Gadget nostalgia, the Computer Exorcist & AI predicts your lifespan

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Clickfix malware could infect your PC. I'll tell you how
it works. Google launches its answer to Apple's affordable iPhone,
which one wins. And Amazon Alexa is removing a key
privacy option. What you need to know plus your tech
questions answered? What's going on on richdmiro And this is

(00:22):
Rich on Tech. 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.
Phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one

(00:44):
zero one. Give me call if you have a question
about technology. Email is also an option. Just go to
Rich on Tech dot tv and hit contact.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
All right.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
We got a couple of guests this week. First off,
I couldn't believe this story. We got someone calling in
who got scammed out of thousands of dollars through a
text message. Yes, we always say who answers these text messages?

Speaker 3 (01:06):
People do.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
It's a numbers game and this person fell for the scam.
He will explain how they got his money. Then later
we've got Mark Anthony Arena, the computer exercist. He's gonna
explain why old school virus scans don't cut it anymore
and the real dangers you should watch out for. And finally,
later we've got Brett Fransen, founder of that death clock app.

(01:31):
He's gonna tell us how AI can predict your life expectancy,
biological age and more, plus why he created this app.
All right, I thought it'd be kind of fun this
week to go through some of the gadget milestones of
my life. So some of you listening may have been

(01:52):
around longer for me, some shorter. But I'm gonna tell
you what has been interesting in my lifetime. Darting with
the giant stereo system that my dad bought back in
the day, New Jersey, grown up as a kid.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
It was a Sony.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
It was one of those rack systems that just had
like a bunch of components.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
It was all silver.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
It has a record player, it had a cassette player.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
I think it was a was it dual cassettes? So
that was number one.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
And I remember my dad bringing this thing home, probably
a lot of money, and uh, it was just incredible.
It was just like something we'd never seen before. Okay,
so that was first I mean cable TV came after that.
That wasn't that big of a deal, but whatever. But
the second I think changing point in my life was
the Nintendo Entertainment System. When I got this thing and

(02:45):
you can play video games in your basement.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Oh, we played the heck out of it. We had
Nintendo Thumb, one of the swishies out the one I got.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
I tried something different from my headphone and they are
not working. Okay, so let's try that less of a delay.
So yeah, Nintendo was incredible. It was, you know, just
RC pro am and we played so many games Mario Brothers.
I mean, we just played the heck out of that thing.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Now, that was great until we went portable.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
And then I got my Game Boy and I remember,
this is one of the first things that I spent
my own money on. I think it was ninety dollars.
Went to KB Toys and bought the game Boy and
played the heck out of Tetris toys.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
KB Toys. Yeah, back in the day, don't have that.

Speaker 4 (03:31):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
This was when the mall had everything you needed in
one place, you know, for everything from your your pretzel
to your you know, your drink, to your games and
your toys and the you know, CD player or not CDs,
the cassettes.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
So that was that was awesome. The game Boy played
the heck out of that.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
I think it actually took regular batteries, like double A batteries.
And then later on it was a VCR. I remember
specifically getting a new VCR at the house. This was
a brand new kind of thing that went along with
block Buster Video. And we would just every Friday night
go to Blockbuster and rent tapes, and we'd rent like
three or four of them at the same time, and
of course you had to rewind them before you brought

(04:09):
them back, and if you didn't bring them back, you
were looking at a bill of like, you know, one
hundred bucks, two hundred dollars whatever it was that a
cassette tape they would charge you, which was just absolutely insane.
Then later on, and I'm not sure all this is
in a perfect order, because I just kind of brainstormed
and I was remembering, so I tried to put it
in the best order I could think of. Then we
had the camquarter, and this was back in the day

(04:31):
when at least growing up in New Jersey, you had
a bunch of different electronics stores in New Jersey and
New York and you would look in the back of
the newspaper and they had all the listings for the
gadgets that they were selling, and you'd see them at
these places in New York City. And then you'd bring
that newspaper to a place in New Jersey. I think
it was like Crazy Eddies, and you would show them
that price and be like, I could get this for

(04:51):
this price, and they'd say, no, we want you to
buy it here.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
We'll give you twenty dollars less than that price sold.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
So I remember Yashika was our camcord and it had
like zoom and these little digital graphics you can put
on there, and the only kind of transition you had
was just a fade, like a fade to black, fade
up from black, and that was it. But camcorder. I
had that thing all the time, played on that a lot.
Then I remember getting my one and ten cameras.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
This was a little.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Pocket sized camera, took actual film, one hundred and ten cartridge.
This was maybe the competitor of thirty five millimeter or before.
And yeah, that was a new one because you had
to take your photos, your film into a little photo
developing place. It was like a little hot in the
middle of a parking lot. You drop off your film
through the drive through and you come back a couple
of days later and get your pictures. You never knew

(05:41):
what was going to be on that roll. Half the
pictures were tossaways because they were so bad. Then we
had projection TV again, so my dad was definitely on.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
The cutting edge of a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
We didn't have everything, but we definitely got He kind
of I don't know if he maybe, now that I
think about it, maybe he instilled my love of electronics
because we got this big projection TV hue. Huge, it
was heavy, it was bulky, but it worked and it
was so cool because the picture was big. And I
remember one time I sprayed index on the screen and
ruined it, and yeah, that was not a good day
in the DeMuro house. I kind of got in trouble

(06:14):
for that. My cassette walkman. I remember having a cassette walkman.
It was a Sony, it was yellow. It was like
kind of the sport you pop a tape in there,
maybe listen to the radio if you didn't have a
good tape. And of course that was my first taste
of portable music on the go. You could listen to
anything anywhere. And of course that was my first taste

(06:35):
of getting you know, cassettes at Sam Goodie on the weekend,
spending all my hard earned cash. Then later I remember,
now this is when I started getting into technology with
my family. But I remember getting my family a cordless phone,
and then we got caller ID and it was a
separate box for the caller ID, and I remember my
mom saying, why would I ever want caller ID? Why

(06:57):
would I ever need to know who's calling. I'll just
pick up the phone and ask them. Oh, we used
the heck out of caller ID. Believe me. Then you
stop picking up the phone. Oh that person's calling, don't
pick it up. I'm not here, I'm not here, Tell
them I'm not here.

Speaker 5 (07:09):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
And then I remember going to a friend's house.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
They had a Tandy computer and I played with it
for just about five minutes. Couldn't really do anything, but
I fell in love and I wanted a computer. So
then I dragged my dad to the store. I got
a three eighty six SX sixteen tiny. It is just
a big old honking computer. I think this was that PC,
Richard and Son or the Whiz something like that. You know,
I grew up in Jersey. All the electronics stores were

(07:33):
regional back then. We didn't really have like a Best Buy.
It was like all regional places. You'd go in there
and you'd get a you know, you'd buy a computer,
just grab the box, put it in your car and
bring it home and turn it on. It didn't do anything.
I mean it did basically nothing. No Internet back then.
But also got a top top matrix printer. This was
the printer that had the perforated edges on the side

(07:54):
to the little holes and you'd prant it go. That
was amazing. Fax machine. Don't forget the fax machine. I
remember walking into the electronics store and getting my first
demo of a fax machine and going, how does it know?

Speaker 3 (08:08):
How does it print out the same thing on the
other end.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Well, of course you realize that it takes a scan
of the document and just print it out in the
other end. It's not the exact same document you're sending
through the internet or through the.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Phone lines back then.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Oh and then I upgraded my computer to a Gateway
two thousand. If you remember this company, they had those
iconic cowprint boxes. I was in love with this company,
ted Waite Gateway two thousand. It was so cool and
I loved it. And I got this big honkin tower
of a computer with all the accessories, and I used
to pop in all the peripherals, buy something new all

(08:43):
the time, to pop it in and attach it. This
was before USB, so everything had to be like put
into the computer. I got a bubble jet printer that
was the upgrade from the Dot Matrix, much quieter. Then
I got a CD player. Bought my first CD player
off of a friend's family member. I think it was
twenty bucks. You sold it to me, and that was
like a CD player, like a portable CD player, And

(09:03):
it skipped so much. You could barely even walk around
with that thing. Then I got my laptop in college.
It was a win Book. I don't even think that
company's around anymore. It was huge, but I loved it.
Still no Internet on that thing, I mean it was
still like maybe it was wired internet. I don't even
remember TV and VCR combos, remember that. I remember waiting

(09:23):
in line on Black Friday for one of those. The
thing was on sale for sixty bucks at Sears. All
the places. I'm telling you aren't even around anymore. All
the technology. It's like, this stuff seems so lame at
this point. DVD player coming home from college watching DVDs
because we had this fancy new DVD player. I remember
watching it and saying, that is so clear, the picture

(09:44):
is so amazing. Fargo was our first DVD. Then I
got my Motorola Star tac phone, my flip phone. I
thought that was the best thing ever. My Palm Pilot,
my Tvo. Then I went flat screen with a Visio.
Thousand bucks on my first flat screen TV from Visio.
It was incredible. I loved it. I made such a
big decision on getting that. Should I buy this? Should

(10:05):
I buy this? Kept that thing for like ten years.
The BlackBerry. We all had one of those. We loved
getting our email on the go. Then I was on
a plane I saw the girl next to me had
an iPod. I said, can I see that?

Speaker 3 (10:16):
What is that?

Speaker 1 (10:18):
And I immediately went out and bought one, the little
iPad iPod Mini from Best Buy, my Motorola Q smartphone.
Then I got the iPhone. That was when things really shifted. Now,
all the gadgets I just told you could be built
into a phone, and then the Kindle came out, and
then the iPad after that, and then the Google Home
Smart Speaker. Now this was when the time when I

(10:39):
was starting in my career as a real tech journalist
and starting to really get this stuff. Day in first
day Apple Watch, I was there for the launch of that.
I mean I was there for the launch of the iPad,
the launch of the Google Home Smart speaker, the Apple Watch,
the son No speakers. I was not there for the launch,
but I was there for the first demo I ever
got in New York City. It's like twelve hundred bucks

(11:01):
for the system. I said, who's ever gonna get this?

Speaker 6 (11:03):
Now?

Speaker 3 (11:03):
I can't live without it, even though you know I
have a problem with it right now.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
And finally, I think the thing that has changed the
most or the biggest impact, has been the meta ray band,
smart glasses, putting those on, snapping photos, taking calls, the AI.
It's all pretty incredible, and now of course we have
AI and everything. All right, Hope you enjoyed that trip
down memory lane eight eight eight rich one O one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(11:28):
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you Talking technology at triple eight Rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two for
one zero one, the website for the show Rich on
tech dot tv. David writes in from San Francisco, Hey, Rich,
I like your show. I have a Galaxy S twenty two, which,
as you know, has no headphone jack. I can't find

(11:50):
an adapter which works so I can hear anything while
I'm on a plane. I've bought three different adapters, none
solve the issue. Do you have any advice? Is it
also a headphone issue? It's incredibly frustrated. Yeah, it's probably
a combination. I mean, the adapter is the only adapter
to get is called the airfly. So the airfly is
a Bluetooth transmitter. You basically plug it in to the

(12:11):
seatback entertainment the headphone out jack on the seatback entertainment
that will allow you to broadcast whatever is on the
seatback you know, the movie you're watching, or the TV show,
or the audio you're listening to to your phone and
on your phone. You definitely are going to need some
sort of bluetooth headphones that have noise cancelation. If they don't,

(12:31):
it's gonna be really tough. You're gonna have to turn
your volume all the way up. The other thing on
your phone is just to check your audio settings, make
sure that you don't have some sort of limit on there.
But you don't really want to be listening super loud
on your phone anyway, because on a plane there's a
lot of ambient audio. So any sort of headphones that
have noise cancelation will be great. I personally enjoy like

(12:52):
the over the ears headphones, so something like the Sony's
or the Bows or the Sonos of the World, all
three of those are really great on the plane. And
if you want a pair of earbuds, you got to
go with something that's high quality because the cheap ones
you're not gonna be able to hear them on the plane.
You got to get something that's a little bit better.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Good question. Thanks for that.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Let's go to Bob. Let's see where is Bob online?
For Bob in Garden City, Michigan. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
Yeah, Hi, Rich, I really enjoy your show.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (13:26):
There are quite a few apps out there for recording
on your phone. I have an iPhone fourteen and like
I'm expecting a call from a medium that I would
like to record and sometimes someone will call in a
collection agency or you know, just for different reasons that

(13:50):
i'd like to be able to easily just hit one
spot to record the show.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, what what kind of iPhone do you have?

Speaker 4 (14:01):
It's a fourteen?

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Okay, so it's a iPhone fourteen. So do you have
iOS eighteen on there?

Speaker 4 (14:09):
I believe I you.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Okay, Well, there's built in call recording now on the iPhone,
so you when you're on a call, you'll notice in
the upper left hand corner there's a little icon that
looks like almost like a tape, and that's what you
want to tap. And so when you tap that, it
says this call will be recorded, and it'll tell the

(14:32):
other person and that's it. It'll record the phone call.
So I need to confirm. I'm looking on the support
page for iPhone and it looks like it's just built
into iOS eighteen. So it's it's not part of like
I don't think you need like the latest iPhone model
to get it, but that's one way to do it.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
So have you ever seen that icon when you're on
the phone.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
No, I haven't noticed.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Okay, Yeah, A lot of people haven't noticed because I
mentioned it on my Instagram at richon Tech for another hack,
I was sharing about scam callers. If they call you
just tap that. Oh it looks like okay, So I
got the screenshot of it. It looks like a little
waveform with a recording button. It's in the upper left
hand corner when you're on a phone call. And by
the way, the Pixel phone does this, and so does

(15:18):
the Samsung phones. They all have audio recording. Now, if
you want a third party you said, there's a lot
of apps out there, ninety nine point nine percent of
the apps, none of them on the iPhone, at least
that I know of, can tap into the audio on
the iPhone. That's just not allowed by the Apple system.
So what they do is they make you dial another number,

(15:39):
a third party number, so it's almost like a three
way call, and then you bring that three way call
on the app and the app will record. The app
on the back end will record that entire phone call.
So the two apps, the one app that I know
works really well is called Tape a Call tape acall
dot com. And then the other app I've not tested,

(15:59):
but it called rev Call Recorder. And this one purports
to be free and unlimited and in one step. So
I haven't tried that one, but you can try that
and see if it works. The other way to do
it on a phone is through Google Voice. So Google
Voice will let you record any call that comes in.
It has to come into your Google Voice, So if
someone dials that Google Voice phone number, you can just

(16:22):
tap I think it's like the four key or whatever.
There's like a key that you tap, let's see record
a call in Google Voice. It is let's see, yeah,
you press the four key while you're on your call,
and boom, it will record that call and you get
a transcript there, or you get the recording you can
make a transcript. And then the other way to do it,

(16:42):
while we're on this topic, is a device called plod
P L A U D the plod note, and this
actually attaches to the back of your phone and it
picks up the vibrations from your phone. So it's almost
like those bone conducting earbuds where you put this on
the back of your phone own you press record and
it will record the call. Now with that, you do

(17:03):
have to be aware because these other methods will tell
the person that you're recording that one does not, so
you need to tell the person. If you're in a
state that requires you to do that, check your local laws.
Thanks for the question, Bob. Eight eight eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Coming up, how someone got scammed out
of thousands of dollars. They're gonna explain what happened to them.
Right here, I'm rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich

(17:26):
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking
technology at Triple eight rich one on one. That's eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
We'll get back to those phone lines in just a moment,
but first we've got a guest that you know. We
talk about these scams all the time on this show
and also on my Instagram. I'm always sharing the latest

(17:46):
scams and thank you by the way for sending them
to me. So if you see a scam that you
think is new and unique and interesting, go ahead send
it to me for sure, because I like to share
it with folks so that the more you know about
the things and the more you're aware of them, the
more you can protect yourself and your family members from them.
So you wonder who's who falls for these things? Right,

(18:08):
And I always say it's a numbers game, and yes,
people fall form young people, old people, people in the
middle everyone. This is why scammers do this stuff. And
so when I heard this story about a young guy
named Connor that fell for one of these scams, I said,
can you come on the show and talk about it?
And he's happy to do that so that you can
hopefully not have the same thing happen to you.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
Connor. Thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 7 (18:31):
Absolutely rich. How's it going man?

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Everything is good. So I heard your story. Tell me,
first off, what you lost? How much money?

Speaker 8 (18:41):
So I lost five six dollars of my savings five thousand.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Well, first off, amazing, kudos to you for having that
much money in your savings. That's no easy feat. But
that's that's incredible. But explain start from the beginning. I
saw you sent me a screenshot of a text message.
You got a text message?

Speaker 8 (19:01):
Yeah, so absolutely so. This is January tewod. I had
just woken up in the morning. It was about ten o'clock.
I went to a concert the night before, so I'd
just woken up fresh thing first in the morning. I received, Yeah,
what I thought was an automated text from my bank
kind of warning me about the scam. I've gotten those
a couple of times where they like kind of detect

(19:21):
some suspicious activity or something and they kind of warn
you like, hey, did you permit this wire chanser of
X amount? Reply why if yes or n if no?
And I obviously just replied and for no because I
didn't really recognize it. And they said, well, someone's going
to contact you shortly from your.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Bank, okay, And so that's where it started.

Speaker 7 (19:43):
Yeah, that's where it started.

Speaker 8 (19:45):
And I've had that happen before, you know, where I've
tried to make a purchase and it's kind of flagged
it on my account and someone from Wells Fargo, my bank,
has called me.

Speaker 7 (19:53):
And so I didn't really think of anything.

Speaker 8 (19:55):
And then I got the call about ten ten eight
minutes later, and the man kind of introduced himself.

Speaker 9 (20:03):
He gave the name.

Speaker 8 (20:03):
Albert Clark, Wells Fargo Frog Claims agent. Agent, gave me
a badge number and everything and seemed, you know, really
legit and kind of asked me like for some basic
questions like my name and everything to verify who I was.

Speaker 7 (20:20):
But I didn't give him an account information or anything.

Speaker 8 (20:23):
Somehow he had access to my account because he then
ran through a bunch of transactions with me from the
night before that I had recognized and was kind of
reading them off, and and then he started to kind
of teeter towards some other like suspicious looking transact or
sounding transactions that I didn't recognize. And so after going
through those, I told him I didn't recognize those, and

(20:45):
he said, well, so there's been some fraud detected on
your account. Our system has flagged these as fraud. But
you're gonna need to go to the nearest Wells Fargo
branch and take out all your cash because they're trying
to get into you accoun.

Speaker 6 (21:00):
Out right now.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
Oh wow, And what did you say to that?

Speaker 8 (21:03):
I mean, I was just I had just woken up.
It was the first thing I had seen. I was
kind of just in a panic, like I needed to,
you know, take action and do what I needed to
do protect my money.

Speaker 7 (21:13):
At that point.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
Yeah, of course, so I you know, got.

Speaker 8 (21:17):
My stuff, and he mentioned during the call, he said,
and I should have noticed this as a little bit
of a special suspicious but he said, I'm going to
be on the phone through the entire time until we
get your money out. And so at the time I thought, maybe,
you know, he's he's really trying to work with me
and make sure my money's protected. But that was definitely
a little bit suspicious that he wanted to make sure

(21:38):
that he was with me through the whole call.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
And so how did you go from that to starting
to take out money? And did you take out cash?

Speaker 4 (21:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (21:47):
So he told me that what I needed to do
was go to the nearest Wells Fargo bank, go up
to the teller, and take out all the.

Speaker 7 (21:52):
Cash from my account.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Okay, and you do that.

Speaker 8 (21:56):
So I, yeah, immediately grabbed my keys, drove to the
new branch of my bank, walked into the bank, walked
up to the teller, told him to just take out
all my cash. He told me to do it. I said,
for personal reasons. They're not allowed to ask you. He
told me to just tell him personal reasons.

Speaker 9 (22:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
I was gonna say, they didn't. They didn't question you
pulling out all this money.

Speaker 4 (22:15):
No.

Speaker 7 (22:16):
Yeah, that's so one thing.

Speaker 8 (22:17):
When I went back to the bank later to talk
to them, the teller kind of realized, like, oh, I
I'm so sorry I didn't I didn't think of anything.

Speaker 7 (22:23):
It was kind of a young kid. He was a
little bit younger than me, so yeah, I was. He
was definitely a little taken back by it.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
But put out the money. You've got five thousand bucks
in your hand. Now cash.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, cash, So he says, okay, guys on the phone
the whole time, still.

Speaker 7 (22:39):
Whole time, still on the phone, dedicated.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
One time you want to drop a signal, and you don't.
I at that time I dropped.

Speaker 8 (22:46):
Yeah, forty five minute phone call, just walking me through this.
That's why I just was in such disbelief that this
man was, you know, taking all this time to get
all this money from me. But anyway, after I got
had got all my cash out, I went back out
to my car and I said, okay, I have all.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
My cash out.

Speaker 8 (23:02):
He then told me, so, now what I'm gonna do
is get your new accounts started right here. I can
get it set up online. Your new debit card will
be in the mail. It'll be there next day, overnight shipping.
You know, the whole whole spiel they usually give you.
And they said, well, right now, so we can get
all this cash off your hand.

Speaker 7 (23:18):
What I can do for you is I can give
you a temporary.

Speaker 8 (23:20):
Uh, temporary debit card that you can add to your
Apple Wallet, which you can use tap to pay at
the ATM.

Speaker 7 (23:26):
Which was the biggest mistake.

Speaker 8 (23:29):
It sounds it sounds, you know, like the like I
want to get all this cash off me right now.

Speaker 7 (23:33):
Yeah, ATM's right here.

Speaker 8 (23:35):
So I added the card to the Apple Wallet function
by just entering, and he gave me a you.

Speaker 7 (23:41):
Know, number, CVC code, date and everything.

Speaker 8 (23:44):
Use tap to pay at the ATM, and I put
all my cash in the ATM and that was it.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
Could charge up the card somehow.

Speaker 8 (23:53):
Yeah, so it was it was a tap to It
was an UH connected to a bank account that he
has connection to.

Speaker 7 (24:00):
And he had me.

Speaker 8 (24:01):
Add the card to my Apple Wallet and then I
tried to use the card later that day and he
had canceled it.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Okay, So basically, you added this virtual card to your
Apple Wallet, then you went to an ATM that accepts deposits.
You fed the money into the ATM, and somehow that
money fed onto that card on your phone. Theoretically, yes, wow.
And then and they wiped it all out and that's
when they wiped it out.

Speaker 10 (24:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (24:24):
And then and then so that was all my cash
that was gone.

Speaker 8 (24:27):
And then he said, you know, it's gonna take a
little bit for your money to show up. It's a
lot of money to you know, show up in the account.
And I didn't really realize what had happened until later
I got home and checked my account just to you know,
see if it had hit you, and I saw both
of zero's and then I had realized, like, oh.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
That was it.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
And you felt like you got scammed at that point
you realized to scam And how did you feel it
that moment?

Speaker 7 (24:52):
I just I just was in shock.

Speaker 8 (24:54):
I just couldn't believe that that actually happened. Like like
you said, you know, you hear about these things all
the time, and I think, you know, I'm a I'm
a young guy. I'm pretty in tune with everything connected
with like technology and everything. I figured that I wouldn't
fall for something like that. But they just, like you know,
they gain your trust. They know how to get under
your skin and to talk to you the right way.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
What's your advice for folks?

Speaker 8 (25:21):
My advice for folks would be just don't respond to
anything text wise, even even you know, be careful about
phone calls too. If you have real concern about something
that may be up with your account, call the number
on the back of your card, you know, get in
contact with your bank using the information the numbers that
they have online.

Speaker 7 (25:41):
Don't don't listen to anyone trying to come at you.
Go go to the go to your business or bank.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
And how are you doing personally? How are you moving
forward through this because you haven't recovered any of this money.

Speaker 7 (25:52):
No, yeah, I haven't recovered any of the money. I've
been doing.

Speaker 8 (25:54):
Okay, uh, you know, luckily at the time that it
had happened, rent was paid aid, the car that I
had at the time was paid everything. You know, it
has put a lot of stress on me. You know, mentally,
I've been thankfully I'm employed, I have a good job.
I'm more working full time. I live with my girlfriend

(26:15):
and she's been helping a lot. But it's definitely I've
had to cut back on a lot of expenses and
I even had to sell my car honestly.

Speaker 7 (26:26):
Because I just couldn't afford it anymore.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
Well, I thank you for sharing your story. I do
appreciate it. I know you set up a gofund me.
I'll link that up on my website. Rich On tech
Dot TV. Connor, thank you man. I mean, at the
end of the day, I mean, it's just it's it's
great for you to share your story so that people
can realize that this does happen to real people, regular people,
everyday people, and it's just one of those things where

(26:50):
somehow they got to you and they figured out a
way in, and now it's like you're you're left to
clean up this mess of this money that you'll probably
never get back.

Speaker 8 (26:59):
Yeah, I like I said, I I right after I
figured out it happened, I went back to the bank
and sat down with a bank manager and filed a
real fraud claim to Wells Fargo and they denied it.
Went through the process of appealing it to the executive
claims multiple times and both have been denied. The reasoning
that they have is that I physically walked into the

(27:20):
bank and took out the cash myself.

Speaker 7 (27:22):
Is they're they're not taking liability.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Interesting, well, I do think that.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yeah, it's it's a tough one, and it's it's tough
because you initiated that transfer, and I've heard over and
over when that happens, it's tough to reclaim.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
All right, Connor, thanks for sharing your story. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Once again, I'll share his gofund me on the website
rich on Tech dot TV. You can read it, read
through what happened, and uh, you know, just hopefully never
have this happen to you.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
Appreciate you joining me today, Connor.

Speaker 7 (27:49):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me on rich Good
talking to you.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Good luck eighty eight rich one O one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Follow
me on Instagram so you don't miss these scale because
I do explain the anatomy of scams on there at
rich on Tech. All right, coming up, we'll take more
of your calls. Plus we'll tell you about Google's new
affordable smartphone. Welcome back to Kate, Katla, Welcome back to

(28:15):
rich on Tech. Yeah, it's not my first day, I
swear eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. You know,
when you've got multiple jobs, sometimes they just merge, and
that's what happens.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
Let's go to Stacy in Rancho Cucamonga. Stacey, you're on.

Speaker 11 (28:34):
With rich Hi, Rich how are you doing?

Speaker 3 (28:37):
I am doing fantastic. How are you.

Speaker 11 (28:40):
I'm doing okay, just doing some yardwork on this playing
Saturday ury.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
It's well if you got some beautiful weather in southern
California this weekend, so enjoy that.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
What can I help you with?

Speaker 11 (28:52):
So my question is regarding BitLocker. I keep my company
filed on a flash drive, which I know I probably
shouldn't do, and trying to move away from that. But
recently my work forced us to encrypt them using BitLocker
if we wanted to continue to use them. So does
that mean that my flash drive is going to be

(29:13):
encrypted on any computer that I try to use it on.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yes? So have you turned on the encryption for the
flash drive?

Speaker 11 (29:23):
Yes, it's working. Everything's great, but you know I keep
work stuff plus person most stuff on it, and you know,
just thinking for the future, what if I have to
change laptop kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
So you know, once it's activated and you're using the
BitLocker to Go, I guess is that the built.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
In are using Windows or mac Windows? Okay?

Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, So you're using the built in like BitLocker to
Go service on Windows okay, yeah, So and you created
a password for the for the drive. Yeah okay, So
once you have that if you pop that drive into
another computer, you're not gonna be able to unlock that
drive or open or access it without that password. So
that that means the encryption is doing its job. So

(30:02):
not only is it you know, it's encrypted, but it's
also password protected. That password will well, you know, decode
the drive so that the computer can read it.

Speaker 11 (30:11):
And just to make sure I understand password, is the
recovery key?

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Uh well, the recovery key is hmm, well, I mean basically, no,
it has its own password. The recovery key might be
a backup key that you can keep once you set
that password.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Okay, you see what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Like, the recovery key is basically, if you forget the
password or there's a problem, you can use that recovery
key to access the drive.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
So that's different than the password. Perfect all right, But
I okay, I'm going to link up some help.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
I've got a little help page on this whole BitLocker
thing for flash drives. I've got a nice page that
kind of explains it. I'll link that up in the
show notes rich on tech dot TV. But yeah, sounds
like you've got it figured out as long as you've
got that password on there and that encryption level. It's
like I said, it's built into Windows and encryption basically.
You know, when you have a flash drive, your files
are on that flash drive. You copy files to it.

(31:07):
You know, it's like one of those little USB thumb drives.
You copy files to that. You can pug that into
any computer and access those files. Well, if you're doing
something that is corporate, you know there might be some
sensitive information on those files, and they don't want that
flash drive. It ever, just fell out of your bag
and was on the ground, someone could pick that up
and pop it into their computer and access to files
on there. So if your company and they're saying, look,

(31:30):
you know, most companies don't even like flash drives in
general because they present very big security challenges for the company. Right,
they can introduce viruses to the computers, they can have malware,
they can again, you can lose your files, they can
get into the wrong hands. But by encrypting that flash drive,
it secures it to a level that if someone found
that drive on the ground, there's not much they'd be

(31:53):
able to do with it. Yeah, there's a chance they
could break that encryption, but it would take a lot.
I mean we're talking, you know, depending on the kind
of computer resources they have, if ever to break that encryption,
so that would be pretty tricky for the average person.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
Let's say.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
And then if you have that that you know, once
they put that into their computer, they won't be able
to access it. But you put into your computer, it
will be able to access it. And then of course,
if you have that password that you set on it,
that's your main way of getting access to the data.
And then the recovery key is if you forget that password,
you'll be able to still recover the data on that computer.
So good question, Stacey, Thanks for the call. Eighty to

(32:30):
eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. So Google has unveiled
their answer to the iPhone sixteen E.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
This is called the Pixel nine A.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
This is their most budget friendly device, starts at four
hundred and ninety nine dollars, very you know, sleek phone.
It's got a six point three inch display, so it's
actually bigger than the previous model.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
It's also brighter.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
It also has two cameras, so it's got a forty
eight megapixel camera thirteen megapixel ultra wide camera, unlike the
iPhone sixteen E that just has one camera on it,
so this you do get the ultra wide. It also
has the best battery life ever for a pixel. They're
saying over thirty hours, which you know, I never really
believe that number unless you're not using your phone at all,

(33:17):
but you know your your mileage may vary. It also
has the AI features built in, so Google of course
has Gemini with all their Circle to Search, the editor features,
the call assist features, so it's got a lot of
nice AI built in, plus seven years of software and
security updates, so that is the standard pretty much for
a lot of these Android devices from Google and also Samsung.

(33:40):
They're offering seven years of updates, So seven years on
this thing for five hundred bucks. That's like seventy two
dollars a year. It's got better water and dust resistance
than before, so IP sixty eight. And yeah, this competes
directly with the iPhone sixteen E, but it's one hundred
dollars less. The iPhone sixteen E, as you might remember,
starts at five ninety nine. This is four nine. But

(34:01):
here's the deal. This is Android. The iPhone is iOS
and to some people it's a non starter. They're not
getting an Android phone. They want an iPhone, and so
I get it. This is why we have choices in
our lives. This is why these are probably the two
phones I'll be recommending the most over the next year,
because they give you a lot at a great value. Yeah,

(34:21):
there's always gonna be the people that want the latest, greatest,
best camera, they're a photographer, whatever, But the Pixel nine
to A is going to have a lot of these
great features. Also, it has a better screen a better
refresh rate than the iPhone as well. So the only
weird thing about the Pixel is that a I wasn't
included in the briefing, which I don't know why they
didn't send me one before like they did a lot

(34:42):
of other people.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
I said, hey, Google, do you forget about me? What
happened here?

Speaker 1 (34:46):
So I will be getting one when it launches, But
they did delay the launch a little bit. It's supposed
to be on pre order in March. Now they're delaying
it until April because there's apparently some quality issue on
a component, so Google's investigating that. So again, the Pick
will ship sometime in April, not available for pre order
just yet. But you know these are for people that

(35:07):
just want a phone, right, They want a nice phone
that just does everything. It's got all the modern features.
And now you've got two great choices, the Pixel nine
A and the iPhone sixteen E. Both well I haven't
tested the Pixel nine A, but typically Pixels, you know,
I've got a soft spot in my heart for them.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
I really do like them, all right.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Eight and eight rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up,
we'll take more of your calls. Plus I'll tell you
about this click fix scam that tricks you into installing
malware on your PC.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
You are listening to rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Welcome back to rich on Tech, rich Tomuro here for
another hour hanging out with you, talking technology. Now when
I say another hour, I mean we have two hours left,
but this is a new hour, so welcome back to
the show. Eight eight eight rich one O one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles,

(36:05):
talking technology with you. Gadgets, apps, tips, tricks, reviews, all
kinds of stuff. Scams coming up this hour got a
unique guest, Marc Anthony Arena calls himself the computer Exorcist.
Kind of has a different take on things when it
comes to technology, so he will share his unique sense

(36:26):
of point of view.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
I guess you could you could call it.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
And later on we've got Brent Brenton Brent Franson, founder
of the death clock app. He's going to talk about
why they created that to us scare you into getting healthy.
I guess to live Longer eight ed eight rich one
on one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero. On the website for the show is rich

(36:50):
on tech dot TV. There he can send me an email.
Let me tell you about this before we get back
to the phones. Here a new click fix scam trick
you into installing malware on your computer. Here's how it works.
You're on your computer, you're surfing, you know, you see
those capture things that says, hey, are you a human?
Verify it? But it's a trick. It tricks you into

(37:14):
running a harmful command on your computer. So it asks
you to press Windows plus R, then control V, then
enter and this sequence will run malicious code that's hidden
on your clipboard.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
Do not do it.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
It might install passwords, stealing malware, onto your computer right now.
This is really targeting hospitality and healthcare workers using phishing emails,
even disguised as hotel booking emails or chrome error pages.
Be careful, so there might even be some of these
clickfix attacks on legitimate looking websites. So the bottom line is,

(37:50):
if you see one of these capshaws that asks you
to verify that you're human, but it asks you to
follow some key press instructions, do not do it.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
Do not do that.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
And if you're an organization and you run a bunch
of computers at your work, you can disable the Windows
plus R run command via the group policy. So if you're,
you know, trying to keep people, trying to save people
from themselves, that's what you gotta do.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
Let's go to Dana.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
And Tribute Tribute Tribuco Canyon, California.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
Dana, you're on with Wretch Hi Rich. Enjoy your show.
Thank you. What's up?

Speaker 6 (38:28):
So it's kind of a convoluted question, hopefully not. But
I have a HomePod, an older one, the kind of
the barrel size that for years, really I'd just say
to tell Siri play Kfi six forty and I'd listen
to your show or whatever, And just in the last

(38:51):
couple of weeks, I'll give it that command, It'll play
the commercials and then go silent. Oh it and it
does the same thing on my iPhone. It'll play the
commercials and then it goes silent, never puts the show on.

(39:11):
But if I give that same command to I also
have an Amazon show. I give that command to Amazon,
it plays the commercials and plays the show. So just
in the last few weeks, okay, if I on iHeartRadio
just won't play on the pod or my iPhone.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
And how are you calling up the station?

Speaker 6 (39:36):
Well, historically I'd just say, you know, hey, Siri, play
KFI six forty and I would play it on the pod.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah, what if you add, like, now, what about other
stations from other companies? You know, because you can you
can ask for a wide variety of stations, you know.

Speaker 6 (39:53):
I haven't. Well, I actually tried just some random country
music station on the iPhone today and it played it
did okay, And if I bring up the I Heart
app on my iPhone, I can play six forty k
if I on the phone and it'll also broadcast to
the home.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
Pod, right right, I mean, that's that's a given. Though,
like because it you know, you're going through the app,
but the functionality that's built in you're saying is not working.
You know, I've got a couple of reports of people
saying that these things work, sometimes they don't work. Sometimes,
not just limited to the HomePod. Sometimes it could be
the you know, the Amazons or the Googles out there

(40:33):
with the home Pod specifically. Have you tried restarting it
and tried any sort of software updates.

Speaker 6 (40:40):
It's fully updated and I've restarted it a.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
Couple of times.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
Okay, all right, So the only thing, the only other
thing I can think of. I can think of two things.
First off, you might try to put at the end
of the play the radio station, like on iHeartRadio and
see if that helps.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
Have you tried that?

Speaker 6 (40:58):
Play it you mean via that I I'm sorry to
say that again, Like you would say something like play
KF I am six forty on iHeartRadio and see if
that helps.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
And now it sounds like it's working because it's getting
the commercials. So it's like getting at the beginning of
the stream. It's just not getting the stream itself.

Speaker 6 (41:15):
So right, and at the beginning of the stream, it
says KFI six forty I provided by iHeartRadio. It's it's
it's the intro and the commercials all sound as it
sounded for years.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
Really, Yeah, And when.

Speaker 6 (41:31):
I did a search, I saw issues about commercials playing
and not and not.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Yeah, but searches will always you know, the problem with
all the stuff online is that it doesn't matter because
there's someone out there that has the same problem. They
put it online and now everyone gets that search result,
so it doesn't really help you, you know, and they
give you all these like things to do that don't
really you know, you go around in circles, so you know,
I think the bottom line is I've got one of
these at home. I will test it and see what happens.

(41:59):
But I I will tell you that these things sometimes,
you know, go through on the back end. The station's
upgrade something or they change something, and there's a lot
of functionality that depends on it. So maybe there's just
something that's changed in the past couple weeks. I will
check it out. I do know that I discovered on
the Apple Music app that you can search for pretty
much any radio station and play it through the Apple

(42:21):
Music app, which I thought was pretty interesting. So if
you search like KFI. It's on there, you know. Let's
just check as you one hundred New York. Yes, the
one hundreds on there in different stations that are you
know not let's see. Yeah, it doesn't even have to
be an iHeart station. I'm looking at Audacity that's on there.
So that's another little trick as you can call these
up through the the Apple Music app as well. But

(42:45):
it's it's Dana. I'm not sure what's going on there.
I would say, uh, unplug the speaker, leave it unplugged
for a little bit. It could be something going on
with your network, if you have some sort of ad
blocker running, that could be messing with it. But it
sounds like you haven't really changed anything. So that's the
true part is nothing on your end has changed. But
now it seems like something definitely changed there, and that

(43:06):
is frustrating for sure. I would say in the meantime,
if you can't get it to work, you can, just
like you said, airplay it through your phone. It's a
pretty seamless process on the iPhone to the home pod.
Hopefully we figure this out. I'll keep you updated next week.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Thanks for the call.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
Eighty to eight Rich one o one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one, Zachary, I've
just got two minutes.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
So what happened with you?

Speaker 1 (43:29):
You got you got scammed as well?

Speaker 12 (43:33):
Yes, sir, thank you for dicking my call. So on
cash app, I had about a month and a half ago,
I had some fraud going on. About five one hundred
and eighty dollars were taken out of my account on
three different charges. I was able to get one retracted
for Amazon and then the other like two hundred and

(43:56):
forty dollars from Walmart. We're rejected it from cash app,
and I just wanted to know I had requested a
new card. I got a new card about two and
a half weeks ago, and then I'm still having like
a lot of fraud attempted on my card. I keep
that walked all the time. So should I leave a

(44:18):
cash app at this point because maybe they're just not a.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
I would if they're not protecting your account. I mean,
that's insane to have fraud on a brand new card
like that unless someone has access to your account. Have
you have you gone in and cleared out your old
devices that have access to your cash app.

Speaker 12 (44:38):
I do have a Razor motorole Eraser. So I'm not
sure if I should, you know, update to an iPhone?

Speaker 9 (44:45):
Would that be more secure?

Speaker 4 (44:47):
Well?

Speaker 1 (44:47):
How are you using this if you don't have a
if you don't have a smartphone, how'd you set this up?

Speaker 12 (44:52):
I set it up through my.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
Motorole Eraser.

Speaker 12 (44:56):
I have T Mobile as my service.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
But that doesn't When you say cash app, you mean
cash like the what do you mean by cash app?

Speaker 9 (45:05):
Cash app?

Speaker 2 (45:06):
It's an app.

Speaker 4 (45:07):
It's an app that.

Speaker 12 (45:09):
Is supported by Wells Fargo is from what I understand
about it.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Okay, So are you as you're you're saying you have
a motorol erasor you mean like the one that downloads
apps like an Android?

Speaker 4 (45:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Okay, god god, okay, I was I was confused. I
was thinking like old school motor Erazor. I was like, wait,
how's that one?

Speaker 4 (45:25):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Okay. I would go in number one.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
I would go into your security and privacy and look
at your settings there for me, I just logged in
and says your device is forty six. So I've got
to go in and clear out my old all my
old devices that I'm logged into the cash app on.
You may be you know if they got access to
your account at a at a root level, they may
have somehow installed it on one of their phones and

(45:48):
that's how they're getting access. I would also make sure
that you have the highest level of authentication turned on
as well, so two factor authentication if it supports that.
But the best you could do is, if this keeps happening,
they keep compromising your card number, you got to get
you got to switch to something else. That's that's really
not supposed to happen. I've had cash app forever. I've

(46:10):
never had a problem. I don't use my card regularly,
but I've had a card with them for a long time.

Speaker 9 (46:16):
I've had one with.

Speaker 12 (46:16):
Them too, for like a year and a half and
then this just all started happening like a month and
a half ago. So I just wanted to get your
exercise on it. So I'm gonna definitely take your advice
on that. And you know, I appreciate you taking my call.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Yeah, thanks a lot, Zachary, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
I would also set up a new pin for sure,
and uh yeah, be careful. And this is why you know,
this is why you shouldn't use your your primary checking
account linked to these things. If you're going to use
like a cash card like this, maybe set up a
secondary account that you only use for this kind of
stuff on your bank instead of your primary account your

(46:51):
day to day spending. Eighty eight Rich one O one
Welcome back to rich on Tech Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Phone lines are open, Give me a call,

(47:12):
or go to the website rich on tech dot TV.
There you can get notes for everything we mentioned on
the show. This is episode one fourteen. All right, let's
go to uh Dino in Michigan. Dino your own with Rich.

Speaker 13 (47:28):
Hi, Rich, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
Yeah, what's going on?

Speaker 2 (47:32):
So?

Speaker 4 (47:33):
I email large groups of people.

Speaker 13 (47:38):
And it's like fifty to sixty And the way I've
done it the last ten eight to ten years is
I put it in my notes and then I just
copy paste all those emails in well, the last two
or three updates. I'm not sure exactly when it happened.
On the software on an Apple on the iPhone. Uh

(48:01):
it it will not take the emails.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
It won't let you in the mail app.

Speaker 13 (48:07):
Yeah, it will, it will not let me mail that
copy and paste oh.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Of just all the different email addresses. Yeah yeah, interesting,
Well they did update the mail app on the iPhone,
so that might be it. And did it happen Did
it happen when there was like the remodel of the
app or what?

Speaker 4 (48:27):
Yahoo?

Speaker 3 (48:27):
Oh use yahoo?

Speaker 4 (48:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (48:29):
Oh they changed their app too? Did it happen with that?

Speaker 2 (48:35):
I really I can't target it.

Speaker 13 (48:37):
I can't pick I can't pick the date when it
happened as far as which iOS you know, level it
was on, and it was it was quite a way ago, it.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
Was, Okay.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
I think the the way to get around this is
to set up a list.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
Have you done that? Okay?

Speaker 1 (48:55):
So I think that's the way to do it because
that's what I do. An outlook, I've got a group
of people that I email. I've I've got two things.
So first off, I know what you're talking about because
I've got a group of people. I've got two ways
that I email a group of people. So the first
is I've got a whole group of people that I
just copy and paste their email into Gmail. It figures
out the email addresses, you know, it kind of parses
them out and puts it in there. And that's fine

(49:18):
if that's not working in Yahoo like it used to,
because you know, they change the app and they just
may not support that anymore. I don't use Yahoo Mail,
so I can't really tell you because I haven't tried that.
But typically if it doesn't work, the best second way
is to just create a list. And so go into
your your Yahoo Mail and then you got to click

(49:38):
your contacts and there's a lists tab and it says plus.
You click that plus button create list, and you just
add your contacts, name the list, add your contacts, and
press save, and then you should be able to use
that list to send out the email once you you know,
once you have that list, you can just send an

(49:59):
email to that list of people. So that is probably
the best way to do it, and then you can,
you know, make a group email out of that. Looking here, yeah,
the old way, yeah, I think that's going to be
the best way to do it, you know, is just
create a list in your contacts and I would you know,
that's probably going to be easy and you can keep
people updated on the list and all that good stuff,

(50:20):
and just compose an email to that list of people.
But I would continue to check every so often, you know,
every time you you know, get an app update on
the iPhone or whatever you're using, whatever platform you're using
with Yahoo, Mel, just check and see if you can
copy and paste the email addresses in. Sometimes when things
are redesigned, right when an app gets a big redesign,

(50:42):
they get the core functionality working first, and then as
they do updates, just because they want to get the
major redesign out there, they kind of add things as
they go along, so not everything is supported all at once.
And this is pretty apparent with the Outlook, with the
Outlook application on computers, they've sort of been revamping that

(51:03):
with a new version of Outlook, and I've noticed on
my computer anyway, it's getting new features all the time,
like everything was not there on day one. And we've
talked about this before, because they let you go to
what's called a classic Outlook. You can toggle between the
classic Outlook and the New Outlook in the settings, and
the reason they do that is because there's some traditional
settings that people use, historic whatever that people needed, and

(51:25):
they're no longer in the new app just yet. Eventually
they'll make their way there, but they're not there just yet.
But I think making a list is probably the best
way to do it. I will link up in the
show notes how to create and how to create a
contact list in the new Yahoo Mail. But thanks for
the question, do you know appreciate it? Eighty eight rich
one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two

(51:46):
four one zero one.

Speaker 13 (51:48):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Remember Claude this is the competitive chat GPT.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
It's an AI chatbot.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
It's the one that I used to use exclusively until
someone convinced me to switch to chat GBT, And now
I've been using that and now, of course, as these
things get to know you more and more, it's tougher
and tougher to switch away because they've kind of gotten
what you like and what you don't like figured out.
So with that said, one of the reasons, one of
the big reasons I like chat GBT is because they

(52:16):
got web searches, and that was now part of you know,
it's kind of closer to what Google does. You can
get real time web search results. Well, now Claude has that.
So Claude AI now has web search access, letting you
pull in real time information from the Internet so you
can check current events, you know, do product comparisons, financial
data research. It also provides direct citations so you can

(52:37):
fact check sources, so instead of having to go through
the search results yourself will it will show you exactly
why it got that information. So this is available now
for paid claud users in the US. Free users will
get it soon. So if you want to use it,
you can toggle on web search in your profile settings
and then Claude will search the web when necessary, similar

(53:00):
to what chat Gibt does. Anyway, Claude got some real
time web search eight eight eight rich one on one

Speaker 3 (53:10):
More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking
technology with you at Triple eight rich one on one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. If you got a question about technology, give
me a call. We'll get back to those phone lines
in just a moment. If you want to link to
something I mentioned, go to the website rich on Tech
dot TV. Take very good show notes and anything I

(53:36):
talk about is linked up right there. All right, we
got an interesting guest to talk technology today, Mark Anthony
Arena calls himself the computer Exorcist computer Exorcist, thecomputer Exorcist
dot com author, podcaster and speaker Mark. I was going
Marc Anthony. I was going through some you go by
Mark or Marc Anthony either way, Okay, Mark, So I was,

(53:59):
I was going through some of your talks. You sent
me one of the talks you recently did, and it's
it's a little jarring for people because you kind of
take a very different approach to this stuff. And well,
first off, just kind of how'd you get the name
computer exercist?

Speaker 9 (54:14):
You know, it's a great question. This stuff just it
acts possessed, right, All of this stuff acts possessed. It
has a mind of its own. It does whatever it wants.
So I thought, what an app's name, what a way
to describe it? And people go, wow, that makes so
much sense. My technology does whatever it wants.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
That is my favorite quote. When people tell me it
just did this by itself. That's always like to me,
like it seems like it does. And yes, sometimes things do,
but there's usually a fix for things.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
Sometimes not.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
But first off, you say that viruses stopped happening in
twenty thirteen, explain and what you think the real threats
are to computer users today.

Speaker 10 (54:53):
I've been doing this job twelve hours a day since
two thousand and nine, and I have not seen a
tradition old virus in a residential setting since twenty thirteen.

Speaker 9 (55:05):
There are new threats.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
Out there, all right.

Speaker 10 (55:07):
Doesn't mean there are no threats out there. There are
just new ones that are far beyond traditional viruses. So
if you are paying for some antivirus product, that means
it's a beautiful waste of seventy bucks a year down
the toilet and it slows down your computer down to molasses.

Speaker 9 (55:23):
Sometimes slows your computer down by ninety.

Speaker 10 (55:25):
Percent, And you bring it to the store and they say, oh,
your computer's old, it's slow.

Speaker 9 (55:29):
Put it in the garbage.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
Yeah. Well, we live in an economy where people, you know,
a world where everything is tossable. So you don't think
viruses are big iss You don't think people feel good
about having that protection. Is that really what the whole
business and industry is built upon?

Speaker 9 (55:44):
Exactly?

Speaker 10 (55:45):
It's all a false sense of security. That's what you're
paying the money for. You're just rubbing dollar bills all
over your computer and hoping that it helps.

Speaker 4 (55:52):
Right.

Speaker 10 (55:53):
Everything in my industry is myth rumor legend, hearsay and superstition.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
But I mean, so what to our people up against.
I mean, we just heard a person who is scammed
by a text message out of like thousands of dollars.
Do you think like phishing emails like that kind of
stuff is really where the scams are these days?

Speaker 9 (56:09):
There's four new threats. Number one is legalized malware.

Speaker 10 (56:15):
Okay, the bad guys realize something, right, Let's say, rich,
Let's say you and I want to rob a bank.
So we go over to the bank and we walk
in and we say, hey, everyone, stick them up.

Speaker 9 (56:23):
We're the plumbers.

Speaker 10 (56:25):
If we don't say we're bank robbers, we say we're plumbers,
we get away with it.

Speaker 9 (56:29):
That's exactly what's happening here. So if I'm evil.

Speaker 10 (56:32):
And we want to create some kind of malicious software,
we get an evil secretary and an evil water cooler,
an evil fish tank, and we create an evil company,
and we can call it a cleaner, an optimizer, a toolbar,
or a customer participation program.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Interesting, so you think all those things are just ways
of getting information off of people.

Speaker 9 (56:56):
It's fully legal, so no virus scanner can ever find it.

Speaker 10 (57:00):
In your computer to a dude and he does a
virus scan, it means he hasn't had updated training.

Speaker 9 (57:04):
It's like if you go to the doctor and your
doctor says, hey, rich, do you have bubonic plague? No?
All right, well then that's really that's all I know
how to handle. So that's all I can help you with.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
So okay, so talk about you kind of mentioned this earlier,
but the idea of like being forced to upgrade unnecessarily,
So how long do you think a computer should last?

Speaker 10 (57:26):
That's so that's my second new threat, right, I talk
about the four new threats, So updates are my second
new threat. I have coined the term update attack to
describe what's happening. Updates come from the publisher, right, whatever
big tech company you bought the product from. The updates
are from the publisher, and they mean well, right, they
claim that they're going to patch something that they forgot

(57:47):
to fix when they sold it to you, so they
let it's it's always something like you'll hear it on
the news. Right. Smartphone users are encouraged to update because
if you don't update, we discover that a guy in
Siberia wearing a green shirt on a Wednesday, and it's
eight fifteen.

Speaker 9 (58:04):
And a high tide and a new moon cold to
get into your computer.

Speaker 10 (58:09):
So it's some astronomically unlikely situation that they're worried about.
And what happens you.

Speaker 9 (58:15):
Apply the update?

Speaker 10 (58:16):
And there are a lot of side effects, right, what
happens after every update?

Speaker 9 (58:21):
What do people experience?

Speaker 1 (58:22):
It's slow, it crashes, It doesn't do the same thing
that you used to want exactly.

Speaker 10 (58:29):
It scrambles the thing like scrambled eggs. It rearranges everything,
and I can't.

Speaker 9 (58:33):
Find I used to be able to do this, and
I don't know what happened.

Speaker 10 (58:35):
And other's an update, and it slows your machine down dramatically, right,
And that's convenient, right, because all of a sudden, Oh
you know what, my phone's kind of slow.

Speaker 9 (58:44):
It's a year old. I'll just put it in the
garbage and buy another one.

Speaker 10 (58:48):
And it usually it fixes one thing and it might
break ten other things.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Do you remember I actually defended Apple for years and
I was very angry at this. People would say, oh,
my battery, you know, my phone feels like it's slowing down,
slowing down after the software update, said, no, that's silly.
It doesn't it gets better and all of a sudden,
Apple comes out and he said, oh, by the way, yeah,
we were throttling phones because we wanted them to be
smooth and have a good user experience as they got older.

(59:13):
I'm like, oh, wait, so hold on, you were kind
of lying all these years to me.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
Yes, they were.

Speaker 9 (59:19):
I've been saying this for years.

Speaker 10 (59:20):
I was on AMFM radio for ten years and now
I do the podcast, and I've been saying it since
twenty twelve, since I've been on any kind of talk shows,
and it's yeah, all of these updates again, they might
mean well, they claim to help you, but they do
massive amounts of damage.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
All right, what about these fake tech support calls? You know,
people get scammed. These happen all the time. People google
a phone number, they call it, they get scammed. So
how do you think someone could spot one of these
scams quickly?

Speaker 10 (59:47):
And that's new threat number three. It's called the support scam.
There's four ways you can get one. Either you go
on the internet and search I need Outlook tech support,
I need Aol tech support, I need whatever tech support,
or a guy gives you a phone call out of
the blue, because they're calling every number one at a time,
Or you get a scary email that says geek squad

(01:00:07):
invoice and it's from Cindi Luhu at aol dot.

Speaker 9 (01:00:10):
Com or something preposterous.

Speaker 10 (01:00:13):
Or you get a scary pop up right that full
screen message on your screen and their sirens going off
because they know senior citizens can't lower their volume, and
there's loud noises and it says warning you have trojans
and cookies and viruses and North Koreans and oh my,
the sky is falling. So those are the four ways
you can get a support scam. If you get the

(01:00:35):
guy on the phone, then they give you a litany
of scary sentences. That's all it is, folks, it's scary sentences.
Your anti virus product can't protect you against a dude
on the phone saying scary words, can it. So the
trick is here. Just hang up on the guy and

(01:00:55):
whatever you do, don't let him into your computer. As
long as you hang up on the guy and ignore him,
you're fine. If you let him into your computer, that's
when you're in trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
All right, Well, we finally, what's the one piece of
tech advice you wish every senior or non techie would
know is.

Speaker 9 (01:01:14):
All this stuff can last ten years.

Speaker 10 (01:01:16):
You don't need a new one when the store tells
you to buy a new one. I make buy money
by saving people money instead of like pushing products and
services on you. So in order to prove a point,
I use computers that are at least ten years old.

Speaker 9 (01:01:29):
I have three laptops, my personal laptops. They're from twenty
twelve and twenty fifteen.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
That's wild. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Okay, well here I am trying to upgrade again after
a year, but I guess I will stop. But I
do tell people that, look, you can. You know, I
don't recommend you upgrade unless there's one hundred percent need
to do that. And by the way, you can get
a lot of life out of a computer with the
chromos Flex.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
Do you recommend that at all for people?

Speaker 10 (01:01:54):
Yeah, if the machine is more than ten years old
and you just want it as a travel machine or
you want to give it to your kids, sure you
can put chrome os flex. That's pretty easy for a
moderately experienced tech guy to do. I personally love a
product called Mint. It's a lot more powerful. So it's
not Windows, it's not Mac it's not Chrome. It's a

(01:02:16):
fourth thing called Mint, and it looks just like Windows seven,
so there's no learning curve. And I put it on
ten year old computers and people just don't have problems anymore.
Instead of milking people for fees, I just don't have
problems anymore.

Speaker 9 (01:02:31):
I solve all their problems.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
Is that the Linux Mint?

Speaker 9 (01:02:35):
Yes? But I never say that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
I was gonna say.

Speaker 9 (01:02:37):
The computer guy told me Linux is scary.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
Right, sounds way too scary for the apportrition. Okay, hold on,
so we got through the updates, the update attacks, and
the support scam.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
What's the fourth do we get to the fourth?

Speaker 9 (01:02:48):
The fourth one is ransomware? Okay right?

Speaker 10 (01:02:50):
Where something walks into your computer like a hot knife
through butter. It scrambles your documents and photos and then
begs you for a ton of money in ransom.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
How do you stay away from that?

Speaker 10 (01:03:00):
Don't usevite yourself, Windows and Heaven forbid outlook. But all
you really need to do is a real proper backup.
You duplicate your documents and photos onto an external hard drive,
and then you disconnect the external hard drive.

Speaker 9 (01:03:16):
It's crazy.

Speaker 10 (01:03:17):
How seventy six percent of organizations end up.

Speaker 9 (01:03:21):
Paying huge amounts of ransom because.

Speaker 10 (01:03:23):
The guys they hire to protect them do not understand
how to do that basic concept. You do a backup,
you disconnect it, you put it in a fire safe.

Speaker 9 (01:03:32):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
And then if your computer gets compromised, you just restore
that backup. You erase the computer, restore the backup. Marc
Anthony Arena, The Computer Exorcist dot Com. Fun to talk
to you. This was excellent. Hopefully you'll come on the
show again and share some more insights. Really appreciate you
joining me today. Thank you all right, The Computer Exorcist
dot com. I will link it up on my website.

(01:03:55):
Richon Tech dot TV eight eight eight rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four to two four to
one zero one.

Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
Uh coming up.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
I got a message that my HP Instant eight prices
are going up, so I did a little comparison. The
biggest time to maybe jump ship. I'll tell you what
that means. Coming up right here on rich On Tech.
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one
oh one eight eight eight seven four to two, four

(01:04:27):
to one zero one. Getting a lot of emails about
the uh. The person that got scammed earlier, Connor Daryl
writes in the caller that lost five thousand dollars should
consider taking further action. The question is, and this is
what Bobo and I were saying, how did the scammer
get his transaction history from the bank. That is what

(01:04:47):
we wondered, because all the other stuff, you know, you
could see how they how they did that, how they
orchestrated it. But how did the bank know about his transactions?
The only way I can think of is that they
somehow had access to his account account history. Daryl says
the bank failed to exercise due diligence in protecting his
account information. He should file complaints with various banking agencies

(01:05:09):
and consider filing a small claims action. Remind listeners not
to respond to calls, but to call the phone number
on the back of the credit card, debit card ATM
or the one on your statement. Yes, Daryl says, I
got a call from my credit card about fraud of
my card. They left a phone number to call. I
called the number on the card and they transferred me
to the fraud group. The number turns out to be legitimate.

(01:05:31):
The fraud rep said, I did the right thing. Yeah,
never call back to the phone number. And especially with
all these transcriptions that the phones do now in your voicemail,
they make it really easy, right, It's like, oh, fraud department,
and the phone numbers like highlighted. You can just call
it right back. You can tap it. Do not do
that when in doubt. Go to the back of your card.

(01:05:52):
Anytime you have a problem, Go to the back of
your card. Call the number on the back of the card.
Go to your statement, and by the way, you should
be printed out. You know, I have a binder. You
should probably do this as well, a binder with like
print out your statements, one from every account that you have,
so you have the account numbers on there. You've got
the phone numbers. And I know that you're gonna say,

(01:06:13):
rich Oh my gosh, that sounds like a security nightmare.
I mean, it's in your house. Put it in a
safe place. I don't know what to say. You know,
if something, if if everything went to hell tomorrow and
we lost imagine you know, your bank tomorrow like somehow
gets hacked or whatever and everything goes away, and like, well,
what was your bank account number?

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
I don't know. Well, how much did you have in there?
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
I mean, what would you do? Okay, well let's start
with this number. Do you have this account number?

Speaker 4 (01:06:39):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
I don't have that either. Well, I mean literally, we
don't know any of this stuff. We do not know
any of this stuff. So print out a statement for
all of your important accounts. What's your car insurance policy number?

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
I mean, what's your vein number on your car? I
don't know. I mean you don't know any of this stuff.
Nobody does. So print it out, go through, take one
day a year. Get a binder, go to office depot,
get a binder, right, and then go through every single
account you have, your your financial accounts, your investment accounts,
your credit card accounts, your bank accounts, your life insurance accounts,

(01:07:16):
your all of your major accounts. Right, and go through
and print out the latest statement and put that in
the binder. Get a three hole punch if you have
to use the one at work, if you have to,
put it in this binder and just have it. And
if something ever happens, you have a record of your
accounts and a little snapshot in time of what was

(01:07:36):
going on. In those accounts. It makes sense. I know,
I'm the tech guy. I'm telling you all about the technology,
and I love tech, but sometimes we have to go
low tech to protect ourselves from the high tech. And
that's what you have to do. And so if anything
were to happen to all your accounts and they're wiped
off the face of the earth, and your bank says, well, hey, bobo,
just tell me how much you had in your account

(01:07:57):
and what your account number is and we'll restore it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
Oh I don't remember, I don't know a million dollars. Yeah, exactly,
start with that. MS start high, but.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
Start you know, you're showing the account. Oh, here's what
I had, here's my last snapshot. You know, let's let's
work with this. Let's start with that. So again, it's
just protecting ourselves. Do it, do it once a year,
and just update it, you know, and maybe throw in,
you know, something like any important access information. If something
were to happen to you, people can understand, you know,
where they can go, your loved ones to kind of

(01:08:27):
recover some of this stuff. I know it sounds very
low tech, and yes, please protect that binder. Hopefully have
some sort of safe in your home or you can
put that fireproof safe. But it's just to you know,
if any if you ever had to like recover all
this stuff, you'd find it very tough without having any
of it. HP instant Ink prices are going up in April.

(01:08:48):
So I've had this HP instant Ink subscription. H I
don't like it, but I pay for it because it's easy.
And the thing to know about it, and this is
what kept me there is that once you're on the
HP instant inc as far as I know, you can't
just stop and use the ink cartridges that they sent
you and leave them in your printer. No, those don't

(01:09:09):
work anymore when you stop, when you get off the merry,
go round the carousel, and you say, no, I'm gonna
stop paying for this. You got to get new ink cartridges.
So for me it was like, you know, over one
hundred dollars, I'm like, wait, I gotta spend all this money.
So starting April eighteenth, the instant ink price is going up.
So you can pause, you can downgrade, you can cancel

(01:09:30):
at any time if you want. So the new they
also introduced a new twenty five page plan at three
dollars forty nine cents a month. So if you just
have you know, a couple of pages you need to
print a month, that's not bad, right, three dollars fifty cents.
But I would compare the price of a cartridge to
how much you're spending on this service, and I did
some math, So I looked at the three pack of

(01:09:51):
color cartridges that's about seventy three dollars that lasts for
seven hundred pages of color. Then you can get the
Excel Black cartridge for fifty four dollars that lasts about
two two thousand pages. So it depends on how much
you print. Basically, I've decided on whether this costs you
money or saves you money. Right, so go to your
account on HP and see how much you're spending on

(01:10:12):
your printing or how much you're printing every month. So,
by the way, these are the new plans. One hundred
pages a month seven ninety nine, three hundred pages a
month sixteen dollars, five hundred pages twenty three to ninety nine.
So basically the bottom line is it's cheaper if you
print a lot of color, like a ton of color
pages every month, it's probably cheaper to go with the

(01:10:33):
HP instant ink plan. If you're only printing black and white,
or you're not printing very much, or you're printing a
ton rather, it's probably better to go with the cartridge.
So roughly, if you're buying cartridges, color is about ten
cents per page, black is about three cents per page,
and then if you look at HP instant ink, it's

(01:10:55):
about five cents per page whether you're printing black or white.
So bottom line is, if you're printing a lot of color,
probably better to go with the subscription. If you're printing
a lot of black and white, it's probably better just
to buy your coverage or buy your ink cartridges. I'll
probably be canceling that at this point. I wish I
could go back to my laser. I had an old
brother laser printer. I love that thing. Dirt cheap at

(01:11:17):
the ink cartridge last forever. The laser toner that my
kids wanted. Color HP is like a razor. They sell
you the printer for like five bucks. The razor blades
are like ten thousand dollars. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology. Getting a lot of emails

(01:11:38):
about these fraudulent transactions. We talked to the guy about
his cash app. He had a bunch of issues there.
Scams are happening. They are happening every day, all day.
It is quite unbelievable, Randy says, your caller with using
the cash app is a perfect example of why I
tell people not to do financial applications on your phone,

(01:12:01):
maybe except when you're at home and on your Wi Fi,
doing on your computer, not your phone. You know, I
actually don't agree with that. I think that you're fine
on your phone. Actually, I think your phone is in
many cases more secure than your computer because if you're
on an iPhone or an Android, you know, a lot
of those times, especially iPhone, everything's sandboxed, so if you're

(01:12:21):
opening up your app, no other app can interact with
your banking app on your phone. So I actually think
it's quite secure on your phone, and I have no
problem recommending that. The main thing and I do tell
people is do not use Wi Fi public Wi Fi
when you're doing any sort of secure transaction. So if

(01:12:44):
you are doing any sort of banking transactions, or even
if it's highly secure email transactions, things like that, I
always recommend that you use just your cellular connection. So
when you're on your phone, your cellular connection between your
phone and your cellular carrier is a very secure connection,
much more secure than Wi Fi. So when in doubt,

(01:13:06):
just toggle off the Wi Fi and make sure you're
not using Wi Fi and actually go into It's weird
because on the iPhone, if you're toggling Wi Fi off
in your control center, which is when you swipe from
the right, that actually does not turn Wi Fi off.
It just disconnects you from the current Wi Fi network.
So if you actually want to turn off Wi Fi
for sure on your phone, you have to go into

(01:13:28):
your settings and where it says Wi Fi, you have
to toggle it off there, and that way it will
physically turn off the Wi Fi on your actual device
versus just toggling just disconnecting from.

Speaker 3 (01:13:40):
The network you're on.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
But Randy, look, it's always good for people to kind
of understand what they're up against and understand how to
stay secure when you're doing any sort of transaction that's sensitive,
which is usually financial. The other thing is, if you're
using a VPN, make sure you trust that VPN because
that's basically a middleman between you and whatever you're doing,

(01:14:02):
and so just be very careful that you trust that VPN,
especially if it's a free one. I would pay for
it if you're going to use one, and make sure
it's from a company that you like. By the way,
if you're a T mobile customer, speaking of wireless, if
you have the te Life app, you know that's the
one that gives you like flee, free slurpees and all that.
Those like two mobile perks that customers get. This is

(01:14:24):
Temo report says, check the app because you might be
getting a free phone line with almost no strings attached.
And they said that this is a perk that's not
been given out for over two years, but select customers
can open up the app and it's targeted for your account.
So basically, I don't know what the reasoning is, why
you're getting it, why someone else isn't, But it's a
loyalty kind of perk, and so you might get a

(01:14:47):
completely free phone line. It's just a one time ten
dollars device connection charge. You have to bring your own device,
no financing allowed and not available if you already have
two or more free lines but or maxed out lines
twelve lines, so anyway, check it out. If you want
a free line from T Mobile and you're a customer,
check out the Tea Life app and see you might

(01:15:07):
be eligible for one. I know last time we had
this deal, it was like Verizon had something where if
you open up the app, they would give you like
ten dollars off a month. I took advantage of that
worked pretty well. Let's go to Bob in Los Angeles.

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
Bob, you're on with rich Oh hi Hei.

Speaker 14 (01:15:23):
So I'm calling in regards to I have about four
Apple arm or Mac laptops that I've been you know,
over the years I've on's either stopped working or I'm
upgrading and so forth. But I've never got rid of
them because I don't know this the best way to
wipe the hard drive before I, you know, take it

(01:15:44):
to eway so that information. I know, you can do
a resep but it doesn't wipe it. What's the best way.

Speaker 8 (01:15:50):
Of doing it?

Speaker 14 (01:15:51):
I asked my son, who's a graphics specialist that has
a lot of computers over the year, and I asked
him what he did. He says, oh, I just smash
it everything with a hammer. Well, I don't want to
do that, particularly, I don't want to hit a with
them battery and so forth. So I did here years
ago people recommending use a strong earth magnet to either

(01:16:13):
life or scramble or something. But I really have no
idea what I'm supposed to do.

Speaker 3 (01:16:17):
I don't think that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
I don't I don't think that's probably the best solution.
And yes, there are there are some you know. Yes,
at the end of the day, you can drive a
screw through the drive if you're you know, or a
bit whatever you want to do with your you know,
with your drill, but I don't really recommend doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:16:36):
That's probably not the best way to do it.

Speaker 9 (01:16:37):
So you're right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
So in general, I would say unless you are dealing
with like government files and things like that. For ninety
nine percent of people, the you know, there are instructions
on Apple's website on what to do before you you know,
give your Mac away and the newest Max. There's two
ways to do it. Basically, the Newest Max it's very simple.

(01:16:58):
It's just like the iPhone where it's like erase all
content in settings, so you can do that very simply.
The other way to do it, if you have an
older Mac, which is an Intel based Mac. You have
to use the disc utility and so you use that
to erase it and reinstall Mac os, and then they
also tell you if you're using an Intel based Mac,

(01:17:20):
there are some steps to reset the env RAM and
so you can do that, which this clears user settings
for memory and restore certain security related features.

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):
Now here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
What you're saying is that even after you do this,
there might be fragments of files that could be recovered.
And that could be true. So what some people might
do is actually just erase the Mac again, and I
think for ninety nine percent of people that's probably going
to be sufficient. But if you're still worried, then you'd
have to turn to like a third party app and

(01:17:53):
just looking online at a couple. I've used a couple
over the years, but there's it's been a while I
did this because now I just kind of erase it
a couple of times. But there is one that gets
good reviews. It's called Let's see do your Data super Eraser?
So that one and you can do that because it

(01:18:13):
will it offers military and government data erasure standards to
permanently erase data and prevent potential data recovery. So again
I don't think everyone needs to do this. I think
that the standard erasing on the built in operating system
will be fine for ninety nine percent of people, whether
you're on Mac or Windows. But again, if you do
have some secure stuff, you do that twice and that

(01:18:35):
should be better. But you know, when hard drives are erased,
they're not actually erased. It's more like they take away
the directions that tell you where to find those files.
So someone with the right software might be able to
go through and actually recover some of the files on
those computers. There's also one called shred os and this
is believe this one's for Windows, So that's that's for

(01:18:57):
Windows if you're trying to do that. And then where's
the other one that I saw that I liked? H
oh yeah, this one actually used which was pretty good.
It was called disc drill, and that one was great.
It helped me reinstall the operating system and apparently they
can also help you wipe as well. Now, some of

(01:19:18):
these are going to charge you, so you may have
to charge you could look for you can look for
some open source software.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
So typically what I do is I type in what.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
I want to use, So let's say disc drill, and
so they usually have At this alternative two dot net website,
you can type in software and it will give you
the software that's similar that's open source. And so if
you want like an open source disc wiping utility, you
can look in.

Speaker 3 (01:19:44):
There as well. So there are a million and one
ways of doing this.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
I have talked to a lot of the services that
recycle computers, like especially if you go to any of
the big companies like a Staples or a best Buy
or an Apple or any of these services, you know
they have systems in place where they say, look, you know,
because not everyone's super techy, they're just dropping this stuff
off to get recycled. They will say, hey, look we
will take care of it. We will make sure that

(01:20:11):
nobody can you know that we will erase your stuff
responsibly before we do anything with it. And if you
have a you know, worse comes to worse. If you
bring your computer there and the hard drive is encrypted
and you have a password on that computer, worst comes
to worse. If you put your trust into these companies,
you know, they theoretically can't get into that computer anyway.

(01:20:31):
But I would at the very least. I'm not saying
you should bring it with your password and all that stuff.
I would at the very least wipe your computer at
the operating system level, just to at least have it,
you know, cleaned off.

Speaker 5 (01:20:45):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
I do remember I brought my computer in one time
twice actually, where they asked for the password on the
device and I was like, I just laughed in their face.
I was like, I'm not giving you the password to
my device, no way. And they're like, all right, well
we may have to wipe the hard drive then if
we don't have that, Yeah, you can wipe hard drive again.
It goes back to what our computer exercist said, make
a backup of things that will save you so many headaches.

(01:21:07):
If your computer hard drive goes out tomorrow and crashes completely,
if you have a backup of your important files, you'll
be fine. You just reinstall, you know, get a new
hard drive, reinstall the operating system, copy over the files,
and you're done. But it's when you don't have a
backup is when you have problems. And there are so

(01:21:27):
many ways you can do backups. For me personally, I
don't need a full complete backup of my entire system
because I don't keep anything on my system. I keep
it all in the cloud, so I need a backup
of my cloud networks, but I don't need a backup
of my actual system. If my computer, if the card
drive crash tomorrow, yeah I'd be annoying, but I would
just reinstall Dropbox, reinstall Google Drive, reinstall Evernoe, go to

(01:21:50):
my Google and yeah, everything would be there. So unless
you have a big collection of photos on your computer
that you don't have backed up somewhere, which by the way,
that should never be the case, or a music collection or.

Speaker 3 (01:22:03):
Something, you know, just make a backup.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
And we talked last week with kimber Streams from a Wirecutter,
and all they said is just go into the file
history on Windows, or go into time Machine on Mac.
It's built into the operating system. Go get a hard drive.
Just go get a hard drive from best Buy or
wherever or online, Seagate, Amazon, Just buy the hard drive

(01:22:26):
a terabyte, two terabytes, it's like sixty bucks. Plug it
into your computer. Now, if your computer doesn't say, hey,
do you want to use this as a backup drive,
then just go into file history on Windows or go
into time Machine on Mac and just set it say hey,
this is my backup. Or you can go to an
online service and just use that to back up your

(01:22:49):
whole computer.

Speaker 3 (01:22:50):
It's very, very simple. It's just most people don't take
the time to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one the website rich
tech dot tv. Coming up later this hour, we're gonna
talk to the founder of the app death clock about
how to use an AI to predict when you might die.

Speaker 3 (01:23:08):
Yeah, scary stuff. This is rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (01:23:12):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology.
Coming up this hour, we've got the founder of the
death clock app. Yeah, I think it scares you into
being healthy. I say that as I eat my U
vanilla cake bread. It's vegan though, that makes it healthy, right,

(01:23:32):
isn't anything that's like vegan healthy?

Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
No? No, well it's just loaded with sugar some stuff, Yes,
some stuff. Some vegan stuff has a lot of sugar.

Speaker 9 (01:23:42):
Add it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
Here's actually how you know when something's unhealthy for you,
Like if you buy a bag of like candy, it'll
it'll highlight the least bad thing for you. It'd be
like fat free. But it doesn't mention that it has
like two percent of your sugar in.

Speaker 3 (01:23:57):
That bag or how much sodium is in it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:00):
I mean, it's just yeah, I'd be like, I'd be
like low low trans fats. You're like, oh great, but
one hundred percent cholesterol whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:24:09):
This is a side story.

Speaker 15 (01:24:11):
I'm not going to say the name of the restaurant,
but me and my trainer went to eat at a
vegetarian spot because he's vegetarian. And he told him like, hey,
I think it'd be a good idea if you guys
put like the nutritional values of each thing, the protein,
the calories like all that.

Speaker 3 (01:24:27):
He was like, yeah, no, we're not going to do that. Yeah,
because it's bad for you. Yeah.

Speaker 15 (01:24:31):
Well yeah, he was like, well this last and that
was the last time we ever went to our restaurant.

Speaker 3 (01:24:35):
I was two years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:24:36):
Again, just because something is vegan or vegetarian does not
mean it's healthy. It just means it is vegan or vegetarian.
I mean a vegan a vegetarian meal could be a
casadia that's vegetarian. Sheese and a shit and by the way,
she's you know, so I get it, but but I
always think it's funny, like and he just look at

(01:24:56):
the store when you go to the store next next time,
just look at all the unk food and just look
at the whatever's highlighted on the front of the drunk food.
It'll be like, you know, no artificial colors, but it's
like everything else is horrible for you in it.

Speaker 3 (01:25:09):
So uh okay.

Speaker 1 (01:25:10):
So we're getting a lot of a lot, not a lot,
but enough people questioning. Some people are supporting Connor talking about,
you know, how bad it is that this happened to him.
Other people are questioning whether he's legitimate, and so let
me just speak to that for a moment.

Speaker 3 (01:25:24):
Number One, he did not come to me.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):
I heard his story through a friend and he told me, Hey,
I know this guy that this happened to, and that
was unprompted.

Speaker 3 (01:25:34):
It wasn't like that guy came to me.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
So my point is it was like there's like three
levels of like, no, this guy did not seek out
to come on a radio show and talk about this
so that he could, you know, get us to go fundme.
So it's nothing to do with that at all. I
came to him and I said, hey, would you mind
sharing your story on the radio because I heard this
happen to you, and I think it could help other people.

(01:26:00):
So if you're wondering if he's legit, Yes, he's legit,
so I would not worry about that aspect of it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
Let's go to Rod in Montana. Rod, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 2 (01:26:12):
Hi, Rich, and thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 3 (01:26:14):
Yeah, that's up.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
I'm looking for a replacement for Skype. I've been using it.
It's in some of my advertising and stuff going back
to twenty ten the number, and I'm not wanting to
lose that number, and really does what I need to
do because I'm I travel a lot, I'm all over

(01:26:37):
the world. I've got I'll make international calls all over
the world, so I need to be able to dial
out to a number that isn't a member of whatever
organization is there. I want to port my number off.

Speaker 3 (01:26:53):
Well that's a question.

Speaker 1 (01:26:54):
So have you been in contact with Skype, because as
far as I can tell, I'm not sure there's a
way to port that number.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
They will release the number to you, they.

Speaker 3 (01:27:03):
Will, ye. Okay, how did you find that information?

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
I googled it?

Speaker 3 (01:27:10):
Okay, well, yes, so did I.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
But it's there's nothing official. There's there's nothing official that
I can find. I found one person I think It
was on Reddit that said that they were able to
do it. But I you know, you would think if this,
if Skype would allow you to port that number, they
would have an official help page on porting that number.
So my question is what did you find for Like,

(01:27:33):
you know, when you poured out a phone number, you
need some sort of account number or code. Did you
find what that would be with Skype?

Speaker 2 (01:27:42):
No, because I haven't figured out where I'm going to move.

Speaker 3 (01:27:45):
Okay, got it? So you haven't gotten for first? Okay,
well I would.

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
I don't want to waste my time because I can't.
It turns out I can't.

Speaker 3 (01:27:52):
Port it right.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
Well, you may, you may find that you might not
be able to. But here's my question. What are you
trying to do with this with this phone number? So
let's say, like like, are you making calls out? Do
people call you? Call you on it?

Speaker 2 (01:28:07):
I've got about five things so that I would like
it to do. But I'm currently doing with Scott. I
pay to use their dial out so I can call
anybody that's not just to have a Skype number, I
can still call.

Speaker 1 (01:28:20):
It rod I'm getting I'm getting the uh, They're they're
playing me off here? How is that such a short segment.
I got to take this. Uh hang on the line,
okay eighty eight. Sorry. Coming up, we're going to talk
about the death clock app rich on Tech dot TV.

Speaker 3 (01:28:36):
We'll be right back. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
We're just doing the robot in here. Why not.

Speaker 1 (01:28:43):
We have a lot of fun here on the show.
So I talked to Rod Off off air.

Speaker 3 (01:28:49):
He's in Montana.

Speaker 1 (01:28:50):
He's looking for a Skype replacement, and so he said
he had five tenants that he needed for his his
new replacement to do, which is dial out numbers. You
had to be able to port a phone number in,
use it with a VPN, accept SMS two factor authentication codes,
and then also be able to dial out for international calls.

(01:29:12):
And I said, I'm pretty sure that Google Voice checks
all of those boxes. So I've had Google Voice since
day one. It used to be called Grand Central. It
was a startup. Google bought them in about three days
after they started, and it was at the beginning, Google
Voice was a way to have one phone number. This
is back in the day when we had landlines and

(01:29:33):
a work phone number and a cell phone number. So
the idea is that you would call this Grand central
number and it would ring all those phones at the
same time. Now, of course we all have a cell
phone and that's pretty much our primary device. We don't
need that functionality. But Google Voice still has a lot
of great features baked in, and I think, Rod, it's
going to do all those things that you need. I

(01:29:53):
think the biggest trick is going to be poorting your
number out from Skype. I've not heard of a successful
story on that yet. So maybe now that it's going away,
we'll hear about how people can do that, and I
might have to email Skype and ask them what the
functionality is there. All right, thanks for the call. All right,
Now we've got Brent Fransen. He is the founder of

(01:30:14):
an app called death Clock. We talked about it on
the show before. Now he's joining us to talk about
what this app is all about. Welcome to the show, Brent.

Speaker 5 (01:30:23):
Thanks for having me Rich.

Speaker 1 (01:30:25):
Yeah, so when I first saw this, I didn't know
if it was a joke or not. It's not a joke,
so this is a real app that you created. Explain
what the app does?

Speaker 16 (01:30:35):
Yeah, I mean the basic summary is we tell you
when you're going to die, and then we help you
live longer. What that means is you answer twenty nine
questions and we've built a proprietary AI that looks at sleep, diet, exercise,
family history, your answers to the questions, and then we
predict two things. The date of your death, so the

(01:30:58):
AI will predict an exact day eight, and then second
it'll predict how much longer it thinks you can live
if you change, if you change your habits, if you
change the way that you're living your life.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):
This is so wild because it's I know there's been
things online, websites you can go to, you can pop
in some of this information. I'm sure insurance companies all
have this sort of information on the back end, but
to have this in a very friendly consumer facing app,
Like the app has a slick design.

Speaker 3 (01:31:26):
You know, it's free. Well for the base part.

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
We could talk about the paid upgrades later, but what
kind of like what was the impetus on this, Like
why did you want to do this?

Speaker 16 (01:31:37):
I basically I think our health our healthcare system is
more of a sick care system. I grew up around
a lot of addiction, and so I've got a lot
of disdain for the just the reactive nature of our
healthcare system, and so I've been very focused on building
technology that helps people manage the way that they're living
their lives so that they can have better lives and

(01:31:58):
longer lives and kind of fit in for the gap
that we've gotten healthcare system. Our healthcare system is great
if you get hit by a car, or you get
diagnosed with cancer or something, if you're being if you're
broken and being fixed in some way, but it's not
good at preventing us from getting disease in the first place.
And so I've been very focused on trying to build
technology that helps people do that.

Speaker 5 (01:32:20):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:32:20):
When I first shared this app on TV and later
the radio, people are like, well, is it just a
data grab? Is you just trying to get all your
personal information? I said, I don't think so, because the
core functionality to get that life expectancy, that death date,
you don't really have to give up much personal information.
It's not asking you for your blood type or anything,
or even your social or your I don't even think

(01:32:40):
it asked for your email address. It just asked for
like your name and your age. And then you answer
these questions, right, Yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:32:46):
That's right, it's name, age, You answer the twenty nine questions,
and yeah, we don't sell the data. I mean our goal,
what we're really building is what we would call an
AI health concierge. But basically the longer, the top factor
that determines how long you're going to live is how
much money you have, and the top one percent live
on average fifteen years longer than the bottom one percent.

(01:33:10):
There's a whole bunch of reasons for that, but the
top reason is just you have access to better healthcare.
So if you're really wealthy of a private doc who
can give you preventive health care the way that you
want it. So the business model, back to your question,
is not to sell the data. It is to say, hey,
you know you're going to live to seventy five. The
way you're living your life today, we think you can.
In the AI thinks you could live to ninety two,

(01:33:32):
and we've trained an AI to help you live to
ninety two. We don't want to see you go to
seventy five. So that's how we try to make money,
and that's what you pay for. You don't pay for
the prediction, but you would pay and you'd get a
free trial for the AI health concierge.

Speaker 1 (01:33:45):
So how do you know if you're successful with this? Like, obviously,
I mean this is brand new. It's not like you
have data to tell like if you're right on these numbers. Like,
how do you tell if you're right?

Speaker 16 (01:33:56):
Well, we are able to use a whole bunch of
existing data to tell us if for right. So we've
got actuarial data. We've trained the AI on about twelve
hundred longevity studies, and then there's the data that that
you input their CDC data, et cetera. And then we've
taken data sets from people who we know have died

(01:34:17):
and we know something about and you can kind of
retroactively train the data set and test whether or not
your predictions are accurate. So we believe it's the most
accurate death date prediction in the world. But what's more
important than the prediction of when you're going to die
is can we help you do the things that are
going to help you live longer.

Speaker 5 (01:34:35):
You know, get the.

Speaker 16 (01:34:36):
Cancer screenings, take the supplements, you know, go talk to
your doctor about the things that are most likely to
kill you, and you know, take action so those things
don't get you.

Speaker 5 (01:34:48):
That's where we're really focused on. Doing well.

Speaker 16 (01:34:50):
I mean, the mission of the business is to help
one hundred million people live ten years longer, and so
we're very focused on how do we help you do that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:58):
So we're talking about the app death Claw. It's available
for iPhone and Android. The website is deathclock dot co.
You can find a link to it on my website.
Rich on tech dot TV. This is Brent Fransen, the
founder of the app. So what are you finding? What
are you finding in your data with people that are
filling out this information and using this information to determine

(01:35:19):
when they might die?

Speaker 16 (01:35:21):
I think so we're finding a couple of things. So
one is the concept scares people. So people either love
the concept.

Speaker 5 (01:35:28):
And they're drawn to it or they hate it.

Speaker 16 (01:35:30):
It can be scary to think about death, and I
understand that now almost universally, when people go through it,
they find it's fun.

Speaker 5 (01:35:39):
We've taken a pretty lighthearted approach to it, and so
we don't.

Speaker 1 (01:35:41):
Really Yeah, you get to save the date card. By
the way, at the end, it's like your death date
is on a save the date card. I mean that's
you know, a little tongue in cheek humor there.

Speaker 5 (01:35:50):
Yeah, there's a grim reaper flying Okay.

Speaker 16 (01:35:54):
I think the thing that I've been surprised with the
most is that most people don't really know what they
need to do to live a little bit longer. So
we live in this like post Huberman Peter Atier era.
We have these health influencers who are talking about a
lot of really complicated things like should I be doing
something cold plunge every day, or should I be taking
met foreman or should I be getting a full body scan?

(01:36:16):
And people, I think want to do the right things
to stay healthy and live a good and long life,
but they don't really know what to do.

Speaker 5 (01:36:25):
So we create what's called a longevity plan.

Speaker 16 (01:36:28):
But I've just been surprised at how much value there
is and helping people cut through some of the noise
and say, hey, okay, for you a forty three year
old male, here's what matters and here's what doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (01:36:39):
I think this app actually might have pushed me to
get one of these heart calcium tests because I was
wondering about that and I ended up I think I
pretty much went I don't know if this was like
in the back of my mind this app, because I
went through it and I was like, oh my gosh,
this is scary information, Like it's weird. It's information we
all know. We know we're gonna die, But to have

(01:37:00):
a date is in an age is really like eye
opening for something that we all know is going to happen.

Speaker 16 (01:37:08):
Yeah, I feel I feel just knowing the decade in
which you're likely to die. It's not you know, the
math is very simple, even if you just look at
you know, average life expectancy for a male or female
in the US. It's very easy to do that math.
But there's something jarring about saying like, oh, I'm likely
to die in the twenty sixties. And then it's funny

(01:37:29):
you mentioned the calcium scan. That's another one of those things.
There's a whole bunch of really basic things that we
can be doing that in that case, it's a CT
scan that looks at calcification of plaque in the heart.

Speaker 1 (01:37:40):
And by the way, it's about three minutes to do.
I mean, it was so crazy fast.

Speaker 16 (01:37:45):
It's inexpensive, and it can save your life. I mean,
you know, I did it recently and I got a
score of zero. Okay, that's good. I'm in a good place.
But it can save your life. And like, it's kind
of fallen through the cracks and the healthcare system, and
so we've got to be really prove about managing our
health journey.

Speaker 5 (01:38:01):
We don't. We don't have a healthcare system that's going
to do it for us.

Speaker 3 (01:38:04):
No, we certainly don't.

Speaker 1 (01:38:05):
And like you said, it works really well when you're sick,
but the preventative stuff is very tricky.

Speaker 3 (01:38:10):
It's it's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:38:11):
I went to my primary doctor a couple of years
ago and they're like, hey, you know, why, why did
you not come in for your physical? I said, well,
no one ever told me, and I said, you're an adult,
We're not going to tell you. They're like, you have
to make your appointment. And it really like stuck with
me of like, if you want to be healthy, you
need to be in control of what you do and
and you know, question everything. And this calcium scan it's

(01:38:31):
funny because I talked to like a couple people about it,
and I talked to my friend about it and it
actually found a blockage in his heart, and you know,
so it's like it was very Anyway, my point is
we were talking about this stuff and it's like it
does help. And I said, well, don't understand why everyone
doesn't do this, you know, like why isn't this part
of like the system. You know, it depends on insurance

(01:38:52):
and all this, and I guess there's just so much
mystery around healthcare and what's included, what's not included, what
you should do and again and all these people you mentioned.
By the way, I read that book, like the was
like four hour Body many years ago, and it's like
everything is so complicated. Like these people are taking like
a blood test every day of their life. It's like

(01:39:12):
that is not for the average person to be able
to do, or these supplements and things. So, you know,
for the average person, I think what it comes down
to is you're working every day, you're going into a desk,
you're sitting down, you're eating fast, and it's it's tough.
It is tough to be healthy because you have to
make a very concerted effort to do that.

Speaker 5 (01:39:31):
Yeah, we're trying to simplify it. I totally agree.

Speaker 16 (01:39:33):
You know, there's this guy, Brian Johnson who's trying to
basically his whole slogan is not dying on which I
find to be ridiculous. But he's dinner at eleven am
so he can sleep better.

Speaker 3 (01:39:43):
Or whatever, give me a break book.

Speaker 16 (01:39:44):
I've got a wife and kids. I'm not eating dinner
right at eleven am. But there's also a very interesting
post AI moment where I mean a lot of what
we're trying to do is give you a place to
put all of your health data. So if you have
any blood tests on a twenty three in me or whatever,
it is just your basic health profile. We should all
have an AI that's trained on any health data that

(01:40:07):
we have and that just sits around twenty four to
seven and analyzes our data and tries to make it
easy for us to be healthy and live longer. And
this is this wasn't possible pre AI. So you know,
taking the data set that is our unique health profile,
seriously putting it in one place and then having an

(01:40:28):
AI that's trained on it, I think allows all of
us to have basically private doc level experience at a
fraction of the cost.

Speaker 5 (01:40:38):
And that's what we're trying to do.

Speaker 1 (01:40:39):
All right, So scary name helpful app deathclock dot Co.
Brent Fransen, founder of death Clock, thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 3 (01:40:48):
Thank you rich all right eighty.

Speaker 1 (01:40:50):
I'm sorry rich On tech dot tv for the link
to that app. Rich On tech dot TV coming up.
We're going to open up. The feedback is overflowing. I'm
going to read some of the emails, the comments, and
the questions that you sent me this week right here
on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Rich Demiro here talking technology with you, trying to get

(01:41:15):
to the feedbag.

Speaker 9 (01:41:16):
Here.

Speaker 3 (01:41:16):
See if there's anything else I should mention before we
open up the feedbag. Let's just you know what, let's
just get to the feedback.

Speaker 1 (01:41:23):
We got so much in the feedback, We're just gonna
just gonna open it up. Rodney from Tarzana writes in Hey, Rich,
we wanted to use the whisper flow app you mentioned,
but our Norton anti virus showed the website as safe.
But when we downloaded the app, we got a warning
that it was infected with a virus. We quarantined and
deleted it. Any thoughts So I emailed the makers of

(01:41:45):
whisper flow and they did email me back, and they
said that some anti virus programs like Norton, Windows Defender
and Kesperski are flagging the Windows version as a potential
threat because the app requires access to your keyboard and
text boxes. The company says they are working with the
anti virus companies to get that fixed.

Speaker 3 (01:42:04):
So there you go. Hopefully it's a false alarm there.

Speaker 1 (01:42:07):
Bob from Palace Verdes writes in I read your article
on AT and t's new device that's meant to bring
back landline service. It's called AT and T Phone Advanced.
My mom still has AT and T landline and a
house full of wired phones. Many are rotary dial Oh
my gosh. Unfortunately AT and t's device does not support
rotary phones. They could have easily added the circuitry, but

(01:42:28):
chose not to. Well, look, I understand there are probably
not that many rotary phones out there, and so AT
and T this is internet, internet based phone service. They're
trying to help people out that don't have landline service,
or they're trying to get people off landline service. So
I understand that that they didn't put rotary in there,

(01:42:50):
because I mean, come on, how many people? I mean,
they know how many people are using rotary? Is how
it's got to be like less than a tenth of
a percent of people in America using rotary Stoll, But
I get it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:00):
If it's you, I totally understand three people.

Speaker 1 (01:43:03):
Yeah, it would have been nice if AT and T
could use both cellular and home Wi Fi as a
backup option.

Speaker 3 (01:43:09):
I think they can.

Speaker 1 (01:43:11):
Lastly, specifically, they say not to plug it into your
house wiring, which makes it useless for homes like my
moms with multiple wired phones. AT and T could have
offered an installed device to properly disconnect the old feed
and hook this up safely. Oh well, not usable for
my mom. But I enjoyed your article and I always
enjoy your newsletter. Well, Bob, one thing is clear that
is that service is not for your mom's house. Melissa

(01:43:36):
from Kistaic writes in I love receiving your newsletter and
listening to you on KFI on Saturdays. You explain things
in such an easy to understand way and have such
a wealth of technoledge. Thank you for all you do. Okay,
that's a nice part, now what I like to keep
the apps on my iPhone organized, but I always have
such a difficult time moving them from one page to another.
I understand if you hold down the app and select
edit home screen, but when I try to move the

(01:43:57):
app to the edge, sometimes it moves easily, other times
it's impossible. Is there an easier way to do this
or am I doing something wrong? No, Melissa, I've been
doing this for seventeen years. It never gets easier. Rearranging
iPhone homescreen icons is horrendous. Huh horrendous. Apparently that's going
to be fixed with iOS nineteen, but I'm not kidding

(01:44:19):
my phone. I don't even arrange it because I can't
I try to move one thing. I am so scared
to put a widget on my iPhone home screen because
I'm gonna mess up my whole thing that I've worked
so many years to get perfected.

Speaker 3 (01:44:30):
I won't even try a new widget. It's that bad.

Speaker 1 (01:44:34):
Like Apple needs a way to save your home screen
so you can try a new one and then go
back to it if you mess something up. Joseph from
Ellisville writes in can I listen to my iPod by
using a wireless adapter for it?

Speaker 3 (01:44:50):
Yes? Twelve South Airfly perfect for this.

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):
You plug it in, creates a Bluetooth connection, allows you
to pair any Bluetooth headphones twelve South Airfly.

Speaker 3 (01:45:02):
Let's see here what else?

Speaker 1 (01:45:04):
Olivia writes in, hey, rich on tech, I recently came
across a website called card cash. You purchased gift cards
at a discounted price.

Speaker 3 (01:45:11):
Is it true? Have you tried it?

Speaker 1 (01:45:13):
I'm looking to purchase a decent amount for an upcoming trip,
but I've not heard about this. Please let me know.
These types of sites are legit. You have to be
very careful. There's so many scams around gift cards. Make
sure it's a reputable site. I have not tried card cash.
I looked up some reviews, kind of pros, kind of
prop some pros, some cons. I have tried a website

(01:45:33):
called raise dot com, and I think they change the
name of their gift card site so it's no longer Raised.

Speaker 3 (01:45:39):
I think it's called g.

Speaker 1 (01:45:41):
What is it gcx gcx gcx dot raise dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:45:46):
I have tried that one. It is legit. Just be
very careful.

Speaker 1 (01:45:49):
I'd buy small transactions before you buy a lot of
big ones. Let's see here. Oh my gosh, so many emails.
Let's do this one real quick. Judy from California writes
in Hey, Rich, I've never emailed you, but I'm not
sure who to trust. I'm not very tech savvy. I'm
a retired senior. I'm getting more wary as time goes by.

(01:46:11):
I'm curious if this anti theft card being touted on
Facebook really works. They say RFID wallets and card sleeves
are no match for portable scanners the new age pickpocketers use.
I would appreciate your opinion. I disagree. I don't think
you need it. I think that credit cards have a
lot of security built into them. They're using one time codes.

(01:46:31):
I don't think there's any major report of someone's credit
card number being swiped with an RFID scanner. I just
don't think it happens, honestly, I think that it could
happen theoretically. I don't think it's a major issue. If
you want to get one of these sleeves, go ahead.
I would not spend a lot of money on it.
Go on Amazon. Type in RFID sleeve. My wallet has

(01:46:54):
RFID blocking. If you have a metal credit card, that
will be enough to mess it up. You could even
use a little piece of tinfoil. Well, but what are
they gonna get. They're gonna get an encrypted card number
that only works once, and they're not even able to
decrypt it.

Speaker 3 (01:47:06):
So I don't think it's that big of a deal.

Speaker 1 (01:47:08):
I think it's a lot of companies are capitalizing on
that advertising right now.

Speaker 3 (01:47:13):
That's gonna do it for this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:47:14):
You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website,
rich on Tech dot tv. Find me on social media
at rich on tech. Thanks so much for listening. My
name is rich Demiro. I will talk to you real
soon

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