Thoughts Medley 27 Mar 24: Privacy on iPhones and The Grand European Tour

by Tony Medley

Here are some ways to manage your privacy on your iPhone. Navigation on iPhones can be complex, so these are just a few issues to help you:

1. Opt out of location-based functionality: Settings>Privacy & Security>Location Services>News; then turn it off
2. Disable Siri suggestions of stories, channels, and topics: Settings>News>Siri & Search; turn off
3. Turning off iCloud for Apple News: Settings>[your name]>iCloud; then tap to turn off news
4. Update notification preferences: Settings>Notifications>News.
5. Disable personalized ads: Settings>Privacy & Security>Apple Advertising; then tap to turn off Personalized Ads
6. Face ID Turn on or off: Settings>Face ID & Passcode, enter your passcode, then tap Reset Face ID; that will delete Face ID data.

Because my columns have a link that allows people to sign up, I occasionally get subscribers I don’t know. One email address was unfamiliar, and the subscriber was a faithful reader, so I sent the person a friendly email to inquire about them. Today I received a reply. She identified herself as the former Anne Stambaugh (now Satterthwaite). She was on The Kneller Tour of Europe that I took after graduating from college.

I have kept in touch with her close friend, Janet Stack, all these years. Janet was from Old Greenwich, Connecticut and when I was in law school in Charlottesville, I went up to see her and Anne a time or two. Serendipitously, Janet and her husband ended up living in Charlottesville. Anne said that Janet suggested Anne sign up for my articles, and she has been reading them for a while without ever contacting me, so I’m glad I contacted her. They were both delightful friends throughout our trip.

While I’m on it, The Kneller Tour was amazing. Dr. George Kneller (a professor at UCLA who has a campus building named after him) conducted this tour. It wasn’t just for UCLA students. He took students from all over the U.S. and Canada. In fact, there was only one other UCLA student in my group, Bruce Upman.

We were on the 19^th annual tour. It was so popular that he had three separate groups, each a few days behind the other, of around 30 students each. We went from June 26-August 26, 60 days. We stayed in the best hotels, like The Negresco in Nice, The Excelsior in Rome, The Danieli in Venice. In addition to the regulars of Paris, London, and Rome, we also went behind The Iron Curtain, Warsaw, Budapest, Leningrad, and Moscow. We were in Berlin a week before they started building the infamous wall.

My aunt, Delrose Sieber, gave this trip to my cousin, Judy Dieste, and me because we were the first in the family to graduate from college. The cost was $1750 for me and $2050 for my cousin. The men paid less because we helped carry luggage and other things. A year later my mother took a similar European tour staying in many of the same deluxe hotels, but it was only six weeks and cost more than $4,000 and it was in the spring. Dr. Kneller’s trip was the height of the tourist season when hotel prices were at their peak. I don’t know how he did it, not just first class, but deluxe all the way. 

Below are two pictures of Anne and me in Switzerland along with Bruce Payne from Northwestern, where Anne and Janet were also students. Janet took the pictures.

Ah, yes, those were the days, my friend; we thought they'd never end.