Cofounder/CEO, InfoHawk. Weekly https://xitter.cf/t.co/YT3UmqeMvV - Helping businesses protect users from scams. 🇺🇸+🇿🇦. Former VP of security & privacy product @Google.
Austin, TX
Joined April 2007
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I spoke to @deathtospinach about romance scams and whether platforms are doing enough to counter them:
Smart - old school Mapquest continues to zig while others zag
The Roads Have Eyes! 👁️
Turn on the Surveillance Layer in Map Options to see known license plate readers from Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions (Vigilant), Genetec, Axis Communications, Axon, Leonardo (ELSAG), Neology, Rekor, PlateSmart, Ubicquia, Verkada, and other outdoor surveillance cameras that watch streets and public spaces.
Keanu Reeves isn't on social media. Becky Holmes has still been contacted by more than 200 of him.
Becky started mocking fake Brad Pitt romance scammers during Covid. Then the victims started reaching out, and the joke became a mission.
On the new episode of Won't Fix, we talk about her book 'Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love With You', why she says the social media platforms are doing almost nothing, and why we need to stop saying people "fell for" a scam.
I could not resist -
🤖 Made with AI
I was reading this article about these memory miracle cure scams. And the first ad underneath it was for one of these memory miracle cure scams. have you seen these @katienotopoulos ?
This was a great conversation - Jon told a story from his first year as a commissioner, in 2004, about Sanford Wallace, the self-described “Spam King.” Wallace’s spyware would make victims’ CD-ROM trays open and close on their own. Then he’d email them offering software to fix it.
“If you paid them $39.95, they would stop the CD-ROM tray from opening and closing, which they had caused in the first place.”
Former FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told me this week:
"AI gives every malefactor an army. Old-fashioned fraud was labor-intensive."
The scams his FTC fought 15 years ago, like fake free trials, scareware, and phony tech support, never went away. They just got cheaper, faster, and far more convincing. A fake Oprah endorsement used to be a Photoshop job; now it's a video in her voice.
We agreed that regulation is a tricky balance we haven’t found yet… & we all need to build more.
Our chat here: wontfixpod.com/podcast/episo…
I was reading this article about these memory miracle cure scams. And the first ad underneath it was for one of these memory miracle cure scams. have you seen these @katienotopoulos ?
Former FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told me this week:
"AI gives every malefactor an army. Old-fashioned fraud was labor-intensive."
The scams his FTC fought 15 years ago, like fake free trials, scareware, and phony tech support, never went away. They just got cheaper, faster, and far more convincing. A fake Oprah endorsement used to be a Photoshop job; now it's a video in her voice.
We agreed that regulation is a tricky balance we haven’t found yet… & we all need to build more.
Our chat here: wontfixpod.com/podcast/episo…
Rob Leathern retweeted
1/ How I infiltrated a Chinese organized crime syndicate that has laundered $1B+ across multiple exploits for Lazarus Group.
Posing as a client, I gathered intel that helped action freezes for the Feb 2025 Bybit exploit and attribute illicit activity onchain.
You’re too kind @JamesBorow - I wish there were better news however!
Unfortunately, the scammers aren’t lazy. Great convo w/ @robleathern (aka Batman of fraud fighting).
Frightening
When Lauren Friedman showed up at Amherst College, she was surprised to discover that almost every single girl in her dorm and on her athletic team was already taking SSRIs.
Inside jokes about Zoloft & Lexapro were common on campus, and everyone seemed deeply grateful their persistent anxiety and depression from teenage years was magically disappearing from a pharmaceutical drug.
Like her peers, @lololizzle had struggled earlier in life with both anxiety and depression -- so Zoloft seemed like a perfect solution. After all, all of her friends were taking it too, so how bad could it be?
Little did she know, SSRIs are causing a silent epidemic among Gen Zers called Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction, or PSSD. Like untold tens of thousands of other people just like her, Lauren now has completely lost her libido, sensation in her genitals, and even a sense of emotional connection with the people around her... PERMANENTLY.
She says she and others like her were NEVER given informed consent about the risk of developing PSSD, and American doctors will rarely even diagnose the condition at all.
Whether it's birth control being thrown in the faces of teenage girls to magically "regulate your hormones" or Zoloft instantly prescribed to "make you happy," one thing is clear--the young women of Generation Z are being poisoned en masse without any understanding of what may happen to them down the line.
A democracy needs institutions that keep corporate power accountable. But the institutions meant to constrain corporations can themselves be influenced by corporate power.
Accountability therefore depends on a *distribution* of power: independent enforcement, transparency, organized workers, a free press, and voters able to hold officials accountable. Each must have enough independence and capacity to challenge corporate power; and the institutions that enable it.
Wild - just did a 1,200-site web search job with @Muse that took about 6 hours. I’m now up to 40% of my weekly token limit