Send us a text

https://short.ly/silent-privacy

Holiday shopping, hot headlines, and a new wave of AI-powered scams collide in a fast, practical briefing designed to make you harder to hack. We open with urgent “patch now” updates for Chrome and iOS that close real-world exploits, then dig into how an e‑commerce giant’s breach arms criminals with eerily convincing delivery and refund lures. From names and addresses to order histories, the data may not include your card number, but it gives attackers everything they need to sound legitimate.

We also tackle a confirmed extortion attempt tied to adult-site premium users, treating the topic with the care it deserves. Beyond the shock, we outline concrete steps: rotate reused passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and expect credential stuffing across your email, banking, and social accounts. Shame is part of the playbook—documentation, trusted contacts, and formal reports help break the isolation that extortion thrives on.

AI deception takes center stage as live face swap tools show up in romance scams and schools fight explicit deepfakes used to bully students. Rather than turn everyone into investigators, we share three simple “reality checks” that stop most fraud cold. Use a channel check to move conversations to a different medium, a liveness check with small unscripted actions, and a reasonableness check whenever urgency or secrecy appears. Pair those with smart routines—navigate from official apps, freeze credit where possible, keep auto-updates on, and rely on a password manager—and you’ve raised the cost for attackers without living in fear.

If you found this guide useful, follow the show, share it with someone who shops online, and leave a quick review so others can find it. Got a question or a scam story we should unpack next? Send it our way and we’ll break it down with clear steps you can use.

Support the show

Send us a text

https://tinyurl.com/2br89jv4

A stranger calls with your child’s voice. A five-star page sells a product that never ships. Your smart speaker hears a command you didn’t. We pull back the curtain on how AI turbocharges old scams and introduces new ones—then map out the simple defenses that actually work.

We start with the most emotional con: deepfake kidnappings and voice clone frauds that need just seconds of audio to sound convincing. We share the one habit that stops panic payments—a family passcode—and the callback rule that forces verification. From there we examine AI-powered phishing that mirrors your writing style, holiday “too good to be true” deals, and the rise of fake storefronts and synthetic reviews. The rule of thumb is clear: go direct to the site or app, treat urgency as a red flag, and weigh reviews for human detail, not star counts.

On the home front, we dig into hidden and ultrasonic commands that can trigger smart assistants. The fix is practical: disable voice purchasing, keep speakers away from locks and garages, and audit your connected skills. We also tackle QR code overlays at meters and restaurants, the spike in delivery text scams, and teen-targeted face-swap sextortion—why open conversations and quick reporting matter more than perfect controls. Finally, we explore metadata and inference risks in AI chat tools. Even with encryption, patterns can leak context, so we outline redaction and obfuscation tactics and when to avoid sharing sensitive data altogether.

If you found this helpful, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a security reset, and leave a quick review to help more people stay safe online. What’s the first setting you’ll turn off today?

Support the show

Send us a text

We unpack how AI shifts the security game, from state-backed use of agentic tools to prompt injections that hijack functions and bypass access. We also show how to control Gemini’s training access to your data and outline practical steps to harden AI stacks.

• Anthropic’s disclosure of state actor abuse of agentic AI
• MITRE ATT&CK at machine speed via spawned agents
• When hallucinations blunt attacks and when they don’t
• Prompt injection and second-order function hijacking
• ServiceNow agent exploitation and lessons for guardrails
• Supply chain risk in Ray and distributed AI frameworks
• Practical defenses for data, context, and tool scopes
• How to opt out of Gemini training via myactivity.google.com
• Why ethical AI and transparency build user trust

If you learn something new, share this episode, share it with your friends, share it with a friend. Always please give us a like, a follow

Support the show