Your phone is a spying machine
It has a camera and a microphone. They can both be turned on remotely and send feeds to someone somewhere.
They can also forward your emails and texts.
If you’re living in the wrong place (e.g. Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt, etc.) or plotting dangerous things, I’d be worried.
What we have to worry about is stuff like this:
This is so patently fraudulent and so bleeding obvious that you wonder that people are still falling for it.
But they are.
In short, don’t click on anything — messages, attachments, lottery bonuses, links to web sites — without checking.
Check. Check. Check.
And the reasons? Friends’ businesses have suffered ransomware. Friends have had money lifted from their “secure” bank accounts. Large amounts of money. One lady lost $20,000.
Today is a good day to change all your passwords, and get two factor identification implemented. Most banks and online brokers will give you two factor ID — if you insist.
How to “travel” at your desktop
I have covid cabin fever. I desperately want to go somewhere fun. But many of the places I’d love to visit (again — I travelled extensively in the mid-1960s — are no longer safe. For example, China, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, South Africa, India, Nepal, Iran and now all of Europe and Australia because of covid.
So, I sit at my desk and flip through photos which CondeNast Traveler sends. The latest, the national parks. Click here.
My favorite, Yosemite:
This is what left of Eleanor’s first teeth
Her mother Anne will die when she sees her daughter’s crooked teeth on public display.
As my grandchild, she’s actually extraordinarily beautiful. The teeth just add a little “accessory” fashion.
The big one is her first second tooth.
I thought of Smile Direct (SDC). But their stock has done awfully in the past two years. So much for that idea.
Nvidia split four for one and fell. It’s been up a lot.
Oil just hit a seven month low because the producers agreed to boost their production. I hate stuff you drag out of the ground. Easy.
A friend had an interesting idea. Buy the oil companies PSX and XOM because of their high yield.
Here’s my email back to him yesterday:
+ PSX yields 4.83%, but today it fell 5.28%
+ XOM yields 6.07%, but today it tell 3.44%
Our stocks are up today — more than we “lost” yesterday.
Bitcoin is not doing its swansong. But it’s had better weeks. Cramer says he’ll get back in when it hits $12,000. Right now it’s $29,600. I haven’t “invested” in crypto. I’ve been aghast at the size of the fees that places like Coinbase and Grayscale charge.
If you want the simplest investment strategy: Buy VGT, which is Vanguard’s technology ETF. Every month buy more of it — irrespective of the price. The strategy is called Dollar Cost Averaging. Matt Wood, the world’s best insurance broker, taught me that. (Want to use him? He’s in Chatham, NY.)
Thoughts for today
+ My doctor asked if anyone in my family suffered from mental illness. I said, “No, we all seem to enjoy it.”
+ I thought the dryer made my clothes shrink. Turns out it was the refrigerator.
+ Camping: where you spend a small fortune to live like a homeless person.
+ I’m a multitasker. I can listen, ignore and forget all at the same time!
+ At my funeral, take the bouquet from my coffin and throw it into the crowd to see who ‘s next. That’ll freak them.
+ People who wonder if the glass is half empty or half full miss the point. The glass is refillable.
I’ll be back tomorrow, if I don’t get hit by a school bus.
Where I am, there are no city buses. It’s a pleasure.
–– Harry Newton
