Bob Sullivan’s podcast projects

“Do your own research” sounds like a harmless — unassailable? — suggestion. It’s more complicated than that, says today’s guest, UNC professor Francesa Tripodi, author of the new book The Propagandists’ Playbook. In this episode of Debugger in 10, Tripodi discusses the IKEA Effect in research, why Googling is more [Keep reading]

Should a company executive face criminal charges after a data breach? That’s one of the questions opened up by the remarkable trial recently of Joe Sullivan, former head of cyber security at Uber, who was recently convicted of essentially hiding a hack from federal investigators. The case has people in [Keep reading]

For decades, American workers and employers had dabbled with the idea of telecommuting — working from home — but only a tiny fraction of workplaces really allowed it. Then the pandemic hit. The world was plunged into a real-time experiment in remote work, and despite an awful lot of ups [Keep reading]

In the digital age, crime is often all about economies of scale.  Many of the tools we’ve built make things very easy for criminals. It’s cheap to send millions of emails, so spam is a problem. You probably knew that.  But you might not know how cheap it is to [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]

“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]