thank you. for. the headline some. funding a secret operation of russian campaign is a cross you are quoting to talk. like a group anonymous names of those involved in the contest. being revealed. rising fuel prices get more demonstrations and francis protests across the country . to a tough question. russia's foreign minister hits back at the. states

claiming to fight human rights around the well. which is that. you can find those stories a lot smaller over on our website i'll be back again with the headlines and then in the meantime it's the big picture. on this week's show we know what will be in santa sleigh and you will too when we count down but top tech holiday gift. but first you better watch out i'm telling you why right now why these guys are trying to rip you off how do or void holidays. i'm hala cook in washington this is the. big picture on our team america.

you've learned maybe the hard way that the internet is a target rich environment for rip off artists right now your e-mail may contain authentic a looking but counterfeit messages that seem to be from companies you do business with and that can dupe you into an identity theft trap how to spot the phony baloney and how is the grinch trying to food you let's ask attorney professor and ace scam buster stephen jay jay wiseman and if you can read only one of the ten books he's written we recommend identity theft alert ten rules you must follow to protect yourself from america's number one crime his website updated daily is scam aside dot com steve welcome back to the big picture. it's good to be with you it's

the most wonderful time of the year yes cameras but is nothing sacred in this most wonderful time of the year because the grinch lives this is got to be the super bowl for so-called mystery shoppers scams how do they work and how do we steer clear. you know mystery shopper scams one of the things about them that makes them so enticing is the fact that there really are legitimate mystery shopper jobs but they don't go looking for you a mystery shopper is someone for quality control be hired by a company to shop at a particular store report on the experience and they get paid for it however what happens is people will see ads for mystery shopper jobs or receive a text message or an e-mail signing them up for this and here's how the scam works what happens is they will send you a bank check a certified check for say two thousand dollars and you deposit that into your

account and the next day you go and you use some of that money to shop you keep a small amount of that money as your pay and then the rest usually about a thousand dollars or so you wire back to the well the mystery shopper people who send it to you unfortunately the check is counterfeit someone who thinks they've had the check cleared all they've gotten is provisional credit within the first couple of days and then when the check bounces the money that was wired out is gone from the poor victims account and they've lost it so you can't first of all if you're contacted about a mystery shopper job it's a scam it's as simple as that second of all anytime there are a lot of scams with this excess check never never count on those funds as being legitimate until you have been notified by your bank that it has fully cleared not provisional credit but fully cleared no matter how thick the chuckle. looks steven

this full employment economy the help wanted sign is everywhere and retailers are competing for seasonal help how are job applicants being targeted. this is right now this is one of the biggest scams across the country and there are a number of scams that are appearing sometimes it may look like a legitimate job site and in fact sometimes legitimate job sites are infiltrated so they may suddenly be offering you the job and they need your social security number because they do need your social security number for pay it's my motto is trust me you can't trust anyone and so if indeed you're contacted about a job or you answer an ad for a job you've got to confirm before you give any real personal information that is legit so you go to the h r department of the real company because sometimes it's

using the names of legitimate retailers so you never get personal information to someone you don't know you check with the h.r. department first of the times they'll do that same kind of scam where they will send you a check that will be part of your initial pay but you also need to pay for some training so you send that back to them of course that check bounces so once again it's trust me you can't trust anyone we all feel extra generous this time of year something phony charities are counting on one of the red flags. yeah this is this is something charities are always phony charities are a big big scam during the holiday season in particular you'll see a lot of firefighter and police charities and so what happens here is first of all you can get a call from a charity even if you're on the federal do not call list that is an exception but any time you get a call an e-mail a text message purportedly from

a charity and maybe even it looks like it really is coming from a charity when you look at your caller id but your caller id can be tricked through a technique called spoofing fortunately there's an easy way to check this out there's a terrific website called charity navigator dot org you go there and you can find out a couple of things first of all you can find out is it a legitimate charity or is it a scam and sometimes the names are really very very similar to legitimate charities but you'll also find out how much the legitimate charity or what looks to be a legitimate charity is taking for themselves as fees salaries and administrative costs and how much goes to the charitable works so even if it technically is not a scam it may be a scam so you can of value it to charity and be able to give directly to the ones you know are good even with e-commerce now so popular some shoppers are still wary of entering a credit card online but brick and mortar purchases also fraud who knows what else

that seasonal cashier is doing with their credit card number some do's and don'ts for online and in-store payment. yeah and you're right ali you are in danger either way first of all if you're in a brick and mortar store if possible you want to use a credit card and you don't want to use a debit card your debit card doesn't come with the same protections if fraud occurs that your credit card does you potentially could have your entire bank account in which the card is tied wiped out the other thing is why. the card used to chip if you've got a chip some retailers still use the magnetic stripe and you have to really be careful there because there are some of these seasonal employees and others who will take your card and run it through a device no bigger than the palm of their hand called a skimmer and that will steal all of the information off your credit card so watch your card when you are in

a brick and mortar store online you've got to look for first in the u.r.l. you want to see h t t p s you want to see that extra x. that means that your transactions being encrypted you also want to make sure you're on a legitimate web site someone may go to what they think is the web site of a amazon or any legitimate retailer and then find out later that it was a phony one so sometimes the e-mail address or the domain addresses the u.r.l.'s look legitimate and what you can do is you can go to a website called who is and who is dot com will tell you who actually owns that website so you may think you're going to m. is on and then you look up the precise u.r.l. you've got there and it turns out it's owned by someone in nigeria well you know it's a scam so you want to check out the web site you want to also be wary if it's too good to be true as far as the cost use a credit card not

a debit card and you also don't want to leave your credit card on file there for ease you want to use it once most good places will also ask you to use your c.v. that three or four digit number for security for online purchases and that's a good thing to do as well but we do take some comfort in something you said a minute ago the chip is safer than the swipe. yeah much safer i'm not saying perfect because you know nothing is foolproof never underestimate the power of a fool but in fact the chip that is been. in used by many many if not most retailers in recent years has dramatically brought down fraud with even card present fraud it's still people are doing it online and you don't present the card the fraud has actually gone up but it has reduced the amount of fraud in brick and mortar stores well we're all shopping a lot online and the last mile is always the longest talk about the livery

scams that are out there. this is great there are so many different delivery scams in some of them you know it's the holiday season you can expect to get deliveries so suddenly you're asked you receive an e-mail that appears to come from u.b.s. or fed ex and they're asking for some confirmation from you first of all they're not going to ask for a credit card they're not going to ask for a social security number but sometimes people fall for this is this is part of the confirmation another one that's kind of interesting is they will deliver a package to you and they will tell you it has wine in it or it has alcohol in it and therefore when they need to get a credit card from you this is a requirement when shipping alcohol or wine which it is and you turn over your credit card to them and boom they've just got your credit card number you open the package and you don't have wine you don't have beer you don't have liquor what

you've got is a lesson and a bunch of crumpled up newspaper phone book hey steve i just have a minute but i must ask not all wise guys come after you on line or via e-mail what are some of the phone scams we should be wary of. you know i'll tell you one of the biggest phone scams right now that has managed to actually trick security professionals because these guys are just so good you get a call it appears to come from your bank your caller id says that your bank has a problem with your card and they say to confirm that it's really. us here are the last four digits of your social security number and then they ask for your credit or debit card number and the c.v. well in fact you don't that your real bank already has your credit card number already has your pin already has you and the way they have the four digits of your social security number is they've gotten it from purchasing it on the dark web after any number of major data breaches such as equifax so they sound legit but you

can never ever trust it scam aside dot com is free steve updates a daily it is well worth subscribing to thank you again attorney author pro fessor and ace scam busters stephen jay jay wiseman. great to be with you. and what scams have you fallen prey to tell us on twitter i am at home and cook what will be under the tree this year tech gifts and we're going to count down the top five and suggest some cool stocking stuffers with radios top dog or next this is the big picture on our to america.

future historians may look back at donald trump's handling of the murder of jamal to show as a case study of the lack of leadership and outright slowly his reasons for giving the saudis or rather the crown prince a free pass simply don't make sense why because it's all about. the british government and the british establishment. and mrs bush and mrs mrs may have looks themselves up into his studio about so-called new deal just so he is incredibly was leading as i just said in so doing they've allowed the european union to impose completely drunk union is on the u.k. which we lost anyway.

statistic from a couple excel came out that showed the wealth and income gap around the world in different countries and there's there's the u.s. there's there's france and then there's the u.k. it's like wow incredible spread between this concentration and then you've got the royalist there are people there in the tory party who support the queen whose whole point of breaks it was to support the queen ok so. a stereo and a moron a policy because trouble poverty breaks it's all about supporting the queen and getting rid of their world contacts. we're still digesting thanksgiving dinner and i'm already packing for las vegas in

january it's the massive mind boggling consumer electronics show to which we recently got a preview including the consumer technology associations annual holiday gift forecast what we want to see under the tree and who better to let the cat out of the bag the radios top tech talker dave grave line his weekend show into tomorrow is heard across the usa and around the world on several hundred stations and heard and seen at into tomorrow dot com they've joins us from our team's miami studio welcome back to the big picture pal. my pleasure hala and then only for you do i wear a tie it's a gadget tie or your show the forecast is that one hundred sixty four million usa adults will spend an average of four hundred sixty four dollars on tech gifts this holiday season do the math it adds up to over ninety six b. billion dollars that's up three point four percent over last year which interesting

lee was down year from the year before dave about that dip in twenty seventeen what weren't we buying last year well holiday i would say it's really twofold first yeah four k. t.v. prices were still particularly high in two thousand and seventeen and now they're ridiculously low specially in anticipation of the holiday season also people were anticipating the one thousand dollars plus smartphone so many decided to hold off and maybe start buying a phone every other model year instead of every year not everyone of course especially particularly fanboys of apple but many in general and now the moment you've waited for according to the consumer technology association research here are the top five tech gifts on this year's wish list number five was last year's number five gift any type of camera and dave i find this curious since smartphone cameras are now so high rez does this surprise you. not at all it's about are fact

everyone now carries a great quality camera in their pocket and of course true professional photographers many serious abot your photo og's still use some really cool very good of vailable separate cameras for their special needs and will continue to do so for some guy and because this research is so granular there are a couple of ties on the list and an item that returns to the top five after dropping out last year desktop computer is item number four was last year's number five i'm starting to feel like casey case and it's the smart watch it dave apple watch seemed to flop when it was first introduced and apple wouldn't even break out the revenue figures separately now they have a new improved version is it an improvement and what other makers are in the smart watch space. well of course like most everything else in tech new is always better

i happen to prefer my android smart watches they've had them out long before apple ever did but the apple watch series four does have a lot of pretty cool tech like a larger edge to edge display and some of the most impressive health features ever packed into any wearable not just a smart watch since it starts though at four hundred bucks it's a great time to snag the series three and maybe save some money even as a gift and that's something we can do with smartphones to is wait for the new one to come out and then buy the old one because they're going to be sharply reduced right many are doing that now it makes perfect sense they're staying one model behind especially with smartphones saving a lot of money and yet still getting the advantages most of them at least that they're looking for we're talking with dave grave line from the into tomorrow radio show and as we count down the top tech gifts for the twenty eight thousand holidays we have a tie for number three last year's number two item smartphones slides to number

three dave i phone is conspicuous but aren't there more android phones in use. it's a good point holiday last year apple sold almost two hundred sixteen million i phones but there were one point two billion android smartphones sold during the same time yeah android holds eighty six percent of the market though apple wouldn't have you believe that you're the tech expert is one platform inherently better than the other is this is like the the p.c. mac debate. yeah it is kind of bizarre because people who love one or the other you can't convince them otherwise you know we say on the air all the time we don't pick your boyfriend or girlfriend significant other it's really a personal matter so you've got to play with them both i would hope and get some suggestions and opinions from your family and friends before making the plunge and perhaps staying with one over another sharing that number three spot on this year's

tech wish list tablet computers and dave you have scolded me for short handing this category as i pad like saying kleenex or scotch tape and like i phone the i pad brand is conspicuous who are i pads competitors and how do they compare well apple certainly has a lot of competitors for their generally much more expensive i pads and you're right there tablets everything is not a bad samsung of course one of their biggest competitors but many companies do produce some quality android tablets and just like smartphones there are many more android tablets sold than apple products it's really a matter of taste and whatever you feel that maybe having a piece of fruit out if it makes it better for you go for it the number two most want to give the runner up was tied for number one last year notebook or laptop computers they pat more power into a smaller lighter case and as somebody who travels a lot you know what i know on the lonesome road every ounce is

a pound and the gift that tied for number one last year owns it this year television and you mentioned that the prices for the four g. sets of plummeted and because we're now using them for so much more than watching what stations and networks happen to be broadcasting at the moment i held out and recently bought a couple of four case has had a forty two inch of his ego and a forty inch samsung just under four hundred dollars each a fraction of the price tags we were seeing when four k. first came out are things getting less expensive faster now. well that is another great point all and then yeah tech has come such a long way that prices drop very drastically now especially before the holidays it's the best time to snag a great t.v. for example among many other consumer tech items i always tell our audience to never feel guilty when buying any tech always buy one for you and one or more for

gifts you've got to experience the tech well not on the top five list but under the tree last year a plenty and on a steep adoption curve smart speakers emaar critter predicts not a misprint forty seven point nine percent annual growth rate from sixteen million now to seventy six point five million by two thousand and twenty dave you've also scolded me for stereotyping this category as alexa who is the robo voice on amazon's echo line which does dominate that you've tried them all how to google home an apple home pod compare well most actually compare pretty well yeah amazon had the jump on the smart speaker market and they still hold a commanding lead but others like google home samsung apple as you mentioned at others are catching up with a long way to go though but if you're looking for a good accurate search results for your various questions think about this alexa is

stuck using microsoft's being only google home cleverly enough uses google by far the most popular and certainly much more precise search engine just think how many households have just lit up because we're saying alexa. they were always intrigued by some of the show and tell items here bring any cool stocking stuffers there. you know it in fact talking about smart speakers maybe you want to head outside and use it will companies like ninety seven have come out with some great portable battery units for google home and alexa this one of course you just pop in your little google home device and now it's. battery operated so you can take it out on the back porch or otherwise they also make a great sounding speaker to use with your alexa's so if you like to listen to a lot of music then you want to look at something like this your simple alexa device the small hockey puck thing just drops right into here but now you have

a full rich speaker with a lot more bass and that makes a lot of sense there are thirty five and forty blocks and of course dash cams very popular this one the owl cam now also provides auto crash response and of course you can look in your car at the front the outside the inside of the car any time and one of my favorites these days for the kids the octopus smartwatch comes with a night light charger it's only fifty bucks we talk about all these kinds of things and a whole lot more that are available at into tomorrow of course now some of the other things you talk about what is the number one or maybe the top two or three issues that into tomorrow callers are asking you about lately. well i'd have to say in addition to various computer questions that we always get i guess the the next bigger issues have questions these days about security cameras for our homes a big push lately of course for people to install ip security cameras like the

various doorbell cams so they can keep an eye on the home whether they're home or not and that's probably among the more asked kinds of products these days too and when all else fails and i heard you say this on here regardless of what they're asking about when all else fails we didn't just hear today in the office with a printer the all turned it off turn it on trick will work right. yeah it does as a matter of fact you know i've talked to people who haven't rebooted their phones since they took it out of the box and then they complain that things are slowing down occasionally reboot your phone close all the programs reboot it once a week at least once every couple of weeks of any time you're getting some issues with anything digital if you will a reboot is always a good thing i thought my i phone was really slow a couple of years ago when a pal of mine took it and showed me all the things i had open he says start closing these things way i don't ever turn your phone off oh absolutely and of course uninstalling apps that you no longer use or haven't used since you installed it

figuring that well this will be fun and then you never opened it up again get rid of them and do look at what apps are currently running on your phones and your tablets whether they be i pads or i phones or otherwise and closer uninstalls things that are of no use to you you're going to find it's almost like having a new phone again wow that's a great idea to thank you dave grave line host of the into tomorrow radio show which here weekends on talk stations all across the usa and around the world and if there's not one near you call and complain and in the meantime listen to into tomorrow dot com happy thanksgiving day and i love your tie i was thank you sir it is the gadget tie just for you in holland always my pleasure and thank you for watching the big picture it's e.s.c.'s somewhere else you can also find r t america and several other places we are on direct t.v. channel three two one we are back on pluto t.v.

channel one three two and you can find us on dish at two eight zero zero or on demand at youtube dot com slash the big picture artie you can watch any show anytime anyplace on any device and thank you in advance for sharing a show with your friends that you found interesting i'm holland cook in washington i am at holland cook on twitter. don't forget a deal if you follow me i'll follow you until next week question more. you know world of big partisan lot and conspiracies it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than

ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. so. i think that i would want to. but inside i'm i'm dockside i think. going down to your next side that you can improve yourself of. but it's all and so then joe but i really believe this is the bottom that we show our side that the story and the band. know what condition.

nobody could see coming that false confessions would be that in the place the fall . had any interrogation out there what you'll see is threat promise threat promise threat why a lie a lie the process of interrogation is designed to put people in just that frame of my. make the uncomfortable make them want to get out and don't take no for an answer don't accept their denials she said if our words. sound stay there i will be home by that time the next day there's a culture on accountability and police officers know that they can engage in misconduct that has nothing to do with solving their crimes.