Rise and Shine: Your Dose Of Business Tech Inspiration

When someone fills in a contact form on your site, you rely on an email notification to tell you about it. That notification relies on a lot of things going right, and all it takes is one to go wrong for you to never see the submission. In this Mindset Monday episode, Charly makes the case for saving your form submissions into your database instead of trusting the email, and what that means for your records and your privacy.

In this...

When you install an app, it asks for permissions that a website would never be allowed to request. Camera, contacts, location, photos, files and push notifications are all on the table, and those permissions are often left on permanently.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ How apps access parts of your phone that websites cannot reach

➡️ Why permissions granted at install are often left on and forgotten

⚡ How push notifications give com...

You tick the box that says “I’m not a robot”, but instead of the usual puzzle, the page asks you to press a few keys on your keyboard to prove you are human. That request is the warning sign. In this Walkthrough Wednesday, Charly walks through a fake CAPTCHA attack that hijacks your clipboard to install information stealers, using a Malwarebytes article to show you what these screens look like and why the wording ...

Nearly every service you use wants you to install their app. There’s an app for everything: your bank, your shopping, even your streaming. Do you actually need them all, or are they just giving providers more access to your phone than necessary?

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ Most apps are just the website wrapped in a different container

➡️ How a privacy-focused browser can replace many of the apps on your phone

⚡ The permiss...

You deleted the app, so your data is gone too, right? Not necessarily. When you sign up for a service and hand over your details, that information lives on the company’s servers, not just your phone. Even if you stop using the app, your data could still be sitting there years later, and if that company gets breached, your details could be exposed.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ Why deleting an app doesn’t remove your d...

The Redirection plugin is a plugin that handles redirects, branded affiliate links, and 404 monitoring on your WordPress website.

If you rename or delete a page, the plugin ensures that the old URL is redirected to the new one so visitors and search engines don’t hit a dead end, which is great for your SEO. Redirection also provides some stats on the links without needing to touch server files. Charly has been using it for yea...

If you are a small business owner wondering whether AI is about to make your skills obsolete, the biggest tech companies in the world just answered that question for you. They fired experienced staff, replaced them with AI tools, and discovered the AI costs more than the people did.

In this episode, Charly covers:

⚡ Why this matters to small business owners who are being told their skills are about to become obsolete

✅ How the Austral...

QR codes are everywhere. Cafes, parking meters, product packaging. We scan them without thinking, and that habit is exactly what attackers are now exploiting.

QR code phishing, also called quishing, has been flagged by both Google and the FBI in 2026 as a serious threat, and it can bypass multi-factor authentication entirely.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ What QR codes are and how they became embedded in everyday business

⚡ How QR ...

WordPress has had AI features added recently, but do you know the built-in tools that have been there all along? Understanding the basics could save you if AI misinterprets your prompts.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ How to change the number of items displayed per page using Screen Options

✅ Filtering posts by category to find what you need quickly

✅ Using Quick Edit to update a single post without opening the full editor

✅ Bulk Edi...

When a service provider makes changes to your business infrastructure without your knowledge, who is actually in control? SiteGround’s decision to force-install their own AI agent plugin on over a million WordPress sites alongside the WordPress 7.0 update is a case study in what happens when that line gets crossed.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ What SiteGround did with their AI plugin and why it matters for every site owner

...

Over the weekend, a run of high-value Instagram accounts - including brand accounts and a former White House page - were hijacked and resold within minutes. According to reports from those affected and footage posted by the attackers themselves, Meta’s own AI Support Assistant may have changed account recovery emails without verifying ownership, allowing hackers to reset passwords and take full control.

In this episode, Charly...

Ever wondered which accounts you're using Sign in with Google with, and how to disconnect them? Following on from Monday's episode about whether you really want to use Sign in with Google as an option, today's walkthrough shows you how to find and unlink those accounts.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ How to find every account linked to your Google login at myaccount.google.com

➡️ Using the Linked Apps menu to see which accounts use...

If you use “Sign in with Google” to access other tools and websites, have you thought about what happens if that account is taken away from you? Google now uses AI to continuously scan accounts for policy violations, and since October 2025, accounts can be terminated in a single automated step with no warning.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ How your Google account connects to every service you sign into with it

➡️ Real ...

Full names, dates of birth, places of birth, passport numbers, government account IDs - some of this data can never be changed. You can reset a password, but you cannot reset your date of birth. France Titres, the national digital ID system, was hacked in April, and the attacker was a 15-year-old. Now imagine what a nation state with serious money could do.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ How France Titres was compromised and what ...

Your Google account keeps a detailed log of your activity - from map searches and phone calls to what you have been watching on TV. If you have not checked your privacy settings, there is a good chance all of that data is being collected right now.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ How to access your Google activity log at myactivity.google.com

➡️ What Google tracks across Maps, Android TV, Assistant, and more

⚡ How to filter your acti...

Cybercrime is on track to become a $12 trillion problem by 2031, and the criminals behind it are not just targeting your technology - they are targeting your brain. In this episode, Charly sits down with cybersecurity expert Robert Siciliano to unpack how organised crime exploits our natural instinct to trust, and what you can do to become a tougher target.

In this episode, Charly and Robert discuss:

✅ What the “human blind spo...

If your favourite WordPress plugins have changed hands in recent years, you may have noticed something shifting. Higher prices, slower support, and founders walking away from the products they built. In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ Why private equity companies acquire plugins for profit, not passion

➡️ What you actually receive when you pay for a WordPress plugin licence

⚡ The difference between founder-led support and PE-backed hel...

Google has quietly rolled out its new Cloud Fraud Defense system, replacing reCAPTCHA on over 14 million websites without notifying site owners. Instead of solving a puzzle, flagged visitors now have to scan a QR code with a Google-approved phone, tying their browsing session to a tracked account.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ What Google's Cloud Fraud Defense system is and how it replaces reCAPTCHA

➡️ Why flagged traffic now requ...

Have you ever switched devices and thought you lost access to a file someone shared with you in Google Drive? If you can log into your Google account, you can find it - you just need to know where to look.

In this episode, Charly covers:

✅ How to find files in the Shared With Me section of Google Drive

➡️ How to add shortcuts so shared files appear in your own folders

⚡ Using starred folders and colour coding to stay organised

⭐ How to ...