The Ryoko Scam is Back (and Worse?) - Krazy Ken’s Tech Talk

The Ryoko Scam is Back (and Worse?) - Krazy Ken’s Tech Talk

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- The Muama Ryoko is back, and the ads are popping up everywhere, but this time, are the claims better and less scammy than before? Do we maybe have a redemption arc on our hands? Let's find out. (upbeat music) Hey everyone, how are you all doing? If you're new here, welcome. My name is Krazy Ken, and the original Muama Ryoko is a product I debunked in an episode 3 1/2 years ago. No, again, unfortunately not Ryuko from "Kill la Kill", but Ryoko. There's been some interesting developments in the last 3 1/2 years, and just within the last several months, I've received tons of submissions asking me to look into a product named Ryoko Pro.

So here I am investigating. But before we dive into the new stuff, let's recap what happened last time. In my original episode, I debunked an ad and website which sold a Wi-Fi hotspot device named Muama Ryoko. The advertisers claimed this device was invented by two guys who quit their job at a large cell phone carrier.

They were mad about the company tricking customers into expensive cell phone contracts by hiding free Wi-Fi hotspots. These two rebels came together and invented Muama Ryoko, a device which creates a Wi-Fi network using 4G LTE, and you can use it anytime, anywhere with no limits and no contract. On top of the fake backstory and BS claims, the advertisers were also very inconsistent with their network speeds, and despite Muama positioning the Ryoko as some sort of revolutionary device, in the episode, I also talked about hotspot technology and how it's been around for years.

Heck, even your smartphone has hotspot features built in. So this isn't anything that special. Quick recap. A mobile hotspot device receives a cellular signal and rebroadcasts it as Wi-Fi so non-cellular devices can connect to the internet through said hotspot. This is helpful if you're in a location with no Wi-Fi access. Overall, the scam was less about the product itself, which was actually kind of okay.

It was more about the way it was marketed. The Ryoko was drowning in false claims, particularly regarding no limits and no hidden fees because in reality, there was no unlimited data plan offered for this device, and I'd argue that there were hidden fees because you don't get hit with the data plan upsell until after you put in your personal information and hit the buy button. You only get 500 megabytes included, then you have to pay for more. Maybe they were implying no hidden roaming fees, but they weren't very clear. I would still say it's misleading.

Deceiving marketing aside, the product actually arrived when I ordered it, so they didn't just take my money and run. And it worked fine. I couldn't test the 150 megabits per second speed claim, but that was merely a limit of my cell service in my location. At least that's what I thought originally. I have since discovered some more variables which could have contributed to the slow speeds, and I'll talk about those soon.

In short, the product was good, but the claims were misleading and arguably outright lies. But all of that was 3 1/2 years ago. Things have changed. The Ryoko Pro is now on the market, and maybe Muama and their advertising team can redeem themselves. Hey, I'm a believer in second chances, so let's see what they've been up to. There's two video ads I have seen for the Ryoko Pro, both from Ryoko's Facebook: a long ad and a short ad.

The short ad upfront says there's a monthly cost to get internet access. Okay, that's an improvement. I appreciate the honesty. As for the rest of the ad, the production value isn't janky and the claims are reasonable. The only claim I challenge is connect any device anywhere because there are some technical limitations with that, which we will discuss. Overall, the short ad is pretty good.

The longer ad, on the other hand, it's a problem. The long ad starts by saying there's no such thing as no internet connection, and it's an artificially created problem so internet providers can pocket cash from roaming fees, and a former telecommunications engineer presented a groundbreaking invention that allows you to go online anywhere in the world without contracts or hidden fees. Ryoko is a high speed device with an eight hour battery, it works in over 110 countries, and it can block ads and phishing scams. Yeah (laughs), we wouldn't wanna fall for a scam now, would we? And the Wi-Fi transmitter is so powerful, it can work in the most remote areas. Oh, and there's no data usage charges. And be careful internet providers, oh, they're coming to eat your lunch.

This device threatens to destroy your entire industry. The ad then circles back to this Richard character, an engineer and former cable internet employee. He learned that in 2010, Congress passed a law which stops internet providers from encrypting their signals. The internet signal was made public and access was granted to everyone. Internet providers fought against this, and because of that, Wi-Fi prices have been going up 5.8% every year. This is when Richard cracked the ISP's encryption method with a music synthesizer, I guess, and ta-da, Ryoko was born.

Oh, and now the ISPs are mad. Oh, they're threatening him. But don't worry, a team is helping Richard fight against the greedy ISPs and get Ryoko on the market. And apparently Ryoko has sold over 1,000,000 devices since it's launched last year. But hurry, Ryoko's website could be closed soon.

So buy now. And thankfully, there's a 70% discount only for the viewers of this ad. Oh man, this ad was four minutes and 32 seconds of pain.

Why do I do this to myself? Oh yeah, because I love it. You probably saw at least one thing wrong with this ad, right? So let's have some fun and break it down. There's a huge problem right at the beginning of the ad where it claims having no internet connection is an artificially created problem so internet providers can pocket cash from roaming fees.

Okay, so roaming fees typically apply to a smartphone, not the other devices they showed in this ad. And it certainly doesn't apply to cable internet. Roaming fees typically only apply to international travel, and that's if your data plan doesn't have other countries included in it. But if you're planning to travel internationally, generally it's a good idea to plan ahead and get a data plan and SIM card or eSIM for the region you're traveling to.

Or get a global one that covers many countries. The next problem is the fake backstory. This so-called Richard character is actually British scientist and engineer Chris Toumazou. And this footage is from a Hyperraum documentary. Stealing someone else's footage to make false claims to sell your product? Ooh, I have to punish you.

This proves that the backstory is fake, but I'm not gonna stop there. We can further prove that the story is fake because 3 1/2 years ago, Muama's advertisers told the story of two completely different people inventing the Ryoko. And there's no disclaimers throughout the ads saying these are paid actors or this is a reenactment. Nothing.

The timeline also doesn't make sense. This newer ad said the Ryoko was created about a year ago, but we clearly saw the Ryoko on sale 3 1/2 years ago during the last investigation. All right, say it with me. More inconsistencies equals more red flags.

By the way, special thanks to the folks who helped me identify this source video. It was a huge help. Normally I'd use Pixel Peeper 3000 for this stuff, but I decided to give her a vacation. Translated, it means she's been stuck on the Windows update screen for the last three days. The next issue is about the technical claims.

The battery life and speed claims are not unreasonable, and we will test them once the product arrives. But there is one glaring issue I need to address now. The advertisers claim the Wi-Fi transmitter is so powerful that it can work in the most remote areas. If you are in a remote area, and you desperately need that Wi-Fi connection, the transmitting power of your hotspot is the least of your concerns. The distance between the hotspot and your laptop, tablet, et cetera, is usually not that big.

So the Wi-Fi transmitter power is often a non-issue. What's more important is the receiving antenna inside the hotspot or outside the hotspot if it's an external antenna and the receiver itself. How good are those components at picking up and processing a signal? And more importantly, how good is the cellular infrastructure around you? Similar to a smartphone, the operating system on your hotspot is constantly communicating with the hotspot's antennas to assess signals in the area using a variety of criteria such as RSRQ, reference signal received quality. Depending on the criteria, the signal strength is measured in decibels or decibel-milliwatts. And if the strength falls below a certain threshold, the signal is lost.

Ultimately, you can have the most kick butt hotspot money can buy, but if there's no cellular reception within range, you're not connecting to the internet. It takes two to tango. I may sound like I'm splitting hairs, but this is why I challenged the connect anywhere claim in the first ad.

But to give the second ad credit, at least they said almost anywhere. And the final issues I have with this ad are the decryption claims. The ad talks about Congress passing a new law in 2010 that stops internet providers from encrypting their signals, implying people now couldn't gain access to them. Sounds like somebody never watched "Schoolhouse Rock."

You know, "I'm Just a Bill"? Congress doesn't pass laws. They pass bills which then move to the Senate, and then further down the line, those bills can be signed into law by the president. That aside, this ad might be mixing a half truth with a half lie. Maybe it's vaguely referring to net neutrality policies, which, for example, prohibit ISPs from throttling speeds while users try to access certain content. But net neutrality isn't some magic wand that suddenly makes internet access available to everyone for free. ISPs still need to make money to operate.

And the ad also says the internet signal was made public, as access to it was granted to everyone. But there is no singular internet signal. The internet is a massive and complex aggregation of network hardware. It's not just one magical line that provides internet access to everyone. So saying the internet signal was decrypted and everyone now has access to it is an insane claim that never happened.

But then the ad contradicts itself because it talks about the prices for Wi-Fi rising by 5.8% every year. But you just said the signal was decrypted and everyone had access to it. So why is the rising cost a problem if everyone already has it? Most of this ad is just complete nonsense.

But we're just getting started. Coming up next, we'll examine Ryoko's web presence. But right now, I need to talk about coding because coding is what makes the tech world go round, right? And TripleTen will help you learn how to code.

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And use my code computerclan for 30% off all of TripleTen's programs. All right, let's take a look at Ryoko's web presence. Before I dove into this investigation and inspected the main website, I coincidentally received a marketing email on October 27th, 2024.

Everything in it seemed reasonable, so I didn't bother digging deeper, but as the viewer submissions increased, I knew something was maybe wrong. I started getting curious. And then suddenly I was bombarded with those horrendous clickbait Twitter ads, which promote lists of gadgets that are great for Christmas gifts. And of course the images in those ads never match anything in the lists.

But guess what device I saw on those lists? The Muama Ryoko, along with a bunch of other products I've debunked in the past. Suspicious. To give Muama credit, the main getryoko.com website

visually looks decent, and I'm glad they removed the bogus no limits claim from before. Good job there. This 70% Black Friday sale is still a little concerning because it was up for almost three weeks after Black Friday ended.

Since then, the banner has been removed, but of course we still have that special 70% off discount. But hey, I guess that's their attempt at scarcity marketing. You know, come on down quick, you don't know when the sale's gonna end. Yeah, it's scarcity marketing. Further down on the homepage says Ryoko automatically connects to the closest internet tower in 76 countries.

(duck quacking) Hang on, your ad says it works in 112 countries. So which is it? Further down, there is a feature list. Ad blocker, data saver, eight hour battery, high speed, et cetera. And when my Ryoko arrives, I will test most of these claims to see if they are true. I'm already concerned about the 150 megabytes per second claim because in the ad, they showed megabits per second.

I know a lowercase b and a capital B might seem insignificant, but in the computer world, a capital B represents bytes, which is made up of eight bits, a lowercase b. So mathematically, they are very different. I wish there was some way we could get some clarification. Oh, hey, just like last time, let's ask the chats. All right, let's see.

Oh my gosh, it's Morgan. Hey Morgan, remember me, it's Ken. You know, the guy from the last episode that you ghosted? I'm gonna ask you about this bits versus bytes thing. While we wait for Morgan to respond, let's keep exploring. Lower on the page, we see this comparison chart challenging your phone's hotspot.

Did you hear that iPhone? I'm gonna have to enter you into the ring when I do some of the comparisons. It says Ryoko connects to the best cell tower, but your phone's hotspot doesn't? That's not true. As we discussed earlier, smartphones calculate a bunch of criteria to connect to the best tower. And in certain operating systems, you can manually select networks as well.

So I don't think this claim is right and really at the end of the day to the consumer, it doesn't matter what specific tower the phone is connected to, the consumer just wants a fast and reliable connection. How that's done behind the scenes, most people don't care about that. We also have these reviews, which are likely fake. I'm not gonna waste my precious time on earth debunking every single one, but we'll take a look at this one right here. Faye.

A little reverse searching of our sweet old lady reveals she's a model for Italian porcelain. She's also a Sun Capital Mortgage customer by the name of Walkiria and a 96-year-old lady named Reva. So either Faye is a secret agent living multiple lives with different names, or she's a stock photo that's being used across multiple web pages. To be fair, the Ryoko terms of service have a disclaimer about protecting testimonial identities.

So I guess they're in the clear with these reviews. Darn you legal copy, you thwarted me again. If you're gonna make bold claims with big numbers, and you're gonna show positive reviews all while trying to sell something, at least back that stuff up with a source or two. I'm not saying you have to.

Muama, I ain't your daddy, but it would help validate your brand, right? I don't know, the more I look into Ryoko, the more I just don't trust it. But I know who could maybe put my mind at ease. Morgan. Ah yes, just like last time, it appears the chat doesn't do anything.

Ghosting me again eh, Morgan? I thought we had something. So there's some things Muama is doing better and a few things that are still kind of sketchy, but I like to be as fair as possible before I make a final judgment. So I do want to test the physical product itself.

So you know what I did next, right? (upbeat drum music with brass band) I went ahead and bought one. (audience cheering and clapping) It's a new mobile hotspot! This mobile hotspot comes equipped with 5G, no wait, 4G technology, and has no revolutionary or unique features compared to most stuff you can get on the market. A prize worth $296.67.

(record scratching) What? Hold on a second. These guys are valuing a consumer grade 4G, not even 5G, 4G hotspot at $296.67. What? I believe Ryoko is inflating this value price to make it look like you're getting a better deal. There's faster 5G consumer products out there which are valued around $90, which is much more reasonable. And yeah, I got a sponsored Ryoko listing on this Walmart page.

Life is amusing. In short, the Ryoko is way overvalued, but at least we get that magical 70% discount, right? So let's just power through. I entered my personal information and clicked the big green buy button. And bam, here's the first post transaction upsell.

And it's asking me to sign up for a data plan. But hey, at least we get 500 megabytes free. I have a feeling I will need to upgrade that, considering each month I use about 500 gigabytes of data, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Wait a minute, what happened to the no data usage charges? This certainly looks like a data usage charge.

Some of your other ads are upfront about the price. Why not this one? I ignored the data upsell for now and got hit with yet another upsell and another and another and another. Okay, I get it. Just take a chillaxative.

Finally, the order process was complete. (calm music) Wow, look at what arrived in only six days. Pretty good delivery time.

Let's take a look. The packaging looks pretty, and I love this warning on the back. Yeah, can't let your kids play with your hotspot.

Inside the box are more upsells. What? I think this is the first time I've purchased a product, and there's physical upsells right on top inside the box. They're literally the first thing... I have butter fingers. Right on top, they're the first thing you see.

The first one is for the docking station, then a language translator, and finally a case. And I forgot to turn them over. There's even more on the back.

Wow, these are great. I think they'll look pretty good on the floor over there. Okay, what else do we got? All right, here's the enclosed instruction book. Seems pretty simple.

The QR code leads to an online guide, and oddly enough, it shows the older unit, which is no longer available on the website. But despite being out of date, the user guide is still helpful. And I asked some follow-up questions to the support chat, you know, the fake Morgan chat, and if you wait long enough, you actually get someone.

I got Joice this time, and I was surprised to actually get answers. The Ryoko device itself looks quite nice. I like the smooth roundness of it.

And the light up logo is also pretty slick. The bottom has a USB-C port for charging with the included cable, and the side has three buttons: power, select, and navigate. Ryoko's data is provided by Viaota, which is operated by, I have no idea how to pronounce this, Oriava Incorporated, which also operates Ryoko by the way. And the SIM card comes pre-installed, so it's pretty easy. Just turn it on, and in 30, 45 seconds, you're connected.

I decided to upgrade my plan after all from the stock 500 megabytes to 10 gigabytes. And you'll see the screen tells you your remaining data and days until your plan expires. Pressing the navigate button lets you view the Wi-Fi login info and a QR code to instantly connect. And it also displays the Viaota features like ad blocking. After connecting to the Ryoko, you can go to your browser and type in the default IP address and access device information, statistics, and you can change settings.

A change I would recommend right away is set the security mode to WPA2 instead of WPA/WPA2. This will ensure your connection uses a beefier security standard. Then set a password that's more secure than 12345678.

All right, now that we're all set up, let's take this baby for a spin. I'll conduct three tests. First, I'll test the ad block feature, then the battery life, and for the grand finale, I'll run a speed test. The ad block feature worked on the first try. This feature is built into the Viaota services, and once I turned it on and loaded a page, the ads disappeared. I think it's sometimes okay to block ads, especially on those fishier websites that have fake download buttons and stuff.

That is so annoying. But I do encourage everyone to not block ads on free content they wish to support. You know, like hopefully me. Hey, I'm just trying to feed my family. - [Crew Member] You don't even have a family. - You wanna go? By the way, if you want to get early access to ad-free versions of my episodes, please support me on Patreon.

Thanks. Now the battery life claims say eight hours, but there's no disclaimer saying how the test was conducted, so it's impossible to recreate it perfectly. But one of the claims says Ryoko's battery life is better than your phone's hotspot battery. So that's a test we can do. Your results may vary depending on what phone you use, but today I will be using an iPhone 14 Pro with 94% max capacity.

I'll stream the 24/7 "Mystery Science Theater" feed on YouTube at 720p, and we'll see how long the Ryoko can last. Then we'll do the same test with the iPhone and see which one lasts longer. All right, start the clock. (dramatic orchestral music) Okay, I'm not gonna make you stare at the clock the whole time. The Ryoko lasted for nine hours, 18 minutes, and 12 seconds, which is better than the eight hour claim on the website. Okay, you get some points there Ryoko.

Now let's see how long my iPhone lasts while doing the same task. My iPhone lasted 14 hours, 53 minutes, and 44 seconds. And I almost ate up my five-gigabyte hotspot data plan, but I barely made it. I couldn't have planned that better if I tried. So the battery life on my iPhone slaughtered the Ryoko.

So I don't agree with that little chart on the website. Now I want to test the speed. The website says up to 150 megabytes per second, but thanks to this chat reply, we now know they meant to say megabits per second, so we'll cut them some slack there. But one of their ads shows 180 megabits per second, and another part of the same ad shows 232. I'm not sure which number is true.

Let's see if we can get close to any of them. I connected my iPhone to the Ryoko, and we're off to the races. And wow, okay. 7.51 megabits per second down and 5.72 up. (duck quacking) Maybe it was just stage fright. Let's try again.

All right, we're off to the races again, and 7.41 and 4.19. This is worse than the previous Ryoko I tested 3 1/2 years ago, which got 33.5 down and 22.5 up. For the record, I popped the Ryoko Pro's Viaota's SIM card into the original Ryoko, and the speeds were still very slow. Maybe the service provider for the Ryoko changed, or it's just the infrastructure in the area changing over 3 1/2 years. Now hypothetically, I should be able to put a SIM card in here for a much better data plan, but I'm trying to test this product out of box based on how it was advertised to me. And as you can see, it is being a huge pile of crap right now.

So I did a little digging. I discovered my Ryoko with the stock SIM card installed has a public IP address pointing to an internet service provider named Top Connect, which is based in Estonia, which is about 5,000 miles, give or take, away from my humble lair. And it turns out Viaota's data plans are built on Top Connect's infrastructure.

This is a big problem for users of Ryoko in the United States and possibly other locations too. The large distance between me and the ISP over 5,000 miles away is likely why the connection is so slow. I also ran a traceroute command to see how data was traveling to the host. Once again, I saw Estonia show up in this domain and lots of long ping times, which further confirms why I'm experiencing a slow connection with the Ryoko. For a moment, I thought maybe this device isn't made for the US market, but no, that can't be. Ads were targeted to US prospects, including me.

The website shows the US flag and US carriers. They ship to the US. These so-called reviews are all in US locations, and Oriava's business address and the return address on my Ryoko package are both in the United States. So Ryoko and their advertising team, whoever's pulling the strings here, are clearly targeting US customers for the product.

Yet the product doesn't work well in the United States, at least for me. To try and give the Ryoko a more fair shot, I decided to try a different hotspot plan. I tried Uscellular, AT&T, and Verizon, and none of them were compatible with the Ryoko. However, when I looked at my Ryoko's IMEI number with T-Mobile, their site said it was partially compatible with their network. I put the T-Mobile SIM in the Ryoko, and the screen constantly says waiting for network, and sometimes it says unsupported SIM, but the Ryoko still lets me connect to it. I ran a speed test, and the results are worse? How? 4.99 down and 5.21 up.

I'm gonna say something bugged out there. Let's give it a second shot. On the second test, we got, okay, 30.1 down and 6.98 up. Much better than the Viaota SIM card, but still nowhere near 150 megabits per second.

(horn beeping) But I don't know of any other way to test this thing. I feel like I gave it a bunch of fair chances. With the limited network compatibility in the US, frankly, I don't know what else I can do. So let's consider everything we examined and ask ourselves the question did Muama and the Ryoko redeem themselves? In my opinion, they did some things better than last time, like being more upfront about the data prices. And as a bonus, I found their customer service helpful.

And for video streaming, their battery life actually lasted longer than their claim. On the other hand, there's things they did which are the same crap as before, if not worse. The speeds are slower, the claims are still outrageous, and they used someone else's likeness and intellectual property for the fake backstory as opposed to using properly licensed stock footage. So Ryoko, I appreciate your efforts to make your product and your marketing better, but I'm still giving you a failing grade.

And to everyone watching, I'm open to your input. Do you think Ryoko now is better than they were 3 1/2 years ago? Have they redeemed themselves? Redemption arc aside, do not buy the Ryoko. I do not recommend it at all.

If you truly need a hotspot, you can use the hotspot functionality built into your phone already as long as your data plan supports it. And if you need a dedicated hotspot device, you can get one from your carrier. And with your newfound internet connection, guess what? You can stream more Krazy Ken episodes. Thanks for sticking with me.

Catch the crazy and pass it on. (upbeat music) Hey, you young whipper snappers and your wireless internet. Back in my day, we had to call the internet on the phone. Yeah, just watch this.

(dial up internet beeping) Huh, darn thing's frozen again. MARTHAAAAAAA!!!!!!

2025-01-15 23:50

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