What the Hack?

Charlie Webster hosts the hit podcast “Scamanda,” which takes us on a dark journey of discovery with a young woman who pretended to have cancer to bilk Good Samaritans on GoFundMe. Listen to hear the kinds of scams you can find on all crowd-sourced micro donation sites and how to avoid them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Karen Johnson is a catfisher-turned-scam avoidance coach turned–you guessed it–catfishing victim. The scam that got her is a classic, opening the door to a Pandora’s Box of the usual advice about avoiding the most common scams out there. But the thing that really got us thinking is the role AI played in almost every aspect of this week’s show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Identity theft is the third certainty in life behind death and taxes, but the way scammers come at you changes all the time. That’s why we invited ITRC head Eva Velasquez to fill us in on the three biggest trends in identity-related crime this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jen Destefano’s story made national news. Her daughter Brie was abducted and the kidnappers let them speak to each other to prove it. But while they had demands for big money, they didn’t actually have her daughter. Was it a deepfake, a really good actor or a prank taken way too far?   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we first heard about this, Adam was like, “come on, guys, jury duty scams?.” That said, Travis and Beau didn’t know so much about them. The upshot, an intro to jury scams with a State Department employee who saw it coming, not because he’s a G-man, but because he’s addicted to Halloween decorations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a Daily Show correspondent, comedian Roy Wood, Jr. knows a thing or two about fake news and truthiness as well as the truth-and-a-half that is comedy. By skewering the media and the people in the news, he has special insight into how misinformation affects the way we think about the world and what we know. This episode originally aired December 12, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lola Blanc and Meagan Grainger are the hosts of Trust Me, a podcast about cults and scams, and are this week’s guests. They're here to help us figure out the gooey center of the Venn diagram formed by cults, cult leaders and scam artists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert Kerbeck rubbed elbows with some of the top actors of his time including Calista Flockhart, Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman and George Clooney. But like all working actors, he needed a side gig to survive. This week we talked to starving actor turned millionaire corporate threat actor about the sensitive information he was able to snooker out of his targets.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author, Actor, Comedian Dan Ahdoot is no stranger to What the Hack or actually being hacked. Which is why it’s kind of weird he’s back on the show to talk about how he’s done nothing to keep himself from getting hacked again. (It’s funnier than it sounds.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nicole Perlroth’s book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is a masterpiece on the topic of cyberwar and the zero-day hacks that make it deadly. Join us as we explore with Perlroth a cyberscape where mistakes are weaponized, backdoors abound and we all have zero degrees of separation from spies and the people they spy on.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices