. Like it literally it's like, wait, do I
still have a job? Does my email still work? I
wondered if my card would still swipe when I went
into the studio because I just wondered if it still
everything was still working, But it is. We got a
nice quick trip into Sedona, Arizona, over the break. If
you have not been, I highly recommend it. It is

(02:13):
a I know from LA. It's a nice drive, probably
about eight hours or so. That's what we did. I
love road trips.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
My wife was kind of fighting the road trips. You
don't want to go that far. I said, let's just try.
It'll be great. Kids loved it. You know, road trips
are so much more comfortable now than they were back
in the day. Right, like when I was driving with
my parents, Think about the cars that we were in
compared to today today's cars are. They're comfortable, they're quiet.

(02:40):
You know, you've got all the endless entertainment you could
ever imagine at your fingertips. All right, the big story
of this week, Apple has agreed to pay ninety five
million dollars to settle a class action lawsuit alleging that
Siri violated users privacy. Now, this has been percolating for

(03:02):
a while since twenty nineteen. A lot has changed since then,
but Apple finally decided to say, you know what, we're
gonna stop fighting this. We're just gonna settle it. And
as you might expect, ninety five million dollars is not
a lot of money when it comes to Apple's monopoly money.
I mean, this is a company that made fifteen billion
dollars in the last quarter. So this is just, you know,

(03:24):
a gnat that they're swatting away. But there are some
lessons to be learned from this. So here's what happened.
The lawsuit claimed that Siri was evesdropping on conversations and
sharing those recordings with third parties. Now, I think the
term evesdropping is very sexy for this lawsuit. I think
that it gets a lot of people's attentions, but that

(03:44):
shows intention of Apple to listen, and I don't think
that that was Apple's intention. Did it happen? Absolutely? Does
it happen all the time.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah. If you have one of these voice assistants, whether
it's Siri, whether it's Alexa, whether it's Google, a speaker,
a watch, a phone, how many times have you have
you been talking to someone and all of a sudden
your voice assistant chimes in and it gives you an answer,
or it says I don't know what you're talking about,
or here's what you're talking about, or I don't have

(04:15):
an opinion on that or whatever, and you're surprised and
you go, ah, okay, you were listening. Now these things
are listening, but the way that they're listening is typically
local for that hot word, that keyword, and then if
it thinks it has that keyword identified, it will then
send what it hears after that to the server to
figure out what you're trying to do, Whether it's asking

(04:36):
for the weather, whether it's asking for information, a question,
whatever it is. Now. Back in the day and Apple
and a lot of these companies still do this, you know,
shared recordings with third parties for quality control. So the
idea behind this lawsuit was that not only was Siri
triggering without these users knowing, but then the information contained

(04:58):
in those recordings was with third parties. And so most
of the time those third parties were there to sort
of quality control and see, Okay, here's what the person said.
Do we get their answer right, did we get the
hot word right? Whatever. You know, they're trying to make
sure that these systems are working and they're trying to
make them better. Now, typically this was probably in the
user's you know, terms and conditions that said, hey, if

(05:21):
you're going to use Google Assistant, if you're going to
use Siri, if you're going to use Alexa, you agree
to this happening. And I think people since twenty nineteen
a lot has changed. Like I said, we've gotten more
hip to these privacy controls, and so since then a
lot of these companies have given us more control and
more choices over these assistants. When we first set up
our devices, it's not perfect, but it's it's better than

(05:43):
it was now. The original lawsuit and you'll probably hear
about this as well, also claim that Apple shared recordings
of what these people were saying with advertisers, and they
mentioned a whole bunch of ads that popped up in
their news feed after they talked about things in front
of their phone. But I don't think this was fully
substantiated in the lawsuit. I don't think it made it
to the final settlement because Apple has been very very

(06:07):
clear about how they share user data and the user
privacy that they keep in mind with almost every product
that they make, and I just don't see Apple sharing
what we're talking about with advertisers.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Now.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
I know casual conversations. Everyone believes this is happening, but
you know, I think the perpetrator there would most likely
be Facebook and Instagram if that was happening, which, by
the way, think about the billions and billions of conversations
that are happening in phones in front of phones on
a daily basis, It would be quite the undertaking to

(06:39):
scan all of those conversations for keywords and to show
up ads for those things. I'm not saying it doesn't happen.
Believe me, I've talked about stuff in front of a
friend or family member and all of a sudden that
ad shows up in my news feed. It's happened to
all of us. Facebook, of course, says they have certain
ways of making that happen. It's all magic, based on
things that you search, and your phones close to each

(07:00):
other and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, so
Apple settle settling this means that they're not admitting any wrongdoing.
They just want this to go away. What are you
going to get? Individuals will likely get up to twenty
dollars per device that they had activated since twenty nineteen,
so it might have been even earlier than that. This

(07:21):
was a large swath of time. But it's a maximum
of five devices, so even if you upgraded your phone
a couple of times, the most you can get as
one hundred dollars. And most likely you're gonna have to
say that, yes, Siri was accidentally enabled on my device.
I attest to that, and I want my money. And
the final settlement is slated for February fourteenth with the judge,

(07:42):
so we're not gonna have anything until, you know, later
this year. And then of course you have the time
period where you have to submit your claim or you know,
get yourself out of the class action all that good stuff.
So it's not gonna happen overnight, but just something to
keep your mind on now. I think that this case
really highlights the import of understanding privacy settings on your
devices and the terms and conditions whenever you set up

(08:05):
a device. Ninety nine percent of the time, the selections
that are sort of pre selected are going to be
in the company's best interest, not yours. Right, they want
the most that they can get out of you because
they're collecting as much data as possible to make their
products better and of course make money off of what

(08:25):
you do. And so there are a couple things you
can do to you know, improve your privacy. Number one,
on the iPhone, you can turn off this entire area
where you're improving Siri and dictation with your interaction. So
if you go into your settings Privacy and Security, then
Analytics and Improvements, that's where you can say turn off

(08:46):
Siri and Dictation. The other thing you can do is
also flip your phone over. If you don't want your
iPhone listening to you, just flip it over and so
if it's screened down, Siri will not be listening. Go
ahead and try it, say Hey s with your phone
face up, it'll spring to action. Flip your phone over,
it will not spring to action. So that's another way
to do it. Now. On Android, there is a way

(09:10):
to sort of manage your voice and audio activity. So
if you go into your settings, you tap on Google,
You've got your name and an email address at the top.
You can go into Manage your Google Account, Data and Privacy,
scroll down to history, tap Web and app activity, and
then you can uncheck the box next to include voice
and audio activity. Yeah, they don't make this stuff very

(09:32):
easy to find. Alexa same thing. You can go into
your Alexa app and delete your existing voice recordings, or
you can prevent Alexa from saving your future voice recordings
and using what you say and interact to help improve
the service. There's also a setting on Android which is
quite handy. They don't have the same sort of flip

(09:52):
over to disable Hey Google, but there is a setting
on there where you can toggle the mic off globally,
which is really handy. So if you don't want your
phone listening, you don't want the microphone on at all.
You can go into your quick settings up at the top,
and there is one that you can add for your microphone.
So right now I have microphone access toggled off, which

(10:13):
means my phone will not listen to me in any way,
shape or form while that is off. And that means
you can go ahead and try it, try voice typing,
whatever you want, it will not listen.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Now.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
I know those directions were a lot, so I put
them all on the website rich on Tech dot TV.
Just go there right at the top. It says how
to stop your devices from evesdropping, and I've got all
the instructions right there. Also put it on the show
notes as well. All right, eight a eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
to one zero one. Coming up, we'll talk about Turrow

(10:46):
and your questions right after this. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking
technology at triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Let's take our first call from riverside. Joe, You're on
with Rich.

Speaker 4 (11:07):
Hey, Rich, how are you doing.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
I'm doing fantastic. What's up?

Speaker 4 (11:12):
So I've been trying to find information on LG's M
four O lead TV and I can't as far as
what I've researched. It was supposedly supposed to come out
in the middle of twenty twenty four, and I can't
find any one, whether it's Costco, best Buy, anybody in

(11:33):
the States selling the M four. So I was wondering
if you have any information on that.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
Interesting. So this is a four case let's see with
wireless video and audio transfer, ninety seven inch TV.

Speaker 4 (11:48):
I'm looking at the eighty three inch.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Play you're looking at three? Oh, just eighty three Huh yeah,
I don't.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
I don't have you know, forty fifty thousand dollars for
one hundred thousand for TV.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yes, I was gonna say, so these are I mean,
this is a very expensive model. I mean I'm looking
at the one, so I guess it's launched in other countries.
So this one looks like it was launched in Hong Kong,
the one that I'm looking at. So the thing about
LG is that, Okay, So let's see. So it's supposedly

(12:21):
going to be launched globally. This is the latest article
I could find. It's going to be launched globally on
July first. That clearly didn't happen. Huh. Yeah, Now, they
did just launch this transparent TV here in the States,
which is that was like sixty thousand dollars. So was
the M Was the M three here or no.

Speaker 4 (12:43):
I've seen I've seen the M three available. I think
it was being resold like by just a reseller on
like Walmart dot com or something.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
Okay, Yeah, that's interesting. Uh, I mean, I guess my
I guess the main answer to this is I don't
know when this is coming out to the US. But
the other answer is CES is happening this week, And
so I guess I will check for this over in
Las Vegas when I visit the LG booth and see
what they say about it. Maybe I think that what

(13:14):
aspect of this TV is appealing to you, the wireless aspect.

Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah, So from my research, I'm guessing the G four
and the M four are essentially the same TV. It's
just the M four has the wireless HDMI connectivity, which
that sounds extremely appealing to me.

Speaker 5 (13:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
No, they've been they've been touting the wireless box, which
you know you can plug, So basically the wireless boxes
where you can plug everything in to the box, which
can sit in a corner or a closet or whatever
you need away from the TV, and then you can
have the TV somewhere else and it will beam that,
you know, data to the TV wirelessly. You still have
to plug in the TV, but that's the main thing. Okay.

(13:57):
So what I'll do is I will note this and
I will with them and see what they say about
this TV. I mean, there's so many models that are
available that.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
I feel like I'm probably gonna end up going with
the G four. But it's just like, man, like all
my research was saying, like this should have already been out,
and it's like nobody's carrying it, Like what the heck
is going on?

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah? That is, that's It's interesting. But I mean, you know,
sometimes these TVs are very similar. They might just have
different model numbers in different states or different countries. Rather,
I think with this one, it seems like because I'm
looking at this the rollout of the twenty twenty four
O led EVO TV lineup. This was in February, right
after CS obviously last year. But let's see what they

(14:42):
do this year. Let's see what they do for cs.
I have a feeling that you're going to see more
of that wireless connectivity on more TVs. I think LG
was sort of like the first that really pushed that.
I remember them showing us that, and I think more
companies maybe will have that this year, so it'll probably
be standard in a couple years.

Speaker 4 (15:00):
Right, Yeah, that's that's kind of my guess.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
So what's the G four go for?

Speaker 4 (15:06):
So during Black Friday, I was looking at the G
four and it was it was five thousand dollars at
Costco and it came with UH install free installation as well.
If you check Costco's website right now, it's at fifty
four ninety nine. Okay, so you were getting like a

(15:29):
five hundred dollars discount. But that's really not a big
deal to me. It's neither here nor there when you're
when you're talking about spending this kind of money on
a TV. But I was just like, I want to
see I want to see the price point on the
m for you know, and see if it makes sense
to get that wireless or if it just makes more

(15:50):
sense for me to fish my HDMI cables through the
back of the drywall, which is not terribly hard.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
No, I mean I've I've not done it myself, but
I've seen the installer do it at my place a
couple of times, and they do it in seconds, so clearly,
I mean, and I show he showed me how he
did it. I was like, Oh, that's pretty cool. It's
like this little I don't know, it's like a cable
with a magnet, I don't know, whatever it was. It
was pretty simple. And I mean to him, not to me,
But you know, if you know what you're doing, you
can do it all right, Joe. I will make a

(16:18):
note of it to check at CES this year. Thanks
for the call, appreciate.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
It, Thank you, have a great day.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Eight eight eight rich one o one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Uh before
we go to break here, Uh, you know, I was
thinking about this over the holidays, the Amazon error. You know,
we we all get these gifts from Amazon, and we
literally had this this situation where I feel like the

(16:44):
gift giving world has changed because of Amazon. So now
I don't know if this happens with you, but people
are like, oh, what do you want for the holidays
for your kids? And literally you send your loved ones
a list of stuff and they just ship it to
your house. And we were getting boxes. We're like, who's
this from? Had like, no, noe, no nothing. It's like,
is that really the meaning of gift giving? All right?

(17:05):
Coming up, we're gonna talk about one of my new
favorite apps. It's called All Trails. I'll explain coming up
right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking
technology at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
The website for the show richon Tech dot TV. If

(17:27):
you've got a Samsung phone, Samsung is releasing a very
inexpensive fitness tracker, the Galaxy Fit three. It will be
available in the US on January ninth. This thing is
just sixty dollars, so it looks like a smart watch.
If you've been wanting to get on that smart watch
fitness tracker sort of thing, but you didn't want to

(17:49):
spend two three hundred dollars for something. This is a
great deal at this price. So it's got a small touchscreen, monitors,
obviously over one hundred workout types, running, swimming, cycling, tracks
your sleep, you're snoring, blood, oxygen, heart rate, even your stress.
May not want to check that one when you're at work.
Up to thirteen days of battery life if you've got

(18:12):
the display sort of like turned off. If you have
it always on, you're gonna get like three days. Like
I said, it's got everything you need for sixty bucks,
so not a bad deal. I like how Samsung has
a wide variety of products, right, Like they don't just
do the premium, high end stuff. They've got stuff for
everyone's budget. And this Fit three has been available in
other countries for a while now, but they're bringing it

(18:34):
to the US on January ninth, so kind of cool.
And I love the fact that it works with all
the Samsung phones and apps that they already have all right,
speaking of getting fit, Like I said, I was in
Sidona recently and we did a lot of hiking, and
this is an app that I've had on my phone
for a while, but I had sort of a light
bulb moment in Sodona with this All Trails app and

(18:57):
it just really really helped us explore the outdoors. So
joining me now, Kai Twan Mo from All Trails, Welcome
to the show. Thanks Rich thanks for having me so
explain what All Trails is for the person that doesn't know.

Speaker 6 (19:13):
Yeah, absolutely, All Trails is the world's most popular and
most trusted platform for outdoor exploration. We are an app
that's available through the Apple App Store and the Google
Play Store.

Speaker 7 (19:24):
We also have a website. But we help help.

Speaker 6 (19:27):
People discover new places outside and enhance their experiences when
they're on the trail.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
And so this has been around for a while. I
looked back to my original email I sent to All
Trails saying, oh, I love this app. It was like
in I don't know, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. It's been
a while. So I've had it on my phone for
a long time and I used it. But now I
feel like I'm sort of like an expert because I
started looking at like the filters and things. So in Sedona,
I know there's so many different hikes. I wanted to

(19:54):
find stuff that was appropriate for my family, right, like
my two kids, and so I put on like literally
the I switched the filters to say, like, I only
want four and a half stars, right like the top
rated trails. I want stuff that's you know, easy or
maybe moderate great views, Like, there's so many different sliders
you can you know, kind of dial in exactly what

(20:15):
you want. So how do you figure all this stuff out?

Speaker 6 (20:19):
Well, first, i'd say twenty sixteen. That is a little
while ago. So thank you for being such a long
standing member of the all trails community.

Speaker 7 (20:28):
What you're describing.

Speaker 6 (20:29):
You know, we have a incredible team of more than
two hundred people at this point who were united by
a passionate love for the outdoors. So we spend all
day every day thinking about exactly the type of thing that.

Speaker 7 (20:41):
You just teed up.

Speaker 6 (20:42):
You know, how are people going to find hikes that
they can do with their kids? You know, how are
they going to get out there and find sort of
exactly the right trail for them. So we're we're building
new features all the time. You hit on a few
that are relatively new to us. So yeah, I think
that definitely qualifies you as an expert all trails user
at this point.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Well, the feature that really was the light bulb moment
is you know, I have an Apple Watch, and you
know when you're on a trail, the last thing you
want to do is get lost right or take like
the wrong fork or whatever. Especially when you're with your family, right,
And so there's this feature on the Apple Watch where
it is basically a compass and it highlights where you're

(21:21):
supposed to go in green. And so if you come
up to like a fork in the trail, you know
how sometimes people walk off trail and they kind of
make an area that's really not the trail. And all trails,
by the way, does a good job of like showing
you where the trail is on your phone. But I
love the idea that literally you look at your watch
and you just kind of move your watch left and

(21:41):
right and it will highlight the correct path. That to
me is like it just gives you so much reassurance
that you're not going to get lost out there.

Speaker 6 (21:50):
Yeah, I saw your Instagram post about your Apple Watch.

Speaker 7 (21:54):
That we relaunched our.

Speaker 6 (21:56):
Apple Watch app last year in the second half of
last year. So that's all a relatively new offering for us.
And I'm slightly embarrassed to admit, as an employee of
an outdoor tech company that I just got an Apple
Watch for Christmas.

Speaker 7 (22:08):
So while I had I had.

Speaker 6 (22:10):
Of course seen our Apple Watch app in action before this,
I now can use it every day myself.

Speaker 7 (22:16):
And it's fantastic.

Speaker 6 (22:18):
It's you know, we recognize that while we are an
app that you have on your phone, we're here to
help people get outside and enjoy their time outside. So
I'm having your watch and your stats and your navigation
at a glance.

Speaker 7 (22:33):
Really great feature.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
We love it.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
So how much of this is sort of like crowdsource?
Like when I take a walk or a hike or whatever, like,
do I help build the database of like, Hey, here's
where the trail is, Here's where you know the markings are.
Like I mean, I know people can submit pictures and
things like that, but how much of this is crowdsource
versus like, I don't know, do you guys go out
there and like look at trails yourself?

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (22:57):
I love this question.

Speaker 6 (22:58):
So you absolutely, as a member of our community, are
contributing to our collection of more than four hundred and
fifty thousand trails that so many trails are on the
platform today by far the biggest and most comprehensive collection
of trails in the world, and the community is.

Speaker 7 (23:15):
A big part of helping grow that collection.

Speaker 6 (23:18):
But something that a lot of people, I think don't
know about us is we have a dedicated team of
trail data integrity specialists who all day, every day are
monitoring and digitally maintaining that collection of trails. So when
you get out there with all trails, you're doing so
with not just the support of our community of seventy
five million members, but with the knowledge and expertise of

(23:40):
people whose literal job it is to help you get outside,
have a great time, and do it safely.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
And that's cool. I mean I can't speak enough to
like how much. I mean, we're in front of screen
so much during the day, and so the ability to
sort of look for a trail that has you know,
epic views or waterfalls. Every time I do one of these,
I just feel like I've done something good for myself.
And if I can get my kids to join me
or someone else, you know, it's it just feels really

(24:06):
really nice. So explain the I guess the other thing
I want to talk about is privacy. So, you know,
since this is a community, you know the things that
you do sometimes could be put on your profile that
could be public explained like what's public versus private, like
without changing any settings, and what people should look at
if they want to change those settings.

Speaker 6 (24:28):
Yeah, absolutely, so privacy and safety of our community are
of the utmost importance, and we think mainly you know,
we think about getting outside all the time, but we
think about that all the time too, you know, as
a community based platform, you know, by default a lot
of activity is public, but we have built the ability
for any activity that you do with All Trails to

(24:50):
be adjusted in your privacy settings. You can make it
either totally private so that only you can see it
if you don't want to share your outdoor adventures with
anyone else. You can also set it to just people,
you know, a sort of smaller group, or you can,
of course, like you said, have it be public and
our public trove of you know, reviews and photos. That's

(25:11):
a huge part of what makes All Trails special and
our communities united by love of the outdoors. So we're
really grateful that people continue to pick us outside that way.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
And what do you get for the free versus sort
of the upgrade to All Trails Plus?

Speaker 6 (25:25):
Yes, great question. So All Trails is it's available for
free to download like I said, in the Apple or
Google app stores. All Trails Plus is really our you know,
that's our premium and paid offering, and.

Speaker 7 (25:38):
You get so many.

Speaker 6 (25:39):
Features with All Trails Plus things that you mentioned like
wrong turn alerts. That's an Ultrails plus feature. It allows
you to go offline, which is huge. You can either
download an individual trail for offline use or actually, just
a few weeks ago, we introduced offline parks where you
can download an entire park, every single trail in the park,
recent reviews, photos, plus essential park information like ours, fees,

(26:03):
accessibility info. Really kind of game changing if you're planning
a trip to a place where there might not be
great service, and so many spectacular outdoor places are exactly
that way.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
And I just saw you can print maps. Look at this.
You can print your own customizable maps for backup on
through the website. So that's neat. I mean, you go
to these national parks, a lot of them do not
have sell connectivity, so that offline feature is really crucial.
So Kit, tell me about you. What what got you
interested in all trails why? I mean, are you a

(26:36):
hiker or you do you like doing that stuff or
what already have to do?

Speaker 6 (26:39):
Now that you work there, certainly I see getting outside
as something that not that I have to do, but
that I love to do. I had been in the
outdoor industry before this, Prior to that, I worked at
Nike for a long time. I'm coming to you here
from Portland, Oregon, near where the company's based. But you know,
I was just I was really drawn to All Trails

(27:01):
as this incredibly interesting intersection of outdoors and tech. You know,
this is a company that is so focused on innovation
and moving incredibly quickly, but also fundamentally so deeply committed
to being intentional technology. You know, you mentioned earlier. We're
on our screens so much, we're at our desks so much.

(27:23):
We know that time outside is essential to physical and
mental health, and so we want to make sure that
people can do that as part of their everyday life.
That is not a special occasion to go outside. And
so just that that mission, the commitment to the mission
to get the world, help the world find its way outside.

Speaker 5 (27:43):
Let me in.

Speaker 7 (27:43):
And it's been a really fun ride so far.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
All right, Kaitwan, move from All Trails the website AllTrails
dot com. If you go to the website, rich on
Tech dot tv, I've got a link for a month
free of the premium, so just go to the show
notes for that. Kai, thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 7 (28:01):
Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
All right, coming up, I'll tell you about Turo, explain
what that's all about, plus more of your calls at
eight eight eight rich one O 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,

(28:22):
talking technology at triple eight rich one O one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
The website richon tech dot TV. If you want notes
for today's show, just hit episode one oh three, and
if you want to email me, just hit contact up

(28:43):
at the top. Rich on tech dot TV. So no
doubt you heard about these two attacks, one in New Orleans,
one in Las Vegas. They both involved cars that were
rented through a service called Turo. And this is not
the publicity they wanted, but obviously a lot of people
are now just hearing about Turo for the first time.

(29:05):
So what is Turo. Turo is like Airbnb, but for cars.
So if you have a car, let's say, you know,
use it a couple of days a week, but the
rest of the time it just sits there. You can
rent this out to other people. And this has been
around for a long time. It's not like a new thing.
I've personally not used Turo. I'm well aware of it.

(29:26):
For me, it's always been a matter of every time
I look to rent a car on there, which, by
the way, it started out really cheap, but now I
feel like it's not anymore. It was just always kind
of like the same price and more hassle than getting
from Hurtz or Avis or something like that. So what's
the deal with this Turo thing? So they have what's
called a Turo risk score algorithm. So when someone rents

(29:49):
a car from you, you know, they put all the
information into the app, their driver's license, stuff like that
credit card number, and then they, according to Bloomberg, look
at fifty different data points to screen renters. Now I
don't know how both of these renters got through this
risk score with no problem, but Turo did confirm that
both of these cars were rented through them. One was

(30:11):
a Tesla cyber truck. Obviously you know that because that
was very much in the news. The Ford f one
point fifty was a lightning, which is their electric car
or electric truck, I should say, So what went wrong here?
I mean, this just brings up the idea of you've
got these peer to peer platforms and they're everywhere. You've
got Airbnb, I mean Uber is really peer to peer.

(30:33):
You're driving your car picking up strangers. Turo is where
you're literally renting someone else's car from them and they
may drop it off to you at the airport. You
may pick it up at a parking lot if it's
something like a Tesla or another car that has like
you know, easier sort of digital key access. That makes
life a lot easier with renting these things out. But

(30:53):
you know, it just it just raises a lot of
questions about like what's the vetting process of these companies?
Are we safe using them? Are you safe renting through
them or you know, driving through them? How are these
people screened? You know, you think about Uber, you know
this driver, It's like, how do you know what this
driver's all about? And every time I've asked Uber or

(31:16):
Lift about their screening process, you know, they do a
very if you ask me, it's a very light background check.
In fact, I'll tell you the story that I told
when I went to Nashville last year or year before.
I think it was my driver, you know, I got
to the area of my hotel I said, oh, it's
a really nice area, Like, what's the deal with it?
And he's like, Oh, I don't know. I'm just I'm

(31:36):
just driving for my brother who's in the hospital. What like.
He literally just used his Relatives app to sign in
and you know it was just picked up his phone
and started driving the car. Now, that is something I
never thought of in a million years, Right. You think
that the driver that you have is the driver on
the app that you ordered. And I don't know if

(31:57):
you've ever looked at the picture of the driver on
the app, but it's always blurry. It's not like the
clearest thing. It's not like you could tell exactly who
this person is. And so ever since then I'm like, Okay,
that's an a fear unlocked that I never really thought about.
Someone could just literally drive with someone else's app. So
I know that Uber does sort of like because I
looked into it. Afterwards, they will ask drivers to take

(32:18):
like a selfie at the beginning of their shift or
something like that. But again, these systems aren't perfect, and
so being aware of the implications of these is always
a good thing. And for me now I always check
the driver. I always check their picture I always kind
of try to make sure it's the person that's driving me.
But again, you know, it's just one of these things
where we have to think about this stuff. Turo, for

(32:40):
their part, they said they're, you know, cooperating with law enforcement.
Neither attacker had a criminal background according to their research
that they did. And this is a company where you know,
they've got like four hundred thousand cars listed for rent,
billions of dollars that's been done through this. I look
at Turro reported hundred and twenty two million dollars in

(33:01):
revenue in the first nine months of twenty twenty four.
So people are using it for the most part. It's fine,
but it's just stuff to keep in mind when you're
using this stuff. Let's go to Mike in Los Angeles. Mike,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Hey, Rich, thanks Jay, and I call yeah.

Speaker 8 (33:18):
I don't know if you have an answer to this,
but maybe you have some insight. I have at my email.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Is with hotmail. Lately the past year or.

Speaker 8 (33:25):
So, whenever I email someone with a dot net packed
all dot net, att dot net, Sbcglobal, dot net, its
returned to me undeliverable. I went online and found out
this is happening to everybody, from hotmail to dot net,
and some people have speculator or maybe they know more
than I do that across the board atp, dot net,

(33:45):
et cetera is rejecting all emails from Hotmail, possibly due
to they say something about it has the most hacking
or scamming.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Have you heard of this or do you know anything
about it?

Speaker 9 (33:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (33:57):
I mean so number one, I've not heard of this.
I know that emails get rejected for various reasons. I
don't think that this is something that's across the board
with Hotmail, although you know, hotmail is one of those
services that I know people still use it, but it's
definitely not the most up to date email. So what
I would try to do is use an alternative email

(34:19):
address and see if the same thing happens, and when
you send to those people, maybe use that. I mean,
it depends how much you're sending. But just taking a
quick look online, you know, some people are reporting that
the dot net domains are sometimes associated with more spam,
so maybe Hotmail has sort of flagged these servers, but
it's odd that it's happening with all of those domain emails.

(34:42):
Now the other side of this is that you know,
Yahoo has taken over sort of servicing all of those
email addresses that you mentioned, the Cox email, the SBC,
the AT and T that's all being done by Yahoo now,
so there could be something there as well. I would
just make sure sure before you send these, just make
sure that your account is on the up and up,

(35:03):
like you're you're not at your limit, you know, these
attachments things like that, and see if that helps. But
I'll keep an eye out on this. That's an interesting
one eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four 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 oh one. That's

(35:26):
eight eight eight seven four to two four to one
zero one. The website for the show is rich on
Tech dot tv. If you want links to anything I mentioned,
just hit the episode number one oh three, and coming
up this hour, we're gonna talk pictures. I don't know
if you've scanned in your pictures yet or if you

(35:48):
have a way to kind of organize and manage your
digital photo collection, which mind just grows by the dozens
every day, every single day. We're gonna have Christa Kowalchik
talk to us about preserving and organizing both your digital
and print photos. We'll have her on just a little
bit later. Greg writes in through the website. When I

(36:11):
open up the passwords app on my iPhone and select
the Wi Fi option, I see my Wi Fi information
and other networks I've accessed. Some are listed as WPA
two personal, and I can unmask their passwords, including my own.
I have two big concerns. Can I unmask my Wi Fi?
Can others unmask my Wi Fi password using the passwords app?

(36:33):
How can I prevent this? Is it normal for me
to see passwords for other networks? This feels like a
security issue. I'm worried my Wi Fi password could be
exposed to anyone nearby. Has Apple addressed this as a
security flaw? Good question, Greg. For many years password Wi
Fi passwords were sort of hidden on the iPhone, mostly

(36:55):
inaccessible unless you really knew what you were doing. But
now they are all inside the passwords app. So this
does bring up some good concerns. Number One, there there's
not a security flaw here. This is just what's new,
and so Apple has by default put all of your
passwords for Wi Fi networks that you've connected to in

(37:17):
the past in your Passwords app. That's the new app
they introduced with iOS eighteen. It's on most iPhones at
this point if you've upgraded to the software, the latest software,
and so before there were ways of seeing the passwords
for Wi Fi networks that you connected to with previous
iOS versions, but it wasn't clear and it wasn't easy.

(37:37):
Now this is much easier. So I understand the concern there.
These are networks that you have connected to, So these
are not random networks. These are not networks that our secret.
They are everything that you've connected to. So the answer
to your first question, can others unmask your Wi Fi password? Yes,
they can, only if you've given them access to your

(37:59):
Wi Fi network. So that's the main thing to know here. Now,
I understand that a lot of people scan QR codes
to log onto Wi Fi networks and the password is
just in there. It's not secretive. So typically what I'd
recommend is that you do not use a password for
your Wi Fi network that is easily guessed or that

(38:19):
accesses other stuff anywhere. And I take it a step further,
I would not allow people in your home to use
your primary Wi Fi network, I would set up a
guest network. And I understand there's a little bit of like,
you know, it's a little bit of social awkwardness when
someone comes to your house and they're like, oh, what's
the coach pat your WiFi and you're like, oh, here's

(38:41):
the guest network. I get it. It's a little awkward,
but for security reasons, and I usually just tell people, Hey,
for security reasons, I have everyone log onto my guest network.
In case there's a major issue, I can wipe all
those off the network very easily. So I would suggest
having a guest network in general. Is it normal for
me to see passwords of other networks? This feels like

(39:02):
a security issue, Yes, now it is. So again, it
goes back to that whole idea of don't use a
password that is easily guessed or that accesses other stuff
in your life. So do not use your email password
as your Wi Fi password. Let's see, I'm worried my
WiFi password could be exposed to anyone nearby. No, that's

(39:25):
not true. They would have to connect to your network
before they can see the password, and you would have
to give them the password for them to connect to
the network, so it's a chicken versus Egg kind of thing.
You know, you have to give them the password. Once
they have that password, they'd be able to see that
password even if they sign in with a QR code.
That QR code has the password embedded in it, so

(39:49):
anyone with a QR code reader could look at that.
So I'm looking through all my passwords and it's actually
kind of funny like looking through these because people do
use some interesting passwords for their works, so yes, be
aware of that. It is available. And on the Android
side of things, you can see the passwords as well.
So if you go into your settings, you go into

(40:11):
connections and you look at let's see here, I got
to find where they are on here, but if you
look at the let's see, I'd have to look for it.
But if you look for oh, managed networks there it is.
So if you go to manage networks, you tap one
of those networks, you can easily see the password for
that network as well all the networks that you've connected to.

(40:33):
I actually think it's kind of fun to see all
the networks you've connected to because it's kind of like
a little who's who list of where you've been. But yeah,
please be careful with your Wi Fi passwords. Don't just
give them to anyone and set up a guest network.
Kia is recalling over twenty two thousand of their EV
nine electric SUVs. The reason some of the back seats

(40:57):
might be missing their bolts. Yeah, not a good not
a good look, Kia. So this apparently was an assembly
line worker error at their plant in South Korea. The
good news is no one's been hurt. There's not been
any reports of injuries or accidents. But this is this
is twenty over twenty two thousand EV nine electric SUVs

(41:22):
from model years twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five. Now,
these are the SUVs that have second and third row seats.
This was a hot this is still a hot suv.
It's all electric, it's got third row seats. This was
one of the first EV's that had third rows besides
like the Rivian, and so you know, this was a

(41:42):
very popular car, still is. And so this is not
exactly the look that Kia wanted with this car because
a lot of people probably got it thinking oh this
is cool, this is new, and now this is happening.
So not every car has the issue, but Kia will
You're gonna have to bring this car into a dealer
to have them inspect it and put in the bolts

(42:04):
if they're not there. So Key is going to start
notifying affected owners by male starting January twenty fourth. This
will all be free, of course, for the fix. But
you know loose, You might hear loose or rattling seats
and if that was driving you nuts, because you have
one of these cars, it's not just you, it's them.
Let's go to eight eight eight rich one O one

(42:27):
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Let's go to Diane in a menafee. You're on with rich.

Speaker 9 (42:35):
Dian. Hi, I have a Samsung Galaxy phone and when
I take pictures, I have it on pictures. But it
wants to take a movie. Come, how can I change?

Speaker 4 (42:52):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Okay, So when you say it's taking a movie, does
that mean when you're looking back through your picture it
moves a little bit?

Speaker 9 (43:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Okay, So I think that's a feature called motion photo.
So what this is is it's basically capturing a couple
of seconds of video before and after you hit that
shutter button or right when you hit that shutter button,
and some people like that because you can go back
and let's say someone blinked in your picture, you can
go back and choose a different frame of that photo,

(43:25):
almost like going back in time and changing the look
of that picture. But it's because it's capturing. It's almost
like a think of a film strip, right, So you've
got when you take a picture, you're taking just one
of those frames of that film strip. But what this
phone is doing, it's capturing a couple of those film stripped,
you know, those frames. So if you want to turn

(43:46):
this off, it's actually quite easy. It's a feature called
motion photo. And in the upper part of your frame
of your phone, when you're taking a picture, you should
see a little square box that almost looks like a
play button, and if you press that, you can toggle
it on or off. It's called motion photo. And so
that is that is the feature that I would toggle off.

(44:08):
You can also go into your settings for camera and
toggle it off that way as well. So if you
can't find it on your screen, you can go into
your camera settings and you can switch it off inside there.
So if you go, let's see, I'm looking for my
camera settings, let's see here is it in there? Let's see, Yeah,

(44:29):
shooting methods, okay, settings to keep let's see. I'm on
a beta version of the software, which I realized quickly
that I should not have done that for the purposes
of this show, because my settings are completely different. But Bobo,
you've got the Samsung. Do you see that little when
you open up your camera? Do you see a little
almost like looks like a play button inside you know,

(44:52):
a square? Yes?

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Okay?

Speaker 10 (44:54):
Is that the second to last thing on the right? Okay, right,
that's okay, So on my it's the last thing on
the right. So if you toggle that, this a motion
photo off?

Speaker 9 (45:03):
Okay, on, Oh, I see it now.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 8 (45:07):
Diane, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
All right, thanks for listening to us. There and Menafie
appreciate it. There you go, see solving problems, changing lives. Bobo,
I feel useful. I hoped you did help. I realized
I realized that I downloaded the new software, the beta software,
on this Samsung S twenty four Ultra, and I realized
that is the wrong thing to do when you're on

(45:30):
a radio show where you're trying to tell people how
to find things. All of my stuff is different it's
all in different places eight eight eight rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero
one The website rich on tech dot tv more after this,
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you, talking technology. The website for the show

(45:53):
rich on Tech dot TV. While you go there, be
sure to sign up for my free newsletter rich on
Tech dot TV. Hit sign up. It will arrive at
your inbox usually every Saturday morning. It's filled with a
whole bunch of tips, tricks, stuff I'm thinking about that week.
It's kind of like a version of this radio show,

(46:14):
but in newsletter form, so you get a lot of
good information, a lot of useful information and things that
I think you should know. Let's go to Steve in Edmunds, Washington. Steve,
you're on with rich.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Hi, Rich, thanks for taking my call. I really like
the show.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
My question is about Google. I added that to my
phone at Galaxy S twenty one. I have a five
twelve gigabytes. I have a lot of pictures, family pictures,
and they're all organized files and all that, and so
I do have them backed up at My kids were

(46:53):
telling me, you know, get the Google Photos and you
can never go wrong. Well, as soon as I loaded it,
and I have because I have a lot of photo
files on my and videos on my phone, Google Photos
started backing those up and telling me, oh, you you've
exceeded the free level. You're going to have to pay,

(47:14):
And so I thought, well, you know, what's a few bucks?
Well just kept Now I'm paying like ten dollars a
month because of the level that I'm at for a
five to twelve phone, and so I thought, well, they
I'll just do this on my own. I'll turn off
Google Photos. I know there's a lot of tips online
about doing that, but I don't see anything that works.

(47:34):
And I'm reading about that people complaining you really can't
turn it off, and so if you do, try to
just nuke it on your phone, you risk losing all
your pictures. There's no assurance that I can see that
you're gonna that I can survive that. Even if I
do have back my pictures back up backed up, I
just don't want to go through that hassle. So so

(47:56):
that's why I'm I'm wondering about how do I.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
Okay, you want to Google phone, you want to cease
using Google Photos, Okay, I actually think it's it's relatively
easy compared to anything with iCloud. So this I think
that's the good news here. So my first concern though,
where your pictures backed.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Up a couple of external drives.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
Okay, So what happened was, just to understand your question,
you have all your pictures on your phone, right, so
you said you have like a five hundred and twelve
gigabyte phone. You've got a whole bunch. Let's say you
have one hundred gigabytes of pictures on there, whatever it is,
ten gigs, whatever it is, it's definitely over the fifteen
gigs that Google gives you, right, four hundred gigs. But yeah,
you've got four hundred gigs of photos and videos. Oh wow, Okay,

(48:39):
that's a lot I've got. I mean, I'm saying that
I've got like two terabytes. It's I mean, my my
Google photos is a whole other concern. But ill, let's
get through yours. So what i'd recommend is, you know
what you need to do is, first off, I would
just back up all these photos from your phone to
an external drive. Once you know you have them all

(48:59):
backed up, are good, then you can go into Google Photos,
and you can turn off Google Photos. There's a setting
on there that just says, you know, back up, and
if you go into your settings, you just turn off backup.
And so.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Look at it with me, go to the there. So
if you go to their version, I don't see it.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
Go to photos upper right hand corner and you're in
Google Photos for sure, right. Okay, do you see where
it says backup. I don't know if you're says backup
complete or backup in progress whatever it says, so backup complete?

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Do you see that.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Going there? Now, let's see backup, getting ready to back
up and storm.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
So if you go so, once you go into Google Photos,
you should see your own picture in the upper right
hand corner. That's your Google account profile, right, yeah, okay,
tap that and then it should say either backup complete
or in backup or there's things waiting to be backed up.
It says something about backup on like the second section there.
If you see that, yeah, what does it say?

Speaker 2 (50:03):
I'm getting ready to back up?

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Okay? So tap that and it should bring you to
where it says backup is on. Yes, okay, so now
how much does it say? Now in mind it says
I've got two hundred and fourteen, six hundred and ten
photos and videos backed up to Google Photos. That's a lot.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, I do not see a number.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Okay, well mine, Yeah, mine's backup of complete. So that's
probably why it's showing the number. But now, is there
a toggle that says backup photos and videos on this device?
Is there a toggle that you can turn off? So
turn that off now? Now that's going to stop your
photos from being backed up to Google Photos if you're
getting those error messages because your Google Photos is still
all filled up. There's a couple of things you can

(50:49):
do there. So you can go to one dot Google
dot com from your computer. Don't do this on your phone.
Do this on your computer and you'll see where it
says storage. You tap that and it says clean up space.
And once you go in there, you can clean up
either large files. Like what I would do is for
you just get rid of some of the big photo files, right,

(51:12):
some of the big photos or videos that you have
inside there. So you can do that and that's very easy.
It'll organize all your pictures by large and you can
just delete, like whenever I need more space or want
to get rid of some stuff. I just literally go
through there and delete, you know, ten or twenty files whatever.
The other thing you can do is, if you want
to get rid of these photos from Google but keep

(51:32):
them on your phone, go to photos dot Google dot
com from a web browser and you can now delete
pictures out of your Google account, but they will not
delete off your phone. And that's what I would do there.
So those are the two things that I would do.
One dot Google dot com free up storage. If you
want to get rid of these pictures completely, go to

(51:54):
photos dot Google dot com and you can select a
whole bunch at once and just delete them. They'll remain
on your phone, and make sure that backup has turned off.
Great question today, Steve eighty eight rich one oh one.
We're gonna talk more about pictures and videos coming up
right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple
eight rich one oh one. The website for the show

(52:17):
is rich on Tech dot tv eighty eight seven four
to two four one zero one. I was just checking
my Facebook. I forgot that I posted about this, but
Facebook dot com slash rich on Tech. My kid got
this uh weighted blanket for Christmas. My my mother in
law gave it to him. I don't know if you
asked for it or what, but I was like, what

(52:38):
is the deal with a weighted blanket? And so he
said he loved it, and I was like, I don't
let me try this thing. You put this thing on.
I don't know if you've ever been to the dentist
where they put that extray blanket, that's what it feels like.
But I'm not kidding. I've had my like three best
naps I've ever had in my life. We were joking
because my wife put it on on our drive to Sodona.

(52:59):
She put it on in the car. She never falls
asleep in the car, fell asleep like a baby. So
we think this is like a magic blanket. You know it.
I have one, You have a weighted Why is everyone
keeping these a secret?

Speaker 11 (53:11):
It's amazing, bro, I swear to you, I love this
thing so much. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
So I didn't know this was a thing. So people
my bit all the time. That is hilarious. People are
commenting all about them. They say it improves their sleep, relaxation.
Some people say it takes them getting used to because
it is heavy. Uh, some people buy them too heavy.
So I guess there's different you know, weights of these things.
But and now someone also said, try a weighted sleep mask.

(53:38):
That's next. I do like my sleep mask. I'm telling you. See,
I thought the sleep mask was the way to fall asleep,
and now it's like the sleep mask, the weighted blanket.
Slept like a baby yesterday. All right, joining me now.
Professional photographer Christa Kowalcik. Christa, thanks for joining me.

Speaker 7 (53:58):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 8 (53:59):
Rich.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
So you worked with helping Hurricane Ian survivors recover some
of their damaged photos and memory. So you've built quite
the following online talking about Well, I'll let you explain.
So how did you I mean, you've been doing this,
you're photographer, but what sort of like pushed you into
you were on a bunch of TV shows to talk
about preserving memories? Explain what happened?

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Yeah, for sure. So I am a lifelong photographer. I've
loved photography since I was a child. It's the only
real job I've ever had. So I've just always been managing,
way back to the film days, I've managed my photos,
managing digital photos. But it wasn't until Hurricane Ian came
and it just devastated my area where I live here
in southwest Florida. And when that storm came thru it

(54:43):
was floodwater and it just destroyed homes. There were over
five thousand homes that they lost every they lost their photos.

Speaker 7 (54:49):
They were just gone. Everything was gone.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
But then there was another forty some thousand homes that
had severe damage, and I was able to just jump
in and start volunteering to help people to try to
sell bitch some of those water damaged photos.

Speaker 7 (55:02):
So that's kind of how I got started in this.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
But it was really then that I realized the things
that I do every day managing all of those photos
that I have, that a lot of people just don't
know how to manage their photo collection.

Speaker 7 (55:15):
So I started to help people.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
After that experience, I realized that most of the people
I was helping, they didn't know that there was even
an option to get a digital copy of those photographs
before disaster.

Speaker 7 (55:27):
Happened and have that memory saved.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
So now I just coach people every day and I
share the easy, easy tips and tricks to get digital
copies of those pictures and also make sure that digital
pictures are safe too.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
All right, So what's the first step that people should
take to protect their pictures from natural disasters? What's you know?
These are the printed pictures.

Speaker 7 (55:47):
Yeah, for sure, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
The very first thing you need to do is get
a digital copy of those pictures. I've heard there's a
lot of myths about ways to store photographs to keep
them safe, but at the end of the day, there's
just so many things can go wrong. The one way
to just make sure those pictures are always safe and
that memory is always safe is to just get that
digital copy of.

Speaker 7 (56:08):
All of the photographs.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
Okay, And so what I mean, where do they do this?
Do they send it out to someone? Do they do
it themselves? I know it takes a long time to
do it yourself. I sent all mine out. What do
you like to do? You know?

Speaker 7 (56:21):
I think it's it's The answer is different for different people.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
It depends on what your budget is and the amount
of time that you have to commit to it. There
are some really fabulous scanning options now though, that make
it easy. So if you are somebody has a little
bit of time and you want to diy it, EPSN
has a photo that has a feater, you can scan
as many as thirty or forty pictures a minute with
the scanner, so you just put them in and it zips,

(56:44):
it's it, It scans up.

Speaker 7 (56:46):
It's so easy a child could do it.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
So I think it's an easy project to diy if
you want to. There's also phone apps that allow you
to get a digital copy of your pictures too, So
there's ways to diy and do it. But there's also
fabulous services. There's there's a company in Gosha, Wisconsin. I
believe they're it's Pixology. They are a small business that
will digitize your pictures for you. They even have a

(57:10):
service where they will come right to you. They have
a few clients a year. They go right to them
and help them to organize and digitize their pictures.

Speaker 7 (57:17):
So there's there's a lot of ways to do it.

Speaker 3 (57:18):
I think as long as you are getting that digital copy,
it's that's the only thing, no matter.

Speaker 7 (57:23):
How you do it.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
You mentioned the phone apps. Is there an app that
you like? Because I tested one called I think it
was photo Mine or something. Is there one that you
like that works better than others?

Speaker 7 (57:33):
You know, photo Mine is the best that I've seen
of the phone apps.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
You know there is the quality is not as good
as a traditional scanner. If you get a desktop scanner
or that apps and scanner with the feeder, that's going
to be your best quality scan But if you have
just old memories that you want to keep, and a
lot of our photographs are that they aren't pictures we're
going to be printing again, but we'd be devastated if
we lost them. They're you know, the birthday party or

(57:58):
the baby shower, just things that we have old print
photos of that aren't necessarily being passed down for generations,
but we want to have that memory saved, and I
think photomine is a fabulous app for that.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
What about a picture that's like damage, Like is there
a good app that you like that will fix it up?

Speaker 7 (58:13):
So, you know, one thing that's.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
Neat with photomine and also the apps, the epps and
photo scanners is they have some enhancements that they can do.

Speaker 7 (58:22):
Just that's easy.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
You're getting the scan of the photo and they get
that enhancement for you. So that's the first thing I
usually suggest. You'd be surprised how they can Either of
those can just bring back to life an old photo.

Speaker 7 (58:33):
But there's also.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Lots of services online if you have something that has
damaged to it that you can send a photo off
And it's amazing what you can do. Now anybody with
just a tiny bit of photoshop skills can use the
AI tools in Photoshop and can restore almost anything. So
I do tell people if you have a damaged photo,
don't just throw it out.

Speaker 7 (58:52):
There's a lot of times that you can save, even
things that look pretty bad.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
Now, do you recommend scanning the actual film negatives or
the actual picture? Like, if you have both, which one
would you prefer?

Speaker 3 (59:05):
So that's you know, that just depends on the situation.
The negative is going to give you the best quality.
So I think if you're looking for the best quality scan,
if this is an heirloom photo and it's so important
to you, I'd.

Speaker 7 (59:17):
Go with the negative.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
But what I found is ninety percent of people's photo
collections or just great memories they want to keep, And
I think it's easier to get a scan of a
print photo.

Speaker 7 (59:28):
So if you're just looking to make sure.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
That that memory is safe, I think that using using
the print is just fine.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
All right, let's talk digital photos. I take so many.
I'm trying to go through them. I usually go through
them at the end of the day to kind of
get rid of all my screenshots and random images. But
what do you recommend for someone who's trying to start
the decluttering process.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
Yeah, for sure, I think what you're doing is great.
I think having a routine is the is the key.
I personally, I'm similar to you. I am going through
my pictures once a day, you know, I have been
been at night, I do a quick roll of the
pictures I took that day. I think favoriting your best
pictures is just an easy way to narrow down your
best ones, deleting things at that point, or you know,
even once a week doing that.

Speaker 7 (01:00:09):
There's also an app it's called Daily Delete. I love
this app. It really makes it mindless. So it does
go through all of your pictures. It shows your photos
in a calendar.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
Basically, you select the date you want to look at
and it will show you all the pictures from that date,
and then it uses an AI technology to tell you
which ones it thinks you need to delete.

Speaker 7 (01:00:30):
But then it also learns your preferences.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
So let's say you have a pet and you never
want a single photo of that pet to be deleted.
It will learn that you've decided you don't want those,
So you're kind of correcting its work as it goes along.
And after a few days or a week of just
kind of correcting what Daily Delete has done, it's going
to start doing it mindlessly for you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
That's interesting. Okay, what about storage apps? Like I always
recommend Google Photos, that's my favorite. But what do you
like for different photo storage apps?

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
So I'm an Amazon Photos user just because it's free
with Amazon Prime.

Speaker 7 (01:01:07):
So you know, that makes it easy.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
It's got an app that just automatically is backing up
my photos. But Google Photos was free.

Speaker 7 (01:01:12):
Everything is.

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
I don't believe it's going to be free forever, so
I think that's just you know, something to well.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
It's free with Prime, so as long as we're and
it's also the photos only, just to be clear, the
videos are an extra you know, costs. But I always
mention to people, if you have Amazon Prime and you're
gonna stick with it, which most people do, it's a
great way to kind of back up your photos as well.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:01:33):
No, I think it's great. I think Google Photos is great.
I think they're all great.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
There's one storage called forever storage that is dedicated towards photos.

Speaker 7 (01:01:41):
They it says it guarantees.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
Your photos will be there for one hundred years or
something ridiculous. I personally don't trust anywhere. I think everything
needs to be stored in multiple places, and I think
that's the only safe way to keep your photos.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
I would agree like anything that I mean forever storage.
I love the idea forever, but we know nothing's really forever.
So I always have two places where they are backed
up and any and we have like less than a minute.
Common to mistake. You see when people are trying to
organize their photos, taking on too much.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
I think that it's huge having a lifetime of photographs
or photos going back your parents photos. Sometimes, if you
have a lifetime of photos, don't don't sit down and
try to do it all at once. Break it into
small projects and just check off one month or one year.
It's not like cleaning the garage. It's an emotional it's
an emotional project and sometimes you need to walk away
from it for a minute. So break it into small

(01:02:36):
projects and just get a little.

Speaker 5 (01:02:37):
Bit done at a time, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
Christa Kowalchik the website the christak dot com the Krista
with a k k dot com. So the k R
I s t a k dot com and I picked
up one of your tips from your Instagram to get
a photo album for the year and then print out.
So this year my goal is I got like a

(01:03:00):
six hundred one. I'm going to print out a couple
of pictures each month at the end of the month
of my favorites and put them in this album that's
gonna sit on my coffee table. So at the end
of twenty twenty five, I should have a full photo
album of like some of my favorite pictures. I think
that's very exciting.

Speaker 7 (01:03:13):
Oh absolutely, I think you'll love it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
Printed, by the way, not just on my phone where
I'm showing people my phone. Christa, thanks so much for
joining me today. Thanks rich Christa Kowalcik. Follow her on
social media. I love the tips that she offers the
christak dot com. I'll link it up on my website.
Rich on Tech dot tv. Coming up, I'll explain what
advanced data protection is on the iPhone and explain if

(01:03:38):
you should keep it on, turn it on, or keep
it off. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you
talking technology took me a bit there. I was furiously
typing up the show notes for all the things that Christa,
our photo guest, mentioned. It's all on the website rich
on tech dot tv. So everything that she just mentioned,

(01:03:59):
all the different ways to organize your photos, it's all
right there on the website rich on tech dot TV.
Let's see here coming up, Let's see. Oh that's next hour.
I'll tell you about that next hour. Let's talk about Gloria.
She wrote in is it a bad idea to buy
electronics like cell phones, tablets or laptops from shopping channels?

(01:04:24):
Good question, Gloria, I don't think so. I would say
my main concern would be to make sure the return
policy is good, like make sure it's easy to return,
because you're getting these site on scene, and that the
warranty matches what you're getting if you bought it from
somewhere else. That's the main thing. The other thing I

(01:04:45):
would say is just, you know, just make sure you
know what you're buying and if it's actually a good deal.
I think a lot of times are these home shopping
networks and these home shopping channels you know, the whole
point is like you've either have credit with them or
it's for easy pay or something like that, so you
may be spending more than you need to on these gadgets.
So i'd always look up the actual model number on

(01:05:08):
something like an Amazon or Best Buy and just see
if it's the same price. If it is, it might
be easier just to buy it from a place you
already go to. But and then also make sure that
it's the current model. So sometimes you may be getting
a really good deal on these things because it's the
previous model or a model that's no longer being made.
But you know, I don't know, I have no problem

(01:05:29):
with this. I actually I actually have always thought that
I'd be a great person to be on these channels,
Like I love talking about gadgets. In fact, it's funny
when you do kind of like a first look at gadgets,
you know, that's what you're doing. You're you're basically like
if you're talking about it to camera, you're kind of
memorizing all these different little features and then kind of
selling it to camera. So I always thought it'd be

(01:05:50):
really fun to be on like a home shopping channel.
But I think a lot of people just buy this
stuff because it sounds really cool, and then they get
it and I don't know do they open it or
use it. But Gloria, if you like it, it looks good,
go ahead get it. I have no problem with it.
I got an email from someone asking about advanced data protection. Actually,
this person contacted me on Instagram. They said, hey, I

(01:06:12):
saw this reel tells me to turn on advanced data
protection on the iPhone. Should I do it? So, let
me explain what advanced data protection is. This basically gives
you end to end encryption on your iCloud data. So
iCloud data is pretty much a lot of your stuff
that's on your iPhone is already end to end encrypted,

(01:06:32):
but this increases that protection from certain categories, like certain
things like already it's end to end encrypted, but this
increases that protection of more categories, including your entire device, backup,
your photos, and your notes, which means only trusted devices
can access them. So with ADP, which Advanced Data Protection activated,

(01:06:54):
Apple cannot access your encrypted data in any way, shape
or form. So this means that if there's a data
breach on Apple servers and your stuff got out there,
no one would be able to see your pictures, or
your data or your info. Sounds great, right, But the
downside is if you forget your password or you forget

(01:07:15):
the recovery key for your iCloud, there is no way
you'll be able to recover this data ever, never, ever, ever,
So if you're someone that loses your passwords can't remember things,
this might not be the best thing to turn on.
That's one of the downsides. The other downside is that
all of your devices that are linked to your iCloud

(01:07:38):
account have to be updated to the latest operating system
to have this benefit turned on. So that means if
you're running a combination of devices on your account, all
of them have to be updated. If some of them
can't be, then you cannot. You either have to remove
that device from your account or you can't activate this.
The other downside is that a lot of functionalities of

(01:07:59):
act accessing your iCloud data via the web will be
disabled because you cannot access this stuff via the web
because it's a whole complicated situation, but because it's not
a trusted device that has the key to unencrypt your information,
it can't access it. And the web browser is not
equipped to do that, So that means you just can't access.

(01:08:19):
So if you ever said, oh, I lost access to
my phone, let me go to iCloud and grab my
pictures or grab my contacts, No, not going to happen
because you have this ADP on. So this would fall
under the category of stuff you see online and it
looks really good and you see this expert quote unquote

(01:08:40):
telling you what to do and you don't realize there
are implications, pros and cons of every action in this world.
And so I get these things all the time. Cybersecurity experts,
data experts, iPhone experts, Android experts, expert, expert, expert. If
someone calls themselves an expert, I'm always concerned, right because

(01:09:01):
what does that mean? Do you have a PhD and iPhone?
You have a PhD and Android? Like, what is expert
mean you've studied these or does it mean that you
just you know? Like I always, I don't consider myself
an expert anything. I just know a lot about technology
and I don't even know everything about technology. I just
cover this stuff on a daily basis, so I'm versed
in it. And again, when it comes to answering tech questions,

(01:09:24):
you know people think you have all the answers. I
don't have all the answers. But the difference between someone
like myself and you know, people that are smart about
technology is that you understand how to figure out the answer,
Where to go for the answer, who to talk to
for the answer, what the implications of that answer is,
the pros and cons of things that, to me is
much more useful than expert tells you to turn on

(01:09:45):
this setting, turn off this setting. If you look at
all the stuff that I post to Instagram, Facebook, I
explain the pros and cons. I explain what's going on,
so you understand and you can make an informed decision.
I don't just say you should turn this feature on.
I explain what the feature is and why you might
want to turn it on. So with this advanced data protection,

(01:10:06):
in all these advanced security features, there's a reason why
Apple doesn't just turn them on for you, or Android
doesn't just turn them on for you. It's because there
usually are reasons why you may want them on and
you may want them off. If you're smart, you know
what you're doing, You're with it. You understand technology, turn
it on, understand it, you understand the pros and cons
This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(01:10:29):
My name is rich Demiro, hanging out with you talking technology.
The website for the show rich on Tech dot tv.
If you want to send me an email, go to
the website rich on tech dot tv. Hit contact and
there you can submit feedback, submit questions, comments, whatever you'd like.

(01:10:49):
That's what KL did. KL wrote in about my comments
about the weighted blankets, saying kids have died using weighted
blankets and that was news to me, but I did
look it up and apparently, yes, there were a couple
of kids that did die in April twenty twenty two
by these weighted blankets sold by Target, which led to

(01:11:11):
a huge recall. Now those were apparently a design flaw,
but you know, just looking at the tips here, it's
saying that you got to be age appropriate, not recommended
for babies or toddlers. Check the manufacturers age recommendations, proper
size and weight. Kids should be supervised. And you know
this is all common sense. It goes without saying. But

(01:11:32):
you know, since I did mention them, I should probably
say that. You know, if you're going to use one
of these blankets, you know, probably make sure that your
child can handle something like this.

Speaker 10 (01:11:41):
With all these lawsuits going on, you should realize common
sense isn't all that common anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
Is there anything as common sense? No? I mean, look,
you know when you're talking about I am a big
believer in if there are issues with the product, Like
clearly this had a design flaw with the zipperk so
got like entangled in this thing, that makes sense. Like
if it's a if it's a design flaw, if there's
a problem, like yes, But common sense in general, I

(01:12:10):
feel like has gone out the window with a lot
of things in life.

Speaker 12 (01:12:13):
Now.

Speaker 11 (01:12:14):
The blanket that I have isn't a zipper blankets.

Speaker 10 (01:12:16):
It's like a almost like knitted Yeah, it's a weighted
knitted blanket.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:12:21):
And it's not big. It literally just covers me from
my chest down on my feet.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
Yeah. The one that my kid has is a smaller one.
But again, I mean, if I had an infant, I'm
not putting a weighted blanket on the infant. Like that's
just to me, that would be common sense, right. I
think if you're a parent in general, there are so
many things that you need to learn and understand, and
there's just I mean, look, there's things that our parents
did with us that you would never do now. My

(01:12:46):
father in law was telling me, you know, they're in car.
I mean there wasn't even seatbelts. I mean kids would
sleep like on the you know they had these big
old station wagons, right and kids would sleep on like
the back like you.

Speaker 10 (01:12:58):
Know, I don't know what you call it. I can
get my dad in trouble with this one corvette. My
dad had an older corvette, was at eighty six, and
me and him my mom would ride in this corvette,
but I would ride in the trunk of the car
and the closed trunk like the back where the yeah, yes,
laid back there. Yes, And to me it was the
most coolest thing ever you did. No, no, no, not

(01:13:21):
at all. But back then it was fun.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
Oh yeah. I mean just this, if you look at
some of the pictures of things, the stuff we take
for granted now, the safety measures we have, the everything,
it's all just like it's because something bad happened. And
I mean I remember we've test drove like this uh
big old giant station wagon when I was a kid,
and it had like the two seats that faced backwards,

(01:13:46):
you know, like out the back, and it was like,
that was the coolest thing ever. And now when you
think about, like how these rear end crashes, like maybe
not the best place to put your kids something so.

Speaker 11 (01:13:56):
Simple drinking from a water holes as a child.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
Yes, nobody ever died doing that, did they?

Speaker 11 (01:14:01):
But I wouldn't now what you wouldn't no now right now?

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
Uh huh? Well, I guess I've had no BPA in
the I'll get out everything. I mean, you mentioned anything
and someone has some sort of issue. Ron writes into
my Instagram at rich On Tech. Hey, rich I've been
listening to your radio show since day one. I'm curious
can we actually see you live? You always post a
pick with you in the station, but I was wondering
if we can see you live in some of these episodes.

(01:14:25):
Keep up the great content in twenty twenty five. This
has been an ongoing question since day one of this show.
The short answer is no. The other answer is if
you want to see the first ten minutes of the
show that is part of my rich On Tech Weekly show,
which airs on KTLA plus, part of the TV station
I work for here in Los Angeles, you can see

(01:14:47):
the first ten minutes of the show that you would
have to download the KTLA plus app on your Roku,
your Apple TV, your Fire TV, or your Samsung Smart TV.
And that's a weekly show that airs and you can
see the first ten minutes of the radio show. Don't
really have plans for live right now. I'm on TV
Live every day, and so this is sort of like,

(01:15:08):
you know, a time when I'm not doing live unless
something changes, we'll see. Let's go to Deborah in Santa Monica. Deborah,
You're on with Rich by Rich.

Speaker 9 (01:15:18):
Okay, the reason I'm calling them is I have a
one plus seven pro Android phone.

Speaker 2 (01:15:26):
Okay, I've had it for years.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
It's a wonderful phone.

Speaker 9 (01:15:30):
However, in the last couple of weeks, something has happened
to the settings that I didn't do anything with. Okay,
I didn't change it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
Oh no, nobody ever changes anything on their phone.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
Really.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
I said, that's the.

Speaker 9 (01:15:45):
Way I want it, and then I leave it alone
unless it's something you know, serious, Okase, But I would
remember that if I had been anything to the setting.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
Sure.

Speaker 9 (01:15:54):
So what's been happening, and it's very annoying, is when
there's when the system apparently when a here's talking, it'll revert.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
It to text.

Speaker 9 (01:16:06):
Which will stream across my screen. It'll do it. And
any app or program that I'm aware of when I
was on and anytime I've been on X recently. If
there's talking and I'm listening to a tweeter watching a tweet,
it'll it'll put the put the talking right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
It's almost like close captions, right, Is that kind of
what it is.

Speaker 9 (01:16:31):
Calling live cat Yes. I cannot figure out in any
of the apps or on my Android phone, even in settings,
and I've spent hours going through the settings to see
that it's in somewhere. You know, I have to drill down.
It's not there. I even did a Google search and
they actually said, yes, there's a way to do it.

(01:16:51):
Go to settings, go to this good event. Guess what
what they say to go through is missing on my phone.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
Okay, well, so you have stumbled upon a fee. Sure
that is quite helpful for people.

Speaker 9 (01:17:02):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
I think there's a couple of things going on here.
Number one, So what you're talking about is live captions.
This is available on both iPhone and Android, and it's
a feature that on Android, it came a couple of
years ago. On iPhone, I think it's within the last
year or so. But what it does is it listens
to the audio on the phone and it transcribes it

(01:17:22):
in real time and puts it in a little box.
And so for people that you know could be hard
of hearing, they want this on their screen. That's one
reason to use it. Another reason is you just want
captions because you're, you know, watching something in class. You
don't want to disturb someone else. You know, there's lots
of reasons why you might activate this. I made the
joke Tebra about no one ever changes features, because it's

(01:17:45):
an ongoing joke. When someone comes to me with a problem,
they say, I didn't change anything. But you know, sometimes
what happens is we tap a button by accident. We
you know, just something you know, gets hit in our pocket,
whatever it is. And so that's just kind of my
inside tech show for anyone. My mom calls me with
a problem and I'm like, she's like, and I didn't
touch a thing. I was like, Okay, no one ever

(01:18:05):
touches anything. But here's how we do it. So this
is an accessibility feature. So there are a couple of
ways to turn it on and off. The first way
is to go into settings and tap accessibility and to
choose live captions and turn that on or off. Are
you is that the feature that's not there?

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Okay?

Speaker 9 (01:18:23):
When I go into my settings, there's no specific accessibility.
You have to go to something like it's either in
system or Apps and Notifications. I'm going to see apps
and notifications.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
Well, it wouldn't be under Apps and Notifications. There's usually
a separate setting just for accessibility on almost every Android phone.

Speaker 8 (01:18:44):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
Of course, the one day I did not bring the
Android phone that I'm testing with me, I said, nobody's
gonna have a question about one plus today, and of
course you have the question about one plus, so I
don't have it in front of me. But typically if
you go into settings accessibility, that's going to be the
first place to and then you should find it under privacy. Okay,

(01:19:04):
what's that.

Speaker 9 (01:19:06):
You have to in settings? There is something called privacy okay,
and permissions and personal data.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
No, that's not going to be it. Okay. So the
other way to look for it, it's.

Speaker 9 (01:19:16):
On it is because there's accessibility usage. That's the only
way I found anything having to do with assessibility.

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
Well, okay, accessively, that's not it though, that's not the
that's not the part. So the other way to do
it is to go in the upper right hand corner
when you go into your settings and type in live captions. Okay,
so you can type in live caption and that should
bring up the setting of where to find it. So
on this Samsung phone I'm looking at, it's under hearing enhancements,
under accessibility accessibility, So settings accessibility, hearing enhancements. That's one

(01:19:48):
way of bringing it up. The other way to bring
it up is to press the volume button on your
Android phone, and when you press that volume button, there
is a little captions icon. So if you press volume
up and then press Settings, you should see a little
live caption's icon. In that main settings page of your volume.

(01:20:08):
You'll see a whole bunch of sliders you tap there
and that should toggle it on or off. The third
way to find it is to swipe down from the
top of your screen and you see a whole bunch
of widgets like to turn on and off, the airplane mode,
the flashlight location, whatever it is. And then if you
tap the little edit button there, it's like a maybe

(01:20:30):
a pencil icon, and then you tap edit on your
widgets for your These are called quick tiles that it
should say available buttons, and one of those should be
labeled live captions. Tap that and you should now it'll
put it into those quick tiles. Tap done, and then
once you swipe down to bring up those quick tiles,

(01:20:52):
make sure you expand it. You should have a new
option that says live caption and you can toggle it
on or off right there. So those are three ways, Deborah,
to turn that on and off. Please send me an email.
Go to rich on Tech dot TV. Send me an
email so I have your email address and I will
give you when I get home, I will give you

(01:21:12):
specific directions for the one plus phone. But that is
the three ways in general on Android that you can
turn on and off live caption. If you ask me,
they should have it right on the captions when they
show up. That would make the most sense. Let me
just see, I'm playing a YouTube video and you would
think it would have them right on, you know, a

(01:21:35):
little toggle right on there. But I guess it doesn't
do that. Eight eight eight rich one O one eight
eight eight seven four two four one zero one. This
is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four two four one zero one, the website rich

(01:21:56):
on Tech dot tv. Don't forget this show is available
as a podcast. Just search rich on Tech in your
favorite audio app. Never miss an episode. Of course, the
best way to listen is live right here on the radio.
That's my preferred way. But the podcast is fun as well.
Apple Fitness Plus. I don't know if you're a person

(01:22:17):
that wants to close your rings on a daily basis,
I know I am. If you have an Apple Watch,
those rings represent the move minutes that you get on
a daily basis standing up every hour for like twelve hours.
And then what's the third one? The steps you take
on a daily basis. Let me say, I don't even know.
I'm only worried about the move minutes. Let's see here, Oh,

(01:22:40):
great segment, rich You don't even know what you're talking about.
Move minutes exercise interesting? Oh move is your calories? Okay,
I don't worry about that. So you got the calories,
exercise minutes and then stand minutes. So yeah, if you're
someone who wants to do that. Apple came up with
this thing called Apple Fitness Plus a couple of years ago.
During the pan lets you work out from your phone

(01:23:01):
or your Apple Watch. It started out you had to
have an Apple Watch. Now you can do it just
through your iPhone. But I visited their Apple Fitness Plus
studio in Santa Monica to get a little preview of
some of the new programs they have for twenty twenty five.
They're launching all of these on Monday, January sixth, largest
ever lineup of their fitness and mindfulness programming. And they've

(01:23:26):
got new strength training. So the thing about strength training,
it's very intimidating. You've got people like Bobo that work
out all the time and they know what they're doing.
Every time you go on Instagram, he's with lifting more weight.
I'm like, I never lift that. But if if you're
intimidated by that, you know, maybe you just want to
start small. So this program you can start with any

(01:23:46):
weight and it could be anything. So if you if
you strong and you already want to lift a lot,
you can start with that, or if you don't want
to lift a lot, you can start with that. Then
they've got pickleball conditioning, so that's new. I know pickleball
is very popular. They've got these programs so you can
learn like specific yoga poses and then of course breath meditation.
The other feature I really think is great. If you're

(01:24:07):
just trying to move your you know, move yourself, get
yourself up and out of the house, it's called time
to walk. And so they interview all these like celebrities
and notable people and you just walk with them, so
they're in your ear. You just walk and they talk
and tell their story and before you know it, you
got thirty minutes of walk time. Fitness Plus is also
integrating with Strava for the first time ever in a

(01:24:30):
big way, so you can see detailed tracking and workouts
shared on the app, so it's a bigger integration. I
don't use Strava, so I'm not totally knowledgeable about that,
but I know a lot of people love it, especially
I think it start out with like the biker community,
not the motorcycle bikers.

Speaker 10 (01:24:45):
The I use Strava, do you Yeah? I use it
around my neighborhood. It's pretty simple.

Speaker 1 (01:24:50):
What do you do with it?

Speaker 10 (01:24:52):
You just started like, wherever you go, you hit the
button to record your pace, and it keeps track of
your miles, your elevation, and amount of calories that you
could have possibly burned in the process and the time.

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
Okay, so so it's like a tracker app.

Speaker 10 (01:25:04):
Yeah, but it tracks to your map, like to your
areash o. God, you like the path that you went
and everything like that. And there's a friend network on
it too, so like I can see what you did
and like it, or you can.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
See what right you don't like it. And I think
that's what the big improvement is with Fitness Plus is
that it now shows the specific workout that you did
to your friends. Fitness Plus is ten dollars a month,
eighty dollars a year. You can share it up to
six people in your family. You can get a free
trial by going to like I think best Buy has
two months. If you have a new Apple device, you'll

(01:25:36):
get it. But anyway, it's kind of fun. Let me
just give you a quick idea of Apple, how they operate,
you know, and I know I talk about Apple a lot.
I also talk about Android. I like both, but you
know they're two very different companies, right, But like Apple,
So I go to these studios and they open the
door for me and they're like, hey, before you go in,
just so you know, we have a lot of energy
around here. I'm like, all right, what does that mean?

(01:25:57):
They opened the door. They had secretly collected every employee
in the building. So I'm talking like I don't know
one hundred people at this building, and they were all
standing there in the lobby when I walk in, and
all just like clapping and shouting and saying welcome, rich
and it's just like, you know, these big smiles. And
I was so taken aback because it's just like this

(01:26:18):
is Apple is just such a unique company. I mean,
to grab everyone. Can you imagine doing that at any
company you work for? Say, hey, this guy's coming in today.
Let's let's grab everyone downstairs and let's have them all,
you know, say hello in the lobby and like cheer
for him. Bill from Kingston, Pennsylvania, who listens to the podcast,
writes in I'm considering replacing my Moto Edge twenty twenty
two with a Pixel xcel Pro. I'm also intrigued by

(01:26:41):
the one plus thirteen, which is coming out in January.
The Pixel has a higher price plus two extra years
of support, but the one plus looks impressive. What's your take?
You don't mention one plus often, but I know you're
a fan of the Pixel. Here's my take historically, and
I am testing the one plus thirteen, so I have
been using it. I can't tell you everything I'm under embargo,

(01:27:01):
but I will tell you that here's my thought. The
Pixel is all about the software and camera. One plus
is all about very very good hardware at a great price.
So if you're looking for the best camera out there,
I'd say probably go with the Pixel. If you're looking
for a great value of hardware and price, I think

(01:27:22):
the one plus thirteen might be your best bet. But
I will have more about the one plus when I
can talk about it and give my full review. That
will be coming up soon in the next couple of weeks.
But I will say the photos are looking good off
of this one plus thirteen. Coming up next, we're going
to talk to Gerald Casulis of nord VPN about the

(01:27:43):
biggest scams to watch out for in twenty twenty five.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
technology with you. We're going to get to the top
scams of twenty twenty five in just a second here,
But first, Kenny from Warwick, Rhode Island, rights in I

(01:28:05):
rented a Kia EV six while traveling in North Carolina
and love the quiet responsive drive. However, finding a reliable
EV charger was a challenge. I dealt with charging anxiety
when Google Maps led me to chargers I couldn't use
or were occupied. Is there an app that makes finding
chargers easier for non Tesla drivers, Kenny? This is why

(01:28:29):
I only rented a EV once, and I drive an EV,
so believe me, I love them, but I think renting
one is a little bit different because people are not
prepared for the fact that you do have to charge
this thing, and charging a non Tesla EV can be tricky.
As you experienced, these third party charging stations can be
very hit or miss. Sometimes they don't work, they're not maintained,

(01:28:51):
just it's a mixed bag. So two apps that can help.
One is called plug Share plug Share. This is a
really handy app. It's crowdsourced. People put information in about
apps or sorry about apps, about the charging stations everywhere,
so you can look for them that way. The other
one is called a Better Route Planner a Better Route

(01:29:14):
Planner and this was actually bought by Rivian, but it
still operates. It looks like it operates independently, and they
do have an app and so you can put in
your information you want to look for, you know, chargers
along the way, you can say what kind of car
you have. It's got a lot of great information there,
but at the end of the day, like you experience,
sometimes when you get to these places, the charger may

(01:29:36):
just not work. And that's getting better because Tesla is
opening up its super charging network to third party cars
and brands. But you need an adapter most of the time.
And it is a kind of a slow process because
they've announced this, but not everyone's on board right away.
So Kenny, thanks for the email, Thanks for listening to
the podcast to appreciate it. Gerald casulis now on the

(01:29:59):
line from nord VPN. You probably have heard of NordVPN.
They have all kinds of security programs and VPN programs.
He's going to talk to us about twenty twenty five
top cyber threats. Gerald, thanks for joining me today. Hi Rich,
thanks for having ny So what is NordVPN all about?
What I mean, I know the VPN, but you guys
got a whole bunch of products.

Speaker 11 (01:30:20):
Huh oh yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:30:22):
Absolutely, we want to make Internet a safer place, so
we have of course NORDPN to protect your identity online. Also,
we have Bustard Manager, we have business tools, we have
cyber Efects Intelligence, So we have a bunch of things
fully focusing on cybersecurity and you and your business safety online.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
I guess my first question is do people actually get
scammed on a daily basis? I know that I share
kind of these scams and text messages and all kinds
of things that are going around on a daily basis.
Are people falling for this stuff?

Speaker 5 (01:30:55):
Sadly? Absolutely, people, businesses, everyone does.

Speaker 12 (01:31:00):
I think we live way too hectic and fast space
of a life that we easily get tricked by receiving
an email, clicking on a link that we shouldn't, could
be text messages Here in US, you know, we get.

Speaker 5 (01:31:11):
A lot of that as well.

Speaker 12 (01:31:13):
It's very easy, and if you do fall for something,
you don't need to feel the silly bad about it.
It's just obviously what you do about it straight afterwards
and what tools you implement on digital devices that you
use to protect yourself better.

Speaker 1 (01:31:27):
All right, So we're talking about some of these things
you need to watch out for in twenty twenty five
combo lists. What does that mean and why are they
a big concern?

Speaker 12 (01:31:35):
For cybersecurity, great question, Rich, So, combo list is a
combination of information that's available in a dark web. And
when you know, when we talk about dark web, we
always think of this mythical, mystical place somewhere that is unreachable,
but actually dark web and deep webs it's very popular
among cyber criminals. And the combo list is basically a

(01:31:57):
list of information that's.

Speaker 5 (01:31:59):
Originated from breaches.

Speaker 12 (01:32:00):
So it could be a website got breached somewhere that
could be your email. There's another website I got breached
somewhere that could be your address, And that combo list
is going to be basically everything, all the information accessible
from numerous different breaches that could potentially have your full
contact details, your social security number, your telephone number, your addresses,
a bunch of information that would made for cyber clinels

(01:32:22):
to potentially steal your identity a lot easier and purchase
those type of combolists.

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
So they're piecing together information from various breaches. One may
not be a big deal, Okay, your phone number, but
now they've got your phone number, your social your address,
your email address, a couple of your old passwords, whatever,
all in one place.

Speaker 12 (01:32:43):
Absolutely, and that's where it all kind of leads to
account takeovers, which is very popular. You don't necessarily need
to look at a massive infringement such as someone stealing.

Speaker 5 (01:32:55):
Your identity, but even account takeover.

Speaker 12 (01:32:57):
So imagine I get your email address, maybe I get
a couple of different passwords that you use somewhere that
on the websites that were breached, and maybe you are
reusing one of the passwords that you use somewhere else,
which could be even secure passwords for instance.

Speaker 5 (01:33:11):
Or maybe using a really weak password.

Speaker 12 (01:33:13):
Of course, that full cube of criminals utilizing AI tools
would take only a split second to guess pass get
that type of password.

Speaker 5 (01:33:22):
So for me to.

Speaker 12 (01:33:23):
Gain access into into one of your logins, into one
of your tools, and it could be banking information and whatnot,
would be very very simple.

Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
That's wow. That's why I always tell people you have
to use a password manager, you have to use a
unique password. It's just it's vital at this point, I mean,
you just can't, there's no way around it. Okay, Now
this one, what is synthetic identity fraud and how does
it differ from sort of traditional ID theft?

Speaker 12 (01:33:50):
Yeah, a really good question, and that's actually Sentetic identity
fraud is actually getting gaining a lot popularity, so to say.
Synthetic identity fraud basically criminals create a new identity by
combining real and fixtious information. So potentially could be using
a real social security and number that has been available
somewhat and they combine it with fake information like fake

(01:34:11):
name to open a pounds of some sort to commit
fraud somewhere and potentially utilizing AI tools as well or
deep fake technology. It makes that type of synthetic identity
fraud a lot easier, and combining the real information with
fake information will be would be a lot harder for
you to get triggered to know that's happening in the background.

(01:34:33):
And it differs from the traditional identity debt where normally
your full information would be used where you might find
out about it a lot sooner because it could come
up on your credit report a lot easier.

Speaker 1 (01:34:44):
Wow, this is just wild. We're talking to Gerald Cassulis
from NordVPN about some of the top cyber threats to
look out for in twenty twenty five. How are hackers
using AI to make phishing attacks and social engineering more effective?
I know this is a big.

Speaker 12 (01:34:59):
One, absolutely Rich, and that's one of the things we've
seen sort of rising in sort of say popularity over
the last year or so.

Speaker 5 (01:35:09):
Basically, you can imagine AI.

Speaker 12 (01:35:11):
Tools, you know, a lot of us use it on
daily basis, you know, to make our lives easier. Could
be to draft an email for us, to do a
bit research for work, university, you name it. So in
a similar manner, there are AI tools in the dark
word that don't have traditional limitation and security measures, meaning
that you can ask those type of AI tools to
put a fraudulent email together, to put deep fake together

(01:35:35):
of some sort, to put malware attacked together. Right, So
meaning that for me, the entry barriers as a potential
hacker gets very very low, where I don't need to
know how to code, how to put active activities frogun
activities together. AI tools would do that for me, and
I'll be able to target Rich. I could have your email,

(01:35:58):
I'd be able to send out automate I think emails
that would be AI generated with intention of defrauding you.
So sophistication itself, it goes to the roofs and make
it makes it a lot easier for individuals to actually
operate in a negative manner.

Speaker 1 (01:36:15):
Yeah. I mean if you ask like a chat GBT
or a Gemini to do some of these things that
I'll say, sorry, I can't. But that does not mean
that there are not one hundred thousand tools out there
that will do it that are not necessarily in regular
consumers hands or the mainstream tools. So keep in mind
that you know, just because you can't do it doesn't
mean that no one else can. Finally, what is reverse

(01:36:38):
identity theft?

Speaker 12 (01:36:41):
Good question, Rich, So, same as with synthetic identity that
we see a lot of reverse identity theft are now
gaining popularity as well in the dark web in the
forums that being discussed as well. Basically, it's it's a
alarming concept where individuals assume.

Speaker 5 (01:36:57):
Someone else's identity and not to mention the silly for.

Speaker 12 (01:37:00):
Financial gain, not to steal your identity, but to actually
live as you. In a simple way put it where
they could be securing jobs, they could be accessing certain
services under false three tenses with different intentions, and those
type of intentions could be looking to frame person for
a crime, could be doing credit sabotage, impersonation of some

(01:37:23):
sort of online employments, broad so there are many.

Speaker 5 (01:37:26):
Different factors that play into it.

Speaker 12 (01:37:28):
So you can think of it reverse identity, where someone
would actually try to take your identity and live as
you for fraudulent purposes.

Speaker 1 (01:37:38):
Ah, that's scary, all right. Have we got about thirty seconds.
What do you think consumers should do to prepare for
all these challenges? Like, what do you think are their
main steps to take to protect themselves?

Speaker 12 (01:37:50):
Yeah, rich, as you said at the beginning, passive managers
one of the easiest tools to implement it. So and
then beyond that, you know, there are three things to consider,
So make sure you always enable to factors negation on
tools that you have. You use unique passwords, so never
reuse the password, and never create a week password like
passed one two threek and also regular your accounts. Uh,

(01:38:11):
you know, as frequently as you can. Make sure you
update your Internet of Things devices. If you've got like
a smart refrigerator, make sure you update those devices because
being they're not tooriously weak in terms of cybersecuity measures,
some very easy to for hackers to actually get into them.
So I think that many things that we can do
so not all of it is lost, which is a

(01:38:31):
good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
All right, great information. Wow, a lot of things to
watch out for in the new year. Gerald casulis from
nord VPN. The website nord vpn dot com is where
you want to go if you want to learn more
about some of those products and services. Thanks a lot
for coming on today, Gerald, appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (01:38:52):
Thanks che stay stay safe online.

Speaker 1 (01:38:54):
Thank you. Coming up, we're gonna we're gonna open up
the feedback, get some of those messages you've sent to
me throughout the week, and we'll see what you said
right here on rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich
On Tech. A couple of things to talk about before
we get to the feedback here. A couple of little things.

(01:39:15):
So I mentioned, I drove to Sedona and on our
way through Arizona, we drove past this giant, giant manufacturing plant.
I was like, what is that? It looks so high tech.
It was like looked brand new. And it turned out
I was trying to you know. When we passed by,
I was like to my wife, I was like, I

(01:39:35):
got to take a picture of this thing? What is this?
And sure enough I see a little sign TSMC like
TSMC What I did not realize they had a giant
manufacturing facility in Arizona. That's a Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company.
They make chips for all kinds of devices. So this

(01:39:57):
is kind of like the I mean, I know some
of you will get angry for me saying this, but
this is almost like the intel of our you know,
current times. Like they just make all kinds of chips
and everything. And this was a multi billion dollar plant
anyway near Phoenix. So the cars in that parking lot.
You can always tell a good company by the quality

(01:40:18):
of the cars in the parking lot, and these were
some nice cars. The entire parking lot was solar paneled,
you know, coverage. So you're looking for a good job,
I don't know, this might be the place. Anyway. I
thought that was really cool to, you know, remind us
that all this stuff we take for granted, there's a
lot of chips that go into these phones and computers
we have. They got to be made somewhere. This was interesting.

(01:40:41):
Someone asked me to test out something like a free
trial of a program, like some security program, and so
I signed up. It was like fifteen dollars a month.
They offered like a seven day free trial. And here's
the thing, Usually when I sign up for something, I
cancel it right away, or I snooze the welcome email
for you know, two or three days after so I

(01:41:02):
can check it out and then remind myself to cancel. Well,
I didn't get that welcome email, so I thought, that's
kind of shady. Come on, if you're signing up for
something that requires your email address, you should get an
email from that company that says thank you for signing up.
Your trial ends on this day. Companies that don't send that,
I would be wary of doing business with them, because that,

(01:41:24):
to me is already getting off on a bad foot,
because you know, I had no way of remember like it.
Just a couple like hours later, I'm like, wait, where's
this email? Never got it, went to the website directly
and canceled it. But anyway, and finally before we get
to the feedback, my wife and I the other night
needed some stuff for you know, like a little like whatever,

(01:41:47):
just random stuff around the house. I forget what the
one thing we needed was. But anyway, I said, why
don't we try doordashing It Like, by the time we
drive to Target pick up these three items, like DoorDash
might be cheaper actually I think it was Uber Eat.
And here's the thing. A lot of these companies are
doing like first time deals. So Uber was giving like
fifty percent off your first like non food delivery order.

(01:42:08):
So Target, you know, qualified, I'm not kidding. This stuff
was at our house within twenty minutes. We ordered like
five items and it was so cheap. It was cheaper
than going there ourselves. And by the way, when you
go to Target, you spend extra money because you buy
stuff that you weren't thinking you were going to get.
And this thing was at our door, and I was like,
this is wild, Like what world do we live in
where this stuff is at our door quicker than we

(01:42:29):
can drive to Target? And so I thought about that,
but I was like, you know, the catch about all
this is that, of course it's fifty percent off right now.
All they want you to do is try it so
that the next time, by the way, it's not going
to be fifty percent off, you'll remember how convenient was
and maybe you'll do it again. And that's how these
all these tech companies build business, so that they do
it really cheap at the beginning, and then when you actually,

(01:42:50):
you know, later on, use it again. It's like, Oh,
where'd that discount go? There's no there's no promo codes anymore.
All right, let's get to the feedback. Howard writes in
I enjoy your segments and radio show. I received an
email about a one hundred dollars settlement from an auto
parts antitrust case, but wasn't sure if it was legitimate.
I searched online and found mixed results, but no news coverage.
Can you suggest how to verify this? Yes, I can

(01:43:13):
go to the website top class actions dot com, topclassactions
dot com. He actually forwarded me the email and I
popped it into this website the actual case number, and
sure enough it came up. And so any class action
lawsuit type in a keyword into this website and it
will tell you all the details on that. That's where

(01:43:33):
I go to verify Top Classactions dot Com. There's a
lot of those class action lawsuits, you know, percolating. Make
sure they're legit before you do anything with them. Let's
see here. Rudy from San Jose writes in you had
a caller with an epsoen printer and an AT and
T wireless internet who mentioned they had printing issues. I

(01:43:54):
wanted to share a tip. Many routers create two networks,
a personal network and a guest network. The phone or
computers on one network and the printer is on the other,
they might not see each other. I had a similar
issue at home and discovered this was the case. Thanks
Rudy JL from Illinois rights in. I'd love for influencers

(01:44:14):
like you to help educate people about the downsides of
vertical video. It's becomes so common, but many people don't
realize how much better videos look if they were shot
and horizontal. Even when the issue is pointed out, the
trend continues. Can you help spread the word, you know, Jl,
I used to care about this, and now I'm sorry.
With TikTok and Instagram reels and all these vertical videos,

(01:44:36):
that format is here to stay. My best solution is,
if you are shooting anything that you're not sharing on
social media, yes, shoot it in widescreen because that's what
you see on your TV. But you know it's I
have no problem with it anymore. I have to shoot
videos both ways because I'm shooting for TV and social
It's just kind of the way of the world. Vanessa

(01:44:58):
from Nevada rights in this while camping in Montana, my
e bike was stolen. I tracked it with tile for
nine hours all around town without success. Then two days
later it pinged at a storage unit across town. With
help from my son, daughter in law, her brother, and nephew.
Oh wow, they brought out everyone. We went to the location.
I rang the tile, called the Sheriff's department and they
heard the ring. After getting a warrant and cutting the lock,

(01:45:20):
I got my one thousand dollars plus e bike back.
I listened to you on KFI through iHeart on my echo.
I love your show. Be careful when you're getting Just
because you can see the location doesn't necessarily mean you
should go in like the but you did the right thing,
got the officer involved. Teresa from Chicago rights in. I
saw your segment before Christmas and immediately went out and

(01:45:41):
got the remote control Geko at my local Target. It
was the last one. My four and a half year
old granddaughter loves it. I'm not very tech savvy, but
I enjoy your segments. Thank you. My kid also loved
the remote control Geko. We got it for him and
now we're getting it for can't mention because they might
be listening. Kids love it, that's gonna do it. You
can find links on the website rich on Tech dot TV,

(01:46:04):
follow me on social media at rich on tech. Very
important this week because I'll be at CES twenty twenty
five in Las Vegas sharing the latest and AI wearables, cars, TVs,
all the other good stuff. Thanks to everyone who makes
this show possible. My name is Richdmiro. I will talk
to you real soon.

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