What the Hack?

Rudy Shepherd was not used to selling his own work online. He had a gallery for that. But when the relationship with that gallery ended, he had to fend for himself, giving new meaning to the phrase, “learning on the job.” Listen in as he takes us on a tour of the Zelle hell with a scammer who knew just what to say. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are tens of millions of small and medium-size businesses in the United States alone, and depending on their state incorporation, many are in danger of business identity theft. Andy Pham is an American hero by many standards, for sure with regard to the right to become wildly successful. He’s truly living the American Dream. Having grown up in Communist Vietnam for the first ten years of his life, his mom sent him to the United States where she believed he would have a better life and avoid being drafted into the war in Cambodia. She was right. His story of success is eye-popping, but what happened to him on the scam front is almost beyond belief. Download the latest episode to hear how a nasty dentist managed to steal a five million dollar project from Pham, and how he got it back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time flies when you’re having fun talking to people from all walks of life about getting scammed, hacked or otherwise cyberbamboozled. It seems like yesterday that we launched What the Hack with Adam Levin, but, this week marks our first anniversary! With highlights and noteworthy moments, our anniversary show is like a chocolate sampler, minus the gross ones with orange jelly that Travis likes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michelle Waters was a middle school teacher before getting into the teaching tools business, so she has nerves of steel. But when her Facebook account was misappropriated and badly misused, she learned that even veteran teachers have a melting point. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Covid-19 pandemic put millions of people out of work and put billions of dollars in unemployment benefits up for grabs. What was a lifeline for the unemployed became a goldmine for scammers. In this episode, the scammer sometimes rings twice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Social engineering is still a new term for some people. We break it down in this episode by focusing on how reporters and magicians use it. (Get it? There’s a trick involved!) Check out this wide-ranging conversation with journalist Andrew Gold that covers shamans, a classic girlfriend’s mother tale and nose picking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You may have a little deja vu since Beau is constantly trying to get scammed, but in this episode, Adam, Beau and Travis talk about the scams they’ve stared down in the past–and of course Beau talks about the scam he fell for. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An ugly divorce becomes fertile ground for an ex’s hacking skills as Hope is persistently compromised by forgotten backdoors to old devices and even a secret dressing-room camera. Hear how he kept getting in and what you can do if you’re worried about cyberstalkers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever wonder if your phone was listening to you? Have you stared at one of your smart home cameras and got the vibe that you were in the first act of a horror movie? Well, this episode proves that the worst you can imagine is just one bad relationship away! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam was a guest on the Date/Able podcast recently, and he had a lot of fun. With a head full of “The Tinder Swindler,” he invited them to be guests on What the Hack to discuss something near and dear to our hearts: Gutting faux-meo catphishers for fun and whatever the opposite of not-losing money and precious time looks like for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeff Williams has been on the cybersecurity beat before it had a name. Currently the Global Head of Security at Avast, Jeff was working the ramparts at Microsoft in the mid-oughts when he was tasked with bombing the botnets and making spam email a thing of the past. Your inbox reveals the outcome, but the journey will make you safer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Retired Secret Service Chief of Staff Brian Ebert is back to talk about the time two Romanian hackers accidentally hit security cameras with ransomware that were monitoring the inauguration of Donald Trump. Hear how a sketchy Amazon vendor selling smoking guns (the culinary kind) led the Secret Service to the hackers days before the inauguration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ConsumerMan Herb Weisbaum is a veteran protector of all things scammable. On this week’s episode, he joined us to talk about crypto scams. If you invest in crypto you might want to check your accounts to make sure your dough's still there, because there are a lot of ways for it to go walkabout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Arnold is a world-famous lenser known in equal parts for fashion and street photography, which may have made him a target. Tune in to hear his remarkably laid back reaction to becoming a victim of identity theft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Retired U.S. Secret Service chief of staff Brian Ebert joined us to recount the case of an international credit card skimming operation of mind-boggling proportions. Listen in as he tells a story that will make you freeze your credit before you even finish listening. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bill knows a lot about staying safe online and he still got scammed, which is what makes him the perfect guest for What the Hack. Trying to buy some last-minute tickets for a hockey game, he was in the scammer’s sweet spot–rushed and needing something specific. Listen in as he tells us the tale of how he stalked his scammers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We like to think of our hackers (when they get you, they are yours forever) as being super STEM-smart computer lab rats, but as “Green Eggs and Dan” host Dan Ahdoot found out, sometimes they are thirteen-year-olds trying to earn some pocket money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re looking for love and companionship online, you know there are tons of jerks and rabbit boilers out there. You need to be careful. Here’s a story that will make you delete that dating app forever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Darknet Diaries host Jack Rhysider is back! This time he tells us about a superfan stalker. Ever wonder if all that personal stuff you post on social media might get you in trouble? This week’s episode features an OG cyber expert’s story about just that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jordan Harbinger is no stranger to the trust triggers that make people do things online and in real life. So, we figured he had some firsthand experience based on his coverage of hacking and social engineering on The Jordan Harbinger Show, but we didn’t know how wonderfully devious his stories from the early days were going to be. Check out this must-listen episode, or be hacked immediately. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Identity theft, a Ghanaian car smuggling syndicate, and a mystery insurance policy that didn’t even make it into the episode – this story has it all, and from a previous guest we never imagined would become a victim of this sort of crime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam Burley is a “second-generation nerd” (that’s “cybersecurity expert” to you). He makes a living protecting businesses and their networks. When the ransomware gang behind the Colonial Pipeline attack infiltrated an unprotected server, he faced a crash course in how Ransomware-as-a-Service gangs operate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Darknet Diaries host Jack Rhysider is no stranger to cybercrime, but he’s relatively new to NFTs, a digital space still in Wild West mode. Jack joined us to talk about NFT pitfalls and the pickpocket vibes he’s encountered while investing in them, some digital wallet woes and more. He also had great advice for anyone thinking about making a move in the NFT space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we want to introduce you to Now, What's Next?, an original podcast from Morgan Stanley. This season of Now, What's Next looks at how the supply chain connects us all, and what happens when it breaks. The “Great Kettlebell Shortage” episode looks at why it was so hard to get kettlebells during the height of the pandemic. In this episode we meet Jay Perkins, the co-founder of Kettlebell Kings. During the beginning of the shortage, Jay sold out of two containers worth of product in about 10 minutes. While some businesses were hurting, others stepped in to fill the gap left by China. We hear from kettlebell manufacturers in Vietnam and the US who took the opportunity to make their move. Listen to Now, What’s Next? anywhere you listen to podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Valentine’s Day is Christmas for scammers. Millions of people looking for love make themselves vulnerable to strangers online every day. Sadly, the person pitching woo isn’t always who they claim to be. The catfish du jour was pretty brave, but the only bread he saw was for a cyber po’boy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We liked Brian so much, the conversation went on for a really long time. If you didn’t catch the last episode, we talked to Brian Fennimore about his ancient experience with a compromised Hotmail account after trying to find some fizzy candy online. This time around, we go deep and learn some security tricks we didn’t know about. Pro tip: If you want two episodes, fascinate us. (He really did tell us stuff we didn’t know.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brian Fennimore does cybersecurity for a living, but even infosec pros don’t pop out of Zeus’s head perfectly formed. Listen to the story of how nostalgia, a sugar craving and a reused password landed him in trouble back before cyber was a thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whim wanted to teach overseas. While based on the coast of Portugal, she was offered a teaching position from two employers. She didn’t know that she was about to end up with no job at all, narrowly avoiding getting taken for a bundle of dough. Also in this episode: Adam continues to hack Beau in every way imaginable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trolls are misunderstood creatures, but they’re so mean that it’s hard to feel for them–unless you’re sussing out their soft underbelly for a kill shot. We talked to journalist Megan Carpentier, who is no stranger to online harassment. She gave us a crash course on trolls–how to recognize them and make them go away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all know Instagram influencer accounts get hacked and held for ransom. And it’s no secret men send women pictures of their private parts via DM. This episode meets at the crossroads of these two open secrets. Model and writer Lisa Seiffert joined us to tell the tale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caitlin Brodnick was not the most obvious target since she’s the host of a podcast called ScamWow. Which is why we were obviously impressed by the effort of her scammer and by her ability to see it for what it is and avoid getting got. Also discussed: Why you should never answer questions on social media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From QAnon to Mahjong and a parade of phishing victims, 2021 offered up a lot of teachable moments. We revisit six episodes from our first year, and invite the guests back to tell us how they improved their cyber defenses (or haven’t). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the hottest holiday gifts of 2021 is the new Nintendo Switch. The problem is they’re sold out everywhere. When this week’s guest tried to think outside the big box stores, she ran into a classic e-commerce scam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who steals a Christmas tree? Sadly, a lot of people do. Harry tells us about a scam that was way too evil for the Grinch playbook as well as the other kinds of scams he’s seen over his many years in the Christmas tree business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kristine had been living la vida expatriate during Covid, when work called her back to New York City and she had to find a short-term rental. How’d a hardened reporter get sucked into a Craigslist scam? The same way we all do, and it’s a very good story. Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Growing up in the shadow of child identity theft can be a struggle. For Axton Betz-Hamilton, her discovery of the culprit led to the shock of a lifetime. In the second installment of this two-part episode, we examine the massive financial and emotional toll of finding out a loved one wasn’t all that they seemed, and how to recover. Also discussed: stalkerware apps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By the time most people find out that they’ve been the victim of child identity theft, their credit is trashed. That’s what happened to Axton Betz-Hamilton. And like most victims of child identity theft, she was targeted by someone she knew. In the first installment of this two-part episode, the mystery of who stole Axton’s identity unravels in a very unexpected direction. Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does your business depend on social media? How about your social life? Would you be willing to pay to get your account back if it got hacked? That’s this week’s dilemma for a well-known eyewear designer. Hear what he did. Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Josh works at a real estate company that oversees wire transfers every day. Hear the story about the time a single compromised email account almost cost his company big time. Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've waded into cryptocurrency investments, you probably know about crypto scams. But what you don’t know about crypto wallets could be exactly what a thief needs to steal all those magic gains. We also talk about bears, if you're into that sort of thing. Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when you combine an actor, a well-followed Instagram account, an early morning alert and a master cleanse with a hacker? An account takeover and ransom situation, of course! Also covered in this episode: no-click exploits. Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The teenage son of this week’s guest learned a lesson we've been banging on about for years--the hard way. Don't use your debit card when a credit card will do. There is a very specific reason we say this, and you can find out what it is right here. Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Covid epidemic shut down music venues around the world, but with our ever more connected planet, the bands played on. Music people moved their gigs online and Twitch became a major venue for that. That’s where Emily McVicker ran into trouble with a new version of the overpayment scam. Also in this episode: Can you steal a Tesla with a Raspberry? Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some scams give us something to laugh about whether it's the sheer audacity or the incompetence that made them work. Loki’s story is not one of those capers. He was the victim of a catfishing scam where he figured as the catfish as the result of identity theft. But the worst part? The person who did it to him... Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Larry worked on the assembly line at Ford and a long list of impressive jobs to which he can now add “Scam Slayer.” Online criminals often target retirees, because they assume senior citizens are easy prey. Larry is an object lesson in how not to fall victim to the kinds of crime targeting the AARP crowd. Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mary is a lot of things. Cannabinoid cooking maven, former radio host, and her banter could make the saltiest sailor blush. When she was angling to find love (and sex) online, a rather young-sounding catfish took the bait and what followed was pretty funny. Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like many of us, Joyce spent hours during the Covid lockdown connecting with friends by playing games online--in her case a MahJong app. Imagine her surprise when using a legitimate app to find a scammer trying to empty her entire bank account. The most likely culprit? You will rethink your game time when you hear what it was. Read the episode transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paul Toma is in the business of making the world a greener place, which made him a target for someone looking to tap into his credit at a local bank. A stroke of luck was all that stood between him and economic ruin. Find out in the latest episode how Paul was compromised and why you should never reuse your passwords. See the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan Beeler of Boyne Resorts protects fans of the great outdoors from prying eyes and other online threats. Fending off the assortment of cyber attacks that come his way is all in a day’s work, which is why Dan was the first to know when his company got hit by ransomware. Hear what happened, and how Dan saved the day. See the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Noah’s son had a boat coming to him, but finding one to buy during the pandemic was like trying to raise the Titanic. This episode focuses on that classic moment when Noah found a deal too good to be true. Boat-selling skullduggery ahead, as we learn how be like Noah when it comes to online scams. See the episode transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices