When Trust Becomes a Trap
Easy Prey
Most people use technology all day without giving much thought to what is happening behind the screen. We trust routers that may not have been updated in years, depend on internet systems few of us understand, and now turn to artificial intelligence for everything from travel plans to home repairs. That convenience comes with tradeoffs. In this episode, we look at the weaknesses built into our connected world and what happens when our technical knowledge fails to keep pace with the technology surrounding us. Sherrod DeGrippo leads threat intelligence for Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks, where...
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Scam Compounds
Easy Prey
When most people think about online scams, they picture criminals sitting behind a screen and stealing from victims around the world. But in Southeast Asia, many of the people sending those messages are victims too. Some were promised legitimate jobs, flown across borders, trapped inside guarded compounds, and forced to scam others while trying to survive. In this episode, I talk with Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies Asia Institute. After years of studying labor rights, civil society, and Chinese investment in Cambodia,...
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Sports Betting
Easy Prey
Sports betting is everywhere now. It is in the commercials, on the apps, wrapped into game broadcasts, and sold as a fun way to make sports more exciting. But behind the easy sign-ups and “risk-free” offers is an industry built on odds most people do not fully understand, fine print that can cost real money, and a business model that depends on customers losing. In this episode, I talk with Danny Funt, an investigative reporter and the author of Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. His reporting on sports betting, politics, news, and sports media has appeared...
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Google Maps Scams
Easy Prey
Most people are not thinking clearly when they need a locksmith or a plumber. They are locked out, water is leaking, something broke, and they just want somebody nearby who can fix it. So they open Google, tap one of the first businesses that comes up, and assume the listing is real. Unfortunately, that is exactly the kind of situation scammers count on. In this episode, Mike Blumenthal, co-founder and analyst at Near Media, talks about fake local business listings and the ways bad actors have learned to game Google Maps. Mike has been following this problem for years, going back to the...
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Job Recruiter Scams
Easy Prey
Job hunting is hard enough without having to stop and ask whether the recruiter in your inbox is even real. My guest today, Jay Jones, ran into that problem firsthand after being laid off in December 2023. With his daughter due to be born just weeks later, Jay began receiving messages from recruiters that looked promising at first, but quickly turned out to be fake. Jay, also known as The Profiler, decided not to ignore what was happening. He started investigating the patterns behind these scams and has since identified and helped remove thousands of fake profiles, fraudulent companies, and...
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Bail Bonds Scams
Easy Prey
Getting a call that someone you love has been arrested is scary enough. Getting that call from someone who sounds official, knows just enough to seem credible, and says you have to send money right away is exactly the kind of moment scammers are counting on. Julie Henderson is the president of the North Carolina Bail Agents Association and has spent 24 years working in the bail bond industry. She started in the field almost by accident after applying for what she thought was a legislative assistant job, and she has stayed because she cares about helping people get through one of the most...
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Confessions of a Fraudster
Easy Prey
Technology keeps changing, but many of the most effective scams still come down to something very human: trust. My guest today is Tony Sales, co-founder of We Fight Fincrime and Underworld TV. Tony has a perspective most people in fraud prevention will never have. Earlier in his life, he was involved in organized financial crime and was once described in the UK press as Britain’s greatest fraudster. After years in that world, and after serving time in prison, Tony made the decision to use what he knew to help stop the very crimes he had once been part of. Today, Tony works with...
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Personal Safety
Easy Prey
Scams and safety threats don’t always announce themselves. Sometimes they start quietly, with a moment of distraction, a strange feeling you ignore, or a situation that shifts just enough to test whether you’re paying attention. My guest today is S. Gale Bleth, a personal safety educator, certified RAD self-defense instructor, speaker, and author of Aware: A Personal Safety Playbook for Leaving the Nest. Gale brings a deep background in crime prevention and safety education, including 16 years at Cal State East Bay and 16 years as a crime prevention specialist with the Hayward Police...
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Data For Sale
Easy Prey
Everyday conveniences ask for tiny pieces of information all the time like a phone number at checkout, a zip code at the register, an email address for a receipt, or a loyalty account for a small discount. At the moment, it can feel harmless. But those small details can add up quickly, creating a personal profile that businesses, data brokers, scammers, and even people with bad intentions can use in ways most of us never agreed to or fully understood. My guest today is Ron Zayas, CEO of Ironwall by Incogni. Ron is an online privacy expert, speaker, and author who has helped the judiciary, law...
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Exploiting Psychology
Easy Prey
Scams are often explained as a failure of judgment, but the truth is far more human. People are not fooled because they are foolish. They are manipulated at the exact moment emotion overrides logic, whether that emotion is fear, loneliness, hope, urgency, financial stress, or the desire to believe something better is finally possible. My guest today is Dr. John Demartini, one of the world’s leading authorities on human behavior, perception, resilience, and personal development. For more than five decades, he has researched, written, and taught in the fields of human awareness and potential....
info_outlineIn a world where we’re told to carry our entire lives in our pockets, we’ve reached a strange tipping point where the very devices meant to connect us have become windows into our private lives for those who wish us harm. It’s no longer a matter of looking for the "shady" corners of the internet; today, the threats come from nation-state actors, advanced AI, and even the people we think we’re hiring. We are living in an era where the most sophisticated hackers aren't just trying to break into your phone, they’re trying to move into your business by pretending to be your best employee.
Joining the conversation today is Jared Shepard, an innovative industry leader and the CEO of Hypori. A U.S. Army veteran with over 20 years of experience, Jared’s journey is far from typical; he went from being a high school dropout to serving as a sniper and eventually becoming the lead technical planner for the Army’s Third Corps. He is also the founder of Intelligent Waves and the chair of the nonprofit Warriors Ethos, bringing a perspective shaped by years of advising technologists in active war zones.
We’re going to dive deep into why Jared believes everything you own should be considered already compromised and why that realization is the first step toward true security. From the terrifying reality of his own 401k being stolen via identity theft to the future of "dumb terminals" that protect your privacy by storing nothing at all, this discussion challenges the status quo. We’ll explore how to navigate a future where AI can fake your identity in real-time and why the ultimate battle in cybersecurity isn't against a specific country, but against our own human tendency toward laziness.
Show Notes:
- [[02:12] Jared Shepard of Hypori is here to discuss how modern cyber threats actually play out in real life.
- [04:48] How modern attacks unfold slowly instead of triggering obvious alarms.
- [05:55] Why many victims don’t realize anything is wrong until secondary systems start failing.
- [07:56] What identity theft looks like when accounts are targeted methodically over time.
- [08:48] How attackers prioritize persistence and access over immediate financial gain.
- [10:32] A real attempt to take over long-term financial accounts and how it surfaced.
- [13:07] Why financial institutions often respond late even when fraud is already underway.
- [15:44] The limits of traditional identity verification in an AI-driven threat environment.
- [16:52] Why layered authentication still fails when underlying identity data is compromised.
- [18:21] Deepfakes, voice cloning, and why video calls no longer prove much.
- [20:57] How laptop farms are used to bypass hiring controls and internal access checks.
- [22:18] Why insider-style access is increasingly coming from outside the organization.
- [23:33] Why some companies are quietly bringing back in-person steps for sensitive roles.
- [26:09] SIM farms, mobile identity abuse, and how scale changes detection.
- [28:47] The growing tension between personal privacy and corporate device control.
- [31:22] Why assuming device compromise changes everything downstream.
- [33:58] Isolating data from endpoints instead of trying to secure the device itself.
- [35:12] How moving compute and data off the endpoint reduces exposure without requiring device monitoring.
- [36:35] How pixel-only access limits data exposure even on compromised hardware.
- [39:11] Why AI training data introduces new security and poisoning risks.
- [41:46] Why recovery planning is often overlooked until it’s too late.
- [44:18] The problem with victim-blaming and how it distorts security responses.
- [46:52] Why layered defenses matter more than any single tool or platform.
- [47:58] What practical preparation looks like for individuals, not just enterprises.
- [49:12] Rethinking privacy as controlled access rather than total lock-down.
Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.