Mute might not be what you think on video chat apps

We've got new phones, we've got new services, You've got all kinds of things happening, and the big news this week, and by the time you listen to this show, this could have changed. Because this is such a dynamic situation. But Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter outright forty three billion dollar deal fifty four dollars and twenty cents per stock. He is, you know, sort of a this

is kind of a controversial thing. I mean, the reaction I've seen on Twitter has been fast, it's been furious, it's been you know, some people think it's going to be a good thing. Some people think it's going to be a bad thing. But the reality is it's a thing, and so again forty three billion dollar deal. Elon Musk said that, you know, he wants to buy Twitter because he believes in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and he thinks free speech

is a societal imperative. But he thinks that the company cannot survive or thrive. I guess, he says, I realized the company will neither thrive nor serve this imperative in its current form and needs to be transformed as a private company. So he is offering to one hundred percent of Twitter. Now, he says that this is his offer. Fifty four dollars and twenty cents is a fifty four percent premium over the day he began investing in Twitter. I'm sure he can look at the filings and see

when he started investing. I think that was at the end of last year, and a thirty eight percent premium over the day the investment was publicly announced. Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it. That's what Elon Musk said. Now, this has been a roller coaster because we know that it was revealed that Elon Musk bought nine percent stock in the company then the company offered him a board seat. Then he said no, I'm not going to join the board.

And then he started asking weird questions on Twitter, like, you know, does Twitter protect free speech? You know, just all these weird kind of odd things, and some things got deleted. And it's interesting to watch his rise and also the kind of transformation into a very polarizing, controversial person. You know, obviously he has very successful company with with Tesla. He is doing really interesting things with SpaceX, and you know, obviously he came from PayPal and made a whole bunch

of money there and did some interesting things there. He's outspoken and he is a forward thinker. But should he be in charge of Twitter? A lot of people say no. I'm just reading the comments today on tech Meme, they linked up a bunch of the tweets. I mean, I think more tweets than I've ever seen from anyone or any particular story. Just a lot of people, the good, the bad, the ugly, and let's be honest, what a lot of people are concerned about is this idea of

free speech on Twitter. Twitter has blocked one of their most prolific tweeters. You remember former President Trump and you know, Trump had I think he had about eighty million followers. And this was another thing that that Elon did. He tweeted out a list of people and he said, is Twitter dead? You know, these people rarely tweet and they're like the top, you know, they have the top followers

on Twitter. So it's it's really controversial. It's really interesting, you know, should Twitter be handled or run by one person? Right now? Twitter is a publicly traded company. It's got a board. And keep in mind this is a consumer podcast, and to be quite honest, I don't talk about Twitter a whole lot in this podcast because I don't think Twitter is a very consumer oriented company. Like I don't

think average consumers are on Twitter. And it's clear that, you know, if you look at their user base, they've got you know, over two hundred million active users daily, but only a portion of them are in US, maybe something like fifty sixty million of them. So when you look at that compared to something like Facebook and Instagram and you know these other places out there, you know, Twitter is just a blip, and so is Snapchat. Really the two big ones are Instagram and Facebook when it

comes to social media, and so Twitter is small. But that's part of the argument is should Twitter be bigger? Should Twitter have more of an impact in the US? Should it not just be the news folks and the entertainment folks. And now, of course TikTok is another huge one and growing very fast, so we'll follow this. I think that for the average person, I think it really the deciding factor if if Elon is in charge, I

think changes they're feeling about Twitter. There's a lot of journalists on Twitter who may not want to support it as much anymore. Or there's some people on Twitter, you know that that kind of lean left or right that may feel like Twitter would become much more of a conservative place. So you know, I'm not giving you my my feeling on whether that's right or wrong or what you know, people should think about. But I'm just giving you all the facts and kind of what is what's

percolating around the community. And that's really what it is, is what does this social media network want to be? Does it want to be a voice of the right, Does it want to be a voice of the left. Does it want to be a voice somewhere in the middle. Should they be censoring people, should they be you know, just is it? What should Twitter be? And so those are a lot of questions that need to be answered. Do I think that Elon Musk is going to finalize

purchase of Twitter. I'm not really sure. I think that a lot of this is is just kind of shaking things up a little bit. We'll see. But Twitter's also a company they answer to shareholders. This is a lot of money, and so it's just kind of one of those things that we will follow. And it's quite fun to watch. I'll be honest as a tech person, it's quite fun to watch. It's fun to see the reactions. It's fun to see all of the different positioning of people.

And anyway, so we'll see what happens. By the time you listen to this. It could all be mute. It could all be a moot point anyway, because Elon may drop out of the contention for purchasing Twitter. He may say nevermind, I changed my mind. All right, let's get to the first question of the show. Let's see where are we? Gina says, I have a question about wi fi. If you're at a Starbucks or McDonald's or any other retail outlet on their WiFi, how susceptible are you to

being hacked? Can you safely use Wi Fi at a hotel or on a ship? Several years ago, I was on a cruise. When we landed, many people got off and access their phones through a Wi Fi connection at the port. Later that day many were complaining their phones had been hacked. So I never use outside Wi Fi. Just wondering if Wi Fi is safer. Thanks for responding, Gina. Well, you know, everyone has a story of someone who something

happened to them. The fact that a bunch of these people got off at a port and their phone was hacked, I'm not really sure that happened. It's kind of like this whole idea of you know, everyone has a story about something thing, right, And I think that in general public Wi Fi is quite safe and I think you'll be okay. Starbucks, McDonald's, I mean those companies I think are probably the most safe. I mean, the chances of someone getting in and messing with McDonald's or Starbucks WiFi

is pretty pretty low. Now, what I do my banking on a Wi Fi network? And the answer is no, would I check my email? Probably? I think it'll be fine. Don't forget that when you check these services most of them are going through a secure layer to access that service, So it's not just like flying over the public internet to access your information. When you go from your phone to Gmail or something like that, it's using a secure kind of transmission socket to access that information, So it's

not just kind of putting your information out there. And if someone were to sniff that network, typically as long as it's a secure as long as it's over a secure connection, you know, from you know, a Gmail or encrypted or whatever, it will be fine. They're not gonna be able to see what you're doing. Now, are there a million and one ways that this could be a problem. Yes, of course, someone could could set up a fake network and they could just log all the traffic that's happening

on that network. Someone could log all the unencrypted traffic over a network and see what's happening there. But typically when you're exchanging passwords and you're logging into things, most of that is done over encrypted connections. So I think you're gonna be okay. But again I would still err on the side of what am I doing on this network? So if I'm just doing social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

you know, watching YouTube, it's gonna be fine. But if I'm doing my banking, if I'm doing my budget, if I'm doing you know, something that's really really highly secure, I would not use a public network in general, but for vacation things like that. On a cruise ship, you'll probably be fine. Now, if you want, you can step up your connection to a VPN, it'll be a little bit safer. There's a lot of them out there that

people like, you know. I would just google top rated VPNs and see from a reputable source like Wirecutter or you know, PC mag or something like that, and see what they recommend. But I think that, you know, if you want to step it up to that, that'd be fine. But in general, I would make sure that you are accessing things over a secure connection when you're you're going to a website that requires that. I would also use

LTE if you can. Now, if you're on a cruise ship, you probably can't use your cellular connection, so you're gonna be on their Wi Fi. I would just be really concerned about the Wi Fi networks that I connect to, So typically I do not connect to a lot of random Wi Fi networks. Typically I will connect to a network if it's trusted, if it's from a place I know, or if it's from a provider I know, I don't

just you know, find an open network. Remember the days where you just find an open network and you connect to it and you'd be like, oh cool, I found free Wi Fi. I think that my privacy is much more important than saving a few megabytes of data on my plan, so I always default to cellular in general. Now there's another whole thing that I think is actually more important here, and that's the Wi Fi at your work.

So I think that Wi Fi at work everyone connects to their Wi Fi at their employer, and a lot of times to connect to that Wi Fi, you may have to download some sort of security profile to your

device to be able to get onto that network. And I think that that actually has more potential for issues than a different network that doesn't require that, because when you download one of these trust certificates to your phone or to your computer, it's giving that Wi Fi network a little bit more free rain on your device than

a network that doesn't require that. And so what can they do at your work, Well, you know, they may be able to monitor the websites that you're going to they may able to see when you come and go. There's a lot they can do, actually, depending on what your company wants to do and how they want to slice and dicee the data that they're collecting if they

collect that data. So I personally always am very very cautious about when I connect to Wi Fi and why and how and for how long and the networks that I use. So, Gina, I think it's good that you're thinking about this stuff. I think that if you're just casually using the Wi Fi network, you'll be fine. But anytime that you are just a little bit more critical of the network, I think that's a smart thing in general. Well,

along those lines, let's talk about your video conferencing app. So, you know, what do we all do when we go on something like Zoom or teams or FaceTime or whatever. You know, you mute yourself when you don't want to be heard by the person on the other end. But did you ever think that perhaps the video conferencing app itself might still be listening to you. They're just not

transmitting that audio to the person on the other end. Interesting, So it turns out these video conferencing apps might still be listening to you even when your mic is muted. This is a study from the University of Wisconsin. Students there took a look at how popular video chat apps collect data even when the mic is off, and in a majority of cases, when you press mute, the apps still access your microphone and many still collect audio snippets.

So to protect your privacy, experts recommend using what's called the double mute, and this means muting the app, so pressing that mute button on the app, but also pressing a mute button on a piece of hardware like on your headset or the settings on your computer, pressing mute there. So therefore you have muted both access to your microphone from your computer at a system level and also through

the app. Now, the study did not reveal specific app names that may be coming later because they're going to present these findings at a private conference later this summer. But this is one of those things that it's kind of like the stuff that you wonder about when you use these apps, like, Okay, well I'm muted to the person on the other side, but the app never said that I was muted to them. And so with this study found is that yeah, a lot of these apps

are still collecting little snippets here and there. Some of them are still collecting a bunch of information about your audio even when you're muted. And so it's kind of concerning that when you think your privacy is intact, it may not be. And now this study actually took it a step step further. They analyzed some of the audio using a pretty crude algorithm to see if they could figure out what you were doing in the background, like

washing dishes or watching TV or whatever. And their algorithm was able to figure out what you were doing in many, many cases. And so again when you think about someone like Facebook or or you know, Zoom whatever, you know they have very sophisticated systems and computers and people, and so what could they do with this audio? They could say, well, we know that ninety seven percent of people are washing dishes, that the audio sounds like this, so let's send them

some ads about dishwashing detergent. Who knows. I mean, look, these programs are free in the majority of cases. If you're not paying for it, you know that you're the product. So I found this study to be really interesting. I think it's it needs They kind of threw it out there without a ton of like background data. Like they didn't really say which apps this could be they test, I mean they said they tested, like, well, they test. I think it said like two hundred apps they tested.

Oh no, they asked two hundred and twenty three video conferencing users. Okay, but they didn't say which apps. But they tried out many different video conferencing apps on major operating systems including iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac checking to see if the app still access to microphone when it

was muted. Now, if you have an eye iPhone or an Android on Android, they now have a system wide toggle in the settings to cut off access to your microphone, which you know you can do by you know, dragging down your notification bar. On iOS, it will tell you when it's accessing your microphone, but it doesn't necessarily let you turn off access unless you go into the settings for the app. But that would be kind of a problem because you'd never be able to use the app.

So I guess my advice if you're really, really truly concerned about your privacy is to use a pair of plug in headphones for your computer or your phone that has a physical mute button as well. That way you know, you're muting your audio at the source, at the microphone and also through the app itself. All right, Kenneth writes in when I joined cal State Northridge Alumni Association, one of the benefits was to allow me to have a school related email addrect Thus at my CSUN dot edu.

I've had that as my primary email address for several years. I have that as my identifying name on many different providers like Walmart and Amazon. Yesterday, I was informed by it that SASUN by the end of June, the email account will be terminated. As such, all alumni member accounts will be terminated. Only current students and faculty will be able to continue with those school accounts. This is due to a reduction in the storage space that Google is

allowing universities. Yes, Google, when it first arrived said free, free, free, forever, will continue to increase your storage space forever. And then forever came and they said, oh, never mind, let's not do that anymore. Let's charge you after fifteen gigabytes. That happened a couple years ago. As such, I wrote that he didn't write that as such, that was just an aside.

As such, he says, I'm going to have to jump through a lot of hoops, get a new Gmail address, download my stuff to that address, and then contact all the others with whom I use my former address. So Kenneth did not actually ask a question in here, You

just kind of left a comment. And I guess this is kind of a warning to other people that, yeah, you need to be careful when you choose your email address, because if you're going with a provider that is maybe not going to be there in the future, you might want to rethink. So the safest thing to do is probably to get your own domain and pay for email through that because you can continually do that, and you know kind of if you're paying for it, you're gonna

be able to get that hosted. Obviously, I think Gmail is pretty safe. I think Outlook is pretty safe. Yahoo and not so much. I probably wouldn't choose them at this point. But a lot of people also have similar

problems with their cable company. So they will use their cable company's email address, and next thing you know, they move or they switch providers, and now what do you do Because you've got all your stuff linked in and the problem with the email addresses is that they are your recovery email address for many many accounts, and so if you forget your password, oh hey, let's just email you a password or your a temporary link to your

email address. And if that email address is not in use anymore, well now you're kind of out of luck. Because some of the bigger companies give you alternative recovery methods, but a lot of the other ones just don't. It's just your email. So I think that this is a good kind of just warning to not use random email addresses, as good as they may seem at the time, for future reference. So I know that I have an alumni

email address as well. I've used that. I did use it pretty much exclusively is my email for a very long time, and then the writing was kind of on the wall that I didn't really want to use that anymore after Gmail came out. And of course I always have my hesitation with Gmail, because you know, it is Google, and so you're kind of showing your allegiance to one major corporation, and so I didn't like that idea. But

Gmail seems to be a really good email provider. It's worked for me for many years, so I do use that one as well. As a couple others. I've I've got some help self hosted emails as well. But at the end of the day, I think that you go with a provider that's pretty big so that you don't get stuck in one of these in one of these situations where you kind of have to back yourself out. And so I think outlook, let's see largest email providers. So I think there's like proton Mail is a big one.

Let's see what else do we have here? Oh gosh, this is from twenty sixteen. Come on, you've got to have a better provider than that, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Oh, AOL, Oh gosh. I wouldn't have AOL, that's for sure. Let's see what else is there. I remember when there was an email called Juno, and this was back kind of back in the day when I think AOL was king and AOL cast money, and so if you had an

AOL account, fine, that was great. But Juno came along and it was free email and it had a little tagline at the bottom, and I think ads on the web service, like the actual app that you downloaded your computer had ads on it, and so Juno, I thought, was like the best email in the world, because I was like, I get this for free. It works outside AOL, It's never gonna change. It's so great. I had like an awesome email address because I was like one of

the first users. So my email was like super easy, like richdat Juno dot com or something like that, and so I just loved it. And then of course that evolved. It got bought by I think net zero. Do you remember that name? Man, all these things net zero? I think is that even around anymore? I don't know. Let's see, no net zero brings you to Norton three sixty so net zero is gone. Wow, just so wild? How all

these things? Oh my gosh, it brought me to the net zero search page, like a search But yeah, that was there. I mean, there was a lot of stuff in the early days of the Internet that kind of was available and then it went away. Another one that actually have been quite impressed with over the years that's

been around forever is Google Voice. So I've had a phone number with them since day one when it was called Oh my gosh, I'm trying to remember what Google Voice was before Google Voice previous name, Oh my gosh, it was like Cloud grand Central, Grand Central, So I got grand Central. I was working at c NEET at the time, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever to have this phone number that rang all of your different devices. So I don't know why I needed that.

I mean, back in the day, you had a landline, you had your cell phone, and you had your home phone, so there were three places where someone could potentially reach you. And so I thought Grand Central, the fact that you could just give out one phone number and it reached you had all these different phones at the same time

was so amazing. And I'm pretty sure the phone number I have with that with Google Voice is the same phone number I've had since Grand Central launched in two thousand and two thousand and six, and it, by the way, was not very it was it was not around very long before Google purchased it. So Google purchased it in two thousand and seven for just a mere fifty million dollars. So that's what became Google Voice, if you remember that. I love giving little history lessons because you kind of

forget about this stuff. I mean, I've been doing this for a while and I am I'm one of those people that loves to sign up for stuff the day it comes out. I think, you know, it used to be a lot. There used to be a lot more services that came out that were really cutting edge and really cool and just free and kind of changed your life in a sign up and you're like, this is really cool and it's free. This is really cool and

it's free. This is really awesome and it's free. And now I feel like that's not so much the case anymore. I think many, I mean things are still coming out

that are really awesome. I think that many of these companies have gotten hip to the either the freemium model where you know you're gonna get a feature or two for free, but the rest of it is going to be pretty highly locked down and paid, or they just come out and it's just like now we're just paid, and we've got to be because there's just no way we can do this without being paid. I remember Who's

Sweet was another one. So Who's Sweet was this service that it just it linked up all of your different social media networks and you can post one thing and it would go to all the different networks. And I thought that was so cool until I just Deine told me, I'll never forget this. We were hosting cs together and I just Deine. I was you know, asking, I was picking her brain. I'm like, Justine, how do you have so many followers in so many places? And how do

you keep up with it? And this was, you know, you're going on ten years ago, so this was like the early days of social media. And she was like, Oh, whatever you do, do not cross post. Whatever you do, don't cross posts. People want to build their own little communities and their own little places, and so the post that you have in one place does not necessarily work

in another place. And that really held with me for so many years, and I would I would try to be very unique and have a unique voice on all my different social media platforms. And then flash flash forward ten years. Justine and I hosted a CES couple of years ago, and I said, Justine, I don't know if you remember telling me this, but you remember telling me that, you know, we should be different on all these different platforms and personalize the stuff. And she goes, oh, well, yeah,

there's no way I can do that anymore. And yeah, that's that advice doesn't hold true anymore. And I was like, what, I've been following this advice for so long, but here's the thing. It's still good advice, and of course we discussed it a little bit more. Of course, you want to create the You can have similar content, but you

adapt it for the different social media network. So what a lot of people do when I see this all the time, they post an Instagram post on Facebook like the actual maybe a link to it, or they post a link to a YouTube video. And the reality is Facebook does not reward that. They reward what's called a native upload of a video or a native link or you know, links these days on Facebook don't really do

well at all. But you know, they want native content, content that is uploaded through their system in their format. So if you look at something like Instagram when they came out with their copycat of TikTok, they you know, people are just downloading their tiktoks and uploading them to Instagram reels and they said, you know this is just because I already make this piece of content. It's the

same format, it's vertical, it's the same timeframe. Let me just upload it to Instagram, and Instagram sensing danger because they didn't want people to just you didn't want reels to be a TikTok copycat. That it was and literally just show TikTok videos. They got hip to that, and they ended up putting in their algorithm a filter that would look for you know how when you download a TikTok video, it puts your username and TikTok kind of bounces around the screen like that DVD logo on the

TV screen. It kind of bounces around your TikTok video. Well, Instagram's algorithm searches for that, and if it sees that on your video that watermark, it says, Okay, we see what this person's doing here. We're gonna demote that. And so they demote that video. So, yes, you'll still see those videos, and if it's a popular video, of course it's still gonna go viral with that even on there if a lot of people catch wind of it. But it's one of those things that's built in because Instagram

wants to reward original content. Now, could you just upload the same exact video to both services? Yes, you can, but again and that's much more in a native format because you're not just downloading something that you uploaded from TikTok and using TikTok, you know, editing functionality and all that stuff and then uploading it to Instagram. So again, it's just this kind of stuff happens with all these social networks. They want to be their own social network.

They want you to have your own kind of voice and your own you know, they want you to use it the way that you engage with your viewers and not just sending stuff to ten different networks at once. So I think at the beginning, when we were trying to handle all these different things, that worked out great. But as Justine realized and as I realized, as you went along, like these these services became so different and

kind of what people expected from them became different. Like on Instagram, you would post a picture, you know, it wouldn't you wouldn't necessarily just post a screenshot of your latest article that you posted to the website or whatever, you know what I mean. And so again, by by putting those things in a format that the social media network wanted, would help you in that social media network gain viewers and followers and also interact with those followers.

And they rewarded that, and they still do in a big way. I mean, this is very very apparent on Facebook to me that when you test out some of the new things that Facebook is doing, like reels, they are really really rewarding you with that by showing those to way more people. They're kind of over correcting for those things, and so they're sending your reels to a

lot more people than that would typically see them. But as these things mature, the numbers go down and people are like, hey, wait, hold on, how come I was getting so many views at the beginning and now I'm not getting those same views. I haven't really changed anything. Well,

what's changed is that Instagram got what they wanted. They got everyone to get comfortable with using reels, to uploading to reels, to selecting reels, to watching reels, and now they don't need your help as much in uploading that stuff because the mass amounts of people are uploading stuff. So they're like, all right, we're good now, so we'll just now we'll just show your videos to a small subset of people once again, like we were going to in the beginning. I don't know what that story was.

I don't even know where how did I get on that tangent with that story? Oh? Email, Yes, that was the email question. So to answer your question, choose an email that you can stick with all right, let's get to a story about Fitbit. Fitbit devices we'll soon be able to tell their users about potential heart issues. Fitbit's got an approval from the FDA to use an algorithm

came up with that identifies atrial fibrillation. This is a fib that's a form of a regular heart rhythm that affects more than thirty million people, and those people are more susceptible to strokes. So the big challenge here is, yes, you might say, rich, dude, rich, come on, I listened to the show. I know that the Apple Watch has had this feature forever. Come on, Rich, Well, two things on that. Number one, I don't think that the Apple Watch does this in the background. I believe that you

still have to trigger a manual. If I'm looking at this watch here and I go to heart or ECG, it doesn't necessarily take a reading in the background. You have to put your fingers and complete kind of this circuit on your watch for it to take a reading. And if you have a heart issue, maybe people do that, you know, a couple times a day. But the kind of idealized version of this is that you would you're wearable, would be doing this in the background all the time.

But I think the problem with that is that it uses a lot of battery, it uses a lot of resources, and that has been a challenge until now. And that's when Google or I should say Alphabet that owns Fitbit, they have come up with this algorithm that kind of looks at the data that your watch is collecting all the time and analyzes that data for signs of a FIB and then they will notify you if there is

something unusual. This does not replace a doctor, doesn't replace the equipment you would typically use to do a real reading or a thorough reading. But it is a really really good start and the fact that this gotten FDA approval is huge. Basically, it gives the wearers of fitbit specific models of Fitbit, this is not all of them, and it gives them, you know, another way to track their health. And I think that is a really really good thing. So the Apple Watch, I think is fantastic.

I think it's amazing. I think it's saved a lot of lives. I think that it is telling people when their heart rate is low, when their heart rate is high, when they're breathing, is having an issue. I think it does that but also it can do these manual heart rate readings. So I think that this is a really good thing the fact that Apple users are enjoying. Oh yeah, it also tells you, you know, if you fall, it

can call for help. So I think that these wearables are getting to a place where they are going to become so commonplace. And it's like, why would you not have one of these things on your wrist? I get the privacy implication, sure, but I feel like the security blanket that they offer is starting to outweigh any sort of privacy concerns you may have about these devices. And so to me, I mean, look at we've got Google with their They've got things that can I mean, there's

just so much of this going on. I tested the Google Home that can you know, measure your respiration at night without even touching you. I mean it just looks at the waves like it uses like micro micro radar to like sense the up and down of your lungs, and it can it can figure out issues there and tell you how you slept. I mean, we've got the Aura ring that does a whole bunch of stuff. I'd

still like to test that one out. That's the one wearable that i'd really like to try out that I have not tried, and it just seems like it'd be a really cool thing. But I will say, I think this is great. I'm so glad that Phippit got this. It's going to be coming to certain models of the Sense, the Versa, the Charge, and the Inspire. My only problem with fitbit is that they seem to take a lot longer to introduce software features on their devices versus the

Apple Watch. Apple Watch has this nice cadence of regular software updates with watch os, kind of like iOS. It just comes out regularly and there's always something new and things are always getting better. I feel like and maybe I just haven't worn a fitbit in a while. I feel like the Fippit is just a little bit behind. Like they announce these things whenever the fitbit comes out. They always say like, oh, we're gonna have a blood oxygen sensor, but it takes like another six months to

a year to arrive on people's wrists. So I think that hopefully you know now that pipbit is getting much more integrated with Google and I should say alphabet, I I guess hopefully there you know, there's more kind of force behind them to work more closely in getting these things to people's wrists faster. But I am all for it.

I really think that, uh. I mean one of the reasons I wear the Apple Watch is that I really feel like it's like an almost like a safety blanket where you know, if you go out running and you fall, like imagine you're hiking in the middle of nowhere by yourself, which you know you may do once in a while, and you know, you fall and your watch calls for help. I mean, that's really really important, and it just doesn't you know, if you didn't it's it could be the

difference between life and death. I mean, it really really can. So let's get to another question. Let's see, Uh, Collette says, I am puzzled. Oh, it says you. I guess the subject is USB thumb drives. Uh for photo, I guess photostick. I am puzzled. At one site the reviews oh for the above are great, and on another site I should not buy. I have an Android tablet and HP Envy computer. My husband has a Tashiba laptop and an Android phone. I would like to take all the photos from each

and put them into one spot. What do you suggest to someone with minimal tech knowledge? Thank you, Collet collect well, I would suggest Google Photos. I mean that would be my first choice in this situation. I think whenever someone wants to consolidate their photos, I think Google Photos is the best. You can install it on every single one of those devices you just mentioned. You can also do a family share account and so you can have the

photos from both your husband's devices and yours merge. It works great, It's slicing and dicing, and the search is just unbelievable. The cloud backup is phenomenal. I would recommend, of course, having it on a different backup somewhere else, but you know, you can do that down the line. But I think that Google Photos would definitely be the best way to go. You originally asked about the photostick by Omni. Now I don't know what the photostick by Omni is, but I have a guess, and I guess

that I probably would not recommend that. So I'm searching for a photostick by Omni and yeah, let's gosh, let's see. So just looking at the website. Immediately looking at the website, it's one of those websites that is just something I would not purchase something from. So it's it's got the pop up that says someone from Lincoln, Kansas just purchased the photo stick. Omni. Oh my gosh. Just now, when I happen to go to your website, someone just purchased one,

and you're telling me about that. Okay. Also you can see the pricing. It's like retail is seventy four, this is fifty nine ninety nine. Then you've got retail. So basically they're selling a one and twenty eight gigabyte Oh someone else just bought one from Hagerman, Idaho. Huh. And they're selling a two hundred and fifty six gigabyte flash storage drive that looks like a drive that I used to get at events giving out like candy for free

for one hundred and fifty dollars. Now, if their software was like unbelievable, yeah, that would be amazing, so I would I would recommend it. But it I just don't think that any of this is good, So I'm not knocking them. I have not tested this. I don't know, but the reality is, uh oh, I just got a special offer when I went to click away from the website they said, Okay, you can get an extra one for forty percent off. So it's just one of these websites that is just I don't like it. I wouldn't

order from there, so if you want, if you want. Oh, and it also says okay, it says as featured on CBS, Yahoo and Business Insider, so let's go to Yahoo or okay. So interesting this. I just can't trust this. It's so weird. They have this like report from a website and the author you can't click on it, so this is like, it looks like it's a website. It's so interesting. It looks like it's a website from a TV station in Houston.

But usually you could click on the author's name so that you can see all the things that this author wrote. And I can't seem to find that author. But you know what, I don't you know what? Actually this author does look legit. Let's see. Let me just try one more thing. Weird, what our email address? Let's try one

more thing here? Okay, So it looks like this is a consumer author or a consumer reporter in Houston, so she may have she may have actually tested this for real, so that could be legit let's see on on Okay, on Yahoo they are using a press release, so they are literally just linked up to a press release that is not an actual news story. And then h on Business Insider, they are linking to a press release of their own writing. So for all these reasons, absolutely not

what I purchase this. Now you can purchase it. It might be just fine, but I'm giving my advice. You're tuned into the rich On Tech Show. So this is why. Those are all the reasons why when I research a product, I would not purchase it. So what I would purchase is something called the sand Disc sand Disk I expand and they make various versions. You will want the one that works with the Android phones, and so they have and I Expand. I think it's either the duel or

let's see they have the let's see shop. Oh come on, I'm looking for this thing portable drives. I'm trying to find the sand disc I Expand that I would get, and they have Anyway, if you just go to sand Disc I Expand, they have a whole bunch of the one that I featured on KTLA was really good. So I just search. Okay, here we go. Ktla USB Drives and this one is called the sand Disc I expand Flash drive. Lucks ooh, lucks this is this is deluxe

because it has Lucks in the name. And what I like about this drive is that it's got iPhone on one side, a connector for lightning, and then USB C on the other. You may just need USB with those different devices, but I'd recommend USBC because you both have Android phones and so you can plug that into the bottom of both of those phones. But great question, I would say, when it comes to the tech questions that

I get, should I get a USB? These things must advertise like like I can't believe, but the USB drive for backup photos is probably the top, if not the top question, one of the top three questions I get. And it's it's truly remarkable how these companies advertise because these they're just everywhere, so many questions about them. So anyway, there you go. There's my answer. All right, Netflix introducing

the double thumbs up for even better recommendation. So not a big story, not much time to spend on this, or I don't want to spend a bunch of time on this, but there will be a new option for you when you're rating shows on Netflix, and it is the double thumbs up. Not to be confused with the two thumbs up. Two thumbs up is Ciskel and eber Late movie critics that pretty much defined the entire industry. But this is the two thumbs up. Oh I just

got it on mine. Okay, so I just got it on my Netflix app and you tap rate, and now it gives you a down, a thumbs up. A thumbs down says not for me. One thumbs up is I like this. Two thumbs up is I love this, And so when you click that two thumbs up, it will signify that you want more shows like that for your personalized recommendations, and that's what you are going to get.

So they just found that the one thumbs up was just a little I'll lean in the ratings because you might like something, but you're not like, oh my gosh, I love this. Like there are certain shows I like, but then there are shows that I love, love, love, and so actually I should go into Netflix. I never really thought about this. I don't really use a whole bunch of Netflix, but I should go in and rate the shows that I do like so that I can get really good like maybe I'll discover shows that I like.

I never thought about doing that, but I'm gonna. I'm actually gonna do that with some shows and movies because that way I can get stuff that I like. And then maybe I'll watch more Netflix and get my twenty dollars a month worth. I know, everyone that's using my account gets there, gets my money's worth, that's for sure. Uh. Let's see what do we want to go to next?

All right, okay, let's go to Marylyn. Marilyn says, I'd like to understand why developers need access to my personal information such as photos, contacts, media, ability to make and or manage phone calls in order to play a game I've downloaded. Is it really necessary to give them access to my handset or tablet? Thanks anti cookie, anti cookie, anti cookie, absolutely not. They do not need this personal information.

This is a data grab. They are trying to get as much information out of you as possible because they can sell more ads to you, or better yet, they can collect information about you and then use that information to sell your data to other people and make some quick cash off of that as well sell that to data brokers. So I love the fact that you are actually aware of this. I love the fact that you are cognizant of it and you are noticing this. But when you download an app, be very very careful and

methodical about the screens that follow the download. You're going to get questions about all kinds of stuff. Can we have access to your gpsqu have access to your precise location, we have access to your contacts, we have access to your calendar, we have access to your you know, can we track you across apps? All these different things? Location? You know, like she said, contacts, media, photos, And Apple

has gotten really good about letting you you know. It used to be on Android and Apple when you said yes, it would just be like a blanket yes to like a lot of different things. Now they've definitely parsed it out on both operating systems, and Android actually takes it a step further. So if you don't use an app for a while, they they revoke they're called permissions. They

actually revoke the permissions of that app. So let's say you downloaded some random game that is stopping up all of the data it can because it's just kind of

one of those apps. Well, let's say don't play that game in six months, Google in the background says we noticed that Rich hasn't been playing this game, and also, why do you need access to all Virtus stuff in the background here, So we are just going to revoke that access until he opens up this app again, and then we're going to ask him again if you want to give his location. And I think that is a

huge win for the operating system. On Android and Apple, you can go ahead and revoke permissions and take them back after the fact, but it doesn't do it automatically, but it'd be nice if it did, and maybe it will in a future update. Who knows. I mean, WWDC is just around the corner. And at this point, I feel like the features that Apple and Android keep adding

are like very similar on both ends. It's like, oh, we have this, Oh we have this, we have that, we have this, and it's like they're just kind of like neck and neck at this point with the different features they have. But with that said, always always be very critical about any of the permissions that you give,

especially when it comes to your photos. If you're using like a photo editing app and it says allow access to all your photos, just say, hmm, does it need all my photos or can I just like, let's say you just wanted to download an app to like retouch a picture once because you just need to do something, just give it access to that one picture. That's why it says on Apple allow access to all photos or

select media. That's what that means. You select that one picture and say, okay, you can have this picture, but you can't have all the rest of my pictures because these companies could, you know, kind of slurp up some of the data from your the metadata from your other pictures and kind of see where you take them and that gives an idea of where you go. So believe me, these these app developers can be very sneaky, sneaky and

it's it's a lot of it is very legal. You know, if they're if you're given access to your your location, you know these apps will ping that access even when you're not using it. And so that's another question that Apple now asks. It says, do you want to give permission to use your location all the time or only

when you're using the app? Now all the time is way more valuable to them because they can see all the different places that you go, and they know that if you go into that coffee shop every single morning you pause there for two minutes. They know that you're frequenting,

you know, Jim's Coffee on Second Street in Seattle. And now they can have an advertiser that wants to advertise against that and say, hey, why don't you come to Jones Coffee on Third Street and they can send you a coupon so or targeting ad or whatever they want to do. So there's a reason for all of this stuff and why these apps want so much information. It is your job, as a consumer sad as it is, to kind of sift through and think about, hmm, do

I need to give them this information? And I sit here as a very as a smart tech person, and I sit there and I go, okay, now, what's the implication of not letting ways have access to my information at all times? And the implication is now Ways doesn't know where I am and it can't send me a time to leave notification. So there are some reasons why you might want to give these apps certain access that they are requesting. It's up to you to kind of figure out and connect the dots as to why they

need that. The famous example, and I almost hate to use this because it's been so long. But the famous example is that all the flashlight apps back in the day that would ask for all the permissions and really it was a flashlight app which was probably built into your phone, but it was just collecting so much data while you had that app installed on your phone, because then they were selling it to different companies. So same thing with a lot of weather apps. They do that

as well. So you just have to be very careful about what data you give up. And if you don't really care, then don't care. But I think you should be concerned with any of the data that you are willingly giving up on a daily basis. Good question, anti cookie all right, Speaking of Google Photos, the unlimited Google Photos backup is coming back. I can't believe this, but just for T Mobile customers, ugh, this is according to nine to five Google, Google and T Mobile seem to

have a pretty good partnership going. But soon T Mobile customers will be able to pay fifteen dollars a month for unlimited Google Photos backup. Now, fifteen dollars a month might sound like a lot, but right now I'm paying twenty five dollars a month for I think five terribile of I guess Google Drive access. Now here's the thing,

the unlimited Google Photos backup. I'm not exactly sure if this would refer to new photos moving forward or all of your photos in Google Like, once you activate this fifteen dollars option, does it magically unlock all that space in your Google Drive that's being used by your Google Photos. I'm not sure, and I don't really know. They don't really explain it in here, but this new two So basically you get two terabytes of Google Drive storage plus

unlimited Google Photos. So that would be a really, really big win. In fact, that'd be pretty compelling to me because I would save ten dollars a month by switching to T Mobile just to get this one feature. Now, I've been around the block long enough to know that features come and go, so I would probably not base my switching of a wireless carrier on this one feature because who knows how long this partnership is going to last.

Who knows how long the unlimited photos deal is going to last, and then you got to switch again if if something changes or they raise the price or it's not as competitive. But I would say, if you have T Mobile and you have a lot of Google Photos. You're paying fifteen dollars a month for Google Drive storage

or something like that. I would definitely look into this because the ability to store photos and videos in full resolution is pretty awesome, especially if you're like me and you have over two I'm going on three terabytes of Google Photos, just Google Photos. Oh no, no, no, no, that's not true. That's not just Google Photos. Let me

say how much I have in Google Photos. If you want to check to see how much storage're using Google just go to one dot Google dot com and then tap storage and I'm using two point three terabytes of five gigs. That is one hundred and twenty one gigabytes in Google Drive, thirty five gigs in Gmail. How the heck do I have thirty five gigabytes of Gmail? I have no idea two point two terabytes of Google Photos,

and so yeah, I'd like to get that unlimited. That'd be amazing, because you know, the old pixels were unlimited, And by the way, I still have the original Pixel which was unlimited, and you can still use it for unlimited. So some people have kind of hacked together a system where you take a picture on your your current phone and it sends it to that that pixel, and then that pixel uploads it, so you still get to save

that full resolution. If I was a little bit more of the old nerd that I was, I'd probably do that. I'd probably set that up. But at this point I'm more about convenience, and I don't really want to have like a Google Pixel server sitting in my house just to upload pictures. And I'd be like, because the problem is,

let's say you're out on vacation and this happens. You take your the majority of your pictures on vacation, so now now you're waiting to get home to back up all these pictures that are on your phone, and I think that's very, very dangerous to not have those backed

up in real time when you're on vacation. By the way, when I'm on vacation, I typically will turn on my I typically turn off this is this gets a little complicated, but in Google Photos, you have the option to only upload over cellular and so are sorry only upload over Wi Fi, And so typically to save battery, I will leave that turned on because most of the time I will you know, I'll be I'll be in you know, I'll be home at the end of the day, and I'll get into my Wi Fi zone and I will

have those photos that I took throughout the day uploaded. Now, when I'm on vacation, it's it's kind of tricky because I want my photos to be uploaded in real time, because when you're on vacation, you are doing a lot of things that you don't typically do. You're in a lot of places that you wouldn't be in. You're in a lot of situations that you wouldn't be in. And I'm talking like, you know, boats and flying on airplanes and all these different things where you may lose your phone.

And if you lose your phone, and let's say you have all these photos set to back up on Wi Fi only, you may not make it back to your hotel room before these photos get uploaded, and now you've lost a day's worth of photos because you were taking them all day. You drop your phone down an elevator shaft at the hotel, and now it's gone and at the end of the day, and now all those photos are just locked on that phone forever. So typically I will turn on the cellular uploads when I'm on vacation

because that's when those pictures are the most precious. The downside of that is that you are now eating through your phone's battery a lot faster because uploading your photos over cellular takes a lot more battery. And so it's this kind of like this gentle dance that I have when I'm on vacation that I want my photos to be uploaded, but I also want to preserve my battery life.

So I kind of sometimes do it in the middle where I'll let the photos go up over cellular, but not the videos because the videos really eat up a lot of the battery. And so it's just little things to think about. I mean, this is I just tell you this stuff because it's this kind of stuff that keeps me up at night, and I kind of really try to digest a lot of it and come up with like good systems, but you know, it doesn't always work.

But that's kind of like what my feeling is. So get those pictures backed up, please, please, please please please. All right, let's do one more question from Jan Hey, Rich, Bob and I are nearing seventy need a smart TV. We like local news and weather. We're huge sports fans and have learned how to stream on Netflix. What featureshould we look for in purchasing a fifty inch center stand. I'm guessing that just means fifty inch TV. Uh, Thanks Jen so Jan. I would recommend the Roku TCL six

series Roku TV. I think that's going to give you everything you need. It's gonna be a fantastic price, It's gonna have Roku built in, and so you don't have to deal with like a third party kind of smart TV situation. You don't have to deal with a not a very good smart TV situation. If I had my way, I'd probably recommend the Apple TV as an add on to any TV. So just find a good TV that you like and then add the Apple TV. But that's expensive.

I don't know if you have an iPhone because you didn't mention if you have an iPhone, but I think that the built in is probably the easiest way to go. My second choice would probably be one of the Amazon TVs that has the fire TV software built in, and or perhaps just getting a fire TV stick that you can attach to a smart to a TV. This idea of the smart TV I typically don't like because I feel like the software is updated more frequently on the

standalone sticks and devices. But when it comes to like Roku and Fire, a lot of those TVs maybe not if they're from third parties or not updated, but the TCL is updated, I know. And also the Amazon TVs are updated if they come from Amazon. So I think it's the Omni series is the one that you want to look for. So those are the TVs that I'd

recommend if you're going built in. Otherwise, I'd say just get any old TV that you like at Costco and then just get the add on, which is either the Fire TV stick or the Roku box or the Apple TV, and in my preference would probably be probably Apple TV and then maybe fireTV stick, the Max, and then the Roku, and I'd go with a Roku device not a stick because the sticks are historically underpowered. I do like the Max.

I think that one's fine, but I think the Roku, the really cheap Roku sticks like twenty five bucks, is going to be very underpowered, especially if you're cutting the cord and you're using that for everything. Oh wow, look at that. That audio means it's the end of the show. That's gonna do it for this episode, If you'd like to submit a question, for me to answer. Go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech, hit the big blue send email button, or go to

richon Tech dot tv and 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 social media. I am at rich on Tech, and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple TV, fireTV, and Roku. Once you do, scroll the tech section and

watch all of my TV segments on demand. 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 spending it right here with me. I'll talk to you real soon.