Apr 24, 2019
It's Wednesday morning. Time for the WGAN Morning News with Ken and Matt. Today they talked about the Samsung Galaxy Fold, the fake 5-star reviews on Amazon, and how much your tax info is worth on the dark web.
These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com
---
Related Articles:
5-Star Phonies: Inside The Fake Amazon Review Complex
Hereโs How Much Your Tax Info Is Worth On The Dark Web
---
Transcript:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
Airing date: 04/24/2019
Samsung Fold Problem - How Much Your Tax Info Sells For - Matt's Bad Amazon Headphones
Craig Peterson 0:00
Hey, everybody, we talked this morning about the Samsung fold
problem, how much your tax and photos worth on the dark web and
Matt bought some headphones online on Amazon based on the star
ratings. And guess what? They aren't so good. So we talked about
that as well. So here we go Craig Peterson with Ken and Matt in
Maine, this morning.
Matt Gagnon0:26
WGAN Wednesday morning, that time and that day means Craig
Peterson, man about town and tech guru joins us as he does
now. What's going on, Craig?
Craig 0:37
Hey, good morning. Caribou still has snow on the ground. But that's
a shocker.
Ken Altshuler 0:45
Which is why we should annex it to Canada. It doesn't belong in
America, get rid of it.
So I didn't see this on your, we're not going, I'm sure you've talked about the Samson folding tablet fiasco. And since I love to talk about how Samsung sucks. Any comment on Samsung?
Craig 1:09
You summed it up there in one word.
Ken 1:11
Well, thank you for joining us.
Matt 1:16
Oh, you fanboys.
Ken 1:17
I haven't had that with my iPhone, Matt.
Matt 1:19
At least they're trying to develop something new.
Craig 1:22
It's a problem. And of course, we're talking about these folding
things. With the Galaxy Fold. The screens are breaking and people
are kind of getting upset. But it's a cool new technology. Matt's
right for once, Ken. You know.
Ken 1:37
Matt's never right. Ever.
Craig 1:40
Ever? Oh, come on. I was trying to give you one Matt. So here's a
problem. It's, how do I even explain this? Okay, here we go. I've
got one Matt. The Apple MacBook Pro has a similar problem. And that
is that when you're bending these things, sometimes those cables
are, and the conductors are extremely, extremely small. And when
you bend them a lot, of course you get mechanical breakdowns and
that's what's happening right now with the galaxy fold and with the
MacBook Pro, in fact, both companies are scrambling Apple's
scrambling to get a new MacBook Pro out this September. And it
looks like they're kind of pushing it up a little sooner than they
had wanted to. Because of the two big problems with the MacBook
Pro. One is the keyboard is still an issue for a lot of people. I
just I don't like the feel of it. I don't. Ken, you like the feel
your MacBook Pro keyboard right?
Ken 2:42
I do. Well, I kind of like the raised a little better. I've
got a use of this. But that when I was raised lettering, I liked it
a little better.
Craig 2:52
Yeah, I'd like to the old one little bit better. And then there's
some problems with the cables in the screen there. And then the
Galaxy Fold from Samsung is incredibly new technology. No one's
really tried to do this quite this way before. And so it's it's
kind of falling on its face. But also Samsung doesn't have the
profit margin Apple does to invest in some of this stuff. So it's
impressive what they did. But I'm not sure it'll ever be, well ever
is a long time. Right. But anytime soon?
Matt 3:22
I don't know, I guess I don't understand. And I'm a Samsung
aficionado, if you will. So I don't get why you'd want it. I don't
want to fold my phone. Is it just because you want to get a bigger
screen? I guess. And so you can fold it that way? I don't care that
much. Yeah, I mean, where is the demand for this? That I mean,
I want to have a tablet, but I wanted the size of a phone. I really
don't a tablet the size of my phone.
Craig 3:47
Well, it's the phablet thing, right? But let's go back again to
Apple as an example, Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs. Henry Ford, let's go
way back to Henry Ford. He said if we had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said faster horses. And Steve Jobs said of
you know, we came up with the with the iPod and then the iPhone.
And it, nobody was asking for it. And then when they came up with
these bigger ones, like the one I have sitting right in front of me
right now, they came up with a bigger screens and displays people
were not asking for that either. And yet, in all of those cases,
they became very, very popular. So as a business person, I've got
to say, you, you have to what's the word cannibalize your own
business, even if you have a business model and your business is
doing well, if you don't compete against yourself with some new
innovations, someone else is going to compete against yourself with
that same innovation that you didn't bother doing. So I've got to
in this case, praise Samsung for trying it. And I also agree with
both you guys, I don't really want one that big. I have an iPad, if
I need it, you know something that's bigger, but you know, having
it in my pocket is going to be is going to be problematic. So I
think that's why. So good, good on them for trying something new.
But they definitely did not pull it off.
Matt 5:10
Talking to Craig Peterson our tech guru joins us at this time,
every Wednesday to go over the world of technology. Craig, when I
buy stuff on Amazon, I admit that I am one of the people that will
you know, take like three different I actually, here's a good
example, I just bought some wireless headphones, so that I could go
running and not have the stupid wires in my face all the time. When
I did that, I found like four or five different ones on Amazon and
I checked out the reviews to see what people thought of them. And
I, I will say I gave a couple extra points to the one that had
better reviews. And I ended up buying it and I'm not terribly happy
with it. Was I taken was was that were there a lot of phony reviews
that are on these Amazon items and has this become a problem?
Craig 5:53
Well, that's a really good point because there's an article I have
up on my site this week. It's from The Hustle. But this one
particular was headphones, his iPhone plug it has that little
iPhone connector on it. And it was ranked five stars, almost it had
almost 4000 5-star reviews. And yet when the guy order did, that
connector came right off broke off for like almost the first time
right in his iPhone when he was trying to use it. And it's it is a
real problem in something that we've kind of known about for a
while. But the reason that's happening I think is very interesting.
We used to have a, we still do, a lot of people here in the US who
are buying stuff in China or from someplace else. They're shipping
it over here. And then they are selling it on Amazon, they're
reselling. And what's been happening over the last two to three
years is these Chinese companies that are making these things have
figured out, well, maybe we can get rid of that middleman. And so
they've been shipping directly to Amazon. We're not going to get
into all of the details here of how that all works. But they ship
their stuff over and then they sell it. So there are some things
that are going on that are kind of bad. You know, there's 82% of
Americans, both all probably all three of us, right? Who checked
the reviews, who checked the stars in it. But it turns out that
there are sellers in China, who are paying people here in the US,
they have secret Facebook groups, they have all closed Facebook
groups, and they have other ways of communicating. And they will
have you buy their product, they'll reimburse you for having bought
it from Amazon. And then they'll give you an extra 10 bucks if you
give it a five star review online. And so this guy got into this,
he started poking around, he was invited to be a reviewer of
this nice little iPhone charger cable. And he found out that there
is a big underbelly here there's a site you might want to check out
called Fakespot, F-A-K-E-S-P-O-T. And people are looking at these
five star reviews and Fakespot had a look at these. And found that
in fact, there there there is star inflation going on. And they use
some interesting ways to try and figure it out. But kind of on
average, it's about a half a star inflation on some of these
products. And when maybe as many as 30% of all of these reviews
online are fake. And that is a real problem, Matt.
Matt 8:46
So I have this to blame for my wireless headphones not working the
way that I want them to. Excellent.
Craig 8:50
It might be.
Matt 8:53
I really just want to blame someone, Craig. So I'm gonna go ahead
and pick this and call it good.
Craig 8:57
Call it good. When you get right down to it, read the reviews and
see if they're all the same. I found reviews, I did a search online
about this that said I haven't tried this product but and do a
search for that. Go to Google and tell it to search Amazon for I
haven't tried this product. And you will find reviews where people
are giving a five star review and saying I haven't tried this
product. So look for those, when you're looking at a product and
then also look for people saying almost the exact same thing over
and over again. And for me something that spooks me badly is very
poor English. And that means that they aren't you know, they aren't
people who can speak English well. So maybe they're legit. Maybe
they're great people. But I get a little nervous about it.
Ken 9:53
We are down with Craig Peterson. He's our tech guru.
Matt 9:58
Peterson.
Ken 9:59
Exactly what I said. He joins us, everyone Wednesday at 7:38. Sorry
for the cough.
Matt 10:06
We're now at 7:48. 10 minutes into the segment.
Ken 10:09
I didn't. I know, but he joins us at 7:38.
Matt 10:11
I'm just saying.
Ken 10:12
I didn't know the dark web, I know dark web deals with a lot of
bad, you know, kiddie porn, but I didn't know it looked at my
taxes.
Matt 10:23
Are you saying that you can Donald Trump's taxes on the dark
web?
Ken 10:26
Yeah. Can we go down and find out?
Craig 10:29
You will if the congressional committee catch all of them. Here's
what's going on, I want to give everyone a quick piece of advice
here. And that is if you have filed an extension for your taxes,
file them as soon as you possibly can. Because what's happening is
the bad guys are doing a couple of things. We already know they've
got your passwords, we already know they've got your accounts. And
we already know that most Americans are still using one of 10
passwords, people. And because of that what they've done now is the
bad guys are hijacking People's Bank Accounts unbeknownst to them.
So you can still use your bank account, but the bad guys have
access to it. And then they are filing fake tax returns. And
they're filing those big tax returns. And then they're pulling the
money, all of it, including your tax return out of your bank
account. And so that's how they get the guys you say well, I don't
get much money. Yeah, but you're looking forward to that $500 tax
refund. Well so are the bad guys. And they are paying online,
anywhere from $1 for up to $52 for W-2s, 1040s, your name, your
social security number and your birthdate is worth as little as 19
cents on the dark web. But just think of that. It can take you 300
hours to recover your credit and name and it's only worth 19 cents.
And you can if you want to become a bad guy, you can get a how to
guide to cash in on a victim's tax return for only $70 on the dark
web. So it's our money, our identity isn't worth much. But if it's
worth more than 17 cents to you, maybe you should change your
passwords and use a password manager like 1Password or Lastpass
online because man this is a real problem. And the best way to deal
with this particular the taxes is to file your return early before
the bad guys file one on your behalf.
---
More stories and tech updates at:
Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:
Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:
For questions, call or text:
855-385-5553