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THE RED TAPE CHRONICLES

Technology has hidden side effects -- we reveal them here

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Home2023

Year: 2023

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

2023 is the summer of the mega concert (and mega ticket scams)

August 23, 2023 Bob Sullivan 0

This is the summer of the blockbuster concert, and why not: Music fans have years of pent-up Covid frustration that they are ready to release.  Sold-out shows by megastars like Taylor Swift are the perfect venue to release all that energy.  Unfortunately, all this pent-up demand has created the perfect [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Old-fashioned check fraud is back, this time with violent attacks on mail carriers

August 10, 2023 Bob Sullivan 0

Everything old is new again. There was a time when my parents taught me to be extremely careful with personal checks — never to leave open space in the amount fields, lest someone add a zero, for example.  Over the past several years, check writing has fallen deeply out of [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Debugger: The Frances Haugen interview. Two years after Facebook, now what?

July 24, 2023 Bob Sullivan 0

Nearly two years after focusing the world’s attention on Big Tech’s big problems, Frances Haugen remains a powerful force in the technology industry.  In today’s episode of Debugger, she tells me how Covid lockdowns played a key role in her difficult decision to come forward and criticize one of the [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Exchange students coerced into West Virginia romance scam crime ring

June 15, 2023 Bob Sullivan 0

Huntington, West Virginia has seen its share of tragedies. Nestled near the Kentucky border, Huntington is the home of Marshall University, which in the 1970s suffered one of the saddest disasters in the history of US sports.  A charter flight carrying most of the school’s football team crashed on the [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

Insidious funeral home scam; spiritual cleansing lies; and don’t believe search results when you need help

June 8, 2023 Bob Sullivan 0

Welcome to this scam roundup. I’m trying something new; a quick collection of scam stories that have come across my desk in the past week, along with follow ups on stories we’ve told at The Perfect Scam podcast, which I host for AARP. Seen a scam? Contact me here.  I [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Two-thirds use tech to avoid face-to-face interactions; the truth we don’t want to face

May 22, 2023 Bob Sullivan 0

Machines dehumanize people.  I’ve long had a mental experiment in mind that I’d love to pull off one day — force people to walk at a grocery store the way they drive on a highway.  You know: cut each other off, flip the bird, breathe (literally) down someone’s neck on [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Grieving wife, stepdaughter learn dark truth about missing cremated remains

May 19, 2023 Bob Sullivan 0

By my calculations … at the low end, she may have stolen 3% of the population of Montrose. Last week I introduced the story of Diana McBride, who had just begun a quest to discover the truth after her step-dad’s cremains went missing following his untimely death. When Diana’s mom, [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

When ‘Cactus’ died, he was supposed to be cremated. Instead, something horrible happened

May 12, 2023 Bob Sullivan 0

It did keep plaguing me, you know, what really happened? Did they mix up his body? Did they lose his body? Little did I know what really happened. Really the horror, the nightmare was yet to come. I’ve hosted nearly 75 Perfect Scam podcasts during the past two years, but [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

Hundreds of supplement companies warned about ads; is this any way to protect consumers?

May 5, 2023 Bob Sullivan 0

I’m often asked, “Isn’t there a truth in advertising law?!!??” by consumers who feel cheated by a company that embedded a gotcha in its advertisements.  My sad answer is often some variation of “No, not really.” At least that’s been the on-the-ground reality for some time.  There’s a glimmer of [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Rules for Whistleblowers: a Handbook for Doing What’s Right

May 2, 2023 Bob Sullivan 0

When Whistleblower Francis Haugen came forward and testified before Congress about what she thought was going wrong inside Facebook, she changed big tech forever. But how? I recently talked about this with Stephen Kohn, author of the book, Rules for Whistleblowers, A Handbook for Doing What’s Right, and many, many [Keep reading]

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About me

BOB SULLIVAN is a veteran journalist and the author of four books, including the 2008 New York Times Best-Seller, Gotcha Capitalism, and the 2010 New York Times Best Seller, Stop Getting Ripped Off! His latest, The Plateau Effect, was published in 2013, and as a paperback, called Getting Unstuck in 2014. He has won the Society of Professional Journalists prestigious Public Service award, a Peabody award, and The Consumer Federation of America Betty Furness award, and been given Consumer Action’s Consumer Excellence Award.

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