Authorities discover the way China might be cyber spying on us, and it is not good. Two major outages in one week. What we know about Verizon and Bank of America's issues. Ring adds a key feature to its cameras, but not to its most popular products. I'll explain, plus your tech questions answered.
What is going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech.
This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful and fun. All right, let's open up those phone lines at triple a Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to.
One zero one.
Every time I do that, I just imagine the floodgates opening with Kim standing behind them, just all these calls flowing her way. She will go through them and get you on the air. Here, give me a call. If you have a question about technology. Email is also an option. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit contact up at the top. That's Rich on tech dot TV. Hit contact. You can submit your question there. It will make its way right to my inbox guests. This week,
We've got Justin Klosco from Consumer Watchdog. He's gonna talk about tech related privacy concerns and how you can better protect your information. Then later in the show, it is shopping expert Trey baj. She is from truetrade dot com. She's gonna talk all about Amazon Prime Day, and we're gonna have a check in from North Carolina. One of my friends that lives there covers VR for Android Central.
He's been on the show before.
He is gonna call in and talk about what it's been like in the wake of this hurricane over there, and especially when it comes to technology, it has not been good over there.
But let's talk about Prime Day.
I'm gonna get to the China spying stuff in the in the next segment that is just wild, but I'll get to that in a moment.
But first, let's talk about Prime Day.
This is happening this week, and I figured I would share my tried and true ways the way that I shop on Amazon. And I know we're gonna have Trey on later on to talk about her tips and tricks, but these are mine. This is the way I shop on Amazon day in day out year in, year out to make sure that I'm getting the best deals on Prime Day. So Prime Day is happening on Tuesday and Wednesday,
October eighth and ninth. Once again, you do have to be a Prime member, So if you're not paying for that Prime membership, you might want to sign up for a free trial if you're going to start your holiday shopping. These deals are exclusive for Prime. And I've noticed that Amazon has started sort of promoting the Prime membership a lot more so when you go on Amazon. I ordered something the other day and it was like, hey, you would have paid ten dollars for shipping if you weren't Prime.
And then if you go to your Prime page, if you go to Amazon dot com, let's see Prime, there is a page and it tells you, like how much you've saved on Amazon Prime over the years, which is interesting. So let's see Amazon Prime membership. Let's see. I think there's a here's the stats. I've saved one and twenty eight dollars with Prime. That doesn't sound like that much. I mean how many for oh, for twelve months, Okay, that's that's a lot. I've watched sixty three movies and
shows which I don't believe I have. But okay, three hundred and thirty four packages, zero books, that's prime books, and I've listened to five hundred and ninety four songs, so I don't know. I mean, I guess the three hundred and thirty four packages. If you do the math, one hundred and thirty nine dollars for the year divided by three hundred and thirty nine packages, that's forty one cents shipping each package.
Wow. Okay, that's when you put it that way.
Remember when when shipping actually cost a lot of money, like you would literally pay for postage and handling. And now it's just if you're not getting free shipping, you're like, I'm not ordering from there. I mean, it's very rare that we pay for shipping, but somebody has to pay for it is built into the price of these things, all right. So my first strategy number one, make a gift list now. And by the way, AI is really good for helping you with this. I mentioned a couple
of weeks ago is my kid's birthday. We said, hey, give me some ideas for a ten year old for you know, a ten year old boy.
And I'm not kidding.
We got such great ideas from AI, so lean on AI and the Adobe Insights actually said people are leaning on AI for shopping so much more than ever before. Great way to brainstorm gifts and gift ideas. Review your past purchases. This is one of my best tips because you know, we buy so much stuff on Amazon. Like it's not sexy, but I buy like my filter for my refrigerator, right Like, I buy that on Amazon every six months, never goes on sale. Maybe it's on sale
during Prime Day. So go to Amazon up at the top, hit returns and orders, and then buy again. This will give you a list of all of this stuff you have purchased on Amazon, and so you can see like, oh okay, I do need that again. You'll just get ideas for things that you may have purchased in the past. Like we purchase I know again it's silly. These wipes for our shoes that we use. My kids love them. They really clean up. You know what I'm talking about, Bobo.
You got to have clean shoes, right, So my kids love them. I love them, and we order them all the time. They may be on sale. So once you have that, you've got your stuff in your cart. Now check your cart. So I don't know about you, but I save a lot of stuff in my Amazon cart for later. Go to your Amazon cart, scroll down to the bottom and see what's in there, and also add stuff in there. So if you want to track the
price on things, add it to your cart today. That way you're not scrambling on Tuesday and Wednesday to come up with all the stuff you want to purchase. And then once you do that, watch for early deals. So in the in the sort of days leading up to Prime Day, things go on sale. So just continue, you know, for the next week or so, it's time to visit Amazon and just see what's there, see what's happening that's you know, you never know when you're gonna find something that's that went on sale.
And keep in mind this is a two day event.
It really lasts in my mind, probably more like four or five days, because if you think about the two days before it, the day after, plus the two days, you know, there is a long swath of time to get those deals. I would say the deals really drop off though after Prime Day, so once it ends, you're not really going to be getting that many deals right after that. So look more in the days leading up to it. Now, here's the most important thing to look for.
You have to look for these special Prime Day banners. Don't just look for something that says save eleven percent, save fifteen percent. I'm looking right now at my past purchases, and you see these banners they say Prime Early Deal, limited time deal with Prime, or thirty six percent off or whatever percent off, limited time deal. So right at the top, it's showing me all the stuff I've purchased in the past, Like these these luggage tags that I paid, Well,
they're okay, they're not that big of a deal. They're only you're typically eight dollars right now there's seven. But hey, that's a dollar saved. Why not bad example, Let's see these lights that I bought outside typically eighty nine dollars. These are on sale for fifty six. And this even has a countdown ends in four hours. So again that's how you identify the Prime Day deals, these big red banners near the price tags. If you don't see that,
it's probably not on sale for Prime. Now, once you find something that you want to purchase, I take the URL and I go to a website called Camel Camel Camel. You pop that URL from Amazon into Camel Camel Camel, and this will give you the price history. So what you're looking for on that price history is to see if the lowest price that they've recorded is lower or
higher than the current price. So if the current price on sale is the same or lower than that last previous lowest price on Camel Camel Camel, go ahead and buy it. That means that this is a better deal. So for instance, this TV that I looked up was one hundred and fifty nine dollars. Camel Camel cammell said, Oh, the last cheapest price was one sixty nine, so therefore this is way cheaper, I mean ten dollars cheaper than
it's ever been. And that's what you're really looking for because you can't go by the list price on Amazon. The list price means absolutely nothing. That does not mean that this item ever sold at that price. It just means that's the list price. This thing could be on sale all the time, and that's why Camel Camel Camel will help you figure out if it's actually a deal or if it's just you know, the typical price it's always been. Now, if you're looking for deep discounts on
Amazon stuff. That's where you're going to find some great stuff like Ring, Kindle, Fire TV, Echo, and euro for the mesh Wi Fi. Those are all going to be on sale. Typically they discount the previous year's products a little bit more than the current stuff, but the current stuff gets discounts as well. Some of the current deals you can get right now Amazon Music Unlimited four months for free, Kindle Unlimited, three months free, Audible if you
like to listen to audiobooks. I think I picked up like three months free, but your offer maybe personalized depending on if you subscribe before. And then of course Amazon promising all kinds of deals on all these brands. There's a list of a couple dozen of them, American Girl, bos, Coach, Dice, and Lego, Peloton, Samsung. I've listed them all my website, and what I did for you is actually link them all up because Amazon doesn't give you like a list
plus the links. So what I do is I go through and I link them all up so that you can click if you want something from Bos, you can click that link and see what's on sale instantly from Bos. And so I've done that with all of the different brands. Then of course I put things that I like in there as well, So you can check that all out. That's all on my website, rich on tech dot TV, and it's basically a big banner there that says Prime Day, So check it out and if you need the thirty
day free trial access that is available as well. So my advice for Prime Day, don't just spend money like no reason. Go in with a plan and you can actually save money on the things that you actually need and actually want and actually want a gift throughout the holidays. By the way, this week, I mentioned last week on my Instagram was sort of knocked by Instagram. Well this week they actually shut down my account completely for a while. That means I lost all my posts, all my followers,
all my account access. It was suspended. I logged on and said, your account is suspended and you can appeal this, but if you appeal and lose, we delete your account and you can never come back. And I said what, And so I tweeted about this. I went on X and I said, hey, here's my story, Like, what the heck? I know I made fun of Meta last week in this show, but come on, does somebody really get mad there and delete my account.
Well, it turns out I don't know.
All I know is that a Meta spokesperson replied to my tweet and said, hey, this was a mistake.
Your account was back now.
I think that seems kind of fishy, seems kind of odd that all of a sudden, after I got this knock on my account last week, the day or a couple days later, after I make fun of Meta, they close my account and say I'm suspended, like for no reason. It said copyright or something like give me a break. So long story short. At first, I was like, Oh, I am relieved of posting of stories, of making reels of all this social media stuff, like life is so
free right now. And then I was like, it's also kind of sad that I lost one hundred and seventy thousand people there that I talked to on a daily basis. Anyway, I have my account back at rich on Tech, So I am there. Let's hope that there are no more quote unquote mistakes with my Instagram. All right, eight A eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call
if you have a question about technology. My name is rich Damiro and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show rich on Tech dot tv. If you want to link to something I mentioned, hit the light bulb up at the top of the show and you can get links there.
This is show number ninety two. Marta wrote in on email, Hey, Rich, I would like to say you are such a great informative person with great phone etiquette.
Thanks for this great show.
My question, I'm interested in perching a good purchasing a good router for my place, which at the moment is twelve hundred square feet.
Much appreciated.
I would say Eerro is gonna be your best bet, and it's gonna be on sale right now during the prime day.
So check out ero E E r O. That's what I use. I've used for many years.
It works, it works well, and I don't think you need like the latest version. I just think like one to two nodes.
Would probably be the best of the just the standard one I think is on sale already, so E E R O on Amazon Marta and thanks for the kind words there.
All right, let's go to Linda in Seal Beach. Linda, you're on with Rich.
All Rich, there's a good chance that my iPhone fifteen is jail broken. I am looking for a solution. I have called different companies online and all that take care of our companies.
Where can I go.
To find an individual? I'm not being successful?
What do you want? I mean, how did this get jail broken?
And there's a neighbor.
And he had access or they had access to your phone?
Yes?
They yes, they had access to all of my I was broken into.
My home and.
They got all my information and my passwords. And I have changed my password on my iPhone about ten times. I'm just what do I do next? I purchased a new I've even just a new iPhone. I kept my old email address Apple had told me to. When they recovered it, they had me go back to my old email caudebt.
Okay, well, I've also did How did he get into the phone? How did he did he have your past code as well?
Yes?
Wow, so did you have that written down somewhere? I?
Yes, I did, Okay, I did.
And so what is your phone doing that you believe that this person still has access to it?
I am I am having some way somehow. One example is my Apple I D password. The app drop Box was added to my Apple I D password where you go into sign into your Apple IP. I have had files downloaded off of my phone into drop Box. I only used drop Box perhaps two times, and that was in twenty twenty when I sold property.
Oh wow, Well, so there's a couple of things you can do. Number one, you you should be able just to literally recover your phone through your computer. You just fully restore it and that will that will format it and put fresh software back on it. So if you if you look up factory restore iPhone.
Uh, factory reset and that is.
What not reset have. This is a restore. This is a reset just resets the software that's on there. Restore means you're connecting your phone to a computer and it's actually going to put a new copy of the operating system on your phone. That's what you need to get rid of this. Uh this jail break, Now, to jail break a phone is it's quite involved and I'm not sure what the end game here is with this. Person. But no matter what, you need to change your passwords.
You need to set up two factor authentication, and you start by going into your Email account changing that password, enabling two factor authentication. Then you go into your Apple account and you change your password and you enable two factor authentication. Those are the two things you need to do immediately to get this person to not have access to your account. Then you got to take your phone. You got to factory restore it with a computer, and that's going to be the way that you get this
phone erased and formatted and reset back to factory. I would bring it to an Apple store as well, just to make sure that everything is on the up and up. You can also take it to a place like you break I Fixed. They will do a free diagnostic. You can also scan it if you want to see if this thing has spyware on it, the webs the software I amazing. We'll actually scan it for popular U spyware,
which is Pegasus, Predator, King's Pawn and Operation Triangulation. So those are the steps I would take, Linda, and reclaim your privacy, reclaim your phone, and get a password manager. Start putting stuff in there instead of writing it down because you saw what happened. Someone got in and got access to everything. Coming up, I'll tell you how China might be having access to the US information right here.
Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. A little bit of trivia.
Did you know?
This was the very first music video to ever air on MTV and very obviously it makes sense video killed the radio star because the MTV kind of changed everything when it came to music.
I really did. Welcome back to the show. I'll get to your calls in just a moment. What but don't play music videos anymore? So they killed them? Yeah, I don't even think.
Yeah, you could actually watch like the old school MTV like they have it like on those streaming networks and like it's just it's so weird to see. But yeah, you used to sit down and just watch music videos. Now of course it's YouTube and you know, Vivo and all that stuff. So this is kind of a big story out of the Wall Street Journal. This China linked hacking group called salt Typhoon breached the networks of major US telecom providers like Verizon AT and T in Lumen.
So what they did was they took advantage of the back doors that these providers have built in for court orders. So if they needed to wiretap someone in the US, you know, I apparently they have a way to do that on all of our networks, and China somehow figured out a way into that, which means of Internet traffic from businesses and millions of American consumers is potentially exposed here.
What does that mean.
It means all the stuff that's flowing on the Internet China could have seen. That's really bad, I mean really bad. This is the reason why encryption is really important. This is the reason why back doors are really bad, because you can't have a back door to a system that only the good people can access. And who's good? I mean really, who wants that at all? If you think your transmissions are private and they're not scary. So we don't know what the full extent of this breach is.
We just know that it's really bad. I mean, this is bad. The fact that they are tapping our systems that we have here in the US, that you know, depending on where you believe, should we have those are not. This is not a good thing. So again, encrypted, encrypted, encrypted. This is why Apple has been so hip with encryption and making sure your device is encrypted, and Android is getting more private and more encrypted. But it calls into a lot of questions like you know, using a VPN
does that help? Using an app like Signal does that help? You know, we just had this change over to RCS, which is Rich Communication Services. So typically I message is encrypted, so if you're texting someone, I message is encrypted. We just saw WhatsApp they are encrypted. But we also saw all these all these big providers in the US are moving to encryption. Whether they have a backdoor sometimes you know,
they don't necessarily tell us. But this is you know, news to me that all these major companies, Verizon, AT and T. You know, back in the day it was just phone lines. They are very easy to wiretap, but once you get into these networks that are transmitting data packets, it's a lot tougher to sniff out unless it's unencrypted and unless there's a back door. And clearly that was taking advance of it in a big way. That is
something to watch. Let's go to Gary and Laguda Noguel. Gary, you're on with Rich.
Yes, Rich, have another cell phone question for you here. Sure, now I'm considering getting the new phone. And see when I called you. I have my Samsung Galaxy STMNY. I love the size of the phone, and it works good with a Hoverizon when I'm mountain in the desert and up in the mountains. It works good around my house here, it doesn't where I live. I live in Team Mobile zone. Mayos say, And I want to ask you, now, how are these phones that I've seen that had dual SIM cards?
Are they worth purchasing or not? I mean, and how does the dual SIM work?
Uh?
Yeah, So, I mean you would basically need to purchase a SIM a plan from two providers, and you can install both those providers on your phone, and then you can actually use both of those providers at the same time. You can have the both active. Someone texts you on the T Mobile line, it'll come through. If someone texts
you on the Verizon line, it'll come through. You can decide which one's your primary so you can say, like, I want to use this as my primary line, so when you start composing a text, it will go from that line. You can decide which one uses data, you can have them both use data. I mean, there's a lot of options when you're talking about e SIMS, and almost every modern smartphone at this point supports multiple SIM cards.
So whether that's the Pixel, the Samsung, or the iPhone, you can install and use multiple SIMS on most of those devices, no problem. But I will tell you, I think this is expensive. I think that it's a little of a solution. But if you were using Verizon as your primary SIM most of the time, and then when you go home, you've got T Mobile, you know, have it used that, it's kind of going to get see So I why not just use Wi Fi calling when
you're home? I mean, if it's when you're out and about in the area and it doesn't work, you know, but the Wi Fi calling in your house is going to work just fine. The other thing I would look into there is a carrier called Red Pocket Red Pocket and they actually have this feature that lets you switch between the three networks, so they call it Coverage Genius, and they operate on all three networks and you can choose your network.
Based on your needs.
So whether you want better coverage in your current location, whether you're traveling, whether you're moving and I'm looking at how this works, and it says you can change networks if you need to improve your coverage, have a new device, you're just trying to find the right fit, so you download this coverage Genius tool to switch your ESUM from one network to another, keeping your number functional. So I don't know, that does not sound like something that you
want to do like every day. It more sounds like you can switch networks if you go to a different area that has no signal, and it takes a little bit to do this, but it doesn't sound like something that's automatic. So I'd probably gary recommend number one just using Wi Fi calling when you're home and if you're out and about, and you'd you know, I guess the main thing what it comes down to is I always tell people to find a carrier that works where you
live and where you work. So if you're talking about you know where you live is T Mobile, I'd probably go with T Mobile, and then when you're out and about, just use T Mobile. I know Verizon is a great network, you want to be on it, but I think it's very important to have a network that works where you live and the other way you can do it is.
You can flip it.
You can still stand Verizon and just use the Wi Fi calling when you're home, but that's not as clean as as doing it the other way. So hope that helps. Gary appreciate it. Thanks so much for the call.
Today. Let's go to Brian and Murrietta. Brian, you're on with Rich.
Good morning.
I'm trying to help a friend of mine.
She does door Dash, and the way I understand is that the higher the level you are and the percentage of completion, the more orders you're going to get. She's at the highest I guess the level of platinum, and her percentage of completion is like the ninety nile, so she shouldn't getting.
More orders, but especially during peak time.
And things like that.
She could be at the restaurant.
In the store, but the software, the door Dash program will give to somebody that's further away. And I was trying to help her figure her eyes and I wonder one and DoorDash.
Can't figure it out either while somebody else is getting it further away.
And she's at that level, and I think she's at the store.
Because boot it off, because somebody else is going to prioritize and then my other question is twofold, is that if if she decided, okay, I suggest her to go to Varizon, don't go to Visible or Total, go to Verizon. Having the Ultimate on the Minute Plus which has the five G Ultimate wide band versus just the five G doesn't make it any think that'll make a.
Difference as far as being on the network.
And maybe they're they're just recognizing that she's there and she's going to get that order. The difference between the alter all the why versus the G and the just regular G.
What signal is she? What signal is she on? What? What? What carrier?
Uh?
It's it's kind of like like Total or Visible?
What was like?
So she is on T Mobile? Okay, she is on an MV and L, So that could be it. I don't think that's it. I think that these systems look at the location of your phone and they take into account a lot of different algorithms. So again I don't know if it's like strictly that it doesn't know she's there. But what I would recommend is for sure looking in your door dash app and making sure the location permission is set to all the time and not just when
using the app. That's the number one thing. You want to make sure that it has access to your location the entire time. And then when it comes to cellular, I mean, you know five G ultra wideband. Yes, that's going to be your absolute best signal and you're going to get deprioritized the least if you're on one of the big unlimited plans. But I don't think that's contributing
to it. I would say tell her to turn her Wi Fi off and make sure that she's on a cellular signal so that way it's always finding because sometimes your phone gets caught in this weird dead zone of it's like Wi Fi cellular, Wi Fi cellular. That's what I would do first off, before spending more money. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The phone line for the show is eight eight eight rich
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology, something bugging you. Maybe you found a great app you want to share with everyone. I don't know whatever it is. Kim will take it and get you on the show if possible. Let's see website for the show Rich on tech dot TV. A couple things you can do there. You can sign up for my newsletter. You can send me an email just hit contact, or you can hit the light bulb icon
for show notes. So anything I mentioned here in the show notes, I will put there where the light bulb is. And also on the front page is the Amazon Prime Big Day Deals. What you need to know, I've got all my tips and tricks for that. Let's go to Diana and towards California. Diana, you're on with Rich.
Hi, Rich, thank you for taking my call.
Absolutely what can I help you with?
Yes, I need your help with. A few days ago, my dad was powering up his Windows laptop and then he got d like a pop up or a screen that was sounded like it must have covered his whole screen. That was selling my subscription to Microsoft to be sixty five. So he didn't really understand fully and he does not need Microsoft through sixty five, but he went ahead and it's a subscription to get it off his screen.
And so, uh, that's why they do that.
By the way, I've set up many Microsoft computers. It's basically it looks like you're just saying yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to all the different things, but like actually subscribing you to stuff.
Yeah, and he does not know how to like get out of those screens or those windows. But anyway, so he ended up ultimately actually subscribing and giving him his credit card number, and thank goodness, it wasn't a stam. It appears to be legitimately from Microsoft. So he received his you know, acknowledgment or a welcome email, but they do not have any information on how to cancel, and
so it just has a link to activate. And I'm not even sure if he has a Microsoft account, so I'm not sure what's the best and quickest way to cancel out of this subscription.
Well, he must have a Microsoft account because he must have set it up or signed in with it. Because typically on the Windows computers, I'm guessing he got an update to Windows and that's what happened when it usually when it gets a big update, it like tries to get you to sign up for all this stuff.
Again, is that what happened? Or do you get a new computer?
Yeah, it was an older laptop, but I wasn't there when it happened, so he only describes it as he was turning on the computer and the screen came up. I was chasing Microsoft through sixty five and it sounded like it you didn't really know how to get out of that.
Yeah.
So typically it's when you get a big update on these computers. They they always go through this flow of like, let's set up your new computer, and then they try to get you to switch to Edge and they try to get you to resubscribe to one Drive and all this stuff. So it's pretty innocent what happened to him. I would call this a dark pattern, which basically it looks like you're doing one thing, but Microsoft is sort of tricking you into doing another thing, which is the subscription.
If you read really carefully, obviously you would notice it.
But they hope that nine.
Out of ten people don't really read these things very closely. They just click yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and there you go, or they think that they need it.
So the good news is he would have been forced to create a Microsoft account if you didn't already have one.
Oh yeah, to purchase this.
Yeah, it's a link to an account.
So the good news is I subscribe and cancel Microsoft stuff all the time, especially Xbox Live because they're always sending me a notification that says, hey, take a free month, and I'm like sure, So it is very easy, very straightforward. The good news about reputable companies and big companies is that they do make it easy to cancel their subscription. So the thing you want to do is log into his account, his Microsoft account. You're gonna have to obviously
if he has an email address. I'm sure he only has one or two. You got to ask him which one is on his account, and then go into account dot Microsoft dot com. Basically log into his Microsoft account and then on the left hand side, there's a whole bunch of like menu items under your email address, and it says account, your info, and then Service and Subscriptions is the number three item, So you tap that and that will show you all of your active service, all
of your subscriptions. So I can see my Xbox Game Pass ultimate and if you scroll down, it will say Microsoft three sixty five I had the family version.
Mine has expired.
But you can see where it says manage resubscribe, but you can press manage and there's a cancellation option in there, and of course they will try to get you to stay, but just go ahead and cancel it out through there. That's the easiest way to do it. It's pretty straightforward as long as you can log into his Microsoft account. That might be the tricky thing is figuring out how to do that. You're probably going to have to do a password recovery on his account just if he doesn't
know the password. And I would do one step further, Diana, I would make sure that once you have his account logged in, I would set up two factor authentication on that account as well, just to protect a little bit better. So those are the things to do. Just basically, go to account dot Microsoft dot com, log in, look for the section that says services and subscriptions, look for three sixty five family and get rid of it.
And by the way, the same.
Goes for Apple, all of your iCloud subscription or sorry, you're Apple subscription, and all of the Google Play subscriptions. These companies, you know, they make it very very easy to sign up, and it is very easy with these major companies to get rid of it. It's just it seems like a lot, and it seems like we're so used to do I really have to go into my account and do this, and what's my password? And I got to do two factor and this and that. Just
take the time to do it. I mean, it really only takes a minute or two what I do with most subscriptions. Unless I know I'm keeping something, I will
cancel it immediately, so I do not forget. And nine out of ten subscriptions except Apple, which is interesting, most of the are sorry Apple's own products, But most of the other subscriptions, like anything you've subscribed through iTunes, you can easily go in on your phone and cancel that immediately and you will still retain access for the entire time, even if it's a year. You just have to go into your settings and then up at the top. And
this is probably a good thing to look into. Just look at your account, tap there and then it says subscriptions under Apple account, and all of your subscriptions will be in there. Tap one and just say cancel and it will not automatically renew. And I do that again as soon as I sign up for things, because you're gonna forget. And the other thing I do is if I get the email that says hey, thanks for signing up, I will snooze it. Until a couple of days before
I'm gonna get built. And that way, that email will pop up in my Gmail a day or two before it's time to renew.
I don't get hit with those those charges.
All right, coming up, I'm gonna tell you about Verizon message shutting down. What you need to know. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The phone line for the show is eight eight eight rich one oh one. That is eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call. If you have a question about technology. You can also email. Just go to the website rich on Tech dot tv
hit content at you can send your message that way. Well, speaking of messages, this has been blowing up my website. I wrote a post about Verizon Message plus shutting down. So whenever I get a bunch of emails about something, I immediately say, okay, there's something here, and I will be honest. You're like my canary in the coal mine because you are the one who texts me, message messages me, emails me. I mean, it's just like all of a sudden when I see a bunch of people send me the same thing.
I'm like, okay, there's something to this.
So on this Verizon discontinuing their Message plus app. I got text from Tim Tammy, Connie Dave, Sharon, Cheryl Rudy.
Yeah.
I didn't just make up those names, Bobo that those are those I'm not kidding.
Those are I had to look back on my email, I mean, all these people. So when I get that many emails, boom boom boom, boom boom, I go all right, I got a look into this, and sure enough, this has just been going wild. People are up in arms about this Message Plus shutting down On November seventh, twenty twenty four. Verizon wants you to switch to what's called Google Messages now. Verizon Message Plus has been around forever.
This app is so ancient and the reason they started it back in the day, you were able to have Verizon Messages on your phone and then you could also install this app on say your iPad or another device and also see your messages. And that feature got sort of like discontinued over the years, but a lot of people were just used to using this app and it lets you do some interesting things above and beyond your
standard messages like you can basically change your background. You can add a signature to your texts, like kind of when things were fun with the texting and now it's gotten very serious with the Google Messages. So, long story short, they want you to switch to Google message Why because Google Messages is kind of like the standard messaging app on the Android side of things, And most of this
applies to just Android folks. Maybe if you had a Message Plus installed on your iPad or maybe on your iPhone, this might apply to you, but it mostly applies to people on Android. So what they want you to do is download the Google Messages app and then open up that app, and as soon as you open that app, it should say, hey, would you like us to set this Azure defall app for messaging? And you say yes, and all of your messages should come over to Google Messages.
Now what I would do personally, just because this is a big switch over, I don't care about my text messages.
They can be deleted. I don't care.
I don't keep any it doesn't really matter to me. But I know a lot of people like to keep their messaging history. So if you're one of those people, there's always a chance that's switching over, you know, something
could go wrong and you might lose your text. So I would use an app like SMS Backup and restore to back up your messages before you switch these apps, and that way you have a nice copy of them and your Google Drive or on your phone in one place, and if something goes wrong, you can always recover them. That way, you don't have to, You don't have to do that backing up. But I just recommend that because anytime you do a major switch or a major change,
there's always potential for an issue. Now you might be saying, why do we have to do this, why?
Why?
Why? Well?
I think the reason is because RCS. The iPhone now supports RCS, which is Rich Communication Services, and that means that when you text from Android to iOS, you will now see typing indicators, you will now see when people read your messages. You can send large photos and videos. It basically has bridged the divide between iPhone and Android when it comes to messaging, and it's a great thing. And Message Plus does not support RCS, nor do a lot of third party messaging apps or any that I
know of on the Android side of things. So the other thing that happened is Samsung also recently switched to Google Messages. So if you're on Samsung, this is like a one two punch. You're like, Okay, I'm on Samsung. I've had Samsung Messages. Now they want me to go to Google Messages. If I have Verizon Message Plus, now I have to go to Google Messages. Everything's filtering over
to Google Messages. You see now the question I'm getting from a lot of people after I've explained all this on my website, Everyone's saying, Rich, what can I use instead of Google Messages. I don't want to use Google. I don't trust Google. I don't want my stuff going into Google. Well, number one, if you're using an Android phone, your stuff's going into Google, no matter what I mean,
it's already happening. But if you because this is Android, Android allows you to do a lot of things that you can't do on iPhone, Like, for instance, on iPhone, you cannot choose your text messaging app. It is one hundred percent I message or messages whatever they call it there, and that's it. It is the messages app that Apple gives you. You cannot set another default. On Android. You can set any message, any messaging app you want as your text messaging app. But here's the caveat. It will
not support RCS. Now I was talking about China earlier with the whole spying thing. RCS is encrypted, maybe not yet to the iPhone, but Android to Android it is, And so again that's going to be the most secure way to message, and it's also going to be the
best way to message with your iPhone friends. So if you choose one of these other apps, you're not going to get the read receipts, you're not going to get the typing indicators, you're not going to get the large photos and videos because everything's going to go through SMS, not RCS, which is the new, much better standard for texting. So with that said, if you go on the Google Play Store, you'll see there are a whole bunch of
apps in the top communication apps. Google Messages number one, WhatsApp, Messenger number two, but that does not handle SMS as far as I know, don't think it does. Telegram number three, as far as I know, does not support SMS. Messenger used to support SMS, doesn't anymore. Then you've got one called messages, and you know you can use that. But again it's you know, I don't know who makes this. I don't I'm kind of like a little weirded out
by it because I don't know. It just has messages and it looks like a generic messaging icon.
Then you've got text Now.
I don't know if they handle SMS, messages, SMS and private chat discord messages. All these apps are called messages, and what are they trying to do. They're trying to get you to install it instead of Google Messages. But I would be very careful because once these apps have access to your texts, that's you know that you don't know where they're going, and unless it's a reputable app maker, you really can't vouch for how they're handling the privacy
of your messages. Now, the apps that I've used in the past that I really like was called Pulse SMS, but again kind of old school, doesn't support RCS. So it works on all these platforms, but you're not gonna get RCS. The other thing you can do, I mean, there's really.
Just that's it. It's really just you gotta switch.
Textra is another one that's out there on Google on Android, but again, none of these are gonna support RCS, and I will tell you that if you're not on RCS, your text messaging is old school. It's not gonna get it's not gonna be able to send the big pictures and the big videos between the iPhone and Android. And that's like been the biggest issue with people, is that
whole situation. So I would just switch. Now, you have until November seventh before Verizon completely shuts down Verizon Messages, but I would just go ahead and get rid of it right now. So download Google Messages and just go with that. Speaking speaking of Verizon, I can't believe this happened this week and nobody's mentioned another word about it.
I don't know if you if this affected you, but there's a huge Verizon network outage on was it Monday this week earlier or last week whatever, depending on what day you're listening, if you're listening recorded on the podcast, but Verizon, and like my personal phone was out for like eight hours, no service whatsoever, said SOS in the upper right hand corner. Many many people experienced this across the US. We don't know what caused it, and Verizon just said, hey, we fixed it, but they never said
what happened and so we don't know. Was this a hack, was this a mistake, was it a software update, was it a glitch?
We don't know.
But all we know is that lots of people had no access to Verizon for many, many hours. Now, for me personally, okay, fine, even though I was out and about all day and it was really annoying, I had a backup phone. I've got a backup line. I was in Wi Fi some of the time. But if you don't have Wi Fi and that's your only phone, that is a problem, especially when it comes to emergencies. Now, hopefully nine one one calls went through because maybe it
latched onto a different network. But this is this is wild because we saw this hap with AT and T as well, remember that one that was just a few short months ago. This these these outages when they hap and they're rare, but when they do happen, they seem to be getting bigger and more widespread and impacting more people at a wider swath. So it is you got
to think about these things. You got to think about having a backup plan if your phone was not working, what would you do now if you're home or at work, Okay, find you have Wi Fi. But if you're out on the road, you're a traveling salesperson, you know, and your phone went out and you have no access to Wi Fi, that would be a problem.
That's like your livelihood.
So I think it's odd that Verizon has not said anything about this in a couple of days.
Now.
I just find that very very odd, and I hope the FCC pushes them to say, hey, what happened here, Verizon, we need some answers. They did say they're investigating, but you know, everyone always forgets about this stuff.
Bank of America this week, same thing.
People were logging into their bank accounts and saw a zero balance. Now, I remember back in the day when I did that, it was for real. But thankfully I've worked hard and I've tried to not have that zero balance anymore. But I remember the days when I did, and it was you know, no one wants to see zero balance. But imagine logging into Bank of America and you actually have a zero balance when you know you
have money. That's like the biggest fear, right, Like you just log into your bank acount and it's like gone. You're like, wait, what do I do? What if it doesn't come back? And that's what happened with these Bank of America folks. This was on October third, Mobile access, mobile banking. People are having all kinds of issues. This did not go on as long as the Verizon outage, but can you imagine seeing that if you did, that is scary because you don't know if it's going to
be resolved. You're like, okay, is my money gone or is it coming back again. Bank of America apologized, but they did not say what caused it. And again, most of these things are innocent enough. It's someone doing a software update, but you know, we are on high alert nowadays with cyber criminals and hacking, and so whenever this stuff happens, you think the worst. And we hope that nobody had access to Bank of America and wiped out accounts was thankfully at it didn't happen, but we don't know.
Put it protect your accounts. Please put in that two factor authentication. Do not reuse the same password ever. You gotta do what you can to protect yourself. Eighty to eight rich one On one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
This is rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you at Triple eight Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show is rich on tech dot TV. Let's go to Donna in Squim, Washington. Did I say that right?
You did exactly right.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Rich, appreciate your show. Listen to you every every Saturday.
Thank you.
Well, this is I'm in desperate need to help. I work for a small business. So about ten years ago, the owner's son purchased a domain and Google workspace from a third party vendor. Just this week, and this email is used specifically for the business. This week, I could not log in. When I went to log in, it says you're out of space. Purchase more. But I have to go to the third party vendor.
I have tried for.
The last ten days sending. It's impossible to find a phone number, so I send emails, always a different person. They're asking for information that the son who set it up does not remember his password. I have the sign in but not the password. So bottom line, our business email is being held hostage and is there any way to recover it from Google? I don't care and the owner doesn't care about the domain, but it's tough to do business without email.
Well, the domain is part of the email, isn't it isn't the.
Email addressed the domain?
No?
Well, and this I'm not savvy enough to know this. There is there's a separate domain to set up a website, which I believe never got set up.
It's fine, but you registered a domain.
Right, Yes, But then there's a Google workspace that has the ability for four people to receive an email. And as the admin, I use it, and then the owner uses it, and two of the workers use it as well. But most most and most important is as the admin. All the vendors send their invoices to me to pay.
But, yeah, did you lose access to this? What happened?
It says that our storage is fully so when I go in because I can log into the admin side and see the workspace, who's so you know this and that? But when I go to purchase.
More space, Okay, you can't do it.
I have to contact the third party vendor and they won't do anything without information that nobody has.
Can you get access to the email on this account or no?
No?
So when you go to like do you go to Gmail or how do you usually get the email?
I go to Gmail, okay, and I when I go to sign in, it just says your account has been suspended.
It's been suspended. Interesting, okay, Well a couple of things first. First up, I would go to the I'd first see who owns this this don't well, there's so.
Many things going on here. Number one.
I mean it's a it's a lesson that we have to remember these things. I know, and I'm guilty of this myself. Sometimes you set up these things really fast and you think, Okay, I'll remember that in the future.
Then you don't.
And so at the point of anything, and this goes for anyone that's listening that's setting stuff up, just take your time and write it down, because you really are going to forget, Like like I've set up you know, those like security questions sometimes and you're like, oh, of course I'll remember those, and then two years later you're like, oh, now, what was my mother's favorite color or something like that,
and you're like, I don't remember what I put. So write those questions down and write them in your password manager, along with the strong password and any information that may come along, especially the recovery codes. First thing I would do is go to the I can look up and see what this domain is registered under, like who owns the registration?
And so you go to go to that website.
Okay, I'm sorry, I can look up.
Yeah, it's I see a n N dot org. Look up dot I can dot org and see who owns the domain. And that will help you see like where this domain is actually registered and there should be some contact information there to help you get some customer support there, because you do need to have control over this domain as well. For Google, Uh, you're gonna have to try to recover this account. Have you gone through all the recovery steps on Google's recovery page or no?
No, because when I go to anything, it refers me to the third party vendor.
Yeah, so the third party vendor set up this Google workspace account.
Is that what I'm hearing.
That's the way I understand it. I wasn't in years ago. So I'm trying to help them.
And so you're paying that are you paying? Are you paying to this third party vendor?
Still?
Well, they were and this is probably the problem was last year the bank because there were so many payments that came through on this where to account. The bank flagged it and then stopped stop the credit card. Okay, so I know they want a payment, and I said that in an email to I'm and happy to pay well, but they want this past information that the owner says he can't find.
So first off, I would go to the credit card receipt and look up the phone number for the third party and see and call that, and that could be a good way to get in and figure out what's going on here with the payment. The other thing, you have to google how to recover your Google account or Gmail and there is a sign in help button. See if that will help you get recovery to this account. I'm not sure it will because it's a workspace account, but try that. First coming up, we're gonna talk privacy.
This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Our phone number is eight eight eight rich one oh one.
Very confusing.
It's literally saying that number while I'm trying to give our number. Eight eight eight seven four to two four one's your one. By the way, little pro tip if you're ever at the grocery store and you know how they ask for like your phone number at the you know, check out if you want to get the deals or whatever, and you don't have one, eight six seven, five three oh nine works every single time because someone has registered that number.
So little pro tip if you know.
Some of these stores are really strict about that, Like they're like, you have to put your number in if you want to get the best deals. So just put the area code in with that number and it's it's it probably works like nine out of ten times.
Anyway. See you learn stuff here. Uh.
Joining me now is uh Justin Clasco from Consumer Watchdog.
Justin Welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks for having me.
So tell me what Consumer Watchdog does.
Yeah, so, you know we we we fight large companies. We try to give a voice to just regular everyday people and try to even the playing field out there, because it's a it's not very even.
Yeah.
So, I mean, let's talk about this when it comes to what do you think consumers are up against? Like, what do you think their biggest kind of I mean, obviously these big companies are are collecting our data. They're they're pretty much in charge if we want to if we want to use anything. We got to play by their rules, right, Yeah.
And I mean I think a big thing that consumers don't notice is kind of just the amount of power and how how these companies have their hands in a lot of different things, and you know, including collecting data, which is a big part of it, and it's foundational to you know, your everyday life and how decisions are made online.
We're living online.
Increasingly, so it's it's very important to to kind of take control of your personal information.
Now.
We hear about this data collection all the time. But and then some people are like, well, I don't care. What are they going to collect on me?
You know?
So what is kind of like the good and bad of this data collection? Like why do companies want so much data about us?
They want data on you because you're more likely I think to buy things and to spend money and and to enrich you know, companies. So you know, if if they if they know you've been in this location trying to buy you know, uh, sunglasses, and they know that whether there's competitors around you, they can fine tune that stuff. They know what you even just add to a shopping cart on your phone, and how long and you've kind of hovered over you know, a certain you know T
shirt or you know, a pair of earbuds. So it really it's the detail and the speed that that is giving these companies kind of a one up, and really they just kind of start learning more about you than you even know about yourself.
So it's it's it's kind of creepy.
Yeah, we've heard stories about how Target will send like coupons to people and be like, hey, congrats some being pregnant.
You're like, wait, what how do they know?
Yeah, that was Yeah, that was really creepy. But yeah, that's a great example. And you know, you know, while it's good, you know, we want we want things, we want to be advertised things that we like, and but I think there's a line that gets crossed when your information is kind of weaponized against you. Like, you know, if say you have a family member that dies and an airline knows that you're trying to get a flight out to this funeral compared to another person was not
They're going to price gouge you. They are gonna they're base it's basically price fixing. They're going to make you pay more money for that. And that's because of the vast amount of data that is available out there.
I've heard, I mean, we've heard so much about this, you know, using VPNs and you know, private browsing and all this stuff. And you know, we now, of course we see all the cookies, you know, like, hey, do you want to accept cookies? But I'm convinced that, yes, these companies are using a lot of this information they're
collecting to sort of set dynamic pricing. And especially you know, like even if something as simple as I was on a website the other day and I remember the website and I just I just paused and it was like I forgot about that page for a minute. When I came back, it gave me like fifty dollars off because I said, hey, are you still deciding?
And I was like, now what if I would have said yes.
Before I waited, I would have lost fifty dollars, you know, I would have paid fifty dollars more.
Totally.
I mean, it's I mean, it's just so like gamified, like and you know, and it's these companies are just going to be like that's market capitalism, you know, you know, we can do that and that's fine, But it really is like.
Kind of a form of price fixing.
So what do you recommend? What do you what are your recommendations for consumers?
Yeah, so right now, if you're in the state of California with these data brokers that collect a ton of information on you, you can you can go to these data brokers like live Ramp, Experience Equal Facts, and you can tell them, hey, stop this, stop collecting all these details on me, stop collecting my geolocation, and they they
under California law, have to do that. You can also access your information and they'll spit back a report for you in a few days, and you'll probably be weirded out by all the information you'll see that they have on you. But there's like almost five hundred data brokers in the state of California, so it's probably really annoying to try and exercise your rights. But that's changing. Uh,
there's a there's a registry. If you Google or look up California data brokers, you'll find a state registry where all data brokers have to register, and there you'll be directed to their privacy pages how to exercise your rights, how to delete, how to opt out, how to limit your data.
But go there's just a lot of them. There's a lot.
Oh my gosh, it's not ideal right now, but it's getting better because of some legislation that was passed. But they're working on this right now. You know, California regulators are working on this right now. It would be a one step opt out kind of. In one step, you'd be you'd signal or delete your personal informations to data brokers and they, under law, would have to wipe all the info they have on you or whatever you direct them to do.
So that'll be in twenty twenty six.
Now that's California. What about other states? Are they as protective or you know what's happening there?
Not really.
I think there's like four or five other states who have data broker laws. California is definitely on the forefront of it. And you know, there is there is no federal privacy legislation. It's been introduced a couple times and it's it's dyed and and this legislation has actually been much weaker than the laws we have in California. So we should, like, you know, we should be excited about what we have here and use these rights for sure.
Now this is data brokers, Is that different than these like Spokyo and all these like those are like data I mean, I don't what do they call those Like when you're when you're like email and your phone number and all that stuff is like online.
Yes, so data brokers get info a lot of ways, you know, kind of like how like they're you know, they're a little even though they both are also credit agencies, they they they operate a little differently. They don't just collect public information public information that's online. And they also I mean the big thing is is your your online habits.
You know, where you go, what you search, what you add to a car, what you buy, and so that is the stuff that is really fueling sort of this this multi billion dollar targeted advertising industry where you're just you're just helicoptered into this sort of consumer buying frenzy.
Now I've I've heard that when you get that that letter from your bank once a year, like any company that says like hey, you know, here's how we do our sharing of data, like you should always say like do not share my stuff?
Like is that does that help you think?
Yeah?
I mean it would, it would definitely help.
And like.
You know, there's there's different laws there's you know, there's financial data regulatory laws. Not to bore you, but definitely that is one part of it. And there's you know, there's multiple parts of it. You know, there's not just data brokers every day companies that collect data on you. And you know, you can also exercise your rights, but you still have to do it step by step. And you know, there was a law that almost that almost got signed by the government, but it didn't make that easier.
But that's a whole other story.
Well, yeah, I mean, look, money talks and obviously a lot of these these I mean I'm looking at I just followed the breadcrumbs up the chain and it looks like that big data broker that you mentioned, the live ramp is owned by Axicom, which is owned by Inner Public, which is like one of the biggest like companies that does advertising. So it's like they're they own the they do the advertising, but they also own the you know, they're they're getting the data from these little smaller companies.
It's just wild when you think about this stuff. We are we are so helpless, that's the problem. And I think what you're saying about these laws and things like if you take advantage like that's really the only way that we have any sort of power because scrolling through a hundred different data and trying to remove your information is you got to quit your job to do that.
Yeah, don't lose your jobs out there, guys.
All right, justin, how can folks find more information? Like Consumer Watchdog? What do you think they're their best bet to do that is?
Yeah, consumer watchdog dot org.
We have a privacy section and if you go there, you know we can help you direct you to take control of your personal information and from data brokers.
It's all there.
All right, Thanks so much for joining me today. Really appreciate it.
Thanks Rich, Thanks great.
That's justin klausco from Consumer Watchdog. I'll put the link to the website on mine rich on Tech dot tv.
Coming up more of your.
Questions at triple eight rich one oh one plus ring is adding a much requested feature I will explain coming up on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Got a message that I don't say the phone line enough. I feel like I say it a lot, but phone line and website website is rich on tech dot tv. You
can hit contact to get in touch with me. Sign up for my newsletter while you're there, lots of valuable information. If you like this show, you will love the newsletter because it's basically this show written out with all the tips and things that you can think of. Let's go to John and Fallbrook. John, I know you've been holding on for a while. Thanks so much for hanging on. Welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. I enjoy your show. I look forward to listening to it every week. My question is mesh Wifelise. I need to expand extend my range a bit, and I wanted to know which of the Mesh WIFEI system sort of the best.
Well, I can tell you the one that I use and that I've liked over the years. Have you looked into these at all? Is there any specific feature that you need?
I really haven't looked. I roamed around a bit on on Amazon and I seen KEP Link, and I seen euro and then ORB, but I haven't looked any deeper than that.
Okay, well, you just mentioned the top three, so it looks like you've done your research. So I will tell you that in my experience, I think that the the best overall, I think is that euro That's the one that I've been using since day one. You know, they basically invented the genre of whole home mesh wi fi.
It is now owned by Amazon.
It was started as an independent company, but Amazon scooped them up.
So I really like them the best. I've been using them.
I really like their app, and I think that's a big part of this is how the app works and how the setup works and all that good stuff. So I think that especially right now, when these products are going to be on sale during Prime Day, that's probably a good time to check them out and get that. With that said, I will say that the other brands that are very good are Neckgear Orbi, which maybe.
A little bit cheaper than the Euroo.
And then the other one that I think is actually probably the best value over and over according to all the different reviewers is the TP link the Deco. So I think that those are the three like I would rank them. Probably the Eero I think is the best. I still think it's the gold standard. Then the Orby, but if you want kind of like the best bang for your buck, I think the TP link deco is probably gonna be your best bet for that. And then
it depends how many you need of these things. So on their website, I think they typically, you know, they recommend either two to three of these things in your house. So it depends how big your house is. I've always had three in my place. Depending on how big your house is, you may need more or less than that. So if you have let's say, like a you know, a smaller place, you may just need two of these things.
But if you have a decent, you know, reasonably sized house, you know, kind of an average sized house, I think three is good. You can put them in all different places. Now, it also matters where you put these things. So you don't want to put these things in a closet. You don't want to put them out of sight. You want to put them where they can actually get their signals
to each other. And so that's another aspect of where you place these things is that you want to sort of think about the way that these signal emanates out of them as like almost like a doughnut. And so it's going to be if this is on the floor, you're not really going to get much of a signal off these things. A lot of it's going to be, you know, just going below it or above it in that little area. So you want to have these things kind of like positioned up and away from the walls
and away from behind things. Some people put these behind their TVs. You're not going to get the best signal that way, and you know that's that does make a difference. But I think the Eros, I've had absolutely no problems.
With them over the years. I think they are incredible. And I'm on my like third set of them.
And and by the way, I gave my dad my old set and it's still working for him and he's had it for I mean, that thing is going on many many years old and it's still getting software updates too, which is kind of cool. So I think that's a big part of it is look at the software and support of these systems. Eero has a nice long track record. They're always coming out with new features. They've got a great feature, by the way, if you subscribe to their secure where you can block all the ads on your
network at the like literally at the network level. So when you come to my house and you log onto my Wi Fi guest WiFi. You're not getting the uh, you're not getting the standard one. People come to the house and they literally they literally it's like in a front when they're like, hey, can I get your WiFi? And I'm like, oh, yeah, sure, there's a QR code, just scan that and they're like, guess what's that all about. I'm like, oh, you're the guest, you get the guest WiFi.
And I literally, like you could just see their eyes. They like they're like, they're like, rich, how dare you Why you don't trust me with your network? I'm like, no, I do not. I don't want you on my actual network. Guess network. I can just clear you out, you know, and you have no more access, but my home network a little trickier anyway. Thanks for the call today, John in Fallbrook really appreciate that.
Good luck with the mesh Wi Fi.
Ring has come out with a feature that a lot of people have wanted, continuous recording twenty four to seven recording. This is brand new and this is for eligible wired cameras. You always have to read through the lines right. They put out the press release and the blog post that says twenty four to seven recording. Yes, I could record my Ring doorbell all day. Now, no you can't. Those have batteries, they're not most of them are not wired.
But the wired ones you still can't. Because they didn't really think about this feature back in the day when they came out with these cameras, so they got to, you know, they kind of had to like figure out how to make these things work to record twenty four to seven because that's a whole nother ballgame. How a camera going from just clips, which is typically what Ring does, to twenty four to seven recording. It's like your camera is working all the time. So it's for the eligible cameras.
You can look on their website to see which ones are eligible. But it's kind of a cool feature.
Now.
I think it puts them on par with the you know, the wisecams of the world, the Google Nests of the world. I know, in my house, I have a bunch of different systems. So now I'll be able to kind of maybe get some of these Ring cameras because they can record twenty four to seven.
Now you are going to have to pay for this. This is not included. They have three plans with Ring. You've got home basic five bucks a month, Home standard ten dollars a month, Home Premium twenty dollars a month. This is going to start to roll out now, but everyone should have it by November fifth. So if you want the twenty four to seven recording, you got to pay twenty bucks a month, twenty dollars a month if
you want twenty four to seven recording. But now good to know that ring has this feature.
Eighty to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You got a question, give me a all. We'll talk about it. Website rich on Tech dot TV. 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. The phone line is open eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show rich on
Tech dot TV. Let's go to UH Stephanie in upland Stephanie, you're on.
Hey, Hi, I.
Have a question about ten. So we recently ditched the cable because we just don't watch that much TV, and we purchased I went down to UH best Buy and asked what antenna would work for us, so we purchased one. It didn't work, so then we purchased this RCA fifty five mile range.
We were able to get some.
Channels, but we couldn't get Channel two or seven and four would come in and out.
So we've moved it.
We bought an extension. I've stood outside, hold it here, hold it there, and now I'm like done. Years ago twenty one years ago, when we moved here, we had an antenna and ma attic that worked great. Yeah, I kind of researched online. I couldn't. I just kind of have come to the end of like, I don't know what to do to make this simple.
Well, do you have any recommendations.
I do, so I love the antennas from Antenna's direct. I would bring back whatever you bought at Best Buy and just go to this website and you put in your zip code. You live in upland so I just put in your zip code and it gives you the four antennas that would be perfect for your area. There's one for there's one for thirty three dollars, there's one for fifty dollars, one for ninety, one for one sixty.
I don't know what you paid it best by These are probably a little bit more expensive than that, but money.
Doesn't Yeah, I mean it's cheaper than what they had us. It was up to like one hundred dollars a month.
And I said, yeah, yeah, exactly.
And I've got I've got an antenna installed on my roof and it's, uh, it's incredible. I mean people forget that you can get over the air incredible signal from these antennas, and it's actually, in most cases a better resolution than what your cable company is giving you or streaming even so, right, the only trick is if you want to have a DVR, and that's you know, that's another side of this is the DVR situation. So there are some over the air DVRs, like a company called Tableau.
Have you heard of that?
No, So, so.
If you're gonna, if you're you know, if it depends if you care about the DVR, you know that's that I don't character.
Yeah, I mean we miss being able to go back and like, oh, let's watch football game. We missed you know, an hour whatever. But where I'm okay not having it. But however, I have a question about this antenna's direct Are those antennas that have to be like installed on your group or can it just go on our attic.
No, there's so it depends.
I mean there's four different so there's there's three that are indoor, so you can just set them up indoor. Now, give you know you're an uplands, you're the transmitters are not necessarily close to you, so that's why you have to you know, And this will actually show you how
far the distance is from where the signal is. So for instance you mentioned, this actually will show you every single channel that you can get as well, and they'll tell you the signal so where you are actually is all the signals are actually strong, which is great except for I will tell you. Let's see, I'm looking. I'm trying to see if any of these channels are major channels. No.
Seven just would not like we got two. Seven would work at all for us, Like we kept moving this antenna around.
Yeah, I mean there's only one channel that you need, and that's KTLA, But that's besides the point. No, but I'm looking here and KABC it's strong signal. It's twenty three miles away. All the antennas are twenty about twenty three miles away from your house. So long story short, I would go, if you want to get the best, I would say probably the attic antenna's probably gonna be your best. But I would start, maybe, you know, just look at these. It tells you the range of the
attic antennas seventy plus miles. You may not need that. You may be able to try their indoor amplified and just see if that one works. It's got, but you're gonna have to put that up by a window. I would say. It also tells you kind of the direction to go. I mean, this is this is the website you want to go to. So go to antennasdirect dot com, pop in your zip code and check out the antenna's there. And I think I will tell you in my house
even inside, I put one of their antennas there. They've got this mohu versa which is a very inexpensive, like thirty dollars antenna, and I was able to get every channel. But I will tell you the way that these signals work sometimes are very reliant on exactly how this antenna is placed. You put it by one window, you miss one channel. You put it by the other window, you might miss another channel, so you do have to play
around a little bit. But upstairs in the attic you probably have your best bet up high there.
And that's what I'm trying. That's what we're finding with this RCA is like, okay, great, oh we get these channels perfectly.
Oh we lost that.
Yeah, okay, let's move it over here.
The slightest movement you lose a channel gain a channel. So I'm tired of playing this game.
Yeah, it's funny.
You'll be calling me in a couple of weeks saying, Rich, now I need a DVR. So what do you recommend for a DVR? Because now I've got all these channels and it looks great.
So yeah, once I get this square away, I.
Might do that.
Yeah, call me when you get to that point, but yeah, check it out. I'll put the link on the website. Rich on tech dot tv, thanks so much for calling today over there and upland okay.
Oh yeah, awesome, thanks for taking my call.
All right, Stephanie, take care. I always do. I always.
I've been doing this show for two years almost two years now, and I still I just got my finger on the trigger and it's like I cut people off I don't mean to cut you off. Sometimes it's just like, you know, I'm looking at like ten different screens here, and it just sort of happened. So yeah, that's always
a good I was actually the first person. I don't want to take credit for the success of that company, Antennis Direct, but I will tell you that I was one of the first people to ever feature them on the Today Show. Gosh, this was probably I don't even want to say, but probably almost fifteen sixteen, probably eighteen years ago.
I don't know, whatever it was. It was a long time ago.
And they they literally they said as soon as I mentioned their name on TV, their place was just flooded with phone calls. They said they could not make an outgoing call for like a week or two. That's how many people called asking for this antenna. And the antenna was so cool. It was actually a frame. It was a picture frame, and the antenna was in the frame and you put it on your wall and it would,
you know, pick up the channels. And I remember I was, you know, since I was on the Today Show, I thought it'd be cool to put a picture of Lindsay in the frame, and I snuck it in. I printed out a picture of me and Lindsay put it in the frame and I was like, are the producers going to say you can't have that in the frame? And sure enough she was on the Today Show as well. How long were you on Today Show?
How what? How long were you on the Today Show? Like a segment like a couple of minutes?
I was on a law actually no, like like time wise like probably I think those segments were maybe five minutes, No like years, like, oh gosh, I mean this was probably almost twenty.
Years ago at this point. Oh wow. Yeah. I was like I was a little kid.
I was literally like it was like talk about imposter syndrome. I was working at Sina at the time, and you know, I was kind of like, I mean I was I've literally been doing the same thing, Bobo for all these years. It's just about giving people good information, right and an easy to understand way. And so when I got to CINA, and I was sort of like, you know, I had access to all this great information and the reviews and stuff, and I was the person who would take that information
and put it on TV. And so I started doing these things and I was on the Today Show, I was on ABC you know all their like early morning shows there. I was on CMBC, I was on Fox Business. I mean I was everywhere because here's a person that knew how to talk about technology in a way that people understood it.
My thing is is something that when I go to career days to school about you know, what we do for a living. Always tell them if you love what you do, you're never going to work a day in your life because it's always fun. It's always enjoyable. Like me coming here every Saturday, I enjoy coming here with this. It's fun, it's the interesting show and is knowledgeable and you help people. And that's one reason why I love radio, helping people and making people laugh and smile.
One hundred percent.
And I that is literally when you look at my mission statement, it is to help people. And some people help people by you know, being a doctor. I am right there, same level. I wouldn't go that far, but you do help a lot.
I'm just kidding. I am nowhere near. I'm just kidding, but it is.
It is.
Look, it is one of these things where like there's so much information online and this is what this is what gets me so angry about all this, Like TikTok stuff. It's all just like nonsense, Like there's so much nonsense out there, like scary this that like they have people Like the first viral video I ever did was literally debunking a video I saw online of someone ripping the battery out of their Samsung phone and they found this little antenna in there and they're like, you see this antenna,
it's spying on you. And I said, wait, what serious? Yeah, And so I went to my desk. I was at KTLA, and I just said, let me try this, let me let me record a video. And I opened up the phone and I did the same thing the person did, and I'm sure enough I found the antenna. It wasn't an antenna, it was it was a way to oh my, I forget at this point. I think it was like either rf ID or I think it was the way to charge the battery. Yeah, it was like the little
battery antenna, like to wirelessly charge it. Yeah, and I think that's what it was. But I like explained it and I was like this is fake, like stop. But then of course people were like no, you're still lying, Like but that was like the first thing I ever had to go viral. So anyway, but I've still look. I love helping you. I love and I'm you know, people are like, oh, you know, do you know your stuff or you don't know your stuff? Like I'm literally
just like you. I'm like or like any person like, I'm just like collecting this information and trying to like make like digest it so that you can understand it. So you know, there are a lot of things that I don't understand. There's a lot of things I understand, but I just happen to follow all this stuff. And that's why I can, you know, do this. Okay, we'll get
to some more calls in a minute. But Amazon Prime Video Financial Times reporting that apparently people don't mind the ads on Amazon Prime Video.
Remember Prime Video used to have no ads. Now they have ads.
Apparently people have not complained enough, so Amazon is like, oh, I guess they like them, and they're adding more. So now, okay, eight months ago Amazon added ads to Prime Video with a quote light ad load, and now they haven't seen a lot of people drop their subscriptions, and so they're gonna add more ads. Now, here's why people have not dropped their subscriptions. It's because Prime Video is included with Amazon Prime, so you're not going to cancel Amazon Prime
to get rid of Amazon Prime Video. So apparently people don't mind this, and they're gonna add more ads. Now I don't know about you, but I don't really watch a lot of stuff on Prime Video.
Yeah, Boo is right.
Uh, but it's one of these things where yes, I have Prime membership and I have Prime Video, but like the last time I tried to watch something, it was like, oh, watch like six ads, and I'm like, no, I don't want to watch all those ads.
But yes, you will be.
Seeing more ads apparently on Prime Video in twenty twenty five, all thanks to people not caring apparently about more video, more ads.
Eighty to eight rich one oh one.
Rich on Tech dot tv is the website you can follow me online at rich on Tech. I am actively on Instagram, even though they try to stop it there. Believe me, I consider never going back, but I can't that pull of that screen, all those.
Little likes and comments coming up.
I'll take some more of your calls and we're going to talk to Trey Bodge about Amazon Prime Day. Right here, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking tech. We've still got a lot of callers, so I'm going to try to get through all of them before we get to our guests in the next segment to talk about Amazon Prime Day shopping tips. So let's go right to Craig and Woodland Hills. Craig, you're on with Rich.
Hello, Hi, Hi.
I was looking for a Chrome book, okay, and I needed something that's I don't do any gaming or download movies or music or anything like that. I just needed something that I could, you know, send and receive emails, maybe print them, and then do online shopping securely.
Okay.
I just bought an HP fourteen inch from Costco. Yeah, and the battery wouldn't take more than seventy five percent charge, so I have to return it. So now I'm looking for something else.
Huh interesting? And you don't want to exchange it? Were you happy with the performance or no?
I can even do the setup on it. I just was just trying to charge it and it wouldn't charge, okay, So I'm bill in the water right now. I'm just looking for a different type of chromebik that'll suit me, and I don't something that I don't need a lot of virus protection or anything and something hopefully that comes with it.
Yeah, well, the good news about chromebooks is that there are no viruses. So that's what's great about them is that they're they're fool proof. So now I say no viruses. Obviously there's always, you know, something that could go wrong, but typically the way that the chromebook architecture is there, there is really no virus that that could latch onto that system. So the brand that I like for chromebooks is a SUS as US I've tested several, they all
perform really great. The thing that I think you should look out for is a Chromebook Plus.
So there's two the standard chromebooks. If they're not a Plus, they're not going to have a lot of memory, and so the specs are a little bit less. So personally, if you're not getting the Chromebook Plus, let me see what the actual specs are, because they just came out
with this sort of signifier for these things. So yeah, Chromebook Plus starts at three hundred and ninety nine dollars and the main thing is that it looks like they have at least ten eighty PhD display, which is great it's got a decent CPU Core I three from Intel or an AMD Rise. In the RAM that's where the RAM and the storage is really where you're going to get the plus signification. And that's going to be minimum of eight gigs of RAMM of one one hundred and
twenty eight gigs of storage. And your webcam is actually going to be a HD webcam as well. TENADP. So I would check out a SUS. I would check out Chromebook Plus.
That's the brand that I like, and look for that plus signifier because you're going to get specs that last you a little bit longer. Yes, you can get a Chromebook for super super jeep, but you know you're not going to want to use it for very long. So if you get that plus, I think you're going to be able to use it for at least i'd say five years, so if not longer. I mean, Chromebooks are just great for browsing the web and doing the simple task that you mentioned.
Thanks a lot for the question there, Craig. Let me know what you get. Email me.
Let's go to Oh my gosh, let's see here. Let's go to Jeff and Marietta. Jeff, you're on with rich Y.
Rich thanks for taking my call.
Yeah.
So my wife does some graphic work and she's always used a Windows product, and now she was having trouble even with my gaming computer, making a fifteen page a newsletter every month. So I got her an Apple on the suggestion of a digital person my office, and I got her an Infinity program. But she's not used to dealing with with Apple. She's always been a Windows person. Is there any tutorials that you would suggest to make that as easy as possible?
I mean, I think that number one, I would go to Apple's website. They have great user guides for the Max, So you go to Apple Support.
They do a great job.
They used to make They used to make books, actually, but I'm looking on their their books and I don't really see it anymore, which is kind of wild. They used to have these really good guides to Mac and I'm just not seeing it. So they they might not do those anymore because they're, you know, they maybe they just moved everything to the website. But anyway, I'll put the link on the show notes. But basically Mac user guide on Apple support website. That's the first place I
would go. The second is really YouTube. I mean, just you know, for the basics, like find a couple of good people that explain you know, mac os and the ins and outs and the different features. And that's probably the best way to learn, is that way, you know, cause it's visual and you can see what they're doing, you can see how they're you know, getting to you know, to know these computer systems. I remember I had a friend. I switched to a MacBook a long long time ago,
and my best friend was on Windows. And I remember telling him and he like really pooh pooed me. He's like, I can't believe you're using a Mac. It's so weird. Everything's so different. And I said, I don't know, try it, and he did after a while, and I mean we always talk about this, but it's like he would never go back to Windows.
Obviously. I try to use both to kind of learn both, but I really do enjoy the way the Mac works. Coming up, we're going to talk Prime Day.
We got Trey Bodge talking about Amazon Prime Day.
Up next on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology for our last caller. Before we get to our guest, Jeff and Murrietta. I was asking where his wife can learn how to use her new Mac computer. I mentioned the free user guide on Apple's website YouTube videos, and I forgot to mention a very great hands on way at the Apple store. They do these things called Today at Apple, and they are free sessions where you'll learn the basics. And I just looked it up and they do have
one for getting started with the Mac computer. Learn the essentials to get the most out of your Mac. We'll start with settings, sow you how to navigate everyday features, explore how to customize your Mac, and then we'll share shortcuts.
So that is a great way to do that.
I'm assuming there's an Apple store near Marietta, but that is a great way because it's hands on and you're with a real human and those people know their stuff.
So definitely check out that.
All right, welcoming to the show now Trey Bodge from Truetrey dot com shopping expert to talk about Amazon Prime Day co coming up this week.
Try thanks so much for joining.
Me, Thanks for having me, great to be here.
Yeah, thanks for joining and let's talk about this Prime Day thing, because is it happening more than twice a year, or does it just feel that way.
I think it just feels that way. It is only happening twice a year. It started out only once a year, and then the pandemic obviously turned a lot of things on their heads, and Amazon kind of had a new idea to launch a Prime Day in October because they had to skip their July Prime Day, and so since then they've been doing it twice a year and it's kind of become the unofficial kickoff of the holiday shopping season.
Now I have poo pooed this in years past. I thought it started out good and then it started to get a little bit stale. But now I actually do feel like it's kind of ramped up. And last Prime Day, I did buy a lot of stuff because, you know, things that I wanted or needed were on sale. So do you feel like the deals are there these days?
I do, And especially on Amazon's proprietary brands, that's where they have a lot of wiggle room on their pricing and so they can go as deep as say sixty percent off a Blink security camera, for example, So they have a lot of wiggle room there.
And so if you do need an.
Amazon device or another product from a brand that Amazon owns, you know, from cleaning products to apparel and all that good stuff in between.
It is a really good time to save on Amazon.
So with that said, I mean, what are sort of like your you know, your top tips for you know saving.
Yeah.
So the thing is about Amazon Prime Day, as you probably know, is that a lot of other retailers are also having big sales this week, and so it's a
pretty dizzying time for consumers. And so the first thing that I would recommend is just to get organized, to make a list of your holiday gift recipients, some gift ideas for each, and then because because we do see a lot of sales on kind of day to day items as well, it makes sense to make a list of some of your favorite products too, so then you can keep your eyes peeled for exciting deals on Amazon and then also on those retailers that are having those big sales as well.
Now, how do you spot the deal?
Because I was saying earlier that they've kind of started putting these little banners on the price, you know, like these red banners that say like limited time deal or prime deal. So because not everything is a deal, like if it just says like, oh, twenty percent off, it may not you know that just maybe a regular deal, but a prime deal is like marked, Is that right?
Yeah, So the prime deals are marked, and some of them will last the entire forty eight hours. Some of them will come and go very quickly. There's there are lightning deals, they call them, and then there'll be kind of other special deals dipping in and out. So it's a little bit tricky to keep track of all of them. So there are a couple of things that I like
to do. I like to add things to my cart and then click save for later, and then when I go to save for later, all of my items that I'm interested in are in one place, and I can see very quickly if those items are on sales.
So that's what I like to do.
I also like to use a tool from Paypals called Honey, and it's a deal site and a deal browser extension, and I find it particularly helpful for this because when you're browsing online on Amazon and other retailers as well, it'll pop up and give you some historical pricing. And I find that helpful because maybe PayPal Honey's gonna say it's a great time to get this item.
This discount is.
Really deep, or we've seen lower prices before, and then I know to wait on that item, and in that case.
I also get those alerts. I use the Honey extension as well. My wife puts like so many outfits that she wants to buy, so I'm always getting like an alert like, Oh, your thing is thirty percent off. I'm like, what is it? And I look at I'm like, oh, it's another shirt.
Like I'm hoping it's like one of the tech items that I've put in my basket. I noticed this year there was no mention of these invite only deals.
Are they still doing that or no?
That's a great question. So I think it's happening again. I haven't heard that it was removed, but that was something they were experimenting with last time, and so if it was successful, we'll see it again.
If not, it'll kind of just quietly.
Vanish I was one of the people I got the ninety nine dollars TV. This was like, I don't know, two years ago, but it was like the super deal of the century, and it was like invite only, and I happened to get up early because I work on the morning show at KTLA, so I was up early.
I got the thing where it's like you're invited to.
Buy this, and I did it like instantly, mostly just so I can talk about it for years later.
But so far that's worked.
I know.
This is what we do, right, We experiment with these things and then we end up with the.
TV exactly and I gave it to my father in law. Actually he might have paid me back for I can't remember at this point. So any mistakes that shoppers can you avoid during these prime big deal days?
Yeah, I mean, I.
Think a mistake that you can make during these times, especially we've got this forty eight hours of Amazon and then we have Targets Circle Week in Walmart's having a sale and best Buy and Lows. So the big mistake that people can make is just to get too excited about all of it and to buy too much. And so I do think making that list, keeping on track is really really helpful. And it's interesting because we are becoming an increasingly promotional culture, like we like to save.
There was a bread financial pull that found that seventy six percent of us are going to be shopping deals this holiday shopping season looking around at different retailer shopping these big sale events, and because of that, we do tend to get caught up in the excitement and then perhaps drop things into our cart and click.
Buy on things that we don't need or don't even want.
Yeah, that's always a problem.
Okay, let's talk about the idea of some of these things that you're excited about. You know, some of these deals like I saw you sent me, like the Luna Mini, Let's see fire tablets, the what's the Broovy bundle.
Oh, so there are some deals that I'm really excited about.
You know, we talked about the Amazon proprietary devices like the Blink camera and the fire tablets and fire TV sticks, and those are hovering in the sort of forty eight to sixty percent off range, which is significant, So I'm excited about those. And then the Lunamini is from a company called Fourio. They make really nice facial cleansing brushes. They're electric and I use them myself, and they're up to forty five percent off, so that's another big deal
that I'm excited about. And then the Broovie is actually a company that they make beautiful, beautiful coffee and all different flavors, and they partner with lots of different coffee farms and so they have a lot of high quality coffee pods, and then they have a very stylish brewer.
But it does tend to be pretty pricey.
But around Amazon Prime Day, it's going to be fifty percent off this bundle of the brewer and lots of pods, so you can try all sorts of different coffees. And so I'm excited about deals that are that are significant, like that that at our fifty percent off, I'm pretty.
Excited about that.
Wow.
Yeah, because that's looking it up, it looks pretty. It's like an evolved k cup, you know, it's kind of like a little bit elevated.
Right.
Yeah, it's a very stylish brewer.
And so if you want your kitchen to look fabulous and you want that sort of you know, kitchen appli and sitting there that looks amazing, the breoviy is one to look at.
What do you think of camel camel camel? Do you recommend using that? And you know, for the price history I.
Do, And so camel camel Camel is another option besides the PayPal honey that we were just talking about.
Camel. Camel Camel though is specific to Amazon.
So for Prime Day, absolutely they have a browser extension then also a website.
There are lots of different tools that you can use.
So first of all, if you have the browser extension and it'll just kind of do some work for you and alert you if it's.
A good price or not. But if you go to their website.
You can set deal alerts and be notified when things go on sale. You can get a real sort of in the weed sense of pricing on things, and I find it to be very helpful for Amazon Prime Day.
Any other tools, like any other third party tools like I know, I know, Honey's pretty good. There was a new one that I was testing that didn't turn out to be that great. But you know, there's so many like extensions and things like do those actually help? And there's no real coupons for Amazon, is there?
Well, yes and.
No, So when you're shopping on Amazon, be sure to look for that kind of green coupon button. In addition to maybe a Prime Day sale, you can click on a coupon on Amazon and maybe save an extra five percent or ten percent or get a dollar off amount.
So coupon's on Amazon, yes.
And I do expect to see some sort of external coupons happening. I like slick deals dot Com for this. They are a you know, a website that has millions of deals. They have millions of deal seekers actually combing the Internet for the best sales.
So it's a very kind of community, community oriented site. So I like that. And I do also like that too because all the best deals are right in their front page. So you look at the front page and they're all there. And then they have a feature called the deal Alert, which if you're looking for something kind of price, you say that TV that you were interested in, you add the name of that item to your deal alert on slick Deals, and then you'll be automatically notified
when it goes on sale. So I use this feature all year long.
And for example, you know I need a new dishwasher, I dropped the names of a couple of the dishwashers I'm interested in into the deal Alert, and then I'm notified when they go on sale, so I don't have to waste my time looking around all the time for good deals on that item.
I love slick Deals. I mean, if you're just looking for an excuse to spend.
I mean I visit that site every single morning, and I'm always like, oh I need this, I need this?
Do I need it? I kind of want it?
But there's such there's always a great stuff and it's not just like products. Sometimes it's like oh, get a free cheeseburger at Burger King today or whatever. So I mean there's always like something. Tell me about your newsletter. You've got your website, true truetrade dot com. Tell me about your newsletter. What do you do on there?
Yeah, so I have a newsletter as well.
It goes out a couple times a month, and that's lots of savings oriented content there. And then I'm very active on Instagram as well, say sharing you know, interviews like this, and also information about how to save money, little tricks and hacks that I've learned along the way on your day to day purchases, holiday shopping, give guides my favorite products that I'm trying, and some travel tips as well. So lots of money saving content on my Instagram.
All right, that is true Trey dot com. That's the website and Instagram is the same thing, True Trey. So Trey Bosh, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thanks for having me.
All right, happy shopping.
Amazon Prime Day coming up that is on October eighth and ninth, that is Tuesday and Wednesday. Get those deals or get those items in your shopping cart now so you can save soon.
All right, coming up?
It is the feedback your comments, send emails throughout the week to me when we come back. The website for the show. By the way, Rich on tech dot TV. If you want any of the links I mentioned, just hit the light bulb there. This is show number what I say, ninety two, so you can find the links there. I got an email from Andrea's in Bell Gardens, California. Basically he said that his Ticketmaster tickets were stolen out of his account, and he wondered if I'd ever heard
of this, and no, I hadn't. So I reached out to Ticketmaster and I said, Hey, what's the deal, and they said, yes, this happens. It's not a Ticketmaster hack per se. It is a week password, and so typically the hackers get in because you either have a week password on your ticket Master account or your email account or both, and they basically steal the tickets right out from under you.
Now, the good news is.
Ticketmaster says, because these tickets these days are digital instead of paper, they can often recover your tickets for you. So if you get in touch with their customer service, they can see what happened to these tickets and help you get them back. I don't know if that's always the case, but Andreas was able to get his ticket Hits his tickets back. And if you've got a ticket
Master account, go on there right now. Make sure you have a strong unique password set up on that account so that they do not you don't lose your tickets. And I also want to mention mobile x this week change their calling plans. They've made them a lot better. We had the founder of mobile X, Peter Adderton, on this show a couple months ago. Mobile x is sort of one of these startups. They run on the Verizon network, but they've got great plans and now they're even better.
So you can get unlimited data twenty four dollars eighty eight cents a month, you can get ten gigs of data for fourteen dollars and eighty eight cents a month, and you can get their personalized plan that starts at three dollars and forty eight cents a month, So they this is big because they really just made a challenge to all kind of like these other mv and o's out there, like Visible Total and Mint Mobile. And I've been testing the Mobile X. It works well. It runs
on Verizon. I've had no issues. So if you're looking for a the inexpensive plan. Again, these are all kind of like DIY, so it's not like you can go into a store to get help, but they do sell them the simcards at Walmart. So Mobile X is the website. All right, Let's get to the feedback. These are the emails, the comments, the questions. I got so many questions or so many emails in response to me talking about budgeting
last week. Gary and Ranchel Santa Margerita said, Hi, your caller asked about an app to check his debit card spending quick and we'll let you download transactions and enter checks in future purchases to see an AMDIA up to date view.
Thank you.
Gary Warren writes in Hey, Rich, it's good to hear someone else who updates their budget weekly. I haven't found a good way to automate the process for my spreadsheet. I use one from Vertex forty two. Thanks for all the good information you provide. Ken from Lincoln, California said, Hey, Rich, though you thought you might have missed a suggestion for your personal finance budgeting Quicken. It's been around for years on both platforms. It can be as simple or as
complex as you wish. I've been a happy user for as long as I can remember. I am seventy three. Thank you, Ken. Sometimes these simplest explanations are right in front of me, and I forget. Thomas writes in Rich. If you're interested in using a spreadsheet for budgeting, take a look at Tiller tillerhq dot com. I move from Mint and it does a decent job of pulling in
data from all of their supported accounts. I check this out and basically you do have to pay, but they basically will take your transactions from your bank and credit card and all that stuff and put them into a spreadsheet so that you can move them around and organize them. So Tiller HQ t I L L E R HQ. I'll put the link on the show notes. Joy from Anaheim takes a different approach. I don't understand the need for a budgeting app. As a senior on a fixed income.
I find budgeting necessary and very easy. It's actually something I've done for years. I make a list of all my expenses, including a weekly allowance, and then total them up. They should not exceed my income, but if they do, I can see what I can postpone until another month. Any discretionary expenses I take out of my weekly income. I check my bank balance every other day and record all receipts daily. Some things are non negotiable, like rent and utility. I subtract any fund spent from my daily
allowance and write the remaining balance on my calendar. It's really very simple, not to go over. An app would seem to complicate things. Well, Joy, it sounds like you just do what an app would do. But yeah, let's see here. Arnold from Rancho Kucamonga writes in with an update, Dear Rich, thanks for solving my problem. Ads and video games kept popping ads and games kept popping up on my Samsung phone, especially interfering with taking pictures and videos.
Your step by step instructions work worked. Thank you for solving what was an incredibly bothersome problem. Take care, Arnold, Wow glad to hear that that worked. SONU writes in from Las Vegas. Hey, Rich, I'm a North Jersey transplant to Vegas for twenty three years. But as you mentioned in your last show, which I stream weekly on the podcast, you recalled the slider cable boxes. You got me thinking, and this is what we use when I was a kid in Wayne, New Jersey. I think the cable company
was Cablevision back then. Thanks for the memories. Yes, the slider cable box first one we had in my house, and I think it was Cablevision.
Let's see.
We got Bob, also from New Jersey. I guess a lot of Jersey people like hearing me talk about Jersey. Oh my god, mecha magic. I'm driving to the car, driving to the gym, and just heard you mentioned mecha magic. I would make my mom take me there as a kid, as a magic nerd. I think it was an East Orange or West Orange. I think I still have a little briefcase full of magic tricks back home in the attic and New Jersey. That's what I kept mine in a little briefcase. I was the amazing rich O.
That was my name.
Before I was Rich on Tech, I was rich Oh alisays, thank you, rich have a blessed week and enjoy tech day. You give so much knowledge. You investigate in detail, giving to we the older. We appreciate what you do. Have a great day again. Thank you well, Thank you Elise for appreciating me. I appreciate you for listening to this show. That's going to do it for this episode. You can find links to everything I mentioned on the website rich on Tech dot TV. Find me on social media. I
am at rich on Tech. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks for everyone who makes this show possible. Next week we're going to talk about the pros and cons of art style TVs.
I'm rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.