Romance Scams - What's Your Story?

Students learn a valuable lesson when it comes to AI detecting guns on campus, SIM swappers are surprisingly stupid, and romance scammers get scammed by someone (or some thing?) calling themselves Chiquita Banana.

All this and much much more is discussed in the latest edition of the "Smashing Security" podcast by computer security veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by Mark Stockley.

Warning: This podcast may contain nuts, adult themes, and rude language.

Episode links:

• ‘The least safe day’: rollout of gun-detecting AI scanners in schools has been a ‘cluster,’ emails show - Motherboard.
• Gun detection AI the latest tech to make schools less safe - TechDirt.
• The unproven, invasive surveillance technology schools are using to monitor students - ProPublica. 
• NYC Mayor considering a subway security system that can’t differentiate between a laptop and a handgun - Motherboard.
• Violence-as-a-Service: Brickings, Firebombings & Shootings for Hire - Brian Krebs.
• USA vs Patrick McGovern-Allen (PDF) - Court Listener.
• Reports of romance scams hit record highs in 2021 - FTC.
• Meeting you was a fake: Investigating the increase in romance fraud during COVID-19 - Academic Research.
• This dating app fought scammers with bots… hilarity ensued - TechCrunch.
• She was 69. He Was Young, Hunky,,, and a Fraud - The Daily Beast.
• Gladbeck: The Hostage Crisis trailer  – YouTube.
• Watch Gladbeck: The Hostage Crisis - Netflix.
• The Ocean Cleanup.
• We flooded our dating app with bots… to scam scammers  - Medium.
• Craiyon.
• Carole’s attempt to ask Craiyon to draw Liz Truss eating a giant cupcake of Europe.
• Is this Graham eating a banana?  Craiyon seems to think so.
• Smashing Security merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, stickers and stuff)

Sponsored by:

• Kolide – the SaaS app that sends employees important, timely, and relevant security recommendations concerning their Mac, Windows, and Linux devices, right inside Slack.
• Bitwarden – Password security you can trust. Bitwarden is an open source password manager trusted by millions of individuals, teams, and organizations worldwide for secure password storage and sharing.
• SolCyber – SolCyber delivers Fortune 500 level cybersecurity for small and medium-sized enterprises. If the bad guys aren’t being discriminating about who they’re attacking, how can you settle for anything less?

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Thanks:

Theme tune: "Vinyl Memories" by Mikael Manvelyan.

Assorted sound effects: AudioBlocks.