Tech News: Scams and Lawsuits

Our first story is that we appear to be drawing closer to the conclusion of a very long legal battle between Apple and some of its employees, more specifically employees who worked at Apple stores in California between July two thousand nine until August two thousand and fifteen. So what's at the heart of all this. Well, Apple had this policy in place that every single employee was to submit their bags and personal iPhones for a search before they

could leave the store. The company said this was an effort to cut back on employees stealing products from the store or potentially making off with trade secrets. A group of employees sued the company and it became a class action suit with more than fourteen thousand employees involved in it. But the core of the lawsuit wasn't so much about the fact that the employees had to submit to a search. It was more about Apple refusing to count that time

as time worked by the employee. In other words, Apple was treating these searches as if they were off the clock in the free time of the employees, which the employees were arguing was a violation of California state law. So the legal representation for the employees were they were successful to say that the searches were a ring on company time and that employees therefore should have been compensated for that time. Now, you might wonder how much time

did these searches take. Well. Engadget reports that the average weight was between five to twenty minutes. And that doesn't sound like very much time, right, I mean, it's it's just not five to twenty minutes. It's not a whole lot of time. But if you've ever driven in California, you know that that state's rush hour ain't no joke. And every minute you're spent being forced to stay at

work where you're not on the clock not fun. Uh, And I mean that's that's the point, right, It's still your time, and you would not be doing it, you know, not be spending it sitting at work. You would only do that if you were on the clock. So employees should still have been compensated for their time, even if that time was still a short amount each day plus over you know, a length of your term of employment,

that five to twenty minutes. That really adds up. So Apple has agreed to pay out a settlement to claimants. The full settlement is a hair under thirty million dollars. But again, we're talking about more than fourteen thousand, five hundred employees who are covered in this class action suit. So each person should expect to receive a payout of around one thousand, two d eighty six bucks. Uh. That's significantly more than what I typically see when I look

at class action suits. Uh. You often see ones that have hundreds of thousands of claimants, and so everyone ends up getting like a fraction of a dollar. Uh. And typically the lawyers make out like bandits. The individual claimants get very little, and the company gets you know, a a fine that they must pay. But anyway, this whole agreement is not quite done and dusted just yet. In fact, the final approval for this settlement amount won't happen until

this summer. But then, assuming everything goes to you know, the courts approval, this story will finally have an ending. A federal judge has ruled that the US Federal Trade Commission, or f TC, can move forward with an antitrust case against Facebook slash Meta. Now this comes after lawyers for Meta filed a motion to dismiss the case, and it looks like it's going to be able to go on. This was not always a sure bet. The FTC had previously filed with the federal courts and received a rejection

from the judge. The judge said that the FTC had failed to provide facts to support the case being made against Meta. But second times the charm in this case, I guess, as the judge now says that the revised filing contains sufficient support to merit a case. The argument the FTC is making is that Facebook slash Meta had a pretty simple and straightforward strategy when it came to competitors or even potential competitors, and it boils down to

if you can't beat them, by them. So, in other words, when exectit, Facebook would look at services like say Instagram. They saw that the photo sharing platform could potentially rival Facebook itself and pull people's time and focus away from Facebook. Now, I've talked about how Facebook's business model depends on keeping people tied to the site for as long as possible. That applies to all of Facebook's platforms, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp,

whatever it may be. So obviously, anything that could threaten that, anything that could pull people's attention away from those properties, is seen as a problem by Facebook. So the FTC is arguing that Facebook tries to sidestep this challenge by just buying up companies that could stand in the way whenever the opportunity arises, and uh FTC provided enough information to support this argument to convince the judge that a lawsuit can in fact move forward, an antitrust suit can

move forward. I would also like to add that Facebook frequently tries to imitate other platforms like U TikTok is a big example right now. Clearly Facebook has not purchased TikTok, but I bet you dollars to donuts they've talked about it,

at least at Facebook. But Facebook did introduce reels to Instagram, which is a product that looks an awful lot like the video platform on TikTok and and reels, it just seems to be their approach to trying to keep people on Instagram rather than having them go off the platform and and check out videos and doom scroll on TikTok instead of doom scrolling on Instagram. Uh so, I mean, if you can't beat them, you buy them, And if

you can't buy them, I guess you imitate them. Anyway, we still have to go through the actual antitrust suit, Like this was just the preamble to see if if a suit was you know, merited. So this matter is far from resolved. It could potentially lead to a situation where the US government forces to spin off some of its properties. Maybe, but a lot of other things have

to happen before that comes to pass. An international group of fact checkers have sent an open letter to YouTube's CEO saying that the platform is quote one of the major conduits of online disinformation and misinformation worldwide end quote this. According to the Associated Press, The fact checkers assert that bad actors on the platform are utilizing it to spread falsehoods and dangerous information, particularly in non English speaking countries.

They say that YouTube appears to be doing very little to address this problem, again in non English speaking countries, and that the company's efforts have mostly been focused on English speaking regions and the meanwhile, there is real damage being done around the world and it's facilitated by YouTube. That's essentially the argument. They also called for YouTube to

superimpose images our messages that debunk misinformation when it's identified. So, in other words, when you find a video that is UH sending out falsehoods that there should be a visual queue that says, hey, this is misinformation. Because the group says that displaying fact checking information is much more effective than just deleting videos. And of course, the big issue with deleting videos is that frequently bad actors can just

re upload it on another channel they own. But by creating a process to label videos as containing misinformation, YouTube can take away the power of those videos. I think that's a pretty great idea in general, but I do wonder how you would go about implementing it, particularly on a scale as large as YouTube. We know that hundreds of hours of video get uploaded to YouTube every single minute, and I'm curious as to how you would design a

system to catch stuff quickly and effectively. If you relied solely on human beings to moderate content, you would have a situation like that old I Love Lucy episode in which Lucy is at the conveyor line as bond bonds are zooming pastor and she's just shoving them in her

shirt and in her mouth and everything because she's overwhelmed. Well, imagine that scenario and multiply it by I don't know a Brazilian because as you would be reviewing one video, more than a hundred hours of other video would be joining the network every single minute. That's a dawning challenge

and I don't have an answer for it. I assume you would have to go towards some sort of automated solution, but then you have to make sure that whatever automated solution you design is effective and it's not prone to bias or false negatives. There are a host of other issues that come up, So I definitely feel that this is a real world problem that we need to address.

I am at a loss as to what that solution could be, but then you know there are people far more intelligent than I am who are working on this problem. I have an update for the ongoing story about the US Federal Aviation Administration or f a A, and it's uh kind of tense conversation with the telecommunications industry regarding

five G, namely A T and T and Verizon. Those are the two companies that are specifically kind of at odds with the f a A. So the story so far has been some tension between them and the f a A over the rollout of five G technology, and the concern is that five G frequencies, specifically those in the C band spectrum of five G, could potentially interfere with the operation of sensitive equipment on board airplanes and jets,

like radio altimeters. So last year A T and T and Verizon purchased up pretty much all of the C band spectrum of frequencies in an auction. That's why those two companies have been sing gold out. Now. I point that out because until I read this update in Reuters, I actually didn't know why it was just A T and T and Verizon that we're getting called out. That's just bad form on my part for not diving in deeply enough to find out the reason why. Anyway, we're

starting to see some progress being made. For example, A T and T has agreed to create a sort of buffer zone around fifty airports so that jets flying in and out of those won't be bombarded with frequencies that

could potentially cause interference. Uh. The f a A has issued new sort of directives for aircraft that have untested altimeters, you know, altimeters where we don't know if five G would interfere with their operation or not, And the f a A says that those aircraft will not be allowed to land at air strips or airports in low visibility

settings if five G happens to be deployed within that region. Uh. It sounds like there's a big move to replace older radio altimeters with newer technologies that have more effective shielding against these radio frequencies. So there's overall this kind of push to adopt technologies that should at least theoretically be

resistant to this kind of interference. You might remember that for ages, the rules on airplanes for bade people from even having a cell phone on at all out of concern that RF signals from the phones could create interference for various airplane systems. Eventually we got away from that obviously. Now you can have your phone on, although you're supposed to have it an airplane mode when you're on an airplane.

But you know, before you couldn't even do that, Like you couldn't even have like an e book reader on on an airplane. Uh. And then they said, well, okay, you can have it on, but not during takeoff and landing and all that kind of stuff. This is similar to that, but we are seeing some progress. All right, We've got some more stories to get to, but before we get to them, let's take a quick break. We're back. Business Insider reports that hackers have launched a malware campaign

that is likely using email as the delivery mechanism. This is kind of old school to to blast out emails containing malware. The malwaring question is wrapped up in a file that has been named a Macron stats dot e x c. That's an executable file. So it sounds like this is a campaign that is leveraging the a Macron outbreak in an effort to convince people to click on

the file. You know, if you scare people and say you need to know this information, click on this, then maybe it's effective, and then at that point malware installs on the target machine. The actual malware is called redline stealer, and it typically steals login information like user names and passwords from the infected computer and then sends them off to the hacker, who then sells that information on the

dark web. The security firm Forte Guard has identified twelve countries where this attack has appeared so far, and it sounds like this is not a targeted focused campaign. Rather, this is like a classic malware campaign where hackers are just casting as wide a net as they possibly can

and hope to get some hits. So this is just yet another reminder that it is a bad idea to click on files that are sent through email, particularly if they're coming from someone you don't know, and if they are coming from someone you know, it's best to touch base with that person make sure that they, you know, legitimately sent you a file before you do anything, because this is just uh an easy vector for hackers to to take. It's also an easy one for us to

avoid if we're just a little careful. CNBC reports that there's a land rush going on in the virtual space, with folks spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure your virtual real estate. And yes, this relates back to the concept of the metaverse. Uh. This story actually feels like deja vu to me because I remember hearing similar

things way back when Second Life was buzzworthy. But yeah, folks are shelling out big bucks to secure specific space on digital you know, various virtual environments, including ones with names like the Central Land and Sandbox. And we're starting to hear a lot of people say, pump the brakes

a bit before you jump on this speculation board. Uh. And I would like to add my voice to the folks who are saying, hey, be careful, um, don't put any money that you aren't willing to just say goodbye to into virtual real estate right now, right if you can't afford to lose that money, I mean, just assume that money is lost, because that way, if it's not, if things turn around and things are great, that's fantastic. If you're counting on it and it doesn't, that's bad.

So just say, all right, well goodbye three hundred thousand dollars. I don't know who can afford to do that, but that that's kind of the scale we're talking about. So yeah, be careful and don't do that. Just just invest money

where you can afford to lose that money. And I want to mention again that you know, we're so far away from a real metaverse, a compelling metaverse, one that can allow more than say, a couple of dozen people to gather in the same virtual space at the same time, um and do things that are on a really kind of deep level, Like you can have a little virtual environment that people can log into. You know, we've got video games that allow for the simultaneous play of more

than a hundred people. But that's a very narrow, narrowly defined environment it right, where you have a limited number of interactions you can take within that environment. Because it's a game. You know, you're not allowed to do everything. You're allowed to do whatever the game is meant for you to do. While the metaverse theoretically is a place where you would have much fewer constraints on what you

could do. You would have an enormous variety of things you could do, perhaps even things that you could never do in real the real world. Like I think of the matrix where you know you see neo fly at the end of it, well spoiler alert from a movie that came out in the late nineties. But but but you know, I think of something like that with the metaverse. Well, you know, it's gonna take a while for us to

have the technology to support that kind of thing. In fact, I mentioned last year that a VP at Intel said, our technology is is will need to be a thousand times more powerful to support a really meaningful metaverse. Meanwhile, if you go and buy virtual real estate in one of these virtual environments, who's to say that that virtual environment is still going to be around whenever the metaverse actually does become a legit thing. If it ever does,

I'm skeptical that it ever will. But even if it does, there's the very real possibility that the place where you bought your you know, virtual acreage isn't really a thing anymore, and is is the digital equivalent of a ghost town, and isn't really connected to a larger metaverse that's meaningful. That would just mean that you wasted all that money. So that would be a bad investment right now. The folks who are running these virtual environments, they're making the killing,

particularly as virtual real estate prices balloon beyond belief. But this is probably not sustainable. And I agree with folks like Mark Stapp, who is a professor at Arizona State University, and he says, quote, if it continues the way it's going, it is most likely going to be a bubble end quote, and like Professor Staff, I would never say definitively that this is a bubble, but I'm gonna say that it

sure does walk and quack like a bubble. Besides which, my guess is that again, we're several years away from having a really compelling metaverse experience. If such a thing as possible, it probably will be possible. I'm just grouchy. I'm determined to be a techno hermit. I don't think you're ever gonna come across me in the metaverse. I'm more likely to be sitting quietly in a chair, reading a book, or perhaps playing Seven Days to Die because

I've gotten addicted to that game. In the state of Massachusetts here in the United States, held a referendum on a right to repair law for cars, and the voting populace of Massachusetts overwhelmingly supported the law. Voted in favor of it so voted against. That is an overwhelm homing win when you're looking at a lot of votes that come down to like fifty two versus is a huge win. Well, the car companies were not thrilled with this, and they quickly filed lawsuits to reverse the law or the very

least delay when it would go into effect. See it's supposed to take effect this year, but the car companies say that's too soon and it should really be more

like or really never. Years ago, Massachusetts actually voted that car companies would have to make wired connection telematic data accessible in Massachusetts, and that would mean that say, an independent repair shop or potentially even just a private car owner would be able to diagnose problems with their car and complete repairs on that car, rather than being forced to take the vehicle to, say, an official dealership to

get the work done. We've been seeing this trend of turning tech into closed off ecosystems so that one party has essentially economic control over the whole thing. In fact, we talked about this earlier this week with Cannon and its printer and toner cartridges. Uh. But anyway, that earlier law which did pass, had a technical gap in it because it did not anticipate wireless systems, and so the law only required automakers to comply with it using wired systems.

So then you saw car companies migrate over to wireless approaches and they didn't have to comply because the wireless wasn't covered well the law shut that gap down, and according to Motherboard, car companies have brought a lawsuit against the state, claiming the law to be unconstitutional. I am not sure on what grounds that claim is based off of. Sounds like a Hail Mary play to me, but I

could very well be missing something obvious. I am not a legal expert by any stretch of the imagination, but my guess is that with a seventy support in the state, the car industry is going to have a real tough time convincing lawmakers in Massachusetts to overturn this law or to amend it in a way that takes the teeth out. I think most politicians in the state are going to feel a lot of pressure to stick to what the voters were asking for, because doing otherwise is a great

way to find your exit out of local politics. Okay, we've got a couple more stories to cover, but before we get to that, let's take another quick break. Okay, if you happen to be a famous person and you are approached by someone who's asking you to endorse a cryptocurrency,

you might want to do your homework first. Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather are learning that firsthand, as they face a lawsuit from investors who lost money in a cryptocurrency called ethere um Max, which I should add is not actually related to the famous cryptocurrency ether that's on the Ethereum blockchain. It has a very similar name, which is a that's a red flag right there, but it's not

related to it. Both Kardashian and Mayweather promoted this crypto token over the last year two and now a group of investors claim that their promotion was spreading misinformation about the tokens, and subsequently it drove up the cost of the tokens temporarily before the bottom dropped out and the investors then lost a ton of money. So what they're

saying is that ethereum Max was a pump and dump scheme. Now, in case you're not familiar with that term, the idea is that, let's say that you want to run this scheme, so you either establish or you buy up a ton of something that's super cheap and has low value, right, low market value. Uh, this could be anything. It doesn't

have to be cryptocurrency. It can literally be anything, and you just buy it up and then you use various means to drive up excitement and speculation about that thing so that more folks jump on board and buy it all up. So this always makes me think of the film trading places. But you get you get things moving so that investors start thinking, oh, this is the next you know, big ticket, this is the next to the moon thing. We're gonna I want to get in on this early on so I can make a mint and

a bunch of people start buying it. Well. Increased demand typically prompts an increase in price. Right, if more people are demanding it, the value goes up. You can demand a higher price for the thing. So there you are sitting on amount of whatever it we're talking about here, whether it's cryptocurrency or something else that you bought at pennies on the dollar, and now it's worth a ton of money. So you quickly sell it all off and you dump it before folks figured out it it's just

smoking mirrors, and you make a huge profit. Then you're off to Rio to join the producers. Meanwhile, all the rest of the folks who joined in after you, they're left holding the bag and they're trying to sell off their investment as the prices start to come down. And if they're lucky, they might break. Even if they're not lucky, they can lose a ton of money in the process.

That's what the lawsuit is alleging happened in this case, that Ethereum Max was a pump and dump scheme from the beginning, and that Kardashian and Mayweather were part of the mechanism to drive up the cost of the token before the scammers, you know, pull the plug. I think the thing to take home here is that crypto remains a scammers paradise, so don't let yourself get caught up

in the excitement without doing your homework. Now. I'm infamously negative about crypto in general for lots of reasons that I won't get into here, and I mostly feel like crypto in general is kind of a scam in a really big picture way. Um, it's sort of the thing where you could actually have a fake it till you make it approach, but I'm not convinced that the make it has actually happened. However, you've all heard me go on enough about that kind of stuff already, so let's

move on. But let's talk about other scams that you should be on the lookout for. We talked about email, We've talked about crypto. Ours Technica ran a piece recently titled quote scammers put fake QR codes on parking meters to intercept parker's payments end quote. I love that headline. It gives you the gist right away. So kudos to John Broadkin and the team at ours Technica for putting

this together. The article, by the way, also fantastic. So yeah, the scam here is that thieves put up QR code stickers on parking meters around several cities in the state of Texas. So if you were to go park somewhere in Texas and you see the parking meter, and you walk up and it's got this sticker with a QR code on it, and you use your smartphone to scan the code and then visit the associated website it was

sending you to. You would see what appeared to be a pretty simple payment site, presumably for that parking meter, but in fact you would just be sending money straight to the thieves because it wasn't connected to the payment system at all for the cities. The cities in question release statements saying that they don't use QR codes for this very reason. That scammers can use fake QR codes to divert traffic to their own sites. Instead, the cities use cash and cards at the meters themselves, and I

assume all of them. I know Austin for sure has an official smartphone app on that side, So as long as scammers can't make a fake parking payment app and pass it off as real and legit in various cities, you can be reasonably sure that if you're using a payment app for the city you are in, that you're actually paying the meter. That way, you don't have to worry about thieves taking your money or the city taking

your car. So yeah, just a reminder that QR codes might lead you to places you really don't want to go. But maybe you do want to go to Disney World. I did last year, and it was weird. I was being super careful, my whole family was being super careful while we were there, but being around that many people, a lot of whom we're not being particularly careful, that

gave me tons of anxiety. I actually kind of regret having gone, but it was a big family trip and a surprise for my nieces, so I waited and decided to go, and yeah, still feel weird about that. Luckily, everyone was safe, everyone was healthy both before, during, and after. But anyway, that's not the point of this segment. No Disney filed a patent that potentially gives us a glimpse what we could encounter on future trips to their theme

parks and other Disney related places. The patent, which was approved right at the very tail end of last year, is for what they're calling a virtual world simulator. Now, it sounds to me like the patent is describing a three D projection mapping technology paired with cameras and motion sensors and facial recognition and an AI system to determine where someone is looking at any given time. So this

is how I imagine it would play out. Let's say that you're on Main Street, USA at Disney World's Magic Kingdom, and you've got a ton of cameras trained on you.

They're out of sight, but they're all looking at you, and they're paired with tracking software to look at your head position, where your eyes are pointed, how quickly you're moving, all that kind of stuff, and then projectors connected to this system create an image of I don't know, let's say it's Captain Hook because he happens to be your favorite Disney character. Uh, turns out the three D projectors are not the only thing projecting in this particular scenario anyway.

The patent seems to describe a tech that would allow Disney to kind of create these sorts of projections that can move along with you and interact with you in some way. The patent specifically dismisses the idea of an associated headset, so this would not incorporate something like augmented

reality glasses. It sounds kind of cool, but it also makes me a bit anxious because, I mean the level of tracking a system would need to create this kind of interaction on a level that would be really compelling. That also means that Disney would be like seriously watching your every move, and not just your move, but everyone's move. And I'm not sure how the system would determine which guests gets to have this kind of experience. Uh, you've been to a Disney park, you know how crowded they

can be. And I imagine you could not have this system cater to everyone all the time, because then the park would be packed to the girls, both with real world guests and all the projected characters interacting with them, and if you're not wearing a headset or anything, those interactions they could be seen by everybody. Right, It's not like just something that you would experience. Everyone would be able to see it. So it's an interesting patent. I don't know if or how it would be implemented. We

may never actually see this tech materialize. Sometimes that happens with patented technology. And in fact, it could just mean that Disney sits on this to make sure no one else does it, right, not that Disney is working to do it themselves, but rather let's make sure that nobody beats us to this, because that would be a real competitive edge for for someone else. So let's patent it and then they can't do it without our permission. That's also a possibility. Uh. I think the idea is kind

of neat. I I just it's hard for me to imagine how it would actually play out at Disney. For one thing, the projection mapping stuff, I'm curious where you would project it onto, um if it just be walls or something, or if there would be maybe statues around the park where you would do three D projection mapping on that. But even then if it's a statue, then you're limited in the kind of animations you can do.

You can do a lot of facial animations, but you wouldn't be able to do a lot of body stuff. So I don't know. Uh. The patent is interesting, the implementation remains a mystery. Okay, that wraps up this news episode for Thursday, January twenty two. Hope all of you are well. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out

to me. The best way to do so is over Twitter and the handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again, really y. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.