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May 22, 2023

You could lose access to iCloud account data forever!

You could lose access to iCloud account data forever!

There was a shocking article by Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal about how you are a simple bar trick away from losing access to all your photos (and some money) forever. All they need to do is steal your iPhone after seeing you type in your passcode, and they can lock you out of your account forever. 1. This is why we back up stuff and 2. There is a way to stop this. I'm not yet sure how vulnerable Android folks are to the same problem. If I've piqued your interest, this is the episode for you.

Here are two YouTube videos where the WSJ talks about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUYODQB_2wQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCfb9Wizq9Q

Mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript
W. Curtis Preston:

If you're an iPhone user that uses only iCloud to back up

W. Curtis Preston:

your iPhone, you're going to want to

W. Curtis Preston:

listen

W. Curtis Preston:

to this week's episode.

W. Curtis Preston:

Did you know that you're a simple bar trick away from losing access to all

W. Curtis Preston:

of your photos forever and being a victim to thousands of dollars of crime?

W. Curtis Preston:

If you're a surprise as I was, then you're going to want to

W. Curtis Preston:

listen to this week's episode.

W. Curtis Preston:

And also by the way, I'm not sure Android folks are in the clear either.

W. Curtis Preston:

This is going to be a good show.

W. Curtis Preston:

hi, and welcome to Backup Central's.

W. Curtis Preston:

Restore it All.

W. Curtis Preston:

Podcast.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm your host, w Curtis Pres, AKA Mr.

W. Curtis Preston:

Backup.

W. Curtis Preston:

And I have with me a guy who keeps bringing me more problems.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

this time?

W. Curtis Preston:

this, the, the, the thing that we're doing the episode on,

W. Curtis Preston:

like, I didn't even know it was a problem.

W. Curtis Preston:

And you brought, you know, and you brought me in and, and there

W. Curtis Preston:

there's not, I don't know if there's really any good solutions to it.

W. Curtis Preston:

I think it's just, I think this is definitely, this is a, I think this is

W. Curtis Preston:

one where I think Apple needs to, needs to help, which we're gonna, we're gonna

W. Curtis Preston:

talk about, um, Uh, it's one of these where, wow, I'm glad I found out about

W. Curtis Preston:

it now, so that we can do some things, um, you know, to, to do at least one

W. Curtis Preston:

thing to, to make it a little bit harder for someone to steal my information.

W. Curtis Preston:

But, um, Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

So I don't know.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's just, you just keep coming up with these problems for me to solve.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and it's just, you know, sometimes I got better things to do than to solve,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

really though?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Do you

W. Curtis Preston:

I don't know?

W. Curtis Preston:

Do I, do I, I mean, I'm just, I'm very busy, like right now, well, I'm

W. Curtis Preston:

actually, the thing I'm most busy right now is trying to solve the last problem.

W. Curtis Preston:

That you put in my head.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, I'm still working on that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, which we're

W. Curtis Preston:

gonna talk about.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

yep.

W. Curtis Preston:

Anyway, I'll jump in before we get started on this week's

W. Curtis Preston:

episode, throw out our disclaimer.

W. Curtis Preston:

You're gonna hear a bunch of opinions and they're ours, not

W. Curtis Preston:

necessarily our employers'.

W. Curtis Preston:

And if you.

W. Curtis Preston:

Want to join the conversation.

W. Curtis Preston:

We definitely want to hear from you.

W. Curtis Preston:

You can, my dms are open, uh, at WC Preston on Twitter.

W. Curtis Preston:

Feel free to give me more problems to solve You know, Hey, how do,

W. Curtis Preston:

how do we solve this problem?

W. Curtis Preston:

If you've got questions, if you've got stuff you want us to talk

W. Curtis Preston:

about, uh, feel free to DM me.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, you can email me w Curtis Preston or you can, uh, go to

W. Curtis Preston:

LinkedIn, linkedin.com/iin/mr backup and you will find me

W. Curtis Preston:

And also Radius, if you would please, uh, go to your favorite podcast or if

W. Curtis Preston:

you like what we're doing, uh, then help other people find us and also tell your

W. Curtis Preston:

friends, you know, you're like, Hey, there's this really great podcast with

W. Curtis Preston:

these two fun guys that talk about, you know, some of the most boring topics

W. Curtis Preston:

in the world, but try to, try to make them interesting as much as we can.

W. Curtis Preston:

So this episode, I gotta say, this woman that did this research,

W. Curtis Preston:

uh, there's actually two part, and there is a YouTube video.

W. Curtis Preston:

That she did, which, uh, we'll put a link to it in the show

W. Curtis Preston:

description so that you can watch.

W. Curtis Preston:

I, I highly recommend that you watch Joanna Stern.

W. Curtis Preston:

Thank you.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, I was the one that wrote it, but I think I'm gonna have

W. Curtis Preston:

you describe the scenario.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah, so basically she was reached out to by someone, a

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

victim, and what had happened was he was at a bar and his phone got stolen.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And the next day he went to try to sort of log in, change his password,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

all the rest, and he got locked out.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

he realized that there was a whole bunch of, I don't know

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

if it was like Venmo or PayPal or whatever else, but there was a whole bunch of.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Transactions, financial transactions.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Purchases made from his phone, and he had no way to access his phone.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

He was locked out of his Apple account.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

He had no access to anything.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

He tried reaching out to Apple Support.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They weren't able to help him.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

He tried reaching out to Apple's legal and escalating it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They said, sorry, there's nothing we can do to help you.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

He was willing to fly out to Apple or even.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like and show his like social security number, his driver's license, all sorts of

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

information to prove it was his account.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And it was so important to him because on his phone he was using iCloud and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

he had a bunch of pictures of his eight year old daughter at, who's

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

currently eight years old, right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But since she was a baby.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so he was like, I just want access to all of my pictures of my kid, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Which was stored in that iCloud account that I am now currently locked out of.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, and that, that core problem right there, you know, losing access to all this

W. Curtis Preston:

data that, in his case, irreplaceable, very precious data is, uh, The core

W. Curtis Preston:

problem behind the thing I was alluding to earlier, a a about, uh, backing up

W. Curtis Preston:

data that is on a device like an iPhone.

W. Curtis Preston:

And we're, we're gonna get to that in a minute.

W. Curtis Preston:

But there, there's a bigger problem here, and that is, you know, that you also

W. Curtis Preston:

mentioned is that, uh, because I saw other messages about people, uh, that had.

W. Curtis Preston:

Basically once the phone, once they, the, the attacker had physical

W. Curtis Preston:

access to the phone and their passcode, that they also did a bunch

W. Curtis Preston:

of, uh, unauthorized transactions.

W. Curtis Preston:

Like I remember somebody saying $40,000 in Apple Pay transactions and so the, the

W. Curtis Preston:

core thing here is that the, the attacker, the thief, basically it's, it's an old

W. Curtis Preston:

school hack, but it requires two things.

W. Curtis Preston:

One is they need to observe you typing in your passcode in a public place.

W. Curtis Preston:

And then the second is then they need to steal your phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

And the thing is, if you, if you think about that, both of those

W. Curtis Preston:

things are pretty easy to do.

W. Curtis Preston:

As an attacker, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Meaning that in a public environment, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

So it's very common.

W. Curtis Preston:

For you to, you know, some people want to use face ID to to log in,

W. Curtis Preston:

others want to use their passcode.

W. Curtis Preston:

Sometimes face ID doesn't work.

W. Curtis Preston:

And so you put it in your passcode.

W. Curtis Preston:

You're not really thinking, I think at least the average

W. Curtis Preston:

person, maybe somebody that's

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like, who's around

W. Curtis Preston:

might, yeah, nobody's thinking about who's around me.

W. Curtis Preston:

Like, you should be thinking about, you know, you really should be

W. Curtis Preston:

thinking about the, um, it, it's like you typing in a pin at an atm.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

You should be cut or typing in your pin at a PayPal or at a, a pay.

W. Curtis Preston:

What do you, what do you call that?

W. Curtis Preston:

The, you know,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

of

W. Curtis Preston:

yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Point of sale.

W. Curtis Preston:

Thank you.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, you, you typing in your pin number there, you should be thinking about

W. Curtis Preston:

privacy and hopefully you're concealing it, but you should be having that same

W. Curtis Preston:

level of concern when you're in public.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Mm-hmm.

W. Curtis Preston:

I think that two things.

W. Curtis Preston:

One is I think that people don't think that way, number one and number two.

W. Curtis Preston:

In a bar, they might be slightly compromised mentally, so they

W. Curtis Preston:

might not be thinking about that.

W. Curtis Preston:

And

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and I think there's also another aspect there,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Curtis, is I don't think people realize.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

How connected phones are these days to like what access it has once

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

someone gets access to your phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

People who have like financial account

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

logins and apps on their phone.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

People who have, like you were talking about like Apple Pay

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and credit card information.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah, all of that stuff is on there.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And people just don't realize like the wealth of knowledge and that an attacker

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

who compromises your phone can take.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I, the one thing I wanna talk about is like, people are probably thinking, oh,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

but they don't have my apple ID password.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

How can they get access to my data and lock me out?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so, I think just briefly touching on that, right, so on your phone, once you

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

have the passcode and once you have the phone, right, you can go to settings.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Once you have the passcode, you can change the face id, you can reset the apple

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

ID password directly from your phone.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so what an attacker does is they go do those two things

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and now you're locked out.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Now in most cases, you're like, oh, I could just do like, forgot

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

my password on Apple id and they'll send me a code and I can log in.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Well, now what they're doing as well is there's a concept in Apple called

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

a recovery key, which is I think a 28 digit key that Apple creates.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That if you, if you create that key, you can't go, do I forgot my passcode

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

anymore, cuz that doesn't work.

W. Curtis Preston:

Well without the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

do that, Yeah, without the key, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That's the only way you can get access.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Just knowing the passcode is password isn't enough.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so what they're doing is they're creating this and Apple doesn't give

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

you a way to protect it easily, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They kind of went the approach of let's make the user experience very

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

simple to regenerate these keys.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And they didn't realize that this is what attackers are doing.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They lock you out of your account, they change your passcode, they

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

create a recovery key, and now you as the victim, you have no

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

access to anything with that apple.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

So they change your passcode, they change your apple ID password, and

W. Curtis Preston:

they change the recovery key, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Even if you have a recovery key, they change it and then

W. Curtis Preston:

they, they're gonna do this.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm guessing they're gonna do this pretty quickly, but maybe they

W. Curtis Preston:

might not do it really quickly.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, but I, I think that I, I don't, well, I'm, I'm gonna say I definitely

W. Curtis Preston:

didn't think that that was possible.

W. Curtis Preston:

I didn't really think about.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, what happens if somebody gets my passcode?

W. Curtis Preston:

I rarely type my passcode in public.

W. Curtis Preston:

Well, let's face it, I'm rarely in public, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm, you know, I'm not hanging out in bars, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm not hanging out in bars, uh, at this point, you know?

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, but I think if, you know, a younger person might be hanging out in

W. Curtis Preston:

bars more often, and, um, the, just, just any bars or restaurants, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

yeah, yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But, but, but here's another point, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So during the pandemic, my wife and I, we would go to go grocery shopping.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And at the time we were ma we were wearing masks, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And on our phone space Id doesn't work.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So of course, you pull out your phone, you need to look up like,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Hey, what am I supposed to buy?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And you sit there and you have to type your passcode.

W. Curtis Preston:

right, right, right.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, and so

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

public place and people may not realize and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

be aware because it's like, Hey, we're just in a grocery store.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Why does it matter?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But it's like, Nope, that's yet another situation.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right, right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Again, I don't go to the grocery store.

W. Curtis Preston:

That's what I say, like my wife does most of the shopping.

W. Curtis Preston:

My wife shops for my clothes.

W. Curtis Preston:

She says, you know, she's great.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

How about Costco?

W. Curtis Preston:

Costco.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm a Costco

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right, and, and given you right, and knowing

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

how you are with your phone, how many times have you sort of left

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

your phone somewhere and walked away

W. Curtis Preston:

It's never, I I've never lost my phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

I've never misplaced my phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

You're spewing lies.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

in public?

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm saying You're spewing lies.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

I, I've left, definitely left my phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

So, so basically it, it's a combination of they, so they wa they observed you.

W. Curtis Preston:

Typing in your passcode, and then you left your phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, either they did a, they did a brush pass and, and, and did a pit

W. Curtis Preston:

pocket situation, or you laid it down on the bar, and then they stole your phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right?

W. Curtis Preston:

And you may think, well, I would never leave my phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm, I'm gonna say nonsense to that.

W. Curtis Preston:

I, even if you're the least absent-minded person, Uh, you know,

W. Curtis Preston:

and also if you are in a bar situation

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or a crowded place.

W. Curtis Preston:

Any sort of crowded situation.

W. Curtis Preston:

A brush pass, uh, is extremely easy to do.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, you know, if you've ever seen, you know, these movies that you, you

W. Curtis Preston:

see it sometimes in the movies, but if you are a good pickpocket, you can.

W. Curtis Preston:

Literally, you know, and, and they, they just, they, they feel nothing, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, but yeah, so that's the two thing.

W. Curtis Preston:

The, the two things that you should be doing is protecting your

W. Curtis Preston:

passcode when you're in public.

W. Curtis Preston:

And the other being, protecting your phone when you're public.

W. Curtis Preston:

If you do either of those things successfully in a public place,

W. Curtis Preston:

you wouldn't be subject to this.

W. Curtis Preston:

But, um, the, the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Things happen.

W. Curtis Preston:

what's that?

W. Curtis Preston:

But things happen, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

So we have, let's see, three things, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

So three things that you should be looking at and let's start with.

W. Curtis Preston:

What I think is the most basic one first, which is what should

W. Curtis Preston:

be, what should you be doing?

W. Curtis Preston:

If you have valuable photos on your phone Prasanna,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or any valuable data, you should be backing it up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Of course.

W. Curtis Preston:

be backing it up.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, right.

W. Curtis Preston:

If you have any data that's valuable anywhere, you should be backing it up.

W. Curtis Preston:

And you say to me, you say to me, but Curtis, I have iCloud.

W. Curtis Preston:

What's the response to that?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Well, a, I don't use iCloud, but I will ask a

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

question, but Curtis, you use iCloud.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

So, okay, so, so two things.

W. Curtis Preston:

One is iCloud is not a backup.

W. Curtis Preston:

iCloud is a synchronization tool, okay?

W. Curtis Preston:

At best, iCloud is a second place to store exactly the same

W. Curtis Preston:

thing that's on your phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

So if.

W. Curtis Preston:

Someone hacks your phone or hacks the iCloud account, they can delete one and

W. Curtis Preston:

it synchronizes and deletes the other.

W. Curtis Preston:

That's, it's not a backup, it's a synchronization tool.

W. Curtis Preston:

That's, that's a really important thing to understand.

W. Curtis Preston:

Number two, if you, as I do have the optimized storage option turned on,

W. Curtis Preston:

uh, what's stored on your phone is actually a thumbnail of the image or

W. Curtis Preston:

video, and the actual image or video is up in the cloud, which means that.

W. Curtis Preston:

The actual thing that you're trying to protect, I think with this, with

W. Curtis Preston:

this, Victim that started this whole story, he probably would've taken

W. Curtis Preston:

the, the thumbnails and he would've

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

now.

W. Curtis Preston:

he would've been happy.

W. Curtis Preston:

But you know, you want those high-res versions and those are only in Apple,

W. Curtis Preston:

which means the data that most people really value if they turn on that option,

W. Curtis Preston:

which I think most people turn on cuz they don't want to buy a 256 gigabyte iPhone.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and, uh, but it's only stored in the cloud.

W. Curtis Preston:

So.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's not, so, it is absolutely not a valid way to back up your iPhone.

W. Curtis Preston:

So, um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

uh, well, and if you get locked out like we've been talking

W. Curtis Preston:

and if Yeah, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

And if you get what the whole point of this story, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

If you get, if you get locked out of iCloud, if you get locked out

W. Curtis Preston:

of your Apple account, which is what will happen if your phone is

W. Curtis Preston:

stolen and they have the passcode.

W. Curtis Preston:

If you get locked out, you won't be able to access that iCloud version.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and this is pretty big deal.

W. Curtis Preston:

So really what's the only solution to that?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Back up your data to something other than iCloud.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right, right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Which, um, I'll just, I'll just quickly, um, throw this out.

W. Curtis Preston:

The, the, there's two quick options that I've been, I'm experimenting

W. Curtis Preston:

with right now that so far appear to work and we're gonna, but we're

W. Curtis Preston:

gonna have, uh, another complete episode about this, uh, coming up.

W. Curtis Preston:

And that's Google Photos.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, uh, a product called iDrive.

W. Curtis Preston:

iDrive is a, just an independent backup product, I'd say between the two.

W. Curtis Preston:

So far, I like, I, I like the functionality provided by iDrive better.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, it's also less expensive than Google Photos, but Google Photos is a little

W. Curtis Preston:

bit more of a full featured photo app, whereas iDrive is just a backup app.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, but

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

but there'll be a full episode on this.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, there'll be a full episode on that coming up.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, cuz I'm still, I'm still sort of researching that.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm also looking, and also I'm, by the way, one of the things I like

W. Curtis Preston:

about the iDrive app is that it works for both, uh, iPhone and Android.

W. Curtis Preston:

Google Photos works for Android, but it has the same problem that iDrive

W. Curtis Preston:

or Photos does for iPhone users.

W. Curtis Preston:

So I wanted a, an option for those.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, yeah, so that's, um, And it's, it's, it's incredibly affordable.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's not something, it's incredibly affordable.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's very non-invasive.

W. Curtis Preston:

Turn it on and, you know, set it and forget it.

W. Curtis Preston:

And if this was to happen to you, at least you wouldn't lose access to all of your,

W. Curtis Preston:

um, specifically your photos and videos.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So I have a do have a question.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I know we will cover this later.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

If this scenario happened to you and you had the iDrive software

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

installed on your phone, can an attacker go and delete all your data

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

from the iDrive app on your phone?

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, no.

W. Curtis Preston:

No, because specifically if they've got your phone, they only, they

W. Curtis Preston:

have a very limited, uh, set of functionality available on the phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, they would need your iDrive password and login to iDrive

W. Curtis Preston:

itself, the, the website, uh, to be able to delete old backups.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

can I ask the next question?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So then I don't know how it works with Dashlane, but if someone was

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

using like the iCloud key chain and they had access to your phone, they

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

had your password, they changed your apple, uh, apple ID password.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Could they get access to your iCloud key chain now

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and get access to any password store there?

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Two,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That, that, that,

W. Curtis Preston:

so.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, I'm not a fan of Apples key chain, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

I mean, we, we've, you know, we've talked about, I'm glad you again,

W. Curtis Preston:

see, this is what I'm talking about.

W. Curtis Preston:

You're just good at coming up with problems.

W. Curtis Preston:

But yeah, don't, uh, this is why, you know, we talked about,

W. Curtis Preston:

you know, we're, we're full supporters of password managers.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, we, we just did the, the last pass episode.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, um, you know, I just published it, which will go live

W. Curtis Preston:

just, uh, uh, uh, this weekend.

W. Curtis Preston:

But the, and if you haven't checked that out, it's basically the lessons that

W. Curtis Preston:

we learned from the last pass episode.

W. Curtis Preston:

But, um, the, um, I lost my train of thought.

W. Curtis Preston:

What were you asking me?

W. Curtis Preston:

Oh, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

So we talk about, you know, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

So iCloud keychain and using your the Chrome password manager,

W. Curtis Preston:

still better than nothing, but it puts you at a real risk of.

W. Curtis Preston:

Other exploits, uh, because for example, if somebody can log into Chrome, they

W. Curtis Preston:

can export your passwords and they, you know, they can do whatever they want.

W. Curtis Preston:

Same thing with iPhone.

W. Curtis Preston:

If they change your passcode, um, then they have access to the,

W. Curtis Preston:

to the key vault, and then they can use it to do other things.

W. Curtis Preston:

Now, I, I highly doubt that an attacker who's just trying to

W. Curtis Preston:

steal money, uh, is gonna also want to go attack my photo backup.

W. Curtis Preston:

And iDrive, I don't even think, I think they're the.

W. Curtis Preston:

Security by obscurity, uh, is in your favor, but it is possible, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, but they can also log into, they could do more scary things

W. Curtis Preston:

like logging into your, uh, bank accounts and do things like that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, but like, and, and that's why with Dashlane, it requires me to

W. Curtis Preston:

put in my, um, My password or, uh, my face, um, uh, you know, so,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Wait, that's it.

W. Curtis Preston:

what, well, you gotta have the phone.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So they have your phone,

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

And then it,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Speaker:

they have your passcode.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Speaker:

They can

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Speaker:

change your face

W. Curtis Preston:

dash lane P passcode, the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It, it is

W. Curtis Preston:

dash lane Master password they would need.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

okay, so you need to enter your dash lane password, and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

then also either a code or your face.

W. Curtis Preston:

no, you, you need the phone and the master

W. Curtis Preston:

password or the phone and my face?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Can they put a new face idea in?

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, I think when you, that's a great question.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, No.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

No.

W. Curtis Preston:

So yes, they could put in a new face, but when you do that, it,

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm, I'm sure we gotta check this,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I would hope.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I hope

W. Curtis Preston:

sure that when you put in a new face on face id, it deactivates

W. Curtis Preston:

anything that was using face id.

W. Curtis Preston:

And then you have to re reenable it, like in this case, dash lane.

W. Curtis Preston:

You would have to reenable face ID with, um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W with the new

W. Curtis Preston:

with the new,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And you'd have to enter

W. Curtis Preston:

have to put in the master password.

W. Curtis Preston:

I don't know that for a fact.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, but I believe it with all my heart right now because

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

hope so, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

I would hope so.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, Dar see again, giving me more problems.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, we gotta, we gotta go check that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, I'll, I'll, I'll change my face ID to somebody else and see if it

W. Curtis Preston:

still works with, with Dashlane.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Speaker:

or just do it yourself.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Speaker:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Oh, I guess I could do a new face ID with my own face.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

I don't have to use somebody else's.

W. Curtis Preston:

So good news and bad news.

W. Curtis Preston:

The good news is that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Dashlane at least did the right thing.

W. Curtis Preston:

So again, the worry here is that in this scenario, a hacker

W. Curtis Preston:

steals my phone and my passcode.

W. Curtis Preston:

They're now in my phone, essentially as me.

W. Curtis Preston:

Face ID won't let them into dash lane.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, uh, they don't know my Dashlane password, so they can't do that.

W. Curtis Preston:

But what if they reenable face ID basically put their

W. Curtis Preston:

face in the place of mine?

W. Curtis Preston:

What would dash lane do?

W. Curtis Preston:

The really good news is that dash lane said, ah, no face

W. Curtis Preston:

ID is new since the last time.

W. Curtis Preston:

And so you need to put in your master password.

W. Curtis Preston:

That is great news.

W. Curtis Preston:

The bad news is Venmo and PayPal did not behave that way.

W. Curtis Preston:

So using face ID on Venmo and PayPal.

W. Curtis Preston:

Didn't seem to help.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, I, so first off.

W. Curtis Preston:

Just a reminder.

W. Curtis Preston:

I do believe strongly in password managers, I believe strongly in third

W. Curtis Preston:

party password managers like dash lane.

W. Curtis Preston:

And I think in this case, if you're not using Dashlane, I would then go

W. Curtis Preston:

check with your password manager.

W. Curtis Preston:

Reenable face ID, basically putting a new face in there.

W. Curtis Preston:

And then seeing what your password manager does.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'd love to hear back from you again, DME at WC Preston on Twitter.

W. Curtis Preston:

So, so, What's our next one here?

W. Curtis Preston:

And that is, um, if your phone is ever misplaced or stolen immediately, not

W. Curtis Preston:

later this evening, but immediately borrow a friend's phone, borrow

W. Curtis Preston:

a friend's computer, go to the nearby web terminal, whatever.

W. Curtis Preston:

You can log into your iCloud count immediately and put your phone as lost.

W. Curtis Preston:

Now, having said that, Um, that's gonna be a problem if you're

W. Curtis Preston:

on an unknown device, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Because iCloud has mfa, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

So, um, hopefully you go ahead.

W. Curtis Preston:

What were you gonna say?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and, and this is where I think make sure on your

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

iPhone you set up recovery contacts,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So you can assign in Apple right on your phone to say, okay,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

if I'm coming from a, if I.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Coming from a device that I don't, or unauthorized device, then I

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

don't, I'm not able to receive the two factor authentication.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So here are other people you can contact that I trust, and they'll

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

send them the code there, and then you can get it from them and use that

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

to now access your Apple account.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and so, uh, you could basically call your, call your friend, wife,

W. Curtis Preston:

whatever, um, and say, Hey, I need you to really quickly log into my, you know,

W. Curtis Preston:

or authenticate me so that I can, um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And it's very simple.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They just need an Apple device and they say, yep, the person is good to go.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And then

W. Curtis Preston:

Right, so that you can log in and deactivate the phone or

W. Curtis Preston:

the, you know, put the phone is lost.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, cuz that's the thing you wanna do really quickly.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, so that the, and, and then what you're hoping at that point is that the

W. Curtis Preston:

person hasn't yet done the thing, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

If the moment they steal your phone, they immediately lock you out, then there's

W. Curtis Preston:

not, there's not much you're gonna do.

W. Curtis Preston:

But what's the final thing, which is as far as I can tell, the best

W. Curtis Preston:

option in terms of preventing.

W. Curtis Preston:

The theft, uh, you want to talk about that?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

yeah, and this is a feature which I don't

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

think many people actually know about, or those who know about it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Associate it with kits, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's a feature Apple has called Screen Time, which allows you to sort of monitor

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

how much usage, who's using what apps, and typically use it for your kits, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So you can give your phone or your iPad to a kid.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They could use certain apps within it, but they can't get to like settings.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They can't.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Load all content, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It does content filtering and other things like that.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But it also has a feature which allows you to say, okay, when I enable screen

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

time and it's my own device, I can also restrict certain content in

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

certain privacy settings, if you will.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And one of those, when you enable it, is to not allow account

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

changes or passcode changes

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

without, without asking for a different passcode.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I think that's the key, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, that's the key.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

So you, first thing you do is you, you, you create a screen time passcode, which

W. Curtis Preston:

is a, it's only a four digit by the way.

W. Curtis Preston:

Create a screen time passcode.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, minus 77.

W. Curtis Preston:

77, just so you know.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and then,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

6 66.

W. Curtis Preston:

um, and then, uh, so you create that, and then

W. Curtis Preston:

you go into, so you go into this app, it's called Screen Time.

W. Curtis Preston:

And by the way, that's two words, screen time.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, not to be confused with FaceTime, which is one word.

W. Curtis Preston:

And then, um, you go into content and privacy restrictions, and then you scroll

W. Curtis Preston:

down to passcode changes and account changes and changes to don't allow.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, right.

W. Curtis Preston:

So basically if you are logged well, it means that whenever you're logged into

W. Curtis Preston:

your phone and you want to change the passcode or account changes, you are going

W. Curtis Preston:

to need to enter the screen time passcode.

W. Curtis Preston:

Don't forget it.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

but if you forget it, it's not the end of the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

world because you can still reset it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

If you can log into your Apple ID on say a different device or on the web or

W. Curtis Preston:

Right, right, right.

W. Curtis Preston:

But yeah, that, that, if anything, this, this maybe just slows them down.

W. Curtis Preston:

It just slows them down, giving you time.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and they will be locked out if they enter the passcode,

W. Curtis Preston:

uh, incorrectly too many times.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, the, um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Which I think it's a good thing, but.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I think like we talked about, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

For this option, I don't think anyone knows about it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I didn't know about this,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that they could be used in this way.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Basically protecting you.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Somebody grabbing your device, changing it so that they can't change the passcode,

W. Curtis Preston:

um, without this other passcode, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

And this is a passcode and this one never enter in public, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Never, never, never enter this.

W. Curtis Preston:

This is a super secret passcode.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, Apple could do better here.

W. Curtis Preston:

They talk about this apple.

W. Curtis Preston:

Even if, like, I am a little disappointed to hear that even if you

W. Curtis Preston:

can prove that you are that person, right, uh, that apple will not, uh,

W. Curtis Preston:

get you back into your own account.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, I, I don't know if that's, is this one of those things where.

W. Curtis Preston:

That this is a security feature that, in other words, like, like

W. Curtis Preston:

they can't reset your passcode.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I think because at this point you're sort of using device level key, right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That's why once you create the recovery key, they can no longer do the reset

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

because they don't have the other half

W. Curtis Preston:

Right, right,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

access the

W. Curtis Preston:

right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, Yeah, I, I, I think Apple needs a better option than

W. Curtis Preston:

what they currently have.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and now, and maybe with this coverage in Wall Street Journal,

W. Curtis Preston:

uh, maybe it will change that.

W. Curtis Preston:

So, um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or, or the other thing is if you can, I know this is kind

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

of limited to Apple ecosystem, but some people have multiple devices, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So just do a verify on a different device when you are like changing

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

your recovery key, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You do this in other places, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Where it's like pops up and so it's like, Hey, so-and-so is asking do you authorize

W. Curtis Preston:

Right, right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, I, I am curious to know to what degree, is this an iPhone

W. Curtis Preston:

problem or is this an, is this a also an Android problem?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Ooh.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I unfortunately haven't interacted with the Android ecosystem in a

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, me neither.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

because I know Google has recovery keys, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

For Google accounts.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I just don't know if that applies on a Google

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm gonna have to pull out my, my backup Android device.

W. Curtis Preston:

I have one.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and just, and just see what happens, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

I.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, but anyway, I, you know, I hope this is helpful to folks that, I

W. Curtis Preston:

mean the, the, you know, in terms of the topics that we cover, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

We, you know, we we're concerned about you and your data, and so there are

W. Curtis Preston:

multiple ways to protect your data.

W. Curtis Preston:

One of which is to, is to, uh, oh, there was one other, by the way, one

W. Curtis Preston:

other thing that we didn't talk about, and that is when it talks about, um,

W. Curtis Preston:

payment methods that are on your phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

Make sure that whatever you connect as a payment method on your phone has

W. Curtis Preston:

protection built into it, for example, You know, visa cards, MasterCards, debit

W. Curtis Preston:

cards, um, these all have, and maybe Apple Pay itself, I don't know if Apple

W. Curtis Preston:

Pay itself has protection built into it, but if you're using, um, and, and,

W. Curtis Preston:

and you should look into that, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Because what happens if you get subject to this and then someone just takes.

W. Curtis Preston:

40, you know, they charge $40,000 worth of stuff.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and then boom, your accounts wiped out and you can't get that data back.

W. Curtis Preston:

So what I'm saying is, let's, let's assume Apple Pay doesn't

W. Curtis Preston:

have any protections built into it.

W. Curtis Preston:

If you directly connect it to your checking account via the

W. Curtis Preston:

account number, uh, not your debit card, you have no protection.

W. Curtis Preston:

If Apple Pay doesn't provide any protection,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I think your bank account only does $50,

W. Curtis Preston:

think so.

W. Curtis Preston:

I think that that is only via, if they do it via debit card.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, I don't, I don't know.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, you know, we're, we're not financial, uh, advisors or whatever.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, look into, look into that, right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, Venmo, PayPal, all of these things.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, what are the protections on them?

W. Curtis Preston:

I am curious.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

also consider what you do on your

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

iPhone or on your phone, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Ask yourself the question, do I really need that on my phone?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Do I need access 24 by seven to my financial account on my phone?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like one of the things I do is, so I like with my bank that I

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

can do mobile deposits, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so, but to do that, I need the app.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So what do I do?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I install the app, I do my mobile deposit, I delete the app,

W. Curtis Preston:

But in the ca.

W. Curtis Preston:

Oh, that's interesting.

W. Curtis Preston:

That's a little much.

W. Curtis Preston:

I mean, because at least with those apps, you need the pa, you need a

W. Curtis Preston:

separate passcode to get into those apps.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, but, but like, uh, like Venmo though, let's see.

W. Curtis Preston:

If I go to Venmo, cuz I have Venmo, um, boom, I'm in Venmo,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

no, passcode

W. Curtis Preston:

no passcode for Venmo.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, and there's no passcode for a, well, no Apple Pay.

W. Curtis Preston:

You need a, you need to put in.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Face

W. Curtis Preston:

fa face id, that's what I normally use.

W. Curtis Preston:

But what's your backup?

W. Curtis Preston:

It's your passcode, isn't it?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Changed.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

W. Curtis Preston:

Hmm, hmm.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I wonder if anyone's on threat modeling on this.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Interesting.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

But Venmo, uh, and PayPal, but PayPal.

W. Curtis Preston:

Because I have PayPal on my phone as well with PayPal.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

It just logged me in with face id.

W. Curtis Preston:

So with PayPal.

W. Curtis Preston:

With PayPal, I need to put in my PayPal password or face id.

W. Curtis Preston:

We really need to check out the face ID situation.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, again, um, Oh, look, I just spent $203 at, uh, via PayPal

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Oh, Costco.

W. Curtis Preston:

to buy?

W. Curtis Preston:

No, to buy tickets to go see, um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Oh.

W. Curtis Preston:

the musical six.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's the, it's the six wives of King Henry vii.

W. Curtis Preston:

So anyway, it's a musical.

W. Curtis Preston:

It it, and it's funny, it's got, um, it's got a modern take on it,

W. Curtis Preston:

but anyway, so I just, I just bought tickets to that to go see in July.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm very excited about that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, no one cares anyways, so, but everybody's like, well, this is

W. Curtis Preston:

kind, this is kind of the end.

W. Curtis Preston:

So, uh, we've come up with some new problems.

W. Curtis Preston:

This is what I'm saying.

W. Curtis Preston:

Like I said in the beginning, you just gimme more problems.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, I.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Well, I think, I think it's enough problems.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's awareness.

W. Curtis Preston:

Awareness.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, be aware, uh, your phone is, uh, you know, it's an, it's an attack point.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's an attack vector, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and there are, there are some things that you can do to

W. Curtis Preston:

prevent it, uh, number one, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Don't put your passcode in public and be really careful about what

W. Curtis Preston:

you do with your phone in public.

W. Curtis Preston:

Number two, uh, is this, um, screen time feature?

W. Curtis Preston:

That you can, uh, put in place and well, I should have said this is number one.

W. Curtis Preston:

Number one, back up your stuff via something that isn't iCloud or

W. Curtis Preston:

Google Photos if you use an Android.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and, uh, we're gonna do another episode on that.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention, yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The one thing we didn't touch upon, but it might be useful is if you do happen

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

to use like an Apple watch, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It does have a functionality to tell you when your phone goes missing, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or when it goes too far away.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So that might at least help you notice ahead of

W. Curtis Preston:

you, with your Apple watch, um, say that your phone is lost?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I don't know.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That's another question we will

W. Curtis Preston:

can't, you can.

W. Curtis Preston:

You can, if you are, uh, on wifi or you have a Apple phone or an

W. Curtis Preston:

Apple watch with a cell signal.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Cell phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, Because you have, you have iCloud, you have, um, f uh, fine mine.

W. Curtis Preston:

You had fine mine in there.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, so yeah, so if you, if you do have, that's a good point.

W. Curtis Preston:

If you do have Apple Watch, uh, uh, then you could do that, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, I like that feature.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, you just lost your phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

I would immediately then go,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Where is he?

W. Curtis Preston:

yeah, I would immediately, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, all right.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm gonna tell, I'm gonna tell a funny story really quickly because it involves,

W. Curtis Preston:

uh, my daughter and losing an iPhone.

W. Curtis Preston:

In public, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

So my daughter, uh, don't do this at home kids.

W. Curtis Preston:

My daughter, who's, uh, let's see, 28, um, she, she lost her phone at a bar and she,

W. Curtis Preston:

um, she pulled up on her husband's phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

She pulled up the location of her phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

Have I told you this story yet?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Mm-hmm.

W. Curtis Preston:

you, okay, so this happened a couple months ago.

W. Curtis Preston:

So she took, she, she pulled up the location of her phone, and so she

W. Curtis Preston:

saw that the location of her phone was now, um, several miles away

W. Curtis Preston:

at a house, uh, in, interestingly enough in, uh, the neighborhood

W. Curtis Preston:

where my brother-in-law lives, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Which isn't the nicest neighborhood.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

And so she goes over there and she knocks on the door of the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Wow.

W. Curtis Preston:

where her phone is pinging.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay?

W. Curtis Preston:

And, um, the mother.

W. Curtis Preston:

She, she knocked the, I think the mother was out in the front yard, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

So there, there's a, there's an older lady out in the front yard

W. Curtis Preston:

and she said, yeah, my phone is like pinging, um, you know, over here.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, um, and she's like, well, I don't know, you know, whatever.

W. Curtis Preston:

And so she calls her, she calls her, um, She said, well, you know, nobody

W. Curtis Preston:

here has your phone or whatever.

W. Curtis Preston:

I think maybe she went inside or something, and then my daughter

W. Curtis Preston:

being like this innocent, like, what?

W. Curtis Preston:

I just don't understand.

W. Curtis Preston:

Like it's pinging, it's pinging inside your house.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

And my daughter, she wasn't alone.

W. Curtis Preston:

She was with three Marines, but, but.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

But

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That's pretty gutsy.

W. Curtis Preston:

but they weren't, they weren't armed.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

So, so, so she's like, yeah, I, it's just, it's ping.

W. Curtis Preston:

Is there anybody in the house maybe that you could ask that

W. Curtis Preston:

May, maybe they found my phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

So she goes in and she gets the, her son, the woman's son is in the house.

W. Curtis Preston:

The woman's son comes out and it's the bouncer from the bar who

W. Curtis Preston:

helped them look for their phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

And it was like busted.

W. Curtis Preston:

And she got, she got her phone back and I'm like, please don't do that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Please.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

like you'd

W. Curtis Preston:

you know,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

uh, you know, when, when, when, when my brother-in-law

W. Curtis Preston:

found out that, that my daughter had been, you know, in his words had been

W. Curtis Preston:

going, you know, knocking on doors in the hood to look for a stolen phone.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, yeah, maybe she, maybe she was worried about this story.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, somebody, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Anyway, all right, well, um, nice chatting with you, Prasanna.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

As always, Curtis, and yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

We'll figure out some of these issues with face id.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

And also, uh, you know, thanks for listening folks and

W. Curtis Preston:

listening to my silly stories.

W. Curtis Preston:

And be sure to subscribe so that you can restore it all.