How hackers get your password

a nerve. We talked on KTLA about how to free up storage on your smartphone. Now I think that this is less of a problem than it was before, but it's still a pretty big problem. And the number one thing that I see is that people do not back up their pictures. I don't understand why. I mean, I guess I do. It could be complicated, but you just have to. And the main two things that are going on here is that you've got a combination of storage on your phone which is limited, and then you've got

storage in the cloud, which costs money. And so people don't want to pay for that storage in the cloud because it becomes expensive. But yet they're running out of storage on their phone, and so what they do is they just basically delete stuff and say, I guess I don't need that. You shouldn't do that, there's no need to do that. Pay a couple extra bucks a month to get the storage online. Pare down your photos or your video you're really it's the videos that take up

the most storage. So if you're in a place where you're like where I was a couple probably a year ago, where I was looking at my Google Drive and I was really close to the next tier where I'd have to pay much more per month, it's really the videos that put you over the edge there. So go through

and delete the videos. You'd be surprised how many trash videos are on your phone, like stuff that you took that you don't really need anymore, or videos that you started and then like let's say your kid plays baseball like mine, there's a lot of scenarios where you start taking a video because they're up at bat and then they stop or they strike out, and you don't really need that video anymore. So just go through and delete videos on your phone. The easiest way is really to

delete some big videos on your phone and iPhone. I was a little bit surprised doesn't have a real easy way to do that. And so if you want an easy way to delete the big files on your phone, there's an app called Gemini Photos, which is really nice and it's a couple bucks. It's like three days for free, five dollars a month, twenty dollars a year, or like thirty five for lifetime access or actually unlimited access, because

sometimes they change the program. They come out with Gemini too, and then they're like, oh, never mind, that's not included. So I would pay like the five dollars to use it for a month and you know, there you go. You can save it get rid of all the big files. It also helps you get rid of the blurry photos.

There's also this major confusion about iCloud with the iPhone, and the major confusion is that people don't realize that when you delete stuff off your phone if you have an iPhone using iCloud, they don't realize that when you delete a picture off your phone, it also deletes out of iCloud. iCloud is not a one way backup, it's a two way sink between your phone and iCloud. So anything you do on your phone is reflected in iCloud. Now that's the reason why I like Google Photos better

than iCloud is because it's a one way sink. When a picture goes up to iCloud or sorry, when a picture goes up to Google Photos, it sticks there. It stays there even if I delete it off my phone outside of the Google Photos app. So that's a little confusing as well that on my iPhone, I basically have two apps on the home screen. I've got Photos and I've got Google Photos. And this is the other thing that I recommend that you do almost on a daily basis.

I go through at the end of the day and I just go through and delete pictures out of my Google Photos. I just it's almost like maintenance. So I'll just spend ten to fifteen minutes a day just going through my Google Photos and just deleting stuff. And that

could be old photos. Sometimes you just go in and pick a category like fireworks, and I'll just scroll through all my old pictures and videos and just just kind of clean it up, pare it down a little bit, look through receipts, do that, and there's a lot of different ways you can just spend time kind of paring down your your cloud accounts so that you don't have you're not faced with this giant, you know, plethora of pictures at some point that you're never going to get through.

I'm always hoping too, that Google will apply some sort of AI to making our photos easier to manage in a like, in a cleanup way, and they do. They definitely have ways, It's just not one hundred percent one click.

So anyway, I've got a great article on the website rich on tech dot tv about cleaning up your photos and freeing up storage because it is a summer and you are going to be taking a lot of photos and videos, so definitely get that storage cleaned up on your phone before or you take a vacation, because you don't want it to be when you're on vacation you run out of storage. All right, let's get to the first big story of the week. Verizon plans are getting

a little bit more expensive. This is not a huge price increase, but honestly, I'm kind of sick of all the price increases. Every single service that I subscribe to use do whatever in real life online has gotten expensive over the past six months. More expensive. And that's including Netflix, which went up by two bucks a month. My alarm system went up by a couple bucks a month. Haircuts. I brought the kids for haircuts that went up by another three dollars for the two of them. You know,

so three dollars times to another six bucks. What else went up? Amazon went up, Amazon Prime went up. So basically everything has gone up in price. And if you've been to the grocery store, you know that all those prices have gone up. So, yeah, inflation is real at this point. It is happening, and big companies are saying, you know, I feel like there's two things happening. Yeah,

everything's becoming more expensive. But also I think a lot of companies are sort of what I always refer to as klingons, where they're like, oh, we notice everyone else is raising prices, Let's raise prices too. And a lot of this is reality, Like I'm sure it does cost Verizon more to do business because everything is costing them more,

like fuel and labor and all these other things. And so now they're adding what's called an economic adjustment charge of a dollar thirty five per voice line for consumers. If you have a business line it's gonna go up by ninety eight cents a month and then two dollars and twenty cents per data line. So bottom line for the average consumer, you're gonna be paying a couple bucks

more for your Verizon bill next month. This starts in June, and it's just one of those things where it's not a huge amount where you're sitting there going, oh, I'm gonna cancel Verizon, but it's just enough when you add it up to all the other things that prices are just going up, and it's just the reality of what's happening right now with the econ me. I don't know what's causing it precisely, but it's happening in a big way.

And again I think some of it is is chalked up to kind of like higher cost of doing business, but other things other people are just like, you know what, it's just kind of like the time to raise prices, and that definitely seems like what's happening in a big way. So just don't be surprised next month and you get your Verizon bill, it is going to be higher. Now if you're looking to switch. There are a couple of companies that I do recommend that I think are pretty good. Now,

here's the thing. When you have a big unlimited plan from Verizon, it gives you everything. So if you're traveling internationally, you need that hot spot, you need the international data. You have an Apple Watch, you need that. So it becomes very intertwined. You've got a couple of kids on your plan, you don't really want to change anything. And that's where these big companies really make out with millions and millions of people overpaying every month for services that

they just don't need. You know, an unlimited plan is a good ninety dollars a month, sixty to ninety a month, And do you use all those features? Probably not now I do personally, and I can't switch out of one of these big all on one plans, but someone like my wife definitely. If you look at her Verizon data usage, it's literally a gigabyte a month, two gigabytes a month.

It's a joke. But we're sort of intertwined on this plan, so I'm not gonna I thought about switching her off, but it's just too much, and it's kind of nice to have everyone together. Especially my son has a plan as well, so it's just one of these things where I got to stick to it. Now, if you are single, if you have just two people on your plan, maybe no kids, maybe no Apple Watch. Definitely some alternatives to look into. Number one Mint Mobile fantastic. I've got a

family member with it. They pay three hundred bucks for the whole year. It's not unlimited data, but it's like eight gigs a month and it works just fine. I've got a test Mint Mobile plan that it is unlimited for thirty dollars a month and it's fantastic. It works great, it does what I need. Obviously, it's on a secondary phone, so it's not my primary line. But it's been fantastic and you only have to think about it once a year when you pay that bill. The other one that's

really good is Visible. Now. The thing about Visible is that it's owned by Verizons, so you get Verizon quality network. The problem is you're not going to get Verizon quality support, and so when you need help, in the case of another family member that I have on Visible, help is not very good. It's mostly by chat. It's you know,

you either have to chat or call. I don't even know if they offer a phone call, but you know, you can't go into a store, which at the end of the day, when you're having trouble, the ability to go into a store is really nice. So you can't do that. But at the end of the day, you get an unlimited Verizon plan for twenty for as low

as twenty five dollars a month. Now it is typically forty dollars a month, and they do they do limit things like your speed and you know, your hotspot data and all that stuff, but a lot of people again don't need all that stuff. So you can get what's called a party plan for twenty five dollars a month. And it sounds like you have to join with a bunch of people like in your family. You don't. You can actually just link up with any random party plan.

They've got links to these things on Reddit and online where you can just find a random Visible party plan, and they don't they don't frown against it, like it's fine. I'd ask Visible this and they said, yeah, it's fine, you can just join whatever. So if you join a random party plan, you can pay twenty five dollars a month unlimited Visible. They just added e SIM support for a lot of Android phone Samsung and pixel, so you don't even have to get a SIM card sent to

you. You can just activate your phone with this right from your device. So that's something to look into. The other plan that I really like, and I have not tested this one but I want to, is an AT and T plan that's only available at Walmart, and it's forty five dollars a month for unlimited. It's really good. Now I don't know what the downside is to that plan. A friend was telling me that, you know, they'll throttle

you really quickly if you go over the data. But it's like unlimited, but still, you know, they give you like thirty five forty five gigs of data whatever it is, and then after that they have the right to throttle you and slow down your speeds. But it does come with hotspot, it comes with online storage. It's five g So if you are a single person with one line, you like the idea of prepaid, you pay your bill. You know, you can do automatic payments, but it's forty

five dollars a month. You have to sign up or buy the SIM, at least inside Walmart. I think you have to sign up in Walmart, but look into that. I think it's called the AT and T Max Walmart plan. But those are some good alternatives if you're looking to save some money, like we all are at this point. Oh that's that sound means it's time for the first question. Oh my gosh, Paul says, Hey, Rich, I speaking of what we just talked about. I just called Spectrum Mobile.

Was thinking of changing over from Verizon. They told me I have a They told me I have to have a five G compatible phone. My eight plus has been paid off two years ago. I'm not buying a new iPhone again. My mind is the last with the home button. I think this is a form of bait and switch is their way around it. They would send me a five G only simcard, Paul. So, Paul sounds like I think Spectrum is heavily advertising Spectrum Mobile, which is you know,

it's another option. If you have Spectrum, it does probably save you some money. I'm a little bit torn on them because I don't like the idea of giving a big cable conglomerate even more of my money per se. But if you can save money every month by going with it, and you're not going to really switch, because I think with Spectrum Mobile you have to have Spectrum Internet or some sort of Spectrum service to get the

cheapest price. I could be wrong on that because it's been a while since I looked into this, But with regards to the five G I'm not sure that their SIM card is only five G compatible. I would be a little bit. I don't think that's totally true. But if this is their rule, you have to go buy it, because what they're doing is they're not going to send you a SIM card unless you send them what's called the IMEI off your phone and it's compatible with their

with their rules and their network. So what they're going to do is say, okay, send us this number from your phone, which is you can find it in settings called the IMEI, and that tells you if your phone is compatible with their network. Now, it may be compatible with the Spectrum Mobile service, but since they're not allowing anyone with just four G phones to get on anymore, they may say no, you can't do that. And it's

not bait and switch, it's just that's their rule. That's what they want to do, and they want to prevent people from having a bad quality of service when they get on that network, because not like the the cell phone carriers are not retiring four G anytime soon, Like it's not going away this year or next year or even in probably a couple of years. But I think that the emphasis is definitely on five G. And so

if that's their rule, it's not bait and switch. It's just hey, you know, this is what we want to do, this is our priority, and we make the rules and you can either live by them or you know, find some other service. So what I would recommend Paul is maybe look into some of the other services that I mentioned. If you want Verizon, I would definitely check into Visible, and I believe you'd be able to activate that eight plus right from your handset there. All right, So Google,

I was off last week. I had to go down to San Diego for a Lego Land shoot, so I did not was not able to do the podcast. So I did see Google Io, I did follow it, but I was not able to talk about it in a big way on the podcast. I'll be quite honest, I was underwhelmed. I think that Google is still doing amazing things with AI and machine learning. I think that Apple is catching up to a lot of it, except for specifically, voice transcription is really horrible on Apple. Still if you

use Siri, it's amazing on Google. But I think a lot of these things, I mean, Google just their secret sauce is really just really flexing their software smarts. But I'll be honest on the flip side, I think that Google had lens for a very long time, which reads things in pictures, which is identifying what's in the pictures and also the text. But I think that Apple's implementation

of live text on their phones is just phenomenal. So good example, I'm going on vacation later and or soon, i should say, and I was looking up some recommendations and this social influencer had posted a whole bunch of recommendations for this area on an Instagram story and it

was just a ton of tiny text. So I screenshotted that Instagram story I put into my photos and I just started copying and pasting all the recommendations from that using live text into my Google Maps, which I use what's called lists, and I just bookmark little things that I want to go to in different cities. And so it was such an easy process. It was such a

smooth process. And that was something that I'd have to look over see what the name of the restaurant is, and then remember it and then type it into Google Maps. This way you literally just copy and paste the text even though it's a picture. It can still recognize that text and copy and paste it really easily, and it was right on. So kudos to Apple for doing something so smooth. Which Google has had that feature for years,

it's just never been any good. But I did notice that Google has definitely stepped up their kind of use of Google Lends ever since Apple kind of integrated it into their phones in such a big way. So it's you know, look, it's a it's a it's competition, and Apple and Google our neck and neck in this competition of what they can do for you and the products and services that they have. Anyway, all that's to say, not too many things to talk about from Google. Iow

a couple of notable items. Pixel six a's coming out in July. This is going to be a cheaper pixel phone at four hundred and fifty dollars. It's going to have dual cameras on the back, a main lens and an ultra wide so no telephoto. But Magic Eraser has also gotten a little bit better. It can now change the color of just acting objects in your picture, which

is kind of cool. In addition to deleting things out of your pictures, it also comes with the same highly accurate speech recognition, cool features like recorder, live caption, Live Translate. It's going to receive five years of security update, and it's also the first Pixel that can go seventy two hours in extreme battery mode. So this is going to be available July twenty first, for pre order July twenty eighth.

I say that the Pixel six A is going to be an excellent phone for the average phone user that wants a really good phone that's going to last five years. These Pixels just keep on going if you're not a power user. I think that these lower priced Pixels are really the perfect smartphone because they have great software, they have an excellent camera. They're not I mean, the iPhone now has options that are the cheapest option of the

iPhone is four thirty. I think for the iPhone se, which is okay, the Pixel six say, well, we'll offer that ultra wide. I think it's gonna have a better kind of a better camera maybe and also some some cooler features. But the I would say, if you're looking

at those you know, budget phones. I would say that the the options to look at are the Samsung I think it's the fifty three, and then the the Pixel six A and also the iPhone S. All Right, the other thing they mentioned, I'll just go over this since I've got it here is the Pixel Watch, which is, you know, the big smart watch to rival the Apple Watch. And the Apple Watch has just been amazing. It's been out for seven seven years now and it just is

the best wearable on the market. There's nothing even close to what the Apple Watch does, and quite honestly, it's basically the thing that keeps me in the Apple ecosystem. Now, if they let if they set the Apple Watch free, and Apple knows this, this is why they don't set I message free. If they set the Apple Watch free and let you activate it as a its own device without going through a lot of hoops like they do right now, I think that they would lose some people

to the Android because people would have more options. You can wear an Apple Watch and have Android. But they know that that keeps you in the ecosystem, so they don't do that. But if they did, it would it would get a lot of not a lot of people. But definitely people would think twice. They go, oh cool, I can get the Apple Watch, which is really amazing, but I can also get a pixel phone or something

else like that. Not too much to say about the Pixel Watch except it's gonna have things like Google Maps built in. It's gonna have fitbit tools built in, it's gonna have Google Wallet built in. But this thing does not come out for a long time. It's not coming out until the fall. And you know, it's one of these things that it's gonna be first generation. There's definitely gonna be some downsides to it. It's not gonna be as full featured as the Apple Watch. People are gonna

be disappointed. Will it be fine? Probably, But I think for that we're gonna I hopefully. I'm pleasantly surprised. I just don't see it as being amazing out of the gate. I think that if you're looking for a companion to the pixel or to an Android for a smart watch, it'll be a nice option to have. But we're gonna have to kind of sit and wait on that one. All right, Let's get to the next question. Nancy says, I just watch your segment which you recommended a password manager,

Can you recommend one for iPhone and Mac? So, yeah, the couple of a couple of this actually had to do with the next story. I was gonna mention how hackers get your password, So I guess I'll skip to the end and then I'll go back to the beginning. But the password managers that I recommend number one. If you want a free one, I recommend Bitwarden. I did a story with Bitwarden was very impressed. They offer a

free product. Yes, there is a it's a freemium product, which means you sign up and they hope that you get a little bit frustrated with what they offer for free, or you want some extra features that you end up paying for the full service product. And that's not I'm not saying that in a bad way. That's what all these companies do. Whenever you use a product that's free.

The hope is that you're just a little bit hamstrung by that product and that you say, oh, okay, fine, I'll pay the extra five bucks a month because you get a taste of that product and you already have a login, you've already started using it, and you're already comfortable with it, and yeah, you can suffer through the free product and use just the free options, but it's always going to be a little bit better if you pay for the paid product. And that's just kind of

the business model. And yes, you could use a free product forever and just say, oh cool, I'm one of those people that this free product works great and it's amazing. But for most people, or for many people, I should say, they will translate into a paid customer. Now, for paid password managers, I like dash Lane and I like one Password. I think those are two of the best. I think

they're highly recommended. Last Pass I used to recommend a lot, but a lot of people were burned by last Pass when they went from free to a paid service and they kind of really hamstrung the free service, and so I kind of like it left a little bit of a bad time haste in my mouth. Now, if you ever want to switch from one password manager to another, there are ways of switching. It's not the easiest thing in the world, but I have done it and it works.

But it's it's doable. But the beauty of a password manager is that you just have to remember one password and then it will fill in all the passwords and so what you want to look for is a password manager that works across various devices that includes a computer, a smartphone, a tablet, and maybe even your watch. And so when you look at that, something like dash Lane and one password and bitwarden, they'll cover a lot of those bases. But what Nancy is asking me is can

you recommend one for iPhone and Mac? And so if you are just using an iPhone in Mac, I would say, just use the built in iCloud keychain. And so iCloud has a built in password manager. It will generate passwords, it will fill in those passwords, and it's super easy. It's super simple. You may even have seen it when you're using Safari on the iPhone or Safari on the Mac. It says, hey, do you want us to suggest a password? Do you want us to recommend one? Do you want

us to save one? Do you want us to fill in one? That's all fine and dandy if you're only using iPhone and Mac. In fact, I would qualify not just iPhone in Mac. But you have to be using Safari on both iPhone and Mac for this to truly work. If you're using Chrome on the iPhone and Mac, I would not recommend using the built in password manager on the iPhone because it's going to present some problems because you're gonna be copying and pasting a lot of stuff.

So for that reason, I would recommend a third party one. And like I said, Bitwarden, dash Lane, one Password are all going to be good options, even last Pass. You know, it really comes down to your preferences. You know, it's just look get a feel for how much these things cost, the features they have, like some of them have, like I think dash Lane might have like a built in VPN that you can use, so that if that's an

option that you want, then go with that. You know, there's a lot of different there's a lot of different ones, and you can, you know, you don't have to use my recommendations. You can look up online a lot of people like other brands, just see what you like. But again, if you're just using Chrome and Android, then I would recommend the built in password manager that Chrome has. An Android and I don't know what is that called. Let's

see Chrome password manager. It's just called Google password Manager, and so you can use that, but again I would only use that if you're using Android and Chrome. That's it. Okay, so that's your password manager. Now why do you need a password manager? This is what I got into on the news. This was another popular story this week because I'm telling you I've always said this on the podcast. I am like a doctor. I hear a lot of stories. I see a lot of stuff, and the way that

I see this stuff is all through emails. People email me, they DM me on a daily basis, give telling me about their problems. And the problems typically stem from hacking. They typically stem from losing accounts. They typically stem from organizing their computers, organizing their photos, recommendations for better Wi Fi. I mean, these are like the common themes I see over and over and over selecting which smartphone to get. But one of the biggest problems I see is hackers

getting passwords. And ninety nine percent of the time we hand over our passwords to the hackers through a phishing attempt and those fishing emails that you get you're listening to a tech podcast. You may be a little more savvy than a lot of people, but the fact is you've got someone in your family or friends that is not as savvy as you, and these are the people that fall for this stuff, and it's your grandma, it's your mom, it's your dad, it's a friend, it's a relative.

And these are smart people that are doctors, their lawyers, their architects, their journalists, their teachers, whatever. They're smart in their aspect. They may not be as tech savvy as you are or as I am, and that's what happens. So what happens is you get this email and there's some sort of what the sexpert I talk to calls

a stressor event. Hey, you got to you got to change your password right now, or your account was just logged in from somewhere you need to help, you know, lock this down, or your Amazon account was just used to purchase this, so you better go in and fix that. And before you know it, when you try logging in to fix it, they've already taken your password and they're off and running and they're they're messing things up and they're somehow either you know, screwing with your stuff or

just they can do a lot of damage. So what do you want to do? You want to make sure that you do not fall for that social engineering, don't get tricked. So learn to spot the signs of a phishing email. Sometimes it's not always that easy. So and tell your friends and family members about this. That's the other thing is like educate your friends, you know, talk about this stuff. I know, you're out to a beer with your friends, like just say, hey, uh, do you

know how to spot a phishing email? Because I think you should know, and just you know, see the reaction on their face and be like, I know. I listen to Rich on Tech, that's what he talks about. The other way that your password gets out into the wild is when a website is hacked. And this happens. This has happened to me many times. You sign up for one website, they are hacked, and next thing you know, that password and email combination is floating around on the web.

It might be on the dark web, it might be a little tough to access, but these hackers know how to find this information. And then they go ahead and they try that password and use their name on a whole bunch of different websites, common websites. You might use Gmail. They try it there. Yahoo, You might try it there. They might try it on a banking website, and they just keep going and of course you know they're not

sitting there necessarily trying to log in. They're using automated systems that can do this stuff very fast in a big way. And so this expert I talk to Roger Grimes, by the way, who is an excellent expert from the software training company or security awareness training company know before. He said that twice a year, your password is probably stolen from a website that you belong to. And this is why you don't want to reuse the same password over and over. People say, ah, I've got my password,

I use it. It's the same password I've had for years. Don't do it. I mean literally, you're putting yourself at so much risk if you're using the same password over and over. It's just not worth it. Take the five minutes to sign up and understand how to use a password manager. Take the five minutes to turn on two factor authentication. The first thing that I ask people when they get hacked, I say, did you have two factor on?

They said no. I've been talking on the news about two factor authentication now for ten years, and still when I ask people, a lot of people have not turned it on. Turn it on, set it up. The best way to do it is with an authentication app. Look up one of those Microsoft offers one, Google offers one. There's a couple other companies that offer them. That's the best way to do it so you're not tied to

your phone number. Oh let's see what else. This expert was telling me that the passwords that you think you make up, that you think are tough for hackers to guess, are very easy. They can guess sixteen to eighteen character human created passwords all the time now, if using a password manager, if it's a totally random password. As far as they know, eleven or twelve perfectly random passwords are

uncrackable at this point. So that's why when you've got all those crazy passwords on the h Sorry if you hear some commotion in the background. We are fostering two kittens right now, and they are just running all over the room. So it's uh that they're getting into this playful state. When we first got them, we had to nurse them to health. They were so tiny and so scared. But now they are turning into the kittens that you know and love. But they are eating my wires, they

are playing around. They're yeah, just put your mouth on that USBC cable. Okay, climb on my router. The one kitten is now that we've got two the and is sitting on top of my hero So I'm sure the Wi Fi signal just took a big nose dive. Let's see what else They are cute, though, I will say it's a lot of work giving them medicine and all this stuff, but it is cute and it's fun to do.

The kids love it. Okay, where was I? So the passwords that you want to use from a password manager, eleven or twelve character is going to be perfect, going to be a good password. The other thing is if you like, let's say, on your computer at work. And I understand why you may not want to use a password manager, because your computer at work, you're logging in thirty forty fifty times a day. Right, every time you leave to get up from your computer, you should be

locking it. Every time you come back, you want to unlock it, and that probably requires your passwords, So I get it. You probably don't want to put in a twelve character randomly generated password, so you want to use a password that's a little bit more familiar, and so in that case, use something what's called a password, a pass phrase, and a passphrase is something like Johnny jumped over the big blue fence where overalls. Now it may not have to be that long, but something to that effect.

It's a it's almost like a sentence that you can remember, I love eating ice cream in the summer. Don't use that because that's too that's that's too easily guessable. Okay, now they just turned on the speaker by pressing the button on it. That's real nice. Okay, So now I gotta go hang on a second. I've got to go turn off the music because the kittens have turned on

this speaker, so let me turn this off. And okay, that's this is well, this is a first for the podcasts having to turn off a speaker in the middle of it because the cats are on it. But anyway, so pass phrases very smart, and that's that's what I would use. The other thing, uh, the other thing I didn't mention is the other way that these hackers get

your password is unauthorized password resets. And so if you get, if anyone ever asks you to read them a number that you get like a confirmation, just don't believe it. And you know, it's funny because again, and I've talked about this on the podcast in the past. These hackers basically reverse engineer the security measures that companies have put in place to protect us. So what happens is, if you ever use let's say PayPal, and let's say you don't log in for a long time, PayPal will say, hey,

we notice you logged in. Can you please enter the phone enter the six digit code that we just texted to your phone. And so that's just put in place to make sure it is who you are who you say you are when you go to use PayPal after not using it for a year. Now on the flip side, what the hackers will do is they'll call you up and they'll say, hey, mister Demiro, we noticed that your PayPal account has been hacked, so we need to fix it. And just to confirm you are who you say you are,

we just texted you a code to your phone. Please read us that code. And what they're actually doing is a password reset. So they've got your password because it's already been hacked in some other ways, and they send that password reset code to your phone. Now you read them back that code they entered in the website, and now they've taken over your account, so that's another way that they get accessed. You just have to be on your toes and this stuff I'm telling you is just stuff.

This is why I talk about it because you just have to know about it. It's really it's very tricky, and that's what they do, is they really try to trick you. So be on the lookout for that kind of stuff. All right, let's get to the next question. Ron says, good day. Is it possible to use music for my library as ring tones on my iPhone twelve pro? If so, how do I transfer a song to my ringtone menu? Thank you? Be well well, Ron, this is a good question. This is a feature that used to

be pretty popular on the iPhone. I have not set a custom ring tone a long time, but when the iPhone first came out, this was the bee's knees as they called it. I don't even know what that phrase refers to, but you know what that's I think all the kids said that maybe back in the fifties. So these days iTunes is definitely less of a force in life.

Transferring things to your iPhone is not necessarily easy. So what I would recommend is a program and the program I recommend is called I ring I r I n GG. And this is from soft Reno and this is actually a company that's based out in Ukraine. So we are still thinking about folks out in Ukraine that are going through a very tough time right now. Hopefully that situation

will be resolved. We do hope so, because it's just too senseless what's happening there anyway, I digress, but iring r I n GG is a simple drag and drop way of putting ring tones on your iPhone. I don't even know what to say. It's just that's it. It doesn't get much easier than this. You select a song, you drag it into the app, or you can even choose a song from the app, and then you just plug in your phone and boom, it will transfer it to your phone. It's so easy you do not need iTunes.

It's like literally the easiest app I've ever used in my life. Maybe I'll go back to using custom ring tones I I You know, I was testing this app out a couple of years ago. I definitely had some custom ring tones on my phone. But you know, it's one of these things where if you still want to do it. That's the easiest way that I know to do it. All right, good question, great, great question. All right, let's get to the next story of the week. Pretty

simple story. Amazon has updated the Fire seven. I don't typically recommend the Fire tablets because I think that they are not very exciting. They are literally if you just want a basic, the most basic tablet to read books on, watch videos on, and maybe surf the web a little bit on. But these are mostly consumption devices like these are. I don't even know if I'd recommend checking my email on them because they're so basic. But this is a good a good tablet for just watching videos and also

reading books, even for kids. I don't typically recommend the Fire tablets because, honestly, the Fire tablets are just they're just so complicated. I feel like like the software is not that good. It's just it's just not that great. Just spend the extra money on the iPad. I'm telling you, I get it. The iPad is like five times six times. Let's see, this is sixty bucks, so six times five five times the cost for an iPad. And I'm telling you, the iPad will last longer, the software is better, your

kids will appreciate it. It's just an overall better experience. But with all that said, the iPhone, the Fire seven does have USB C now, so it's gonna have easier charging. It's got a thirty percent faster processor, double the RAM, which realistically is probably like two gigs versus one. I don't know the actual specs, but it's like very light on the RAM, and it has forty percent more battery life, so you get ten hours of use. So this is now sixty dollars. Used to be fifty dollars. It's a

little bit more expensive ten dollars price increase. That all goes back to the first thing I was talking about, inflation. So suddenly these tablets cost more to make. I guess I'm gonna get it. Everything's just more expensive. These tablets will be available for pre order and they're shipping on June twenty ninth. Not much more to say about those. They do offer a Fire seven kids. The Fire seven is the smallest tablet from Amazon. And what can I say?

If you just want a cheap tablet, you're taking a long plane flight, you just want something the cheapest possible thing you can get. Fire seven is gonna do that. For you. All right, let's get to the next question of the podcast, and this comes from Donna. Donna says, Hey, Rich, quick question. I need to offload the photos from my phone. I currently have an iCloud account that's frequently backed up. If I delete photos from my phone, will they still

be on the cloud. I don't want to lose any I'm not sophisticated enough to understand how I could preserve my photos and free up storage on my phone. Thanks for your help, cheers Donna. Oh wow, this goes back to what I was talking about at the beginning. And yes, very very complicated. But you need to know, Donna, that when you delete a photo off your phone, it will

be it will be deleted off of iCloud. So what you need to do is, uh, you need to be very familiar with a feature called optimize I phone storage. So your iPhone, if you have iCloud and you have an iPhone, you can set up your iPhone so that you can take advantage of unlimited storage and iCloud or I guess I should say as much storage as you pay for an iCloud and your phone will. Okay, let me explain how this works. Let me take a deep

breath because this is kind of complicated. But Number one, go into settings on your iPhone, tap or says your name, which is up at the top, Then tap iCloud, and then tap photos. And when iCloud Photos is turned on, which it probably is if you're already using iCloud Photos, there is a toggle underneath that says either optimize iPhone

storage or download and keep originals. Downloading keep originals means it is going to sync all of your photos to iCloud, but only to the extent of storage that you have available on your iPhone. If you run out of storage on your iPhone, it's gonna say, sorry, we can't do anything else. So what you want to do is choose the option for optimize iPhone storage. And here's what that's gonna do. Let's say your iPhone is sixty four gigabytes of storage on board. Let's say you have a terabyte

of storage and iCloud. When those sixty four gigabytes are getting to be filled up on your iPhone, your iCloud storage sixty four gigs is no big deal. You've got a terabyte. What it's going to do is it's going to keep uploading the full resolution pictures to iCloud. Keep using your storage there on your iPhone. It's going to continue to use just the storage on your phone that

it has available. But what it's gonna do is it's going to start deleting old pictures off your phone, but only the full file of them, the full res file. It's gonna keep a tiny resolution file that you can still browse through on your phone. But there's gonna be a little cloud in the corner. And so when you want to use that picture, when you tap on it, your phone is gonna go, oh, hold on, I don't

have this picture on my local storage. Let me just go grab it from the cloud, and in five four three two one, boom, here you go, here's your picture. And so in the background, it's gonna constantly be managing this storage on your phone and making sure that you have enough storage to continue taking pictures on your phone, even though you only have sixty four gigabytes of storage. But it knows that you've got that nice, glamorous two

terabytes in the cloud. So it's gonna work with the two of those storage areas to kind of make sure that you have as much you can basically take two gigs, two terabytes of photos, even though your phone only has sixty four gigs available. It's only gonna keep the amount of photos on your phone that it thinks it can handle at any given time. But you'll have full access to browse all those pictures and to download the fues at any time to share them out. So hopefully that

makes sense. I know it's so so complicated. I understand it in my brain, but when you talk through it, it's just one of these things. It's like really weird and it's like, okay, it makes sense, but it also just is very complicated. But make sure that's clicked and you should be okay. All right, Speaking of Apple, let's just talk more about Apple while we're on that topic. If you have a subscription, Apple has made a little tiny change to the way subscriptions work, and I guess

this all has to do with inflation as well. This is the common theme of today's show. But now Apple has changed the rules to say that the developer can increase your subscription price basically without telling you. Now, I think they're still gonna say that you have to approve this, like in a little notification, but it doesn't automatically stop

them from doing this. So I think this is being a little bit overblown, but the reality is, Look, subscriptions go up, and just like on your credit card, when Netflix sends you notification that says, hey, just so you know, starting next month, we're gonna be charging you nineteen ninety

nine a month instead of seventeen ninety nine. So instead of having instead of stopping all those subscriptions, instead of Netflix sending you an email and saying, hey, starting next month, if you want to continue subscribing, you need to resubscribe at nineteen ninety nine, that's not very good for a business model, not very good for the customer because most customers, a majority of customers are gonna sit there and say, okay, two dollars Netflix, handfist in the air, but I'll stick

with you. Same thing with Apple. You're gonna see your subscription go up. Let's say for some app that you have, Okay, it goes up from nine ninety nine to ten ninety nine a month, and you're gonna go ough. I wish that didn't happen, but okay, fine. So instead of making you stop the subscription or manually stopping it for everyone and then making you start up again, they're just gonna say, look, if it's under a certain threshold, you can just automatically

opt people into this new higher subscription. So the main numbers here are five dollars, So if a subscription changes by more than five dollars monthly or weekly, it doesn't qualify for this new thing. It will stop the subscription. So again, if the subscription changes by a dollar, two dollars, three dollars, four dollars, it will be okay. And it's also fifty percent. So if a subscription is ninety nine cents a month and all of a sudden they raise it to to ninety nine a month, that's not going

to be okay. So they'll be able to raise it to a dollar forty nine a month with it being okay under this new thing. So I think at the end of the day you are going to get a notification that says, hey, this subscription is going up, and you just say okay. But I don't think they're going to be automatically canceling it in that case unless it's over those thresholds. So again, another very complicated nuance, but I think it sounds very reasonable what Apple is doing

because it's kind of a win win. Developers get to raise prices, customers get to continue their subscriptions at a reasonable price increase, but if it goes over a certain threshold, you're gonna have to take action about that subscription. Next question on the list, Ira says Rich, I need to make a QR scan code for my wife's art business. I heard that some of them are not safe to use. Can you recommend a safe website to use to make the QR code. One that I've heard of is qrmonkey

dot com. I'm not sure if it's safe to use, all right, so quick check of qrmonkey dot com. Now, I think that QR codes are gonna be safe in general if you're making one. The main thing is that, let's see how can I QR QR code monkey, Okay, what's going on? Code QR. I'm just gonna search for QR code generator. Okay. I'm sure there's apps that can do this as well. But if I look at QR oh, okay, well, if you look at QR code generator, you know what I would just use that. That's what I would use.

QR dash code dash generator dot com. It's part of Bitley, and so I really trust Bitley, and so I would definitely use this one. And the cool thing about this one is that you can, oh, this is excellent. You can put in a URL, you can put in your email, you can put a Wi Fi. Oh, this is great. Definitely use this one. QR dashcode dash generator dot com and it gives you so many options. You can even track the scans so that you know you can kind of connect it to Bitley to track them. Let's just

make one real quick. I'll do rich on tech dot tv and it immediately generated it. You can put a little you can put a little frame around it that says something. You can even change what the frame says. Oh, this is phenomenal. So definitely just use that. And yes, there is a pro version that can let you do things like PDFs and stuff, but uh no, it looks like, oh yeah, you just sign up for free to do that. But this is fantastic. It's got a lot of basic options.

And I think that this is really good because it is owned by Bitley. I think that I'm I'm I'm happy that it's owned by Bitley because it's not going to go away anytime soon. So or hopefully not. And that's the big concern. Once you generate a QR code, it's it's pretty much gonna work depending on how that QR code is generated, Like if it's redirecting things like viviability to change it later on. What it's doing is using a kind of a redirect service to go to

your website. But if it's just building the information directly into the QR code, then it should last forever. So I'm looking at this one and it's yeah, it's totally this is great. So QR dashcode dash generator is a great way to do it. Now, the one thing that could be handy, I mean inside your business. You know, you can have a scan for the Instagram page of your business, the Facebook page, the Twitter page, the ability to send you an email. But Wi Fi, I think

is a good one. Instead of making people put in the Wi Fi network and password, you could even do this in your house. You just put your SSID, which is your Wi Fi network name, and also your password in this QR code, and people with an iPhone or Android could just literally aim their phone at this QR code and they can link up to your Wi Fi. In fact, I'm gonna do this for my WiFi. Now, the one thing I will say is that you don't necessarily want to do this for your your main Wi

Fi network. So at home you should have and your business you should have a guest Wi Fi network. The reason why you should have that is because it's a lot safer. So, for instance, at my home, whenever people say, hey, Rich, can I hop on your Wi Fi? It's easy to give them my real WiFi and address and you know, all that good stuff, but it's much safer to give them a guest network. You can set up a guest

network on most routers. I highly recommend it because what it does is it protects your your IoT devices, your all your smart home stuff, and all of the anything that's plugged into your network. It protects that from the guest. The guest does not have access to, you know, any hard drives that may be on your network, or any network servers or network storage, or the ability to just do anything, you know, mess with your smart lights. So definitely use a guest network and create the QR code

for that. You can put it up in your kitchen or on your refrigerator. Your friends and family can come into your house, they can just hover their camera over that QR code and they can link into your network. So in fact, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave that page open so I don't forget to do that. But great question, Great question, Ira, thanks so much for asking it. All right, speaking of the house, if you have wisecams, they have a new security system and it's called cam plus Pro.

This is three dollars and ninety nine cents a month, or forty eight dollars a year, or let's see three a month or three three three, I don't know, oh, monthly, Okay, So if you which is it for the whole year? It's forty dollars for the year, so that's a pretty good deal. You can try fourteen days free and you can turn any Wisecam version two, Wisecam version three, or

wisecampan version one into a security system. There's no hubs, there's no sensors, there's no contracts, and they have smart detection, so they use noonlight noo n l ight. It detects people and it recognizes them through facial recognition, and it can basically dispatch emergency services if you need it. So it's all powered by artificial intelligence kind of reminds me of what's happening with both Ring and Nest, and also the other one. I did a story on which the

name is evading me right now, Deep Centennial. And so, look, all these companies are starting to use AI to recognize intruders at your home and kind of disregard the familiar faces. And when they recognize someone that's not familiar, either in your house or around the perimeter, they are helping you call emergency services. So again it's called camplus Pro from Wy's. You probably got to pop up about it if you have a wyscam. That's what it's all about. One more

thing I wanted to mention. Amazon is launching its free V app on Apple TV Free V f R E E V E E was formerly IMDb TV, and so this has a bunch of free stuff to watch. These free apps are the next big thing. So you've got two b you've got Zoomi, you've got Pluto, you've got Roku free TV, and there's so many of these free TV apps and people like free if you don't mind ads, these are all ads supported, and so you can watch

a whole bunch of stuff. Dealer, No Deal, Bewitched, shark Tail, Bosh, a whole bunch of stuff, so they have a ton of stuff to watch for free. And free V is now available on Apple TV, So if you have an Apple TV, you can now watch Amazon free V for free if you don't mind ads. But again, you know, especially with the increase of prices of all these streaming services, people are looking to free and so again if you don't mind advertising, which you know, broadcast TV it's been

supported by advertising forever. So again, streaming started as a premium which it was all kind of paid for and no ads. Now we're getting to this point where okay, we've reached a plateau on that, and now let's go to the next level, which is offering similar services but for free with ads. And even Netflix said that they are going to look into that as well, So don't be surprised if we see an ad supported version of Netflix in the next year or so. Andrew says, good morning, Rich.

I would like to know what's your view on the safest way to do banking with financial institutions. I have a chromebook dedicated to only financial transactions with banks and investment institutions. Will that be safest? If show? If so, what should I do VPN with available public Wi Fi? Will this be safest as usual? Thanks for your advice in advance, Andrew. I would not recommend public Wi Fi for banking and financial stuff, but if you, let's say, need to use this at a library or something, I

would probably recommend using a VPN with that. I don't think you need a VPN at home if you're using your home Wi Fi. If you want to be extra safe, sure you can flip that on. But I would say at home, you are fine on your own WiFi as long as your network's not compromised in any way to

use your your computer and Wi Fi for banking. If you are on the road, I would typically recommend turning off your Wi Fi and going on cellular if you're on your smartphone or using your smartphone as a hot spot to do any sort of banking on the on the go. So VPN is good when you're on public Wi Fi or you're on any sort of Wi Fi. If you're on your home network, it depends if you it's mostly for privacy if you're on your home network, but if you're on a public network, yeah, VPN is

probably going to be your safest bet. I think that if you're just doing standard things like surfing the web, I don't think you need it. But if you are doing anything that's a little bit more elevated. And this is why employees most of the time use a VPN, because they're accessing servers and things that you a would

not be able to access without a VPN. But also the companies and corporations get that extra security of a connection that can be trusted because it's their own connection versus the Hyatts or the Hiltons or who knows how.

You know, people will jump on any free Wi Fi, but you know, be a little bit cautious when you're on Wi Fi because it's ninety nine point nine percent of the time fine, but you do need to remember that it is a public network that you are not controlling, so there could be a security issue with that network. Most of the time, there's not. Most of the time you're going to be just fine. But I would definitely

be weary. Is it wary or weary, I don't know, but I would definitely be on guard anytime connect to a network that is not your own. But if you have a Chromebook, you know Chromebook is good too. That's the other thing I'd mentioned is just make sure that your software is up to date. So that's the other big thing is that you want to make sure that you're using software that has been updated with security updates,

because that's a that's a big deal. You want to make sure that your your exploits have been patched, if there are any on your system. All right, before we go, final story, Uber Eats launching autonomous deliveries in Santa Monica. This is super super cool. I have not been out here to check it out. I need to go stalk this vehicle because Uber told me they would not do a story with me, even though they were so excited to tell me about this. These companies, these tech companies,

they love to be super secretive. Like they're all taking a page from Apple with how secretive Apple is. But like Uber Eats was like, oh hey, Rich, We've got this cool thing happening in Santa Monica. And I'm like, oh awesome, Can I can we go do a story? Oh no, we're not ready to do a story. Oh okay, thanks, So I just have to go out there and see this thing. But Uber Eats delivering from a place in Santa Monica a little health food shop called Creation Cafe.

They are using Hyundai's Ionic five all electric vehicles. Basically, the person orders the food, the place loads up the meal in the backseat of the vehicle. The vehicle drives all by itself to the person where they're you know, wherever they ordered, and stops, and then the person gets a notification on their phone which allows them to open up the back door of the car. They open up the back door, they pull out their food, and the

car drives off. Now, right now, this is happening with a lot of robots in cities, so that's happening, but those are robots. This is a car. And so this car is driving around delivering food to people for Uber Eats, which is just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe we're getting to this level. Now, I'm not sure this

is the thing that I need to check out. I think that the I think that the car still has a safety driver it because I don't think that they have the approval from the state to actually have this car operating without a safety driver. So I think there's either a safety driver or a safety you know, supervisor

in the car. They're not driving the car. But if they ever had to take over, they could, but Ubermotional, that's that's who's doing this, and basically they're just seeing they're just testing this to see if it can work on a broader platform, on a broader level. But again, what's happening. We're seeing automation across so many industries. This is clearly a way to automate things, to save money, to let these cars run twenty four to seven. There's no fatigue of a human driver. It could be safer

than human drivers in some aspects. You know, you hear the stories on the news of the human drivers trying a French fry or taking a lick of someone's food. That obviously can't happen if it's a robot. So but also, these companies are just preparing for a future where the typical person may not want to do some of these

some of these tasks anymore. You know, people are getting more educated, they're getting better jobs, and a lot of these jobs that are sort of routine or monotonous, they're looking for ways for robots and automation to replace them. Good thing, bad thing, depending on your perspective, I'm not sure, but it is happening. I'm just telling you about it. I'm not saying whether it's good or bad, but I'm just telling you what's happening. And this is definitely happening.

I see it every single day in my reporting that companies, big, big, large sale companies are looking to automation and robots to automate and streamline repetitive tasks and tasks that can be tackled by a robot. I don't think humans are ever going away in any industry, but we are definitely changing roles, that's for sure. And this is just one of those ways that the changing role is happening. All right. That sound does mean it is the end of the show.

That's going to do it for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button, or you can go to rich on Tech dot tv hit the email icon. I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast. Go to the listening app of your choice, write a quick line about what you like about this show to help other people understand why they should listen. You can find me on all social media.

I am at Rich on tech. I've been doing a lot of reels lately. I love the one minute reel. It's such a powerful way to get information across It's very challenging as well, but it's also just a lot of fun for me personally to do. So look for those reels on Facebook, Instagram, and even YouTube. I'm uploading them as shorts. No matter where you live in the US, you can download the free ktla plus app on Apple, TV,

Fire TV, and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the technology section, and there you can watch all of my TV segments. Everything, all of my main energy is put into the TV segments, so that's where you really want to watch to get an idea of just who I am and what I do. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you anyway with me, kittens and all. I'll talk to you real soon.