Bob Sullivan’s podcast projects

Bob is currently the host of AARP’s The Perfect Scam podcast. Listeners ride along weekly as scam victims and professional con artists tell their stories. A 2023 Webby award winner

Debugger is a podcast about technology and democracy, produced with help from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Breach is a deep-dive audio documentary that investigates history’s biggest hackers. Bob is co-host with Alia Tavakolian of Spoke Media. Season 1 uncovers the role of Russia in the massive Yahoo hack; Season 2 examines the comedy of errors that led to the Equifax breach. Sponsored by Carbonite. A Shorty Award finalist.

No Place to Hide is a 6-episode miniseries examining the state of privacy in America, from abusive digital police tactics to abusive romantic partners who hunt down victims through cyberspace. Bob co-hosts with Spoke Media’s Alia Tavakolian. Part fiction, part non-fiction. Sponsored by Intel.

“So, Bob?” is a weekly investigation of the unintended consequences of technology.

LATEST EPISODES

Hear how an FBI agent conned a con artist; got him to fly to the US for prosecution

August 5, 2021 Bob Sullivan 0

How do you catch Internet con artists? Well, you con them. Alan, who lives near Washington D.C., had traveled to Dubai and to Ghana thinking he was helping a princess gain access to her multi-million dollar inheritance. Before his fever was broken, Alan — not his real name — sent [Keep reading]

Podcast: ‘If you don’t send us money, I’m going to kill your mom’

July 28, 2021 Bob Sullivan 0

Jeremy Vincent was startled out of his sleep in the middle of the night with the ring of his smartphone. Its screen read, “Mom’s Cell.” But when he answered, he didn’t hear his mom’s voice. Instead, he heard this: “I’m going to let you talk to your mom, your mom’s [Keep reading]

Before we sit down for dinner, can I ask that you turn off your surveillance gadgets?

June 2, 2021 Bob Sullivan 2

What do you do if you think your friend is bugging you? I don’t mean bothering you. I mean…bugging you…using a device to listen to you, maybe e1ven recording your conversations, when you visit their home. Well, that’s the world most of us live in now. Personal assistants, many modern [Keep reading]

A mom goes missing; a daughter comes to the rescue

June 1, 2021 Bob Sullivan 0

While much attention has been paid lately to the role of cryptocurrency in fraud, gift cards are still the tool of choice for many Internet criminals. In fact, the BBB says gift card fraud reports tripled between 2017 and 2020. And about one in four fraud victims who had money [Keep reading]

Want to stop ransomware? Cut off the cryptocurrency

May 20, 2021 Bob Sullivan 4

The rise of ransomware gangs parallels the rise of cryptocurrency, and that’s not a coincidence. In today’s “Debugger in 10,” I talk with Duke’s David Hoffman, who says it’s time to regulate crypto so it can’t be easily used by crime gangs — even if that means crushing the very [Keep reading]

Digital ‘superhero’ hacks scammers and has the video to prove it — hear what makes Jim Browning tick

May 6, 2021 Bob Sullivan 0

This looks like a normal office full of workers doing normal office-y things. But it’s a scammer phone bank, set up to rip off people all around the world. If you didn’t see it for yourself, you wouldn’t believe it. But thanks to a European tech worker who calls himself [Keep reading]

We could have fixed the Web. ‘It wasn’t that hard. We just failed’

April 19, 2021 Bob Sullivan 2

This is the third part of the transcript from part 2 of our podcast, “What is the Original Sin of the Internet.” Tim Sparaponi is a really engaging speaker, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy listening to him more than reading his comments. But if you’d like to skim what he [Keep reading]

‘If it’s legal, it’s ok’ — the Original Sin of the Internet, part 2

April 15, 2021 Bob Sullivan 82

This is the second transcript from part 2 of the “What is the Original Sin of the Internet” podcast launched this week. Here, Ari Schwartz — whose career has spanned the Center for Democracy and Technology and the White House and private industry — explains why it’s so hard to [Keep reading]

‘We haven’t looked at privacy. As a crisis’ — The Original Sin of the Internet

April 12, 2021 Bob Sullivan 1

This is part 3 of the transcript for the Debugger podcast, “What is the Original Sin of the Internet.” Somehow we went from bankrupt sock puppets to a fundamental attack on free will to billions of dollars of research designed to find psychological vulnerabilities and hack people’s minds. Bill’s version [Keep reading]

Why the collapse of the dot-com bubble led to the surveillance economy — and the techlash

April 12, 2021 Bob Sullivan 0

This is part two of a six-part series based on my new podcast, Debugger. I am on a quest to find the Original Sin of the Internet with a series of experts who were there at the beginning of the Internet age. Next up: Bill Woodcock from the Packet [Keep reading]

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