I love black-and-white photography. I also adore compact cameras you can always have by your side. So I’m a total mark for the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome, a fixed-lens camera that can’t zoom and can’t record color — at all. It’s a formula that makes the average person ask, “Why?”
Technology
Apple has 90 days to allow app sideloading in Brazil
The judge who issued today’s ruling said that “Apple has already complied with similar obligations in other countries without demonstrating significant impact or irreparable harm to its economic model,” Valor reports.
Brazil’s investigation into Apple began with a complaint filed by Mercado Livre in 2022. In November, Brazil gave Apple 20 days to let developers offer alternative in-app payment options and allow sideloading, but in early December, the injunction was overturned.
The company plans to appeal the ruling, according to a statement shared with The Verge.
“Apple believes in vibrant and competitive markets where innovation can flourish,” spokesperson Fred Sainz says. “We face competition in every segment and jurisdiction where we operate, and our focus is always the trust of our users. We are concerned that the interim measures proposed by CADE would undermine the privacy and security of our users and intend to appeal today’s decision.”
Update, March 6th: Added full statement from Apple.
For obvious reasons, I’ve had Moon on the mind all week. So I was trying to figure out what I should recommend this week that would thematically fit. Brian Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks is incredible, and if you haven’t listened to it, go do that now. But it also seemed a bit on the nose. Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool also came to mind. But it also felt a bit obvious. Then I remembered Kate NV’s Room for the Moon, a record I had on repeat in 2020.
Russian artist Kate Shilonosova chases ideas across 11 tracks inspired by Russian and Japanese pop from the ‘70s and ‘80s, as well as children’s movies. This obviously leads Room for the Moon to indulge its most whimsical impulses. It’s a fairytale rendered in snappy Talking Heads-esque bass, proggy synths, and reverbed drum machines.
The opener “Not Not Not” is almost goofy, its chaotic melodies constantly dancing around each other in a perpetually disorienting way. It lurches forward asymetrically, grooving like a flat tire. The instrumental “Da Na” follows, drawing on a familiar yet slightly uncanny palette of sounds. The clarinet (?) drifts in and out of dissonance as if drunk. The tuned percussion elements flit around what might be a kenari seed shell shaker or someone running their fingers over the tines of a comb. It’s truly impossible to tell, and both seem as likely as the other.
“Sayonara (Full Moon Version)” is the fantastical daydream counterpart to Oingo Boingo’s nightmare new wave theatrics. The least strange track on the record is probably “Plans,” which fully embraces 80s dance pop aesthetics. But even that song finds room for a minute-long instrumental passage featuring a bleating, almost atonal saxophone solo.
While the sounds are strange, uneasy, and almost queasy at times, the songs are light and fantastical. Despite not understanding the lyrics, which are mostly in Russian, it’s impossible not to get a sense of hope from them. Kate NV’s Room for the Moon is not a somber lunar lullaby, but the pleasant dreams of an innocent mind.
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The FBI has just released its latest annual internet crime report, and the numbers are staggering: Americans filed 1,008,597 complaints with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) last year, with losses nearing $20.9 billion.
Buried in the new data is an eerily familiar trend getting more expensive for older adults. Identity theft complaints involving Americans 60 and older totaled 5,359 complaints and $48.5 million in reported losses in 2025, a steep jump from the year before.
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DO YOU KNOW THE TRUE COST OF IDENTITY THEFT?
Identity theft tied to major data broker breaches has cost Americans more than $20 billion over the past decade, according to a Senate report analyzing hundreds of millions of exposed records. (Sara Diggins/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
Seniors account for a disproportionate share of losses
The report shows a clear fault line by age. Americans 60 and older filed more than 200,000 complaints in 2025, with reported losses reaching $7.7 billion, the highest total of any age group. By comparison, people in their 30s and 40s submitted more complaints overall, but reported lower total losses. Complaints from older adults more often involve bank accounts, retirement funds, and investment portfolios, where a single identity fraud incident can result in a large withdrawal or transfer.
IC3 data is based on self-reported complaints submitted by victims and businesses throughout the year. Each report includes details such as transaction type, payment method, and estimated losses. The FBI aggregates these submissions to identify where money is moving and which groups are being affected.
Identity theft appears within this data as one of several fraud types. Identity theft prompts fewer complaints than categories such as investment or tech support scams. In many cases, it’s used to get access to existing accounts, where stolen personal details can pass verification checks and move funds.
Identity theft losses trail other fraud types
Investment scams led all categories in 2025, with reported losses of more than $4.5 billion. Business email compromise followed, with losses exceeding $2.9 billion, while tech support scams accounted for more than $1 billion. These categories make up a large share of the $7.7 billion in total losses mentioned earlier.
Identity theft sits below those totals, though it remains part of how some of these cases unfold. Among victims age 60 and older, identity theft complaints added up to $48.5 million in reported losses last year. That’s a roughly 70% increase from 2024.
Other federal data shows how common identity theft remains. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) receives more than a million identity theft reports each year, placing it among the most frequently reported consumer issues, even as total losses remain lower than other fraud types.
5 MYTHS ABOUT IDENTITY THEFT THAT PUT YOUR DATA AT RISK
How are victims getting scammed?
Complaints from older Americans span a wide range of fraud types, with a few categories appearing consistently across IC3 reports.
- High-volume scams: The most frequently reported complaints include phishing and spoofing, tech support scams, and government impersonation, all of which involve direct contact through phone calls, emails, or online messages. Other commonly reported cases include non-payment or non-delivery scams, extortion, and personal data breaches, each contributing to overall complaint volume among victims aged 60 and older.
- High-loss scams: The categories tied to the largest losses are different. Investment scams, business email compromises, and confidence or romance scams account for a significant share of reported losses, even with fewer complaints.
- New categories also appear in the 2025 data. AI-related scams are included for the first time, with thousands of complaints and substantial reported losses among older victims. Charity fraud is also listed as a newly reported fraud type for this group.
An identity theft victim in Albany, New York, looks over documents he’s gathered. Victims of identity theft frequently spend weeks disputing fraudulent accounts, contacting lenders and restoring their credit reports after stolen data is misused. (John Carl D’Annibale/Albany Times Union via Getty Images)
How to avoid these scams
With losses climbing, knowing how these scams work and how to spot them early can make all the difference.
1) Limit how personal information is shared
Be cautious when asked for Social Security numbers or account credentials. Government agencies, banks, and tech companies do not request this information through unsolicited calls, emails, or messages.
2) Pause before sending money
Scams that lead to the largest losses often involve urgency. Requests to move money quickly – especially through wire transfers, cryptocurrency, or gift cards – should be treated with caution. Taking time to verify the request can prevent large losses.
3) Verify contacts independently
If a message claims to be from a bank or government agency, use a known phone number or official website to confirm. Do not rely on contact details provided in the message itself.
4) Watch for unusual account activity
Regularly review bank and investment accounts for unfamiliar transactions. Small or unexpected changes can be an early sign of unwanted access.
5) Use account protections where available
Enable two-factor authentication and account alerts where possible. These tools can help flag or block unauthorized access attempts.
Monitoring can help catch identity misuse earlier
When identity theft happens, the first sign could be a new account or a transaction the account holder didn’t authorize. Credit monitoring and identity protection services can track activity across credit files and financial accounts, alerting users when new accounts are opened or when personal information appears in known data breaches.
That can give victims a window to act, such as freezing credit, locking accounts, or disputing fraudulent activity, before they lose money. Many services also offer identity theft insurance and fraud resolution support, helping cover certain losses and guiding victims through the recovery process.
If fraud does happen, that support can include working directly with banks, credit bureaus, and creditors to restore accounts and remove fraudulent activity.
For older Americans, where accounts often hold larger balances, timing can mean the difference between a small loss and a much larger one, and how quickly accounts are restored.
MICROSOFT ‘IMPORTANT MAIL’ EMAIL IS A SCAM: HOW TO SPOT IT
No service can prevent every kind of identity theft. However, monitoring tools and guided recovery support can make it easier to detect suspicious activity early and respond quickly.
See my tips and best picks on Best Identity Theft Protection at Cyberguy.com
Kurt’s key takeaways
OpenAI joins the Global Anti-Scam Alliance as bad actors use AI to scam victims out of money and data. (Halfpoint/Getty Images)
The numbers tell a clear story. While identity theft may not top the list of total losses, it plays a critical role in how many of the biggest scams succeed. For older Americans, the stakes are higher because the accounts being targeted often hold decades of savings. What stands out isn’t just the increase in complaints. It’s how fraud is evolving. Scammers are combining tactics, using identity theft to unlock accounts, then moving money through investment scams, impersonation schemes or social engineering attacks. Once they get in, the damage can escalate quickly. The takeaway is simple. Slowing down, verifying requests and adding basic protections like alerts and two-factor authentication can make a real difference. Catching suspicious activity early often determines whether a loss stays small or becomes life-changing.
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If scammers only need one piece of your personal information to get started, how confident are you that yours isn’t already out there? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com
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Copyright 2026 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.
I’ve tested the GR IV Monochrome for over a month, taking it with me everywhere and photographing everything. Let me explain how this pricey little point-and-shoot is likely to go down as one of my all-time-favorite cameras.
$2197
The Good
- Excellent black-and-white image quality
- Everything great about the standard GR IV: sharp lens, small size, solid focusing
- Fantastic high-ISO noise performance
- Limiting yourself to black and white has creative benefits
The Bad
- Expensive for a Ricoh GR
- Face / eye tracking autofocus pales in comparison to the bigger camera brands
- Short battery life (about 200-ish shots)
Ricoh GRs are some of the most unassuming, no-frills cameras around, and they have been since their conception in the film days. In the digital era, they’re pocket-size point-and-shoots with a large APS-C sensor permanently attached to a fixed focal length lens. If you’re familiar with Fujifilm’s popular X100 line, it’s like trimming one of those down to the bare minimum — that means no viewfinder and no fancy aperture ring. The X100 and other coveted street cameras like Leicas offer vintage-style shooting and double as lifestyle accessories or shoulder-carried jewelry (with prices to match). But a Ricoh GR is purely a shooter’s camera, with unabashedly modern methods of being used. Atop the camera is a typical mode dial, with customizable user presets, not an old-timey shutter speed dial.
The GR IV Monochrome takes last year’s Ricoh GR IV, strips out the color filter from the sensor, and replaces its built-in ND filter with a red filter (for one-click contrast adjustment purely using optics). Functionally, the alteration to the sensor gives the GR Monochrome an elevated ISO range of 160 to 409,600 and makes it better in low-light shooting (because color noise looks worse at high ISO than pure luminance grain). It maintains the upgrades established with the GR IV: improved autofocusing for its 28mm-equivalent f/2.8 lens, a 26-megapixel APS-C sensor, and 53GB of internal storage (supported by a microSD card slot).
1/15The $120 Ricoh GF-2 add-on flash is a great addition for the camera. It’s best for close-up subjects, but it creates a nice high-key look in black and white.
Using the GR IV Monochrome feels just like the standard GR IV, with key functions that help it thrive in impromptu street-style shooting. It powers on and is ready to shoot in less than one second, and at any moment you can quickly full-press the shutter to forgo autofocusing and take a shot at a preset focus distance. Ricoh calls this Snap Focus, and it allows you to easily shoot from the hip with zone focusing — a staple of street photographers. The GR is all about spontaneity. Its autofocus system has face and eye detection, but it’s just a serviceable helper. The main way to use the GR is with single-point focusing and quickly moving it around the touchscreen. Many hardcore photographers will loathe its lack of an electronic viewfinder, but I’ve come to terms with its forgoing one for the sake of size.
But being forced into a black-and-white view of the world through this camera’s LCD is where the real magic happens. Any digital camera can be set to black-and-white mode, but not having the choice pushes you to look more intently at light and tonality. I pay extra attention to my compositions and seek out textures and tones I might ignore when shooting color. I know the camera can’t see color, so I mentally adjust my eye and my creativity to match — knowing there’s no bailout or reverting back to color in post. A more disciplined shooter may not feel they need all that, but I’ve shot enough on the GR IV Monochrome, other black-and-white-only cameras, and film cameras to know that I’m feasting when working with some limitations.
1/23
That’s the same ethos that drives people to go back to analog photography and digicams, or use toy-like cameras, but the GR IV Monochrome also unlocks the ability to shoot at extravagantly high ISOs in just about any light. The f/2.8 maximum aperture of the GR’s lens isn’t as fast as the f/1.7 and f/2 lenses of the Leica Q and Fujifilm X100 cameras of the world, but it’s fast enough when you barely notice much noise until ISO 25,600 and even a six-digit ISO is perfectly usable (even before denoising in post-processing software).
The other big way the GR IV sets itself apart from its Leica and Fujifilm competitors is that this camera is actually pocketable. I have ventured out of the house many times with my personal Leica Q2 slung over my shoulder, sans camera bag, ready to go on a little photo adventure or capture memories with family or friends. But it’s even easier to drop a Ricoh GR into a purse, diaper bag, or even a jacket / rear pants pocket. It turns any outing or errand into an opportunity to dabble in your creativity. These are snapshot-y moments that would usually be reserved for the camera you always have with you: your phone. But with the GR IV Monochrome, I feel more empowered and motivated to create something special and purposeful.
1/31
Am I creating art at the grocery store that’s worthy of the white walls of a Chelsea gallery? No. But seeing my own personal world through a black-and-white lens of such quality is enchanting. And there’s nothing wrong with feeling a little “artsy” sometimes, even if you’re just auditioning for the art critic in your own head.
The mundanity of our humdrum lives feels elevated when given the timeless quality of black and white. Lately, it’s felt even more authentic to me and worthy of appreciation, since generative AI is making so much of our world feel fake. It’s now commonplace to doubt everything we see as a possible deepfake or a dubious con — even from our own government. Black-and-white imagery still feels precious and real, at least as long as the AI-obsessed tech platforms don’t focus their Eye of Sauron of Enshittification on this niche of the medium.
To be fair, cameras that can’t shoot color aren’t new. Leica has been making its Monochrom variants of Q and M cameras for nearly 14 years. But priced at nearly $8,000 to $11,000 and up, they’re mostly unattainable to an average enthusiast. At $2,199.95, the GR IV Monochrome isn’t cheap but it’s much more grounded and feasible to own one without it being your only possession. And frankly, it’s less hoity-toity and snobbish when your second, third, or fourth camera — the “artsy” one — doesn’t cost more than a used car.
1/34
I’d be lying if I said that’s not part of why I dig the GR IV Monochrome so much. I’d love to one day personally own a Leica Monochrom of some sort, but it’s hard not to opt for the catch-all color camera when you’re spending that kind of money (hence why I own a Leica Q2 and not a Q2 Monochrom). But since my brain was broken by Leica and pro-level mirrorless system prices years ago, I can simultaneously look at the GR IV Monochrome and think, “$2,200? That’s not bad,” and also “GR cameras used to be like 900 bucks — what gives?”
It’s the everyday companion status of the GR IV Monochrome that makes it extra-extra special. With this little guy in your pocket, with that kind of image quality and light gathering potential, it feels like a permission slip to capture a sense of authentic wonder wherever you go. The standard GR IV is the logical version to get, allowing you to capture the vibrancy of your world. But the more hardcore GR IV Monochrome brings the romance, gritty realism, and magic.
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
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