Let's say good morning now to KTLA's tech guy and the host of Rich on Tech on KFI.
It's Rich de Miro.
Morning, Rich, Hey, good morning to you. Amy.
Okay, So, Rich, I would love to start today with this social security email scam because these things look real and they're not, and they can really mess you up.
So what's the link?
Yes, and this one's a doozy because if you go to it, it actually will. If you go to the website, you click the link it says download your statement, it will actually download malware onto your computer. And if you ran that, like if you double click that file that it downloads immediately, it is bad news. So I got this email forwarded to me from a viewer John People. By the way, Amy, because I do so many these scams,
everyone sends me their scammy mail. So all day long, I'm literally going through scammy mails and be like, is this one interesting? Is this one good? Is this one new? Is this one different? But this one is going around because I went to the social security website and they did say yeah, as of April first, this is going around, so beware. It basically says we've got your social security statement. It's ready to download. You click the file, it immediately
downloads some you know file to your computer. And like I said, if you click that, it is really bad malware. It'll give the hackers full control of your computer, stealing passwords, reading files, spying on you. It's really wild. So beware and do not click those links.
Okay.
And with that one, Rich, it's not one where they kind of grab control and then say, oh, here pays some sort of a ransom.
I mean it's just to go and screw up your computer.
Oh no, there could be some ransomware in there as well, and they can do whatever they want. Yeah, So we didn't we didn't get that far. We my son and I actually kind of like tested the malware in a sandbox to see like just what it does. And it does a lot. I mean, it's but we didn't get to a screen where it's where it kind of like took over our computer and said, hey, pay this ransom. But that's definitely in the realm of possibilities for sure.
Okay.
And by the way, yeah, the best way to get around all that stuff like have a backup, a complete backup of your computer. So if you ever run into a situation where you have ransomware take over your computer. The best thing to have is a complete backup of your computer, and a good tech person can just wipe your computer clean and reinstall your stuff and you don't have to pay that ransom.
Okay, and here's my dumb question of the day, because you know I love dumb questions when it comes to technology. So to get a backup of your computer, do you put that? Can you put your whole computer like on an external hard drive? Or where do you put it?
Yeah? I mean you can literally just get buy an external hard drive, plug it into your computer. The first time you plug in a blank hard drive on Mac and Windows, it should say, hey, do you want to use this as a backup? If not? On Mac, it's called time machine. On Windows it's called file history or backup. Just search for it, set it and pull the drive out. By the way, don't leave it connected to your computer. Just connect it every week or so.
Okay, Okay, that's great, great advice.
Okay, you were talking about laptops, and if you're in the market for a laptop, you might not be finding any deals anytime soon.
I don't think. Well. Look, I mean it's funny because I follow this website slick Deals, and I have a filter with like the best laptop deals, and every day I check that and this is the week. This week is the smallest amount of deals I've ever seen, like ever. There's a one, two, three, four, five deals and they're not super cheap. But I mean, here's the thing. So with these tariffs, we have not seen in a big way. No major company has said, hey, we're raising prices. These
prices have gone up. Obviously Apple is the big one, you know, Lenovo, HP, Dell. Waiting for something from those companies because that would signal a real impact from these tariffs. We have not seen that.
But some smaller.
Companies have kind of changed the way they've done things. So there's a company called Framework, which makes laptops that are basically pieces that you can like replace over time, and so they have temporarily halted sales of their entry level laptop because they say that the ten percent tariff, even a ten percent, would be too much. And then
Razor they make high end gaming computers. Again, they haven't said anything publicly, but they took the pre order page down for their latest laid sixteen laptop.
Okay, all right, so just so I.
Think these companies are like us Amy. They don't know what's happening, right, They just they're just like, hey, we want to make sure we're not going to sell these things at a loss, but we also want to continue selling our goods in America.
Gotcha? Okay?
And then here's one place you can find a deal with Apple TV plus.
Yeah. I think I think Apple did this just for some levity in our world right now, because there is so many price increases and so many changes. Apple TV plus three dollars a month for three months, so limited time offer, and you know this is for now through April twenty fourth, new and they say quote qualified returning subscribers whatever that means. Just you know, try it, see if it works for you. But not a bad deal, right two ninety nine For the three months.
They got great, great programming. So I'm wondering, which can I cancel and then renew or do we know.
That that I don't know. Yeah, I don't know that. A lot of people were asking me that on Instagram last night, and I'm like, don't have the answer to that. I mean, look, they have I'm sure you can look at their little terms and conditions at the bottom, but I have not been able to find like definitive, like what does qualifying mean? You know what I mean?
Yeah, okay, and reading that.
Side, let's see offer expires qualified. Yeah, redeeming offer not available if you are eligible for a free Apple TV Plus or your subscription.
Yeah.
So it's basically like I can't find the answer to that. But I think if you cancel it, I'm guessing there's some sort of like timeframeah where if you have had it in the past, you know, Okay.
So if you don't have it, Apple TV really does.
They're like one of my favorites because I think about who I'm going to cancel if I need to cancel some I'm like, you can't be Apple TV.
They have too much good programming on there.
They don't do a ton, but what they do is very high quality.
Absolutely Okay.
You can get more great tech advice when if you listen to Rich on Tech every Saturday from eleven am to two pm.
You can also, of course see him on KTLA, follow.
Him on Instagram at rich on Tech, and if you want to know about the things that we just talked about and other stuff that he talks about, he puts it all up on his website.
It's Rich on tech dot TV. Thank you so much, Rich Demiro.
All right, I'm going on KTLA right now to talk about my radio show on CAFI.
I love that.
Yeah, my whole piece today. It's pretty cool.
Okay, cool, Thanks Rich, all right later bye,