Unexplained Outages, Prime Day Tips & Spying Galore

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Authorities discover the way China might be cyber spying on us,
and it is not good. Two major outages in one week.
What we know about Verizon and Bank of America's issues.
Ring adds a key feature to its cameras, but not
to its most popular products. I'll explain, plus your tech

(00:21):
questions answered.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
What is going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is
Rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
This is the show where I talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
that tech should be interesting, useful and fun. All right,
let's open up those phone lines at triple a Rich
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two,
four to.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
One zero one.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Every time I do that, I just imagine the floodgates
opening with Kim standing behind them, just all these calls
flowing her way. She will go through them and get
you on the air. Here, give me a call. If
you have a question about technology. Email is also an option.
Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit
contact up at the top. That's Rich on tech dot TV.

(01:12):
Hit contact. You can submit your question there. It will
make its way right to my inbox guests. This week,
We've got Justin Klosco from Consumer Watchdog. He's gonna talk
about tech related privacy concerns and how you can better
protect your information. Then later in the show, it is
shopping expert Trey baj. She is from truetrade dot com.

(01:35):
She's gonna talk all about Amazon Prime Day, and we're
gonna have a check in from North Carolina. One of
my friends that lives there covers VR for Android Central.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
He's been on the show before.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
He is gonna call in and talk about what it's
been like in the wake of this hurricane over there,
and especially when it comes to technology, it has not
been good over there.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
But let's talk about Prime Day.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
I'm gonna get to the China spying stuff in the
in the next segment that is just wild, but I'll
get to that in a moment.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
But first, let's talk about Prime Day.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
This is happening this week, and I figured I would
share my tried and true ways the way that I
shop on Amazon. And I know we're gonna have Trey
on later on to talk about her tips and tricks,
but these are mine. This is the way I shop
on Amazon day in day out year in, year out
to make sure that I'm getting the best deals on
Prime Day. So Prime Day is happening on Tuesday and Wednesday,

(02:34):
October eighth and ninth. Once again, you do have to
be a Prime member, So if you're not paying for
that Prime membership, you might want to sign up for
a free trial if you're going to start your holiday shopping.
These deals are exclusive for Prime. And I've noticed that
Amazon has started sort of promoting the Prime membership a
lot more so when you go on Amazon. I ordered

(02:54):
something the other day and it was like, hey, you
would have paid ten dollars for shipping if you weren't Prime.
And then if you go to your Prime page, if
you go to Amazon dot com, let's see Prime, there
is a page and it tells you, like how much
you've saved on Amazon Prime over the years, which is interesting.
So let's see Amazon Prime membership. Let's see. I think

(03:15):
there's a here's the stats. I've saved one and twenty
eight dollars with Prime. That doesn't sound like that much.
I mean how many for oh, for twelve months, Okay,
that's that's a lot. I've watched sixty three movies and
shows which I don't believe I have. But okay, three
hundred and thirty four packages, zero books, that's prime books,
and I've listened to five hundred and ninety four songs,

(03:37):
so I don't know. I mean, I guess the three
hundred and thirty four packages. If you do the math,
one hundred and thirty nine dollars for the year divided
by three hundred and thirty nine packages, that's forty one
cents shipping each package.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Wow. Okay, that's when you put it that way.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Remember when when shipping actually cost a lot of money,
like you would literally pay for postage and handling. And
now it's just if you're not getting free shipping, you're like,
I'm not ordering from there. I mean, it's very rare
that we pay for shipping, but somebody has to pay
for it is built into the price of these things,
all right. So my first strategy number one, make a
gift list now. And by the way, AI is really

(04:15):
good for helping you with this. I mentioned a couple
of weeks ago is my kid's birthday. We said, hey,
give me some ideas for a ten year old for
you know, a ten year old boy.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
And I'm not kidding.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
We got such great ideas from AI, so lean on
AI and the Adobe Insights actually said people are leaning
on AI for shopping so much more than ever before.
Great way to brainstorm gifts and gift ideas. Review your
past purchases. This is one of my best tips because
you know, we buy so much stuff on Amazon. Like

(04:43):
it's not sexy, but I buy like my filter for
my refrigerator, right Like, I buy that on Amazon every
six months, never goes on sale. Maybe it's on sale
during Prime Day. So go to Amazon up at the top,
hit returns and orders, and then buy again. This will
give you a list of all of this stuff you
have purchased on Amazon, and so you can see like,

(05:03):
oh okay, I do need that again. You'll just get
ideas for things that you may have purchased in the past.
Like we purchase I know again it's silly. These wipes
for our shoes that we use. My kids love them.
They really clean up. You know what I'm talking about, Bobo.
You got to have clean shoes, right, So my kids
love them. I love them, and we order them all
the time. They may be on sale. So once you
have that, you've got your stuff in your cart. Now

(05:26):
check your cart. So I don't know about you, but
I save a lot of stuff in my Amazon cart
for later. Go to your Amazon cart, scroll down to
the bottom and see what's in there, and also add
stuff in there. So if you want to track the
price on things, add it to your cart today. That
way you're not scrambling on Tuesday and Wednesday to come
up with all the stuff you want to purchase. And
then once you do that, watch for early deals. So

(05:50):
in the in the sort of days leading up to
Prime Day, things go on sale. So just continue, you know,
for the next week or so, it's time to visit
Amazon and just see what's there, see what's happening that's
you know, you never know when you're gonna find something
that's that went on sale.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
And keep in mind this is a two day event.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
It really lasts in my mind, probably more like four
or five days, because if you think about the two
days before it, the day after, plus the two days,
you know, there is a long swath of time to
get those deals. I would say the deals really drop
off though after Prime Day, so once it ends, you're
not really going to be getting that many deals right
after that. So look more in the days leading up

(06:30):
to it. Now, here's the most important thing to look for.
You have to look for these special Prime Day banners.
Don't just look for something that says save eleven percent,
save fifteen percent. I'm looking right now at my past purchases,
and you see these banners they say Prime Early Deal,
limited time deal with Prime, or thirty six percent off

(06:52):
or whatever percent off, limited time deal. So right at
the top, it's showing me all the stuff I've purchased
in the past, Like these these luggage tags that I paid, Well,
they're okay, they're not that big of a deal. They're
only you're typically eight dollars right now there's seven. But hey,
that's a dollar saved. Why not bad example, Let's see
these lights that I bought outside typically eighty nine dollars.

(07:15):
These are on sale for fifty six. And this even
has a countdown ends in four hours. So again that's
how you identify the Prime Day deals, these big red
banners near the price tags. If you don't see that,
it's probably not on sale for Prime. Now, once you
find something that you want to purchase, I take the
URL and I go to a website called Camel Camel Camel.
You pop that URL from Amazon into Camel Camel Camel,

(07:39):
and this will give you the price history. So what
you're looking for on that price history is to see
if the lowest price that they've recorded is lower or
higher than the current price. So if the current price
on sale is the same or lower than that last
previous lowest price on Camel Camel Camel, go ahead and
buy it. That means that this is a better deal.

(08:00):
So for instance, this TV that I looked up was
one hundred and fifty nine dollars. Camel Camel cammell said, Oh,
the last cheapest price was one sixty nine, so therefore
this is way cheaper, I mean ten dollars cheaper than
it's ever been. And that's what you're really looking for
because you can't go by the list price on Amazon.
The list price means absolutely nothing. That does not mean

(08:21):
that this item ever sold at that price. It just
means that's the list price. This thing could be on
sale all the time, and that's why Camel Camel Camel
will help you figure out if it's actually a deal
or if it's just you know, the typical price it's
always been. Now, if you're looking for deep discounts on
Amazon stuff. That's where you're going to find some great
stuff like Ring, Kindle, Fire TV, Echo, and euro for

(08:45):
the mesh Wi Fi. Those are all going to be
on sale. Typically they discount the previous year's products a
little bit more than the current stuff, but the current
stuff gets discounts as well. Some of the current deals
you can get right now Amazon Music Unlimited four months
for free, Kindle Unlimited, three months free, Audible if you
like to listen to audiobooks. I think I picked up

(09:05):
like three months free, but your offer maybe personalized depending
on if you subscribe before. And then of course Amazon
promising all kinds of deals on all these brands. There's
a list of a couple dozen of them, American Girl, bos, Coach, Dice,
and Lego, Peloton, Samsung. I've listed them all my website,
and what I did for you is actually link them

(09:26):
all up because Amazon doesn't give you like a list
plus the links. So what I do is I go
through and I link them all up so that you
can click if you want something from Bos, you can
click that link and see what's on sale instantly from Bos.
And so I've done that with all of the different brands.
Then of course I put things that I like in
there as well, So you can check that all out.
That's all on my website, rich on tech dot TV,

(09:49):
and it's basically a big banner there that says Prime Day,
So check it out and if you need the thirty
day free trial access that is available as well. So
my advice for Prime Day, don't just spend money like
no reason. Go in with a plan and you can
actually save money on the things that you actually need
and actually want and actually want a gift throughout the holidays.

(10:10):
By the way, this week, I mentioned last week on
my Instagram was sort of knocked by Instagram. Well this
week they actually shut down my account completely for a while.
That means I lost all my posts, all my followers,
all my account access. It was suspended. I logged on
and said, your account is suspended and you can appeal this,
but if you appeal and lose, we delete your account

(10:31):
and you can never come back. And I said what,
And so I tweeted about this. I went on X
and I said, hey, here's my story, Like, what the heck?
I know I made fun of Meta last week in
this show, but come on, does somebody really get mad
there and delete my account.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Well, it turns out I don't know.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
All I know is that a Meta spokesperson replied to
my tweet and said, hey, this was a mistake.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Your account was back now.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
I think that seems kind of fishy, seems kind of
odd that all of a sudden, after I got this
knock on my account last week, the day or a
couple days later, after I make fun of Meta, they
close my account and say I'm suspended, like for no reason.
It said copyright or something like give me a break.
So long story short. At first, I was like, Oh,
I am relieved of posting of stories, of making reels

(11:16):
of all this social media stuff, like life is so
free right now. And then I was like, it's also
kind of sad that I lost one hundred and seventy
thousand people there that I talked to on a daily basis. Anyway,
I have my account back at rich on Tech, So
I am there. Let's hope that there are no more
quote unquote mistakes with my Instagram. All right, eight A
eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four

(11:38):
to two four one zero one. Give me a call
if you have a question about technology. My name is
rich Damiro and you are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro 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 rich

(11:59):
on Tech dot tv. If you want to link to
something I mentioned, hit the light bulb up at the
top of the show and you can get links there.
This is show number ninety two. Marta wrote in on email, Hey, Rich,
I would like to say you are such a great
informative person with great phone etiquette.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
Thanks for this great show.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
My question, I'm interested in perching a good purchasing a
good router for my place, which at the moment is
twelve hundred square feet.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Much appreciated.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
I would say Eerro is gonna be your best bet,
and it's gonna be on sale right now during the
prime day.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
So check out ero E E r O. That's what
I use. I've used for many years.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
It works, it works well, and I don't think you
need like the latest version. I just think like one
to two nodes.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Would probably be the best of the just the standard
one I think is on sale already, so E E
R O on Amazon Marta and thanks for the kind
words there.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
All right, let's go to Linda in Seal Beach. Linda,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
All Rich, there's a good chance that my iPhone fifteen
is jail broken. I am looking for a solution. I
have called different companies online and all that take care
of our companies.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
Where can I go.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
To find an individual? I'm not being successful?

Speaker 2 (13:23):
What do you want? I mean, how did this get
jail broken?

Speaker 4 (13:27):
And there's a neighbor.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
And he had access or they had access to your phone?

Speaker 4 (13:34):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (13:35):
They yes, they had access to all of my I
was broken into.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
My home and.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
They got all my information and my passwords. And I
have changed my password on my iPhone about ten times.
I'm just what do I do next? I purchased a
new I've even just a new iPhone. I kept my
old email address Apple had told me to. When they

(14:09):
recovered it, they had me go back to my old
email caudebt.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Okay, well, I've also did How did he get into
the phone? How did he did he have your past
code as well?

Speaker 4 (14:22):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Wow, so did you have that written down somewhere? I?

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Yes, I did, Okay, I did.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
And so what is your phone doing that you believe
that this person still has access to it?

Speaker 3 (14:38):
I am I am having some way somehow. One example
is my Apple I D password. The app drop Box
was added to my Apple I D password where you
go into sign into your Apple IP. I have had

(15:01):
files downloaded off of my phone into drop Box. I
only used drop Box perhaps two times, and that was
in twenty twenty when I sold property.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
Oh wow, Well, so there's a couple of things you
can do. Number one, you you should be able just
to literally recover your phone through your computer. You just
fully restore it and that will that will format it
and put fresh software back on it. So if you

(15:36):
if you look up factory restore iPhone.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Uh, factory reset and that is.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
What not reset have. This is a restore. This is
a reset just resets the software that's on there. Restore
means you're connecting your phone to a computer and it's
actually going to put a new copy of the operating
system on your phone. That's what you need to get
rid of this. Uh this jail break, Now, to jail

(16:02):
break a phone is it's quite involved and I'm not
sure what the end game here is with this. Person.
But no matter what, you need to change your passwords.
You need to set up two factor authentication, and you
start by going into your Email account changing that password,
enabling two factor authentication. Then you go into your Apple

(16:23):
account and you change your password and you enable two
factor authentication. Those are the two things you need to
do immediately to get this person to not have access
to your account. Then you got to take your phone.
You got to factory restore it with a computer, and
that's going to be the way that you get this
phone erased and formatted and reset back to factory. I

(16:45):
would bring it to an Apple store as well, just
to make sure that everything is on the up and up.
You can also take it to a place like you
break I Fixed. They will do a free diagnostic. You
can also scan it if you want to see if
this thing has spyware on it, the webs the software
I amazing. We'll actually scan it for popular U spyware,
which is Pegasus, Predator, King's Pawn and Operation Triangulation. So

(17:11):
those are the steps I would take, Linda, and reclaim
your privacy, reclaim your phone, and get a password manager.
Start putting stuff in there instead of writing it down
because you saw what happened. Someone got in and got
access to everything. Coming up, I'll tell you how China
might be having access to the US information right here.

(17:33):
Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one
oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. A little bit of trivia.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Did you know?

Speaker 1 (17:46):
This was the very first music video to ever air
on MTV and very obviously it makes sense video killed
the radio star because the MTV kind of changed everything
when it came to music.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
I really did. Welcome back to the show. I'll get
to your calls in just a moment. What but don't
play music videos anymore? So they killed them? Yeah, I
don't even think.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, you could actually watch like the old school MTV
like they have it like on those streaming networks and
like it's just it's so weird to see. But yeah,
you used to sit down and just watch music videos.
Now of course it's YouTube and you know, Vivo and
all that stuff. So this is kind of a big
story out of the Wall Street Journal. This China linked

(18:31):
hacking group called salt Typhoon breached the networks of major
US telecom providers like Verizon AT and T in Lumen.
So what they did was they took advantage of the
back doors that these providers have built in for court orders.
So if they needed to wiretap someone in the US,

(18:51):
you know, I apparently they have a way to do
that on all of our networks, and China somehow figured
out a way into that, which means of Internet traffic
from businesses and millions of American consumers is potentially exposed here.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
What does that mean.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
It means all the stuff that's flowing on the Internet
China could have seen. That's really bad, I mean really bad.
This is the reason why encryption is really important. This
is the reason why back doors are really bad, because
you can't have a back door to a system that
only the good people can access. And who's good? I

(19:29):
mean really, who wants that at all? If you think
your transmissions are private and they're not scary. So we
don't know what the full extent of this breach is.
We just know that it's really bad. I mean, this
is bad. The fact that they are tapping our systems
that we have here in the US, that you know,

(19:52):
depending on where you believe, should we have those are not.
This is not a good thing. So again, encrypted, encrypted, encrypted.
This is why Apple has been so hip with encryption
and making sure your device is encrypted, and Android is
getting more private and more encrypted. But it calls into

(20:13):
a lot of questions like you know, using a VPN
does that help? Using an app like Signal does that help?
You know, we just had this change over to RCS,
which is Rich Communication Services. So typically I message is encrypted,
so if you're texting someone, I message is encrypted. We
just saw WhatsApp they are encrypted. But we also saw

(20:33):
all these all these big providers in the US are
moving to encryption. Whether they have a backdoor sometimes you know,
they don't necessarily tell us. But this is you know,
news to me that all these major companies, Verizon, AT
and T. You know, back in the day it was
just phone lines. They are very easy to wiretap, but
once you get into these networks that are transmitting data packets,
it's a lot tougher to sniff out unless it's unencrypted

(20:56):
and unless there's a back door. And clearly that was
taking advance of it in a big way. That is
something to watch. Let's go to Gary and Laguda Noguel. Gary,

Speaker 5 (21:07):
Yes, Rich, have another cell phone question for you here. Sure,
now I'm considering getting the new phone. And see when
I called you. I have my Samsung Galaxy STMNY. I
love the size of the phone, and it works good
with a Hoverizon when I'm mountain in the desert and
up in the mountains. It works good around my house here,
it doesn't where I live. I live in Team Mobile zone.

(21:31):
Mayos say, And I want to ask you, now, how
are these phones that I've seen that had dual SIM cards?
Are they worth purchasing or not? I mean, and how
does the dual SIM work?

Speaker 6 (21:46):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, So, I mean you would basically need to purchase
a SIM a plan from two providers, and you can
install both those providers on your phone, and then you
can actually use both of those providers at the same time.
You can have the both active. Someone texts you on
the T Mobile line, it'll come through. If someone texts
you on the Verizon line, it'll come through. You can

(22:06):
decide which one's your primary so you can say, like,
I want to use this as my primary line, so
when you start composing a text, it will go from
that line. You can decide which one uses data, you
can have them both use data. I mean, there's a
lot of options when you're talking about e SIMS, and
almost every modern smartphone at this point supports multiple SIM cards.
So whether that's the Pixel, the Samsung, or the iPhone,

(22:30):
you can install and use multiple SIMS on most of
those devices, no problem. But I will tell you, I
think this is expensive. I think that it's a little
of a solution. But if you were using Verizon as
your primary SIM most of the time, and then when
you go home, you've got T Mobile, you know, have
it used that, it's kind of going to get see

(22:52):
So I why not just use Wi Fi calling when
you're home? I mean, if it's when you're out and
about in the area and it doesn't work, you know,
but the Wi Fi calling in your house is going
to work just fine. The other thing I would look
into there is a carrier called Red Pocket Red Pocket

(23:14):
and they actually have this feature that lets you switch
between the three networks, so they call it Coverage Genius,
and they operate on all three networks and you can
choose your network.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Based on your needs.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
So whether you want better coverage in your current location,
whether you're traveling, whether you're moving and I'm looking at
how this works, and it says you can change networks
if you need to improve your coverage, have a new device,
you're just trying to find the right fit, so you
download this coverage Genius tool to switch your ESUM from
one network to another, keeping your number functional. So I

(23:57):
don't know, that does not sound like something that you
want to do like every day. It more sounds like
you can switch networks if you go to a different
area that has no signal, and it takes a little
bit to do this, but it doesn't sound like something
that's automatic. So I'd probably gary recommend number one just

(24:17):
using Wi Fi calling when you're home and if you're
out and about, and you'd you know, I guess the
main thing what it comes down to is I always
tell people to find a carrier that works where you
live and where you work. So if you're talking about
you know where you live is T Mobile, I'd probably
go with T Mobile, and then when you're out and about,

(24:38):
just use T Mobile. I know Verizon is a great network,
you want to be on it, but I think it's
very important to have a network that works where you
live and the other way you can do it is.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
You can flip it.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
You can still stand Verizon and just use the Wi
Fi calling when you're home, but that's not as clean
as as doing it the other way. So hope that helps.
Gary appreciate it. Thanks so much for the call.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Today. Let's go to Brian and Murrietta. Brian, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 7 (25:09):
Good morning.

Speaker 8 (25:11):
I'm trying to help a friend of mine.

Speaker 9 (25:12):
She does door Dash, and the way I understand is
that the higher the level you are and the percentage
of completion, the more orders you're going to get. She's
at the highest I guess the level of platinum, and
her percentage of completion is like the ninety nile, so

(25:32):
she shouldn't getting.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
More orders, but especially during peak time.

Speaker 8 (25:37):
And things like that.

Speaker 10 (25:39):
She could be at the restaurant.

Speaker 11 (25:41):
In the store, but the software, the door Dash program
will give to somebody that's further away. And I was
trying to help her figure her eyes and I wonder
one and DoorDash.

Speaker 9 (25:52):
Can't figure it out either while somebody else is getting
it further away.

Speaker 12 (25:55):
And she's at that level, and I think she's at
the store.

Speaker 11 (26:00):
Because boot it off, because somebody else is going to
prioritize and then my other question is twofold, is that
if if she decided, okay, I suggest her to go
to Varizon, don't go to Visible or Total, go to Verizon.
Having the Ultimate on the Minute Plus which has the
five G Ultimate wide band versus just the five G

(26:23):
doesn't make it any think that'll make a.

Speaker 12 (26:25):
Difference as far as being on the network.

Speaker 10 (26:28):
And maybe they're they're just recognizing that she's there and
she's going to get that order. The difference between the
alter all the why versus the G and the just
regular G.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
What signal is she? What signal is she on? What? What?
What carrier?

Speaker 13 (26:46):
Uh?

Speaker 9 (26:46):
It's it's kind of like like Total or Visible?

Speaker 7 (26:50):
What was like?

Speaker 1 (26:51):
So she is on T Mobile? Okay, she is on
an MV and L, So that could be it. I
don't think that's it. I think that these systems look
at the location of your phone and they take into
account a lot of different algorithms. So again I don't
know if it's like strictly that it doesn't know she's there.
But what I would recommend is for sure looking in

(27:13):
your door dash app and making sure the location permission
is set to all the time and not just when
using the app. That's the number one thing. You want
to make sure that it has access to your location
the entire time. And then when it comes to cellular,
I mean, you know five G ultra wideband. Yes, that's
going to be your absolute best signal and you're going

(27:36):
to get deprioritized the least if you're on one of
the big unlimited plans. But I don't think that's contributing
to it. I would say tell her to turn her
Wi Fi off and make sure that she's on a
cellular signal so that way it's always finding because sometimes
your phone gets caught in this weird dead zone of
it's like Wi Fi cellular, Wi Fi cellular. That's what

(27:58):
I would do first off, before spending more money. This
is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The
phone line for the show is eight eight eight rich
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Give me a call if

(28:19):
you have a question about technology, something bugging you. Maybe
you found a great app you want to share with everyone.
I don't know whatever it is. Kim will take it
and get you on the show if possible. Let's see
website for the show Rich on tech dot TV. A
couple things you can do there. You can sign up
for my newsletter. You can send me an email just

(28:41):
hit contact, or you can hit the light bulb icon
for show notes. So anything I mentioned here in the
show notes, I will put there where the light bulb is.
And also on the front page is the Amazon Prime
Big Day Deals. What you need to know, I've got
all my tips and tricks for that. Let's go to
Diana and towards California. Diana, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 13 (29:04):
Hi, Rich, thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Absolutely what can I help you with?

Speaker 13 (29:09):
Yes, I need your help with. A few days ago,
my dad was powering up his Windows laptop and then
he got d like a pop up or a screen
that was sounded like it must have covered his whole screen.
That was selling my subscription to Microsoft to be sixty five.

(29:32):
So he didn't really understand fully and he does not
need Microsoft through sixty five, but he went ahead and
it's a subscription to get it off his screen.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
And so, uh, that's why they do that.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
By the way, I've set up many Microsoft computers. It's
basically it looks like you're just saying yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes to all the different things, but like actually subscribing
you to stuff.

Speaker 13 (29:55):
Yeah, and he does not know how to like get
out of those screens or those windows. But anyway, so
he ended up ultimately actually subscribing and giving him his
credit card number, and thank goodness, it wasn't a stam.
It appears to be legitimately from Microsoft. So he received
his you know, acknowledgment or a welcome email, but they
do not have any information on how to cancel, and

(30:19):
so it just has a link to activate. And I'm
not even sure if he has a Microsoft account, so
I'm not sure what's the best and quickest way to
cancel out of this subscription.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Well, he must have a Microsoft account because he must
have set it up or signed in with it. Because
typically on the Windows computers, I'm guessing he got an
update to Windows and that's what happened when it usually
when it gets a big update, it like tries to
get you to sign up for all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
Again, is that what happened? Or do you get a
new computer?

Speaker 13 (30:50):
Yeah, it was an older laptop, but I wasn't there
when it happened, so he only describes it as he
was turning on the computer and the screen came up.
I was chasing Microsoft through sixty five and it sounded
like it you didn't really know how to get out
of that.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
So typically it's when you get a big update on
these computers. They they always go through this flow of like,
let's set up your new computer, and then they try
to get you to switch to Edge and they try
to get you to resubscribe to one Drive and all
this stuff. So it's pretty innocent what happened to him.
I would call this a dark pattern, which basically it
looks like you're doing one thing, but Microsoft is sort

(31:28):
of tricking you into doing another thing, which is the subscription.
If you read really carefully, obviously you would notice it.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
But they hope that nine.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Out of ten people don't really read these things very closely.
They just click yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and there
you go, or they think that they need it.

Speaker 13 (31:43):
So the good news is he would have been forced
to create a Microsoft account if you didn't already have one.

Speaker 12 (31:49):
Oh yeah, to purchase this.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah, it's a link to an account.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
So the good news is I subscribe and cancel Microsoft
stuff all the time, especially Xbox Live because they're always
sending me a notification that says, hey, take a free month,
and I'm like sure, So it is very easy, very straightforward.
The good news about reputable companies and big companies is
that they do make it easy to cancel their subscription.
So the thing you want to do is log into

(32:16):
his account, his Microsoft account. You're gonna have to obviously
if he has an email address. I'm sure he only
has one or two. You got to ask him which
one is on his account, and then go into account
dot Microsoft dot com. Basically log into his Microsoft account
and then on the left hand side, there's a whole
bunch of like menu items under your email address, and

(32:37):
it says account, your info, and then Service and Subscriptions
is the number three item, So you tap that and
that will show you all of your active service, all
of your subscriptions. So I can see my Xbox Game
Pass ultimate and if you scroll down, it will say
Microsoft three sixty five I had the family version.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Mine has expired.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
But you can see where it says manage resubscribe, but
you can press manage and there's a cancellation option in there,
and of course they will try to get you to stay,
but just go ahead and cancel it out through there.
That's the easiest way to do it. It's pretty straightforward
as long as you can log into his Microsoft account.
That might be the tricky thing is figuring out how

(33:21):
to do that. You're probably going to have to do
a password recovery on his account just if he doesn't
know the password. And I would do one step further, Diana,
I would make sure that once you have his account
logged in, I would set up two factor authentication on
that account as well, just to protect a little bit better.
So those are the things to do. Just basically, go

(33:42):
to account dot Microsoft dot com, log in, look for
the section that says services and subscriptions, look for three
sixty five family and get rid of it.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
And by the way, the same.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Goes for Apple, all of your iCloud subscription or sorry,
you're Apple subscription, and all of the Google Play subscriptions.
These companies, you know, they make it very very easy
to sign up, and it is very easy with these
major companies to get rid of it. It's just it
seems like a lot, and it seems like we're so
used to do I really have to go into my
account and do this, and what's my password? And I

(34:16):
got to do two factor and this and that. Just
take the time to do it. I mean, it really
only takes a minute or two what I do with
most subscriptions. Unless I know I'm keeping something, I will
cancel it immediately, so I do not forget. And nine
out of ten subscriptions except Apple, which is interesting, most
of the are sorry Apple's own products, But most of

(34:38):
the other subscriptions, like anything you've subscribed through iTunes, you
can easily go in on your phone and cancel that
immediately and you will still retain access for the entire time,
even if it's a year. You just have to go
into your settings and then up at the top. And
this is probably a good thing to look into. Just
look at your account, tap there and then it says

(34:58):
subscriptions under Apple account, and all of your subscriptions will
be in there. Tap one and just say cancel and
it will not automatically renew. And I do that again
as soon as I sign up for things, because you're
gonna forget. And the other thing I do is if
I get the email that says hey, thanks for signing up,
I will snooze it. Until a couple of days before

(35:19):
I'm gonna get built. And that way, that email will
pop up in my Gmail a day or two before
it's time to renew.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
I don't get hit with those those charges.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
All right, coming up, I'm gonna tell you about Verizon
message shutting down. What you need to know. This is
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich
Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The phone
line for the show is eight eight eight rich one
oh one. That is eight eight eight seven four to

(35:50):
two four one zero one. Give me a call. If
you have a question about technology. You can also email.
Just go to the website rich on Tech dot tv
hit content at you can send your message that way. Well,
speaking of messages, this has been blowing up my website.
I wrote a post about Verizon Message plus shutting down.

(36:13):
So whenever I get a bunch of emails about something,
I immediately say, okay, there's something here, and I will
be honest. You're like my canary in the coal mine
because you are the one who texts me, message messages me,
emails me. I mean, it's just like all of a
sudden when I see a bunch of people send me

(36:35):
the same thing.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
I'm like, okay, there's something to this.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
So on this Verizon discontinuing their Message plus app. I
got text from Tim Tammy, Connie Dave, Sharon, Cheryl Rudy.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
I didn't just make up those names, Bobo that those
are those I'm not kidding.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Those are I had to look back on my email,
I mean, all these people. So when I get that
many emails, boom boom boom, boom boom, I go all right,
I got a look into this, and sure enough, this
has just been going wild. People are up in arms
about this Message Plus shutting down On November seventh, twenty
twenty four. Verizon wants you to switch to what's called
Google Messages now. Verizon Message Plus has been around forever.

(37:19):
This app is so ancient and the reason they started
it back in the day, you were able to have
Verizon Messages on your phone and then you could also
install this app on say your iPad or another device
and also see your messages. And that feature got sort
of like discontinued over the years, but a lot of
people were just used to using this app and it

(37:40):
lets you do some interesting things above and beyond your
standard messages like you can basically change your background. You
can add a signature to your texts, like kind of
when things were fun with the texting and now it's
gotten very serious with the Google Messages. So, long story short,
they want you to switch to Google message Why because

(38:01):
Google Messages is kind of like the standard messaging app
on the Android side of things, And most of this
applies to just Android folks. Maybe if you had a
Message Plus installed on your iPad or maybe on your iPhone,
this might apply to you, but it mostly applies to
people on Android. So what they want you to do

(38:21):
is download the Google Messages app and then open up
that app, and as soon as you open that app,
it should say, hey, would you like us to set
this Azure defall app for messaging? And you say yes,
and all of your messages should come over to Google Messages.
Now what I would do personally, just because this is
a big switch over, I don't care about my text messages.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
They can be deleted. I don't care.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
I don't keep any it doesn't really matter to me.
But I know a lot of people like to keep
their messaging history. So if you're one of those people,
there's always a chance that's switching over, you know, something
could go wrong and you might lose your text. So
I would use an app like SMS Backup and restore
to back up your messages before you switch these apps,
and that way you have a nice copy of them

(39:01):
and your Google Drive or on your phone in one place,
and if something goes wrong, you can always recover them.
That way, you don't have to, You don't have to
do that backing up. But I just recommend that because
anytime you do a major switch or a major change,
there's always potential for an issue. Now you might be saying,
why do we have to do this, why?

Speaker 5 (39:21):
Why?

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Why? Well?

Speaker 1 (39:22):
I think the reason is because RCS. The iPhone now
supports RCS, which is Rich Communication Services, and that means
that when you text from Android to iOS, you will
now see typing indicators, you will now see when people
read your messages. You can send large photos and videos.
It basically has bridged the divide between iPhone and Android

(39:45):
when it comes to messaging, and it's a great thing.
And Message Plus does not support RCS, nor do a
lot of third party messaging apps or any that I
know of on the Android side of things. So the
other thing that happened is Samsung also recently switched to
Google Messages. So if you're on Samsung, this is like
a one two punch. You're like, Okay, I'm on Samsung.

(40:07):
I've had Samsung Messages. Now they want me to go
to Google Messages. If I have Verizon Message Plus, now
I have to go to Google Messages. Everything's filtering over
to Google Messages. You see now the question I'm getting
from a lot of people after I've explained all this
on my website, Everyone's saying, Rich, what can I use
instead of Google Messages. I don't want to use Google.

(40:28):
I don't trust Google. I don't want my stuff going
into Google. Well, number one, if you're using an Android phone,
your stuff's going into Google, no matter what I mean,
it's already happening. But if you because this is Android,
Android allows you to do a lot of things that
you can't do on iPhone, Like, for instance, on iPhone,
you cannot choose your text messaging app. It is one
hundred percent I message or messages whatever they call it there,

(40:50):
and that's it. It is the messages app that Apple
gives you. You cannot set another default. On Android. You
can set any message, any messaging app you want as
your text messaging app. But here's the caveat. It will
not support RCS. Now I was talking about China earlier
with the whole spying thing. RCS is encrypted, maybe not

(41:10):
yet to the iPhone, but Android to Android it is,
And so again that's going to be the most secure
way to message, and it's also going to be the
best way to message with your iPhone friends. So if
you choose one of these other apps, you're not going
to get the read receipts, you're not going to get
the typing indicators, you're not going to get the large
photos and videos because everything's going to go through SMS,
not RCS, which is the new, much better standard for texting.

(41:35):
So with that said, if you go on the Google
Play Store, you'll see there are a whole bunch of
apps in the top communication apps. Google Messages number one, WhatsApp,
Messenger number two, but that does not handle SMS as
far as I know, don't think it does. Telegram number three,
as far as I know, does not support SMS. Messenger

(41:55):
used to support SMS, doesn't anymore. Then you've got one
called messages, and you know you can use that. But
again it's you know, I don't know who makes this.
I don't I'm kind of like a little weirded out
by it because I don't know. It just has messages
and it looks like a generic messaging icon.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Then you've got text Now.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
I don't know if they handle SMS, messages, SMS and
private chat discord messages. All these apps are called messages,
and what are they trying to do. They're trying to
get you to install it instead of Google Messages. But
I would be very careful because once these apps have
access to your texts, that's you know that you don't
know where they're going, and unless it's a reputable app maker,

(42:37):
you really can't vouch for how they're handling the privacy
of your messages. Now, the apps that I've used in
the past that I really like was called Pulse SMS,
but again kind of old school, doesn't support RCS. So
it works on all these platforms, but you're not gonna
get RCS. The other thing you can do, I mean,

(42:57):
there's really.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Just that's it. It's really just you gotta switch.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Textra is another one that's out there on Google on Android,
but again, none of these are gonna support RCS, and
I will tell you that if you're not on RCS,
your text messaging is old school. It's not gonna get
it's not gonna be able to send the big pictures
and the big videos between the iPhone and Android. And
that's like been the biggest issue with people, is that

(43:23):
whole situation. So I would just switch. Now, you have
until November seventh before Verizon completely shuts down Verizon Messages,
but I would just go ahead and get rid of
it right now. So download Google Messages and just go
with that. Speaking speaking of Verizon, I can't believe this

(43:43):
happened this week and nobody's mentioned another word about it.
I don't know if you if this affected you, but
there's a huge Verizon network outage on was it Monday
this week earlier or last week whatever, depending on what
day you're listening, if you're listening recorded on the podcast,
but Verizon, and like my personal phone was out for
like eight hours, no service whatsoever, said SOS in the

(44:06):
upper right hand corner. Many many people experienced this across
the US. We don't know what caused it, and Verizon
just said, hey, we fixed it, but they never said
what happened and so we don't know. Was this a hack,
was this a mistake, was it a software update, was
it a glitch?

Speaker 2 (44:22):
We don't know.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
But all we know is that lots of people had
no access to Verizon for many, many hours. Now, for
me personally, okay, fine, even though I was out and
about all day and it was really annoying, I had
a backup phone. I've got a backup line. I was
in Wi Fi some of the time. But if you
don't have Wi Fi and that's your only phone, that
is a problem, especially when it comes to emergencies. Now,

(44:44):
hopefully nine one one calls went through because maybe it
latched onto a different network. But this is this is
wild because we saw this hap with AT and T
as well, remember that one that was just a few
short months ago. This these these outages when they hap
and they're rare, but when they do happen, they seem
to be getting bigger and more widespread and impacting more

(45:06):
people at a wider swath. So it is you got
to think about these things. You got to think about
having a backup plan if your phone was not working,
what would you do now if you're home or at work, Okay,
find you have Wi Fi. But if you're out on
the road, you're a traveling salesperson, you know, and your
phone went out and you have no access to Wi Fi,
that would be a problem.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
That's like your livelihood.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
So I think it's odd that Verizon has not said
anything about this in a couple of days.

Speaker 5 (45:31):
Now.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
I just find that very very odd, and I hope
the FCC pushes them to say, hey, what happened here, Verizon,
we need some answers. They did say they're investigating, but
you know, everyone always forgets about this stuff.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Bank of America this week, same thing.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
People were logging into their bank accounts and saw a
zero balance. Now, I remember back in the day when
I did that, it was for real. But thankfully I've
worked hard and I've tried to not have that zero
balance anymore. But I remember the days when I did,
and it was you know, no one wants to see
zero balance. But imagine logging into Bank of America and

(46:06):
you actually have a zero balance when you know you
have money. That's like the biggest fear, right, Like you
just log into your bank acount and it's like gone.
You're like, wait, what do I do? What if it
doesn't come back? And that's what happened with these Bank
of America folks. This was on October third, Mobile access,
mobile banking. People are having all kinds of issues. This
did not go on as long as the Verizon outage,

(46:29):
but can you imagine seeing that if you did, that
is scary because you don't know if it's going to
be resolved. You're like, okay, is my money gone or
is it coming back again. Bank of America apologized, but
they did not say what caused it. And again, most
of these things are innocent enough. It's someone doing a
software update, but you know, we are on high alert
nowadays with cyber criminals and hacking, and so whenever this

(46:53):
stuff happens, you think the worst. And we hope that
nobody had access to Bank of America and wiped out
accounts was thankfully at it didn't happen, but we don't know.
Put it protect your accounts. Please put in that two
factor authentication. Do not reuse the same password ever. You
gotta do what you can to protect yourself. Eighty to
eight rich one On one eight eight eight seven four

(47:13):
to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
This is rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you at Triple eight
Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. The website for the
show is rich on tech dot TV. Let's go to
Donna in Squim, Washington. Did I say that right?

Speaker 4 (47:41):
You did exactly right.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (47:44):
Thank you, Rich, appreciate your show. Listen to you every
every Saturday.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
Well, this is I'm in desperate need to help. I
work for a small business. So about ten years ago,
the owner's son purchased a domain and Google workspace from
a third party vendor. Just this week, and this email
is used specifically for the business. This week, I could

(48:11):
not log in. When I went to log in, it
says you're out of space. Purchase more. But I have
to go to the third party vendor.

Speaker 7 (48:19):
I have tried for.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
The last ten days sending. It's impossible to find a
phone number, so I send emails, always a different person.
They're asking for information that the son who set it
up does not remember his password. I have the sign
in but not the password. So bottom line, our business

(48:45):
email is being held hostage and is there any way
to recover it from Google? I don't care and the
owner doesn't care about the domain, but it's tough to
do business without email.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
Well, the domain is part of the email, isn't it
isn't the.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
Email addressed the domain?

Speaker 7 (49:08):
No?

Speaker 4 (49:08):
Well, and this I'm not savvy enough to know this.
There is there's a separate domain to set up a website,
which I believe never got set up.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
It's fine, but you registered a domain.

Speaker 4 (49:22):
Right, Yes, But then there's a Google workspace that has
the ability for four people to receive an email. And
as the admin, I use it, and then the owner
uses it, and two of the workers use it as well.
But most most and most important is as the admin.
All the vendors send their invoices to me to pay.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
But, yeah, did you lose access to this? What happened?

Speaker 4 (49:50):
It says that our storage is fully so when I
go in because I can log into the admin side
and see the workspace, who's so you know this and that?
But when I go to purchase.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
More space, Okay, you can't do it.

Speaker 4 (50:05):
I have to contact the third party vendor and they
won't do anything without information that nobody has.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Can you get access to the email on this account
or no?

Speaker 4 (50:15):
No?

Speaker 2 (50:16):
So when you go to like do you go to
Gmail or how do you usually get the email?

Speaker 4 (50:20):
I go to Gmail, okay, and I when I go
to sign in, it just says your account has been suspended.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
It's been suspended. Interesting, okay, Well a couple of things first.
First up, I would go to the I'd first see
who owns this this don't well, there's so.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Many things going on here. Number one.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
I mean it's a it's a lesson that we have
to remember these things. I know, and I'm guilty of
this myself. Sometimes you set up these things really fast
and you think, Okay, I'll remember that in the future.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Then you don't.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
And so at the point of anything, and this goes
for anyone that's listening that's setting stuff up, just take
your time and write it down, because you really are
going to forget, Like like I've set up you know,
those like security questions sometimes and you're like, oh, of
course I'll remember those, and then two years later you're like, oh, now,
what was my mother's favorite color or something like that,

(51:09):
and you're like, I don't remember what I put. So
write those questions down and write them in your password manager,
along with the strong password and any information that may
come along, especially the recovery codes. First thing I would
do is go to the I can look up and
see what this domain is registered under, like who owns
the registration?

Speaker 2 (51:27):
And so you go to go to that website.

Speaker 4 (51:29):
Okay, I'm sorry, I can look up.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Yeah, it's I see a n N dot org. Look
up dot I can dot org and see who owns
the domain. And that will help you see like where
this domain is actually registered and there should be some
contact information there to help you get some customer support there,
because you do need to have control over this domain
as well. For Google, Uh, you're gonna have to try

(51:51):
to recover this account. Have you gone through all the
recovery steps on Google's recovery page or no?

Speaker 4 (51:58):
No, because when I go to anything, it refers me
to the third party vendor.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Yeah, so the third party vendor set up this Google
workspace account.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Is that what I'm hearing.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
That's the way I understand it. I wasn't in years ago.
So I'm trying to help them.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
And so you're paying that are you paying? Are you
paying to this third party vendor?

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Still?

Speaker 4 (52:18):
Well, they were and this is probably the problem was
last year the bank because there were so many payments
that came through on this where to account. The bank
flagged it and then stopped stop the credit card. Okay,
so I know they want a payment, and I said
that in an email to I'm and happy to pay well,
but they want this past information that the owner says

(52:41):
he can't find.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
So first off, I would go to the credit card
receipt and look up the phone number for the third
party and see and call that, and that could be
a good way to get in and figure out what's
going on here with the payment. The other thing, you
have to google how to recover your Google account or
Gmail and there is a sign in help button. See
if that will help you get recovery to this account.
I'm not sure it will because it's a workspace account,

(53:04):
but try that. First coming up, we're gonna talk privacy.
This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Our
phone number is eight eight eight rich one oh one.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Very confusing.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
It's literally saying that number while I'm trying to give
our number. Eight eight eight seven four to two four
one's your one. By the way, little pro tip if
you're ever at the grocery store and you know how
they ask for like your phone number at the you know,
check out if you want to get the deals or whatever,
and you don't have one, eight six seven, five three
oh nine works every single time because someone has registered

(53:44):
that number.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
So little pro tip if you know.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
Some of these stores are really strict about that, Like
they're like, you have to put your number in if
you want to get the best deals. So just put
the area code in with that number and it's it's
it probably works like nine out of ten times.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Anyway. See you learn stuff here. Uh.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Joining me now is uh Justin Clasco from Consumer Watchdog.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Justin Welcome to the show.

Speaker 8 (54:08):
Hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
So tell me what Consumer Watchdog does.

Speaker 6 (54:14):
Yeah, so, you know we we we fight large companies.
We try to give a voice to just regular everyday
people and try to even the playing field out there,
because it's a it's not very even.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
So, I mean, let's talk about this when it comes
to what do you think consumers are up against? Like,
what do you think their biggest kind of I mean,
obviously these big companies are are collecting our data. They're
they're pretty much in charge if we want to if
we want to use anything. We got to play by
their rules, right, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (54:46):
And I mean I think a big thing that consumers
don't notice is kind of just the amount of power
and how how these companies have their hands in a
lot of different things, and you know, including collecting data,
which is a big part of it, and it's foundational
to you know, your everyday life and how decisions are

(55:07):
made online.

Speaker 8 (55:07):
We're living online.

Speaker 6 (55:08):
Increasingly, so it's it's very important to to kind of
take control of your personal information.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Now.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
We hear about this data collection all the time. But
and then some people are like, well, I don't care.
What are they going to collect on me?

Speaker 7 (55:20):
You know?

Speaker 1 (55:21):
So what is kind of like the good and bad
of this data collection? Like why do companies want so
much data about us?

Speaker 6 (55:29):
They want data on you because you're more likely I
think to buy things and to spend money and and
to enrich you know, companies. So you know, if if
they if they know you've been in this location trying
to buy you know, uh, sunglasses, and they know that

(55:50):
whether there's competitors around you, they can fine tune that stuff.
They know what you even just add to a shopping
cart on your phone, and how long and you've kind
of hovered over you know, a certain you know T
shirt or you know, a pair of earbuds. So it
really it's the detail and the speed that that is

(56:10):
giving these companies kind of a one up, and really
they just kind of start learning more about you than
you even know about yourself.

Speaker 8 (56:18):
So it's it's it's kind of creepy.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Yeah, we've heard stories about how Target will send like
coupons to people and be like, hey, congrats some being pregnant.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
You're like, wait, what how do they know?

Speaker 6 (56:28):
Yeah, that was Yeah, that was really creepy. But yeah,
that's a great example. And you know, you know, while
it's good, you know, we want we want things, we
want to be advertised things that we like, and but
I think there's a line that gets crossed when your
information is kind of weaponized against you. Like, you know,

(56:50):
if say you have a family member that dies and
an airline knows that you're trying to get a flight
out to this funeral compared to another person was not
They're going to price gouge you. They are gonna they're
base it's basically price fixing. They're going to make you
pay more money for that. And that's because of the
vast amount of data that is available out there.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
I've heard, I mean, we've heard so much about this,
you know, using VPNs and you know, private browsing and
all this stuff. And you know, we now, of course
we see all the cookies, you know, like, hey, do
you want to accept cookies? But I'm convinced that, yes,
these companies are using a lot of this information they're
collecting to sort of set dynamic pricing. And especially you know,
like even if something as simple as I was on

(57:33):
a website the other day and I remember the website
and I just I just paused and it was like
I forgot about that page for a minute. When I
came back, it gave me like fifty dollars off because
I said, hey, are you still deciding?

Speaker 2 (57:45):
And I was like, now what if I would have
said yes.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Before I waited, I would have lost fifty dollars, you know,
I would have paid fifty dollars more.

Speaker 8 (57:53):
Totally.

Speaker 6 (57:54):
I mean, it's I mean, it's just so like gamified,
like and you know, and it's these companies are just
going to be like that's market capitalism, you know, you know,
we can do that and that's fine, But it really
is like.

Speaker 8 (58:07):
Kind of a form of price fixing.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
So what do you recommend? What do you what are
your recommendations for consumers?

Speaker 6 (58:14):
Yeah, so right now, if you're in the state of
California with these data brokers that collect a ton of
information on you, you can you can go to these
data brokers like live Ramp, Experience Equal Facts, and you
can tell them, hey, stop this, stop collecting all these
details on me, stop collecting my geolocation, and they they

(58:37):
under California law, have to do that. You can also
access your information and they'll spit back a report for
you in a few days, and you'll probably be weirded
out by all the information you'll see that they have
on you. But there's like almost five hundred data brokers
in the state of California, so it's probably really annoying

(58:57):
to try and exercise your rights. But that's changing. Uh,
there's a there's a registry. If you Google or look
up California data brokers, you'll find a state registry where
all data brokers have to register, and there you'll be
directed to their privacy pages how to exercise your rights,

(59:18):
how to delete, how to opt out, how to limit
your data.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
But go there's just a lot of them. There's a lot.

Speaker 6 (59:26):
Oh my gosh, it's not ideal right now, but it's
getting better because of some legislation that was passed. But
they're working on this right now. You know, California regulators
are working on this right now. It would be a
one step opt out kind of. In one step, you'd
be you'd signal or delete your personal informations to data
brokers and they, under law, would have to wipe all

(59:47):
the info they have on you or whatever you direct
them to do.

Speaker 8 (59:51):
So that'll be in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Now that's California. What about other states? Are they as
protective or you know what's happening there?

Speaker 8 (01:00:00):
Not really.

Speaker 6 (01:00:01):
I think there's like four or five other states who
have data broker laws. California is definitely on the forefront
of it. And you know, there is there is no
federal privacy legislation. It's been introduced a couple times and
it's it's dyed and and this legislation has actually been

(01:00:22):
much weaker than the laws we have in California. So
we should, like, you know, we should be excited about
what we have here and use these rights for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Now this is data brokers, Is that different than these
like Spokyo and all these like those are like data
I mean, I don't what do they call those Like
when you're when you're like email and your phone number
and all that stuff is like online.

Speaker 6 (01:00:46):
Yes, so data brokers get info a lot of ways,
you know, kind of like how like they're you know,
they're a little even though they both are also credit agencies,
they they they operate a little differently. They don't just
collect public information public information that's online. And they also
I mean the big thing is is your your online habits.
You know, where you go, what you search, what you

(01:01:08):
add to a car, what you buy, and so that
is the stuff that is really fueling sort of this
this multi billion dollar targeted advertising industry where you're just
you're just helicoptered into this sort of consumer buying frenzy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Now I've I've heard that when you get that that
letter from your bank once a year, like any company
that says like hey, you know, here's how we do
our sharing of data, like you should always say like
do not share my stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Like is that does that help you think?

Speaker 10 (01:01:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (01:01:42):
I mean it would, it would definitely help.

Speaker 7 (01:01:44):
And like.

Speaker 6 (01:01:46):
You know, there's there's different laws there's you know, there's
financial data regulatory laws. Not to bore you, but definitely
that is one part of it. And there's you know,
there's multiple parts of it. You know, there's not just
data brokers every day companies that collect data on you.
And you know, you can also exercise your rights, but

(01:02:07):
you still have to do it step by step. And
you know, there was a law that almost that almost
got signed by the government, but it didn't make that easier.

Speaker 8 (01:02:14):
But that's a whole other story.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Well, yeah, I mean, look, money talks and obviously a
lot of these these I mean I'm looking at I
just followed the breadcrumbs up the chain and it looks
like that big data broker that you mentioned, the live
ramp is owned by Axicom, which is owned by Inner Public,
which is like one of the biggest like companies that

(01:02:38):
does advertising. So it's like they're they own the they
do the advertising, but they also own the you know,
they're they're getting the data from these little smaller companies.
It's just wild when you think about this stuff. We
are we are so helpless, that's the problem. And I
think what you're saying about these laws and things like
if you take advantage like that's really the only way
that we have any sort of power because scrolling through

(01:02:59):
a hundred different data and trying to remove your information
is you got to quit your job to do that.

Speaker 8 (01:03:05):
Yeah, don't lose your jobs out there, guys.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
All right, justin, how can folks find more information? Like
Consumer Watchdog? What do you think they're their best bet
to do that is?

Speaker 8 (01:03:14):
Yeah, consumer watchdog dot org.

Speaker 6 (01:03:17):
We have a privacy section and if you go there,
you know we can help you direct you to take
control of your personal information and from data brokers.

Speaker 8 (01:03:25):
It's all there.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
All right, Thanks so much for joining me today. Really
appreciate it.

Speaker 8 (01:03:29):
Thanks Rich, Thanks great.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
That's justin klausco from Consumer Watchdog. I'll put the link
to the website on mine rich on Tech dot tv.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Coming up more of your.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Questions at triple eight rich one oh one plus ring
is adding a much requested feature I will explain coming
up on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at
triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven

(01:04:00):
four to two four to one zero one. Got a
message that I don't say the phone line enough. I
feel like I say it a lot, but phone line
and website website is rich on tech dot tv. You
can hit contact to get in touch with me. Sign
up for my newsletter while you're there, lots of valuable information.
If you like this show, you will love the newsletter

(01:04:22):
because it's basically this show written out with all the
tips and things that you can think of. Let's go
to John and Fallbrook. John, I know you've been holding
on for a while. Thanks so much for hanging on.
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 7 (01:04:37):
Thank you very much. I enjoy your show. I look
forward to listening to it every week. My question is
mesh Wifelise. I need to expand extend my range a bit,
and I wanted to know which of the Mesh WIFEI
system sort of the best.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
Well, I can tell you the one that I use
and that I've liked over the years. Have you looked
into these at all? Is there any specific feature that
you need?

Speaker 7 (01:05:06):
I really haven't looked. I roamed around a bit on
on Amazon and I seen KEP Link, and I seen
euro and then ORB, but I haven't looked any deeper
than that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
Okay, well, you just mentioned the top three, so it
looks like you've done your research. So I will tell
you that in my experience, I think that the the
best overall, I think is that euro That's the one
that I've been using since day one. You know, they
basically invented the genre of whole home mesh wi fi.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
It is now owned by Amazon.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
It was started as an independent company, but Amazon scooped
them up.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
So I really like them the best. I've been using them.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
I really like their app, and I think that's a
big part of this is how the app works and
how the setup works and all that good stuff. So
I think that especially right now, when these products are
going to be on sale during Prime Day, that's probably
a good time to check them out and get that.
With that said, I will say that the other brands
that are very good are Neckgear Orbi, which maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
A little bit cheaper than the Euroo.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
And then the other one that I think is actually
probably the best value over and over according to all
the different reviewers is the TP link the Deco. So
I think that those are the three like I would
rank them. Probably the Eero I think is the best.
I still think it's the gold standard. Then the Orby,
but if you want kind of like the best bang
for your buck, I think the TP link deco is

(01:06:39):
probably gonna be your best bet for that. And then
it depends how many you need of these things. So
on their website, I think they typically, you know, they
recommend either two to three of these things in your house.
So it depends how big your house is. I've always
had three in my place. Depending on how big your
house is, you may need more or less than that.

(01:07:00):
So if you have let's say, like a you know,
a smaller place, you may just need two of these things.
But if you have a decent, you know, reasonably sized house,
you know, kind of an average sized house, I think
three is good. You can put them in all different places. Now,
it also matters where you put these things. So you
don't want to put these things in a closet. You
don't want to put them out of sight. You want
to put them where they can actually get their signals

(01:07:22):
to each other. And so that's another aspect of where
you place these things is that you want to sort
of think about the way that these signal emanates out
of them as like almost like a doughnut. And so
it's going to be if this is on the floor,
you're not really going to get much of a signal
off these things. A lot of it's going to be,
you know, just going below it or above it in
that little area. So you want to have these things

(01:07:43):
kind of like positioned up and away from the walls
and away from behind things. Some people put these behind
their TVs. You're not going to get the best signal
that way, and you know that's that does make a difference.
But I think the Eros, I've had absolutely no problems.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
With them over the years. I think they are incredible.
And I'm on my like third set of them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
And and by the way, I gave my dad my
old set and it's still working for him and he's
had it for I mean, that thing is going on
many many years old and it's still getting software updates too,
which is kind of cool. So I think that's a
big part of it is look at the software and
support of these systems. Eero has a nice long track record.
They're always coming out with new features. They've got a

(01:08:25):
great feature, by the way, if you subscribe to their
secure where you can block all the ads on your
network at the like literally at the network level. So
when you come to my house and you log onto
my Wi Fi guest WiFi. You're not getting the uh,
you're not getting the standard one. People come to the
house and they literally they literally it's like in a

(01:08:45):
front when they're like, hey, can I get your WiFi?
And I'm like, oh, yeah, sure, there's a QR code,
just scan that and they're like, guess what's that all about.
I'm like, oh, you're the guest, you get the guest WiFi.
And I literally, like you could just see their eyes.
They like they're like, they're like, rich, how dare you
Why you don't trust me with your network? I'm like, no,
I do not. I don't want you on my actual network.

(01:09:05):
Guess network. I can just clear you out, you know,
and you have no more access, but my home network
a little trickier anyway. Thanks for the call today, John
in Fallbrook really appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Good luck with the mesh Wi Fi.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Ring has come out with a feature that a lot
of people have wanted, continuous recording twenty four to seven recording.
This is brand new and this is for eligible wired cameras.
You always have to read through the lines right. They
put out the press release and the blog post that
says twenty four to seven recording. Yes, I could record
my Ring doorbell all day. Now, no you can't. Those

(01:09:41):
have batteries, they're not most of them are not wired.
But the wired ones you still can't. Because they didn't
really think about this feature back in the day when
they came out with these cameras, so they got to,
you know, they kind of had to like figure out
how to make these things work to record twenty four
to seven because that's a whole nother ballgame. How a
camera going from just clips, which is typically what Ring does,
to twenty four to seven recording. It's like your camera

(01:10:04):
is working all the time. So it's for the eligible cameras.
You can look on their website to see which ones
are eligible. But it's kind of a cool feature.

Speaker 6 (01:10:13):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
I think it puts them on par with the you know,
the wisecams of the world, the Google Nests of the world.
I know, in my house, I have a bunch of
different systems. So now I'll be able to kind of
maybe get some of these Ring cameras because they can
record twenty four to seven.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
Now you are going to have to pay for this.
This is not included. They have three plans with Ring.
You've got home basic five bucks a month, Home standard
ten dollars a month, Home Premium twenty dollars a month.
This is going to start to roll out now, but
everyone should have it by November fifth. So if you
want the twenty four to seven recording, you got to
pay twenty bucks a month, twenty dollars a month if

(01:10:50):
you want twenty four to seven recording. But now good
to know that ring has this feature.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
Eighty to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. You got
a question, give me a all. We'll talk about it.
Website rich on Tech dot TV. More rich on Tech
coming your way right after this. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
The phone line is open eight eight eight rich one

(01:11:16):
oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. The website for the show rich on
Tech dot TV. Let's go to UH Stephanie in upland Stephanie,
you're on.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
Hey, Hi, I.

Speaker 14 (01:11:36):
Have a question about ten. So we recently ditched the
cable because we just don't watch that much TV, and
we purchased I went down to UH best Buy and
asked what antenna would work for us, so we purchased one.
It didn't work, so then we purchased this RCA fifty

(01:12:01):
five mile range.

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
We were able to get some.

Speaker 14 (01:12:05):
Channels, but we couldn't get Channel two or seven and
four would come in and out.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
So we've moved it.

Speaker 14 (01:12:13):
We bought an extension. I've stood outside, hold it here,
hold it there, and now I'm like done. Years ago
twenty one years ago, when we moved here, we had
an antenna and ma attic that worked great. Yeah, I
kind of researched online. I couldn't. I just kind of
have come to the end of like, I don't know

(01:12:34):
what to do to make this simple.

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
Well, do you have any recommendations.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
I do, so I love the antennas from Antenna's direct.
I would bring back whatever you bought at Best Buy
and just go to this website and you put in
your zip code. You live in upland so I just
put in your zip code and it gives you the
four antennas that would be perfect for your area. There's
one for there's one for thirty three dollars, there's one

(01:13:01):
for fifty dollars, one for ninety, one for one sixty.
I don't know what you paid it best by These
are probably a little bit more expensive than that, but money.

Speaker 14 (01:13:10):
Doesn't Yeah, I mean it's cheaper than what they had us.
It was up to like one hundred dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
And I said, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
And I've got I've got an antenna installed on my
roof and it's, uh, it's incredible. I mean people forget
that you can get over the air incredible signal from
these antennas, and it's actually, in most cases a better
resolution than what your cable company is giving you or
streaming even so, right, the only trick is if you

(01:13:37):
want to have a DVR, and that's you know, that's
another side of this is the DVR situation. So there
are some over the air DVRs, like a company called Tableau.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
Have you heard of that?

Speaker 7 (01:13:49):
No, So, so.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
If you're gonna, if you're you know, if it depends
if you care about the DVR, you know that's that
I don't character.

Speaker 14 (01:13:56):
Yeah, I mean we miss being able to go back
and like, oh, let's watch football game. We missed you know,
an hour whatever. But where I'm okay not having it.
But however, I have a question about this antenna's direct
Are those antennas that have to be like installed on
your group or can it just go on our attic.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
No, there's so it depends.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
I mean there's four different so there's there's three that
are indoor, so you can just set them up indoor. Now,
give you know you're an uplands, you're the transmitters are
not necessarily close to you, so that's why you have
to you know, And this will actually show you how
far the distance is from where the signal is. So
for instance you mentioned, this actually will show you every

(01:14:39):
single channel that you can get as well, and they'll
tell you the signal so where you are actually is
all the signals are actually strong, which is great except
for I will tell you. Let's see, I'm looking. I'm
trying to see if any of these channels are major channels. No.

Speaker 14 (01:14:56):
Seven just would not like we got two. Seven would
work at all for us, Like we kept moving this
antenna around.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Yeah, I mean there's only one channel that you need,
and that's KTLA, But that's besides the point. No, but
I'm looking here and KABC it's strong signal. It's twenty
three miles away. All the antennas are twenty about twenty
three miles away from your house. So long story short,
I would go, if you want to get the best,

(01:15:25):
I would say probably the attic antenna's probably gonna be
your best. But I would start, maybe, you know, just
look at these. It tells you the range of the
attic antennas seventy plus miles. You may not need that.
You may be able to try their indoor amplified and
just see if that one works. It's got, but you're
gonna have to put that up by a window. I
would say. It also tells you kind of the direction
to go. I mean, this is this is the website

(01:15:46):
you want to go to. So go to antennasdirect dot com,
pop in your zip code and check out the antenna's there.
And I think I will tell you in my house
even inside, I put one of their antennas there. They've
got this mohu versa which is a very inexpensive, like
thirty dollars antenna, and I was able to get every channel.
But I will tell you the way that these signals
work sometimes are very reliant on exactly how this antenna

(01:16:10):
is placed. You put it by one window, you miss
one channel. You put it by the other window, you
might miss another channel, so you do have to play
around a little bit. But upstairs in the attic you
probably have your best bet up high there.

Speaker 14 (01:16:22):
And that's what I'm trying. That's what we're finding with
this RCA is like, okay, great, oh we get these
channels perfectly.

Speaker 10 (01:16:29):
Oh we lost that.

Speaker 4 (01:16:30):
Yeah, okay, let's move it over here.

Speaker 14 (01:16:32):
The slightest movement you lose a channel gain a channel.
So I'm tired of playing this game.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Yeah, it's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
You'll be calling me in a couple of weeks saying, Rich,
now I need a DVR. So what do you recommend
for a DVR? Because now I've got all these channels
and it looks great.

Speaker 14 (01:16:45):
So yeah, once I get this square away, I.

Speaker 4 (01:16:47):
Might do that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:48):
Yeah, call me when you get to that point, but yeah,
check it out. I'll put the link on the website.
Rich on tech dot tv, thanks so much for calling
today over there and upland okay.

Speaker 14 (01:16:56):
Oh yeah, awesome, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
All right, Stephanie, take care. I always do. I always.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
I've been doing this show for two years almost two
years now, and I still I just got my finger
on the trigger and it's like I cut people off
I don't mean to cut you off. Sometimes it's just like,
you know, I'm looking at like ten different screens here,
and it just sort of happened. So yeah, that's always
a good I was actually the first person. I don't
want to take credit for the success of that company,

(01:17:24):
Antennis Direct, but I will tell you that I was
one of the first people to ever feature them on
the Today Show. Gosh, this was probably I don't even
want to say, but probably almost fifteen sixteen, probably eighteen
years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
I don't know, whatever it was. It was a long
time ago.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
And they they literally they said as soon as I
mentioned their name on TV, their place was just flooded
with phone calls. They said they could not make an
outgoing call for like a week or two. That's how
many people called asking for this antenna. And the antenna
was so cool. It was actually a frame. It was
a picture frame, and the antenna was in the frame

(01:18:04):
and you put it on your wall and it would,
you know, pick up the channels. And I remember I was,
you know, since I was on the Today Show, I
thought it'd be cool to put a picture of Lindsay
in the frame, and I snuck it in. I printed
out a picture of me and Lindsay put it in
the frame and I was like, are the producers going
to say you can't have that in the frame? And
sure enough she was on the Today Show as well.
How long were you on Today Show?

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
How what? How long were you on the Today Show?
Like a segment like a couple of minutes?

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
I was on a law actually no, like like time
wise like probably I think those segments were maybe five minutes,
No like years, like, oh gosh, I mean this was
probably almost twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
Years ago at this point. Oh wow. Yeah. I was
like I was a little kid.

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
I was literally like it was like talk about imposter syndrome.
I was working at Sina at the time, and you know,
I was kind of like, I mean I was I've
literally been doing the same thing, Bobo for all these years.
It's just about giving people good information, right and an
easy to understand way. And so when I got to CINA,
and I was sort of like, you know, I had

(01:19:01):
access to all this great information and the reviews and stuff,
and I was the person who would take that information
and put it on TV. And so I started doing
these things and I was on the Today Show, I
was on ABC you know all their like early morning
shows there. I was on CMBC, I was on Fox Business.
I mean I was everywhere because here's a person that
knew how to talk about technology in a way that

(01:19:22):
people understood it.

Speaker 15 (01:19:23):
My thing is is something that when I go to
career days to school about you know, what we do
for a living. Always tell them if you love what
you do, you're never going to work a day in
your life because it's always fun. It's always enjoyable. Like
me coming here every Saturday, I enjoy coming here with this.
It's fun, it's the interesting show and is knowledgeable and
you help people. And that's one reason why I love radio,
helping people and making people laugh and smile.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
One hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
And I that is literally when you look at my
mission statement, it is to help people. And some people
help people by you know, being a doctor. I am
right there, same level. I wouldn't go that far, but
you do help a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
I'm just kidding. I am nowhere near. I'm just kidding,
but it is.

Speaker 13 (01:20:04):
It is.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
Look, it is one of these things where like there's
so much information online and this is what this is
what gets me so angry about all this, Like TikTok stuff.
It's all just like nonsense, Like there's so much nonsense
out there, like scary this that like they have people
Like the first viral video I ever did was literally
debunking a video I saw online of someone ripping the

(01:20:26):
battery out of their Samsung phone and they found this
little antenna in there and they're like, you see this antenna,
it's spying on you. And I said, wait, what serious? Yeah,
And so I went to my desk. I was at KTLA,
and I just said, let me try this, let me
let me record a video. And I opened up the
phone and I did the same thing the person did,
and I'm sure enough I found the antenna. It wasn't

(01:20:46):
an antenna, it was it was a way to oh my,
I forget at this point. I think it was like
either rf ID or I think it was the way
to charge the battery. Yeah, it was like the little
battery antenna, like to wirelessly charge it. Yeah, and I
think that's what it was. But I like explained it
and I was like this is fake, like stop. But
then of course people were like no, you're still lying,
Like but that was like the first thing I ever

(01:21:07):
had to go viral. So anyway, but I've still look.
I love helping you. I love and I'm you know,
people are like, oh, you know, do you know your
stuff or you don't know your stuff? Like I'm literally
just like you. I'm like or like any person like,
I'm just like collecting this information and trying to like
make like digest it so that you can understand it.
So you know, there are a lot of things that I
don't understand. There's a lot of things I understand, but

(01:21:29):
I just happen to follow all this stuff. And that's
why I can, you know, do this. Okay, we'll get
to some more calls in a minute. But Amazon Prime
Video Financial Times reporting that apparently people don't mind the
ads on Amazon Prime Video.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
Remember Prime Video used to have no ads. Now they
have ads.

Speaker 1 (01:21:47):
Apparently people have not complained enough, so Amazon is like, oh,
I guess they like them, and they're adding more. So now, okay,
eight months ago Amazon added ads to Prime Video with
a quote light ad load, and now they haven't seen
a lot of people drop their subscriptions, and so they're
gonna add more ads. Now, here's why people have not
dropped their subscriptions. It's because Prime Video is included with

(01:22:10):
Amazon Prime, so you're not going to cancel Amazon Prime
to get rid of Amazon Prime Video. So apparently people
don't mind this, and they're gonna add more ads. Now
I don't know about you, but I don't really watch
a lot of stuff on Prime Video.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
Yeah, Boo is right.

Speaker 1 (01:22:27):
Uh, but it's one of these things where yes, I
have Prime membership and I have Prime Video, but like
the last time I tried to watch something, it was like, oh,
watch like six ads, and I'm like, no, I don't
want to watch all those ads.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
But yes, you will be.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
Seeing more ads apparently on Prime Video in twenty twenty five,
all thanks to people not caring apparently about more video,
more ads.

Speaker 2 (01:22:49):
Eighty to eight rich one oh one.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
Rich on Tech dot tv is the website you can
follow me online at rich on Tech. I am actively
on Instagram, even though they try to stop it there.
Believe me, I consider never going back, but I can't
that pull of that screen, all those.

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
Little likes and comments coming up.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
I'll take some more of your calls and we're going
to talk to Trey Bodge about Amazon Prime Day. Right here,
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you talking tech. We've still got a lot
of callers, so I'm going to try to get through
all of them before we get to our guests in
the next segment to talk about Amazon Prime Day shopping tips.

(01:23:34):
So let's go right to Craig and Woodland Hills. Craig,

Speaker 5 (01:23:40):
Hello, Hi, Hi.

Speaker 16 (01:23:43):
I was looking for a Chrome book, okay, and I
needed something that's I don't do any gaming or download
movies or music or anything like that. I just needed
something that I could, you know, send and receive emails,
maybe print them, and then do online shopping securely.

Speaker 2 (01:24:02):
Okay.

Speaker 16 (01:24:03):
I just bought an HP fourteen inch from Costco. Yeah,
and the battery wouldn't take more than seventy five percent charge,
so I have to return it. So now I'm looking
for something else.

Speaker 1 (01:24:14):
Huh interesting? And you don't want to exchange it? Were
you happy with the performance or no?

Speaker 16 (01:24:20):
I can even do the setup on it. I just
was just trying to charge it and it wouldn't charge, okay,
So I'm bill in the water right now. I'm just
looking for a different type of chromebik that'll suit me,
and I don't something that I don't need a lot
of virus protection or anything and something hopefully that comes
with it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
Yeah, well, the good news about chromebooks is that there
are no viruses. So that's what's great about them is
that they're they're fool proof. So now I say no viruses.
Obviously there's always, you know, something that could go wrong,
but typically the way that the chromebook architecture is there,
there is really no virus that that could latch onto
that system. So the brand that I like for chromebooks

(01:25:01):
is a SUS as US I've tested several, they all
perform really great. The thing that I think you should
look out for is a Chromebook Plus.

Speaker 2 (01:25:12):
So there's two the standard chromebooks. If they're not a Plus,
they're not going to have a lot of memory, and
so the specs are a little bit less. So personally,
if you're not getting the Chromebook Plus, let me see
what the actual specs are, because they just came out
with this sort of signifier for these things. So yeah,

(01:25:34):
Chromebook Plus starts at three hundred and ninety nine dollars
and the main thing is that it looks like they
have at least ten eighty PhD display, which is great
it's got a decent CPU Core I three from Intel
or an AMD Rise. In the RAM that's where the
RAM and the storage is really where you're going to

(01:25:54):
get the plus signification. And that's going to be minimum
of eight gigs of RAMM of one one hundred and
twenty eight gigs of storage. And your webcam is actually
going to be a HD webcam as well. TENADP. So
I would check out a SUS. I would check out
Chromebook Plus.

Speaker 1 (01:26:11):
That's the brand that I like, and look for that
plus signifier because you're going to get specs that last
you a little bit longer. Yes, you can get a
Chromebook for super super jeep, but you know you're not
going to want to use it for very long. So
if you get that plus, I think you're going to
be able to use it for at least i'd say
five years, so if not longer. I mean, Chromebooks are
just great for browsing the web and doing the simple

(01:26:33):
task that you mentioned.

Speaker 2 (01:26:34):
Thanks a lot for the question there, Craig. Let me
know what you get. Email me.

Speaker 1 (01:26:38):
Let's go to Oh my gosh, let's see here. Let's
go to Jeff and Marietta. Jeff, you're on with rich Y.

Speaker 12 (01:26:44):
Rich thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:26:47):
So my wife does some graphic work and she's always
used a Windows product, and now she was having trouble
even with my gaming computer, making a fifteen page a
newsletter every month. So I got her an Apple on
the suggestion of a digital person my office, and I

(01:27:08):
got her an Infinity program. But she's not used to
dealing with with Apple. She's always been a Windows person.
Is there any tutorials that you would suggest to make
that as easy as possible?

Speaker 1 (01:27:22):
I mean, I think that number one, I would go
to Apple's website. They have great user guides for the Max,
So you go to Apple Support.

Speaker 2 (01:27:31):
They do a great job.

Speaker 1 (01:27:32):
They used to make They used to make books, actually,
but I'm looking on their their books and I don't
really see it anymore, which is kind of wild. They
used to have these really good guides to Mac and
I'm just not seeing it. So they they might not
do those anymore because they're, you know, they maybe they
just moved everything to the website. But anyway, I'll put
the link on the show notes. But basically Mac user

(01:27:55):
guide on Apple support website. That's the first place I
would go. The second is really YouTube. I mean, just
you know, for the basics, like find a couple of
good people that explain you know, mac os and the
ins and outs and the different features. And that's probably
the best way to learn, is that way, you know,
cause it's visual and you can see what they're doing,
you can see how they're you know, getting to you know,

(01:28:18):
to know these computer systems. I remember I had a friend.
I switched to a MacBook a long long time ago,
and my best friend was on Windows. And I remember
telling him and he like really pooh pooed me. He's like,
I can't believe you're using a Mac. It's so weird.
Everything's so different. And I said, I don't know, try it,
and he did after a while, and I mean we
always talk about this, but it's like he would never

(01:28:40):
go back to Windows.

Speaker 2 (01:28:41):
Obviously. I try to use both to kind of learn both,
but I really do enjoy the way the Mac works.
Coming up, we're going to talk Prime Day.

Speaker 1 (01:28:49):
We got Trey Bodge talking about Amazon Prime Day.

Speaker 2 (01:28:52):
Up next on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech.

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology for
our last caller. Before we get to our guest, Jeff
and Murrietta. I was asking where his wife can learn
how to use her new Mac computer. I mentioned the
free user guide on Apple's website YouTube videos, and I
forgot to mention a very great hands on way at
the Apple store. They do these things called Today at Apple,

(01:29:19):
and they are free sessions where you'll learn the basics.
And I just looked it up and they do have
one for getting started with the Mac computer. Learn the
essentials to get the most out of your Mac. We'll
start with settings, sow you how to navigate everyday features,
explore how to customize your Mac, and then we'll share shortcuts.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):
So that is a great way to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:29:39):
I'm assuming there's an Apple store near Marietta, but that
is a great way because it's hands on and you're
with a real human and those people know their stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
So definitely check out that.

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
All right, welcoming to the show now Trey Bodge from
Truetrey dot com shopping expert to talk about Amazon Prime
Day co coming up this week.

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):
Try thanks so much for joining.

Speaker 17 (01:30:02):
Me, Thanks for having me, great to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:30:05):
Yeah, thanks for joining and let's talk about this Prime
Day thing, because is it happening more than twice a year,
or does it just feel that way.

Speaker 18 (01:30:14):
I think it just feels that way. It is only
happening twice a year. It started out only once a year,
and then the pandemic obviously turned a lot of things
on their heads, and Amazon kind of had a new
idea to launch a Prime Day in October because they
had to skip their July Prime Day, and so since
then they've been doing it twice a year and it's

(01:30:36):
kind of become the unofficial kickoff of the holiday shopping season.

Speaker 1 (01:30:40):
Now I have poo pooed this in years past. I
thought it started out good and then it started to
get a little bit stale. But now I actually do
feel like it's kind of ramped up. And last Prime Day,
I did buy a lot of stuff because, you know,
things that I wanted or needed were on sale. So
do you feel like the deals are there these days?

Speaker 18 (01:30:57):
I do, And especially on Amazon's proprietary brands, that's where
they have a lot of wiggle room on their pricing
and so they can go as deep as say sixty
percent off a Blink security camera, for example, So they
have a lot of wiggle room there.

Speaker 17 (01:31:15):
And so if you do need an.

Speaker 18 (01:31:16):
Amazon device or another product from a brand that Amazon owns,
you know, from cleaning products to apparel and all that
good stuff in between.

Speaker 17 (01:31:25):
It is a really good time to save on Amazon.

Speaker 1 (01:31:28):
So with that said, I mean, what are sort of
like your you know, your top tips for you know saving.

Speaker 8 (01:31:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 18 (01:31:36):
So the thing is about Amazon Prime Day, as you
probably know, is that a lot of other retailers are
also having big sales this week, and so it's a
pretty dizzying time for consumers. And so the first thing
that I would recommend is just to get organized, to
make a list of your holiday gift recipients, some gift

(01:31:57):
ideas for each, and then because because we do see
a lot of sales on kind of day to day
items as well, it makes sense to make a list
of some of your favorite products too, so then you
can keep your eyes peeled for exciting deals on Amazon
and then also on those retailers that are having those
big sales as well.

Speaker 2 (01:32:16):
Now, how do you spot the deal?

Speaker 1 (01:32:18):
Because I was saying earlier that they've kind of started
putting these little banners on the price, you know, like
these red banners that say like limited time deal or
prime deal. So because not everything is a deal, like
if it just says like, oh, twenty percent off, it
may not you know that just maybe a regular deal,
but a prime deal is like marked, Is that right?

Speaker 18 (01:32:36):
Yeah, So the prime deals are marked, and some of
them will last the entire forty eight hours. Some of
them will come and go very quickly. There's there are
lightning deals, they call them, and then there'll be kind
of other special deals dipping in and out. So it's
a little bit tricky to keep track of all of them.
So there are a couple of things that I like
to do. I like to add things to my cart

(01:32:57):
and then click save for later, and then when I
go to save for later, all of my items that
I'm interested in are in one place, and I can
see very quickly if those items are on sales.

Speaker 17 (01:33:06):
So that's what I like to do.

Speaker 18 (01:33:07):
I also like to use a tool from Paypals called Honey,
and it's a deal site and a deal browser extension,
and I find it particularly helpful for this because when
you're browsing online on Amazon and other retailers as well,
it'll pop up and give you some historical pricing. And
I find that helpful because maybe PayPal Honey's gonna say

(01:33:30):
it's a great time to get this item.

Speaker 17 (01:33:31):
This discount is.

Speaker 18 (01:33:32):
Really deep, or we've seen lower prices before, and then
I know to wait on that item, and in that case.

Speaker 2 (01:33:38):
I also get those alerts. I use the Honey extension
as well. My wife puts like so many outfits that
she wants to buy, so I'm always getting like an
alert like, Oh, your thing is thirty percent off. I'm like,
what is it? And I look at I'm like, oh,
it's another shirt.

Speaker 1 (01:33:51):
Like I'm hoping it's like one of the tech items
that I've put in my basket. I noticed this year
there was no mention of these invite only deals.

Speaker 2 (01:33:58):
Are they still doing that or no?

Speaker 18 (01:34:00):
That's a great question. So I think it's happening again.
I haven't heard that it was removed, but that was
something they were experimenting with last time, and so if
it was successful, we'll see it again.

Speaker 17 (01:34:11):
If not, it'll kind of just quietly.

Speaker 1 (01:34:13):
Vanish I was one of the people I got the
ninety nine dollars TV. This was like, I don't know,
two years ago, but it was like the super deal
of the century, and it was like invite only, and
I happened to get up early because I work on
the morning show at KTLA, so I was up early.

Speaker 2 (01:34:28):
I got the thing where it's like you're invited to.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
Buy this, and I did it like instantly, mostly just
so I can talk about it for years later.

Speaker 2 (01:34:34):
But so far that's worked.

Speaker 5 (01:34:37):
I know.

Speaker 17 (01:34:37):
This is what we do, right, We experiment with these
things and then we end up with the.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
TV exactly and I gave it to my father in law.
Actually he might have paid me back for I can't
remember at this point. So any mistakes that shoppers can
you avoid during these prime big deal days?

Speaker 17 (01:34:53):
Yeah, I mean, I.

Speaker 18 (01:34:54):
Think a mistake that you can make during these times,
especially we've got this forty eight hours of Amazon and
then we have Targets Circle Week in Walmart's having a
sale and best Buy and Lows. So the big mistake
that people can make is just to get too excited
about all of it and to buy too much. And
so I do think making that list, keeping on track
is really really helpful. And it's interesting because we are

(01:35:15):
becoming an increasingly promotional culture, like we like to save.
There was a bread financial pull that found that seventy
six percent of us are going to be shopping deals
this holiday shopping season looking around at different retailer shopping
these big sale events, and because of that, we do
tend to get caught up in the excitement and then

(01:35:36):
perhaps drop things into our cart and click.

Speaker 17 (01:35:38):
Buy on things that we don't need or don't even want.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):
Yeah, that's always a problem.

Speaker 1 (01:35:44):
Okay, let's talk about the idea of some of these
things that you're excited about. You know, some of these
deals like I saw you sent me, like the Luna Mini,
Let's see fire tablets, the what's the Broovy bundle.

Speaker 17 (01:35:59):
Oh, so there are some deals that I'm really excited about.

Speaker 18 (01:36:02):
You know, we talked about the Amazon proprietary devices like
the Blink camera and the fire tablets and fire TV sticks,
and those are hovering in the sort of forty eight
to sixty percent off range, which is significant, So I'm
excited about those. And then the Lunamini is from a
company called Fourio. They make really nice facial cleansing brushes.

(01:36:23):
They're electric and I use them myself, and they're up
to forty five percent off, so that's another big deal
that I'm excited about. And then the Broovie is actually
a company that they make beautiful, beautiful coffee and all
different flavors, and they partner with lots of different coffee
farms and so they have a lot of high quality
coffee pods, and then they have a very stylish brewer.

Speaker 17 (01:36:44):
But it does tend to be pretty pricey.

Speaker 18 (01:36:46):
But around Amazon Prime Day, it's going to be fifty
percent off this bundle of the brewer and lots of pods,
so you can try all sorts of different coffees. And
so I'm excited about deals that are that are significant,
like that that at our fifty percent off, I'm pretty.

Speaker 17 (01:37:00):
Excited about that.

Speaker 2 (01:37:01):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:37:02):
Yeah, because that's looking it up, it looks pretty. It's
like an evolved k cup, you know, it's kind of
like a little bit elevated.

Speaker 2 (01:37:08):
Right.

Speaker 17 (01:37:08):
Yeah, it's a very stylish brewer.

Speaker 18 (01:37:11):
And so if you want your kitchen to look fabulous
and you want that sort of you know, kitchen appli
and sitting there that looks amazing, the breoviy is one
to look at.

Speaker 1 (01:37:21):
What do you think of camel camel camel? Do you
recommend using that? And you know, for the price history I.

Speaker 18 (01:37:27):
Do, And so camel camel Camel is another option besides
the PayPal honey that we were just talking about.

Speaker 17 (01:37:32):
Camel. Camel Camel though is specific to Amazon.

Speaker 18 (01:37:35):
So for Prime Day, absolutely they have a browser extension
then also a website.

Speaker 17 (01:37:40):
There are lots of different tools that you can use.

Speaker 18 (01:37:42):
So first of all, if you have the browser extension
and it'll just kind of do some work for you
and alert you if it's.

Speaker 17 (01:37:47):
A good price or not. But if you go to
their website.

Speaker 18 (01:37:49):
You can set deal alerts and be notified when things
go on sale. You can get a real sort of
in the weed sense of pricing on things, and I
find it to be very helpful for Amazon Prime Day.

Speaker 1 (01:38:00):
Any other tools, like any other third party tools like
I know, I know, Honey's pretty good. There was a
new one that I was testing that didn't turn out
to be that great. But you know, there's so many
like extensions and things like do those actually help? And
there's no real coupons for Amazon, is there?

Speaker 17 (01:38:15):
Well, yes and.

Speaker 18 (01:38:16):
No, So when you're shopping on Amazon, be sure to
look for that kind of green coupon button. In addition
to maybe a Prime Day sale, you can click on
a coupon on Amazon and maybe save an extra five
percent or ten percent or get a dollar off amount.

Speaker 17 (01:38:31):
So coupon's on Amazon, yes.

Speaker 18 (01:38:33):
And I do expect to see some sort of external
coupons happening. I like slick deals dot Com for this.
They are a you know, a website that has millions
of deals. They have millions of deal seekers actually combing
the Internet for the best sales.

Speaker 17 (01:38:46):
So it's a very kind of community, community oriented site.
So I like that. And I do also like that
too because all the best deals are right in their
front page. So you look at the front page and
they're all there. And then they have a feature called
the deal Alert, which if you're looking for something kind
of price, you say that TV that you were interested in,
you add the name of that item to your deal
alert on slick Deals, and then you'll be automatically notified

(01:39:08):
when it goes on sale. So I use this feature
all year long.

Speaker 18 (01:39:11):
And for example, you know I need a new dishwasher,
I dropped the names of a couple of the dishwashers
I'm interested in into the deal Alert, and then I'm
notified when they go on sale, so I don't have
to waste my time looking around all the time for
good deals on that item.

Speaker 2 (01:39:25):
I love slick Deals. I mean, if you're just looking
for an excuse to spend.

Speaker 1 (01:39:28):
I mean I visit that site every single morning, and
I'm always like, oh I need this, I need this?

Speaker 2 (01:39:33):
Do I need it? I kind of want it?

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
But there's such there's always a great stuff and it's
not just like products. Sometimes it's like oh, get a
free cheeseburger at Burger King today or whatever. So I
mean there's always like something. Tell me about your newsletter.
You've got your website, true truetrade dot com. Tell me
about your newsletter. What do you do on there?

Speaker 17 (01:39:50):
Yeah, so I have a newsletter as well.

Speaker 18 (01:39:52):
It goes out a couple times a month, and that's
lots of savings oriented content there. And then I'm very
active on Instagram as well, say sharing you know, interviews
like this, and also information about how to save money,
little tricks and hacks that I've learned along the way
on your day to day purchases, holiday shopping, give guides

(01:40:12):
my favorite products that I'm trying, and some travel tips
as well. So lots of money saving content on my Instagram.

Speaker 1 (01:40:18):
All right, that is true Trey dot com. That's the
website and Instagram is the same thing, True Trey. So
Trey Bosh, thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 17 (01:40:29):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:40:30):
All right, happy shopping.

Speaker 1 (01:40:32):
Amazon Prime Day coming up that is on October eighth
and ninth, that is Tuesday and Wednesday. Get those deals
or get those items in your shopping cart now so
you can save soon.

Speaker 2 (01:40:44):
All right, coming up?

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
It is the feedback your comments, send emails throughout the
week to me when we come back. The website for
the show. By the way, Rich on tech dot TV.
If you want any of the links I mentioned, just
hit the light bulb there. This is show number what
I say, ninety two, so you can find the links there.
I got an email from Andrea's in Bell Gardens, California.

(01:41:08):
Basically he said that his Ticketmaster tickets were stolen out
of his account, and he wondered if I'd ever heard
of this, and no, I hadn't. So I reached out
to Ticketmaster and I said, Hey, what's the deal, and
they said, yes, this happens. It's not a Ticketmaster hack
per se. It is a week password, and so typically

(01:41:28):
the hackers get in because you either have a week
password on your ticket Master account or your email account
or both, and they basically steal the tickets right out
from under you.

Speaker 2 (01:41:39):
Now, the good news is.

Speaker 1 (01:41:40):
Ticketmaster says, because these tickets these days are digital instead
of paper, they can often recover your tickets for you.
So if you get in touch with their customer service,
they can see what happened to these tickets and help
you get them back. I don't know if that's always
the case, but Andreas was able to get his ticket
Hits his tickets back. And if you've got a ticket

(01:42:01):
Master account, go on there right now. Make sure you
have a strong unique password set up on that account
so that they do not you don't lose your tickets.
And I also want to mention mobile x this week
change their calling plans. They've made them a lot better.
We had the founder of mobile X, Peter Adderton, on
this show a couple months ago. Mobile x is sort

(01:42:23):
of one of these startups. They run on the Verizon network,
but they've got great plans and now they're even better.
So you can get unlimited data twenty four dollars eighty
eight cents a month, you can get ten gigs of
data for fourteen dollars and eighty eight cents a month,
and you can get their personalized plan that starts at
three dollars and forty eight cents a month, So they

(01:42:44):
this is big because they really just made a challenge
to all kind of like these other mv and o's
out there, like Visible Total and Mint Mobile. And I've
been testing the Mobile X. It works well. It runs
on Verizon. I've had no issues. So if you're looking
for a the inexpensive plan. Again, these are all kind
of like DIY, so it's not like you can go
into a store to get help, but they do sell

(01:43:06):
them the simcards at Walmart. So Mobile X is the website.
All right, Let's get to the feedback. These are the emails,
the comments, the questions. I got so many questions or
so many emails in response to me talking about budgeting
last week. Gary and Ranchel Santa Margerita said, Hi, your
caller asked about an app to check his debit card
spending quick and we'll let you download transactions and enter

(01:43:28):
checks in future purchases to see an AMDIA up to
date view.

Speaker 2 (01:43:31):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:43:32):
Gary Warren writes in Hey, Rich, it's good to hear
someone else who updates their budget weekly. I haven't found
a good way to automate the process for my spreadsheet.
I use one from Vertex forty two. Thanks for all
the good information you provide. Ken from Lincoln, California said, Hey, Rich,
though you thought you might have missed a suggestion for
your personal finance budgeting Quicken. It's been around for years

(01:43:53):
on both platforms. It can be as simple or as
complex as you wish. I've been a happy user for
as long as I can remember. I am seventy three.
Thank you, Ken. Sometimes these simplest explanations are right in
front of me, and I forget. Thomas writes in Rich.
If you're interested in using a spreadsheet for budgeting, take
a look at Tiller tillerhq dot com. I move from
Mint and it does a decent job of pulling in

(01:44:14):
data from all of their supported accounts. I check this
out and basically you do have to pay, but they
basically will take your transactions from your bank and credit
card and all that stuff and put them into a
spreadsheet so that you can move them around and organize them.
So Tiller HQ t I L L E R HQ.
I'll put the link on the show notes. Joy from

(01:44:36):
Anaheim takes a different approach. I don't understand the need
for a budgeting app. As a senior on a fixed income.
I find budgeting necessary and very easy. It's actually something
I've done for years. I make a list of all
my expenses, including a weekly allowance, and then total them up.
They should not exceed my income, but if they do,
I can see what I can postpone until another month.
Any discretionary expenses I take out of my weekly income.

(01:44:57):
I check my bank balance every other day and record
all receipts daily. Some things are non negotiable, like rent
and utility. I subtract any fund spent from my daily
allowance and write the remaining balance on my calendar. It's
really very simple, not to go over. An app would
seem to complicate things. Well, Joy, it sounds like you
just do what an app would do. But yeah, let's

(01:45:18):
see here. Arnold from Rancho Kucamonga writes in with an update,
Dear Rich, thanks for solving my problem. Ads and video
games kept popping ads and games kept popping up on
my Samsung phone, especially interfering with taking pictures and videos.
Your step by step instructions work worked. Thank you for
solving what was an incredibly bothersome problem. Take care, Arnold,
Wow glad to hear that that worked. SONU writes in

(01:45:41):
from Las Vegas. Hey, Rich, I'm a North Jersey transplant
to Vegas for twenty three years. But as you mentioned
in your last show, which I stream weekly on the podcast,
you recalled the slider cable boxes. You got me thinking,
and this is what we use when I was a
kid in Wayne, New Jersey. I think the cable company
was Cablevision back then. Thanks for the memories. Yes, the
slider cable box first one we had in my house,

(01:46:03):
and I think it was Cablevision.

Speaker 2 (01:46:07):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (01:46:07):
We got Bob, also from New Jersey. I guess a
lot of Jersey people like hearing me talk about Jersey.
Oh my god, mecha magic. I'm driving to the car,
driving to the gym, and just heard you mentioned mecha magic.
I would make my mom take me there as a kid,
as a magic nerd. I think it was an East
Orange or West Orange. I think I still have a
little briefcase full of magic tricks back home in the
attic and New Jersey. That's what I kept mine in

(01:46:29):
a little briefcase. I was the amazing rich O.

Speaker 2 (01:46:31):
That was my name.

Speaker 1 (01:46:32):
Before I was Rich on Tech, I was rich Oh alisays,
thank you, rich have a blessed week and enjoy tech day.
You give so much knowledge. You investigate in detail, giving
to we the older. We appreciate what you do. Have
a great day again. Thank you well, Thank you Elise
for appreciating me. I appreciate you for listening to this show.
That's going to do it for this episode. You can

(01:46:54):
find links to everything I mentioned on the website rich
on Tech dot TV. Find me on social media. I
am at rich on Tech. Thank you so much for listening.
There are so many ways you can spend your time.
I do appreciate you spending it right here with me.
Thanks for everyone who makes this show possible. Next week
we're going to talk about the pros and cons of

(01:47:14):
art style TVs.

Speaker 2 (01:47:15):
I'm rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.

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Rich DeMuro

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