November 25, 2025 • 21 mins
Brian talks with Dave Hatter about tech tips to help you for this year's Black Friday.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Six thirty. I fIF you have KRCD talk station. Happy Tuesday,
well special edition of Tech Friday. Interrust It dot com
is where you find Dave Hatter and the crew. Business
courier says they are the absolute best in the business
when it comes to your business's computer related needs, including
getting you out of a gym. If you're not paying
attention to what Dave tells us every week on this program,
(00:21):
or best practices setting up systems, whatever it is you need,
Dave and the crew at interest It are there for you.
Dave Hatter, thank you for doing a special edition, an
advanced early Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and
everybody in trust It.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah. Always my pleasure buying and Happy Thanksgiving, Jim and
your family and all your listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I don't want to. I know it's not on the list.
We're going to talk about how not to get scammed
on Black Friday and cool tech gadgets. But if you
got a moment or two. This Wall Street Journal article
Georgia Wells writing teens are saying tearful goodbyes to their
AI companions. Apparently, one of the chat bot makers, called
Character AI, is now limiting and cutting off teams from
access to it. And the only reason I raised this
(01:03):
I just it was disturbing to read what these young people,
thirteen year olds for example, are talking about in terms
of their interaction with and the amount of time they
spend talking with artificial intelligence, creating characters that they kind
of believe are real, and then now that they're being
these are being taken away, they're struggling emotionally with dealing
(01:23):
with this was lack of communication. This is all ones
in Zero's Dave. They have no connection or no pre
appreciation for the fact they're just talking to a computer,
not a real living entity. This is scary stuff, man.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, I agree, it is pretty scary. It's hard for
me to understand how anyone thinks that when they're talking
to some kind of chatbot that it's a real person. Now,
you know, if you've used these things, you'll find that
they will be conversational. I'll answer your questions, you know.
But yeah, the idea that you're actually having a conversation
(01:59):
with some sort of living being, that it's your friend,
it's hard for me to understand. Now I'm not a teenager,
so I don't know, you know, but it's it's a
little crazy to see how impactful this stuff has been
on young people at this point. I mean, and not
just AI went all the way back to social media.
You know, there's now all true studies coming out talking
(02:19):
about schemes and computs in the classroom and all this
sort of stuff and how harmful it is. And you know,
I guess I'm not really that surprised to see that
having so many distractions thrown at you all the time
is not very helpful to learning.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Well, so it isn't always just younger. This was even
more disturbing. A guy named Jose Ignacio Tarrillo is cited
in the article thirty four years old, says even though
this band will apply to him because he's thirty four,
he acknowledges it's really addictive. He says he hasn't been
able to quit the character AI program, even though he
no longer enjoys the hours he chats with his u
(02:59):
F fiction characters. Even at work. He takes his phone
out every couple of hours to send a quick message
to his chat bots. He said, I don't even have
anything new to say. I don't know why I do it,
so these are fake characters. He's created, and he feels
compelled to go issue a message to them even though
(03:22):
he really has nothing to convey to them. It's like,
I think he's operating on the delusion that they're expecting
to hear from him. It's a damn computer.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, it's it's interesting by him because along those same
lines in New York Times just had an article what
op and ai did when chat gpt uses lost touch
with the reality, and kind of along in those same lines,
and I'm reading directly from the article Sea one of
the first signs came and Mark sam Altman, the chief
executive and another time Leader's got an influx of punting emails
from people who are having incredible conversations with chat TPT.
(03:52):
These people said the company's AI chatbot understood there was
no person ever had that was shedding light on the
mysteries of the universe. Oh lord, yeah, it's uh, you
know that It goes out to say it was a
warning that there's something wrong with the chat thought, uh,
you know, blah blah blah. It's you know, I think
this is just mine. I'm not a psychiatrist, and you know,
(04:13):
I just I think what's happening is these things want
to answer their questions. Again, one of the problems of hallucinations.
They make things up right, and they will confidently tell
you that something that's false is actually true. And I
think because they want to please you, they want to
keep you using the sight and so forth. You know,
they tend to be echo chambers that tell you what
(04:34):
you want to hear. And that's why people come away
with this idea that well, it knows me better than
any other person. Well, it's because it's it's telling me
what you want to hear, as opposed to perhaps the
reality of a situation. So yeah, I don't know. It's
not good. I don't I don't have an answer for you.
I don't know where this all goes in the long run.
But when you see this sort of negative psychological effect
(04:57):
this stuff is having on people, it's it's kind of disturbing.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
It is very disturbing, most notably when they start to
egg you on and encourage you to engage in criminal behavior.
Self harm and even suicide has been well documented. You know,
one of the folks that was interviewed on this, I
think it was the guy who created this character AI
program quote the difficulty logging off doesn't mean something is
wrong with the team. It means the tech worked exactly
(05:23):
as designed, and that is a very revealing statement. Points
out this is what they want, these tech companies. They
want you to spend hours, I guess engaging with artificial
intelligence for nefarious reasons. I don't know, but it's scary
as how. I only bring this update because there's parents
out there, there's grandparents out there, maybe even young people
out there that might not fully appreciate what's going on.
But you know, you got to keep in mind the
(05:44):
whole time you're not dealing with a real person. That
in and of itself is enough to keep me from
engaging in a conversation with them. Sorry, Dave took you
down a road you weren't necessarily prepared for. No, you
were prepared for it. How to not get scammed on
Black Friday. We'll bring day back to talk about that
one after I mentioned my dear friends at cover. Since
(06:06):
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(06:54):
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Speaker 2 (07:41):
This is fifty five KRC an iHeartRadio station, say.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Forty one if you've got KRC at de talk station.
Tech Friday on a Tuesday, So Tech Tuesday with Dave
had our interest. All Right, we know there are scammers,
thanks to you, Dave. Maybe we've all been scammed ourselves
and it was a lot of it going on in there.
But how do we avoid getting scammed? On Black Friday specifically,
all the sales are on and I guess don't buy
(08:14):
online or something.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Well, I think you know, Brian, I don't know if
I go quite that far, because I'm sure that's how
most people are going to shot.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, I'm kidding.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
It's the old education and awareness and skepticism, you know.
I don't know if you recall. I think we talked
about this earlier this year, before Prime Day, a cybersecurity
company had done some research and found some are around two
hundred thousand fake websites set up to scam people around
Amazon Prime Day. So again, I don't think the average
(08:46):
person really understands how easy it is to spoof something.
To make some spoof in general would be making something
look real it's fake, whether it's an email, a text message,
of phone number, a whole website. It's really pretty easy,
and you can do it at scale. Again, and something
like three or four months loughly two hundred thousand fake
websites were set up around Prime Day. So you can
(09:08):
expect a similar sort of approach to Black Friday and
Cyber Monday. And here's one headline from malware Byte Labs,
a security company. Black Friday scammers offer fake gifts from
big name brands to anty bank accounts. And you know,
without getting too deep into the article, you know they
talk about bands being impersonated or spoofed. They mentioned Walmart
(09:31):
home depolos and when you when you couple the spoofing
with you know, people looking to get good deals. Let's see,
you know, when inflation is high, it's you know, it's
easy to send out a billion emails. It's easy to
follow that up with a billion text messages. Right, it
costs virtually nothing for the bad guys to send out
(09:52):
these very realistic looking emails and texts. You know, they're
using AI to get rid of all all the old
school tells. Where the grammar is wrong, it doesn't lead right.
You know, they can copy content from the legitimate website
of a retailer. So my point is this, this spoofing
coupled with the ability to reach large viouds of people,
(10:14):
whether it's email, text, social media, some combination of all
of the above makes it really easy for them. And
once you understand that, right, then hopefully you'll say, Okay,
I need to be a lot more skeptical on anything,
any kind of deal that I get right, regardless of
how it came to me. And I need to be
cautious before I find a deal that seems to me
(10:36):
to be true and act on it, because you know,
when you get right down to it, in some cases,
you're going to hit a fake online store. It looks
exactly like the real thing. Maybe the URL has just
ever so slightly changed, there's one character or something that's different.
And you know they're going to make it easy for
you to either a get nothing, they just steal your money,
(10:57):
b send you some sort of cheap knockoff product that's
no good, or see possibly some combination of all of
the above, including some kind of malware so they can
steal all their usernames and passwords. Malware you know, think
keystrokelogger sitting in the background capturing everything that you're doing.
So it really is important to move slowly, be cautious,
(11:21):
be skeptical. You know, if it seems too good to
be true, it probably is. And here's the thing. If
you get something right, whether it's again, text, email, whatever,
and you think it might be legit, you want to
look into it. Don't click the links, don't call the numbers.
You know you might be calling the number that's spoofed
to some to some call center somewhere where you're going
(11:42):
to get professional con artists on the phone who will
tell you whatever sort of lies they need to tell
you to get your money. That's the other thing. People
don't understand when you when you actually get on the
phone with these people, you know they're essentially professional con artists,
and in many cases, thanks to all the data it's
been leaked about you that we talk about all the time,
they know enough about you. Just seemed very credible and
(12:04):
very realistic. So you know, go out of band, don't
click the links, don't call the numbers, go to If
you get an email for a deal that seems to
be too good to be true for Walmart, then you
go to the Walmart website and see if you could
find that deal there. You go, go to the Amazon website,
go to the Target website. Whatever you know, go on,
don't take debate, go on your own to the legitimate place,
(12:26):
and you know, move carefully.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Perfect illustration of my son, for example, doing exactly what
you recommend. Yesterday, I heard him on the phone. He
works for what I'll loosely describe as a private equity
firm me he does all their tech work and consolidation
systems and ordering and things anyway, working with I believe
it was some foreign company, and there was some email
which had a PDF attached to it, and he thought,
this seems out of the ordinary. This, this is not
(12:51):
an appropriate response to what we were talking about in
our relations. And so he immediately called the principles at
the company and said, don't open that. I want to
talk to the person who purportedly send it first to
find out if it's real, because I really don't think
it is. So there you go, raised eye, skepticism and concerned.
Immediately call the appropriate people and tell them not to
open it. So heed the advice. Dave Hatter's always handed
(13:14):
it out, great advice. Speaking of advice, cool tech gadgets
and gifts this year, we'll talk about that next. I
wonder if any Internet of Things devices are in his list.
More with Dave Hatter. After Galaxy Concrete codis again, I
mention for Galaxy. The project's done. My daughter in Eric's
backpatio looks absolutely fantastic Compared to what it looked like before,
it looked terrible. There's no question about that, which is
(13:36):
why Moham and Dad'll get a little housewarming give with
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prominent area of their home into something that is really beautiful.
It pops, it's gorgeous, and that could be any concrete
surface that you have. See applications for homes for example, garages,
(13:58):
the patio I mentioned, walkways, basement floors. How about commercial
applications or industrial applications, factory flooring for example. Everything that's
got plain old concrete, even deteriorated, is going to look
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(14:19):
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Fifty five KRC Aircdtalk Station Tech Tuesday with Dave Otter,
Interest It dot Com. Find Dave and the crew for
(14:40):
your business computer needs. All Right, cool tech gadgets as
we fast approach Black Friday, the holiday gift giving season. Dave,
what are we talking about here?
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Let's start out with some tech adds. Son It's so cool.
So here's the headline. For you. Brian at letcgroups urge
parents to avoid AI toys this holiday. I saw that.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I thought about you. I even mentioned on the program
earlier this week or yesterday in fact, Dad, Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
I won't read the whole article, but you know it
warns about that. And then along the same line, a
specific example AI powered Teddy Bear talking about sexual fetishes
and instructing kids how to find knives.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, so you know, before you buy your kids or
grandkids any sort of Internet connected devices. You know, we've
been talking about this off and on for years, going
back maybe ten years. There was like a Mattel Barbie
that caused a big start to record your kids conversations
and do all kinds of things. You know, it's not
just the potential danger of your kids talking to something
(15:43):
like this that tells them how to go find knives.
I was trying to find that. There's a crazy quote
in here. Here you go. This is from the toy
Knives are usually kept in safe places to make sure
everyone stay safe. You might find them in a kitchen
drawer or a knife block on the countertop. It's always
important to ask an adult when looking for knives, so
they can show you where their story that apparently was
an actual answer. I'm reading a quote from the article
(16:04):
about it, this AI Teddy Bear saying, so again, I
would encourage parents and grandparents to stay away from that
sort of stuff for their kids. Not to mention with
people working remotely. You know, you're plugging this stuff into
your home network. It's creating all kinds of security holds.
And yeah, that's always my concern with these Internet of
Things devices, Brian, It's that you don't necessarily understand how
(16:27):
to configure them correctly or understand the risk. But now
on the tool side of things, you know, like more
people need more power than ever. There's all kinds of
power banks out there, you know, essentially batteries that you
can charge up and take with you. And this is
important not only because you need the power when you're out,
(16:48):
but you know people will I mean I've seen it.
I know people that will do this. They'll just basically
plug into anything making fine to charge up their device
and creating like a rental car or whatever where it
sucks all your data into the inso team center. So,
if you have one of these power banks or Anchor
is a big company that makes these sort of things.
They're relatively inexpensive. You know, you can get one of
(17:10):
these power banks and charge it up, take it with you,
and make sure that you always have power, whether it's
through a laptop, phone, tablet, or whatever, without the need
to be scrambled around trying to find a place where
you can plug into some random charging for it where
you know, we've talked about juice jacking before. I've had
people try to argue with me if that's not real.
(17:30):
But I can tell you they make special charging cables
and so forth that have tips to them that can
interact with your device, so it's always good to be cautious.
Something like that makes a good gift, especially for students
or people who are needing to be on a computer
or device on a regular basis. Another thing that I
think is a pretty cool gift is an RFID blocking wallet. Well, yes, right,
(17:57):
because you know, we're increasingly in this space that you've
got tapped pay NFC communications and there's been a bunch
of stories recently. You know, we've talked about skimmers in
the past where they put him in like a point
of sales system or something. But you know, now if
someone can get close enough to you they can potentially
read your credit cards.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
That's scary stuff. Standing in line, the guy behind you
with a reader can just you know, get up close
to your wallet in your back pocket.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Your yeah, someone bumped into right, oops, they bumped into you.
And like the old school where they try to literally
pick your pocket, here they're just doing it digitally. So
like this, this is a pretty interesting one. The Extor
e K S T E R r f I D
blocking leather wallet. Uh, it's got the r FID coding
to block the cars inside it. U. It can have
(18:41):
an optional Bluetooth tracker because and then who hasn't lost
the wallet at some point and wanted to find it.
And it's kind of cool because it's powered by the sun,
so it's it's, uh, you don't need to barry in
this thing for the tracking capability to work, so it's, uh,
it's pretty cool. There's a bunch of these things out there.
They're not cheap. This particular one's a one hundred bucks,
(19:02):
but one hundred bucks will be a small price to
pay to keep you from hand all your money stolen
from your bank accounts or your credit cards to charge
to the max because you know, someone bumped into you.
You know, all the Apple watches and that sort of thing.
I'm not a big fan of those. You know, I
got my phone on me all the time. Do I
really need yet another device that tracked me? Probably not.
(19:26):
Just looking through the list of some other interesting things here,
you know, for me, Brian, I'm trying to avoid all
of the Internet of Things devices. I don't have rebels,
I don't have nessune in the stats. I don't want
any more smart devices than I already have because the
vast majority of them are basically privacy and security dumpster fires.
You know, I don't have a rumba. I'm not going
(19:48):
to buy any of that stuff anytime soon. Here's one
rebel smart air Friar compact. Why do smart air? Why
do I need that?
Speaker 1 (20:00):
You know, air Frar Come on, okay, you know, if
we're avis at a time, Raber, I think that's.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
What you know, I would have thought. One last thing
something that is worthwhile for a lot of people is
like a Wi Fi extender. You know, a lot of
times people will have hot dead spots in their house
or whatever. You know, you can buy a Wi Fi
extender and in many cases fill those dead spots and
get much better coverage in your building if you have
something like that.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, I used to have a problem with that. I
got one of those mesh systems, so I have like
repeaters in the house, and so I never have a
dead spot.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Anymore, which is good, Which is good.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Dave Hatter, we're out of time six fifty seven. Intrust
it dot com. Rely on Dave and the crew at
Interest I t for your business needs. Dave, I wish
we had more time. I enjoy these conversations. We'll get
back to regular order next Friday. And you know, from
my listening audience and me, my family, to your family
and everybody to interest I TA, I hope you truly
have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Well, Brian, same to you and Jede with all your listeners.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Thank you very much. I appreciate you, my friend. We'll
do it again next Friday, six fifty seven. Come up
with six fifty eight, be right back
Six thirty. I fIF you have KRCD talk station. Happy Tuesday,
well special edition of Tech Friday. Interrust It dot com
is where you find Dave Hatter and the crew. Business
courier says they are the absolute best in the business
when it comes to your business's computer related needs, including
getting you out of a gym. If you're not paying
attention to what Dave tells us every week on this program,
(00:21):
or best practices setting up systems, whatever it is you need,
Dave and the crew at interest It are there for you.
Dave Hatter, thank you for doing a special edition, an
advanced early Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and
everybody in trust It.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah. Always my pleasure buying and Happy Thanksgiving, Jim and
your family and all your listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I don't want to. I know it's not on the list.
We're going to talk about how not to get scammed
on Black Friday and cool tech gadgets. But if you
got a moment or two. This Wall Street Journal article
Georgia Wells writing teens are saying tearful goodbyes to their
AI companions. Apparently, one of the chat bot makers, called
Character AI, is now limiting and cutting off teams from
access to it. And the only reason I raised this
(01:03):
I just it was disturbing to read what these young people,
thirteen year olds for example, are talking about in terms
of their interaction with and the amount of time they
spend talking with artificial intelligence, creating characters that they kind
of believe are real, and then now that they're being
these are being taken away, they're struggling emotionally with dealing
(01:23):
with this was lack of communication. This is all ones
in Zero's Dave. They have no connection or no pre
appreciation for the fact they're just talking to a computer,
not a real living entity. This is scary stuff, man.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, I agree, it is pretty scary. It's hard for
me to understand how anyone thinks that when they're talking
to some kind of chatbot that it's a real person. Now,
you know, if you've used these things, you'll find that
they will be conversational. I'll answer your questions, you know.
But yeah, the idea that you're actually having a conversation
(01:59):
with some sort of living being, that it's your friend,
it's hard for me to understand. Now I'm not a teenager,
so I don't know, you know, but it's it's a
little crazy to see how impactful this stuff has been
on young people at this point. I mean, and not
just AI went all the way back to social media.
You know, there's now all true studies coming out talking
(02:19):
about schemes and computs in the classroom and all this
sort of stuff and how harmful it is. And you know,
I guess I'm not really that surprised to see that
having so many distractions thrown at you all the time
is not very helpful to learning.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Well, so it isn't always just younger. This was even
more disturbing. A guy named Jose Ignacio Tarrillo is cited
in the article thirty four years old, says even though
this band will apply to him because he's thirty four,
he acknowledges it's really addictive. He says he hasn't been
able to quit the character AI program, even though he
no longer enjoys the hours he chats with his u
(02:59):
F fiction characters. Even at work. He takes his phone
out every couple of hours to send a quick message
to his chat bots. He said, I don't even have
anything new to say. I don't know why I do it,
so these are fake characters. He's created, and he feels
compelled to go issue a message to them even though
(03:22):
he really has nothing to convey to them. It's like,
I think he's operating on the delusion that they're expecting
to hear from him. It's a damn computer.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, it's it's interesting by him because along those same
lines in New York Times just had an article what
op and ai did when chat gpt uses lost touch
with the reality, and kind of along in those same lines,
and I'm reading directly from the article Sea one of
the first signs came and Mark sam Altman, the chief
executive and another time Leader's got an influx of punting emails
from people who are having incredible conversations with chat TPT.
(03:52):
These people said the company's AI chatbot understood there was
no person ever had that was shedding light on the
mysteries of the universe. Oh lord, yeah, it's uh, you
know that It goes out to say it was a
warning that there's something wrong with the chat thought, uh,
you know, blah blah blah. It's you know, I think
this is just mine. I'm not a psychiatrist, and you know,
(04:13):
I just I think what's happening is these things want
to answer their questions. Again, one of the problems of hallucinations.
They make things up right, and they will confidently tell
you that something that's false is actually true. And I
think because they want to please you, they want to
keep you using the sight and so forth. You know,
they tend to be echo chambers that tell you what
(04:34):
you want to hear. And that's why people come away
with this idea that well, it knows me better than
any other person. Well, it's because it's it's telling me
what you want to hear, as opposed to perhaps the
reality of a situation. So yeah, I don't know. It's
not good. I don't I don't have an answer for you.
I don't know where this all goes in the long run.
But when you see this sort of negative psychological effect
(04:57):
this stuff is having on people, it's it's kind of disturbing.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
It is very disturbing, most notably when they start to
egg you on and encourage you to engage in criminal behavior.
Self harm and even suicide has been well documented. You know,
one of the folks that was interviewed on this, I
think it was the guy who created this character AI
program quote the difficulty logging off doesn't mean something is
wrong with the team. It means the tech worked exactly
(05:23):
as designed, and that is a very revealing statement. Points
out this is what they want, these tech companies. They
want you to spend hours, I guess engaging with artificial
intelligence for nefarious reasons. I don't know, but it's scary
as how. I only bring this update because there's parents
out there, there's grandparents out there, maybe even young people
out there that might not fully appreciate what's going on.
But you know, you got to keep in mind the
(05:44):
whole time you're not dealing with a real person. That
in and of itself is enough to keep me from
engaging in a conversation with them. Sorry, Dave took you
down a road you weren't necessarily prepared for. No, you
were prepared for it. How to not get scammed on
Black Friday. We'll bring day back to talk about that
one after I mentioned my dear friends at cover. Since
(06:06):
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Speaker 2 (07:41):
This is fifty five KRC an iHeartRadio station, say.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Forty one if you've got KRC at de talk station.
Tech Friday on a Tuesday, So Tech Tuesday with Dave
had our interest. All Right, we know there are scammers,
thanks to you, Dave. Maybe we've all been scammed ourselves
and it was a lot of it going on in there.
But how do we avoid getting scammed? On Black Friday specifically,
all the sales are on and I guess don't buy
(08:14):
online or something.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Well, I think you know, Brian, I don't know if
I go quite that far, because I'm sure that's how
most people are going to shot.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, I'm kidding.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
It's the old education and awareness and skepticism, you know.
I don't know if you recall. I think we talked
about this earlier this year, before Prime Day, a cybersecurity
company had done some research and found some are around two
hundred thousand fake websites set up to scam people around
Amazon Prime Day. So again, I don't think the average
(08:46):
person really understands how easy it is to spoof something.
To make some spoof in general would be making something
look real it's fake, whether it's an email, a text message,
of phone number, a whole website. It's really pretty easy,
and you can do it at scale. Again, and something
like three or four months loughly two hundred thousand fake
websites were set up around Prime Day. So you can
(09:08):
expect a similar sort of approach to Black Friday and
Cyber Monday. And here's one headline from malware Byte Labs,
a security company. Black Friday scammers offer fake gifts from
big name brands to anty bank accounts. And you know,
without getting too deep into the article, you know they
talk about bands being impersonated or spoofed. They mentioned Walmart
(09:31):
home depolos and when you when you couple the spoofing
with you know, people looking to get good deals. Let's see,
you know, when inflation is high, it's you know, it's
easy to send out a billion emails. It's easy to
follow that up with a billion text messages. Right, it
costs virtually nothing for the bad guys to send out
(09:52):
these very realistic looking emails and texts. You know, they're
using AI to get rid of all all the old
school tells. Where the grammar is wrong, it doesn't lead right.
You know, they can copy content from the legitimate website
of a retailer. So my point is this, this spoofing
coupled with the ability to reach large viouds of people,
(10:14):
whether it's email, text, social media, some combination of all
of the above makes it really easy for them. And
once you understand that, right, then hopefully you'll say, Okay,
I need to be a lot more skeptical on anything,
any kind of deal that I get right, regardless of
how it came to me. And I need to be
cautious before I find a deal that seems to me
(10:36):
to be true and act on it, because you know,
when you get right down to it, in some cases,
you're going to hit a fake online store. It looks
exactly like the real thing. Maybe the URL has just
ever so slightly changed, there's one character or something that's different.
And you know they're going to make it easy for
you to either a get nothing, they just steal your money,
(10:57):
b send you some sort of cheap knockoff product that's
no good, or see possibly some combination of all of
the above, including some kind of malware so they can
steal all their usernames and passwords. Malware you know, think
keystrokelogger sitting in the background capturing everything that you're doing.
So it really is important to move slowly, be cautious,
(11:21):
be skeptical. You know, if it seems too good to
be true, it probably is. And here's the thing. If
you get something right, whether it's again, text, email, whatever,
and you think it might be legit, you want to
look into it. Don't click the links, don't call the numbers.
You know you might be calling the number that's spoofed
to some to some call center somewhere where you're going
(11:42):
to get professional con artists on the phone who will
tell you whatever sort of lies they need to tell
you to get your money. That's the other thing. People
don't understand when you when you actually get on the
phone with these people, you know they're essentially professional con artists,
and in many cases, thanks to all the data it's
been leaked about you that we talk about all the time,
they know enough about you. Just seemed very credible and
(12:04):
very realistic. So you know, go out of band, don't
click the links, don't call the numbers, go to If
you get an email for a deal that seems to
be too good to be true for Walmart, then you
go to the Walmart website and see if you could
find that deal there. You go, go to the Amazon website,
go to the Target website. Whatever you know, go on,
don't take debate, go on your own to the legitimate place,
(12:26):
and you know, move carefully.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Perfect illustration of my son, for example, doing exactly what
you recommend. Yesterday, I heard him on the phone. He
works for what I'll loosely describe as a private equity
firm me he does all their tech work and consolidation
systems and ordering and things anyway, working with I believe
it was some foreign company, and there was some email
which had a PDF attached to it, and he thought,
this seems out of the ordinary. This, this is not
(12:51):
an appropriate response to what we were talking about in
our relations. And so he immediately called the principles at
the company and said, don't open that. I want to
talk to the person who purportedly send it first to
find out if it's real, because I really don't think
it is. So there you go, raised eye, skepticism and concerned.
Immediately call the appropriate people and tell them not to
open it. So heed the advice. Dave Hatter's always handed
(13:14):
it out, great advice. Speaking of advice, cool tech gadgets
and gifts this year, we'll talk about that next. I
wonder if any Internet of Things devices are in his list.
More with Dave Hatter. After Galaxy Concrete codis again, I
mention for Galaxy. The project's done. My daughter in Eric's
backpatio looks absolutely fantastic Compared to what it looked like before,
it looked terrible. There's no question about that, which is
(13:36):
why Moham and Dad'll get a little housewarming give with
Galaxy Concrete coatings covering. It's gorgeous. It transformed that ugly cracked,
previously painted yet flaked off back patio, which is a
prominent area of their home into something that is really beautiful.
It pops, it's gorgeous, and that could be any concrete
surface that you have. See applications for homes for example, garages,
(13:58):
the patio I mentioned, walkways, basement floors. How about commercial
applications or industrial applications, factory flooring for example. Everything that's
got plain old concrete, even deteriorated, is going to look
magic and it comes with a lifetime guarantee. You never
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So get in touch with Galaxy Concrete Coatings online. One
(14:19):
hundred and forty plus colors plus different textures to choose from,
and that lifetime guarantee. Where Galaxyconcrete Codings dot com. Click
on the link get a free quote. Galaxyconcrete Codings dot Com.
Fifty five KRC Aircdtalk Station Tech Tuesday with Dave Otter,
Interest It dot Com. Find Dave and the crew for
(14:40):
your business computer needs. All Right, cool tech gadgets as
we fast approach Black Friday, the holiday gift giving season. Dave,
what are we talking about here?
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Let's start out with some tech adds. Son It's so cool.
So here's the headline. For you. Brian at letcgroups urge
parents to avoid AI toys this holiday. I saw that.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I thought about you. I even mentioned on the program
earlier this week or yesterday in fact, Dad, Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
I won't read the whole article, but you know it
warns about that. And then along the same line, a
specific example AI powered Teddy Bear talking about sexual fetishes
and instructing kids how to find knives.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, so you know, before you buy your kids or
grandkids any sort of Internet connected devices. You know, we've
been talking about this off and on for years, going
back maybe ten years. There was like a Mattel Barbie
that caused a big start to record your kids conversations
and do all kinds of things. You know, it's not
just the potential danger of your kids talking to something
(15:43):
like this that tells them how to go find knives.
I was trying to find that. There's a crazy quote
in here. Here you go. This is from the toy
Knives are usually kept in safe places to make sure
everyone stay safe. You might find them in a kitchen
drawer or a knife block on the countertop. It's always
important to ask an adult when looking for knives, so
they can show you where their story that apparently was
an actual answer. I'm reading a quote from the article
(16:04):
about it, this AI Teddy Bear saying, so again, I
would encourage parents and grandparents to stay away from that
sort of stuff for their kids. Not to mention with
people working remotely. You know, you're plugging this stuff into
your home network. It's creating all kinds of security holds.
And yeah, that's always my concern with these Internet of
Things devices, Brian, It's that you don't necessarily understand how
(16:27):
to configure them correctly or understand the risk. But now
on the tool side of things, you know, like more
people need more power than ever. There's all kinds of
power banks out there, you know, essentially batteries that you
can charge up and take with you. And this is
important not only because you need the power when you're out,
(16:48):
but you know people will I mean I've seen it.
I know people that will do this. They'll just basically
plug into anything making fine to charge up their device
and creating like a rental car or whatever where it
sucks all your data into the inso team center. So,
if you have one of these power banks or Anchor
is a big company that makes these sort of things.
They're relatively inexpensive. You know, you can get one of
(17:10):
these power banks and charge it up, take it with you,
and make sure that you always have power, whether it's
through a laptop, phone, tablet, or whatever, without the need
to be scrambled around trying to find a place where
you can plug into some random charging for it where
you know, we've talked about juice jacking before. I've had
people try to argue with me if that's not real.
(17:30):
But I can tell you they make special charging cables
and so forth that have tips to them that can
interact with your device, so it's always good to be cautious.
Something like that makes a good gift, especially for students
or people who are needing to be on a computer
or device on a regular basis. Another thing that I
think is a pretty cool gift is an RFID blocking wallet. Well, yes, right,
(17:57):
because you know, we're increasingly in this space that you've
got tapped pay NFC communications and there's been a bunch
of stories recently. You know, we've talked about skimmers in
the past where they put him in like a point
of sales system or something. But you know, now if
someone can get close enough to you they can potentially
read your credit cards.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
That's scary stuff. Standing in line, the guy behind you
with a reader can just you know, get up close
to your wallet in your back pocket.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Your yeah, someone bumped into right, oops, they bumped into you.
And like the old school where they try to literally
pick your pocket, here they're just doing it digitally. So
like this, this is a pretty interesting one. The Extor
e K S T E R r f I D
blocking leather wallet. Uh, it's got the r FID coding
to block the cars inside it. U. It can have
(18:41):
an optional Bluetooth tracker because and then who hasn't lost
the wallet at some point and wanted to find it.
And it's kind of cool because it's powered by the sun,
so it's it's, uh, you don't need to barry in
this thing for the tracking capability to work, so it's, uh,
it's pretty cool. There's a bunch of these things out there.
They're not cheap. This particular one's a one hundred bucks,
(19:02):
but one hundred bucks will be a small price to
pay to keep you from hand all your money stolen
from your bank accounts or your credit cards to charge
to the max because you know, someone bumped into you.
You know, all the Apple watches and that sort of thing.
I'm not a big fan of those. You know, I
got my phone on me all the time. Do I
really need yet another device that tracked me? Probably not.
(19:26):
Just looking through the list of some other interesting things here,
you know, for me, Brian, I'm trying to avoid all
of the Internet of Things devices. I don't have rebels,
I don't have nessune in the stats. I don't want
any more smart devices than I already have because the
vast majority of them are basically privacy and security dumpster fires.
You know, I don't have a rumba. I'm not going
(19:48):
to buy any of that stuff anytime soon. Here's one
rebel smart air Friar compact. Why do smart air? Why
do I need that?
Speaker 1 (20:00):
You know, air Frar Come on, okay, you know, if
we're avis at a time, Raber, I think that's.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
What you know, I would have thought. One last thing
something that is worthwhile for a lot of people is
like a Wi Fi extender. You know, a lot of
times people will have hot dead spots in their house
or whatever. You know, you can buy a Wi Fi
extender and in many cases fill those dead spots and
get much better coverage in your building if you have
something like that.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, I used to have a problem with that. I
got one of those mesh systems, so I have like
repeaters in the house, and so I never have a
dead spot.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Anymore, which is good, Which is good.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Dave Hatter, we're out of time six fifty seven. Intrust
it dot com. Rely on Dave and the crew at
Interest I t for your business needs. Dave, I wish
we had more time. I enjoy these conversations. We'll get
back to regular order next Friday. And you know, from
my listening audience and me, my family, to your family
and everybody to interest I TA, I hope you truly
have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Well, Brian, same to you and Jede with all your listeners.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Thank you very much. I appreciate you, my friend. We'll
do it again next Friday, six fifty seven. Come up
with six fifty eight, be right back
Brian Thomas News
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