This week: $68 million from Google, and free antivirus
Also in this issue: the hearing test hiding in your earbuds, a colon cancer test company breached, and what the passkey headlines got wrong.
Good morning!
Something you already own does the job, and somebody is trying to charge you for it anyway. That is most of this week. One thing has a deadline on it, and a couple of headlines sounded worse than they are.
In this issue:
- Google is paying $68 million over Assistant recordings. Claims close 8/27.
- Do you need antivirus on Windows, or on a Mac?
- Before you price hearing aids, take the test that came with your earbuds
- A colon cancer test company got breached. Expect a phone call.
- Can somebody steal a passkey?
- Also this week: a photo backup that quit, an FTC refund, and new limits on plate cameras
- Your library card is a subscription you already pay for
- Plus: two scams making the rounds
- And the Scary Headline of the week: hackers walked into Levi's on a phone call
Google is paying $68 million over Assistant recordings. Claims close 8/27.
The figure going around is $56, and that is the top of a range built on the assumption that almost nobody files. There are two ways to claim, and one pays four times the other. The bigger one wants a receipt for a device you may have bought in 2018, which is where most people will quit. Before you answer no to that question on the form, the piece shows you where to go looking for the receipt. Your speaker is not being switched off, either.
News
Do you need antivirus, or is Windows Defender enough?
There is a red banner in the corner of the screen saying your subscription expired, and it has been saying so for a while. For most people on Windows, Defender is free, already running, and tests level with the thing you were paying for. The piece covers what the labs found, who should still pay, and how to actually cancel McAfee or get a Norton renewal refunded. Monday's companion does the same for the Mac, where three layers are already running and the one rule that matters more than any scanner is not a scanner at all.
Learn
Before you price hearing aids, take the test that came with your earbuds
One person turns the television up, somebody else wants it back down, and in a lot of houses that argument got settled years ago with subtitles as a truce. AirPods Pro carry an FDA-authorized over-the-counter hearing aid and a free hearing test that runs right there in your ears. Take the test even if you never switch the hearing aid on, because it hands you a number you can carry to a doctor. Where it falls short is in there too, along with what Medicare covers and what an independent lab measured when it checked Apple's work.
Learn
A colon cancer test company got breached. If you took Cologuard, expect a phone call.
If you ever mailed a Cologuard sample back in a prepaid box, the company that processed it was broken into, and 10.9 million email addresses are already public. The reflex is to freeze your credit, and that is the wrong first move here, because nothing financial was confirmed taken. The stolen data is a targeting list. Brace for a very convincing phone call from somebody who knows you took a colon cancer test. There are five things to do this week, and the piece walks through them.
News
The coverage of some new research used words like cracked and master key. What the researchers found needs malware already running on your computer as you, which makes a clean computer the whole defense. One of the three attacks is sharper than the others. It reaches a key that Google gives you no way to change, so a compromise outlasts the cleanup. Passkeys are still far better than passwords, and nothing here changes what to use.
Learn
Four stories from the week I did not write a full piece about. Google Drive stopped pushing your pictures into Google Photos on Monday, the FTC is sending $23.8 million to Grubhub diners and drivers, Flock is changing the rules on its license plate cameras after a year of officers misusing them, and half a million Camrys can lose the dashboard and the turn signals at the same time.
News
If you only read one: the hearing test. It is sitting inside a pair of earbuds plenty of people already own, and the alternative starts in the thousands.
5-Minute Tech Tip
Your library card is a subscription you already pay for. Audiobooks, ebooks and magazines, free, on the phone in your pocket, through an app called Libby. Magazines have no waiting list at all, so this month's issue opens the moment you tap it. The same card also gets you Hoopla and Kanopy, and if you do not have a card, you can probably fix that today without leaving the house.
Fresh Trouble
Tax debt help that fixes nothing. Companies promising to wipe out back taxes for pennies on the dollar, before anybody has looked at your situation. They charge the fee, do nothing, and leave you further behind with the people you owe. (FTC)
The ad in your feed that nobody checked. The designer bag at half price that catches you mid-scroll. Social platforms do not always vet the ads or the advertisers behind them, so an ad sitting in your own feed is not evidence of anything. (FTC)
Scary Headline of the Week
"Levi Strauss & Co. says hackers stole corporate data in cyberattack"
Levi's told the SEC on August 7 that somebody got into the computers of three employees and took company files. No software flaw, no missing patch, no password broken. Three people were talked into it over the phone.
So far the company has found no sign that customer data was involved, though it says the investigation is still running. Nobody has publicly claimed the attack, and the group being named around it is somebody's inference rather than a confirmation, so treat that part as unsettled.
The verdict: nothing to do about your Levi's account, but the method used is the lesson to learn. The same call that worked on three people at a six billion dollar company is the one that reaches your phone. Somebody friendly, claiming to be tech support, asking you to sign in somewhere so they can help. That is the scam, and it works at any size.
Seen a headline this week that scared you? Reply and send it. It might get next week's verdict.
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If this is the week you finally go dig out your library card, hit reply and tell me.
Joel
