iPhone’s hidden security update, CSUN assistive tech & scan your phone for spyware (166, March 21, 2026)

your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. All Right, here we go, Kim, you're ready. Let's open up those phone lines. Triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one triple eight rich one O one. Give me a call. If you have a question about technology or need some tech advice. Email is also open.

Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit contact Rich on tech dot tv and hit contact All right, Guests, this week, we've got highlights from the forty first Annual seasun Assistive Technology Conference. We've got Rita Shi from Wirecutter.

She's going to talk about this standout tech from their new Best New Picks list, and later in the show, Patricia Egger from a Proton is going to explain the company's new born private initiative, basically helping you reserve an email address for your kid that's private and secure from day one. Well, I hope you're having a fantastic day. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for joining me on the show. We got a lot planned for you, but I figured I would start with this because it's

kind of unique. It's something we don't typically see on the iPhone in a widespread way, but security researchers uncovered a powerful new iPhone hacking tool called dark Sword. Dark Sword, just one swath and your phone could be leveled. This one's a big deal because it's not your typical scam or app. It's a series of exploits that's basically vulnerabilities

that can take over your phone. Now, before you get to crazy and all this stuff, I will tell you this mostly affects older devices running older software, So I'm not trying to scare you here. I'm just trying to explain the kind of scary new future that we live in already, because we don't typically see this kind of stuff for the iPhone. Now, in some cases, the way this works, you literally just have to visit a website

and that could trigger the attack. So if the website is compromised, that's it, and then attackers can access messages, photos, passwords, crypto wallets, basically everything on your device, which is kind of news to me because I thought that everything on the iPhone was sort of like sandbox. I didn't think that that was possible. And this attack has been global. They've had attack spotted in places like Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Malaysia.

And what's different here is that typically we see iPhone exploits target high profile individuals, right, I always say heads of state, journalists, people like that. Right, They're highly targeted. But this tool could be used much more broadly. And that's what's scary about it. Someone might download it and just say, all right, let's just try to get a whole bunch of people. The other thing is that it

is very tough to detect. So the good news is Apple's already patched the vulnerabilities, as they quickly do with these types of issues. But if you have a phone that is running iOS eighteen and you have not updated it to the latest security patch. Do that now.

So if you don't want your phone to change very much, they'll do that for a while. They haven't said how long they're going to do that, but they're doing it at least right now. You can also enable lockdown mode for extra protection. So if you're a high risk target, you're a CEO of a company, you are a very prominent journalist, like I said, you're a head of state, you probably want to enable this lockdown mode. And this

is a really strict way of operating your device. So for instance, for messages, all attachments are blocked right, so images, video, audio, link previews, those are not going to be available. If you're doing this web browsing, they're going to block certain web technologies, right, So some websites you're not going to load properly. They're not going to function properly. But again,

it's to keep these exploits from happening. FaceTime incoming FaceTime calls are blocked unless you previously called that person or had contact with them in the past thirty days. That's interesting. Photos. When you share photos, location information is excluded. They should do that for everyone. By the way, Apple, when you share a photo, there is no reason that location information needs to be included in there, So let's just make

that for everyone. Device connections. To connect to an iPad or an iPhone, to connect those to another accessory or a computer, you have to unlock your device. That's smart. That should be standard too. Your device will automatically join non secure Wi Fi networks and configuration profiles can't be installed. So that is lockdown mode, very very secure way of operating an iPhone. Not everyone needs it, but a lot of people are toggling that on because it does give

you that extra protection. But I think this shows that the iPhone is not bulletproof. You have to keep your device updated. That is the most important takeaway here. Now, one thing I mentioned on my Instagram. This week is that Apple did a new type of update, an update in a place that you might not typically look. I've never seen this before. So if you go to Settings, Privacy and Security, scroll all the way down to what's

called background Security Improvements. Apple released this new security update called iOS twenty six point three point one A. We've never seen an a security update. This is a brand new thing. So again Settings, Privacy and Security, Background Security Improvements, you'll see a little update there. It should automatically install eventually, but if you want to install it right now, you can tap install and you can find that on my Instagram at richon Tech. I've got the instructions on that.

There's also an app that you might want to download. This can actually scan your iPhone for signs of spyware. It's completely free. It's called I Verify I Verify, and it's actually called I Verify Basic, so that's what it's called when you look it up in the app store, I Verified Basic. It is free. It'll scan your phone for any sorts of malware or spyware, which I think is really smart to do. I did scan mine. It's also available for Android, but the thing about Android is

for some reason they're charging ninety nine cents. I'm not sure why, but I downloaded on my Android just to be safe as well. And by the way, if you're on Android, if you're on Samsung, there are three places you want to look to update your phone. So you want to look at the Google Play Store, update your apps there. Then you want to do your operating system update, so you can go and look there for your operating system. And then you also want to do the Galaxy Store.

Don't forget about that one. Galaxy Store is also a place you want to update because they may have some updates as well. Oh, there's actually four. Then you have the Google Play System Update. So if you go into Settings, Security and Privacy under updates, you'll see it says Google Play System Update. You also want to check there because Google typically oh and look at that, I need an update. So Google will typically put updates through there as well. So a lot of places to look for updates on

your phone. Make sure you update them. That is very very important. Real quick. A little note of irony this week or the company that helps protect your identity just confirmed a data breach impacting about nine hundred thousand people. I was one of them, all my little you know, personal information, all the dark web monitoring systems that I have. They all sent me an email this week saying, rich, your information's out there, mostly contact information, names, email addresses

some cases, phone numbers, and home addresses. The good news is this did not include social security numbers, passwords, or financial information, so that's the good news. But the bad news is this is a company that is that people are paying to protect their identity and they had a data breach and guess how it happened. One of their employees was tricked into giving access to one of their

behind the scenes systems over the phone. Someone called them and I don't know what they said on a phone call, but they somehow convinced them to give them access. So they grabbed about twelve gigabytes of data before it took about an hour for the company to really uh oh and they stopped them. But still, what do you you have to be on lookout for, like any sort of phishing emails or texts pretending to be AURA or other services at this point because they could be highly targeted

to you and also customized with your information. So bottom line, no financial data was taken here, but your contact info could be used for more targeted scams. It's probably stuff that's already out there, but since it's fresh, hackers get their hands on it and they start to use it again. So just be aware of that. All right. We got a lot to talk about on the show eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Once again the website rich

on Tech dot tv. I will link up that app I mentioned, the Iverify app, and I'll also link up everything you need to know about that iPhone security update and uh that iPhone dark Sword malware. All right, Uh, we'll be back in just a little bit. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go to Gary in Uh is it Indio, California?

device and they would pair up. But apparently some someone that's much smarter than me decided that that is not a good system anymore, so they stopped putting it in there. And believe me, I had that printer for many many years. I went through many routers, and all of a sudden they stopped shipping with that feature, and I was like, wait a second, am I missing something? This was like

the easiest way to do things. So you are going to have to set up this this printer the old fashioned way, which is by linking it to the network. Do you are you not seeing the network or is it just it's kind of a pain right because that brother, it's like there's no there's no like easy way to do that, right, Like I remember, you have to do something kind of silly to get that connected.

you may want to switch your euro router. Do you have the euro app downloaded?

is a troubleshooting there it is. Okay, So if you go into trouble shooting and then it says my device won't connect, you can say my device is two point four gigaherts only, and it will basically turn off the five gigaherts and six gigaherts networks just for a couple of minutes while you connect. I think it's like ten minutes to give that printer a little bit of time to connect to that two point four gigahertz network and then it will be smooth selling from there on out.

eight seven four to two four one zero one. Uh, let's see here This story is kind of we were talking about scams in the UH in the first you know, like that basically that Aura app had gotten someone got tricked into handing over access to one of their corporate systems and they got a whole bunch of data taken. This new scam comes from Matt Mullenwegg. He is the CEO of WordPress, so very tech savvy guy. He wrote a blog post that said this scam that attacked him

almost got him. So here's how it happens, so you can watch out for this. UH. Basically, he's just sitting there mining his own business and all of a sudden, all of his Apple devices start lighting up with notifications, password reset notifications. His iPhone is Apple, his Mac all at once. Now that's step one of the scam. As he explains, it overwhelm you and make you think your account is under attack. Okay, the scammers did something really clever.

They basically contacted Apple Support pretending to be him and opened up a real support case. Now this is a public guy, so they were able to kind of piece together some information about him, call the Apple support, open up that support case, and that sent real Apple emails from Apple servers to his email address, so they didn't go to spam. And you know how, I tell you, hey,

check the email address, make sure it's legitimate. These were so your spidey sense would not go up right now, if your person sitting at home, you go, oh my gosh, I'm under attack. I'm getting all these password resets. Now, I got an email from Apple. Next, and this was the part that was really interesting. He gets a phone call from quote unquote Apple Support, and the guy sounds

pretty good. He's calm, he's knowledgeable. They even chitchatted about security advice, saying, hey, you know, you need to lock this stuff down. And at first he didn't necessarily know this was fake, but then I think he realized it was. And so here's when the trap happened. They texted Matt a link to quote unquote fix the issue, and inside that link, this was the fake website that was actually

trying to steal his information. So the fake website even showed that real case ID from that Apple support page. That or there's Apple support emails. So he knew immediately this was fake, and he told the guy. He called him out, and what do you think happened? Immediately the person hung up. So the key takeaway here Apple is not going to call you out of the blue to ask you about your account security or to help you. Never tap links and text or emails for account security.

Always go directly to your settings or Apple dot com yourself. This stuff is getting out of control. It's getting really bad. And remember my little tip I told you weeks ago. There is a call recording functionality on every phone right now. Samsung's got it, Pixels got it, so does the iPhone. And when you enable that call recording, it says this

call maybe this call is being recorded. Those scammers will hang up instantly when they hear that, So just toggle on the call recording when you think you got a scammer. That's a great way of knowing if they're real or fake, because the fake ones are gonna hang up instantly. They don't want to be recorded, all right? Eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Back with the CSUN Assistive Tech Conference after.

biggest accessibility tech shows in the world. It is the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in Anaheim, and today, I'm sure some of the most impressive things I saw.

Our hope is that this will benefit blind people in job situations and make it more more accessible shoes to.

a restaurant. Even inside a restaurant, they don't have to ask somebody else to walk with them to the restroom. They can find it by themselves. Our CEO, he has our P himselves and at the age of thirty. He just thought, I don't want to be the one having to ask the rest of my life somebody to help me. I want to have I want to have a device that really helps me. And if it helps me, it.

So I struggle on a phone call to know what's happening, right, I can't hear it. But with the Bridge unit, I can connect it to any desk phone or computer and it provides me real time captioning just like this on the phone call, so I can read everything that you're saying. So from an accessibility point of view, it's wonderful because then I don't know, I'm not at a disadvantage at work.

just a wonderful thing. It's where technology is going now and we're taking full advantage of it to make sure that we can provide those accessible features.

Of course, AI and IoT is at the center of everything we do in our homes and our lifestyles today, and we're showing how our smart home platform Think you On integrates across the board with our appliances to help give you audio commands and visual identifications when, for instance, if you leave the door open on your refrigerator and you're hearing impaired, you'll actually have a light that'll remind you to close the door.

the broadcaster providing it. But beyond that, you know the ability to actually blow up the image on the screen, change the font size, additional audio explanations, and I just saw a demonstration I hadn't seen before that allows you to evenust not just the volume, but the pace of the introduct of the explanations that are giving to you in an audio fashion to really help someone who's visually impaired walk through the entire and enjoy the entire TV experience and much better than ever before.

so I mean in Gmail. So here's the thing. What you're talking about is something that I've kind of thought about in recent years, tech companies used to be where they would all kind of work together really well. Right, But the problem is every one of these services that you're talking about, they're all owned by a big conglomerate.

So let's say you went all iPhone, like Ring is still going to work with iPhone, but you're not gonna be able to do any sort of voice commands to Siri to control Ring, whereas you would be able to do that with an Alexa device, right, or if you had to fire TV device, when someone rings your ring doorbell, that video pops up on your on your te TV screen.

Same thing with Nest. If you have a Google TV device and you had a Nest doorbell, when someone rings the doorbell, you'd be able to see that on your TV screen. So my feeling is that you pick the best for the job, and I think it sounds like you've picked a lot of things that you like. I don't think there's a way to weave them all together. And believe me, I think about this stuff a lot, because you know, I want to use Gemini because it has access to my email and my calendar, right, But

CHATGBT is better overall for daily use. So what I end up doing is use chat GBT for everything, and then when I have to add something to my calendar or tap into my Gmail, I will go to Gemini and do that or make an image.

You can connect. There's a whole there's a whole laundry list of things that you can connect Canva, Apple, Music, Expedia, Lovable, Spotify, Target, So I mean, you know, that's one way of doing it. Canva also lets you do something like that as well, or sorry not Canva claud that uh, Claude is like another you know, another AI system. So it's kind of like a chat GYBT, except it's made by Anthropic. But here's the deal. So I think you're struggling in a

situation where it's not that easy. There's so many great tools out there to just say, oh yeah, I'm going to go Apple, so I can pick everything that Apple works with nicely. Some people do that, you know, the Apple ecosystem. They really enjoy that. I personally don't like that because then now you're gonna go out and look for a home Kit doorbell or a home Kit video

camera because that works with Apple. Why those might not be as good as a ring camera, right, So, and all of these things have apps your phone, So I think that at this point you still kind of have to just use these things individually, link them up when you can, and just keep in mind as you're building your system and picking products, find stuff that works with

other things. So, for instance, and I know we're talking about this for a long time, but like, for instance, I'm using Microsoft to Do as my task manager, not Google Tasks, because I think Microsoft to Do is one of the best task managers out there, one of the best to do lists. And I made it work with the iPhone and Siri on the side because now I can talk to Siri and just say remind me to do this, and it goes right into my Microsoft And it took me a couple minutes to figure that out.

But I picked Microsoft because of that functionality oversay something like to doist or something like that. So again, it's these little decisions that you make that could make your systems a little bit easier.

and next thing you know, you've got visual voicemail. For most providers on Android, it doesn't necessarily work that way. So for instance, like Mint Mobile, I believe you can download an app and get your visual voicemail, but some other mv and os may not be like that. I'm assuming you're on an mv and O or is it a main network?

this for privacy concerns. I'm not fully convinced it's the best thing to do, but I'm just telling you that you can do it. Google street View lets you blur it, Apple Maps lets you blur your home. There's also a lesser known mapping service owned by Meta called Mappillary m A p I L l R Y that has crowdsourced photos and your home can be on there. What about inside your house? My house was on here for so long and I kept trying to figure out how to

get these pictures off and I finally did. But on redfin you can log in and hide the listing photos. On Zillo you can remove your listing photos as well, So those are two big places. And then when I presented this story, of course, people were emailing me other websites. So basically any website that has your personal information on there, you can go in and ask them to get rid of that or blurt out. Keep in mind, if you do this, at least on Google street View on Google Maps,

once you asked to blur, it is permanent. There is no going back. But I put all these instructions. I'll link them up on the website. Rich on tech dot TV. They're all a little bit different. You just have to know where to look. But typically you look under the menu. When you find a picture of your home under street View, it's report a problem. It's in the lower right hand corner. On Apple Maps, you have to do it from a desktop, it says report an issue. But I'll put all these

instructions on the website rich on tech dot TV. If you want to learn how to get rid of your home from the internet, you are listening to rich on tech back after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. One of my favorite country singers right now, Ella Langley, twenty six years old. So many great songs already, including this one. I just have this on repeat all the time. Eight to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven

four to two four one zero one. The website for the show is richon tech dot tv. Welcome to the show. I mentioned earlier that I Verify app that checks for spyware, already have a few of you sending me screenshots of your phone saying look I'm good, I'm clear. Thankfully. I hope that's the way it is. Let's see this hour, we've got the Wirecutter joining us. They're gonna talk. They've got this new list called Best New Picks and so we're gonna pick their brain about that no pun intended,

and talk about some of the products on there. And later in the show, we've got Patricia Egger from Proton. Are you familiar with Proton? They're the company that they're out of Switzerland. Very privacy focused, so it's almost like everything at Google offers like drive, email, all that stuff, but it's very privacy centric, so all end to end

encrypted and people really like their products anyway. They they've got a new thing called born Private, which is about basically reserving a private email address for your kid at birth. It's funny. Bobo. He you know, he had a kid and his wife we went out to dinner a couple weeks ago, was saying that you guys, set up an email dress for your kid and she will email. This I thought was brilliant. She will email the email address like when she has a cute little moment or a memory.

So when your kid gets to be whatever age, you know, when they can read their email, they're gonna have all these memories that your wife wrote in. That's such a cool idea.

thing got through. Didn't get Before the poor thing got through, you know, my phone was off. And then well, is with pure talk. Then I heard a bary deal with consumer story, so I went story and it took a long time to transfer back over again.

And of course it was the afternoon. It's when I pick up the kids, my wife is calling me all this stuff. Nobody could get a hold of me because my phone number would just ring and that was it wouldn't do it wouldn't connect because there was no number. And so I called my provider and they didn't believe it was me. They said, sorry, we can't. We can't verify it to you because we have no way of verifying.

Typically they'll send you a text to your number, and if you have a second line on the account, they may use that as well. Well, they couldn't do that because I don't have a second line on my account. So they're like, sorry, we have no way of verifying you. And I said, oh my gosh, like just ask me anything. And sure enough, they're just like, no, we can't trust you. And I said, okay, what do I have to do? You have to go into a store. So I had to go into a store and the guy said, okay,

well I can't verify you. I have to wait. I have to try to verify you three times before our system will finally let me in. I mean, so I was. I was actually happy that it was that secure, but man, going without a phone now I had other phone lines because I have lots of test lines from different companies to try out their service, but my phone number was not working. That is not a position you want to be in, especially when your kids are at school, your

wife's trying to call you. You know, people are trying to call you whatever. Anyone else is fine. It's just like the bear, you know, the core folks. You need them to be able to get in touch with you. Anyway, Thanks for the call, Lida. Let's go to Marcel in Brooklyn. Marcel, what's up, Hey.

all users on this app. So prepared to this, how could I fix or everyone there fixed at X via Twitter to get these logins and users back on.

is on the Silk browser. Silk Browser is a little different. It's a little more unique than other browsers out there because I feel like it does some stuff in the background, like Cash's websites and things. Maybe not anymore, but I would try that, try logging in with a different browser and see if that works. Otherwise, if you're able to download the X app on that tablet, maybe go that route and just use X or you know, maybe just stop doom scrolling. That's another option. I mean that maybe

you know, who knows? I mean, maybe maybe just leave X on your phone and you'll be fine. So maybe I don't know. I you know, it's one of these things where to me on my tablet, it's like mostly for consumption, Like I just want to sit there and like watch stuff or read stuff. So for me, like the social media is better, just relegate it to my phone and I keep it there. But anyway, hopefully you get it figured out myself sounds like you you know

your stuff, and you will. It will just be a matter of time before you're back up and scrolling again. Thanks for the call today. All the way from Brooklyn eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I shouldn't say all the way from Brooklyn. If you're listening in New York City, you're like, what do you mean all the way? I mean, I get it's like a train ride away. It's not that far. Depends you're listening to

rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. I mean, I had to play one of Bobo's favorite songs.

That that's the wrong movie. That's the one, right, that's scarface. That's scarface?

if you want to do you ever hear that show Yellowstone. Yeah, it's like, you know, epic kind of like you know out in the middle of nowhere. This isn't that same vein It's called The Madison. It's with Michelle. Yeah, yeah, I've heard of it, but I have a watch it yet. Michelle Pfeifer, Zion.

for ninety nine cents for two months. So remember the big list. Google this the big I'm gonna google it as I do it. Big Okay, high potential. I've heard of that's on ABC. We watch it a Hulu so okay, yeah, the Big List of streaming deals. If you are signing up for a streaming service, do not sign up until you go to my friend Jared Newman, friend of the show. He's been on many times. He does cord Cutter Weekly, great newsletter, but he does the big list of streaming deals.

If there is a deal on a streaming service, it's on this. So before I sign up for Paramount Plus, I went to his website and it set a dollar for two months of premium, and sure enough it worked. It worked, And if you're a new subscriber, you'll get three dollars per month for two months of premium. So anyway, I'll link that up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv. Let's go to Drothy in Wittier, California. Darthy, Welcome to the show.

as well as pictures. And then I got home and about a week later, I looked at all my contact lists and went into various people, and I noticed I was losing years of texts and content, meaning if they sent me a picture, because not all pictures. I move over to my gallery sometimes I leave my pictures, you know, in the content of the text, all of that is gone. And then just the other day, the same thing happened

with my husband. I mean, and this is years and years of obviously texts and stuff like that, the same thing happened he's completely gone. Yeah. So I took it to Verizon because they're my carrier, and they looked at my phone. They checked all my different settings to make sure I didn't say like, oh like delete in thirty days or something like that. All of my settings were perfect. So then they suggested, well, why don't you go to the Samsung store. So I did that. When there they

checked everything. I'm even saying, is there's something mechanically wrong with my phone? And they're like, we can't explain this. Your stuff just went poof.

by Google. There is a clean up functionality on that app. I would run that and just to see. And obviously I would do all the software updates on your phone that I mentioned earlier in the show. So do the the Samsung software updates, do the you know, the security updates, do the Google Play update, do the Galaxy Store updates. And I would restart your phone make sure that's all updated.

And also, if you're not using Google Messages, maybe you're still using the old version of the Samsung Messages app. Switch to Google Messages. But that is very unfortunate, Drothy and uh, I've never heard of such a thing. I've heard of people deleting text threads by accident, but it sounds like something else bigger is going on here. I hope you figure that out. Thanks for the call today, eight to eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one back with Wirecutter

after this. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking tech now Ology Triple eight Rich one O one, Triple eight Rich one oh one. We'll get back to the phone lines in just a moment, but first on the line, we've got Leda Shi. She is the editorial director for Wirecutter. Uh, they've got a new feature called Best New Picks, and so she's here to explain all that. Lyda, thanks for joining me, Hi Rich, thanks for having us. So first off, explain what the

wirecutters all about. We've had some guests on from Wirecutter, one of my favorite websites. Explain what it's all about.

new products in these categories. Only after that's kind of done is when we're truly recommending something and where it appears on our site and that goes so that kind of whittles down the products from tens of thousands of products all the way down to three thousand products, which is still a lot, but it is It is the culmination of a lot of hard work in the back end that a lot of times people don't see.

tried this and it's cool. Here here's a recommendation. It's like very in depth.

stop talking about. We have them in our homes, we recommend them to our friends and family all of those kind of products that stick with us and have stayed with us over the past year.

it's the smart the Birdifi Smart bird Home. It is solar powered, so it doesn't require any sort of hookups, and it kind of feeds video and notification to an app on your phone, so it's really easy to kind of just see a bird family in action and kind of you can see them build the nest, see them lay the eggs, and I think it's just a really cute and fun and really great present for people who maybe aren't super tech savvy.

I mean I'm looking at there's you know, this has everything from home to core to other stuff. But like the tech section has speakers so adults. It's got this little ebook like an e ink tablet. It's got obviously the Sony headphones that everyone loves, the noise cancelation. It's got an ol ed TV, it's got the switch to which people love. The outdoor lights everyone's stringing up on their home now. So, I mean there's a lot of things on here. What's the plan for this? How often

is this going to be updated? These best New picks.

But we're just really excited to give our readers another way to experience all the picks that we have on our site.

talking technology. This is American Girls from Harry Styles. He must have come out with a new album, because anytime an artist comes out with the new album, they start playing all the music from the album and then you're like, oh, that's a good song. Oh that's a good song. So he's got this one in aperture, which you know Harry Styles. I think he was in that boy band, the One Direction or something, and he was Okay, I mean, I'm

not like a boy band person. But he's got good music, that's right, the swift I mean, I like I like Taylor. I think we're gonna play her today. But I'm telling you he's got two I mean every his songs are good. Let's go to Aperture. We got to when we play Aperture, that's one of my favorite beat. Right now, let's go to Laura in Youngstown, Ohio. You're on with Rich.

be a hardware failure. So it could be that your system's overheating, or it could be that a component is failing and that's why it's working for a couple of minutes before it overheats, or something is failing in the RAM or the drive or whatever, So that could be one of those things. How old is this did you mention that maybe.

little programs you've installed over the years. So that's part of the problem is one of those could be creating an issue.

needs to run. And if you can load that and you can start up your computer and it stays on past the five minutes, you know it's something on your computer and it's not the hardware. It's some sort of software that you have installed that is interfering. And then you can go through and start to look in your startup programs and see if you can delete, you know, some programs that you no longer need or use. So that's that's the first.

It's just a software issue. And then you can go through and kind of hopefully clean that up.

And then I would go through into your programs and try to just get rid of programs that you don't need, that you're not using, restart the thing, and hopefully we bring this computer back to life. But I would say Laura that you know, after ten years, it's probably time to start thinking about a new computer. You've got till October when your security updates, you're going to run out. So I would plan on getting something new. If you can get this thing up and running, you still got

to plan on getting something new. After October. There's ways of rescuing this computer. You can install Chromos Flex on it. You can install Linux Mint on it if you want to just browse the web and do simple things. But it just depends what you want to do on this computer. Yeah, you can also do a clean install of Windows to kind of start everything fresh, but that's a little bit much for a computer that's ten years old. I think,

thanks for the call today, appreciate it. Hopefully you get that thing going, and yes, I will link it up. I actually know that a lot of you were looking at the website to get the link I mentioned about the streaming services. I did put it on there. I forgot and I just put it on there, so it

is there. Amazon has new ultra fast delivery options. We're talking one hour and three hour delivery on tens of thousands of items, and this is already live in hundreds of cities for the one hour delivery and more than two thousand cities for the three hour delivery. Now, the funny thing is, I've been going to this website that Amazon says to go to, which is Amazon dot com slash get it Fast, and it keeps saying unavailable for me. So maybe they're still rolling this out in a bunch

of places. But the long and the short of it is that they're talking. You know, they've got groceries on here, everyday essentials, electronics, clothes, medications. But here's the thing. If you want one hour delivery, even as a Prime member, you're still going to have to pay ten dollars for that delivery. If you want three hour delivery, you can pay five dollars. This is all about convenience, and obviously it is all about the competition. We know you can

order things off Uber. Now, you can order things off door Dash. There's many ways. Go puff, I think is another one. There's many ways of getting things to your home fast. And Amazon is like, hold on, hold on, we invented fast shipping. We want to be there too. And before you get poop pooh paying all this money for something fast, I had to do this. I was doing my show remote. I needed a one hundred foot Ethernet cable and I got it on DoorDash from best Buy.

Took forty five minutes to get it to my dad's house, and I could not believe what a lifesaver that was. So people do need this stuff, even though I'm not paying nine ninety nine for one hour delivery unless I ever need it, like really really needed. Amazon dot com slash get it fast. If you want to check it out, see if it's available by you. Eight and eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two pour one zero one. More rich On Tech coming your way

right after this. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is the other Harry Styles song, Aperture. It's got this really long intro and a really long outro which just like this great beat, and it took me a while to get used to it or to really enjoy it. And now it's like

I can't get enough. And so yes, I just paid one seven hundred and twenty nine dollars and sold my blood to get tickets to a Harry Styles concert. I just kidding. I mean some of these tickets have gotten out of control. Apparently they are for his concerts. Eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Uh So a quick story time, maybe not that quick, but this week this was just wild.

I know, if you follow me on social media and you get my newsletter rich on tech dot TV, you know that I've had kind of a bad run with automobiles lately, Like I had my accident back in September. My wife was involved in an auto accident a couple of weeks ago. And then out of the blue, I get a phone call, Hi, Rich, this is I'm not going to give their name or the company with rental car company. We see that you damaged your car to the tune of twenty five hundred dollars on your last rental.

Which credit card would you like to use to take care of that? I said, exqueeze me, what next?

And she but they did have like info about when I actually rented a car, but I'm on social media so prevalently that like, I probably said that I rented a car that weekend. Anyway, so she's like, she kept pushing me to just give a credit card number to take care of this charge sight on scene. I'm like, I didn't damage your car. I'm I'm not gonna just pay a twenty five hundred dollars bill. No way do people actually do this? Probably that's why they do this.

So anyway, so I'm thinking this is probably a scam. So I said, I said, send me an email with all the info. We don't have your email address. How do you not have my email address? I rented a car from you. You have all this other infos at my email. Now, I don't know if they were they were trying to trick me or something, but I said, all right, well then send me a letter. So she had my home address, so she said, okay, fine, I'll send a letter. But she was very angry about it,

and so I hang up. She gives me a phone number to call back. Obviously, I don't call back that number, so I go on the website of the company. I call their number. Took me forever to get a human and finally they look it up and they said, oh, yeah, this is actually legitimate. I said what I said, I didn't damage this car. Okay, well you got to take it up with these people. So I called back, and long story short, I get another person who just immediately

gets into the Okay, which card would you like? We need to figure out this quickly before we send it to collections all this stuff. I'm like, ma'am, I'm like, I'm not just paying a bill that I don't believe is mine, right, Like, I'm sorry, I didn't damage this car. So I go get me a supervisor. Oh, it's gonna take a long time to get a supervisor. You're not gonna be happy. You're gonna it's gonna take a long time. I'll wait. So finally I wait like ten minutes for

the supervisor, and I will tell you. I get the supervisor and we got off to a little bit of a rocky start, you know, cause I'm kind of huffing and puffing. But he turned out to be very nice, and I was like, sir, I've rented cars for twenty years. I've never had a problem come at me. A month after this rental is returned, send me the information. He had my email address. Somehow he was able to send

me an email. So he sends me an email with all the pictures they took of this damage, and I go, okay, well, explain this to me. When I returned this car, it had this many miles on it. You took these damage pictures at this many miles, which is many miles after I returned it. So in that time anything could have happened. Your sales associate could have driven this thing into the wall, like someone else could have rented it. And he's like, okay, you kind of got us there. I said, yeah, And

also I didn't do this, damn it. So he goes, actually, I'm looking at the pictures and this some of this damage looks old and some of it looks rusty, and yeah, you're right. This car was driven after you rent it or after you returned it. And so I was like, and he was kind of turning in my favor, and I said, all right, well, let's clear this up right now. I'm not paying this. Let's clear it up. And he was like, you know what, that's what we're gonna do.

I said, well, thank you. I said, well, how do I keep this from happening in the future. And this is my takeaway. I know it's taking me a while to get there, but my key takeaway is what I've already told you to do is take pictures of all four sides of your rental car. You have to, and in this case I didn't. Of course, the one time that there's a problem, I didn't take pictures of the rental car. So take pictures of all four sides when you rent it, when you return it, make sure you

have that. That's the best you can do because if they come at you with something like this you don't have it. You know, they could just put you on for this money. And he then he then said, you know, you could buy the insurance, which I don't typically do, And he said, you know you can this This airport that you rented at is actually one of our worst offenders for doing stuff like this. I'm like, okay, so you know this happens all the time. My point is

take the pictures. Also, you know I I have a credit card that has what's called primary rental car insurance. There are only a handful of credit cards that offer that. Most of them are secondary, which means if you were to actually not accept the rental car company's insurance. And you get your you know, you're using your own, You're gonna have to go through your primary insurance, which is,

you know, not something you necessarily want to do. So if you have and your credit card pops in at secondary, so anything your main insurance doesn't cover, they'll cover. So I would look for a credit card that has primary rental car insurance, something that I've always demanded of my credit card because I do think that it would come in handy in a situation like this. Not that I damage this car, but if I did, you know, you can rely on that. So anyway, that's my story what

I mean. This really got me going. I was really like, hold on, how do I even prove that I didn't do this damage? But as soon as they sent me those pictures with the odometer, I was like, okay, that's my key right there. I returned this car at this odominant number, they returned it, They took these pictures out of there, and I said, by the way, you had a human check the car when I returned it. That human would have said something if there was a problem, right,

So come on, I'm getting worked up. Just talking about that. All right, Let's let's go to Thatcher in Santa Barbara. Thatcher you're on with Rich. Okay, I think Thatcher left us. Let's go to Thatcher.

information is shared. But it's not going to be as automatic as the second one I'm going to recommend, which is Rocket Money. So Rocket Money can automatically find those subscriptions. This started out as a company called true Bill. They do a great job, but you have to link up your bank or credit card accounts, which means you have to give them access to your financial information, which means they're probably monetizing your data in some you know, in

some way. So if you want the maximum privacy, I go with Bobby. If you want automatic tracking, probably Rocket Money is more convenient. There's actually a lot of apps out there, a lot of smaller apps for keeping track of subscriptions. You can also just keep a spreadsheet. There's also another app I like, but it is paid. It's called monarch Money, which is fantastic when you do have to link up your accounts, but it's all private because you pay for it, right, So if you're paying for

the service, they're probably not monetizing off you. If you're not paying for the service, they're monetizing off your data. So Monarch is a great one. But again that Bobby, that Bobby app. Let me see if there's like a certain way you have to do this, just to type it in here. Subscription app, h Bobby, It's called bobbyapp dot co. Bobby app dot co. That one is only on iOS. Anyway, if you have an app that you like for subscriptions, email me hello at richon Tech dot tv.

I'll mention it in the next segment. Eighty eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four two four one zero one. We will try to get our phone lines working again when we come back right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, Talking Technology, triple eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show is rich on Tech dot tv.

go to Wilmer. Yes, I'm here in Santa Monica. What's up?

walked in there or whatever. And I was unable to do that because when I went into just to retrieve my ID pathword, it said that it would send me a text, but it would send it, but it sends it to the old address and I no longer have that Apple ID or anything, or I don't even have that email to the old address. I did happen to write down some old emails, if that will help.

But that's a whole other story. You set this up wave for so if it's not working, if you can't recover your account by going to iforgot that Apple dot com, I would go to the Apple Store explain the issue to them. They will have you either try to they will know the process of trying to get you back on this Apple ID, or they may have you sign up for a new one using new information and a new phone number that is not linked to an old account.

Because it sounds like sometimes these accounts get so far down the line that you know there's no way of recovering them. But it just depends. It depends on what they can do. So I'm not able to help you over the air here because I can't really give you like a you know, hey, this is what you have to do and it'll just fix it all Like it doesn't sound like it's that easy. If you were able to sign up with a new Apple ID, That's probably

what I'd recommend. Using a new phone number and a new email address so you have not used previously, that would probably be the easiest way to avoid uh, you know, going into an Apple store. But otherwise, other than that, I think I think you go to the Apple store. That's the beauty of having Apple is that you know, head head to the Third Street promenade and you know it's a beautiful store going there, and and someone at

the genius Bart can help you there. Thanks for the call, Wlilmer, and please, once you figure it out, email me hello at rich on tech dot TV and let me know what the solution was so that we can share it here on the show and other people who may have a similar issue don't have to go through that. Thanks for the call today, Tony and New Jersey says, Hey, I'm listening to all your podcasts. I know you test a lot of screen protectors. Got Samsung S twenty five Ultra. Uh,

these screen protectors just don't work. Swiping gestures, you're fine, but fingerlock on fingerprint unlock never works. I've even enabled touch sensitivity and it still won't read any recommendations.

is Somber, Sombr. They've got a lot of great, great songs I'm really enjoying right now. So that's Somber. Also one of Taylor Swift's favorites. So take that. Okay, We've got Patricia egger On, head of security at Proton. I talked about Proton there, the security first company. They offer

email and all kinds of other services. But they have this new thing called Born Private and this is a new initiative to kind of create an email address for your child when they're first born and protect their digital identity from day one. So Patricia, welcome to the show.

And so this is what the Born Private initiative is really basically setting your kids up for success online later on. And that basically means you reserve an email address from them, a Proton email address for them, and it basically stays dormant for ten to fifteen years until the kid is ready to use it. And that's all that comes for a dollar which is donated to the Proton Foundation.

and so it's not really useful. So that's a major difference if you compare it to the you know, the big tech email providers that most people use.

And what's really important to understand I think about email is that it's oftentimes kind of the glue that sticks all of the various pieces of your digital identity together. And so that's why it's a really important part of somebody's online presence or their online identities is that email, because it's going to be it's going to be linking all those pieces together. And so basically with Proton, there's nothing happening with that digital identity until you're you know,

the kid is old enough to start using it. And that's a pretty big difference from again, the usual email providers out there.

And I know it's probably not what the people who created that actually were, you know, intending to do, but I think it's the there's a there's an education element here that that I think is really important, which is, you know, parents really need to understand for themselves what all of this means because they cannot protect their kids if they don't, if they don't understand, and they can't,

they start by protecting themselves. So I think that has been I mean, I think in that sense it's been quite successful at least people around me who really realize, Okay, like I'm a parent, this is I have this responsibility to do to not just protect my kids, you know, on the street and in the playground and whatever, but also online.

So I will tell you my week looks a little bit like this. Any free moment I have in my life, I am sitting down to my computer and reading your emails. No joke. I get that many from you. It is almost a full time job at this point. And I do read them. I do look at them. I do try to reply. I do have a backlog most days. So if you don't get a reply for me, and you know a quick amount of time, just understand that there are a lot of these that I'm getting and

I do try to make them. You know, weave them into my newsletter the show, send you thank you notes, whatever, but just know that I do read them. If you want to email me, it is rich on tech dot TV. You just hit contact up at the top and that will send your email. Rest assured it does make its way to my inbox. Rod says, I just want to say you're doing an amazing job keeping us up to date with all the tech craziness these days. I'm a

big fan. Thank you, Rod. Gary in Connecticut, Hey Rich, I asked you about recycling old cell phones and ended up trying one of those Eco ATM kiosks. There's a bunch around me here in Connecticut. I had three Samsungs sitting on top of my fridge. I didn't want to throw them away, and the process is easy. You enter the phone on the website. They give you a code to use at the kiosk. If you have more than one phone, it's a little annoying because there's no way

to enter a code. After the selling the first one, all three of my phones worked but had cracked screens. I got twenty three dollars each. Honestly, it was worth it just to finally get rid of them. The Kiosk pays in cash or Venmo. Thanks Gary. I think they just installed one by me. I want to try that out with an old phone. Steve says, Hey Rich after hearing the segment about AT and t's one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the telephone call. I was thinking, how

far we've come. One big improvement in the modern phone world. No more long distance charges. That is so true. I remember switching to like MCI for like cheaper long distance at some point. All the commercials would be about long distance on TV back in the day. Chris in Colorado listening on eight fifty am koa Denversus. I've listened to your show quite a few times, and I'm usually driving so I don't get to call in. I'd like to get on your mailing list for some of the cool

stuff you talk about. I'm not very tech savvy, but you've really helped me quite in a few areas. I don't feel so stupid about that stuff anymore. Thanks for doing a great job on the show. Rich on tech dot TV hit newsletter if you want to sign up. Thank you, Doug. I was looking to upgrade my fifteen year old MacBook Pro but kept holding off because of the prices. Then I heard you talk about the MacBook Neo for five hundred ninety nine dollars, and as a

retired person, that's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much, Doug. This is why I talk about this stuff. Now the MacBook Neo I was going to talk about no matter what. But this is why you know people sit there in the back, Rich, you recommended this or you talk about that. It's like there are many people in this world, and everyone has a different want, a different need, and so that's why I'm always just kind of mentioning as much as humanly possible, because there's

always someone out there that can use the information. Alex is listening in the UK over KFI. I guess on the live stream, just following up on the caller asking about a Chromebook with an external monitor, keyboard in mouse. Many Chromebooks can connect to a monitor using HDMI, USBC, or another adapter depending on the model. Most also support external keyboards and mice. Because chromebooks often have limited ports, you might need a USB hub, though Bluetooth accessories are

another option. Yeah, I kind of missed the boat on that one, Alex, because the caller asked about that and I wasn't really sure, but clearly you can. They also have those chrome boxes. I guess they're called the almost looks like a Mac Mini, but it's a chrome chromoos. Norma says in Los Angeles, Hey, Rich just wanted to say a big thank you for the useful information you share in your newsletters and on TV. I've been following you since I retired from the City of Los Angeles

as a computer systems analysts five years ago. Your updates helped keep me up with the latest tech and I really appreciate it. Oh well, thank you, Norma. I appreciate that, and you know your stuff. If you're a computer systems analyst, you probably know more than I do about this stuff. Tony hey Rich just wanted to say thanks for recommending the Backup SMS app for Android. I installed it on my Galaxy S twenty five Ultra and tested both the

backup and restore features. It worked flawlessly. I liked it so much I ended up giving the pro version a review. I gave you credit for the recommendation, looking forward to the podcast and the newsletter. Thanks again. You're an absolute tech gem. Wow, a tech gem. That program is called SMS Backup and Restore. So a lot of people want to back up their text messages or print them out. On Android. It's very easy. On iPhone, not so easy.

There are apps that can do it, but they are third party and they do cost money, so I amazing is one of them. And soft oh Reno, they have one. I think it's called alt tunes that can do it. Let's see that can do it as well. Where is it all tunes? Yeah, let's see what else. Moving down the list here, Bernie says, hey, Rich, I recently finished the Laws of Human Nature book, and I thought it

was great on many levels. I especially liked how the author wove in historical events and people throughout the book. I was actually surprised to hear you mention it. Yes, I mentioned that in my newsletter that I started listening to that book. When a book is really big, like the Laws of Human Nature is really like, it's a lot. I like to listen to it because it is hefty, but I am enjoying it. It's teaching me a lot about people. I know all about narcissists. Now Bobo just looked up.

Uh it's funny. Spotminders just sent me a tracker to test out for the first time, so I will be seeing how their stuff works. But there you go, Spotminders. Uh oh, Kim says narcissists are narcissists because they are insecure. Oh see, what do we know, Bobo? We don't. We just don't know. Uh Less says, I've been listening to your radio show since the beginning. I haven't missed an episode. First Off, thanks for being so helpful. Are also very entertaining.

I also have to say I agree with your wife that your newsletters can get a bit wordy, but I still read them every time. Okay, you know what, Less, I'm not even gonna read the rest of yours. I want to oh a long time ago. My wife she reads my newsletters and she goes, you know, they're a little long. I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm giving people their money's worth.

my kids. When they were little and I had them on their risks, I was like, oh my gosh, my kid went missing, like you know, walks off or whatever, Like how did anyone know who they are? And one time we did lose my kid, Parker in a pumpkin patch. I'm not kidding. We want with our friends. He was like one year old and we get to the front where we're all checking out with our pumpkins. We have all this stuff we're buying and everyone looks around the like, do you have Parker?

or something like thank you? Probably just butchered that too. That's gonna do it for this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on the website. Just go to rich on Tech dot TV. Can find me on social media. If you're not following me on Instagram, it is at rich on Tech. That is where I post all the stuff that I think you should know. When it comes to Instagram, it's a lot of lot of good stuff there all right. Coming up next week,

let me take a look. We're gonna be talking about the Opal app, which is a way to surf social media less. And we've got a cybersecurity expert. Oh, it's gonna explain why turning off location services doesn't necessarily stop smartphone tracking. Five privacy settings you should change right now. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending it right here.