Last Samurai Standing begins with a familiar premise. Desperate samurai dispossessed by the restoration of the emperor enter into a deadly game for a life-changing cash prize — all for the entertainment of anonymous elites. Unlike its inspirations Battle Royale and Squid Game, however, Last Samurai Standing’s violence is chaotic, fast-paced, and kinetic, though it hides a careful choreography that makes the series a more electric proposition than its predecessors.
Technology
Reclaim your privacy by disabling your cellphone carrier’s data tracking
We’ve all heard before that our cellphones are listening to us and monitoring our every move. While this has been debunked (or, at least, explained), the fact of the matter is that data tracking is standard practice by the most popular mobile carriers these days.
And still in 2024, even with complaints from users, new tracking methods are continually emerging, making it harder for users to take back control of their data.
So, what do you need to know exactly about how your mobile carrier tracks your data? And how can you reclaim your privacy without having to say goodbye to your mobile carrier altogether?
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Women looking at a phone (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
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What is data tracking, and what do mobile carriers collect?
To start, let’s talk about what “data tracking” actually means. Data tracking is when companies collect information about a user’s online activities, including but not limited to their browsing history, location data, messaging information and app usage.
This data is used directly by the company collecting it or shared with third-party companies to ultimately tailor their advertising to you. (There are other justifications for this, such as “improving services.” But nowadays, targeted advertising is the primary reason, which leads users to feel more and more like their phones are listening in on them.)
Data tracking may look different from one company to the next. When it comes to mobile carriers, they can collect a wide range of information about their users, which is no surprise since, for most of us, our phones are an extension of ourselves. Therefore, it’s important for you to be aware of these practices and actively manage your privacy settings to maintain control over your personal information.
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A woman holding an iPhone (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
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Different ways mobile carriers collect data
Mobile carriers employ a variety of techniques to gather specific data from their users:
T-Mobile
- User behavior profiling: T-Mobile analyzes personal data to predict user behaviors and preferences, which can influence future services and marketing strategies.
- Research support: The carrier shares data to aid public and scientific research initiatives, ensuring that personal identifiers are removed.
- App usage analysis: Tracks the frequency and duration of app usage to gather insights into user preferences and habits.
- Advertising personalization: This process collects information on app usage and demographic details to tailor advertisements more closely to the user’s interests.
Verizon
- Network usage insights: Verizon uses data like web browsing and app usage to offer additional services or upgrades.
- Aggregate consumer insights: Combines user data with external data to generate insights into consumer behaviors and trends.
- Customized user experience: Verizon analyzes the websites and apps users engage with to create a more personalized service experience.
- Marketing optimization: Uses detailed user data to refine and personalize marketing efforts and service offerings.
AT&T
- Browsing and location tracking: AT&T collects detailed records of users’ web browsing and location to customize ads and offers.
- Automated decision-making: They employ algorithms to use collected data to make automated decisions that affect the ads and content presented to the user.
- Demographic and viewing data: Gathers demographic information alongside viewing habits to better understand and segment their user base.
- Identity verification services: AT&T shares certain data with third parties to facilitate identity verification and fraud prevention measures.
Feeling a bit surprised by all of this? Yeah, we are, too.
A person holding a phone (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
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How to turn off data tracking on your device based on your mobile carrier
If you don’t want your mobile carrier to have so much overarching access to your data, there are ways you can stop them. The problem is that most mobile carriers aren’t going to broadcast this information because it’s beneficial for them to maintain this access.
However, that’s why we’re here to help. Managing your data privacy involves understanding the settings available on your mobile device. Below, you will find instructions for disabling data tracking on devices served by the major U.S. carriers – T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T – as well as a general guide for other carriers.
T-Mobile
To adjust privacy settings on a T-Mobile device:
Log into your T-Mobile account.
- Navigate to My Account, then click on Profile.
- Scroll to the bottom and select Privacy and Notifications, then Privacy Dashboard.
- Here, you can toggle off various options:Share data for public and scientific research: Prevents the use of your data for external research projects.Analytics and reporting: Stops the aggregation of your usage data for business reports.Advertising options: Limits personalized ads based on your app usage and other collected data.Profiling and automated decisions: Opt out of data usage for profiling purposes.Do not sell or share my personal information: Ensure your data is not sold or shared externally.
- Share data for public and scientific research: Prevents the use of your data for external research projects.
- Analytics and reporting: Stops the aggregation of your usage data for business reports.
- Advertising options: Limits personalized ads based on your app usage and other collected data.
- Profiling and automated decisions: Opt out of data usage for profiling purposes.
- Do not sell or share my personal information: Ensure your data is not sold or shared externally.
Additionally, T-Mobile offers a separate app to limit data shared with third-party advertisers through the Magenta Advertising Platform.
Verizon
To manage privacy settings on a Verizon device:
- Log into your Verizon account.
- Go to Account, then Account Overview and select Edit Profile and Settings.
- Choose Manage Privacy Settings.
- You can adjust the following:Customer Proprietary Network Info: Opt out to stop Verizon from using your data to market additional services.Business and Marketing Insights: Disable this to prevent the use of your data for creating consumer insights.Custom Experience and Custom Experience Plus: Opt out to stop personalized marketing based on your web and app usage.
- Customer Proprietary Network Info: Opt out to stop Verizon from using your data to market additional services.
- Business and Marketing Insights: Disable this to prevent the use of your data for creating consumer insights.
- Custom Experience and Custom Experience Plus: Opt out to stop personalized marketing based on your web and app usage.
Resetting the Custom Experience settings will also stop Verizon from using previously collected browsing and location data.
AT&T
To disable data tracking on an AT&T device:
- Log into your AT&T account.
- Navigate to Profile, then Privacy Choices.
- AT&T offers four main toggles you can turn off:Personalized Plus: Stops the use of your location and browsing data for personalized ads.Personalized: Disables automated decision-making using your data.Share or sell my personal information: This prevents AT&T from sharing your data for advertising purposes.
- Personalized Plus: Stops the use of your location and browsing data for personalized ads.
- Personalized: Disables automated decision-making using your data.
- Share or sell my personal information: This prevents AT&T from sharing your data for advertising purposes.
It’s recommended that identity verification be kept active for security purposes.
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Other carriers
If you don’t use one of the above mobile carriers, the steps are likely very similar. But if you have any doubts, talk to your mobile carrier directly, perhaps by going into a store or searching online about how to do it for your specific carrier.
- Log into your account through the carrier’s website or app.
- Locate the privacy settings or preferences, which may be under sections labeled as Privacy, Security, or Data Management.
- Review and adjust the settings to limit data tracking as per your preference.
A woman on her phone (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
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Strengthen your privacy with a VPN
While disabling carrier tracking is an important step, using a virtual private network (VPN) adds an extra layer of protection for your mobile data. A VPN encrypts all of your internet traffic and routes it through a secure server, shielding your online activities from prying eyes, including your carrier.
With a trusted VPN service, your carrier won’t be able to see which websites you visit, what you search for or the contents of your communications. Your IP address and location will also be masked. Setting up a VPN on your smartphone is easy and affordable, with many top providers offering mobile apps. Just be sure to choose a no-logs VPN with robust encryption that doesn’t sell your data to third parties. Combining VPN protection with disabling carrier tracking maximizes your privacy on the go. For the best VPN software, see my expert review of the best VPNs for browsing the web privately on your Windows, Mac, Android & iOS devices.
Kurt’s key takeaways
Even as users voice their concerns about their data, mobile carriers are still finding creative arguments to justify what they take and why they take it. It’s more important than ever to take your data into our own hands and utilize these tips to keep your data private as much as possible. Remember, if your data falls into the wrong hands, you have a much higher chance of becoming a victim of a cybercrime.
What do you think about all this data privacy information? Will this information influence how you choose your mobile carrier in the future or how you’ll take control of your data? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.
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Viewers have Junichi Okada to thank for that. As well as starring in and producing Last Samurai Standing, he serves as the series’ action planner. Many will be familiar with the results of an action planner’s work — sometimes called an action director, elsewhere a “coordinator,” and even “choreographer” — though perhaps not what the role entails. In the case of Last Samurai Standing, it’s a role that touches on nearly every aspect of the production, from the story to the action itself.
“I was involved from the script stage, thinking about what kind of action we wanted and how we would present it in the context of this story,” Okada tells The Verge. “If the director [Michihito Fujii] said, ‘I want to shoot this kind of battle scene,’ I would then think through the content and concept, design the scene, and ultimately translate that into script pages.”
The close relationship between the writer and director extends to other departments, too. Though an action planner’s role starts with managing fight scenes and stunt performers, they also liaise with camera, wardrobe, makeup, and even editorial departments to ensure fight scenes cohere with the rest of the production.
Image: Netflix
It’s a role which might appear a natural progression for Okada, who is certified to teach Kali and Jeet Kune Do — a martial art conceived by Bruce Lee — and holds multiple black belts in jiujitsu. Though the roots of his progression into action planning can be traced back further, to 1995 when he became the youngest member of J-pop group V6.
“Dance experience connects directly to creating action,” he says. “[In both] rhythm and control of the body are extremely important.” Joining V6 at the age of 15, that experience has made Okada conscious of how he moves in relation to a camera during choreography, how he is seen within the structure of a shot, and, critical to action planning, how to navigate all of that safely from a young age.
That J-pop stardom also offered avenues into acting, initially in roles you might expect for a young pop star: comic heartthrobs and sitcom sons. But he was steadily able to broaden his output. A starring turn in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Hana followed, as did voice acting in Studio Ghibli’s Tales From Earthsea and From Up on Poppy Hill. A more telling departure was a starring role in 2007’s SP, in which he played a rookie in a police bodyguard unit, for which he trained for several years under shootfighting instructor Yorinaga Nakamura.
“What I care about is whether audiences feel that ‘this man really lives here as a samurai.’”
In the years since, Okada has cemented himself as one of Japan’s most recognizable actors, hopping between action starring roles in The Fable to sweeping period epics like Sekigahara. Those two genres converge in his Last Samurai Standing role of Shujiro, a former Shogunate samurai now reduced to poverty, working through his PTSD and reckoning with his bloodthirsty past in the game. These days, it’s less of a concern that the character butts up against his past idol image, he suggests. “What I care about is whether audiences feel that ‘this man really lives here as a samurai.’”
For Okada’s work on Last Samurai Standing, as both producer and action planner, that involved lacing high-octane but believable action with the respect for history and character studies of the period dramas he loves. “Rather than being 100 percent faithful to historical accuracy,” he adds, “my goal was to focus on entertainment and story, while letting the ‘DNA’ and beauty of Japanese period drama gently float up in the background.”
A focus on what he defines as “‘dō’ — movement,” pure entertainment that “never lets the audience get bored” punctuated — with “‘ma,’” the active emptiness that connects those frenetic moments. Both can be conversations, even if one uses words and another communicates dialogue through sword blows. This is most apparent when Shujiro faces his former comrade Sakura (Yasushi Fuchikami) inside a claustrophobic bank vault that serves as a charnel house for the game’s less fortunate contestants.
“The whole battle is divided into three sequences,” Okada says. The first starts with a moment of almost perfect stillness, a deep breath, before the two launch into battle. “A fight where pride and mutual respect collide,” he says, “and where the speed of the techniques reaches a level that really surprises the audience.” It’s all captured in one, zooming take with fast, tightly choreographed action reminiscent of Donnie Yen and Wu Jing in Kill Zone.
So intense is their duel that both shatter multiple swords. The next phase sees them lash out in a more desperate and brutal manner with whatever weapons they find. Finally, having fought to a weary stalemate, the fight becomes, Okada concludes, “a kind of duel where their stubbornness and will are fully exposed” as they hack at each other with shattered blades and spear fragments.
Image: Netflix
It’s a rhythm that many fights in Last Samurai Standing follow, driven by a string of physical and emotional considerations that form the basis of an action planner’s tool kit: how and why someone fights based on who they are and their environment. Here it is two former samurai in an elegant and terrifyingly fast-paced duel. Elsewhere we see skill matched against brutality, or inexperience against expertise.
“I define a clear concept for each sequence,” Okada says, before he opens those concepts up to the broader team. From there, he might add notes, but in Last Samurai Standing, action is a collaborative affair. “We keep refining,” he says. “It’s a back-and-forth process of shaping the sequence using both the ideas the team brings and the choreography I create myself.”
There is a third factor which Okada believes is the series’ most defining. “If we get to continue the story,” he says, “I’d love to explore how much more we can lean into ‘sei’ — stillness, and bring in even more of a classical period drama feel.”
As much of a triumph of action as Last Samurai Standing is, its quietest moments are the ones that stay with you. The charged looks between Shujiro and Iroha (Kaya Kiyohara) or their shuddering fright when confronted with specters of their past. Most of all, Shujiro watching his young ward, Futaba Katsuki (Yumia Fujisaki), dance before a waterlogged torii as mist hovers. These pauses are what elevate and invigorate the breathless action above spectacle.
The pauses are also emblematic of the balance that Last Samurai Standing strikes between its period setting and pushing the boundaries of action, all to inject new excitement into the genre. “Japan is a country that values tradition and everything it has built up over time. That’s why moments where you try to update things are always difficult,” Okada says. “But right now, we’re in the middle of that transformation.”
That is an evolution that Okada hopes to support through his work, both in front of and behind the camera. If he can create avenues for new generations of talent to carry Japanese media to a broader audience and his team to achieve greater success on a global stage, “that would make me very happy,” he says. “I want to keep doing whatever I can to help make that possible.”
The first season of Last Samurai Standing is streaming on Netflix now, and a second season was just confirmed.
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If your iPhone keeps warning you about low storage, your Messages app may be part of the problem. Photos, videos and documents saved inside your text threads can stack up fast. The good news is that you can clear those big files without erasing entire conversations.
Below, you will find simple steps that work on the latest iOS 26.1. These steps help you clean up storage while keeping your messages right where you want them.
If you haven’t updated to iOS 26.1, go to Settings > General > Software Update to install the latest version.
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‘CLOUD STORAGE FULL’ SCAM STEALS YOUR PHOTOS AND MONEY
An iPhone displays a low-storage alert as large photos, videos and documents saved in Messages fill device space, prompting users to remove files without deleting entire conversations. (Cyberguy.com)
Why clearing attachments helps your iPhone run better
Removing large attachments gives you quick breathing room on your iPhone. It can free up gigabytes in seconds, especially if you text lots of photos or videos. Clearing old files also keeps your message threads tidy and helps your device run more smoothly by reducing the amount of storage your system needs to manage. The best part is that you can clean up everything without losing a single conversation.
How to delete attachments but keep your conversations on iPhone
These quick steps help you clear large files from Messages while keeping every conversation intact.
- Launch the Messages app on your iPhone
- Open the conversation thread that holds the attachments you want to delete.
- Tap on the name of the contact(s) in the text thread.
To the right of Info, click on Photos or Documents; you may need to swipe over other tabs to see these. Photos will also contain videos and GIFs, while documents will contain Word documents, PDFs and other types of files.
- Hold your finger and long-press on a photo, video or document until a menu appears.
- Tap Delete to remove that single file.
Then confirm Delete when asked.
How to delete multiple files on your iPhone at once
To clear out several attachments at once, follow these quick steps on your iPhone.
Deleting attachments in Messages quickly frees space without losing your conversations. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
- Go back to the Photos or Documents tab.
- Tap Edit.
- Click Select documents or Select Photos
- Tap on the photos or documents that you want to remove. You will see a blue checkmark appear in the bottom-right corner.
- Tap the trash icon in the bottom right corner.
Confirm you want to delete the selected attachments by clicking Delete Photos.
These steps work almost the same way on an iPad. After you finish, you will often see an instant boost in available storage.
How to review large attachments in settings and delete them
If you want to clear the biggest files on your device, you can check them from your iPhone’s storage screen and delete them:
- Open Settings
- Tap General
- Choose iPhone Storage
- Tap Messages
- Click Review Large Attachments to see photos, videos and attachments taking up storage in Messages.
- Click Edit.
- Select items to delete by clicking the circle next to the attachment you want to delete. A blue checkmark will appear.
Then, tap the trash can icon in the upper right to delete it.
APPLE RELEASES IOS 26.1 WITH MAJOR SECURITY IMPROVEMENTS AND NEW FEATURES FOR IPHONE USERS
This method gives you a quick overview of what takes up the most space and lets you delete it quickly.
IPhone users can clear large photos, videos and files from Messages using built-in storage tools, helping free space, keep conversations intact and improve device performance. (Cyberguy.com)
Take my quiz: How safe is your online security?
Think your devices and data are truly protected? Take this quick quiz to see where your digital habits stand. From passwords to Wi-Fi settings, you’ll get a personalized breakdown of what you’re doing right and what needs improvement. Take my Quiz here: Cyberguy.com.
Kurt’s key takeaways
Freeing up storage doesn’t have to be confusing. A few quick taps can remove bulky files and keep your conversations intact. With these simple steps, your iPhone stays organized, runs smoothly and is ready for more photos, videos and apps.
What is the one type of attachment that takes up the most space on your iPhone? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com
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The Federal Communications Commission has banned new drones made in foreign countries from being imported into the US unless the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security recommends them. Monday’s action added drones to the FCC’s Covered List, qualifying foreign-made drones and drone parts, like those from DJI, as communications equipment representing “unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons.”
DJI is “disappointed” by today’s action, Adam Welsh, DJI’s head of global policy, says in a statement. “While DJI was not singled out, no information has been released regarding what information was used by the Executive Branch in reaching its determination.” Welsh adds that DJI “remains committed to the U.S. market” and noted that existing products can continue operation as usual. Other items on the FCC’s list include Kaspersky anti-virus software (added in 2024) and telecommunications equipment from Huawei and ZTE (added in 2021).
The FCC says it received a National Security Determination on December 21st from an interagency body saying that “uncrewed aircraft systems” (UAS) and critical UAS components produced in a foreign country could “enable persistent surveillance, data exfiltration, and destructive operations over U.S. territory” and that “U.S. cybersecurity and critical‑infrastructure guidance has repeatedly highlighted how foreign‑manufactured UAS can be used to harvest sensitive data, used to enable remote unauthorized access, or disabled at will via software updates.”
If you already own a drone made outside the US, you will still be able to use it, according to the FCC’s fact sheet. Drones or drone components can be removed from the Covered List if the DoD or DHS “makes a specific determination to the FCC” that it does not pose unacceptable risks.
“Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), also known as drones, offer the potential to enhance public safety as well as cement America’s leadership in global innovation,” FCC chairman Brendan Carr says.
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