From this week’s inbox: “My wife was a victim of a Bank of America and Zelle scam, we lost $6,800 and the bank told me that there’s nothing they can do. Is this true? It blows my mind that our money is gone just like that. Is there really nothing [Keep reading]
In a crime so ugly it’s hard to believe it’s real, billion-dollar corporations have turned their algorithmic ray guns on elderly and vulnerable Americans — specifically to help criminals deliver convincing lottery spam and other scams. And they did it for years. I’ve covered this topic before, but this week [Keep reading]
When Bank of America put Hank Molenaar on hold recently, it told the Houston resident there would be a long wait time and he could press 1 to get a call back instead. But before the bank called, criminals called, impersonating the bank, and stole his money via Zelle. It [Keep reading]
There’s a new front that’s opened in the years-long battle between the FTC and Facebook. Federal regulators have sued to stop the social media giant’s proposed acquisition of a company named Within which makes a popular virtual reality fitness app called Supernatural. In this episode of Debugger in 10, we [Keep reading]
“Not all storms come into your life to create chaos. Some storms come into your life to clear the path.” — Diane Clemens One of the great privileges of being a journalist is the opportunity to meet people at critical times in their lives — when there’s a terrible tragedy, [Keep reading]
At least one Big Tech firm has glided mostly under the radar during the recent techlash — Oracle — but that relative obscurity might be coming to an end. A class-action lawsuit filed against the data giant by some heavy-hitters in the privacy world alleges that Oracle combines some of [Keep reading]
‘We call that Munchausen by Animal Proxy, and for people who lack access to children, don’t want to harm themselves, lack access to elderly and dependent people, they may induce or lie about illness in their pets. And, I can think of one case where, and this sounds like I’m [Keep reading]
“It’s just a perfect payment mechanism for people who want to do bad things.” — Lee Reiners, FinTech professor at Duke University . Mei Mei Soe was using LinkedIn to find a new job when a friendly, fellow Chinese-speaker asked to connect. Mei Mei, 42, has suffered with debilitating nerve [Keep reading]
Several large data brokers profited for years by selling what are known, cruelly, as “suckers lists” to criminals who used them to fine-tune scams designed to cheat elderly and vulnerable people, a new report on LawfareBlog explains. It’s a stomach-churning analysis which shines a harsh light on an open secret [Keep reading]
A new season of The Perfect Scam has launched and we begin with a story that is very sweet. It’s actually about cookies. Not the kind that track you, but the kind you can eat! Unfortunately, before Lura’s Kitchen was able to send out its first order of cookies, criminals [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan