Website. Rich on tech Dot TV Morning Rich, Good morning to you, Bill, Oh boyd. I want to start with something that I'm asking, really, how come is it really going to do anything? And this is Google's new privacy tool making it easier to remove personal information from search results very easily, just to tap everybody's information is out there everywhere. What does this do? Does this stop a one percent part of the ability for people to get your private information?
Pretty much? But I think what they're doing here is a nice gesture because the real thing we're up against is all of these data collection agencies. You know, you know the people there's so many different names out there, the people Finder, Spokio, you know, they're they're basically putting these results on the web. So when you search for yourself, if you see them, and then of course if you're dating or something, you might want to buy the results,
and they make money. It's a big business. But when you see this stuff for yourself, you want to get rid of it, and you can go to these companies or you can pay a company to take it down. Why do that? But now Google is letting you do it right through Google Search, and so they've always had this feature it's just much easier now. So if you search something like your name and then phone number, you'll have a result that comes up which probably has your
phone number in it. So now you can tap the three little dots that are next to the search result and you'll get this new window that pops up, and inside that window it says remove result, and you can tap that and say why do you want to remove it? And it gives you a couple options. It shows my personal info and I don't want it there. You tap there, and in a couple of hours or a couple of days, Google will tell you if that result has been removed.
Keep in mind, Bill, this does not remove the original website with the info. It just removes the link to Google and so it won't show anymore.
All right, Two questions about that number. One, Google, don't you to go to another browser? And you don't have that safety feature? So there you go anyway, big deal getting another browser. And the other question is with AI. Doesn't AI have the ability to go through everything and figure out what you want and make it so easy where it just pops up exactly what Google is trying to protect.
Great question. So first off with the with the Google. So this is through Google Search. So even if you went to a different browser, whether it is you Edge or Safari, you're still going to probably be using Google Search because of their mass market share, so the results would still be gone from there. And yes, again this is mostly just for optics for yourself. Ninety nine percent of people are going to be searching on Google to
find you. They're not going to go to people Finder, They're not going to go to Spochyo right off the bat, They're going to go to Google. And so if you can remove those RELs at this kind of at the place where people are looking for them the most, then you know they're just not going to find them in general. If you want to get them removed from the sites themselves, yes you can do that as well. But I think that this is a nice gesture because Google knows that
this is a problem. They know people don't want their personal information out there. But they also know they're just the intermediary. In intermediary, right, they are not the end all. They don't host this information. These websites do. And by the way, it's a game of whack a mole to
get this stuff off these other sites. Now to your second point with AI currently, if you ask something like a chat GBT to give me someone's name and address and phone number, even though yes, they have absolutely compiled that information in the background, they're not going to give it up forthcoming lately there may be a way to get it to do it, but right now it's not very easy, all right.
So at this point, because you how many AI companies are out there that you can actually access, even chat GPT, and I'm sure you have a dozen of them that you can talk about, Yeah.
Google, Gemini, Microsoft, Copilot, Claude, Alexas coming up with their own. I mean, there are so many of these things that you can choose from at this point, perplexity, there's a.
Lot, so how many either using AI or not. How easy would it be to do an end around on this privacy tool of.
Googles, You know, it would take me a little bit of trying. But here's the thing. I mean, there's so many of these AIS. They all have different rules, they all have different regulations, but they're all kind of like being very careful right now with what they do. And there's a lot of guardrails that are sort of built into them. But again, these are all you know, this is all human made, and also humans are trying to figure out ways around this on a daily basis. And
not every AI search engine is created the same. So, for instance, there's one called Grock, which is from you know X, which is of course Elon Musk and theirs is saying, you know, hey, we're a little bit more wild than the rest of them out there, right, like we will do stuff that the other one will not. And so you know, you may search for yourself on there and find the information that you're looking for instantly
without it saying no, I can't do that. So again there's and there's of course many many other ais out there that might do this as well.
All right, a word about Alexa, and I always start with Alexa louder As for people that are having Alexa at the same room that they're listening or in the car, just love this. Now Amazon is revealing or unveiling a premium version of Alexa and it's AI powered upgrades. What does that mean? Because right now I get recipes, I get news, I get songs, I can listen to KFI, I can check in with you. What am I going to get that I'm not getting? Now? Well?
You're going to get Alexa understanding you as a person and as a family. So she's going to understand your household more. And I know that sounds weird, but this is a kind of a key piece to this. Yes, she's still gonna be able to do all the smart home things that you just mentioned, and actually I think better because let's say someone wants to hear KFI on Alexa, you have to say it in a certain way for it to trigger that.
Right.
Well, now, with the LM and the large Language model that she's going to be programmed with, she's going to understand what you're trying to say without you saying it a specific way. So I think that's going to get a lot better. And the second side of this is
again her getting to know you. So because she's linked into all these smart home devices, she's sort of understanding when the lights go on and off in your house, when the locks lock and unlock, when you request music when you don't, when you play this kind of thing, and so she'll start to pick up on those things
and help you in a more proactive way. And by the way, she's going to be linked up to like ten thousand different services, including Uber, door Dash and all these different things that you can just say, hey, order me an Uber, tune into this channel, get me this shop for that, and she will understand pretty much everything that you're trying. All right.
So I just went to a friend's house the other day and it was it was dark, and it was Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights. Alexa not as bright, and I was kind of okay, that's kind of neat.
And by the way, it gets imagine her just adjusting, saying, you know you at five o'clock when you're eating dinner, you always put the lights down, so when you say turn on the lights, So go, okay, I'm gonna do them at thirty percent like you typically.
Like, oh, as opposed to you saying turn them to thirty percent. I know that's a lot of work, exactly. I get that for sure. And just a quick note, if my Alexa, which I have, starts to really understand me, I'm done. You know that she's shutting me off.
That's that's that's mighty dangerous.
It could be very dangerous. Rich back to a few other topics. One of the things that I that incenses me are the scams and the majority of scams are now Internet scams. I used to get letters from a former Prince of Nigeria, remember that, and would oh yeah, I love those. Dear sir, you have been we have been told you're an honest man. No name on it, just you know, we need some money to open an account and you'll get thirty million dollars whatever the hell
it is. Now I'm assuming a lot of them are a lot more sophisticated, which they are, and people are so vulnerable. So let's talk about the biggest scams of last year which will lead into this year.
Yeah. So, Better Business Bureau has this great site. I've talked about it before. It's called the Scam Tracker. And what's great about this website is that if you find a scam or you are scammed, you can enter it
into this tracker and then other people can search for information. So, for instance, I interviewed this woman who got involved in a puppy scam, and if she would have just literally typed in puppy into this scam tracker, she would have realized there's one thousand puppy adoption scams going on out there. So anyway, that's how people can use it. But the BBB kind of went through and looked at everything from last year. Found the number one riskiest scam is investment
in crypto scams. No surprise. There eighty percent of victims reporting financial losses and the media loss is about five thousand dollars. So that's number one. Yeah, go ahead, who's in.
Right mind is going to invest based on some Internet connection or search or someone even worse soliciting you. I guess old people, vulnerable people who well, yeah, don't have those smarts.
That's interesting. It's old people and young people. So I think it's young people eighteen to twenty four because they don't have the knowledge base that you know, someone in their middle age does that's seen this stuff before. And then of course old people, you know, that's a whole
other issue. I mean I get emails all the time from caregivers, you know, caring for their parents or their you know, elderly relative that these people at a certain point they're writing checks, they're giving up their personal information. I mean, it's really wild, and yes, it happens every day. Okay. So and then back to your other point, you said, you know who falls for this stuff and whatever. So the longer someone engages with a scammer, the more likely
they are to lose money. And that's part of these romance scams, where they get you in and they start talking to you and you're lonely, and next thing you know, they say, look, I want to buy a plane ticket to come see you and I can't. And yes, people fall for this. Apparently second thing is well okay, So romance and friendship scams number three, by the way, employment scams number two. And I don't say you should do this stuff at home, but I often engage with these
scammers just to see what the end game is. And so yesterday I got a text out of the blue, Hey, are you interested in a part time job? You know whatever. I'm a Lisa. I have information about a recent position. Can we talk for a few minutes? I said yes, And then she said, we provide full time opportunities or part time that require an hour and offer earnings of up to six hundred and fifty dollars a day payments
are processed. Can you confirm you're in the US and have a social turity number and you're twenty five above And I said yes, yes, yes, And you know this is what they're trying to do. They're trying to get your personal information. Okay. The other takeaway from this is the most impersonated companies include Publishers Clearinghouse no surprise there, USPS, PayPal, Amazon and Spectrum and bill. You know, since I have all these followers that are following me for the tech information,
they forward me these scams they get. I think of them as my eyes and ears out there, and I put them on my Instagram and you would just it's wild to see this stuff and the way that these scammers, this is what they always do. They take something we know and love and they twist it a little bit and make it into a scam. So that fraud text that you get from your bank that says, hey, did you just make this purchase? That's real, but then they make it into a fake text and then somehow get
you because of that. Hey.
I One of the things that I was taught and that is when it looks like it's from a legitimate company and you're to click on it, all you have to do is look at the URL and it would be Microsoft dot com slash eight million characters after that scam right on its face. Am I right about that?
That is a good way to do it. There are some signs, so yes, but of course, you know again the scammers, what they will do is they know that people's address bars limited depending on the device they're on, and so sometimes they will make the address look real at the beginning and then at the end it has all that extra stuff, or the opposite way. You know, it makes the beginning look real. So you can't necessarily have to always look at the URL just to make sure.
Someone said, hey, Rich, can I just look for the padlock? Not necessarily because some of these sites can be secure, but they're still stealing your information.
Got it. And by the way, I've had a fair amount of experience with these scams, unfortunately on the wrong side of them. And you know, we'll talk about that later, as in nevermind, im, that was just a joke that just didn't work.
Okay, okay, I didn't know where that was going.
But yeah, I was going at because I won the scammer, because I was on the wrong side. That was you see, Yeah, I didn't see. I told you it didn't work.
I thought you were helping people, Bill. I thought you meant like people called you for help.
Oh god, no, geez, you know why would I do that? All right, Rich, thank you catching tomorrow on k T l A and this Saturday, eleven am to two pm right here on KFI.
You have a good one. You too,