Welcome,

Good morning, everybody.  The New Year is almost here and it comes with a warning about the apps on your smartphone.  Today I was on with Justin McIsaac who was sitting in for Jack Heath today and we discussed some advice about apps you may be using and what they are collecting and who has access to that information. Hint — the people with access are not our friends. Here we go.  

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit – CraigPeterson.com

— 

Automated Machine Transcript:

Craig
Good morning everybody. Happy New Year. Wow, I can’t believe it is coming right up. It’s hard to believe that another year, another decade, and another century. Oh my gosh, the time just flies by anyhow. I hope you had a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, whatever it is you celebrate this time of year and enjoy time together with a family. We are going to be probably going to sleep at around 1011 o’clock. Maybe I’ll make it to midnight. Who knows if the kids are up on New Year’s Eve? It’s always a good time. You know, we had friends and family come in for the Christmas celebration this year. And that was neat to see another granddaughter haven’t seen in a few months. We try and get out there to Kentucky a couple of times a year. And my daughter as well. So shout out to them if they’re listening and shout out to everybody else. So this morning, I was on Jack’s show, and it was Justin who was running it today because Jack is out. Then the guest host ended up being out, and that left Justin trying to juggle all of these balls. But we had a lot of fun talking about maybe some new year’s resolutions when it comes to apps on your phones. So here we go with Mr. Justin McIsaac.

Justin McIsaac
And joining us on the auto fair listener lines Craig Peterson, our tech talk guy. You can visit his website Craig Peterson dot com his show airs on the weekend Saturday right, Craig and all across these IHeart stations. Everywhere, all right.

Craig Peterson
I am. I spent some time on Netflix over the holidays watching the new Lost in Space TV show brings back memories you know still it says or when Alan man it just flashback to the 60s. But it’s kind of fun. It’s a different way to do things now where they released the whole season that one. I liked it a lot better because you got all the context continuity and everything, and yeah, and I like Season Two better than season one. So, I know you’re a little bit of a sci-fi fan, but I back I enjoyed it.

Justin McIsaac
I watched season one with my wife, and we dug it. Who was it? The woman that was in Deadwood was a Mrs. Garrett was plays one of the leading roles. So we dug season one.

Craig Peterson
Yeah. Well, you’re going to like to let me tell you, great,

Justin McIsaac
Lost the space guy, Matt Simon. I’ve never really watched it know what the audience is. It was pretty good. It’s action-packed. But so so Craig focuses on the tech sphere. As one might say in Craig, a lot of people got to launch a lot of gadgets for Christmas, including Matt Simon, who got a Roomba that’s currently mapping his house. But you’ve got some things as we close it on the new year that you might want to be careful with, especially some apps you might have kicking around on your phone that you might want to delete what sort of apps are we looking at, we might want to get rid of

Craig Peterson
Yeah, here’s what’s going on right now. There are a ton of apps. However, most people are only using about five to 10 of the apps on their smartphones. That’s a bit of an issue, frankly. But you know, we all have the hundreds, at least over the years of different apps. The average American checks their phone 52 times a day, it changes our brains physically changes our brains. By spending so much time on these small screens. And so we’ve got to be a lot more careful about that. And, and I’ve got some categories that I think you should avoid here. First of all, 2020 is, as you mentioned before the break just around the corner. It’s hard to believe it’s almost here. So get rid of those apps that depress you. And guess what the number one group of apps that is responsible for that depression is guys. What would you think?

Justin McIsaac
Social media? My banking app, Yeah.

Craig Peterson
Yeah, absolutely. Getting off Facebook ditching Instagram, Snapchat, deleting TikTok, all of those will help you because they all tend to be kind of depressing, especially for the younger generations and TikTok, okay, as well as ToToTok, are apps that you have to delete.

Justin McIsaac
What you said, right so I told me guys are brilliant, I don’t know, though. I understand what TikTok is because my kids don’t have TikTok, but a lot of their friends do.

Craig Peterson
I know like the US military is telling, you know, their soldiers to get off the TikTok because that’s a Chinese program. So what’s ToToTok is that he had a Saudi Arabian program that does much the same thing. And both of them are designed to collect data to send it back to Beijing, and they’re able to track who you are where you are. All the location information, what you’re doing the pictures you’re taking. They’re using it to map our faces. The Chinese are number one in the world for facial recognition. And so you’re right. The military’s not only warning about TikTok, but we’ve had the NSA, the National Security Agency out there now warning us about it. So that’s number one category, get rid of those social media apps. Number two is apps that don’t protect your privacy. Of course, we already mentioned one TikTok, but Facebook Messenger is one such app because it is not encrypted end to end. So be careful of that. In other words, Facebook sitting in the middle, watching what you’re saying watching what you’re doing. However, Facebook does have another messaging app called WhatsApp. That does keep it safe. If you have an iPhone or a Mac. Imessage does keep it secure. It protects your privacy, and to and of course The FBI has for the last 30 years been pretty upset about that type of software. But be careful of spy software, which leads us to the next category. Apps that are free, but aren’t. Most of these apps are using our data. They’re telling the app developers where you are. If you ever wondered why you walk into that hairstylist in the morning, Justin, and then you get to add about a week later from other hairstylists that say they can do a better job.

Justin McIsaac
It’s more like a minute later. Yeah, it’s like I’ve noticed this, like if you talk about, like, oh, I’m going to buy a new car, and then I go on Instagram like 20 minutes later, all of a sudden, ads are going to my feed. Mercedes Benz. I guess Mercedes Benz isn’t checking my banking app because I’m not buying one of those. But the point is like, yeah, your phone’s kind of spying on you listen to it, right.

Craig Peterson
Yeah. Well, if we could get into that and take another hour, but yeah, Free VPN app today. Here are the worst ones right now for spying on you, the so-called free VPN apps, because they track absolutely everything you’re doing and where you’re going. Menstruation apps are one of the worst. Bible apps, Flashlight apps, and face morphing apps like face app. Now, these are kind of cool apps. But you know, where you can put in your picture, and I’ll show you what you’ll look like in 20 years, 30 years. But again, it’s using technology to map us and onto the banking. The next category apps that are making you spend the money want to get, and you might want to get rid of Amazon, eBay, and Walmart apps out there. But also look at right I know somebody who is addicted to Candy Crush, and she pays to play Candy Crush, okay.

Justin McIsaac
Yes, night wizard tonight. So you know, get rid of all some of those.
Some of those games. Not so much now. But when my kids were little, they’re basically like pay to win, like data. I spend three bucks I can get more More, more XP and I’m like, no, we’re not doing that. Let’s just buy a PlayStation. They’ll be cheaper in the long run. So all right, Craig. Craig Peterson’s calm is the website Tech Talk. You can hear it here on these IR news-talk stations. Have you got big, bad plans for New Year’s Craig?

Craig Peterson
Well, oh, yeah, kind of like you. I will probably just sleep through it until I hear someone say the ball just drops, and then I’ll be back up and then go back to sleep. But yeah, I’ll probably binge-watch another sci-fi show on the First.

Justin McIsaac
The Mandalorian. That’s my pick if you haven’t watched it yet. It is on Disney plus, that’s my recommendation. It was awesome.

Craig Peterson
It is. It’s terrific. I haven’t watched the latest episode yet.

Justin McIsaac
It’s excellent. That’s all I’ll tell you. All right, Craig Peterson. Craig Happy New Year. Thanks for joining us this morning. And today. You guys to take care. Bye. Bye. All right. There is Craig Peterson. I got noses tech stuff, and I’d say so he didn’t warn you about your Roomba. So I think you’re all right, Matt.

Craig Peterson
I think so. There is an app that comes along with that, though. Might I might want to check into that a little more. All right, yeah.

Justin McIsaac
I have to basically what Christ is I have to throw my phone in the river. So I’m going to do that during the break. And we’ll come back with more.

Craig Peterson
Yeah, that’s because Justin has an Android phone. And I’m always warning him calling you guys to do about Android phones. Anyhow, I should mention that the map got one of these shark robots to do some vacuuming is mapping out the house. People are wondering about that, and are worried about that. In reality, it is something that you must be concerned about why it is sending those floorplans up to the internet. I’m not as worried as I’d be if it had like cameras on it and things. But it’s still you know, it’s part of that big illusion, I guess. Anyways, have a great day, everybody, and we’ll be back, and we got a big year plan next year. Bye-bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

— 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don’t miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Message Input:

Message #techtalk

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Listen to this episode