AirTag safety explained

I don't know however you found me. Thanks for listening, whether you're listening on Twitter spaces right now, or whether you're listening on Facebook or just downloading the podcast. Is it old school to actually download a podcast now? I think it is. That's the old school way of getting this show. So I started up something new again. I started my newsletter and so I've had a substack for

many years, probably since the first day it arrives. It's been probably like three or four years now, kind of stopped during COVID. But you know, here's the thing. I get so many questions from people, and I try to answer them on this podcast. But a lot of times

are just simple like easy little things. And so I thought to myself, you know, what, wouldn't it be cool if I just kind of used my podcast or my newsletter to kind of just tell people quick little tech tidbits, you know, like how to scan in a document, or what's the best app for this, or what's the best website for this? You know, I come across all kinds of cool stuff all the time, so why not just

share that knowledge quickly and easily. So that's what I started doing today with my first news newsletter that is rich on Tech Tips, and it's through substack, So it's rich on tech dot substack dot com if you want

to subscribe. And the funny thing is I told you, you know, I've got a I don't know, fifteen something or let's see here, thirteen thousand subscribers, and so I you know, of course they get this surprise email today because they all found out, you know, they've all subscribed at some different point in some different way, and so you know, they probably were surprised today to get an email for me after so many years. So I said, look,

if you don't like it, just unsubscribed. There's no hard feelings. If you don't want to get it, and it's funny. I thought people would unsubscribe, and now that I'm looking, I've actually gained subscribers already this morning, So I guess people do like the the quick tips. I will send them out again. If you want to subscribe, go to rich on tech dot substack dot com. That's the way

to do it. In other news, I really need to format my computer because my computer is the MacBook Pro nine let's see twenty nineteen sixteen inch and it is so slow. And it's not my computer that's slow. It's really just Google Chrome. I don't know what the deal is with Chrome. Yes, I have a whole bunch of extensions running, but they're all essential to what I do. Like every single extension I have is something I need, and so I don't know if that's slowing it down

or what. But I know it's really slow because it's gotten to the point where checking my email is actually a chore on Gmail. And I know it's Chrome because if I go to Safari on my computer, it's a breeze. It's super fast, it's super easy. It's just not my preferred and so the problem there is that I just need to be able to you know, check my email on Chrome. It seems like such a small thing, but

it's really tough. So I think later today I'm going to tackle the issue of formatting my computer and just redoing it and starting from scratch, because you know, when you're testing stuff like I am all the time, you're just always installing apps, and you're always trying new things and changing settings, and sometimes you forget to change them back,

and sometimes you forget to uninstall. And so that's my plan, hopefully that my plan is to get through one more year of this computer and then when the new Mac I don't know if they're gonna be called M two chips come out, I can get that one, because it's gonna take Apple a little bit to work out the kinks with those new computers. All right, let's get to the first story of the week. Samsung is now telling us when their next event will be, and it is

on February ninth, twenty twenty two. This is the next Galaxy Unpack event Unpacked event. It will be happening virtually. And I was looking at my notes. The last actual tech event I went to, the last major tech unveiling was I believe it was February eleventh, twenty twenty. It was Samsung up in San Francisco, and I remember specifically we went up there thinking like, oh man, this new coronavirus thing, like what's going on with it? And they

had all these signs. You had to take your temperature. You didn't have to wear a mask, but you had to take a temperature, and it was kind of like, you know, a hokey thing, like I'll give me a break. And of course that was the last major event and we probably all dodged a bullet there because I came back okay, and I'm still okay. I mean, I as far as I know, I still have not gotten this thing.

So even though a couple of people in my family have gotten it, and so many people I know have gotten it, so it feels like it's just a matter of time at this point. But anyway, so what are we gonna see at this event? The S twenty two, which is their new you know, the the update to their popular flagship phones. So we have probably three models we're looking at, the S twenty two, S twenty two Plus, and the S twenty two Ultra. And that's in line

with what they've had before. So these are their flagship phones, not foldables this time. I don't think we're gonna see anything with foldables. But their little teaser trailer is all about light, says break the rules of light. And I think the main thing we're gonna see with these phones is improved nighttime photography, maybe nighttime video. But I'm excited. I really, you know, I say this every time there's a new Android. I'm always like, I'm ready to switch.

I'm I'm tempted to switch now. It's tough because when you're creating content like I am, the iPhone really really is like an amazing workhorse for that, and so I really just every time I try to switch to an Android, I'm like, ah, but this does this so much better for a little like any kind of like video editing and like just little tiny like apps just somehow work

better on the iPhone. Except for Google's apps, a lot of those work better, and a lot of the apps anyway, I'm not going to get into the Android versus iPhone debate, but anyway we'll see. Maybe this will be the phone that takes that carries me over. I thought it was gonna be the Pixel. The Pixel has so far not done that for me, so I hope that the S twenty two, probably the Ultra, would be the nicest one for me. We'll see anyway, February ninth, Stay tuned, we'll

see what happens. All right, let's get to the first question. The subject line is mac Os Monterey, and Sandy says, hi, do I install or do I hold off? Thanks? A good question. So if you asked Rich five years ago. Five years ago, Rich would have said absolutely, install it immediately. Now new Rich says, eh, just just hold off. Well, I mean, if there's a reason why you need to

install it. Sure, like if you're looking through the mac Os Monterey website that Apple has set up and you see a feature that you just have to have, then absolutely go for it. But let's look through some of the features. FaceTime updates, redesign, Safari, Universal Control, and shortcuts, stay in the moment with Focus. So far, all those things are telling me it's a big old oh sorry, wrong one. That's what I meant to do. I mean, do you really need FaceTime improvements? Do you really need

share Play? Do you really need Focus? I don't think so. So unless you need any of those things, right, this moment, then I would just hold off. Now, I will say there is one thing that I am enjoying on the update, and I the update, and that is in the notes app, which I now use quite religiously. They added support for hashtags, and that is quite convenient because you can put hashtags in your notes and then you can create a smart folder that will sort just just the notes that have

those hashtags attached. So for that reason, it's a good update. But otherwise, I mean, I think you kind of wait a little bit. There's no reason to rush into it if you like how things are working. You know, it takes these companies a little bit of time to update their app, so I don't think there's any harm. I haven't noticed any anything bad about Monterey since I installed it. I did wait a couple months, or maybe like thirty days. I can't remember how long I waited, but you know,

I waited a little bit, and it's fine. I don't think it's contributing to my Chrome woes for being so slow, because Safari and everything else is very, very snappy. So I would say just wait a little bit and then go for it, or if you just want to go for it, just just dive right in. Speaking of operating systems, Windows eleven. So this is an example of a lot of people have asked me, Rich, do I update to

Windows eleven. The main reason to update for these programs is that, you know, you get the new features, but you also get the security. Now a lot of times the manufacturers have realized that why force people into getting the new versions of these programs just to get the security updates. So a lot of times they're detaching the security update from the actual OS. So you can still update just the security of your system and you know, still have a good protection there, but not have the

latest operating system. And Windows has always sort of been good about that, but you know, eventually these things they push you to get it because it's just easier for everyone to have people on the latest software. So Windows eleven, I have not updated to that one yet. I'll be honest, It's on my list of things to do, and eventually I will. My kid keeps asking me, He's like, you're gonna update, you can update. I'm like, well, is there anything you need on Windows eleven? Like why do you

need it so badly? And I will say the feedback that I've seen with Windows eleven has not been the best, especially with the taskbar. People have not been happy with that. So it looks like they're going to do some taskbar improvements, a redesign notepad, a redesign media player app, and the big thing is that you will be able to if you want to get on this public preview, you can have Android apps running on Windows eleven. This did not

launch with the original Windows eleven. It was delayed. Now it is coming, but only in a beta, so you have to be part of that beta to get this, and it's only a limited number of apps from apples are Amazon's App Store, which is kind of weird. Whyouldn't they just go with Google Play? But it's just kind of odd, right, It's like, why are you on Amazon's App Store on Windows? Like just it's just very strange. But why wouldn't they support Google Play just on Windows.

It would make a lot more sense. Also, in this blog post that Panos Penei wrote said that Windows ten and Windows eleven or now on a one point four billion devices each. One point four billion devices they're running on, which is pretty cool. And the PC market definitely saw a lot of growth throughout the pandemic things that we already kind of knew or suspected, but now they're putting in writing and another thing I don't use the I

know of this widget. I didn't realize it was gone, But according to the Verge, the weather widget is also returning to the taskbar, which I guess people were up in arms that the weather widget was gone, which, of course, I mean people love their weather, like people like my wife is obsessed with the weather. I'm talking, I mean, looking at apps like It's just wild how much time and effort she puts into the weather. We live in southern California. To me, there's no such thing as weather.

I walk outside, I say, is it cold? Like? Literally, the only decision I need to make with weather in Southern California is do I need an umbrella when I'm walking outside? And ninety nine percent of the time will just run to my car if unless it's like torrential torrential. And the other is if I'm if I need to bring a sweatshirt, which pretty much I always have my car anyway. And if I'm going on a run, do

I wear long sleeves or short sleeves? That's it. I don't really put a lot of thought into the weather here because it's just unnecessary. So anyway, some people love the weather and I understand that, and especially on those nice days. So the weather widget is returning to the taskbar. All right, let's get to the next question of the day. Larry says, Hey, Rich, my whole family really loves your segments on KTLA. Thank you, Larry. I have a technology

question for you. What is the best way to manage my kid's connectivity time on certain devices PS three gaming PC but still allow them to access the Internet for school work. It seems like you would need something that is device specific. I'd appreciate any any advice. Larry in Redondo Beach. Larry, I've got the perfect solution for you. You are gonna love it. Your kids are gonna hate it. It is called Circle and this device was originally either it was like out of Disney Labs, or it was

someone from Disney or is in partnership with Disney. But now it's kind of its own thing. So if you go to the website, it's Meetcircle dot com. This is a small box that you plug into your Internet. It costs ten dollars a month. I believe when you first purchase it. It comes with your subscription, but it is realistically the best way to manage every single device on your network,

and they give you really really good tools. And so if you've tried screen time or you've tried like some of the printal settings in Eero, they're all fine, and I use a combination of both of those. But Circle is just a one stop shop for everything you need. So what you do is you basically create profiles for your kids. So let's say you have two kids. You go in there, you say, here's Johnny, here's Judy. Here are their devices. So you mark which devices are theirs,

and then you say what they can do. So during the weekdays, I want to give my kids an hour's worth of roadblocks every day. Boom, you can do it right through the app. I want to block TikTok, Boom, you can do that right through the Circle app. I want to turn off the Internet for them at eight pm every night. It can do that. I want to limit them to thirty minutes worth of YouTube every day. It can do that. And the reason why it does this is because it kind of monitors all the network traffic.

It plugs physically into your network, and so you can have it do all of the stuff or only look at the devices that your kids are using, and so it's really really great. It can also of course block all of these sites you don't want them going to, like you know, it has built in filters for like social media, adult sites, whatever. You can do all that, so it's very very good. It's the only system I know of besides screen Time that will actually time out

their time on these various apps and things. And screen Time, of course only works on the iOS devices and so you can't really you know, if you have an Apple TV and they're watching YouTube on there, there's not much you can do to time it out. To say, I only want them to be able to watch YouTube on Apple TV or on fireTV for a half an hour each day. Circle can handle that. So again, the website is meetcircle dot com. It is fantastic. I've used it

in my house. I do not have an active subscription right now because we've been making do with with the a combination of screen time and euro parental controls. It's not perfect, but it's worked pretty well. But the problem is with my Eero, I have to physically block YouTube on the entire network or else. The kids will watch it until their eyeballs fall out, and so that's not ideal. I'd rather say, hey, kids, you can watch YouTube every day.

I don't mind them watching like a half an hour of YouTube or maybe even an hour, but it needs to time out after that. And with Eero you can't do that. With Circle you can. So that's my recommendation definitely. You know, the device is gonna cost like one hundred bucks or something, but it is. It is well well worth it, and it will save you a lot of headaches or create some new ones. All right, let's talk about a new feature coming soon to the iPhone. I

demoed this on my Instagram last night. It's so funny how long it takes to do a quick This was a fifty two second Instagram video and my son and I must have recorded it for, you know, maybe seven or eight times, and it probably took us a half an hour start to finish for a fifty two second video. Why you ask, because I want it to be perfect. I you know, he was recording. My kid is eight or sorry ten, and you know he was doing a

great job. He's a great photography. He's really really good photographer. Like it's it's quite impressive how good his mind is when it comes to like the ie for what you're seeing. But there was a main part of this thing is that if you're using face ID with your iPhone, I wanted to make sure that people saw when my mask was on and when I was looking at the phone. And you also need to be able to see the lock on the phone screen and see the phone on lock.

So it's a little bit of like finagling to get that all right, and so we had to do it a couple of times to get it all perfect. And you know, anytime you're working with a phone, there's always a you know, text message comes in or something like that. So anyway, we got it right. If you want to watch the video, it's on Instagram. I think it came out pretty good. It's you know, it's very simple, but

it gets the point across. The new feature in iOS fifteen point four lets you use a face mask with with face ID, and so now you can have an option when you update your phone to wear a mask and still have your phone onlock. And I think this is really really key because previously you had to have an Apple Watch for this feature to work, and it wasn't always perfect. It works most of the time, but you know, you have to have a three four, five

hundred dollars accessory just to unlock your phone. So now Apple says they've they've figured out their algorithm and they can look at your eyes and use just the kind of unique features of your eyes and around them, I don't know, wrinkles, like who knows what they're looking at, and it can figure out if if it's you or not. Now they do have a warning that this is not as secure as standard face ID, and of course that

makes sense. You're covering up excuse me, you're covering up half your face and you're you know, still getting this unlock effect. So I set it up last night. It works really well. I have not tested to see if it works with like payments, but I assume it would because if you're using face ID, it's still face ID. So maybe I'll get a message when I try to use tap to pay and it says, you know you can't do it, but it seems like you can use face ID to uh to do whatever you can with

the with the mask on. At this point, so you know, we're two years in a lot of places. I mean here in La the mask mandate is still just as just as intense, shall we say, as it was at the beginning of the pandemic. In fact, there was it's tough to remember this, but there was a period of about three golden weeks in Los Angeles when you did not have to wear a mask. And I came back to work and it was like, oh, we're done. It's so great. And then all of a sudden, it was

like back to masks. So it's a nice thing to have. Hopefully, fingers crossed, we will not need this feature for much longer, although there are certain parts of the world where people wear masks regularly and for doctors and things. So it's probably a good thing that Apple did this. I'm just so, I'm just curious. Oh here, Oh, according to mac Rumors says face ID with a mask can authenticate Apple pay payments. Oh there you go, so you could use it for

Apple pay. So there it pays to read, pays to read. It sounds great and I think that it's a really nice feature. It works really well. If you want to see the demo, it's it's pretty amazing. I actually put the mask over my face and my eyes, and as soon as I pull down the mask while I'm looking looking at the phone, you immediately see the phone on lock as soon as my eyes are revealed, and it goes to the home screen. So they did a really

good job. I hope it's as secure. I think it's Look, if it's Apple and they're doing this, and especially if they're allowing payments, it's probably pretty secure. Just maybe not. You know, if you're a mathematician, it's not like one hundred percent secure compared to the other standard face idea that they've had all right, air tags. Hey, Rich, is there any guidance on false hits on the Android tracker detector? I recently got three consecutive hits while driving with other

cars nearby. Later I got nothing. Thanks Jerry and Sherman Oaks. Okay, so Jerry is talking about air tags. I did a story on KTLA this week about air tag safety because there's a lot of misconceptions out there, there's a lot of fear mongering, there's a lot of you know, just a lot of stuff that's floating around, as you may imagine.

And I have this theory with the news world right now, is that you really have to think about this, like, we are in a time when have we ever seen so many ways of getting to us with a story. And if there's a juicy story, like air tags are really scary and they're being used to track people and steal cars. So that's a great headline and a great story, every news outlet in the world is going to pick up on that. Now, they're all gonna have different amounts

of facts in there. They're gonna have different amounts of truths in there, They're gonna have different amounts of like actual news and information in there. A lot of times it's like, yeah, there's a story about people stealing cars with these air tags, and we don't really ever hear of the actual like where did this happen, what city was it in, who did it, how did they do it? You know, we don't know the full story all the time.

But again, there's so many outlets out there, whether you're on TikTok, whether you're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, regular news media websites, TV news, cable news, YouTube, instagram, shorts reels. I mean, there's so many ways that people text messages, people text you, people text me stories all the time, Hey, you see this? Do you see that? And you know it's from like MSN dot com or like Yahoo dot com.

It's like, come on, you know, It's like I hold my tech stories to a little higher standard than some of these random websites that they show up on. But anyway, I tell you that because I am a tech person, I know how technology works. And yes, there are implications of the air tag that could be used for tracking, and they could be scary. And in fact, I think this is the best tracker ever invented in the entire history of mankind because they're twenty nine dollars and they

work really well. And so I did a story on KTLA to kind of explain what air tags are all about, what you need to know, what's real, what's fake, and just understanding the technology. So the main thing to know is that if you want to use air tags to track your stuff, they're amazing. If someone wants to use an air tag to track you, yeah they probably could

or your car. And the reason why that is is because air tags are constantly pinging almost a billion Apple devices around the world in this fine my network, and so chances are these air tags are are kind of the location is being updated on a very regular basis and with pretty good accuracy. So what do you need

to know about these things? Yes, we've definitely seen instances of people using them to track people and also to steal cars and you know, but also a ninety nine percent of people are using them on a daily basis just to do good things like track their keys and track their luggage and see where their kids are. And so that's all good, but you need to know that, yes, there could be an instance where someone could slip one of these into your purse or pocket or stuff and

now they can see where you go. And your phone is supposed to notify you, that is if you have an iPhone, and so you'll get a message after a couple of hours when you know, because the iPhone is always kind of tracking these things and saying like, oh wait, we see this air tag but it's not yours, but it's been traveling with you for the last six hours.

We think that's kind of weird, and so it will alert you and say that on your phone, and then in that case you need to you know, you can tap the top of the air tag with your phone and you can see the owner information but if this is a you know, an evil person putting this on you, I doubt that owner information is gonna be any good. It's not gonna be a real phone number. Oh hey, uh uh, did you just try to track me with this air tag? Yes? That was me. Oh okay, thank you.

I just wanted to make sure. No, you gotta you gotta unplug this thing and you know, get the serial number to the police. And so that's the recommendation. Don't drive home with it, don't don't go home, go to a safe place. If you think one of these things is on you, and you know, get it off of you and or your car, and you know, get that get that serial number before you take it apart. And so that's you know, that's what you need to know.

It's kind of scary. And the reality of this situation is if you have an iPhone, yeah, it's supposed to know. But how long does that notification take? Because Apple has to ride a line here of we don't want to be notifying people every twenty seconds that there's an air tag nearby, but we also want to give them a heads up if we think this thing is tracking them.

So how long do we wait to tell that person. Now, you could be on a train going from LA to San Diego and there's a bunch of air tags around you that are traveling with you, but they're not tracking you per se, They're not on your person. And so Apple has to write their algorithms to ride that fine line. And that's tricky. Now. The other thing to know is that if you have an Android phone, Yeah, you're not gonna get a notification because it's Android, and you know,

we all know Apple's relationship with Android. They're not gonna do much. But they do have an app called Tracker Detect, and this will scan for unknown air tags. Now that sounds great, but here's the reality of that. How many times are you gonna sit there and scan for unknown air tags? Are you gonna do this every day when you wake up? Are you gonna do this in your car every time you get into it, every time you leave work? I mean, you'd go mad just trying to

figure out if there's an air tag tracking you. So what would make a person scan around them for an air tag? Maybe if you broke up with an X and it was a bad breakup and you thought someone was tracking you, Yes, that's a good idea maybe you had an feeling that someone was tracking you in your car. So yeah, but the reality is, like I said, it's kind of like this. I mean, I don't know how do you go down that route of like when do

you scan for these things? So, yes, if you have an iPhone, it's nice and it works hopefully, but if you have an Android, it definitely gets a little trickier. To disable one of these air tags. You press the two sides together, you twist them apart, and the battery

will fall out. And again I did say that you can tap any phone to an air tag, So if you have an Android or an iPhone, these air tags have NFC, so if you tap a phone to them, it will bring up a website that tells you the information about that air tag, whether it's legitimate owner information or whether it's the air tag serial number, or if the air tag is marked as lost. The person could put their phone number or email address in there. Now,

that was all a very long story. To get back to Jerry's question in Sherman Oaks, is there any guidance on false hits on the Android tracker? I recently got three consecutive hits while driving Jerry, you said while driving, So what does that mean? You were driving there was air tags nearby at some point because fellow drivers had some air tags, and then all of a sudden those drivers moved away from you. So yeah, you got nothing

later on, So that's gonna happen. Now. I tested the Android tracker in my home because I have a bunch of air tags on my stuff. And it's interesting because it says it will track unknown air tags. So the air tags in my house, it does not pick up unless I put my iPhone in a Faraday bag. And a Faraday bag if you're not familiar with what that is, it's a bag that locks out all signals in and out. So I have one from this company called Silent Pocket.

Now they're called edging, I think just silent. But I put my phone in there and as soon as I put my iPhone in there, then I ran the scan once again and sure enough, the air tag showed up. So the the scanner app is smart enough to know

when these are unknown tags. So let me give you an example that Let's say someone comes over to your house a friend and they've got an air tag on their body with you know, on their keychain, and they've got their iPhone in their pocket as well, and you run this little Android tracker scanner or sorry tracker to tech scanner in your house while your friend is there, and you say, oh, this is an unknown air tag.

It's my friend's air tag, it's not mine. Well, it's smart enough to know when you do that scan that that air tag is not unknown because the person who owns it is with you, so it's not tracking you, they're tracking their own stuff. So that's an example of, you know, the smarts that Apple has built into this system. And that's just on the surface level. There are so many things that I'm sure Apple has taken into consideration.

But at the end of the day, like I said, the thesis on the air tag is that these are good. They're really good at what they do, and so yes, people are going to use them for evil. Just like any other technology ever invented in the history of mankind. People find good uses, people find bad uses, and hopefully the good outweighs the bad. But like anything else, it's the same exact thing. I mean, knives can be really bad if they're used against another person, but they're really

good for chopping up your salad. So again, this is the kind of stuff that we have to take into consideration. I don't think that we should just say air tags need to be banned because they could be used for these nefarious purposes. We have to realize that there is always align with anything that we have. You think about a car. It drives you places and it's amazing, it gets you across the country. But that same car, if it hits a person, could be really really bad, and

it's really dangerous. It's a dangerous item that we are driving every single day. But again, we have to weigh the pros and the cons, the safety and the danger. And that's the same thing with these air tags. They are pretty amazing there, and I think that the system around them will continue to be evolved. I think the android part specifically is a little tricky with these things, but that's anyway. I probably spent way too much time on the air tags. But there you have it, all right,

Let's go to the next story. Facebook. You know, they change their name to Meta. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this, but I just wanted to mention it because so many people got the oculus quest over the holidays. Now I've talked about this before. Everyone in my fingers are in quotes right now. Everyone hates Facebook, right, I personally do not. I think Facebook has done some amazing things in this world for connecting people. But you know,

you may think they're evil, you may not. I've got, you know, a one hundred and forty three thousand followers on my Facebook page. And by the way, just in the last month, I think that's up twenty thousand followers, and so, yes, people are still on there. New people are still on there. People still get their information from there, People still connect with family members on their People still use Facebook, whether you like to believe it or not.

Instagram is owned by Facebook. Do people done a lot of changes, so it's certainly different than than when it was invented. But you know, Facebook is on this. I don't know why they want to change everything to meta. So the bottom line is they're changing the name of the Oculus Quest to Meta Quest. And I don't think that's very smart because Meta is being thrown around in the news as sort of the you know, this new evil company because it's Facebook. It's the new name for Facebook.

You can't hide from us Facebook, You change your name. We still are onto you. And so why change this product that has transcended the Facebook hate and and gotten into so many homes over the holidays. Why are you changing the name now to metaquest? Now You're gonna just make people not like it because it's more associated with Facebook. Now, yes, Oculus is owned by Facebook or you know, it's a

part of Facebook. They purchased Oculus, and you do need apparently, as far as I know, a Facebook log in to use Oculus, which a lot of people have a problem with. But again, it's one of these things where now it's called metaquest. It got a lot of blowback online. People are just trashing Meta for doing this, and it's just one of those things where I feel like they should

should have left it. But I get it. Facebook is on this huge like you know, they want meta metaverse to be a thing, and so that's why, I guess, because the Oculus quest is like the best entree into the metaverse at this point, and so that's it. So I don't know. I yeah, that's there's not much more to mention about that. Anyway. If you have an Oculus and you love it, which a lot of people have told me, they do, it's going to change its name.

Cell Phone carriers is the subject line of the next question. Good morning, rich Do you have any recommendations for cell phone carriers. I'm currently with Verizon. Your friend Leo Laporte recommends Visible, but I've had no luck signing up with them. So do you have anybody alike? Thanks to your time, Richard, Uh Well, I thought Leo liked Mint because he was they were a sponsor, but maybe Visible, maybe he's talked about it. I think Visible is excellent. I think Mint

is really great. I think Cricket is really great. It depends what you need. So you're with Verizon and so you're on a network that's really really good, and so I would recommend that you switch over to Visible. Now, I don't know why you're having no luck signing up with them. I'm not sure what that means now. I know in the past people have had issues with Visible because it's a virtual carrier, so it's owned by Verizon. But the way they originally it is you had to

order a SIM card. It was only very specific phones that would work with it, and you had to wait for that SIM and there's no customer service that you could call or maybe you could call them, but there's no stores you can walk into. And that was part of the whole thing, is that they were kind of aimed at, like the younger generation that wants the DIY stuff, and it was a little bit tricky for a lot

of people. But if you can get in on their network, once you're in, it's really great and it's forty dollars unlimited. But if you sign up for a party plan, it's twenty five dollars unlimited. And the trick about the party plan is that you don't need to gather four friends to get that twenty five dollars deal. You can join anyone's party plan. So people swap these party plan links in Reddit or online or just ask anyone and you can get onto this plan for twenty five dollars a month.

I know people that have done this. It's easy, it's real, and it's only twenty five dollars a month unlimited on Verizon for everything you need. Now, when I say everything you need, there are some caveats. You don't get the full throttle of the Verizon network, so you are not yes, you'll get five G, but you're not gonna get those crazy blazing download speeds that their network is capable of.

You're gonna get a solid, reputable network that works pretty much everywhere you need it to work, but you're not gonna get the full, the full download and upload speeds. And they do that because they're charging you twenty five dollars a month. What do you expect they're not you know the plan that the standard plans for Verizon, or you know they're up at ninety dollars a month, eighty

dollars a month, seventy dollars a month. So what do you think they're doing for twenty five They're they're limiting you in certain areas. Now for ninety nine point nine percent of people, that does not matter. You're not me. You're not uploading giant video files into the cloud, you're not downloading things, you're not posting to social media all the time, these huge files. So it's not that big of a deal. If you're on Netflix, you're on YouTube,

you're sending emails, you're sending texts. That's all going to be fine. Visible Now, I do have a problem with the video resolution you get. I believe it's fury ADP, which is like DVD quality. So I don't. I'm not a fan of that. I personally could not deal with that on my cell phone. I would not do that. But most people don't care about that, and they they're just fine. They're like, look, I'm looking at a tiny screen. It doesn't really matter anyway. And I'm saving a ton

of money every month. My Verizon bill is insane every month. It's just like every month, I'm like, oh, how much am I spending this month? It's leveled out, but it's you know, it's just one of those things. It's it's probably my number two bill. It's like it's that high. It's pretty expensive. But the other one I do like is Mint Mobile. The difference with Mint is that it's on the T Mobile network, and if it works where you are and where you live and where you work,

that's fine. I personally find T Mobile to be a little bit more hit or miss than Verizon, but I don't use it full time. I only test on it, and so maybe that's why. But and all these networks, by the way, have got a lot better in the past couple of weeks due to this whole five G the C band and all these new new spectrum that they're opening up. So to me, a lot of it is like just personal preference of where do you live, where do you work, and how much do you want

to spend. What I like about MEN, and I have a family member that's on MEN, is that we pay the bill once a year, and my family member does not have to worry about their bill for an entire year. And it's like we're talking three hundred dollars for the entire year, and this family member does not need a

lot of data, so it's super easy. It works. And when they tell people that they pay their bill once a month, once a year and they get unlimited everything or whatever, you know, maybe it's not unlimited, but it feels like it is to them. Everyone's like, wait, what, I'm paying one hundred bucks over here to at and tier one hundred and fifty of this or that or three hundred or four hundred. Cell phone bills are really

really expensive. These carriers are not joking around. They are they're making money handover fists and it is pretty apparent. And you know, yes, they run these networks, but again it's it's you're paying a premium for these networks ninety nine percent of the time, so all right, is that the question? I think we got the question. All right, let's uh, let's move on to well, since we're talking about carriers, let's talk about AT and T. This I thought was pretty cool. AT and T is now the

fastest major internet provider. They are just they're doing now two gigabyte plans and five gigabyte plans, so five gig speed and two gig speed right now at my house, I have a thousand. I thought that was a lot. Now they have two and five tiers, so you can get and this is the best part with AT and T fiber and a lot of these fiber offerings, the

network speed is the same up and down. So if you subscribe to Spectrum, let's say it's they advertise four hundred right, four hundred down is pretty much their standard. But if you have to search the website, by the way to find this. But if you finally find what the upload speed is, four hundred is the download speed. If you look for the upload, it's usually about thirty to forty. So it's like it's it's considerably less. I guess that's what ten times less? Is that ten times

less or one? Yeah, ten times less? So now again for ninety nine point nine percent of people. Not a big deal. Most people are downloading things, or downloading Netflix, or downloading YouTube or streaming YouTube. I should say, they're downloading files. They're not uploading a whole bunch of stuff like I am. And so I want that upload speed to be really fast because I'm working with large video files form my job, and so I want the upload

and the download to be super fast. And so this now is available for five point two million customers in seventy metro areas parts of seventy metro areas. I should say, because even if they say that this is in your city, these super fast speeds, they may not be at your exact house. And so I checked my address. They have not updated the two gig and five gig speeds here, but it would be kind of fun. I don't even need a thousand, but I mean I do, but I don't.

I mean, it's probably overkill, but it's it's in you know, cities including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas. And they also changed their their plans for new customers. They're making things a little simpler. So if you have aight and T five, no equipment fees, no any no contract no data caps, no price increase at twelve months, and let's see what else. They also say that they've gotten up to ten gigabyte, so it's ten gigabytes per second. I guess that's a

gbps speeds in their labs. And so the two gigabyte plan is one hundred and ten dollars a month. The five gigabyte plan is one hundred and eighty dollars a month plus taxes. And if you're on business it's way more expensive. It's two twenty five a month and three ninety five a month. Now, I can't really imagine why someone needs a two gig downloads or two gig speed for their Internet. I thought a thousand was pretty wild,

but you know, there are use cases. If you're running a home business, if you're you know, like I said, you're a video editor, you're working with giant files. I mean, these are there are reasons why people need this stuff. So anyway, just something to be on the lookout for. Uh att. How do you find out if it's buy in your area? Let me see if there's a website I can give you uh att dot com slash fiber fast. Att dot com slash fiber fast and I should probably mention that AT and T is a sponsor of my

KTLA segment. They had nothing to do with me mentioning it here. They don't. I mean, you know, I barely talk to them like maybe once or twice a year about stuff, and you know it's believe me. So there you go. Okay. Uh Mamy says, Hey, Rich, I wonder do you have a suggestion on how I can block spam text These texts are getting on my nerves. Some are in groups, some are not. They mostly are about sex.

I hate them. They text me all day. Help. Thanks, you know, Mami, I've talked about this on the podcast before. These these spam come and go. Depends if you've gotten on a list. It depends if the hackers or the spammers have gotten a fresh list of email or you know, phone numbers, and then they just they spam the heck

out of them and then they move on. So the best thing I would say to do is, if you want to, you can turn on the filter unknown Senders setting in your I messages and so if you turn that on, what they do is they will filter any messages that are from people that are not in your address book into a separate little area. Now, personally, I don't like that because I always forget to check that other area and some legitimate email text can go in there as well. So what I've done is I just

deal with them. This week, in particular, the past two weeks, I've gotten a whole bunch of spam texts. They're all the same format, they're all kind of the same thing, and it's just one of those things where I know, it's just it's gonna come and go, and so next week it'll probably be a little bit better, and so I just kind of deal with it. You delete them. I mean, it's I mean, unless they're waking you up at night, which you shove your phone on, do not

disturb anyway. I mean, it's really like, you get a text, you look at it, it's like, okay, come on now. If you're getting a lot, like you said, you're getting all day, that's kind of annoying, and blocking them or whatever is probably not going to do anything unless they're coming from the same number. So maybe turn that on for the next week or so and see see if that helps. All right, next story, you know, I love my Tesla. I actually got my first repair done on

the Tesla. I think I mentioned this, but my Tesla when it rained here in Los Angeles, the rear tail light filled up with water. I mean, come on, Tesla, you gotta do better than that. And it's funny. My last two cars I've had a problem with the rear light filling up with water. So I was in the car wash with my son and he was like with my last car and he's like, Dad, the car is the car wash is dripping on me. And I was like, oh, no, I love window open. I said, no, I didn't leave

a windo open. What's going on? I look in the back and sure enough, from the roof of my car it's dripping in, And I said, what is going on? So I brought my car to the dealer and they're like, oh, I always see this a lot. Yeah, it's just the way they seated the uh the uh the rubber gasket on the back of here. We'll replace it. Like, oh, okay, let's I have a car, a brand new car that the water just comes in from the roof, Like, isn't that like Car one oh one? That that doesn't happen anyway,

So it happened in my last car. Then it happens on the Tesla, which you know, it's kind of annoying. And so it took me a while to submit a ticket for the repair because I just didn't know how the repairs worked. I figured I had to go to the Tesla place. I gotta take my car. It's gonna take forever. I got to get a loaner if they even offer that. Well, it turns out you do it all through the app and they immediately give you a day.

You know, you pick a day in a time right through the app and they come right to your house and they fix it. And by the way, it took two weeks for the appointment, but then it took literally three minutes for the repair. And I was like, oh, do you see this a lot? I always this, This is a key question to ask anyone that's fixing anything that you have. Always ask do you see this a lot?

And you'll be surprised at their answers, because ninety nine percent of the time your problem is very, very common, and they'll never tell you that. They'll never offer that up. Like the repair guy for the Tesla's not going to come over and say, oh, I just did five repairs like this today. They never say that. But if you ask that direct question, it comes from my background as a journalist. If you ask that direct question, hey, do

you see a lot of this issue? You'll see their response is just light up their face them like, oh yeah, we see this all the time. Like the guy was telling me, Yeah, we had a you know, a faulty par and now it's been you know, they updated the par and now it's much better and blah blah blah. I'm like, oh, okay, so I'd be the person to deal with this. And so anyway, I tell you all that because there is a new faster way to get into a Tesla. A startup named Autonomy has a Tesla

Model three subscription program. This is a startup out of Santa Monica and it lets you subscribe to a Tesla. It's a month to month contract. You have to do a three month minimum. You can order your vehicle in about ten minutes on their website or on the app, and that's it. Now. I don't know how long it takes to get one of these cars. They say they have about five hundred orders placed right now and they're hoping for ten thousand by the end of the year.

But they have low mileage Tesla threes available. Later they're going to do other teslas. The subscriptions include maintenance and roadside assistance, which I thought that the Tesla included anyway, but whatever. And you can do your payments from five to fifty a month with a fifty five hundred dollars start fee or up to one thousand dollars a month with the start fee of one thousand dollars. And you need also to put down a five hundred dollars security deposit.

There's a reservation deposit of one hundred bucks. And the term is month to month with three months minimum. Right now, it's only in California. New markets opening soon. So this is an interesting twist because already it's pretty easy to like lease a Tesla from Tesla. But you're talking if you're gonna lease, you're you're looking at you know, a minimum. I think, you know, whatever their term is. I think it's three years, four years, five years, whatever it is.

I don't know. Maybe they have twelve month leases, but with this it's month to month. So maybe you're just tiptoeing into an ev. Maybe you just want to get a taste for it. Maybe you're in town for a year for a new job or something. Maybe you just have gobs of money. Because I'm not getting into the financial aspect of this, I'm not sure it's the most financially sound decision. But then again, you know, there's a lot of people out there that have a lot of

discretionary cash and they don't care. I mean, to me, you know, this is just like it's kind of like a twist on a lease, except with no you know, there's no contract. So maybe people like that idea. I mean, I know that the you know, there's a whole generation coming up that likes everything on demand and they like everything month to month. They like everything to be a payment, and they like everything to be understandable and the expectation

of regularity. I guess that's sounds really weird. I need I need a toilet flush sound when I say that word. But anyway, so that's it Autonomy Tesla three subscription. There you go. And I guess this is the same guy who started Gosh, what was it? I think it was True Car, True Car and cars Direct. Same people, So there you go, all right, Valerie says, why does this keep coming up when I'm trying to go to Etsy dot com. This loads instead of the Etsy dot com home page. And she sent me a big old link

that is join Honey. And if you look at this, it is a big link that is all about getting you to sign up for Honey. So what's happening on your computer, Valerie, is that you have malware on your computer, some sort of program. It could be a browser hijacker, a redirect, something is causing this this page to redirect to this Honey advertisement. It could be another extension on your computer. It could be malware on your computer at large. Sorry, it could be an extension on your Chrome browser. It

could be malware at large. A lot of times. A lot of times this comes from third party software that you install on your computer. That may be what's called a browser helper. So that's what i'd look for. I would go through all of your extensions on Chrome. And if you want to do that, if you look in the upper right hand corner of Chrome, there's like a little puzzle piece that will show you all of your extensions and get rid of the ones you don't want.

You can click the three little dots and say remove from Chrome. And I would go through there. I go through mine all the time to make sure that I don't have any on there that I don't need, and so you know, be brutal, just remove stuff. If you see one on there, you're like, what is this? Just get rid of it. You're not going to ruin your browser. Now. On your computer, I would do a scan with malware bytes, and you know they have a free offering, so just

ignore all the overtures to subscribe. But I would just do that and get that and scan your computer and see if you have any programs on there that are not supposed to be there, or just go through your list of applications and uninstall anything that you don't need that may look suspicious. I see this all the time on people's computers that I'm trying to help out. They've got some sort of software on there that's that's purportedly to help them, but in reality it does not help

them at all. So that's that's what it's all about. All right. Let's get to the next story here. FTC says US consumers lost seven hundred and seventy million dollars in social media scams in twenty twenty one. That's up eighteen times from twenty seventeen. That's the headline from tech Crunch. And the reason I mentioned this is because you think that only old people are susceptible to these scams, right.

I used to do these stories all the time when I was called the troubleshooter over at KTAL Channel six in Shreveport, Louisiana. And there's always some elderly person that was got a phone call and next thing you know, they're giving their credit card number over the phone, or their bank account or they got a letter in the mail and they were totally scammed. This happened all the time. People get their bank accounts cleared out. And you might think, Haha,

that's only for the olds. No, no, no, it happens to young people. In fact, I would say that young people are even more susceptible at this point. And some of this research from the FTC supports that because young people guess what's happening to them? They're getting defrauded on

social media platforms. And so what's happening is because social media has built this little world of like, you know, people to people kind of transactions, you can get scammed a lot easier because things look like they're coming from your friends. Your friends post something and you fall prey

to it. I see, I've gotten many, many, many of these emails about cryptocurrency scams where somehow they take over someone's Instagram and then they post a story that says, oh, I just got you know, one hundred and fifty dollars for free through this new app, like sign up with my link below, and your friends see that and go, oh that's cool, and they sign up and now they're defrauded. And it's defrauded even a word. I don't even know, but anyway, that's what I would say. And this stuff.

There's this whole article on tech crunches I'll link up in the show notes, but it goes through all this stuff. But you just need to know that this is still happening, and just because you think you're smarter than the average bear, it does not necessarily make you immune from all these scams that are going around out there. So, for instance, myself, I was checking my email this morning, I got an

email from the IRS saying, oh, this didn't work. This itn there's a taxpayer number, like, here's a pdf, check it out now. I was tempted to click it immediately and see what the deal was. And I was like, wait, hold on, what email address are they sending this to? And why is the IRS sending me an email? And so again I kind of like, you know, immediately again I immediately went and checked and saw that that was happening.

And so anyway, Wow, I'm really embarrassed right now. I'm pretty sure that I had I'm pretty sure that I had the microphone off the entire time while I was while I was broadcasting to Twitter this entire time. I can't believe it. Oh wow, Okay, well you live and you learn rich. That was a big old, big old mistake. Anyway,

I'll learn for next time anyway. So my point is just just be aware, just always, always, always if it's something that seems like it's like a Amazon thing or like I had someone come into my office the other day saying, hey, I placed an order for an iPhone and then I got this message from Apple that says, hey, you need to call about your order. And that's kind of odd. And I looked at the email. Looked very legit, it looked like it came from Apple. It had the

person's order number on it, and I couldn't tell. I said, look, I said, here's what I would do, And if you're wondering, just take a cool off period twenty four hours. Let cool off, you know what I mean. If this is something that's real, most likely they're going to email you again. And because I couldn't really tell, and I didn't want to call the phone number in the email because I didn't know if that phone number was legitimate or not,

so I just said, hey, just cool off. If Apple needs to contact you, they'll get in touch with you again, and so, or you can go ahead and call Apple's phone number directly, like if you go to Apple dot com, scroll to the bottom of the website and call the phone number there, that's a better way of doing it than calling a random phone number that arrives in an email. So just be on guard. No matter what your level of savviness is, it's just always best to just just

be a critical thinker with all of this stuff. So let's see, I don't want to end on a bad one. Ah, this person's so mean to me. But ah, okay, I guess I guess I'll just tackle it here we go, all right, Howard says, your spot's on the news. Why do you use music under all of your stories. It's hard to hear your voice. The story today about Hyatt today sure sounds like a paid commercial for Hyatt, was it? Mariott and Hilton have been doing this for years, Howard. So, Howard,

let's just break this down. Number One, music under the stories. You know what that's been going on ever since I started the Tech Report at KTLA. I actually am not a fan of the music in the stories, and so I have actually said many times I don't want the music because it is distracting, and I think that it's

also it's a crutch. Sometimes when we're trying to formulate a story, it's much easier to make almost like a music video story than it is to actually come up with what we call in the business NAT sounds, And so I personally like building stories using NAT sounds, which is natural sound, which is like if you're looking at a boat in the ocean, you would hear the splash of the waves, and you hear the horn there and

all that stuff. Whereas if you're just doing a music under your story, you can just have a whole bunch of montage, you know, a whole bunch of clips of this story and it just looks great and it sounds great, but it's a little bit lazier when it comes to editing.

But people have gotten so used to music under stories with things like YouTube, MTV and all these different you know, news magazines, they all use music, and so yeah, I actually don't like the music either, and so I've I've definitely ninety nine point nine percent of the time when my stories come back to me, I tell the editor please lower the music every single time. And I know there's a certain level we have the music at every time and it's standardized, but it still feels too loud

to me. So I agree with you on that one. I'll give you that point. Now, the story today about Hyatt sure sounds like a paid commercial for Hyatt, was it? So I will tell you in my history of KTLA, yes, we have done sponsored segments and it's all highly coordinated through teams. Now, I will tell you that does not happen very often. In fact, I can tell you in the past five years, I think we've done two sponsored segments and they were very clearly marked that these were

sponsored segments. And even when we do those, there's never been any editorial oversight by a third party. I always have the final say in anything that I put on air, and so well, okay, the boss is always the final say, if they choose. But my point is, no one is sitting there telling me what to do, what to write, how to say it. In any of my pieces, I am covering tech news when there's new things that are interesting.

Sure they may look like a commercial because we're featuring a product or a service or something that's new, but it's me explaining my take on what they're offering. And so with Hyatt specifically, what you're referencing is this new digital key that they offer through Apple Wallet, and so it's called room key in Apple Wallet. And yes, it was a nuanced story, and I will give you that, but the thing was, I tried to explain to my story many many times why this is different from what

Mariott and Hilton offer. I've used Mariott and Hilton's offerings as well, and yes, you can use your phone as a key with both Marriott Hotels and Hilton Hotels, and also MGM Hotels and some other hotel chains. But the big difference, and I mentioned this in my piece, is that that requires an app. It requires you to unlock your phone, open the app, activate the key, and hold the key near your phone use or near the door

using Bluetooth. Now, the new Apple Wallet system uses NFC or RFID, I can't remember, but it uses a system that's a lot easier. You do not have to unlock your phone, and it's integrated into the base of the phone itself. So once you get this key and Apple Wallet, you do not have to unlock your phone to use it, you don't have to open your phone to use it, you don't have to open an app to use it, and it works a heck of a lot faster. I

thought I made that point pretty clear. I know a lot of people came down on me on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, or not so much Twitter, but Facebook and Instagram, saying, oh, Rich, come on, I've used this feature so many times, and yes, so did I about two weeks before at the MGM hotel in Las Vegas, and I wanted to be forward thinking and tech thinking and all this stuff, and it was such a pain to use the app as my key the entire time I was there, because it's just so annoyed of a

process to like activate the key, and when you got to the elevator, you had to make sure your key was ready or else the doors were closed by the time you got to activate, and there's no signal in the elevator, so I couldn't even use the key because it has to open up the app and get the key. With this Apple wallet thing, it's all that all that stuff is thrown away. The key is physically stored on

your phone, so it's actually a whole lot better. It doesn't require a wireless connection like a cellular connection because the key is embedded into the phone itself, and it doesn't require it, you know, to open and activate. So anyway, Howard, I understand, I'm always open to any sort of constructive criticism about what I do on TV one hundred percent.

I'm very transparent with what I do, and my end goal with everything that I do, no matter where I post, no matter what I do, is to help people and to really be as fair as possible in both the process and what I'm posting about. And so I really truly think that's that's what guides what I do anywhere I do it, whether it's TV instead Facebook, Twitter, now YouTube shorts, I've been doing a lot more of those so anyway, thanks for the email. I do appreciate it,

all right. That sound means it's going to do it for the end of the show. That means it's going to do it for this episode of the show. If you'd like submit a question for me to answer, just go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button, or go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit the email icon. I would love it if you would rate

and review this podcast. Just go to the listening app of your choice and write a quick line about what you like about this show to help other people understand why they should listen. I did get two new reviews this week. One said that you didn't talk about the Tesla on the way to Vegas and that was a total I can't believe I didn't talk about that. I should have, but it was a great drive and it was it's so perfect. You can find me on social media.

I am at rich on Tech and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free Ktla plus app on Apple, TV, fireTV, and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the technology section and watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name is Richard Demiel, thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending it with me. I'll talk to you real soon