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

Podcast: Uber exec convicted for hiding hack; should cybersecurity workers worry?

October 24, 2022 Bob Sullivan 0

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]

Podcast: How to tell that work-at-home job is really a scam

October 18, 2022 Bob Sullivan 0

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]

You can call every phone in L.A. for $1,000? Why the economics of robocalling make life easy for scammers

September 29, 2022 Bob Sullivan 5

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]

Podcast: Data brokers and scammers team up to target the elderly, vulnerable

September 16, 2022 Bob Sullivan 0

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]

Poor customer service is our greatest cybersecurity vulnerability

September 15, 2022 Bob Sullivan 9

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]

Debugger podcast: Should the FTC stop Facebook from acquiring VR firm? And make it ‘give back’ Instagram and WhatsApp?

September 5, 2022 Bob Sullivan 4

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]

Podcast: Pretending to be deadly ill can be profitable online

August 15, 2022 Bob Sullivan 1

‘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]

Cryptocurrency: The perfect tool for The Perfect Scam — a special two-part podcast

August 1, 2022 Bob Sullivan 12

“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]

Social media companies ‘have revealed themselves to be soulless’ … but there’s #SoulfulWork in cybersecurity

June 27, 2022 Bob Sullivan 0

Bryan Palma, CEO of cybersecurity company Trellix, spoke recently at the biggest cybersecurity conference in the world, the RSA conference, and issued quite the call to action. Social media companies are soulless, he said. Tech workers who want to find more meaning in their work…well, there’s plenty of work to [Keep reading]

The Real Hustle meets The Perfect Scam: My conversation with TV con man Alexis Conran

May 2, 2022 Bob Sullivan 4

Alexis Conran is a rare combination of smart, suave, mysterious and … good-hearted. He’s the star of an international hit TV show called The Real Hustle, aired first on the BBC. A professional magician, Alexis and his band of “criminals” perform scams on unsuspecting consumers in the show — all [Keep reading]

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