Jesse Mullighan (00:00):
RNZ National. It's time for Tech. Tuesday I'm joined by Dan Watson from Vertek IT Services. Hey Dan.
Daniel Watson (00:07):
Hey, good day, Jesse.
Jesse Mullighan (00:08):
Feels okay. Just since we chatted, my big news is I bought myself a laptop. Very, very exciting for me. I've been using the same old laptop for years and years and years, so I took the leap and oh man, when you upgrade or when you get something that's new and you've been using something that's 15 years old, you really appreciate the speed and the convenience and all that little things that have changed
Daniel Watson (00:34):
And it's always better to do it before the old one dies.
Jesse Mullighan (00:39):
Right.
Daniel Watson (00:39):
I can't emphasize that enough. It's so much less hassle if you can easily copy it from one to the other. It might be slow, but it's a hell of bit faster than dealing with something that is dead and you have to do a data recovery.
Jesse Mullighan (00:52):
Yeah. Okay. Well that's a good tip for anyone out there. I was actually biking home the other day on Great North Road Big Road, and I saw in the bus lane a laptop sitting there in a laptop sleeve, and so I thought I was going to get run over by a bus, so I picked it up and took it home and managed to work out who it was, found him on LinkedIn and he picked it up the next day. I was very grateful. He put it on the roof of his car and driven home and only realized when he got home that the laptop was missing.
Daniel Watson (01:18):
Nice. Still functional.
Jesse Mullighan (01:20):
Yeah, totally functional. He had one of those real super spongy heavy duty covers for it, and you probably thought when I bought it, oh, this is over the top. But yeah, it's probably just saving a couple of grand.
Daniel Watson (01:32):
No, absolutely. And you've done your good deed for the day and that always feels
Jesse Mullighan (01:36):
Good. No, it feels great. I thought it might be interesting to ask you about buying secondhand tech. I'm sort of in line for a secondhand phone at the moment, although you always kind of think twice about buying it off trade me, because even if they've got a good reputation, you're like, am I really going to be able to hold this person to account if it dies in three months time? Do you have any thoughts about buying secondhand tech?
Daniel Watson (01:59):
Yes, so I mean, realistically, there's not much you can do about buying secondhand tech off Trade me if it fails to perform a later stage or it is just not quite what you're expecting. The Consumer Guarantees Act only really works for if you're buying from the business. So if it's a private sale, caveat mTOR. What I would do though is because there are little scams out there where they're copying legitimate advertisements and then reposting them so it look all good, they might scrub out the little digital watermark on the photo. So when you're in that kind of process, ask a question, ask him to post a photo of the serial number if there is one, because then you can also use that to do a bit of a warranty lookup on the device. So if it's like a laptop or something, and if it's a name brand, generally you can get serial number and go to the manufacturer's website, look it up, and then you can actually see how old it was, when was it manufactured. That gives you an idea. I probably wouldn't buy anything that's older than five years old that's secondhand at all because the batteries are probably, unless you know that you are going to use it pretty much as in always plugged in workstation, something's likely to fail, much more likely to fail after five years. You can get warranties on them up to about three years and after that any use you get out of it after that is good bonus. But I wouldn't expect it.
Jesse Mullighan (03:35):
We actually just replaced the battery on my daughter's laptop that was a hand me down from me for school and the guy was quite surprised that we'd gone this long without changing it. Is that just something that you've got to build into your plans and the lifespan of your laptop?
Daniel Watson (03:51):
Yes, and not every model has user replaceable parts. Generally the smaller, the thinner, the more expensive ones, the less likely they're going to have things that you can swap out. So do a little bit of research. That's another reason why you get willing to get the product number and serial number off it because then you can go check on the upgrade sites and see if they have an upgrade path for, because you, I've had laptops that I've ran for seven years because I bought a really high end one and then when I got to about three or five years old, I went, oh, okay, I'll upgrade the hard drive. I'll double the ram. And it kept going, that's fine. It was a good solid unit. If it's at the cheaper end of the market in the first place, I would lower your expectations. Interesting. Unfortunately, tech is a bit more disposable at that point. I hate it, but that's just the way the cookies crumbling.
Jesse Mullighan (04:47):
Got to say, I'm very pleased to be back in the PC universe after flirting with the dark side for a few years. I think I'm probably just about the only person in media who's gone from a MacBook back to pc, but it just makes me feel more comfortable. I think my dad used to have a little PC business back in Hamilton and I was sort of milk fed on dos. So it feels good to be back with a computer that you can actually do a bit of it yourself and maybe give it a refurb or an upgrade down the track if it needs it.
Daniel Watson (05:17):
Yeah, there's nothing like being able to right click.
Jesse Mullighan (05:19):
Yeah. Tell me about it. Okay. You've got something else that you've spotted this week you wanted to chat about?
Daniel Watson (05:26):
Oh yeah. There was a spade of sextortion scams that was mentioned in the media around deed and secondary schools, and also one of my clients had one pop in, and there's different types of sextortion scams out there. They're almost always quite disconcerting and some of them are a lot more vicious than others. Have you ever encountered any of those, Jesse?
Jesse Mullighan (05:50):
No, I don't. And I dunno the story you're referring to either I see there's a headline from a week or so ago. What does it involve?
Daniel Watson (05:57):
Oh, the one down Edin. It's the type of scam where students are being targeted by people pretending to be, I know teenagers of their age and at that age people are experimenting and checking things out so they're vulnerable to being coerced into sending risque photos. That would be highly embarrassing. And then they get blackmailed into posting, sending more of those. And then there's the demand, either send money or what have you right now that can come straight out as bullying. It can come from chat sessions and generally people trying to get them from one platform where there's initiation, which could be kind of like a very generic place and then onto a different platform where they can just be straight. Unfortunately, there's been some really high profile cases where the bullying has been so enormous, not New Zealand that I've seen, but the overseas examples of lead to suicides, that kind of stuff. And I think it's quite concerning
Jesse Mullighan (07:09):
From what I understand, that sometimes the initial photo or image that's been sent by the young person isn't particularly compromising, but then the person will doctor it and turn it into something and then use that to threaten them, which is pretty awful. The idea of the young person feeling like they are desperate and can't risk telling someone the situation they're in, it's horrible. So I guess the more you can talk about it and let people know what's going on, the better.
Daniel Watson (07:37):
And it's worth having those conversations with your kids when they are young. As soon as they get a phone, you need to be having these conversations. You don't know when it's going to happen and they may never tell you about it. But if you're proactive about having these kind of conversations of what's appropriate online and what's not appropriate, they don't know they're encountering everything for the first time. Everything we know about keeping ourselves safe online has been developed as we've matured through the evolving technologies that are out there. So we need to remember that our children are vulnerable and we have to show them how the good sides and the bad sides of the world and how to keep themselves safe and that they're able to come and talk to about this kind of thing so that they don't get stuck in a black hole where they dunno where to turn because that can be extremely damaging. And as you said, generative AI is now taking something that might be relatively innocent and then making it worse. So it's every technology can be used for good and for Ill.
Jesse Mullighan (08:49):
Thanks, Dan. Great reminder, and people can do their own research on some of those scams online. RNZ, I think nine nine covered it about a week ago. If you'd looked up the word sextortion on the RNZ website, you'd find it. Nice to chat to you sir. Have a great week. You Nice. Welcome and we'll catch up with you next time.
Daniel Watson (09:09):
Alright, Cheerio then.