Troy: They have a quota of a certain amount of money that they have to steal or obtain. And oftentimes those quotas are very, very high, like nearly impossible. And so they get either beaten, shocked with these uh electric shock sticks or cattle prods. If it’s really bad they [Keep reading]
When I logged onto a Zoom meeting today, I was offered the chance to let the company use some kind of whiz-bangy AI magic that would summarize the meeting for me. Cool? Maybe. Artificial intelligence? Not by my definition. New? Not really. New name? Absolutely I’m sure you’ve had this [Keep reading]
“I need help. Oh my God! I hit a woman with my car,” the fake Bob says. “It was an accident, but I’m in jail and they won’t let me leave unless I come up with $20,000 for bail …Can you help me? Please tell me you can send [Keep reading]
I’m very excited for this episode of Debugger. Kashmir Hill has broken many of the most important privacy stories in the past twenty years, many of them in the pages of The New York Times. She’s been chasing after a secretive company named Clearview AI story for years, and recently [Keep reading]
“Sorry, there’s nothing we can do,” is about the most frustrating phrase a human being can hear. But it’s precisely these words you are most likely to hear if you are the victim of a scam — when you call the police, when you call the bank, when you call [Keep reading]
Who’s on the other end of the line when you get a scam phone call? Often, it’s a victim of human trafficking whose safety — and perhaps their life — depends on their ability to successfully steal your money. A recent UN report suggests there are hundreds of thousands of [Keep reading]
Kathy Book wrote goodbye notes to her husband, son and daughter last December 14, then walked behind her New Jersey home, into the woods, intending to kill herself. She survived, thanks to quick thinking by her husband and local police. (This story and accompanying podcast include extensive discussion of suicide. [Keep reading]
We’ve all had the maddening experience of being shuttled off to a mindless chatbot when we need real customer service help. Few things can raise your blood pressure like a nonsensical automated response designed as a stall tactic when you have a real crisis on your hands. I hope you [Keep reading]
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]
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