Even More Scams

This week, we end the year with a look at a few interesting new(er) scams you should be aware of.

William Sikkens, Bill Snodgrass, Gretchen Winkler

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Welcome to We Are TechnologiesUser Friendly.
2.0 with host.
Bill Sikkens, technology architect.
And this is User Friendly 2.0.
As always I'm your host Bill Sikkens
And why do you me as always,my co-host Bill and Gretchen,
welcome to the last show of 2025.

(00:32):
Happy holidays.
If you believe it's alreadythe end of the year.
I mean, our eighth seasonstarts in two weeks.
It just is amazing to me.
And it's because of all of our wonderfullisteners out there.
I mean, it's just incrediblethat we've been able
to get this far on this journeywith everybody and,
I love it, I love it.
Next week,
we're going to be doing a repeat, over Christmas and you'll and all of that.

(00:53):
And then the first show of 2026,we're going to be looking at technology
backward and forward.
And then our next,which will be our next new one, I guess.
So, you know, there you are.
So we're only really taking one week
downtime, but,hey, I think I think we've earned it
probably.
So this week we're going to be hittingon a couple of different things.
We're going to be talking aboutGretchen's book, which is now available.

(01:16):
You can buy it on one blog.
We'll be talking about thatin a few minutes here. And,
hey, you know what? You've earnedthat, too.
So, it's been quite, quite the journey.
And like I say, what? Read into thatjust after the news.
And then the second segment of the showto end the year
on a very positive note, we're going to betalking about some new scams.
And the reason
why this is important to do right now isthere are some things that are popping up

(01:39):
that are really getting people,and it's kind of nasty what's going on.
So, you know, positive note or not,the positive note is
maybe if you hear about this,this won't happen to you.
So we're going to be going into thatsome detail in the second segment. So
that never stops.
But on that track let'sgo ahead and jump into the news.

(01:59):
What do we have this week.
All right.
Arcade one up to be acquired by basic one.
All right.
So for anybodythat's not familiar with all of this
let me kind of go over whatall of that even is.
And then we will talk aboutwhat's going on.
So arcade one up is a company
that has been around for a whilethat builds three quarter size
arcade cabinets.

(02:20):
So like the games when you went intothe arcade, Pac-Man and so on.
They make a lot of licensedreproductions of these things
that are a touch smallerthan the original.
They're meant for home use,so no closing doors
and the cabinets are not builtat the same quality
that you would need for an arcade,but they work fine for home.
I have one of them Golden ax game herethat has that and some other things on it.

(02:41):
So, you know,it is for the market that it's meant for.
They're actually pretty good.
And there's different schoolsof thoughts on all of this,
but they've been doingsome interesting stuff.
And there's been rumors,
floating around last weekthat they are shutting down operations.
And we want to do some research on it,because there was no official statement
made until very recently. This week. And

(03:04):
what's happening
is the company is not being acquired.
Exactly.
But a lot of their assets are by a companycalled Basic Fun.
So question comes to mind.
What is basic fun? Well,I had to look into that a little bit too.
But they actually have a lot of brandsand it looks like they've put together
an acquired that you will have heard of.

(03:26):
If you haven'theard the name of the company and
I'll give you a few of these here bears.
Oh, Tonka trucks.
Oh, yeah.
White bright.
Yeah.
Lincoln Logs,
Okay.
And the list goes on, including arcade,classic and old games.
So it does seem like kind of a fit.
So the question that comes out about this,and it's actually one in a broader sense

(03:49):
that is worth considering is a lot ofthe arcade one up cabinets are online.
So the golden that'swhat I have is a self-contained unit.
You plug it in, you turn iton, you play it kind of thing.
Okay, so that's fine.
It's one of the older ones,but I know another one.
I have, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesactually has an app, and you go online and
and do all the stuff through itand some of their other devices,

(04:09):
like the Infinity Game tablethat they make, which is kind of cool,
requiresbeing online to work and all of that.
So one of the biggest concerns with this,
in addition to it, would be to be ableto see all this stuff go away
is if they shut downand shut down their servers,
a lot of this equipmentwill will stop working, at least in part.
And, and,
you know, it's something to considerbecause really, anything

(04:31):
that's online and having it as an apppotentially could have that happen.
And it does all the time.
So what's being said here is basicfun is going to be keeping
to some extent the functionalityof these things, hopefully fully.
But that has not been clarified yet.
The different placesthat I've been reading about,
I tried to reach out to them to askand wasn't able to get
any direct information on it,but they are saying to some extent.

(04:54):
So hopefully these thingswill keep working.
And as far as what's going
to actually happen with the product line,the arcade cabinets
and all the rest of the stuffthat is currently made by arcade.
One up
is also something that we'll have to see
because they haven'tbeen too direct on it,
but they are acquiring the assets,not the company, but some of the assets.
So it stand to reason that they're goingto still keep
making some of these productsor some version thereof.

(05:18):
NASA has a
space telescope that is 42ft long.
Yeah,it's called the Roman Space Telescope
or the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
And that, name
has been changed to me, obviously,the name for this person from the wild or.
Excuse me, wide field infraredstudy telescope.
I can see it's the last show of our year.
I can talk really?

(05:43):
This telescope
is designed to explore everythingfrom our outer solar system
to the edge of the observable universe,including planets throughout our galaxy.
And our energy
comes in at over 42ft long, 12.7m,
about the length of a semi-truck trailerwith more than 14ft wide.
When fully deployed,the primary mirror is 2.4m or 7.5m

(06:07):
diameter, which is about the same sizeas Hubble space Telescopes.
Primary mirror. So
biggest difference between thatand Hubble?
The resolutionthis stuff is pretty similar.
It has 100 timeslarger view and it weighs 80% less.
Oh yeah. Some technology, you know.
Let's go.
And so this is going to be interesting.

(06:28):
There's a lot of different instrumentsand stuff on this that we can dig into.
That would take longer than doingright now, but this might be a good topic.
I know there's a lot of interestin space stuff.
The other thing I want to say hereis, you know, when you hear this airing,
if you're hearing a smaller area,it's the last week of December 2025.
We record on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
That day we arethe 19th is the day the aliens are going

(06:50):
to come from three outlets.
So if we're still on the air,I want to welcome a new audience.
This telescope would have been niceif it had been available to see.
But hey,we're going to see them in person.
And if not,well, then. Oh, well, I'm here.
Okay.
Disney.
Disney to invest
1 billion in open AI in major dealthat boosts

(07:13):
Sora in Hollywood.
Yeah, so that's a mouthful. Is that.
And on the press releasethere, it's a picture of Darth Vader.
So I'm thinking, okay, what?
You know, what are we doing here?
So I had to do a little bit of,
investigation into,first of all, the term Sora.
It is a, product that I makes that,
pushes out clips, video clips.

(07:36):
So, users of theAI video creation platform,
according to the press release,
will now be able to createclips of 200 characters
from Marvel, Pixar,and Star Wars franchises.
That's what Sora's for.
Oh, so I don't know exactly whatwe're going to see them doing with this,
because when they try to doAI with, Darth
Vader's voice, that didn't go too well,

(08:00):
I don't know if you remember the storyfrom that earlier in the year.
They used it in a game or something,and, players could get, drones,
you know, or drones to say thingswith his very iconic voice
and naughty things, because, of course,
that was the first thingeverybody tried to do, and it worked. So,
okay, that's bad.
So though I haven't seen some interesting,I don't

(08:24):
I've been seeing some interestingthings on YouTube and I'm wondering
if that is related to that.
A whole bunch ofwhat if stories were Star Wars.
So I'm wondering, and it may very well be,I think that if I were to put a
kind of looking at retro tech a little bitand describing this in early days,

(08:45):
there was something called Napster.
You probably rememberdownloading illegal music.
And, from that everybody was goingto, oh, we're going to stop it.
We're going to stop all of this.
Well, I don't know about you,
but I have an MP3 playerand have for the last 20 years,
and I think this is a similar directionthat what they're wanting to do
is allow fans to create stuffusing Disney's intellectual property,
but still have control overwhat's being done.

(09:06):
So it's like the if you can't beat them,join them kind of philosophy here,
which actually makes some sense
because this would be something that doneright, would allow for audience
interaction, fan interaction, again,without feeling like they're being,
smothered down.
Yeah, yeah.
And where some of the changesas of recording right now,
we don't know for sure, but,
the CEO of Lucasfilm is supposedto be changing at the end of this year.

(09:28):
If that happens,
maybe we're looking at some thingsthat will bring
the fans back into Star Warsand some of these other franchises,
which in my opinionwould be a very good thing,
because that's always what it was aboutwhen George Lucas ran it.
And it still should be what it's about.It's the fans.
It really is that make these things
successful or not, and really givethe energy that Star Wars has

(09:49):
a place that already has enough of these
3D printing spiderbot can build a house in one day.
I mean, Australia lost.
Oh yeah, you can build. Go ahead and wait.
Before we started recording,you gave an explanation.
I hear there's spiders in Australia.
Like real ones.
Yes. Terrifying things.
So I don't know.

(10:09):
I guess if you have them,you know, build on them.
This thing actually doeskind of look like a spider.
It, is designedas the headline says, the full size
homes up to 22,150ft² in just 24 hours.
Talk about production of houses.
And it says it,
operates with the speed and efficiencyof over 100 bricklayers with built

(10:29):
without waste or fatigue,which actually is kind of a big deal,
because if you've ever seen a constructionsite,
there's a lot of waste that goes along.
Almost as much materialthat goes the end of the property
seems to go into the dome.
And, it would be nice to see somethingthat would make that
a little more sustainable.
Uses sustainable cement remix.
Made from sand, crushedbrick and recycled glass,
producing walls that are fireproof,resistant and highly durable.

(10:53):
It's six legged
design, are you the spider allows itto move and build across uneven terrain,
ideal for construction or remoter disasterhit areas where human labor is limited.
And I could see something like there.
I know herewe have a huge housing shortage.
You know,if we get more homes that were affordable
and that kind of a thing,it would make a huge difference
for the quality of lifefor a lot of people.

(11:13):
So looking at these kind of technologies,there actually is a very valid
good thing for, as long as it works.
The biggest concernI have about stuff like this is that
going in, it has to work.
If this comes out
and there's a whole bunch of problemswith the houses that are built
or quality of constructionor anything like that,
that could really throw this offthe rails.
On the flip side, if it's successful,we could see something

(11:34):
that really could help in a lot of partsof the world where we need shelters.
And from what I see of the picturesof what this builds, it's nothing bad.
It's actually a really nice looking house.
Cool California
judge rulesthat Tesla engaged in deceptive
marketing around autopilot

(11:55):
right now.
Anybodythat's been off world in addition to.
Please let me join you.
Tesla's had some controversy.
Let's just put it in their,recent past here.
One of them is is their autopilot.
And this whole thing blew upand got into court
and has been draggingthrough the legal system for a while.
And what it is
is that the autopilot or full Self-Drivingis not actually an autopilot.

(12:17):
It's not actually full Self-Driving.
And the state of California is saying,well, there's a problem.
If you say that it does this and it's not,you know, AI deceptive
advertising, right?
Yeah.
So this is finally come out.
And basicallywhat has been recommended here
is that the company should face a 30 daysuspension of each of its licenses

(12:37):
to sell and manufacture cars in the stateor any of the California DMV.
First of all, in my opinion,it's like, ouch, you know?
But, what's happening right nowis they've been given a 60 day window
to fix this problem,
and then they're going to go from thereif they aren't resolved in 60 days
and they move ahead with the suspension.
So it's basically been stayeduntil they fix this problem

(13:00):
with what's going on with Tesla right now.
They may or may not do.
I mean, it's entirely possible.
They're just going to say, well,you know, I'm tough that you've said that.
So I don't know.
It's hard to say, what directionthis is actually going to go.
But in all reality,
even though this doesn't sound like a lot,I do think a 30 day suspension
of being able to sell your productin a state like California
probably would be noticed on a bottom linesomewhere.

(13:24):
Yeah. So you know, who knows what this is?
It forces them to fix the, practices
of marketing this for somethingthat it's not and it's not its job.
If they actually get the suspension,
which most other companies,I would say they accept the 5050 shot,
but it'll be interestingto see where that goes.
So I do think it's kind of nice to seethat the state is actually said, hey,

(13:46):
what you're doing is wrongand you need to fix it,
and we're actually going to do somethingif you don't,
because that doesn't happen so many timeswhen there's these kind of problems,
they get married or whatever,you know, happens, happens or does.
And so this is onewhere it's actually going to be,
you know,interesting to see where this goes.
That was a, I'm sorry, beneficial to the,

(14:08):
the general public, you know,
so it seems that the market
has a really takentoo much interest in this.
Is the Tesla stock priceclose at a record on Tuesday,
largely due to increased enthusiasmon Wall Street surrounding
the company's plan for its robotaxisand driverless technology.
I wonder if the driverless technologyis going to be really driverless.

(14:30):
We'll see.
Maybe another 30 day fine.
If it's not tomorrow.
The Oscars will move to YouTube
in 2029,leaving their longtime home of ABC.
So we've talked about a lot of the changesthat have happened very recently.
Really.
It's been gearing upcable cutting and cutting,

(14:50):
all that stuff, been around for a while,
but the last 2 or 3 years,it seems like it's really changing.
Covid kind of initiated this,but with the technology
where it is now and stuff,it does seem like the old method
of television, linear television,that kind of stuff is certainly retro.
I don't know if I want to say obsolete.
There still is a place for it,
but we are seeing a lot of differentthings happen like this, like the NFL too.

(15:14):
If you watch it online and the Oscarsmoving, is or the Academy Awards
in this matter of moving, sorry, AcademyAwards and the Oscars are different.
The Academy Awardsmoving in 2029 is a big deal,
because it is something
that is a huge change from the waythat they've always done in the past.
Will you get an Oscarat the Academy Award?

(15:34):
I understand that, but it's okay.
Oscar, that's a yeah, I don't know.
I guess I'm thinking there a little bit,but it is.
Yeah, it's the Oscars. People refer to it.
It's really the Academy Awards.
I don't know, maybe it'sjust things like this that I care, but,
Oh, right.
Speaking of Oscars and Academy Awards,let's talk about your new book.

(15:55):
Yeah, right.
I think the award that should be
given here is that you've had the patienceand the ability.
It is actually published. It's done.
It actually happened.
You know, we've actually got two differentthings we're talking about here.
And one book, The Night School Journal,which talked about both of these
in the past.
We're going to get into a little bitmore detail on them here in just a minute.

(16:18):
But The Night School Journal is a bookin that you start writing, backing
up, what, 2012, I think, 2012 or 2013,something like that.
Yeah.
So a while ago and then you and a pause itwell it was all right.
Oh there's different philosophieson how to write a book.
And there are some peoplewho just sit down and,

(16:39):
oh, I'm just going to write this story,you know, and they don't outline anything.
And I'm normallyan outline kind of person.
But when I started that story,
I just sat down and started writing it.
And so I kind of went alongand all of a sudden
it's like,I don't know where I want to go now.

(17:00):
I don't, you know, and so I had to, like,set it aside and work on something else.
And it took me like ten years
to finally circle back to it
and get myself to give it a, an ending.
So. Yeah. And it's. Yeah.
And the thing of it is, is I,
I had read the first part that you hadwritten back ten years ago, 15 years

(17:24):
and whatever it is now, and liked itand was hoping for an ending.
And the one that you wrote,I think it really well,
you've kind of modified it fromits original, set up.
So it's actually part of cyber hockey now.
You know, there are connections there.
It's not part of the actual series,but it is definitely the connection.
And basically the synopsis of the bookis a young man who is a modern day night,

(17:45):
basically are training to beand things that revolve around that way.
Can you give us a little bit better of a
maybe a synopsis than what I justoh, he's not a it's not a night.
Yeah, he's a kid.
This is the coming of age story nights.
This is this is where a kid, he'sjust a regular kid.
He's not, like,super fancy, like Harry Potter,
who's a wizard or or,you know, an orphan or anything.

(18:09):
He's just a regular kid who has divorcedparents
and, he finds himself,
going to a private schoolthat he picked kind of by accident.
And it turns outit's a school for knights.
And he makes wonderful, connections therewith lots of really neat kids

(18:30):
who kind of change his life.
So it's a coming in age story. It's it's.
Ladies and gentlemen.
That is why you let the authordescribe their book instead of green.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
You know, seriousness,this has been a journey, and I've been,
you know,working on some of the logistical stuff.
But, Gretchen,you've been really doing the thing,

(18:52):
and we've we've had some times,you know, this year
we've had a lot of amazing authorson talking about some of the different
things that they've dealt with,
both positive and negativeand some of the pitfalls.
And I think we have a bit of moreof an understanding of all that now.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Writing the book is actually
and coming up withthe ideas is the easy part.

(19:12):
Yeah.
It's, it's, getting it, editedand published to the point where,
other people like itand we'll put it out there,
and then the marketing is going to beanother beast to wrestle and wrangle.
I'm not a marketing person,so this should be interesting.
Back to that in a in a minute.

(19:33):
Yeah, but just talk about the journeya little bit.
And, this is where, you know, you reallydo have to check everything out.
And sometimes when you do,you still can have problems.
The book is being conventionallypublished.
In our market, it's going to be printon demand and some others.
And it's the way the distributorshang on the line.
But what happened is
we had a large company, large publisher,well known, and well respected.

(19:56):
It was going to take care of this and, send us off to a department
that, unknown to us, was ownedby a international situation,
and we had gotten two thirds of the waythrough the, editing process
and finalization.
And all of a sudden,I had sent them an email on something
and about the website,the staff email, just all at once.

(20:17):
About two weeks later,I got an email from a Gmail account
saying, oh, yeah, the website's been downfor maintenance, and,
we're still here, so just contact usover email as I'm going. No.
Yeah, thatdoesn't instill a whole lot of confidence.
And I have a friendwho's in the entertainment
industry who's kind of actinglike my guardian angel,

(20:40):
and he's like,you need to get the heck out of Dodge.
Oh, okay. Okay.
Yeah, it was exactly what happened.
But it wasted,like three months of effort.
And it did, you know,and then they kept coming back with stuff
where they were editing your wordsand changing things around.
And, you know, it's like, no,
you don't change the author's words.
I mean, you do if you're asked to.But that wasn't the case here.

(21:01):
It was more go through it, make sure allthe words spelled correctly and format it.
That's somehow I, you know, if,if if you want a coffee,
the barista just needs to say, here'syour coffee, sir.
We don't need drama, but we got it really?
Yeah.
Okay.
Tom is laughing somewhere.
Yes, I'm sure insights, boy.

(21:21):
Go to the website.
The details are there,but you have to dig for them a little.
But anyway, on that note, we were ableto, fortunately get out of that.
I had to stop a payment on a credit card,you know, as a chargeback and everything.
So we didn't lose money,but fortunately, we were able to do that.
Now everybody is so and so.
Should we mention where you can find it?

(21:42):
Yeah. Well, of course we're goingto mention where you can find it.
And it's on Amazon.
And you there's two ways to get to it.
You can either do it directly at Amazonor if you go to user
friendly Dot show and go to our shopand click through it.
From there, we got a little bit of a,
reference for that, plus anything elseyou might buy on Amazon at the time.
So I don't mindtaking a little bit of Jeff Bezos money.
He doesn't mind giving it to us.So that's help.
The show doesn't cost any more to do that.

(22:04):
But the thing of it is,is yeah, it's available on Amazon.
But there's a direct link on our website,cyber Hockey, Roscosmos,
the main website for the book, of course,can get to it from there as well.
And right nowwe're going through an introduction issue.
Starting to say earlierdealing with the marketing,
which is updating the websitesand doing all the other stuff, and the,
distributor sent over a marketing planoutline, which we're going through now.

(22:26):
We're going to dothis is our soft launch, as they call it,
and then the hard launch will be inabout 30 days where there's going to be,
you know, regular promotionand all that kind of stuff.
But yeah, definitely somethingthat's worth checking out in my opinion.
Now it's on Kindle if you prefer, right.
You can get around the Kindle
and then you could get a hard.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's depending on what is preferredor you know what,

(22:49):
I think you should check them out.
Yeah. Both.
Go ahead and buyboth and see what you prefer you know.
Yeah.
Oh. What the theme of videos is.
It's been quite the journey.
And then the next onethat's just about out
is the first one in the CyberHawk series called Rise of Heroes.
And we're through the final,editing process on that right now

(23:10):
as we speak here.
So probably by the time this airs,
hopefully it will be availableto purchase all sorts cyber hackers.com.
And, I don't know if.
Gretchen,is there anything else you want to tell us
in our last 30s of the segment?
I don't know, I can hardly believethat it's actually happening.
So I'm excited,
I think, from everybody.
Congratulations.
I mean, you've worked for this, and it's,

(23:33):
it's kind of nice to really just seeit actually actually be there.
All right.
This is user friendly 2.0.
We'll be back after the break.
The snow's coming down.
I'm watching, you.
I love people around and maybe any time,

(23:58):
the church bells now.
Welcome back.
This is user friendly 2.0.
Check out our website at User Friendlydot show.
That is your one stop for everythinguser friendly play back episodes.
Check out the podcast,see what's coming up.
Give us your questions in your comments.
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(24:19):
And you can also check outour social media on Facebook,
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If you'd like to follow us there.
All right,so let's close for the year or something.
Very very happysarcasm sign is actually a topic
that's come up and was somethingthat we were asked to talk about.
And when I started looking into this, it'skind of like, yeah,

(24:40):
we all need to be aware this time of year,we tend to all get very busy.
You're dealing with stuff,especially right now.
Christmas is what when this airs,when five days away or something.
I mean we're it's that time of year,last minute stuff.
And you know, you're dealing with things,trying to think about it.
And even people that are very, very up onscams are going to have some problems.

(25:00):
And what I wanted to dowas talk about a few of these.
Now, these aren't necessarily like new.
This is just come outand somebody dreamed it up.
But there's
either stuff that's happened in the past
that's really coming backor kind of a reboot, if you will, or,
you know, update to somethingthat was going on before.
But the first one here is one that,
a lot of people have had this happenand it's very easy to do.

(25:21):
This started about two years agoand it's been ramping up.
And it has to do with the tap cart,you know, like have to pay.
So most of our credit cards,you can put them into the reader,
as always with the chipor you can tap them.
Well that's fine and usually very secureexcept at an ATM machine.
Now here's what's going on.
Involves glue and somebody that appearsto be very friendly
and usually to somebody,but you don't see the other

(25:43):
when you walk up to the ATMmachine, right, to put your card in.
And the reader won't accept your card.
Yeah. Put it in at someone. Oh, yeah.
You know,we were having problems with that either.
Just use your tap, the reader won't you?
Will they put glue in the readers?What's happened?
Oh, so
people started having problemswhere money was missing
from their accounts after using the ATMmachines in this process.

(26:03):
Oh, well, here's why.
When you use a standard ATM card,
your session is openwhile the card's in the machine.
When you take back your cardor session, well, you can't do that
with a Tap card,so it opens and then closes later.
So what happens is you do need to reenteryour Pin code on every transaction.
So that's where the other person
somewhere standing therewatching you put in your pin.

(26:24):
So when you leave the machine, unlessyou manually log out, it's still open.
So the bad guy just comes up afterwardsand starts doing other transactions
on your session, on your account.
Okay.
So then the lesson here isif you try and use your card
and you can't stick it into the readerlike you normally do,
and somebody comes up to you

(26:46):
and suggests this, you need to go,oh, I'll do this later
and walk yourself into the sideinside the bank where the ATM is located
and go, hey,and tell them what's going on.
Yeah, it'sactually you're very much spot on.
Report it because people aren'tgoing to know about this.
And yes,
there's a way

(27:06):
that you can make sure you log out ofyour account when you close the session.
Now, I personally don't use debit or ATMcards anymore just because
with all the scamming that's going onand you lose a credit card number,
somebody can rub your card,you lose your ATM debit
card number,someone actually can clean out
your physical moneyfrom your bank account.
And, so, you know, you definitely want tobe careful with this type of thing.

(27:27):
And the tap to pay is usually secure.
It's encrypted and all of that.
But this is one situation where there'sa little bit of a glitch in the system,
because the ATM doesn't knowwhen to shut down your session.
There's no way it would.
So they just got it where it keeps itopen.
Yeah. You have to reenter your Pin code.
Well, you know somebody's watchingif you're not thinking about it.
And this other person's,you know, trying to be nice.

(27:49):
So yeah.
Just have to pay the other personstanding there,
I can assureyou, is looking at that keypad.
And that's howthey get at the information. So
there is a way to log out.
Unfortunately, it'snot the same for every bank.
So you have to figure out based on the ATMyou're using how to do it.
But something doesn't seem quite right,
like the reader doesn't work,which would be really weird.

(28:10):
Gretchen, you're spot on.
I would say, you know,just listen to yourself and, you know,
go into the branch or not at the bank,figure something else out.
But just don't let yourself get scammed.
Because this wouldbe very, very easy to do.
And you don't need that heartache.
No you don't.
And it is something
that especially around this time of year,even the other thing of it is,

(28:32):
is there's all kinds of differencesin the time you have to get
your money back and make claims and,you know, the banks,
it's different from a credit card.
But even if you do get on it,you're going to be
without your moneyfor some period of time.
And if it's right before Christmasand you're trying to do your shopping
and now all of a suddenyou don't have your resources to do that,
even if you get it back in a few days,it could still really screw things up.

(28:54):
Yeah, yeah. So what's next?
What do we have to worry about?
The next one is a new version of a scamthat has been around for a while.
Gretchen, your mom had this happen to her.
I know it's called the panic call.
Oh, yeah.
So before I get intohow they've changed this,
tell us what happened to your momreal quick.

(29:15):
Okay. She kept.
She was getting a call from a femalethat sounded completely upset,
and she was calling her grandma,
and, Oh,
that's, you know, oh,my mom has grandchildren,
so, And she was trying

(29:36):
to get my mom to send money
because she was in jailand she was in trouble.
And all of this drama, it was bad.
My mom didn't call for it.
My mom's pretty smart.
She's also had others call,a young man who calls his grandma.
I need blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(29:57):
And of course, my mom not having any grand
male grandchildren says to him,you need to get a better job.
You're ruining your life.
Because the guy was a scammer.
Housing was, you know, and it's just so
the thing of it is, iswhat's happening now.
This is a this is somethingthat's been around for a while.

(30:18):
I think that happened to hera couple of years ago.
And I remember quite a few years ago.
So that part's not new,
but what they're doing now,the new twist on it, if you will,
is the scammers go online on your Facebookor whatever and get voice
clips or record a phone call or something,
but they figure out a wayto get the actual person's voice.
And then using AI, they now make the callin the correct voice of the person.

(30:41):
That would be the daughter or whateverthat's in jail.
You know, a victim gets a call,I've been arrested.
Send money now,kind of like what you were talking about,
but it is a lot more dangerousbecause it's you're going
to recognize the voice is what it's.
So, the way they work.
This is emotional pressure.The idea is to get you all worked up.
Oh, there's a, you know, kind of thingto not think about things completely.

(31:03):
They still use caller ID spoofingeven though that's supposed to be fixed.
It isn't completely.
And the sound, the voice sounds right.
That's the same.
Your voice is now a passwordand it's public.
That's the way to think about it on that.
So how do you defend yourselfagainst this?
Well, one of the things you're suggesting,
and this goes back to when these thingsstarted, is having what they call a family
safe word in other words,it's like a password.

(31:26):
Everybody that supposed to knowit knows it.
And when you call,
you can ask the individual, you know,what is the password or what, how are you.
And do that.
And if they're not ableto come up with it, then there's a problem
you're probably going to get hung up onat that point.
The next thing to do is to hang upand call the relative
or whoever back directly,not at the number on the caller ID either.
You would want to call them back

(31:46):
at a known good phone number to,you know, find out what they're doing.
And really, when it comes down to this,never act on panic calls.
The whole idea is you've got a loved onethat's in trouble.
Yeah, you're goingto want to help them. But,
you know, and it's hard to say thisbecause it's not like
you don't want to help your family,but take the steps
to make sure you're doing the right thing,because 99% of the time, it won't be.

(32:10):
And it's something.
And these kind of things will eventuallyget you to send money with gift cards or,
you know, these transfer things that youcan't get it back and that type of thing.
And it becomes incredibly difficult,if even possible, to recover
something like that.
And people have lost thousands,tens of thousands of dollars.
There's really some stories out therethat are very, very scary.

(32:32):
So somebody is going to get a lot of coalthis year.
Yeah. What you're saying,
speaking of whichis something called dark pattern scams.
Dark pattern scams.
Yeah. All right.
So this is another one.
It's been described to methat this isn't even illegal.
It's just deceptive. Okay.

(32:53):
I'm going to use an example of where thisreally hit the news about two years ago.
But we're starting to see it ina lot of other places.
It is the product of people, money.
Now, PayPal, for anybody that might notknow, is a service
that used to be owned by eBay,and you use it to pay things online.
They've gotten into cryptocurrencyand stuff lately and that type of a thing.

(33:13):
There's different schools ofthought on it.
It's safe or it's not,or if people like it or they don't,
but that's not particularly relevantbecause what's happening here
is another part of this,where you get a pop up
ad somewhere or email or whatever,even from PayPal,
because they own this company,PayPal, honey.
And it says, install thisbrowser extension.
Anytime you go to a website,we'll find the best deal.

(33:35):
We'll get you coupon codes, we'll doall of these different things, okay,
so what's actually happening hereand the reason why this is a problem
and PayPal funny is by the way, it'snot the only one that's doing this.
It's just one of the betterknown ones is two things.
Most of the time,especially content creators
on YouTubeshows like us, a lot of different places.

(33:57):
We'll have links that,
get your organization,your show, a little bit of a kickback.
If you make a purchase through, it's like,
you know,we were talking about your book, right?
And if you go to User Friendly's
website and click on your book,
you still pay the same pricefor that doesn't change anything.
But because we've referred you to Amazon,there's
a main promotion thing in therewhere we get a little bit back

(34:18):
and then once you're on Amazon, of course,
if you buy anything else,it works for that too.
So it's just a really nice way to helpcreators and other small businesses.
Well, when you install this thing,when you go to the website
that it's referring you to,it changes the referral code, unknown
to you, to send the moneyto PayPal or PayPal, honey.
So now the person referringor the company referral

(34:40):
never sees what they should seefrom doing the promotion.
And the other thingthat's coming down with this, at least
the allegation is, is that it doesn'talways give you the cheapest price either.
So if you're the person buying it,it might make some suggestions.
But if for some reasonthey have, a contract with somebody
or something elseor want to promote one brand over another,
it will never tellyou about the lowest price.

(35:02):
So you really have to think for yourself.
Yeah, yeah.
And,
I think think of it this way.
If the product is free, it's really not.
You're the productwhen you think about it, right.
There is a cost.
It just might not be moneyout of your pocket.
And this is trueespecially in shopping. So
best thing to do is review your browserextensions.

(35:23):
The different browsershave different ways of doing this,
but there's usually pretty straightforwardto get in.
Look up instructions on how to do thatif you need to just,
you know, search for it and
remove anything that you don't actuallyuse or at least deactivated.
So if you're going in there and going,what is this?
You probably aren't going to use it.
And if you do need to use it,you'll figure out very quickly

(35:44):
that whatever it is went awayand it was legitimate.
Then you just reactivated or reinstall it.
But again, this is somethingthat actually affects the seller
and the buyer in a negative wayand makes money for the third party.
Now there's some of these that seem
to be very legitimate on Capitalone credit card has one, and
I've never heard of a problem with that.
And I know that I've used that for somereferrals and things, just to be sure.

(36:05):
I started testing all thiswhen I found out about this,
and that one we did get the credit for,at least when I used it.
So it's not that they're all bad,and it's not that all these services are
somehow should be avoided,but it is very important to make sure
that you're doing business.
I would say with somebody that's legitimate, PayPal is a legitimate company.
So it's
not like, you know,this is some third party weirdo thing.

(36:28):
It is something that is, is out there.
So anyway, I again,
that just sounds like they deserveto have Kohl's stuffed in their stocking.
Yeah, it just seems like athey're going to be in court.
There's a class action that was filed,you know all that kind of stuff.
So everybody in the class actionyou know, get a preorder of hash browns

(36:49):
at a local restaurant.
It settles,but the attorneys will get paid.
Oh my goodness.
All right.
Let's see, next one that I haveon my list here is remote chip scam.
So back to the chip parts.
All right.
So this is another interesting oneand one to think about again
with the contactless have to pay lanesmodern version of ATM skimming.

(37:15):
If you haven't heard of C,
I mean that's where the bad guy putssomething over the reader
so it can read your cardas you're putting it down.
Usually has a camera.
So I can see the, keypad and chip cards.
And these type of thingswere designed to help with this.
Well, the bad guys have figured outa bit of a way around that, and one
that you might not even knowthat you've had this happen

(37:36):
until days laterwhen you see your credit card statement.
Way this works is the thieves have two NFCnear field communication devices.
This is the kind of thingthat's built into the reader credit
card machine, ATM,whatever to read the card when you tap it.
So you
have a receiver on one endand somebody standing at the other.
Let's say it's a payment terminalat a store or something.

(37:57):
You're standing at the self-checkoutpayment terminal,
and the other guy has a reader,and they walk by your wallet
and it transmitsthe code from the card in your wallet.
The receiver and the receiver unlocksthe payment terminal.
And you're paying with nowthe bad guys paying with your credit card.
You don't even know that the SouthTerminal believes that your card
is physically present.
You know, and that kind of a thing.

(38:18):
So this is becoming a thing.
And the equipment to dothis is not that hard or expensive to buy.
You can find NFC and, NFC transceivers
for legitimate purposes on Amazonand a lot of other places.
And there are good reasonsto have that kind of technology.
This is a bad way to use it.
So you're dealing with something herewhere there's no physical card theft.

(38:40):
It works through pockets, jacketsor purses.
And the victims many timesdon't realize until quite a bit later
what about those weird sleeves?
Yeah, that's exactly what you do about it.
Oh, okay.
Now RFID blocking wallets, sleeves.
There's different things like thatthat you can buy is fairly inexpensive.

(39:01):
Again, you can get these anywhere online.
And a lot of storesand you basically slide your card.
And these are good to use for passportsand other things
that have these type of technologies
which slide your card in the pocketand lock it.
And the other thing of videois if you don't see it
or if you don't use it, have to pay.
If that's not something you use,you can turn it off.
Usually a credit card,you can go into your account, your online

(39:22):
account, say, hey, I don't want to usethis, don't, you know, don't have it work.
The other thing that is recommendedfor this and a number of other
things, is most credit cards offer a waythat you can go on into your settings
and get alerts when the card is used.
And a lot of people have these set updefaults, different things like that.
But you want to set somethingcalled low transaction alerts.
There's a lot of times people are doingthis aren't going to run up $10,000.

(39:45):
That would set off a lot of bells,but they might do 100 bucks kind of thing.
And, from that standpoint,
those are just,you know, some of the different things.
It's always a good ideato keep track of your financial accounts
and use the tools that are availablebefore it takes a little more time.
But at the end of the day, it's goingto save you a lot of time and heartache.
Did you get hit withone of these of many scams?

(40:07):
You know, so it's too bad really,because the technology and the convenience
of things like tap to pay are really good,and they actually are designed well,
they're encrypted,all this different kind of stuff.
But if you can actually read and do it
in real time,you do get around that protection.
And it is definitely something that I know.

(40:29):
I put my cards in the blocker
and it is a little bit of a painbecause every time you use it,
you have to pull it outand it's hard to put it back,
and I've had that,but you still should do it
because it's that little bit of difficultyis definitely worth doing
so that you don't havethese kind of things happen.
And if it's a credit card,then you have, you know, I've my cards
been run up and, you call the credit cardcompany and deal with it.

(40:51):
But like we're saying earlier,
if it's a debit card,they actually get you your physical money
and you want to make surethat that just simply doesn't happen.
All right.
Do we want another one?
Yeah. There's more.
Oh, this is so cheerful. Yes.
Happy holidays everybody.
Let's tell you howyour money is going to get.

(41:12):
So and actually what we want to dois make sure that that doesn't happen.
And that's really what this is about.
Yeah.
So this one's not a new one butit's still happening and happening a lot.
And it has to do with the use of QR codeson things like parking
meters, restaurant menus,that type of thing.
So there's a lot of placeswhere you can go.
We just we're a mansion,which is a museum.

(41:34):
You're in the Portland area,that we like to go to every year,
and you have to pay at the parking lotto pay.
Now, that might already be considered
a rip off,but it's a legal one from the city.
But this part isn't.
What the scammers will do is you scana QR code to pay for your parking.
In this case, restaurant,you might scan a QR code to see the menu.
There's lots of different waysthat they make this work.

(41:55):
Well, what the bad guy does isthey stick a fake QR code
on top of the real one,and if you do it right, you don't know it.
It's almost like a skimmer in a way.
So now you scan the code,it goes online to a place
where you can make your payment.
So now you're putting in your credit card
information and stuff to make paymentfor parking and giving the bad guy
all that information.
On top of that, you didn't pay to park.
So you're gonna probably have apretty good ticket when you come out too,

(42:15):
because they're goingto say, well, you never paid.
You know,
same thing
on the restaurant menusand stuff like that, too.
We ran into this when,Jeremy was still with us.
We were up at, I think.
Oh, like, oh, we're,one of the areas around Lake Tahoe.
Was it South shore? North shore?It would have been.

(42:37):
It would have beenby the California border on 86.
What is that? Truckee.
Okay.
We went to a restaurant.
This is right after Covid.
Kind of was starting to back off,but they had everything touchless.
So to get the menu for the restaurant,
you had to scan a QR codethat was on the table.
And this wasn't something I was thrilledabout anyway, but it worked.
I mean, you got the menu up,we didn't have a problem,

(42:57):
but that's another placewhere the bad guys will put a sticker.
So you might even get the menu from thatrestaurant if they've done their work.
And then when you go to pay for the meal,we'll have something like, okay,
you know,put your order in. Now, pay for it.
You do.And your credit card number, the bad guy
love life.
So reason it works.

(43:17):
Really what it comes down toit is through our code.
So you'll officially see themall over the place.
And generally they are press badgesQR codes on them.
I mean, you know, it's used very muchin a lot of different ways.
You don't see the URLs before clickand you scan the code and it opens
to whatever website that URL goes to.
You don't actually see what it is.
You can look,
it'll be in the bar, but most people don'tbecause you don't think to do it.

(43:39):
And you do see this a lot in touristareas.
You're on holidayand thinking about other things,
and the bad guys know that they knowexactly what they're doing.
One of the thingsthat's been told me to me too, is I or,
you know, cybersecurityand work with people on that,
and we have 80 hoursa day to defend against that.
These guys have 24 hours a dayto come up with these schemes.

(43:59):
So that gives them a little bit of anedge, you know, and unfortunately it does.
So one of the things to look for isif you do scan on to one of these things
that the payment site feels a little off,or it asks you for
unusual extra personal info.
Or there's things like typos or odd URLsthat kind of stuff.
You know, the restaurant menu

(44:21):
goes to my restaurant for you,which that extension is Russia.
That probably would be a good ideato think that there's
something really wrong here,you know, if it feels off,
unfortunately, with the use of AIand stuff now, they're able to make it
look a little more real.
It isn't as like it was.
I think that

(44:43):
the best way to defend against this,and there's not a 100%,
is when you scan the QR codethat you want to use,
it does actually allow you to see the URLthat it's going to just most of us
don't look at it.
And depending onhow your device is configured,
it may or may not automaticallybe on the top of the browser,
but there is a way to turn it on
and a way to check for itand just get in the habit

(45:04):
of taking a second or two to,you know, look at it.
If it's, in the case of the parking lot,it's supposed to go to
a thing called parking Kitty,and it says so right on the sign.
And it did.
But if it's going to somethingcompletely different or some weird thing,
then it's a way to.
No, that'sprobably not something you want to get,
you know, get involvedwhen you're with. So

(45:25):
anyway, just some stuff and some heads up.
This time of year, we're supposedto be spending time with our families and
being able to enjoy ourselves, participatein our various religions,
and do what's important to us.
Not a timethat you want your money stolen.
So just thinking about thisa little bit more
might save you a huge amount of hassle.
All right,now that we're done with all of that,

(45:49):
Christmas is coming up.
It's your New Year'sis right around the corner.
I can't believe it's alreadythat time of year.
And I cannot believe we are startingthe eighth season of User Friendly 2.0.
I know we talked it up in the top as well,but I don't know.
It's just so, so much has happened.
We have another guest postthat's going to be joining us,
this coming year in 2026,which we'll go into when we get there.

(46:10):
But we were talkingabout some of these different things.
And, you know, userfriendly was first on the air in 2013.
It was like version 1.0.
We're just user friendly.
We startedwe've talked about this a little bit.
We we started in a mall at a, in Reno,you know, and it was crazy.
It was crazy.
But we got our feet wet, you know,

(46:31):
and during that time, we've had some yearswhere we've produced
every week on 1.0, it'ssome years that we just did a podcast.
Now, the 2.0 version, since we moved overto, Salem Media
has been pretty much weekly.
It's been an amazing thing.
It's been a lot of fun.
There's been a lot of thingsto the journey.
I would tell you, you know,we started that before Covid.

(46:52):
So we were in studioat the time we started, you know,
doing this in that revision.
And then Covid happened.
So all that close down.
So we all got our homestudios and Covid ended and we all decided
what's what's you're not going to drive45 minutes each way, you know, to record.
Not necessary.
And you like your ability to participateis because of the way

(47:12):
the technology has changedbecause you're not
local, you know, and it's wonderfulthat that's something that you can do.
Yeah.
It is.
Oh, the other thingthat's been really cool about the change
in technology too, is the factthat we used to be limited on.
Yes, we've got some amazing guests,you know, that
come on the show, but we were limitedto who could come into the studio,
which meant or like, you know,there's a a lot of people available here.

(47:35):
But then they too came inwith some of the new technology.
We're able to talk to peopleall over the world and do.
And it's just just amazing. So, you know,
so as far as all of that goes,it's been an amazing year.
We're looking forward to another one.
And for the last time,I'm going to be able to do this.
I invite everybodyto participate in the Season of Giving.

(47:58):
This year, we've been proudto support the William Temple House
or a user friendly show,or William temple.org.
See what they're doing.They are raising money.
They help provide
free or low cost mental health servicesto people that you did in Portland,
and also operate, which this year hasbecome extremely important, a food bank.
They also have a really cool thrift store.
I found out too, that, or some of the other things

(48:20):
I do with retro electronics.
Oh boy, is that worth visiting.
Not that they have no retro electronics.
If you're into that, go somewhere else,but everything else is great to go there.
It's too late.
They already got it.
All right. Yes.
The cat's out of the bag on that one.
So anyway, to everybody, merry,you'll merry Christmas.
Happy new year, happy Hanukkah and happywhatever it is you do this time of year,

(48:45):
we will see you in 2026.
Until then, this is user friendly2.0 keeping you safe on the cutting edge,
user friendly 2.0.
Copyright 2013 to 2025
by User Friendly Media Group incorporated.
All rights reserved.
Content is the opinionof the show's participants

(49:05):
and not necessarily this stationor platform.
Request for material use.
Interviews.
CcpA Privacy Notice for Californiaresidents.
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may be submitted at user friendlyDot show.

(49:28):
We welcome your input.Thank you for listening.