Preventing Tech Headaches & Configuring Emergency Contacts

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The latest on the Apple Watch ban and iPhone crook
explains how he stole thousands of dollars from victims. What
you need to know about the Comcast Infinity breach, plus
your tech questions answered.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
What's going on. I'm Rich Demiro and this is rich.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
On Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast.
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. We're going
to open up the phone lines at triple eight rich

(00:42):
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Give me a call right
now if you have a question about technology. We're also
going to do things a little differently today since it
is a holiday weekend.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Open phone lines.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
You can call and tell me the tech that you
are thankful for in twenty twenty three, the gadget, the website,
whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Let me know.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Triple A rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Email is also open.
Just go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit contact.
We've got some great guests this week. Ryan Green, founder
of the tech support company Go Go Quincy, is going

(01:28):
to join to share five preemptive tech steps to take
today to prevent tech headaches. Tomorrow, doctor Chris Pearson, cybersecurity
expert with black Cloak dot io, is going to share
tips on how to keep your digital life safe and protected.
And Bill Rideouchell is author of The Bleeding Edge, My

(01:49):
six Decades at the Forefront of the Tech Revolution. He's
going to join to chat about key takeaways from a
career in technology. Well, thanks once again for joining me.
My name is rich DeMuro. It is the holidays, yes
it is. This is the last day or two to
get your holiday shopping done. And it came fast, it

(02:12):
really did. So here we are and I am. If
you want to watch or if you want to see
the ugly Christmas sweater that I'm wearing today, you can
check out my ex at rich on Tech and I
posted a picture. One plus was kind enough to send
a ugly holiday sweater. And it's funny because it's ugly

(02:32):
but not really like you wouldn't really notice unless you
were really looking, and then you're like, oh, that's kind
of ugly, but it's also nice. But this is a
tech company tradition at this point. They Microsoft, I think,
started it, and a couple other companies have followed in
line where they send the tech folks holiday sweaters in
hopes that they'll wear them.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
And I did, and I do.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
I love wearing these things to the holiday parties because
it always gets a laugh, especially the Windows ones, because
a lot of times it's like when old like old
school Windows stuff, and people are like, oh, I remember that.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
If you're looking for.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Some last minute gifts, head to my website rich on
tech dot tv slash shop. I've got eighty six items
that I recommend there. So it's the stuff that I've
tested over the years or that I've just taken a
liking to, so portable batteries, cases, all kinds of stuff.
I don't know if you'll get it in time for
the you know, Christmas morning, but you never know. Amazon's

(03:29):
pretty fast these days. I watched a holiday movie with
my kid the other night, and it made me realize
just how spoiled we are. So when I was a kid,
and I'm sure it was the same way when you
were a child. Holiday specials like Rudolph were aired exactly
once a year on a specific night and time, and

(03:52):
if you missed it, you were out of luck. You
did not see that again until the next year. And
that was the case with one of my favorites, Rootolph
the Red Nose Reindeer. And this was a nineteen sixty
four masterpiece that I loved when I was a kid,
and it was kind of claymation stop motion. When I

(04:13):
was a kid, I didn't know the difference. But now
I see it looks pretty old school. And so I said,
you know what, my kid put the roadblocks down. We're
gonna we're gonna watch this, and he was fine with it.
But here was the thing. So it wasn't on any
of my my thousands of streaming services that I pay
for every month. So I was like, all right, I
gotta buy this thing. So I go on Amazon and

(04:35):
you know whatever, it is five six bucks to purchase,
not rent. And within less than a minute we are
watching this in like the original glory like you're you know,
not broadcast TV quality, not you know, downloaded off the internet.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Bootleg quality.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
No, this is like mastered quality from the studio and
it looks great. It's four by three, but you know,
that's the way things were done back then. But my
point is, think about what just happened. I found a
show from nineteen sixty four that you used to have
to wait one day a year to watch at eight
pm on a Thursday or Friday night during the holiday season,

(05:15):
and I was able to find it on Amazon, purchase
it from my phone, and watch it on my TV
in a matter of thirty seconds. That is incredible. And
it's like this with everything. We have the world's biggest
video store on our TV. It's something that we take
for granted now, but it's something that is so wild

(05:37):
when you really think about it. Same thing with music,
same thing with everything. These days, we have so many options,
we're scared to make a choice.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
That's the problem with all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
It used to be you watch this stuff because it
was on your TV. Someone made the decision for you
to watch this during the holidays, whether you liked it
or not. The other one was a Wizard of Oz.
It came on once a year. My dad would scream
from the other room, Rich Wizard of Oz is on.
You gotta watch it, and you sat in front of
the TV for three plus hours.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
I think that was a long movie. But that one
I don't remember anyway.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
It's quite amazing the world that we live in because
we just take this tech stuff for granted. But it
is really quite miraculous, especially if you went back in
time and told you know, your your previous self, like
you know, you could just like get that instantly. And
the sad part is our children know no difference. Like
the new generation growing up. Everything is on demand whatever

(06:38):
they want. I mean, I'm talking door dash, I'm talking
you know. They want to see a movie, they can
order it. They want to listen to a song, Remember
you had to tape a song off the radio. You
had to sit in front of your radio and wait
for them to play the song you wanted, and then you.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Would press record on a tape player.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
I mean, this is the stuff we don't think about
anymore because we're so used to the flip side, which
is what we no longer have to do information. Remember
going to the library. I remember learning at the library
about microfiche. They would teach us how to find something
in that weird card catalog. It was a drawer you

(07:19):
pulled out that had a type written cards. Someone on
a typewriter took an index card and wrote down the
pertinent information from a book and put it in there
in alphabetical order, and then you would pull this thing out.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
You'd find the book.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
It would have some sort of Dewey decimal system on it,
which I mean, who came up with that? I'm guessing
the guy's name was Dewey Decimal. This was his last
name Decimal. I don't think so, but maybe Dewey was
in the name somewhere. You'd go to a shelf and
know things weren't in alphabetical order. That seemed like it
would be make too much sense. No, they're in some

(07:54):
sort of Dewey decimal order, and you would find in
cross reference this little tiny card and you would go
walk over there, find the book, pull it off the shelf,
and then look through it for two seconds, say oh,
that's not the one, and start the whole process over again.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
What you did with that card? I don't know. Oh man,
it's wild when you think about this stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
The microfiche, by the way, you would also go into
when you needed something from a magazine or a newspaper.
You'd search I don't even know how you searched. I
can't remember that aspect of it, but you would search
and somehow say, oh, like I remember we searched I
think for like our last name. It'd be like, oh,
here's your last name. It appeared in the New York
Times in December seventeenth, nineteen seventy four issue. And here's

(08:42):
how you find it on this microfiche. You would retrieve
this microfiche from a shelf, you pop it into this
machine and you would scan through it, and then when
you made it to that page, you would move it
around like a magnifying glass to try to find what
was on that page. Now you would just search on
in on the internet and find what you need in
about ten seconds. And don't even get me started on AI.

(09:04):
I mean, this is like the Internet is already catalog
now in a new way where now it's just summarized
for us. So now we just get the summary of everything.
And the videos are a minute thirty on TikTok. You
ever see a kid flip through videos on TikTok? They
go so fast it's like, hold on, wait, are you
even watching that? I show my kids my stories I

(09:24):
do for TV right, and I watch them sort of
tune out. After about twenty five seconds, they start eyeing
their screen on their tablet again, and I'm like, you
can't even sit through a minute thirty of a story
that your dad crafted for television. But I know I
get them if they watched the whole thing. Attention span

(09:45):
it's really lacking. And I forgot what I was I
forgot what I was supposed to be talking about here
because I just went on a tangent. So anyway, it's
all good, it's all fun. I thought Rudolph was great.
It really held up after you know how many years,
nineteen sixty four to twenty twenty three. That's a long time.
It's seventy that's like fifty something years. And it held

(10:06):
up that was old when I was a kid. That
was old before I was even young. That makes sense,
all right? Coming up on today's show, Triple eight Rich
one on one. That's the phone number. You can call me.
Tell me what tech you're thankful for. If you can
get through. We are already slammed with the phone calls.
I guess people are around on a holiday weekend. I'm

(10:27):
going to tell you about the Apple Watch band. Yes,
the Apple Watches are coming off store shelves imminently, and
they're not even for sale on the Apple website.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
I'll explain that, but let's take some of your calls.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Coming up next Triple eight Rich one on one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
My name is Rich dmiro and you are listening to
Rich on Tech, Seraphine and Studio City.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Good morning.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
Hi.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
I'm the artist that you spoke to once upon a time.
Here's my situation. I have a TV in the kitchen
and Channel eight which is news all the time. The
point is out of sync with the pictures, and I'm wondering,
is it my TV or is it this station because

(11:16):
it's the only one that does that.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Well, if it's the only one that does it, I'm
suspecting it's the station. But what what's the speaker situation
on this TV?

Speaker 3 (11:27):
I don't know whatever came on the inside.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Okay, so it's built in.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
So then if it's the if it's the speaker that's
built into the TV, then it's the station.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
I haven't heard of this Channel eight business.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
It's actually wonderful.

Speaker 5 (11:39):
It's all news all the time.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Hmm.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Interesting And that this is in Los Angeles, yes, uh huh,
never heard of it. Okay, So yeah, I mean, basically,
the main thing is that if you're having a sink issue,
it typically has to do with an external speaker, and
that's a little bit of latency between the signal that's
coming out of the TV and the signal that's coming
out the speaker. Most of the time, speakers have or

(12:03):
the TV has some sort of way to kind of
like shift that latency just a little bit, like, for instance,
on my TV, I have mine adjusted just a tiny bit.
But since this is built into the speaker, is built
into the TV, it sounds like it's this channel. And
given that I haven't heard of this channel, and I'm
not really sure what the origination is, it could be

(12:24):
just a problem with their signal.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
So I would call the channel and see what they say.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Thanks for the call, Seraphine, and yes, I remember you
were the artist you emailed me.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Gosh, it was a while ago. Let's go to Jim
in Jim and Laguna Beach.

Speaker 6 (12:39):
Jim.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (12:41):
Hi.

Speaker 5 (12:41):
Rich. I use coxs cable for my email and so forth,
but I don't access my email or my calendar through CONX.
I access it through Microsoft Outlook. A week or so ago,
I don't know whether Outlook went down or they had

(13:02):
a change of some sort. But I couldn't pull up
my calendar, which you know nearly caused me to panic.
I was told that my Microsoft the calendar that I
access through Microsoft Outlook, could be synchronized with the calendar

(13:24):
at at at Cox. There's a lot of time on
the phone.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Who serves the calendar? I'm sorry, who serves up the calendar?
Where's that? Stort? So what calendar are you using?

Speaker 5 (13:43):
Well, I'm not sure it's it's Uh, I access it
through Outlook, okay?

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Is it a Google calendar? Is it Microsoft calendar? Is
it Outlook?

Speaker 5 (13:52):
Microsoft Outlook calendar?

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Okay? And so and it's through your email?

Speaker 5 (13:59):
Well, I think what happens is is the if you
send me an email, uh, it has a Cox suffix,
and I think the emails come into Cox and and
somehow the emails go over to Microsoft.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Right, it's checking, it's checking the Cox email. So what
can I help you with?

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Well?

Speaker 4 (14:21):
Is it?

Speaker 5 (14:21):
Do you know if it's possible to have the calendar
that's on Outlook synchronized so that it also appears on
the Cox cable? Uhh calendar?

Speaker 1 (14:41):
I mean it should it should pull that up. I'm
not really sure if you're if you're using the Cox
calendar it is, you know, you can go to their
website and you should be able to view it.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Have you tried that?

Speaker 7 (14:54):
Yes?

Speaker 5 (14:55):
I have, and it's you know, I have all my
calendar stuff is in the in the access through to
the Outlook calendar and then I go over to Connys
and there's nothing there.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Okay, So it sounds like you're using a different calendar
in the Outlook program. So you might be using either
a local calendar, That's what I'm guessing. I think it's
just a local calendar that's not synked anywhere else. If
it is synced somewhere else, then you would be able
to see where that's coming from. And so if you
go into your calendar there it should say so I'm

(15:30):
guessing the calendars on your computer and that means this
is not a sinkable calendar because it is just stored
right on your computer. So what I would do and
if you lost access to that, it shouldn't you know
that data is on your computer. But if you want
to use something that is synced, you would want to
use the Cox Calendar, which is basically a web calendar,

(15:50):
and you should be able to see that on the
left hand column of your outlook. So, for instance, I
use a bunch of different calendars. I've got some through Google,
I've got some through my company, and some from other
third parties, and they're all synced through the same client.
The client's just looking at those online calendars. So you
need to figure out where this calendar is and where

(16:10):
it's stored. That's the main thing. And I would I
personally use a web version of a calendar so you
can access it from the internet as well. All right,
triple A rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four two four one zero one. Coming up, Ryan Green,
founder of the tech support company Go Go Quincy. He's
going to share five preemptive tech steps you can take

(16:32):
to prevent tech headaches tomorrow. This is a really interesting
company because they provide tech support for those I believe
fifty five and up.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
That's their target.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
So we'll talk to Ryan about why he started the
company and get some of his thoughts on that stuff.
My name is rich Dmiro. You are listening to rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro
here hanging out with you talking technology at triple a
Rich one oh one, that's eighty eight seven four to

(17:03):
two four one zero one. Also taking calls today about
what you're thankful for in technology this year, Maybe you're
not if you're calling this show ready to throw the
tech at the wall. Fred said, Hey, Rich, the voice
out of sync on channel eight. This is a real problem.
The woman was talking about digital over the air channel
eight point one. I guess it's called NewsNet. They're compressing

(17:25):
their bandwidth so much that they can't fit in audio
and video at the same time. This used to be
a big problem back in the nineties when analog satellite
TV was broadcasting Merry Christmas.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Fred, Okay, well, there you go. It is a problem
with the channel.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
And then Diane said, in response to what I was
talking about earlier with Wizard of Oz, she said, ABC
turned sound of music into four hours for a broadcast,
so three hours for Wizard of Oz is nothing. So
I guess I was right in my memory of it
lasting that long. I just that was like too epic
for me as a kid, like I don't know. All right,

(17:59):
let's bring on Ryan. Ryan's the CEO and founder of
a company called Go Go Quincy. They provide tech support
for primarily older adults. Ryan, thanks so much for joining
me today.

Speaker 8 (18:12):
Hey, Rich, happy holidays.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Thanks, Happy holidays.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
So give me the quick story about what Go Go
Quincy is all about and why you started this.

Speaker 7 (18:19):
So we're on a mission to be America as grandchild
grandchild on demand. I am an only child, I have
no cousins. In the middle of the pandemic, I was
in business school, and I also found that my family
relied on me to do everything from sinking emails and
helping them get back into social media or printer wasn't working,
and I had the time to help them. But I

(18:41):
recognized pretty quickly that the rest of the country didn't
have that same type of time that they could help
older loved ones, especially while balancing their jobs and children
of their own. And Quincy was born shortly after.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
Wow, okay, so this is what happens to me when
I go home for the holidays. It's like, okay, starting
with moms, let me do the software updates, what's going on?
Why isn't this working? Let me see what your browser's got,
you know, extensions. Then it goes to my dad and
he says, I can't log into this so you basically
provide that service.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
But for everyone.

Speaker 7 (19:13):
Yeah, family visits are turning into technology support sessions. We
see it across the fifty States, and we're trying to
relieve some of those headaches for the entire family, turning
family time, I guess, into family time.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
And what do you think is the is the kind
of the because the digital natives, you know, the kids
growing up, they kind of know this stuff, but there
is this generation right now in the middle that did
not grow up with it, and they they the thing
that I see is that they're scared to do anything
because they might ruin something.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Is that what you notice across the board?

Speaker 7 (19:44):
I think for those that are not digitally native, there's
a constant fear of both breaking things as well as
being scammed or a victim of fraud, or just backing
themselves into a corner where they're not really familiar with
what to do and neeting someone else to sort of
help them see above the trench, and we see that
across the board.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
The fraud stuff is really sad to me because it's
it's happening in such a prevalent way and if you're
not on your guard, you can really lose a lot quickly.
All right, let's talk about the five things you can
do asap to make sure your older adult loved ones
are in a good spot with tech.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Going into the New York A number one.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
You say to take take thirty minutes and go over
all the ways to recognize scam. So you just kind
of talk you with your parents about this.

Speaker 8 (20:32):
That's exactly it.

Speaker 7 (20:33):
I think all of us have received an email at
one point or another where the sender looks a little odd.
Maybe it's ninety percent correct, but that end URL or
domain has a dot ch or dot pH or something that's.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Just a little odd.

Speaker 7 (20:47):
Walk them through something like that, Show them spelling and
grammar issues and where to look for them. In the
footer of a message, in the subject line, sometimes you'll
see extra spaces or odd symbols. That's usually a dead
that there's something underlying that's malicious. And my best advice
is always just take a beat, take that second. We

(21:10):
fall victim. I fall victim to this all the time.
I received an email saying I've been charged? Did I
mean to submit that two hundred and fifty dollars charge
to renew my subscription to a service I didn't even
know I had, and I'm always one of the first
to click through. And the fact matter is that's the
best way for them to get you to take action

(21:31):
as creating that urgency that fear.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
And so just take a.

Speaker 7 (21:33):
Minute just think like did I actually want a service?
Does this feel like something I would want? And you
can usually back yourselves out of those situations, all.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Right, Next up, And this is really funny because my
mom always asks me to write or she writes down
kind of like the instructions for the tasks like if
she needs to like check her work email or something
like this, she'll write it all down, which I laugh at,
but you know it helps. But you say, to think
about the tech questions they have asked you and then
take a couple of minutes to write instructions for those tasks.

Speaker 7 (22:03):
Yeah, you don't necessarily need to recreate an encyclopedia for
your loved ones, but take a moment to look at
the five to six services or applications that they use
most frequently and just give them three to four steps
for each of them. And that's just a good way
to sometimes not find yourself to be the first line
of defense when something doesn't look right. Or there's just

(22:24):
an unfamiliar pattern that's happening with the application, or they
just don't remember how to print exactly or email specifically.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Okay, now, this one is always a source of contention,
the password situation. So I've tried to get my family
members to use a password manager. It's very tough. They
seem to like to write things down. But you say,
if you're the trusted source, help them out by compiling
their usernames and passwords in a secure location.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Explain yeah, totally.

Speaker 7 (22:55):
So we divide this into two problems. I am not
ignorant to the fact that we all have our two
or three favorite passwords. I'm not going to condone the behavior,
but I'm at least aware of it. Take a moment,
write down those passwords in a safe place.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Separately.

Speaker 7 (23:11):
Your user names are a little different, and that actually
tends to be a huge source of frustration. Take a moment.
Go go Quincy has free tools for this, but take
a moment. Organize your user names, so which service, which username,
and create that list. You could do it digitally, you
could also do it with pen and paper. But that
piece of organization actually alleviates so many of the nightmares

(23:34):
that so many of us space.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Okay, so this, okay, this is actually a really good one.
I love this. Come up with a safe word.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
We had a safe word as kids, you know, like
if someone would pick us up that you know, we
didn't expect you would say, hey, what's the safe word?
You know what, We didn't call it a safe word.
It was just a password or code word or something.
But this is a good idea. So have a safe
word to validate whether they're actually talking or texting or
emailing with a loved one.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
So explain how to do that. Yeah, this is usually
the one that I lead with.

Speaker 7 (24:04):
If you take anything from what I'm the five things
that I'm giving today, this is the one that matters.
Come up with a family safe word where if it's
used in a sentence, you know that this is the
real person. Don't use it all the time, but for
specifically emergencies and the like. This is your word that
you incorporate into the sentence and the placement. And why
we're doing that is because we are seeing increasingly sophisticated

(24:28):
levels of fraud and malicious activity. And it is I'm
not an alarmist, but you are seeing AI being able
to copy, so many of the specifics of a family, names, events,
you're able to sometimes spoof the sound of someone's voice
or an activity that they're part of. Just scammers being
even more knowledgeable about an individual that they're looking to defraud.

(24:51):
And so by coming up with your family safewoord incorporated,
knowing when to use it, sharing it with the family,
that is that layer of defense if all else fails
to know whether you are speaking with someone who is
in your family or if it's someone that is spooking
you in an attempt to ultimately defraud it.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
Oh, I forgot about the whole or I didn't really
think about that aspect. With the AI, they're going to
call as you so soon and that's a really scary thought.
And finally, the support system get this in place before
they need it. So obviously go go Quincy. Your service
is a part of that. But what else, So support is.

Speaker 7 (25:31):
Always in a moment of need. That is, when you
don't want to need to find your support mechanisms, you
put those in place. And this is not just with
tech problems and that is the hat that we wear,
but that is with any level of care support. Just
mechanisms in place that are going to be there for
you and your family in the time of need, when

(25:53):
you are anxious, when you are concerned, and in the
world of technology, when things just aren't looking or working properly.
Know who you're going to call. Know whether it's the
family member, whether it's us. Know who's in place, who's
going to help navigate you out of that situation. We
like to think about at Quincy, we're there to first
is protect and assist, and then in that we're also

(26:16):
unlocking the best of technology telehealth, tele medicine, e commerce,
helping our older users be able to navigate those confidently.
And all of that is only possible when you know
that you have a support mechanism in place, and that's
what we've designed our system around. But whether it's us
or someone else, always knowing who you're going to call

(26:36):
before they are needed is actually fifty sixty percent of
the battle.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
All Right, We're going to leave it there.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Ryan Green, CEO and founder of Go Go Quincygogo Quincy
dot com is the website.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker 7 (26:49):
Today, Thanks for having me rich Happy holidays.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
You too, and by the way, the pricing for this
is twenty dollars a month, unlimited tech support five dollars
a month, pay as you go, or if you want
to just try it out, you can do it for
free up to fourteen minutes of tech support a month.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
So go check them out.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
All right, coming up, phone lines, We've got a lot
of you there, so we'll do more calls at triple
eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. My name is
richdmiro and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. If you can't tell by

(27:29):
the way, I do love holiday music, especially the classics,
so that's what I've been having Adam play today. If
you're listening on the podcast, I know you don't get
to enjoy them, but if you're listening live, you do,
so I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Let's go to Richard in San Bernardino. Richard, you're on
with rich A nice name, Richard, Thank you, Richard.

Speaker 9 (27:54):
Yeah, I just wanted to mention I miss my Tonjent
generated a black book I used to have, you know,
the the one he used to just push a button
and it generate the tones going into the telephone.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Oh yeah, I know all.

Speaker 9 (28:13):
My numbers by heart, and now I don't. And you know,
the digital thing you know today is just really you know,
I'm old school, I'm sixty two, and kids today they
I don't even know if they know how to alphabetically

(28:33):
look up something in the dictionary. And what do you
do when all the power goes out? And if you
wanted to look up a word? You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
My kid actually asked for a dictionary this Christmas, so
I'm very I said to my kids, there's two things
I will always spend money on. That's books, and I
can't remember the other one right now. But there is
another thing. But here's the thing. The phone number situation
is a bad one because no one knows anyone's phone

(29:00):
number anymore. And if you're an emergency and your phone
is not there, what are you gonna do? Like my kids,
I said, hey, how are you gonna call me?

Speaker 2 (29:08):
How how are you.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Gonna know how to call me? If you don't even
know my phone number? Like, you've got to memorize this.
This is like basic human survival here.

Speaker 9 (29:17):
I used to know my whole block book, and I
don't hardly know any of it because of the speed dial,
you know, or it's just crazy, you know.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah, no, we look.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
And this is why I mentioned this stuff because we
take a lot for granted now, which you know, technology
has been amazing in helping us along.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
And I'm not one of those.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
People that says, you know, we're worse off because we
can't remember phone numbers. But I'm still saying, you need
to remember a couple phone numbers just in case you
had to call someone if there's an issue. Richard, thanks
for the call today. Let's go to uh, let's see
here Mike in Los Angeles. Mike, you're on with rich Hi.

Speaker 10 (29:53):
Rich I have a two issues are actually three issues
with my Samsung Galaxy H twenty one Ultra. And when
I'm driving in my truck, i put my phone in
the cradle and I'm listening to my music and then
all of a sudden, either it will go into that

(30:14):
voice activation where it'll speak in search, or it'll turn
on its camera, or it'll automatically dial nine to one one.
Is there an issue with the phone or is that
something that it's the cradle causing.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, here's what's happening. Mike.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
You're your cradle whatever, whatever you're using to hold this
phone is activating the side button on the Samsung. So
the lower button on the Samsung does a couple of things.
It can power the phone on and off, but it
can also dial nine one one if it's pressed a
number of times. I believe it's five times, and you
can go into your settings and look for a setting

(30:50):
called Emergency SOS and that will tell you you can
turn that on or off. I would I would probably
leave that on just for emergency situation. And also it
does voice assistant, so if you're pressing and holding, that's
probably what's activating the Bixby. So I would say you
got to get a different cradle for your car, and
one that is either custom for this phone. If this

(31:11):
one is just kind of a generic cradle, it's probably
not you know, it's not cradling the phone in the
right places. And believe me, I've tested probably three hundred
phones in my time at KTLA, and I have seen
the gamut of these situations. So not every phone fits
perfectly in every cradle, and it does cause problems when

(31:31):
that button is pressed down when it's not supposed to be.
So that is what I suspect is happening. And it's
easily remedied by just getting a cradle that or you know,
a car mount that is going to be more more
suitable for this phone.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
The one place that I love.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
For if you want like a really nice car mount
is called pro clip USA proclipusa dot com. These have
custom holders for pretty much every phone, so not just
the phone, but also the car. So if you have
a you know, whatever truck you've got, you can put
that model number into this website and then put your

(32:09):
phone model number in and it will give you a
custom both the part that connects to your car and
the part that actually holds your phone. So it's it's
quite good. It's a little bit more expensive, but it's
going to be really really nice. All right, good question, Mike,
Thanks for the call. Triple eight Rich one on one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Let me give you a quick summary on this whole

(32:31):
Apple watch ban because we are just before the holidays
here and I know people are buying Apple watches, they're
wondering should they get it.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
But here's what's happening.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
So back in October twenty twenty two, the International Trade
Commission ruled the patent that Apple infringed on a patent
from an Irvine company based it's named Massimo, all related
to their blood oxygen sensor on the Apple Watch. And
as a result of that, it kind of came to
a head and they've issued an import ban on the
Apple Watch Series nine in the Ultra two. Now, the

(33:02):
band goes into effect on December twenty sixth, but in
response to that, Apple has already halted sales of the
watch on its website and it's going to remove them
from stores after December twenty fourth.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Now, this is a big deal.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
This affects, like I said, the Series nine and the
Ultra two in the US, and it's also causing some
issues with the repairs on the Series six and later models.
So the only model that doesn't have this blood oxygen
censor of the newer ones is the se So if
you get that, you're fine. Apple is of course appealing
to this. The President could potentially, you know, say hey,

(33:38):
let's block this band. I don't think he's going to
do that, so right now, this is the is this
is where we stand. You can't buy these things from
Apple officially online. You can get them from third parties.
They say there might be some issues with replacements and
warranty and repairs. That's where it's kind of weird. So

(33:59):
after December twenty fifth, Apple can't exchange the watches purchased
before the band. You can get refunds on watches, but
you can't swap for a different color or size.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
So this is like a really big issue.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
And I actually had someone email me from one of
the third party retailers and they're telling me that Apple
won't even acknowledge this to their you know, to their resellers.
I mean, this is like a really odd issue to
happen right before the holiday season. So my advice is, look,
I think you're gonna be fine if you purchase the watch.

(34:32):
It's a feature that you know, if you're purchasing it
for that blood oxygen sensor feature, I'd probably hold off.
But if you still just want an Apple Watch, at
the very least, Apple will probably put out software that
disables that feature just to enable these watches to continue working,
but also satisfy the band. But this is kind of
a big deal something to kind of know about, and

(34:53):
odd timing, especially right before the holidays. All right, Triple
eight rich one.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
On one eight eight eight seven four to two one
one zero one.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
You can find me online. My social media handle is
at rich on Tech. I am active on x I
am on Instagram, and I am on Facebook as well.
If you want to check out my instagram at rich
on Tech. I got a story that's going viral as
we speak. It is the one about California allowing sewage

(35:21):
water to be turned into tap water. And I actually
tried the purified water, and uh I've lived to tell
about it. I'm still here. Eighty eight rich one O one.
You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,

(35:42):
talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
I sincerely thank you for tuning in and listening. I
really do appreciate it. Can you believe it's almost been
a full year of this show, Yes, a year wild

(36:06):
looking forward to doing it again next year too. Uh okay,
A couple things, just some housekeeping here. We've got doctor
Chris Pearson, cybersecurity expert with black Cloak dot Io, coming
up on the show. Chris is one of my favorite
people to interview. He is so knowledgeable and he will
really share amazing, actionable tips on how to keep your

(36:28):
digital life safe and protected.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
He is really really phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Bill Reducial, author of The Bleeding Edge My six Years
at the forefront of the Tech Revolution, is going to
join us a bit later on to talk about the
key takeaways from a career in technology. If you're looking
for last minute gifts, I've got everything that I like
linked up on my Amazon page. You can find it

(36:54):
at richontech dot tv slash shop. And if you're looking
for links to anything that is mentioned on this show,
you can go to rich on tech dot tv slash
wiki wiki and that is updated in real time. So,
for instance, if you want more information about one of
the guests, if you want the phone number once again,

(37:17):
if you want a link to something I mentioned, it
is all there rich on tech dot tv slash wiki
wiki kind of.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Like Wikipedia, right, but just for this show.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Well, this week, the electric scooter company Bird filed for bankruptcy.
They filed for Chapter eleven on December twentieth after a
difficult year. And this company I did a story with
them when they just started. By the way, this was
a very valuable company at one point worth two point
five billion dollars in twenty nineteen, but it has struggled

(37:54):
ever since it went public.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
And why Well, it's really tough.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
To make a company out of electrics that people literally
discard wherever they want. They're done with this thing and
they throw it out like it's a piece of trash.
So the amount of money that these companies have to
spend on upkeep and maintenance. Imagine if you return your
car to Hurtz and you just like kind of dangled
the car and just dropped it in front of Hurts
and it just went into a million pieces. That's what

(38:20):
people do with these scooters. I mean I see them
all over the place. They look so sad on the streets.
They're like dead scooters everywhere. But I remember doing a
story with this company when it first started, and it
was wild because it was in the height of kind
of their you know, they just started. They were worth
so much money, the money was flowing. I went to

(38:40):
their like headquarters, I think it was in Venice, and
I'm not kidding. They opened this door. Not only do
they the first thing you saw was like thousands of
snacks that you could just choose, like whatever you wanted
to eat. But then they opened this door and it
was like a boiler room. You know that movie where
it was just like thousands of people on phones on computers.
They're all young, and I kid you not. They were

(39:02):
all scooting around this giant room on scooters like it
was a huge arena. And the person I was interviewing,
they're like, all right, where do you want to do
this interview? I said right here in front of all
this madness and said, oh no, you can't show that.
At least I can talk about it. Six years later,
Carmen is in Hollywood. Carmen, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 11 (39:23):
Yes please. I used to get into WiFi with the
place where I work because they mean they put the password.
But how somebody moved my phone and I lost all
the places where I used to connect with the to

(39:44):
the Wi Fi. How can I recopulate the pass war
of the place?

Speaker 2 (39:49):
Well, how did that happen? What do you mean?

Speaker 1 (39:50):
How did you How did someone do something on your
phone that made you lose all your passwords?

Speaker 12 (39:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (39:54):
Because I got into the trouvel did I pay in?

Speaker 12 (39:58):
Then?

Speaker 13 (39:59):
I was my own?

Speaker 11 (40:00):
My like, my spell was very weird, and I took
to the T Mobile store and somebody start to see
what was going on and they play and play all.
I didn't know where they went to. But the point
is that I look all the connection, Yeah, to connect
to connections to the Wi Fi. I used to be

(40:22):
connected to my work, I used to be connected.

Speaker 6 (40:24):
To the house.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
What they did was they did a network settings reset.
So you brought it there. And you know, number one,
if someone's doing something to your phone, and this is
not a knock on you, Karmen, this is for someone
who's doing the tech support. You don't do stuff to
people's things before you tell them what you're doing and
what the ramifications of that is. So this person should

(40:46):
have said, hey, look, you're having some trouble with your phone.
We're going to do it's called the network settings reset.
When I do that, just FYI, you're going to have
to reconnect your phone to every Wi Fi network you've
ever connected to. Did you also have to read connected
to the Bluetooth in your car?

Speaker 11 (41:01):
No?

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Okay no?

Speaker 11 (41:03):
But the point is, my really point.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Is is, yeah, you want to get this back on,
I really want.

Speaker 11 (41:09):
My really point is, how can I stuperate to get
in into that place where I work because I know
I'm not going to be able to get again.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
Well, why can't you get it again?

Speaker 11 (41:19):
Because I know they'm not going to be possible for
me to get it. Well then, and my question is
is that BA warr in my phone some house on.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Where No, the password is not on your phone, so
that's uh. Now you can check to see if this
network is saved on your phone, but typically the you know,
and it's very recent actually that you're even able to
see the passwords that you're you know what. The way
that Wi Fi works on the phones, and this is
the iPhone and Android. For many years, once you logged in,

(41:49):
that password was stored securely on your phone in a
secret place. So unless you you know, had a very
strong knowledge of how to crack phones and that information,
it was not readily available. Now iPhone and Samsung have
you know, and Android have made it more readily available.
But it only applies to networks that you currently are

(42:11):
logged into or that you've logged into in the past
and are saved on your phone. So let me show
you where to look just to see. But you said,
this is Samsung phones, you'd go into settings, you'd go
into Wi Fi and then you would tap Wi Fi
once again, you'll see all the available networks. But you
want to go into the upper right hand corner. You'll

(42:32):
see a little three dots advanced settings. You see, they
don't make this easy. And then you want to see
managed networks, manage your Wi Fi networks, and there is
a list of all the networks that you've ever logged into.
And by the way, and I'm not you know, I'm
not trying to stir up trouble, but you know, if
I was suspecting that someone was, you know, doing something

(42:53):
on the sly, this would be a good place to
check to see if they're logging into hotels at random
or networks at random hotels.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
I'm just saying, you.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Know, these are a little clues. There's a lot of
clues on your phone about what you're doing. This is
one of them. This is a big one. So I
can see I've got a list of about fifty Wi
Fi networks that I've logged into all over the world
at different airports and things like that. You can tap
one of those networks and if it's a network like
I would look for your work network on there. And
for instance, I'm tapping one that I logged into at

(43:24):
Google last year, and it says password and then it's
a little icon next to it. You tap that icon,
it's gonna ask you for your pin You see how
tough this is, Like they don't really want you to
see this. And so once you put in your pin code,
which I'm putting in right now, it will show you
that password. So if you have that on your phone

(43:45):
your work Wi Fi network, you would be able to
see that code, but I don't think you have it now.
The other thing is you can sync these with the cloud.
So on Samsung specifically, like you mentioned, you can sync
those Wi Fi networks with the cloud and you would
be able to retrieve that there as well. So if
it was sync to the cloud, you might be able
to look in that cloud sink and see if it's

(44:06):
there on the iPhone.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Same thing.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
By the way, if you want to get a Wi
Fi network password on a network that you've already accessed,
you know that one that you've connected to, you can
go into your Wi Fi and it will say the
networks that you've got, and it'll show the ones that
you're already let's see, logged into. And it only shows them.
Though when you're there, see, this gets really really tricky.

(44:31):
So I can't just see a list of all the
networks that I've logged into. You have to be there
at the network. Okay, no, now I can.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Here we go.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
So you have to press edit in the upper right
hand corner and that will show you all of the
networks that you've logged into and then you can delete those.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
And you can also see the password.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
So if you want to see the password for a network,
you press that little I next to it.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
It says password and it looks like it's like xed out.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
You tap that and it will give you a interesting
It will give you that password, but you have to
again show your your face ID or your passcode. Yeah,
they don't really want you to do this very easily.
It's not an easy way. So my advice, Carmen is
you gotta if you're working at your work, why would
they not give you the password?

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Again, I mean, let's be honest here.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
So clearly you're either accessing a network you shouldn't be,
or there's something going on here that you're not telling me.
But if you know, if I went to my work
and said, hey, I lost my my access to this
Wi Fi network. I think they would just tell me
what the access is.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
They don't. It's not like a one time thing, and
that's it. Good question.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Eight a eight rich one on one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Regulators are
proposing sweeping new privacy safeguards for kids online. The FCC
proposed major changes to strengthen the Federal Children's Online Privacy
Protection Role, which is called Kappa Coppah. This is a

(45:56):
big thing there there. This is like one of the
biggest changes for consumer private for kids in over ten years.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Here's what they're asking.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Changes would require online services used by kids under thirteen
to have targeted advertised advertising turned off by default, and
they would also have to stop using kids personal data
to keep them engaged.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
So what does that mean?

Speaker 1 (46:17):
On TikTok if you scroll through and you stop at
a video that is about, you know, making slime, they
couldn't use that to show you thousands more videos of
making slime because we all know that this stuff on
the internet is unlimited. You could watch slime videos until
the day you die. That's how many there are online.
This also includes Nope, they would prohibit push notifications based

(46:41):
on personal data, so they couldn't say, hey, a new
slime video just popped up, we want to watch it.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
So this is a big deal. They've got a sixty
day public review before the commission votes.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
But yeah, I mean, look, we need this stuff because
kids are very susceptible to the it's it's a slot machine.
You have a slot machine in your pocket, and some
people are wired where they cannot handle that, and kids
with their brains not being fully formed, are very susceptible. Adults,
you're an adult, I mean, look, you know, if you

(47:13):
want to sit there and waste your whole life surfing Instagram,
that's your priority or progative. But for kids, you know,
we're trying to give them a little bit of a headstart.
And the companies right now do the same thing to
kids that they do to adults. You know, they try
to get them in and keep them on there as
long as possible. So if the government is gonna put
in these regulations, it's probably a good thing because it'll

(47:34):
at least give the kids a little bit of a chance.
Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two four to one zero one.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
My name is Richdimiro.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
You are listening to Rich on tech the website rich
on tech dot tv. Join me, find me on social media,
send me a tweet, send me an email.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
We'd love to hear from you. Ernie is in La Maratta, California. Ernie,
you're on with.

Speaker 12 (48:03):
Rich Yeah, Rich, thank you. I have a three year
old Modo g Android and it's been working. This fid
T mobile is my server. And all of a sudden,
in fact, while I was waiting for you, several commercials
just popped right up with no indication, and they're usually

(48:26):
the same ones, a variety of things. What can you
help me with that? In fact, I was waiting outside
my T mobile place, but it is so crowded, and
I was listening to your program. I said, well, I'm
going to covidch de.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Murol oh perfect. Well, I like how you think. I
think that number one. Today's the worst day in the
world to go into any store in America unless you
are you know, unless you really need a gift. But
it's just a mess because people are last minute shopping.
But Ernie, it sounds like you have some where on
your system, so it sounds like somehow an app got installed.

(49:05):
On your system that is not playing nice. So do
you know how to go into Google Play to uninstall apps?

Speaker 12 (49:13):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (49:13):
I do, okay, So what I want.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
You to do is go into Google Play and tap
your profile picture. In the upper right hand corner, it
says manage Apps and Devices, and then it says all apps,
and you can tap manage to see the installed apps.
I want you to go through that list of apps,
and I want you to uninstall any app that you
don't need or don't recognize, because one of these apps

(49:37):
is serving up ads on your system. And if you
installed some sort of VPN or something like that, or
some sort of game or free something, that's what's causing this.
The other thing you can do now, if this was
just happening inside your web browser, I would think it's
just a website in the background that's doing this. So

(49:57):
if you want to do if you want to just
check that, you probably want to clear your history on
your web browser. So I would open up your Chrome
web browser. It says history, and then up at the
top it says clear browsing data. So again, open up
your web browser. There's three dots in the upper right
hand corner. That's the menu I wish these apps would

(50:18):
just use the word menu or settings or a gear icon,
because the three dots is really tricky, like nobody knows
what that means. So if you're an app developer, please
like make it more clear. But you go in there
and then you type you tap history and it says
clear browsing data, and you can tap clear browsing data
and that will load up all your browsing history, cookies

(50:40):
and site data, images and files, all that stuff. And
what I would do is just clear the range and
whenever this started happening, If this just started happening, you know,
a couple of weeks ago, you can select the time range,
so maybe I would do something like the last four weeks,
and then you tap clear data and it's going to
clear out all kinds of stuff on your phone. Hopefully

(51:01):
it will clear out whatever is causing these pop ups.
But it sounds like it's an app if I had
to guess, so good question.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Go through the to go through.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
The apps and go through the uh the history and
clear it out and then restart your phone. That's the
final step and hopefully, Ernie, you will be working with
a much better phone. Thanks for the call today. And uh,
happy holidays. Coming up doctor Chris Pearson, cybersecurity expert with
black cloak dot Io. He's going to share tips on

(51:32):
how to keep your digital life safe and protected. I'm
not going to tell you to grab a pen and paper,
but honestly, the tips that he is about to share
are so good and so easy you're gonna want.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
To remember them.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
My name is rich d'miro. You are listening to rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
here hanging out with you talking technology. Joining me now
now is Chris Pearson, cybersecurity expert at black.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Cloak dot io.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
This is a company that specializes in protecting the digital
lives of high net worth individuals. But Chris has got
a lot of great cybersecurity tips we can all learn from.

Speaker 8 (52:15):
So our clients are going to be corporate executives who
we protect in their personal lives, or high profile individuals celebrities, sportstar, rockstar, politicians,
folks who have a soft spot once again in their
personal lives with them with their families, and will protect
them from privacy harms, from cybersecurity arms, protect their entire
home and home networks, and then be there for their concierge.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
So when you think about high net worth individuals like
you're talking about, they have a lot to lose. What
about the average person?

Speaker 8 (52:41):
Average person still has a lot to lose. Right, they
have their identity, they have their Social Security number. They
also have finances that they really do need to keep
a tight handle hold on. They don't have time to
go asking for ten twenty thousand, five thousand dollars back
from a bank. They don't have time to go chase
down things. When a debit card has been breached, it's
actually their money that is being used for a scam.

(53:02):
And also, more importantly, in terms of their digital lives,
once malware is on a computer, once they're not secure,
everything on that computer is gone. Their pictures, text tweets,
intimate moments, just stuff about their family that is nobody
else's business. It is gone and gone forever. I can
never ever be pulled back. It's out there that cybercriminals
have it, and they will use it however they can

(53:22):
to get an advantage.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
Okay, So first first line of defense, yeah, strong passwords,
two factor authentication.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
How do those protect us?

Speaker 8 (53:31):
I must have really, you know kind of Number one
is multi factor authentication. You'll hear it sometimes as dual
factor authentication, but multi factor authentication on every account that
is important, starting with email. Actually starts with email first,
then bank accounts and financial accounts, then on into social
media and on into healthcare accounts. So that's going to
be the order of priority. It can be something where

(53:54):
as so simple as you log in with the username
and password and then you get texted a number, you
input that digit number and you gain access because you've
proven that you have a device tied to the account. Well,
it does. It prevents a bad guy from logging in
if they know your use name and password.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
Something we often kind of forget about. I love doing
software updates, not so much for other people because it
changes things. So people are scared to do software updates.
But you recommend doing software updates.

Speaker 8 (54:20):
Yeah, Look, there are two different types of devices they're
gonna be out there and varying levels of difficulty. So
in your cell phone and your tablet, you know, usually
it's gonna be an iPhone or something, but on your
cell phone or tablet, pretty easy. Once a week. If
you can't do it once a week, once every two weeks,
so twenty four times a year or twenty five times
a year. Go ahead and click general Settings a software update.

(54:41):
If you don't update your device, win a zero day.
This is an event that happens when the software has
problems with it that any attacker can use. They can
use it remotely, and they can gain access to your device.
That is a zero date. It's unprotected. And so what
you want to do is you want to go ahead
and update your device at least once week, once every
two weeks, so that it's patched, that your device is

(55:03):
not vulnerable. Cell phone and tablet super easy to do.
It'll take you no more than five minutes, no more
than five minutes on computers, sometimes a little more difficult.
Apple releases them on a regular basis. Microsoft it's like
patch Tuesday, second Tuesday of every single month. Look, go
ahead and set it up to do an auto update,
but set it on a Saturday morning. Set it up,
press the button, press go seven am, go out to Starbucks,

(55:26):
come back, have your Danish, have your coffee, and it's
going to be done in your all set. If your
device is vulnerable, and software always has vulnerabilities, but if
it's vulnerable in terms of major vulnerability, then every other
step that you're doing to protect it isn't going to
work because the baseline foundation kind of like the cement,
the foundation of the building is unstable. It's wobbly, it's

(55:47):
not secure. So you want to make sure you do
that super important. And don't forget to update the apps, right,
don't forget to update the apps and that device either
go to your apps on app on an iPhone or
Apple device, go to your apps, do a little swipe
down app updates. Even if you haven't set for auto updates,
sometimes it gets stuck, you know, go ahead, you'll see
twenty seven updates, fifty three updates. Go ahead and update
those once again five minutes.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
Even with all of the software updates, really you are
still not protected from yourself, which is what these you know,
hackers and scam artists are really trying to target, which
is you and your good nature.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
So be careful what you click on. Tell me about
that aspect of things.

Speaker 8 (56:24):
Yeah, so think be careful what you click on is
massively expanded, right, be careful what you click on In
terms of an email that maybe from your friend actually
from their email address, but maybe they've been compromised. It
may be something from something that looks like a friend's
email address, or may just be something that's random. Be
careful about the links, be careful about the documents. Same
thing applies to text messages, right, same thing applies to

(56:44):
text messages a lot more times than the text message.
It's a link, and then it asks for you to
fill out information. It's like, oh, i'm your bank and
you lost your social security number. Fill this form out. Well, no,
your bank did not lose a social security number. Do
not fill out that form. But even more so, it
goes beyond that. Now, in terms of the trick that happens,
a lot of this is right tricking the human mind,
hardening the humans. So a lot of it will be
tech based scams, phone calls, places where people are trying

(57:07):
to elicit information out of you because there are more
technological controls on your phones, on your tablets, on your computers.
They're trying to just flip your brain to move over
from that rational thinking side into the more impulsive there's
a threat, there's something I have to do quickly side,
and that usually spells disaster.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
What about public Wi Fi? We've always heard about this.
It's dangerous, don't use it. Use a VPN. What are
your recommendations when it comes to surfing on whether it's cellular,
home Wi fi.

Speaker 8 (57:36):
Public Wi Fi. Yeah, so, first of all, home Wi
Fi is going to be really really safe if you've
set it up correctly, and all rest definitely going to
be safe, especially if you set up correctly as passwords
all rest when you're out and about. Look, the fact
of the matter is with five G you can get
amazing through put on your device. You can watch a
YouTube video, you can watch it, you can even watch
a movie these days. I mean, you can do almost

(57:57):
everything you need to. If you are fine and everything
is working, okay, stay on your TELCOT, stay on the
cellular signal from Verizon, T Mobile, Sprint, AT and T
stay on that. That's going to be the safest network
to be on. If you're not getting through but you
need and you're at the Starbucks, so you're at the
local place that's got the free Wi Fi, then go
ahead if you want to write and switch over to

(58:17):
that Wi Fi. Hopefully it's one that has a passport
on it. Most of the public ones don't. They don't
even have like a simple password there. But be very
careful once you do that do not do anything that
is sensitive. Don't log into your bank, don't check your
credit carunt bounce, don't send a friend you know money,
don't go check your crypto accounts. Don't do anything because
now you're on a foreign network. You're on a network

(58:39):
that you don't know the security of. Every single person
is on that can see what everyone else is doing.
I want to say it twice. If you're on a
public network, everyone else that is on that network can
see the ones in zero is the network traffic of
what everyone else is doing, so they can see you
log in, they can see what you're doing and transitting.
So don't do that. If you absolutely have to do
something that is going to be riskier, check your account

(59:00):
type of thing. Then you go ahead and pop on
the VPN eight virtual private network so that your traffic
is now encrypted between your device and the network. That's
going to be critically important. But you know what, if
you can just wait an hour, go home and do
it too much better.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Data backups are always a contentious subject because people either
think they're backed up, or they're not really sure, or
they don't want to pay, or they don't want to
take the time to do it. But backing up your
data is very important for a couple of reasons, and
one of them is if you do have a breach,
you can go back to that data. But why do
you think data.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Backups are so important?

Speaker 8 (59:37):
Well, I mean, you're really few diferent reasons. Number one,
the spite of ransomware that is actually going around now
is just so huge, so prevalent. The fact of the
matter is that your data can be stolen, your data
can be encrypted, and you can lose access to your data.
I mean there's two parts of this. One. You can
lose access to your data to somebody else, can have
access to your data now in forever and extore or
ransom you for it, or just share with other people. Again,

(01:00:00):
nobody's business. But if you want those pictures, if you
want the pictures of your kids when they're one, three, five,
eight years old, all those videos, all those movies, you
want to make sure that you have good data hygiene
practices couldn't be easier these days. Cell phone and tablet,
it's pretty simple. Get a cloud account through your carrier,
get a cloud acclount through iCloud, through Apple, and do

(01:00:20):
the manual backups. You can sit on an automatic backup.
Every single night, when you plug it in and it's recharging,
it will automatically backup. So now you are set aside
in terms of your pictures and videos and other key
documents and all the rest there in terms of your
computer using cloud accounts, using a Google account, using a
Microsoft account, using those cloud accounts, it's going to be
great because the documents actually don't reside on your system.

(01:00:43):
If you have some type of ransomware attack on that system,
you're able to actually log in from any other computer
anywhere else and grab those documents back on down. So
that's going to be one other form backup. And then finally,
the tried and true method is get that external removable
hard drive. You pay one hundred dollars for it, really
plug it into the computer. Maybe it's once a month,
maybe it's once every three months. Go ahead and plug

(01:01:05):
it in, set it up, set it automatically downloads, and
it takes maybe an hour, sometimes two hours, It depends
on how much stuff you have. More stuff you have,
the more you're gonna want to do this, then take
that and put it into your safe. Put it in
the safety deposit box. That way you know that you're
rest asshired of having access to all those documents. If
something goes bad and it might not be ransware, might
just be a hardware glitch and you lose everything.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
That is some really great information.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Thanks again to Chris Pearson, cybersecurity expert at black cloak
dot io. My name is rich Dedmuro. I'll have more
rich on tech right after this. Let's go to Carrie
in a Torrance. Carrie, you're on with.

Speaker 13 (01:01:47):
Rich Thanks for taking my call. That's a question. I
have my children as emergency contacts, and I have a
do not disturb and my son was trying to call
me when his wife was going into labor, and I
never heard any of the three calls or the text.
I just happened to get up and look at my phone.

(01:02:08):
So I was wanting to know how I can fix it,
so in the future I'll get my emergency context able
to come through.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Oh my gosh, were you were you able to make
it out there or what?

Speaker 13 (01:02:20):
Yeah? I did was just leading as I got there
because I needed to care for their dogs.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Oh my gosh. Okay, well, I we don't want that.
I mean, I don't think this is going to happen
again soon. I mean at least another you know, maybe
in eighteen months, I mean, or I guess a year,
you know, if they have another kid. But I don't,
you know, I think it's good to know anyway. You know,
this is a this is a thing that happens because
these phones go on that do not disturb, they go
on the silent mode whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
So a couple of ways to do this.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
First off, do you put your phone into different focuses?
They call them focuses now like do not disturb.

Speaker 13 (01:02:58):
And automatically?

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Is it right? Yep?

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
So Apple has been pushing this more so. Yes, it
does usually turns on by default when you're driving or
you know, at certain times for sleep and things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
So, uh, the way there's two ways to do this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
There is, uh, you know, if you want to take
a lot of time to figure these things out, you
can go into the different focus settings and so on
your phone, you would go into settings and then focus
and for instance, let's just say do not disturb. Okay,
that's something that a lot of people turn on. There
is a little section in there that says people, and
so it would you can add the people that you

(01:03:37):
want to be able to call. You when you're on
that focus, and so for phone calls, it can say
favorites or you can say you know everybody, everybody would
be dumb because you know, then what's the point of
the focus. But you can do allowed people only favorites,
which is what I have, and then contacts only. And

(01:03:58):
then there's also this other thing that I think would
have really helped in your circumstance. There is a toggle
that says allow repeated calls, and that's really important because
that means anyone can call you while you're in this focus,
and if they call you a second time within three minutes,
that call will come through the second time. So that

(01:04:19):
means like, hey, someone's really trying to get a hold
of you in an emergency situation. So it could be
from any phone number, and that would break through I
call it breaking through that silence mode.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
So that's the number. That's the first way to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
The second way to do it is a little bit
better because it will break through any sort of modes
that you have on your phone, whether it's driving, whether
it's do not disturb, and you don't have to mess
with as many features. So in this way, you would
open up your Contacts app on your iPhone. You would
search for the contact that you're you know, wanting to
allow through, and then you would tap edit and then

(01:04:56):
and this is so complicated. This just it's like so
many steps to do this. And then you scroll down
to where it says ring tone and once you tap
in there it says emergency bypass and so you can
toggle that on for one of your contacts and it
will allow sounds and vibrations from this person even when

(01:05:16):
the ring switch is set to silent or when a
focus is on. So basically that is like the end
all that is that person is, you know, is really
going to get through no matter what setting your phone
is on. So those are the two ways to do
it on the iPhone, and one of those will work
for the situation you were mentioning, so if you had

(01:05:38):
the repeat call on or the emergency bypass person on.
So those are the two ways to do it. And
by the way, you can find links to what I
mentioned on the wiki, So go to rich on tech
dot tv slash wiki and I put this stuff in
there so you can see. Now on the Android phones,
it's very similar to they call it modes and routine.

(01:06:00):
So you can go into a mode and routine and
you can put in the people that you want for
that to dial through to get through when you are
doing something. So it's very similar on the on the
Android phone, but it's just a little bit, you know,
they call it something different. But on both of these phones,

(01:06:20):
on the iPhone and Android, you can easily I mean
I say easily easily for me, but you can set
it so that someone can sort of quote unquote break
through when there is an emergency, even when your phone
is on that great call. Thanks so much for the
call today. Happy holidays. Okay, couple of things I wanted

(01:06:41):
to mention.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
Let's see here.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
So on Android, you know, you know air drop on
the iPhone, right, it's the way that you can send
like a big file or video from your phone to
someone else's phone. Around the holidays, a lot of times
people say, hey, air drop me that picture you just took,
and so you can do that. But on Android they
call it nearby share. Not as many people know about it.
It works from Android to Android, but it is actually

(01:07:06):
going to get a new name. It's going to be
called quick Share, which is what they call it on
Samsung devices. So be on the lookout if you're trying
to find that feature over the next few weeks. It's
no changes to the way it works, but it's just
a name change. So Android's nearby Share is getting rebranded
to quick Share. Now you might be saying, rich, I

(01:07:26):
need something that goes from my phone to someone else's phone,
like I need Android to iPhone. And there are many
ways to share photos and videos from the Android to
the iPhone besides texting, which is not going to work
very well, especially at videos. But this comes from Jared Newman,
who writes a great newsletter called Advisorator. In his latest newsletter,
he recommends what's called pair Drop Pair droop. So all

(01:07:52):
you have to do on your phone is go to
this website if you're on the same Wi Fi network
as the other phone, pair drop dot net, and you
can literally drag and drop any file onto your screen
and it will show up on the other person's screen
as long as you are both on the same Wi
Fi network. And this will work across you know, Android, iPhone, maccomputer,

(01:08:16):
Windows computer, any two devices that you can go to
the website pair drop dot net. As long as you're
on the same Wi Fi network, you will be able
to share a photo, a video, a file, whatever you
want with someone else.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
Again.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
It is pair drop dot net, linked up on the
website rich on tech dot tv, slash wiki eight eight
eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
two four one zero one. My name is Richdmiro. You
are doing something smart today. You are listening to rich
on tech and oh we still have more time. Oh
we got a lot more time. Sorry, oh ten seconds.

(01:08:55):
That's not that much time. I thought I got a
signal that we had ten narrat is. Oh my gosh,
that's what I was waiting for. You know, whether it's
the fifty first show or the first show, there are
still things I'm getting used to here on the radio.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
Uh rhyming is not one of them. Rhyming timing. My
name is rich Demiro.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Thanks so much for listening eighty to eight rich one
on one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. More show after this. Welcome to another
hour of rich on Tech. My name is rich Demiro.
Thanks for joining me. We are talking technology at Triple
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four

(01:09:34):
to two four one zero one. Are you ready? Are
you ready for it? As Taylor Swift would say, I
just I knew that would make producer Adam look up
from the board since I said that, Oh, I don't know,
is anyone ever truly ready for the holidays?

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
It's like you want to.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
I mean, some people I'm sure want to, you know,
grab on and hold it for as long as possible,
like hold on to this feeling, and other people just
want it to go by quickly. I like to really
relish in it. Anyway. You can find me on social media.
I am at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, Facebook,
x And you can also download this show as a podcast.

(01:10:17):
Just go to your favorite audio app search rich on
Tech and you can subscribe to the show so you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Never miss a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
And if you like what you hear right here, be
sure to watch my TV segments. I cover a variety
of tech topics. You can just go to rich on
tech dot tv to watch those I just posted. Let's
see if it's on there on the main page. If
you go to rich on tech dot tv. We just
did a year ender, and not like a year in tech,

(01:10:46):
I mean it was like the year in my tech,
like the stuff that I covered, And so yeah, if
you go to the homepage. Rich on tech dot TV,
You've got a look back at twenty twenty three, so
you can watch that video and see all the fun
things I did this year.

Speaker 2 (01:10:59):
All right, let's go to Gene. Gene is in San Francisco. Jane,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 14 (01:11:06):
Hey, Rich, I am so unhappy with the update that
Serious ExM put out. It has totally ruined all of
my presets and everything I had going. Is there any
way I can go back to the previous app?

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
Oh, they redesigned everything. I've read something about this on
Serious XM on your phone?

Speaker 14 (01:11:32):
Right, Yeah, yeah, horrible, horrible?

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
What's so bad about it?

Speaker 14 (01:11:39):
Everything? They they totally changed. I knew, I knew where
all my stuff was before, and now everything is totally different.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Yeah I had this.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Okay, here it is Serious XM on Veil's new logo
and rebuilt streaming app. The app is designed to provide
a more personalized and easy to use, lean back streaming experience.
But you say it's no good. I actually just opened
up the app on my phone, and to me, someone
who doesn't use this very often, you know, it just

(01:12:16):
looks like every other music app at this point. So
but you you're saying this is everything's changed, Tom.

Speaker 14 (01:12:23):
I had you know, I love the Beatles, I had
all these shows, you know, dude, it's it's totally missed up.
Everything did ruin my experience. Well, how can I how
can I get back to my previous app?

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
Well, Gene, the short answer is you can't. And so
the way the iPhone works is that you can't. Once
you update anything on the iPhone, whether it is the
system software or an app, it is extremely hard to
go back and there's no actual official way to go
back on Maybe for the system software, they're well, I

(01:13:07):
don't even think for that there is like Apple does
not put this stuff on a website where you can
go and say, oh, let me download you know, the
old version of the software and reinstall it on my phone.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
Like, they don't really do that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:17):
So if it's on the iPhone, there is really not
a way to do that. Now, on Android there is
based on what's called sideloading. But again these are things
that the average person should not probably shouldn't be doing,
and so but on Android it is much easier.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
You would just go.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
Into the a website like APK mirror dot com. You
would type in SERIOUSXM, and you would find all the
old versions of the app, and I can see it
right now. I could see when they change the app
on November first, it looks like the old app, and
then on December fifteenth, boom, there's a new logo and

(01:13:57):
the new app. But with Android, you're able to download
that version of the app because these websites archive them,
and then you'd be able to what's called sideload that
on your phone, which is basically just installing the app
on your phone. But since you're using an iPhone Gene,
the short answer is no, there is no easy way
to do that on the iPhone. Is there a way, probably,

(01:14:18):
but it is not official and it would take a
lot of technical know how, and also you would have
to gel break your phone to be able to install
an app outside the App store. So I would not
recommend any of that stuff just to get your serious XM.
So this is what we talked about with Chris Pearson.
People don't like to make changes. They don't like to
do software updates because it changes things and now you've

(01:14:40):
got everything the way you wanted it and it's all
thrown up in the air and messed up. So sorry,
about that Gene. I apologize that they did that, but
you know, they think it's better, and it probably, if
I had to guess, it's probably putting them in a
better place to compete with not just streaming the channels,

(01:15:01):
but also like all the content that is available through them,
And so it's probably just a matter of, you know,
they want to sell more subscriptions, and so people want
to feel like they're getting their money's worth, you know,
speaking of change, you know, I've got the Peloton app
that I subscribe to, and typically it was twelve ninety
nine a month, and they just raise the price to

(01:15:23):
twenty four dollars a month. And the way they're making
you upgrade to twenty four dollars a month is they
are making it so that you can only take three
of the classes that ninety nine percent of people want.
You only get three of those a month now for
the twelve dollars a month. So unless you want more
than three classes, you have to pay twenty four. And
the classes that they're giving you, the limiting ones, are

(01:15:45):
the two most popular types of classes they offer, which
is running and cycling. And so it's just one of
these things where these companies they have these big teams
of marketing people that come up with ways of forcing
us to do.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
Things we don't want to do.

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
Why would I want to pay twenty four dollars for
the same thing I got for twelve dollars For the
past three years, no one wants to pay more for
the same thing, but they make it so that they
change the features you get for that twelve dollars, so
that now you have to pay twenty four. So I
took you know, between my wife and I, we took
three classes this week. And so I also have a

(01:16:19):
subscription to Apple Fitness, so we've been using that in
the meantime because I'm also paying for that. And by
the way, I paid thirty eight dollars for an Apple bundle,
which includes which includes Apple Fitness, it includes Apple Arcade,
it includes two terabytes of storage, it includes Apple Music.

(01:16:42):
Let's see what else, Apple News, Apple TV Plus. So
I'm getting all of that for thirty eight dollars, including
fitness classes. But now I have to pay twenty four
dollars just to get Peloton classes. And you know, here's
the thing. Are people just going to cancel Peloton in droves?
Probably not. They did the rece and they figured, you know,
people think, oh, twenty four bucks is way cheaper than

(01:17:03):
the gym membership, and so they'll still do that anyway. Gean,
sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that's yeah,
all right. Exfinity major data breach impacting customer information. This
happened October sixteenth through nineteenth through third party software they
were using that Exfinity uses and many other companies.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
This breach.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
Basically they were able to get access to Exfinity's internal systems.
What did they get in those internal systems information including
user names, hashed passwords, which means they weren't properly protected
by Infinity.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
So thank you for doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:42):
Comcast names, contact information, partial social security numbers, dates of birth,
security questions and answers for some customers. Yeah, that's really bad.
This is a lot of stuff. So Exfinity for their accounts,
they made people reset their passwords. So the next time
you log into your Inxfinity account and may say, hey,
you got to change your password because of this breach,

(01:18:05):
or they may just say you have to change it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:18:08):
If you're reusing your passwords on other websites, that's where
This becomes a problem because now the same password that
they had for this one could be potentially used on
other websites, and if you're doing that, they could potentially
get into those websites. Now, these passwords were hashed, which
means they were encrypted, which means it's going to be
tough for them to see them. Doesn't mean it's impossible,

(01:18:30):
But look at the other information here, names, contact information,
social security numbers, dates of birth, security questions and answers.
Security questions and answers is particularly troubling because that means
that they know the answers to your security questions, which
means they could potentially reset your other accounts. So what

(01:18:51):
do you do in this case? There's not much you
can do. You have to keep an eye on your
credit report, make sure nobody is opening up new accounts
in your name, but most importantly, practice good password hygiene,
unique passwords for every website. And when you come up
with those security questions and answers. Quite honestly, I don't
use real answers anymore. I make up answers, and so

(01:19:14):
you can make up an answer and make that a
one time answer, but you have to write that answer
down because if it says mother's made name, and you're
making up a random name. You're not gonna remember that
if you don't write it down, and you need to
know that if you ever do need to reset that.
So Inxfinity has some information on their website. You can
look at that if you want more. All right, more
rich on Tech coming up eight eight eight rich one

(01:19:35):
oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero on.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
We still have time for calls here.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
Coming up, I'm gonna tell you about this Wall Street
Journal article. They interviewed this guy that basically broke into
many people's iPhones and took thousands of dollars from them.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
He will explain how he does that. I'll tell you
what he did. Coming up next.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
I promised I would talk to you about this this
Wall Street Journal article that really my friend Joanna Stern
did and just really really captivating. I mean, I don't
think I've watched a nine ten minute YouTube video all
the way through like with this much intensity in a
long time. Like it's just so well done. So if

(01:20:21):
you go on YouTube, just search iPhone thief Wall Street Journal,
and it's incredible. Got to watch it. But here's basically
the summary.

Speaker 2 (01:20:31):
Of it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
So they interviewed this guy that his name is Aaron Johnson,
who stole hundreds of iPhones and basically would then drain
thousands of dollars from the people who own these phones
their financial accounts. And he did it by getting their
pass codes at bars and then quickly changing their Apple
ID password before they could lock the device. And he

(01:20:53):
was really fast. I mean he said he could do
this like in his sleep, and he would just go
to bars target people and basically they most of the
time they were drunk, and he would just say, you know,
different things to get them to unlock their phone with
the passcode, or he even asked them sometimes and as
soon as he got the passcode, he went right to work,

(01:21:14):
I mean really really fast. This guy navigated around this
phone like you couldn't believe. He changed the apple ID password,
he turned off Find my iPhone, he enrolled his own
face in face ID, and then he accessed the stored
passwords on the phone to take over all their other accounts.
So you know, when it says, hey, do you want
us to save this password, he would access that list

(01:21:36):
of passwords and then take over all kinds of other accounts.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
So now here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
Because of this report, because of the Wall Street Journal's reporting,
Apple is actually going to add a new feature called
Stolen Device Protection on the next version of iOS seventeen
point three, and this is going to add further security.
I talked about this last week. Basically, if someone tries
to change your information and they're not in trusted location,

(01:22:01):
they're going to have to wait in at least an hour.
And in the ideas that that would give you enough
time to set this phone as stolen and erase it remotely.
But again there's you know, there's still ways that people
can do stuff even with this feature. And the other
thing he mentioned that he would actually go out and

(01:22:21):
use Apple Pay on the iPhone and buy more stuff
from Apple stores or even any store that took Apple Pay,
and then he would.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
Sell that stuff. So now, so get this straight.

Speaker 1 (01:22:33):
He would steal the phone, steal all the money that
he could from that phone. Then he would go and
take that phone and use Apple Pay to buy more
phones or other Apple products, and then sell that. I mean,
this guy, and he just says it all with such
a calmness, and he actually has a sense of humor.
It's really wild, and I love the fact that he
shared his story so that we can learn from this.

(01:22:54):
So what can you do to protect yourself? Number one,
when that stolen device protection comes out would probably enable it.
You should add passcodes to any of your money apps.
So when your money apps say, hey, do you want
to add a secondary code, yeah, you probably want to
do that. Delete any sensitive information you have from your
notes or photos. So he would look through the notes

(01:23:16):
and people would have their social Security number in there.
They'd have all kinds of like answers to questions and
things like that all in their notes app. So don't
store that stuff in there or have another password. Also
use complex passcodes, so minimum six digits. The ideal is
a combination of digits and letters. And also watch your

(01:23:37):
surroundings and don't share your passcode. These people, a lot
of them, would just share their passcode with this guy
because they trusted him. And he would be like, hey,
I'm trying to put this my number into your phone
or whatever that he did. They would just be like, oh, here,
type in my passcode. I mean, this is just wild.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
Again. Wall Street Journal go on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:23:53):
Search iPhone thief explains how he breaks into your phone.
Great reporting by Johannist emailed her to ask if she
would come on the show to talk about this, and
she actually said yes, but just didn't work out with
the holidays. You know, there's so much going on. She's
got a family. I've got a family, We've got the show.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
I love the live interviews on the show, and so
it's it's tough sometimes when you can't do that. All right,
If you want to find more information online about the
show links.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
To things I mentioned, you can go to my website.
Rich on tech dot TV.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
I think I can get in one more thing before
we go to our next interview. Here, Mercedes Benz, this
is kind of cool. They're going to start using turquoise
as they're exterior lights to let you know that a
car is driving by itself. So they became the first
automaker in the US to get a permit for turquoise
exterior lights on their cars to indicate that the car

(01:24:48):
is autonomous driving. The lights are going to be used
on test vehicles in California and a twenty twenty six
model year production vehicle in Nevada or Nevada. I don't think
say Nava, Da think so Nevada. The turquoise lights will
illuminate when drive Pilot, which is Mercedes is Level three
automatic driving system is engaged, and this can be used

(01:25:11):
for hands free driving in limited situations like heavy highway
traffic under forty miles an hour. So you know how
you know you can do the hands free driving, but
most of the cars don't have that. It's like Autumn's anyway,
they have it. It's like really high leveled hands free driving.

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):
So anyway, if.

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
You see turquoise on a car, that might be the
new sign that the car is driving itself.

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four to one zero one.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
Coming up, Takeaways from a Career in Technology. Welcome back
to rich On Tech, rich DeMuro hanging out with you
talking technology. We have one more segment after this, and uh,
if you want to call in and let me know
the tech thing you are thankful for in twenty twenty three,

(01:26:02):
I'll let you through.

Speaker 2 (01:26:03):
Eighty eight rich.

Speaker 1 (01:26:04):
One oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. We'll take those rapid fire in
the last segment if you call and tell me what
tech you're thankful for. Okay, we've got a great guest
on the line, Bill Raduschal is author of The Bleeding Edge,
My six Decades at the Forefront of the Tech Revolution.

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):
Bill, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 (01:26:31):
Thank you, happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:26:32):
So, uh, tell me about your career. You spent fifty
years in the tech industry. I'm sure you got some
stories to tell.

Speaker 6 (01:26:42):
Oh yeah, lots of stories, lots of the luminaries along
the way that made it. I mean tech is always
a combination of technology and people, and you need people
who are able to look at something and understand what
they can do with it and make it happen. And
I mean that without those people, the tech wouldn't have

(01:27:04):
done anything. And well, you know, the one everyone always
goes to is Steep Jobs. But you know, Steve case
fits there, Larry Allison, the oracle. I mean, they look
at technology and they figured out, wait a minute, we
can do something that people care about, and oftentimes people
thought they were crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:27:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
I mean, do all these people share kind of like
Jeff Bezos, like the you know, Elon Musk. They all
seem to have eccentricities, right that are a little bit
different than the rest of us.

Speaker 6 (01:27:38):
Definitely. I mean the key thing is that they were
willing to act on knowledge and not evidence. And I
spent a lot of time at Xerox, and Xerox was
an incredibly professionally run company, but they wanted evidence for everything.

Speaker 14 (01:27:56):
Well, by the time you could prove.

Speaker 6 (01:27:58):
That something was right, it was too late. You know.
The story in AOL is that when Steve k saw
Windows ninety five in nineteen ninety five, he looked at
it and said, everyone's going to want to get online
at Christmas.

Speaker 2 (01:28:16):
Wow, there's no proof of that.

Speaker 6 (01:28:18):
There was no data. But he went out and bought
up all the inbound telephone lines for people to call
in from their computers. He went out and bought up
all the spare ones that existed in the United States.
He maybe got eighty eighty five percent of them by Christmas,
And so whenever you did want to get online, the
only place the could get online was on AOL because

(01:28:40):
he had already bought them. But if he's been wrong,
the company would have gone under it. You know. It's
it's that willingness to act on knowledge that lets these
people same things it's certainly prove elon, you know, and
he looks at it and go, this is possible, and
people will pay for it, and we'll buy it, and
you know it's gone off and done it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
So you were a high level executive at places like
Sun Microsystems, AOL, Xerox.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
Was it fun? Did you enjoy your time at these places?

Speaker 6 (01:29:15):
Oh? Yeah, I mean it was. It was certainly. I
mean during this are in particular, it was certainly demanding.
But you know, every day you woke up and you
thought you were doing something that you know, the quote
Steve Jobs was going to put a ding in the universe.
I mean you were. You know, we're working on things
that mattered and changed. And you know, when you have

(01:29:37):
constant change like that, work is fun. I mean, you know,
if you're doing the same thing every day, it's not
as much fun. But you know, I don't think I ever.
You know, I had I think thirteen jobs in eleven years.
Oh wow, and they were I mean just because responsibilities
changed and things changed. I mean it's very but it's

(01:29:58):
still that way. I mean you look at the cutting
edge startups and now you look at AI. I mean,
if you think about it, AI means that every application
that we use day to day is going to get
rewritten in the next three to five years. Because it
will all be rewritten to use AI, and I mean
so that will let there be winners and losers. That

(01:30:21):
means there will be new things the consumers are going
to be able to do. And so you know, you've
got really incredibly challenging but probably also fun period ahead
of us. I mean what really matters in tech is
what technologists like to call abstraction layers, which is you

(01:30:42):
put it in a new layer technology which hides all
the complexity underneath it and lets a whole new group
of people write applications, solve problems and do things. And
tech is just to hear a series of abstraction layers,
and AI is the latest one. But like Windows or
just like smartphones, it's going to be profound. I mean everything,

(01:31:07):
everything will traink that is so interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):
So it's so if you think about it that way,
abstraction layer. So you're just making it easier for new
people to come on board and do things in a
way that these tools allow you to.

Speaker 2 (01:31:22):
But it's simpler.

Speaker 1 (01:31:23):
And so like when when it came to like AOL,
it made it really easy to go online. If you
look at the iPhone, you know, making an app, you know,
the programming languages that Apple has come out with that
anyone can become a developer. And like you said, with AI,
it's the same thing, it's the access to the information,
but now you can do it in such a natural
way and ask these systems things and ask follow up

(01:31:46):
questions too.

Speaker 6 (01:31:47):
Right, and use all of the power of the technology
that is underneath it. So you get access to an
incredible array about knowledge and functionality and in a way
that that you know, a lot more people can use.
I mean, that's what you know faction layer. I mean,
you know, smartphones were around starting in the early nineteen nineties,

(01:32:09):
but they never went anywhere because to write an application,
every application actually had to be aware of a phone call,
because the phones weren't powerful enough so that if a
phone call came in you had to interrupt the application.
And the genius of iPhone and of Android was the
recognition that the hardware had gotten fast enough that voice

(01:32:32):
could just be a regular application and the rest of
the applications didn't have to know anything at all about
voice because the operating system could handle it. And that's
what unlocked everything that you've seen in the smartphone era
is that realization that you didn't have to be voice
aware in the applications, which meant that very people could
write an application now iPhone. I mean, you know, high

(01:32:56):
school kids write applications, and that wouldn't have been possible.
So it's all this continuous improvement in technology that enables
that and enables ever more powerful abstraction layers. Every more
powerful distraction layers, let a whole new group of people
both write apps and access functionality, and it's going to

(01:33:16):
make We're not done. I mean, I think there was
a project at Stanford years ago run by Monica Lamb,
and you know, one of their projections was that we
would all have a digital butler, that all of us
are going to have a butler someplace and there'll be
a digital rich and if I want to talk to
you about something, or schedule something or ask questions, and

(01:33:39):
I asked the butler, and the butler will know I'm
a friend, I'm a stranger. You know what you do,
and you know we'll probably all have butlers, and you know,
it's going to make our lives a lot easier. But
I mean that's not I mean that that's well within
the state of the art today.

Speaker 1 (01:33:58):
Well, I mean, I mean I used chatch ebt to
come up with my own rich GPT, and I basically
fed it all my previous radio shows and then asked
it questions about what I said, and it got a
lot of it right. I mean, it's pretty wild.

Speaker 6 (01:34:12):
What do you make if you ask it to do
a psychoanalysis of you?

Speaker 2 (01:34:16):
I actually I did. Actually I fed in. I took
this funny you say that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:20):
I fed in all the text history between me and
my wife on a telegram. I downloaded it and I
fed it into one of the AI and I said, hey,
analyze our relationship, and it actually did, and it was wild.
It came up with some nuances that you know, we
are separating now.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 6 (01:34:42):
There is a wonderful book from nineteen seventy five by
a professor at m MY team named Arnold Weizenbaum, and
he wrote a program called Eliza and Eliza tried to
mimic a therapist and if it didn't know what else
to say, it tiped back, oh oh, question mark. And

(01:35:04):
there were articles written back then, I mean nearly fifty
years ago about the end of psychoanalysis and things. Because
this thing, and this is five hundred lines of portrait
and not a very complicated program, and the secretary had
put it into the machine and she was working one
day at the terminal and he went over to ask
her a question and he said, please, professor, get away,

(01:35:27):
this is personal. I'm talking to Eliza. And he's going like,
you know that it's five hundred lines of portrait and
you typed it in. And he wrote a book called
Computer Power and Human Reason, which is still one of
the definitive books on the subject. But I mean it's you.

Speaker 1 (01:35:43):
Know, that's wild, and that was that was, you know,
many years ago. Imagine now what relationships people are going
to have with these ais.

Speaker 2 (01:35:51):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (01:35:52):
I have another friend who did exactly what you did
and had to analyze the relationship with his wife, and
you thought it was pretty accurate. I don't know. Yeah,
you can tell me what it said. Well, we are
we are creatures of habit.

Speaker 2 (01:36:08):
We're gonna leave it there. Bill.

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
The book is called, uh, it's part memoir, part business manual.
It's called The Bleeding Edge, My six Decades at the
Forefront of the Tech Revolution. Uh, Bill, tell me how
to say your last name? I said it a couple
of different ways on I love it. Bill, reducial. Thank
you so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (01:36:27):
Thank you, appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:28):
Rich all right, I'll put it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:30):
I'll put the link on the website rich on Tech
dot tv slash wiki if you want to read it. Uh,
great stuff, man, We could have talked for much longer.
I have to have a bill back on all right,
triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one right now, if
you have tech that you're thankful for, I'll take a
few calls before we get into the feedback segment. You're

(01:36:51):
listening to rich on Tech. Okay, let's talk about this
Google settlement. Google is going to settle pay seven hundred
million dollars to settle an antitrust lawsuit. This was brought
on by state prosecutors over various fees charged to app

(01:37:14):
developers in the Google Play Store. And this is all
about you know these You've got the App Store and
you've got Google Play and most of the time you
have to install apps from them if you have an
Android or an iPhone, and you have to use their
billing and so this is we're seeing a lot more,
a lot more activity around this whole idea of should

(01:37:36):
Apple and Google control this much of our devices? So
the settlement includes six hundred and thirty million dollars which
will be divided around among one hundred and two million
eligible consumers in the US. And you're eligible if you
purchased an app or made in app purchases through Google
Play between August twenty sixteen and September twenty twenty three.

(01:37:57):
So be on the lookout for an email saying you
might be getting some money. It's probably gonna be about
six bucks based on my math here. Google, for their part,
is going to simplify the process to let users directly
download apps.

Speaker 2 (01:38:10):
I was talking about that earlier, sideloading, and.

Speaker 1 (01:38:14):
I have different thoughts on that because that could be
dangerous for the average consumer because those apps could have
viruses and malware on them. But also app developers will
have the option to allow payments through third party systems
instead of being required to use Google's billing system, which
again I have thoughts on because it's easier to just
go into one place and see all the things you're
subscribed to on your phone. I amazing three. This is

(01:38:36):
a fantastic app if you are looking to do more
with your iPhone. This is incredible. It's previously been available
for Mac os. Now it's available in beta for Windows.
And here's the things you can do on it. iOS
backup and restore media and file management. You can install
apps to lead apps, contacts and message transfer, device syncing, migration.

(01:38:59):
It is really really amazing and it's called I Amazing
im a Zig Beta is now available for Windows. It's
also available for Mac. I use this all the time.
It basically lets you do whatever you want with your
iPhone within reason. But I'm talking backing things up, moving things.
It's just a it's like the program that Apple should

(01:39:21):
give you with your iPhone, but they don't. Let's go
to Bill. Bill is in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Bill, you're thankful
for some tech.

Speaker 4 (01:39:31):
Yeah, I'm really thankful for something called the or Cam three.

Speaker 12 (01:39:36):
It is a.

Speaker 4 (01:39:37):
Device that my son can use to help read things.
He's legally blind, and it can also identify people as
they walk into the room and do all sorts of
other really helpful vision related things.

Speaker 2 (01:39:51):
Oh wow, or Cam three.

Speaker 4 (01:39:53):
It's called Yes and it is amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:39:56):
And that has changed his life.

Speaker 4 (01:39:58):
Huh as it is going to be You just got
it recently but I really see that it's going to
be a beneficial.

Speaker 9 (01:40:06):
Thing for them.

Speaker 2 (01:40:07):
Okay, it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:40:08):
This is saying that some of it has like AI
and stuff, but we're seeing technology with you know, you know,
ice I, vision issues and different things. I mean, it's
really really starting to help people in new ways because
of especially with AI. I don't know if you saw
the videos of the new meta glasses, the smart glasses
where they can like identify what's what you're looking at. Yes,

(01:40:31):
so I mean this this is similar. Obviously, this is
much more designed for the low vision community.

Speaker 2 (01:40:36):
That's just more of a party trick.

Speaker 1 (01:40:37):
But it's still still really amazing what we're going to see,
especially with AI. Well, thank you, Bill, Happy holidays to you.
All right, thanks for listening there and Wisconsin appreciate it. Okay,
let's get to some of the feedback here.

Speaker 2 (01:40:51):
Don writes in Rich.

Speaker 1 (01:40:53):
On your show last week, you talked about the new
self service TSA kiosks. You didn't mention if they haven't
option for tipping with some smiley faces. Yeah, everything wants
you to tip nowadays. Jim friend of the show, sent
a screenshot of his Facebook. He went to write a
comment on a post, and Facebook automatically popped up and

(01:41:17):
said right with AI, and it automatically gave him three
different things he can just tap once and type in
for his comment. So now we're so lazy in America
that our comments on Facebook are AI generated.

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
We don't even have to think about what to write.

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):
We just have to tap. Thanks Jim for sending that along.
That's wild. Let's see Tanya sent in she wanted to
alert us about an alarming thing that happened to her
while using a new gen AI tool. She was using
an AI tool to generate an image, and she said,
horrible boss who loves power And the image she got

(01:41:57):
was not very nice and she was pretty shocked. She says,
who's training these things? And it's just and I explained,
I said, look, you know these things have a warning
on them that says they're not gonna come up with
the best image every time. But this image was not
very nice. And yeah, so Tanya, thanks for sending that in.
And yeah, you have to be aware of this AI

(01:42:18):
stuff is not it's not all good to go. Let's
put it that way. Jeff says, Hey, Rich I love
the show. I get so many great tips. Your caller
last week needed to record an HDMI output because his
cable company switched his box. Here's the solution for recording
any HDMI output. Has a schedul or app. It accepts
USB thumb drive, any hard drive, lots of storage and

(01:42:39):
video formats.

Speaker 2 (01:42:40):
It's called the Cloner Alliance Box Pro.

Speaker 1 (01:42:44):
How much is that Cloner Alliance Box Pro record any HDMI?
You know a lot of HDMI is copy protected, But
he said, any HDMI that leads me to believe it
may work with that. Okay, I think that's it right,
that's about time. If you can believe it, that's gonna
do it for this episode of the show. Oh my gosh,
so many more comments can't get through. You can find

(01:43:05):
links everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to
rich on tech dot tv. You can find me on
social media at rich on tech. Next week, I'm going
through the mail bag. I'm going to answer all the
questions or many of them that you have asked me
that I haven't gotten to yet, and plus your feedback.
I went back and I looked at all the feedback
for the show from the past couple of months, and
I'm going to put that in there.

Speaker 2 (01:43:25):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:43:25):
So much for listening. There are so many ways you
can spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending
it right here with me. Have a fantastic holiday, have
a great new Year. Thanks to everyone who makes this
show possible. My name is rich Dmiro. I can't believe
it's been fifty one shows already. I will talk to
you real soon

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