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
Jul 11, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 53
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
Jul 04, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 52
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
Jun 27, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 51
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
Jun 20, 2022•56 min•Season 1Ep. 50
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
Jun 13, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 49
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
Jun 06, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 48
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
May 30, 2022•51 min•Season 1Ep. 47
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
May 23, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 46
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
May 16, 2022•59 min•Season 1Ep. 45
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
May 09, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 44
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
May 02, 2022•49 min•Season 1Ep. 43
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
Apr 25, 2022•56 min•Season 1Ep. 42
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
Apr 18, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 41
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
Apr 11, 2022•43 min•Season 1Ep. 40
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
Apr 04, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 39
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
Mar 28, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 38
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
Mar 21, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 37
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
Mar 14, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 36
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
Mar 07, 2022•49 min•Season 1Ep. 35
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
Feb 28, 2022•58 min•Season 1Ep. 34
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
Feb 21, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 33
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 ...
Feb 17, 2022•25 min
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
Feb 14, 2022•42 min•Season 1Ep. 32
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
Feb 07, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 31
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
Jan 31, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 30
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
Jan 24, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 29
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
Jan 17, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 28
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
Jan 10, 2022•45 min•Season 1Ep. 27
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
Jan 03, 2022•45 min•Season 1Ep. 26
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
Dec 27, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 25
