WEBVTT
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This program is designed to provide general information with regards
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to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
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the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
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are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
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legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek
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the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
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suggested ideas. The information contained in this podcast is intended
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for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for
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individual professional legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled
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from vetted sources and references. However, Rose Resources outreach to
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safeguard the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim.
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To a scam.
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Let's talk about scams. It's the must listen show for
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anyone who wants to protect themselves and their loved ones
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from scams. Every Tuesday am Pacific time on kfour HD Radio,
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Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and her guests will provide
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valuable insights and practical tips on how to recognize and
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protect yourself from scams. And now here is your host,
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Joyce Petrowski.
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Hi, everyone, welcome back to let's talk about scams. I'm
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your host, Joyce Petrowski, founder and board president of Rose
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Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly. You can find more
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resources on our website at Roseadvocacy dot org. On the
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homepage you'll find our social media links and you can
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find the links to sign up for our emailed newsletter
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and also our mailed newsletter that we send out once
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a month at the beginning of each month. So today
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I want to talk about USB and charging cables and
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power banks if you but he probably has a ton
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of them, right. There are these cables right here. You
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can find little short ones. This one is particular to
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an iPhone with the way the end is there. This
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is a longer one that is for. To be honest
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with you, I don't remember which device of ours this
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one is for, but it's not an iPhone because the
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end of it here you can see, is not set
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up for an iPhone. But this is just another type
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of charging cable USB cable. So how do you know
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if the cable that you're using or who knows? You
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could have ten different cables, right. We keep them in
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our backpacks for when we travel. We keep them up
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by our desk at work, we keep them in our office.
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At home, we keep them in the drawer by the
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telephone where you're going to charge your devices at home.
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I'm sure they're all over the place. But how do
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you know if it's a good charging cable USB cable
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that doesn't have malicious hardware on it? That malicious hardware,
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if it's installed in that they can intercept the data
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once you've got it connected. They can eavesdrop on your
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phone calls and your messages, or they can actually take
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over your device, your cell phone, your computer, whatever you
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have it hooked up to.
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And this actually started.
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This malicious hardware in these cables started way back in
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two thousand and eight, but the technology was very rare,
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it was expensive, so it was the cases were very
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few and far between. But with the way the technology
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has advanced over the years, we're finding it more and
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more out there, and so you know, it becomes how
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do you know you know, how can you tell if
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your USB cables have malicious hardware on it? Well, there
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is a lot of times they'll say that you need
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like a two D or a three D scanning device
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to find it. Well, it used to be that a
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two D scanning device could find all of it. Well,
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now there's actually some of the malicious hardware that you
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need a three D scanning device, which is like a
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three D CT scan, which is not something that you
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would normally have around your house. Those are those huge
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scanning devices that you find in labs and medical offices
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and things like that. So, but there are some other
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things that you can do to kind of keep an
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eye out for to then know that, hey, maybe this
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cable is not is not what it should be. One
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of the things some of the warning signs you could
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look for are if you know what the brand and
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or the logos look like, what their markings look like.
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If you see that they're a little bit off, that
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could be an indication that it's a it's a it's
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a bad cable. If when the chargers are plugged in
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to your device, all of a sudden, you get or
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i'm sorry, when they're not plugged in to your device,
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all of a sudden, you get a lot of heat
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coming from them when they're not plugged in, that could
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be an indication that there's something wrong with it, that
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it's got malicious software.
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There are what's called oh.
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Dot m as in Mary g is in George Malicious
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Cable Detector and it claims to detect all malicious USB cables.
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Now that's something you're going to have to buy.
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And I did just look it up a little bit
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ago and it took me to the manufacturer's page and
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they sell it for I believe it was thirty nine
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dollars and ninety nine cents. Now, can you find it
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on Amazon? Most likely, I haven't checked, but you can
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find a lot of things on Amazon. So if you're
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an Amazon shopper, you could just type in malicious Cable
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Detector or type in THEO.
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Dot MG malicious Cable Detector.
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There's also something called data blockers, so that's going to
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benefit you if you are just charging using your cable
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to charge and you do not want to transfer data,
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so it will blocker will ensure that no data is
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extracted from your device. Another thing is there are these
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detection services out there, so if you are dealing with
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extremely sensitive confidential information, you might want to consider hiring
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one of these detection services. There's one out there called
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lumah Field, which is mentioned in this article. I don't
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know anything about the company, but the article mentions it
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they will detect malicious cables. They claim to detect malicious
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cables with one hundred percent accuracy. It's going to come
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with a fee, but again it's one of those things
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you're going to have to make a determination for your
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situation if.
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You want to go that route. So another thing is.
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How can you tell if your charger is stealing your data?
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And let's see, I apologize, but I am I'm looking
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at these articles.
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This is an article.
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The first article was from PCWorld and it was titled
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let me see what the title was here. The title
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of that article was it's PCWorld dot com. It was
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written by Dominic Bailey on February twenty six, twenty twenty five.
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How to tell if your USB cable is hiding malicious
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hacker hardware. Now, this article that I'm going to reference
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on how to tell if a USB charger is stealing
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my data was written by WNE Security on January thirtieth,
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twenty twenty five. So again, there's some different ways of
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indicators that you might be able to see if your
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charger is actually if a USB charger is actually stealing
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your data. So, because most of those attacks usually operate
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behind the scenes. It's hard to tell unless you know
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you had uh this detection. You know, company was able
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to look at all of your your hardware, so there
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could be unexpected prompts on your device. So let's say
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your cell phone displays a data transfer or file sharing
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notification when you've got it connected to your charger. Well,
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that's a red flag because the charger should only be
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supplying power. You should not be getting any notifications that
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your data is transferring or a file is being shared.
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But also look for abnormal device abnormal behavior with your devices.
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So if a USB charger is compromised, it could make
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your let's and we're going to use your cell phone
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because a lot of people when they're using their USB chargers,
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you see them on their cell phones. It could slow
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down how your cell phone's operating. You notice that things
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are really slow. All of a sudden, your phone just
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shuts down. If you have a touch screen, all of
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a sudden it's not working. You're touching your screen and
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it's not doing anything, or your phone just automatically reboots.
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Some users have also reported some just unusual pop ups
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that they all of a sudden get or unauthorized request
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to access something on your phone. All of these things
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are abnormal when all you're doing is charging charging your phone.
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So again, if you're able to tell if a USB
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charger has been physically modified. Now, again, unless you know
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what you're looking for, it could be extremely difficult to
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know if it's been physically modified. But one of the
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things you could look at is if a charger, maybe
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you know they normally have a tendency the USB ones
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to be all a certain size, but all of a sudden,
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this one looks bigger, bulkier than normal. Well, I would
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stay away from that one because means it could have
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additional wires inside of it, It could have additional hardware
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inside of it that's making it look bulkier. Let's see
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unrecognized applications or files. If all of a sudden, you
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and this is let's assume you have not just done
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an software update on your phone, because you know how
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sometimes when you do those software updates on your phone,
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some of your settings change and things look different. So
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for this scenario, we're going to assume that you did
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not just update your phone, but now all of a sudden,
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you notice that there's new apps or some of the
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settings have changed. Again, or unauthorized file transfers. All of
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those things are unrecognized applications that you might want to
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consider using a different USB charger. So here's some ways
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to protect yourself from USB data theft. So we talked
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about data blockers. They're a device that sit between your
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charging cable and the USB port and what it does
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is it only allows the power to pass through because
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it's blocking data transmissions. So that could be something to
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look for. And again, if you just go into your
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Internet browser and search data reputable data blocking adapters or devices,
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you're going to find or you could actually say, what
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are the best data blocking adapters for twenty twenty five,
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and you're going to find a lot of articles are.
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Going to come up.
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You're going to find them on the first page of
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your screen. When the results come up, it's going to
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be from a lot of tech companies. And because a
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lot of tech companies they evaluate these products on a
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regular basis, and you can go down through there and
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look at the ones that they highly recommend, and they're
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going to tell you why they highly recommend them, what
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the pros and cons are. They might even have a
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link to the company's way website.
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And maybe they might have a discount code.
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You don't know, but they go through on a regular
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basis and they they evaluate these and they monitor them
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and they test them in order to give you all
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of this information.
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So that is a great way to find.
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On a lot of these products, what's been tested and
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what they feel are the best ones out.
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There for you. There's a lot of.
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Trusted chargers and cables, so make sure you're using it
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from a reputable manufacturer. In that first article they did
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list a few of them.
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Let me get back to that here.
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Where they listed them, Oh, you know, from reputable sellers.
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And this is back in thepcworld dot com article. They
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talk about reputable sellers being Anchor, Apple, Balkan, in.
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You Green.
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They have rigorous quality control processes that prevent malicious hardware
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parts from making it into their cables.
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So again that's Anchor, Apple, Balkan, and Green.
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So that's just a couple different ones that the author
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of this article in PC world has suggested our reputable
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companies to buy from. And so getting back to how
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to protect yourself, Both Android and Apple devices have settings
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that allow users to disable data transfer when charging via
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a USB. So for Android users, you're going to go
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to your settings and then look for connected devices and
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go to USB preferences and select charge only. For iPhones,
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you just select do not trust when you're prompted by
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an unknown device. So basically, when an unknown device is
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plugged in for an iPhone, you should get a prompt
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that says trust or do not trust. Trust this device
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or do not trust it. You're going to want to
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click on do not trust it, and that should allow
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charging only and no transfer of data. Now, again there's
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always updates to software on cell phones, and so this
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is one thing in particular that when you do do
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a software update that you're going to want to go
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back into your into your settings and make sure that
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it is still selected as charge only you're Android, and
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make sure when you're plugging your USB cable in that
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it gives you the prompt to select to that this
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is a trusted device or not to trust it, and
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you're going to click do not trust. Another thing is
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and I see this all the time, and I actually,
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you know, up until probably a couple of years ago,
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I used to do this a lot, not even thinking