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Welcome to Cybersecurity Today, the dark side of Valentine's Day edition.
We've got a special show for you.
Today is in all things cybersecurity, it seems, we're looking on
the dark side of romance now.
Most of us have experienced a breakup.
Some of us, maybe more than others.
I've always admired those people who split up amicably, and, but for
many others, it's one day you have a person you fall in love with.
You share your inner feelings, your dreams, someone you're totally
vulnerable to, and then before you know it, you don't recognize that person.
You wonder.
If you ever were really in love with them or they were in love with
you, and now all that vulnerability comes back to hurt you and that's
an experience that people have had.
It's why we have country music.
but I don't wanna trivialize this, the emotionality of breakups and of love and
of loneliness and of those human emotions isn't something we talk a lot about.
It is something that is powerful and affects people around us.
And I ask you to imagine this is that, you know what, if you had somebody
in your life and they didn't even love you, they just manipulated you.
And what if they exploited that vulnerability, that trust?
What if when the breakup happens, you find not only is your heart broken,
but they've stolen your money, maybe taken your house, taking your savings.
For some, they've taken the dream of a retirement with dignity.
They've left you impoverished and you let them do it willingly.
How crushing would that be?
You don't, you not only have the heartbreak and the loss, but you
also don't wanna share it with anybody 'cause you feel guilty and
you feel that it's your mistake.
You feel like a fool, you're embarrassed.
I can't talk about the average romance, but I can tell you that
these romance scams, they exist.
And if you think it couldn't happen to you, good for you.
But it can happen to a lot of people and the victims aren't fools.
They're intelligent, they're articulate, and oftentimes they're experts in their
own area or field, but they're human.
And in case you think this is rare, think again.
In fact, what you think you know about romance scams, which is often
called pig butchering, is probably wrong unless you've seen the research.
One in 20 adults who are 65 or older, have had an encounter with romance
scams, and that can happen weekly.
But if you think it's just lonely old ladies, take another thought.
Two out of five adults aged 18 to 24 encounter these
potential romance scams weekly.
Just on the numbers alone, , the chances are that.
You know someone, and maybe that's someone you care about, who's fallen victim to
this or who will fall victim to this.
And if you follow the program, you'll know how passionate I am about this fraud.
I cannot begin to think of the suffering that these innocent people
feel, how their lives are ruined.
And I've had the head of Project Shamrock on the show, a group that
tries to educate law enforcement on this type of fraud because that's
what it is before we judge anybody.
These people are taken in by incredibly sophisticated fraudsters,
and one of our missions on this show is to educate our audience on
what this growing problem is about.
So when some research from McAfee, the security firm crossed my desk,
I pinged them right away and managed not only to get access to one of
their top researchers, but also a brave soul that was willing to
come forward and tell her story.
We'll start out with the research.
My guest today is McAfee's, head of Threat Research, Abha Karnik, welcome.
Thanks for having me.
Jim.
I Saw the report.
Do you wanna summarize the findings ? I, the first one just leapt out at me that
there were a lot of younger people I was really surprised at those numbers.
Anything jump out at you from this study?
Yeah, it's always alarming.
like you correctly said, one of the things that scammers, especially in romance
scams are looking for, they find those who are most emotionally vulnerable.
So those are one of the key things that they look for.
And when.
You look at how many people they target, it's astounding.
One in four Americans have encountered some sort of a fake profile.
AI generated is the thing nowadays with romance scams.
So the scams that are thrown at you are becoming more real.
And in, in 53% of the scams that come at you, they ask for
some sort of financial money.
So one in seven.
Americans have lost some sort of money to romance scams, right?
And between men and women, even men are equally vulnerable.
21% of men have lost money versus 10% of women.
which is pretty surprising.
We all think it's lonely women.
we have these ideas in our head.
It turns out men are probably the bigger victims in many cases.
Yeah.
we all have emotional cautions.
It's it's really, it's a human thing, right?
Trust.
Is a human thing.
Love is a human thing.
So I feel, yes, we don't speak about it enough and that's one of the
things with romance camps, the biggest challenge is that a lot of people who
get, who are victims to romance camps may never come out and talk about it.
So I almost feel that the numbers that we report, that the FTC reports,
the IIC three ports are probably way higher than we know, because
not everybody talks about it.
Once you fall victim to.
A scam.
There are very few like Beth on your show who come out and talk about it.
A lot of people prefer not talking about it because they feel like
they've done something wrong.
They feel that they don't have the courage to tell people that they felt victim.
So these are very human emotions.
there's nothing wrong with it.
Nothing wrong with falling victim, But I feel that there's a lot
more out there than we hear about.
Oh, I'm sure there are.
And I've talked about this on the show.
I had a friend.
Because they, in passing mentioned the story of this person.
And because I'm a cybersecurity person, I picked up on it right away.
They didn't, and I wonder how many other stories people just haven't
shared with me that, and this was, again, I can't emphasize this enough.
These are people who are smart.
They're not fools.
They're not.
Even needy.
They like, they're regular people and these are very effective fraudsters who
know how to, they study how to do this and they know how to manipulate people.
I, that, I can't say any more than that.
This isn't, a one-off thing anymore.
Like you said, there are in, this is an industry, right?
There are trained professionals.
Trained in psychology, trained in understanding how you think, how you feel.
they don't just randomly show up.
They target you in many cases.
So if you have a profile out there, they'll read about you.
They'll understand what you're looking for, and they'll use
that against you in many ways.
They'll try to have the, that they'll try to build that emotional connection with
you and once they make that connection.
They draw you in.
Once they draw you in, you'll get scammed.
So it's, there's many scams out there.
you have the simplest scams, which are, which take five minutes or 10 minutes.
At an average, you could spend about 36 minutes, is what researchers at
McAfee found that it takes about 36 minutes for a, any random scam.
But romance scams, on the other hand, tend to be a little longer
drawn because when they scam you of a lot more money than a typical scam.
so this can be in, in a few thousands or tens of thousands sometimes.
I wanna just go and show, McAfee was good enough to introduce me to
Beth Highland and Beth Highland.
Has been scammed and has had the courage to come out and not only talk
about it, but she's also put out a book about it called Romance Scam when
Swiping Right goes wrong, and you'll find in that story, a lot of the things
that we've talked about and more.
We're gonna run that for you now and then Abha and I'll come back on the other side
Yeah.
We're gonna, we're gonna play Beth's story, as part of this show, and she
was kind enough to share her story.
I wanna thank you for doing this, and I wanna, talk to you a little bit
about exactly what has happened to you.
What, describe in your own words what, what has happened.
Okay.
I will start back with my divorce, which was now six years ago.
at the time it had been four years, and my divorce was a good thing.
It was a brand new beginning.
It was a time for me to get to know who I was again.
So I spent the next four years, like I moved to LA and exploring who I was.
I'm from the Detroit area and I'm now in Portage, Michigan.
And it was great.
I, I had the time of my life.
I've always been okay being alone.
And then when I moved here to Portage, I finally, I realized
that I was, I felt settled.
This is where I wanna be.
All of, everything that had happened over the last four years just hit me.
It hit me hard, the divorce, just moving around so much, not having
roots, and I just needed to decompress.
And I I went into a period of isolation and this was, spring
of 2023, spring and summer.
So I just, I don't know, I just wasn't going out.
I was staying a lot.
And then fall rolled around and I felt like I was coming out of it and I
thought, dating is the missing piece.
Maybe I. Anxious to date.
I wasn't desperate or lonely for a relationship.
I just thought maybe I should just get out there and see what's out there.
So I created a profile on Tinder and two of my coworkers met their
significant others on Tinder.
So I thought, all right, maybe this is a good option.
So I got my profile and, swiped on different men and nothing ever
came of anything, just chatting.
And then I saw this profile.
That was really intriguing to me.
It just, I don't know.
I swear he saw my profile, the scammer and.
me and just created this profile that was very similar to mine.
I'm a spiritual person.
I'm into self-development, and my profile reflected that and his did too.
So I was p my interest.
So I swiped, and when I saw those words, it's a match.
I felt elated.
I swear he had me at, it's a match.
That's what I tell people.
So I reached out to him immediately and, just told him, I said,
Hey, I really like your profile.
How are you doing?
And he reached out back and then we just started chatting.
Like it was like every day we were chatting and it was just this very simple.
Easy conversation, easy conversations that we had.
They were just, had a nice flow to them, a nice give and take, and it never
felt it was rushed, but he never felt.
Pushy.
Like I've started talking with guys and I felt that pushiness, like they
were just rushing, rushing, rushing.
Let's get into a relationship.
And I'm like, wait, no.
And then I just would feel suffocated, but nothing, there was nothing like that.
He just would ans he would just ask me questions and was so focused on me and
whatever I would answer, he would just come back with a very sweet reply and just
very, it was just very focused on me and.
And I just, that drew me in my, when I go back and read the text
now, I just, it, I'm like, wow.
It just drew me in and I didn't even realize it was happening.
I didn't realize it was a manipulation, obviously.
And so the second week we said we were, we already said we
were falling for each other.
I just remember thinking, God, am I bawling for this guy already?
It just seems so quick, but I just felt I'm, I've been through a lot of, I was
52 at the time and I know what I want and he knew how to mirror what I wanted.
He was like the male version of me.
And then the second weekend we were supposed to meet, he, said he was in Fort
Wayne, Indiana, which was about two hours.
So we were gonna meet up like halfway, but he said he might have to go to San Diego.
For business.
He said he was a freelance project manager for a construction company and there
was a project that he thought might be getting behind, so he had to fly over
there and, see what was going on and thought it would only be a week or two.
So I thought, okay, we'll just keep chatting and then, that.
So that weekend that he went over there, I remember, first of all, I remember
doing a reverse image, not a reverse image search, but a Google search because
I, my, my coworkers had done background checks on, their significant others.
I thought maybe that's not a good, maybe, excuse me, maybe that's not a bad idea.
I went to Google him and I couldn't find anything on him, and I just
thought, that's really weird.
And I just thought, can you hide yourself from a Google search?
I read some things that said you could, so I just, I was already too
in, so I just decided that, okay, maybe he's just a really private person.
But I remember that night, and I think this is the night that
he was flying over to San Diego.
I just remember feeling like.
Something is really wrong.
And it just was this overwhelming clarity that I had.
And then later that evening we had not talked, we had not texted in between
this time, that later that evening I remember feeling all these just romantic
feelings and I was just like, man, there's gotta be a good explanation for it.
And I just dismissed it and it was just like I was.
Not in it quite enough to where I could get some clarity, but in it too
much for that clarity to disappear, like for me to just ignore it.
then that we, he, let's see, this was Friday.
So Sunday comes around and he.
He broke up with me.
That was the day actually that he video called me using ai.
He, it looked like his picture and, but he said he couldn't hear
me, and so I was so distracted by.
Trying to figure out what was going on with my speaker.
And I could see it enough to see that it was him, but I wouldn't have been able
to tell that it was AI or that I think it was a little grainy, but I, even
if I saw it, I probably just would've thought it's just a bad connection.
So he hangs up after 30 seconds and I said, maybe like when you, he
said, I have to go into a meeting.
So I said, maybe after we, we could do a video call.
And then later he says.
He says that I, man, I had to fire all the site manager and all the
construction workers, the projects behind.
I'm just gonna go home and go to bed.
and then he said, in fact, I hate to say this, but I, I. I don't know
if I'm ready for a relationship.
I have this contract to figure out and I just don't know if I could focus.
I, I wanna be friends.
I don't wanna lose contact, but I just, I if you find somebody else, I understand.
And I just was like, I don't wanna find somebody else.
he's just telling me earlier that day, he would never break my heart.
And then I dismiss it and said, okay, whatever.
This didn't work out.
I'm just gonna move on.
And then the next day he.
I was messaging me and he later, it was the next night and he
just said, I still want you.
I'm really sorry.
I just, my emotions got the best of me.
And I know now that you are the one for me in this lifetime.
And so I remember feeling hesitant 'cause I was like, are you gonna pull
this every time you get stressed out?
And he's you have a right to be leery.
And I, he called and I was, he was crying.
I, and I was really touched, but I still hit my guard up.
And then the next day it was one of those, man, I told him I needed
space for a couple days, but the next day I'm like, I don't want space.
I was just, the fact that he was so vulner vulnerable with those
emotions, it just got me in.
And so from there on, it just progressed quickly.
And I had said, I said, that week I had completely fallen.
we continued, so we talked maybe twice a day and just texted throughout the day.
And then this is maybe early November.
and then I guess to, it would be towards late November.
He said that he told me that he had completed a project over in Qatar.
About two years prior, but that he had to get, they, him and the workers
had to get out quickly because it was COVID and never got paid for it.
So he had been trying to reach out to the board of directors for the
last year to get this payout, and they finally reached out to him
and wanted to discuss it with him.
And eventually told him that they want to give him this payout, but he had
to go over to Qatar to get the funds.
And at this point we had planned on meeting in December.
I was supposed to go to LA to see a friend and he was in San Diego,
so we were gonna meet up a couple days before and fly back together.
And then when this happened, I said, is this gonna delay your return?
And he said, no, I'll still be coming home, to you.
And at this point we're talking about.
we're talking engagement.
We were, I was looking at houses, sending him pictures of listings,
pictures of engagement rings.
So he was gonna move to me and he said, I'll be back, mid-December.
And then he was gonna pick me up from the airport the following
day when I came back from la and.
So around the week of Thanksgiving, he flew to Qatar and he had
to get documentation together.
So he needed it, he needed a lawyer, and then he needed a translator
to help, with the, his meeting with the board of directors.
And he was sending me like payment receipts, like just showing me,
I just I felt like he was being transparent with me as his partner
and showing me these, payments.
He was, and he was gaining my trust at the same time.
Then one day he couldn't log into his bank account and he asked if I
could try, and I said, yeah, sure.
So he sent me the login and the password, and once I got in,
he, I saw that he had money.
He had, like seven, $800,000.
And he asked, he, he walked me through transferring the money
and then it was a success.
And I, and this is the part where he's like gaining my trust and I
just remember feeling oh my God.
I remember saying, I, like I said, I've just fallen deeper in
love with you because I just feel like we're such a great team.
And then the next day comes, he has to make another payment to the
translator, and he asked, he still couldn't get in and asked me to try.
And I couldn't get in His account.
Account was frozen due to suspicious activity.
So he said that day he had to work with his account manager to see what
he could do, and he ended up telling me that he couldn't get in, that he
would have to go to the main branch in England for facial verification.
And he had to have this meeting in, I think it was a couple days
away with the board of directors.
And so he was really upset because he didn't have the translator
and he just thought it was.
It's gonna be really unprofessional.
And I, he basically said, he never asked me directly for money, but
he said he has to raise the money.
And I remember thinking, man, if he asked me for money, I'm
gonna feel really uncomfortable.
and because he didn't ask, I said, I would go to my financial advisor, but
I can't get money out in two days.
It takes seven to 10 days.
And he is, and he even said to me, he's like.
Wait a minute, and he said, slow down.
I've asked a friend, it was like he didn't wanna burden me.
And I'm like, okay.
so the next day or two, he hadn't heard back from his friend,
and I just remember thinking.
I've gotta do something like I, he worked so hard for this, what can I do?
And then it occurred to me I could probably take out some loans.
So I went to my bank and this he owed, he needed $21,000, so I got a $15,000
loan and then a $5,000 cash advance.
And then I had a thousand of my own money, so I said, what is the
best way for me to get this to you?
And he said, Bitcoin atm, it's quick, I'll get it immediately.
And so then I spent the next four days sending him money in,
in, in different Bitcoin ATMs.
And then there was the matter of the Bitcoin ATM fees.
So those were probably at least 4,000.
So I just, I got a loan from a different bank for $5,000 and got that money to him.
And then, so his meeting had been rescheduled for that the next
Friday, and it was a success and I was really excited and that was the
day I left for LA to see my friend.
And so we were supposed to meet in a week and he is I have a meeting
with the financier on Monday.
And we'll see how it goes.
So once he had the meeting, he said again, the meeting was a success.
And, but he had to, he said, I'm, the deal was I have to do
an inspection on the property.
And that point I knew there was a delay.
He wasn't gonna make it home.
So he said he would try, but then, I guess fast forward to a week later,
he said, let me see if I can handle the inspection and maybe you as my
next of kin can handle the payout.
And I said, okay.
And so he sends me a beneficiary form to fill out as is next of kin.
So I did that and then he is he was asking me, what do you think?
Should we do a bank check or should we do this through crypto?
he said A bank check is gonna be costly and the crypto's
quicker, but what do you think?
And I said, I guess we should go with crypto since it's gonna be faster.
So he sent me, a link to the crypto platform.
He said, create an account and then we'll reach out to customer service.
And he drafted an email and customer service got back to me and said,
okay, we're assigning you an account manager, contact him through WhatsApp.
So I did all that and they, the account manager needed to verify, my account.
And then he said, send me the beneficiary form and your
driver's license, which I did.
He said, okay, the money should be in your account within 24 to 48 hours.
So 48 hours later, I checked the account, it's there, and I said
to him, how do we transfer this?
Like how do I convert this to cash and transfer it to my bank?
And he's I'll walk you through that.
So as we're doing this is all through texting, and he said, first of all,
in order to transfer the money, there's a $50,000 activation fee.
And I'm like, what?
I are you kidding me?
I, I never heard of that.
And I didn't question him, but I just went along and I still wasn't thinking scam.
I thought that he was maybe being scammed by this company.
they were pulling the wool over his eyes.
so in the meantime, I am going back and forth with the scammer
and this account manager and telling him what was being said.
And I said, can you take it out of the payout?
and this payout, by the way, is like $10.1 million.
And he, yeah, for this like whole project that he did, he had to pay some of his,
contractors, but we would have $5 million.
And so he, The account manager said, no, you have to pay it up front.
It's a bond payment, but you'll get it back.
And so I thought at that point I'm like, $26,000 I, if something goes
wrong, I said I could live with that.
I have money I in my retirement to pay that off.
But this is a little scary.
But I reluctantly said that I'll go to my financial advisor and see what I
can do, but it's gonna take some time.
So I get on the phone with my financial advisor and we have a
really good professional relationship.
So I think at that point I was just.
Felt so isolated and so frustrated that I just told him the whole story.
I just had that little voice that said, tell him what's going on.
And so I did, and then he and his team are trained in romance
fraud, so he said, I Beth, I hate to be the one to tell you this.
I think you're in a romance scam.
I just remember thinking what I said, no, he never asked for money.
He kept saying, this is classic romance fraud.
And I'm like, he never asked me for the money.
How is this classic romance fraud?
I don't understand.
So he kept me on the phone for an hour and I was willing to listen because it
was like, I couldn't believe it, but I couldn't ignore it at this point.
'cause like I said, the $50,000 is a lot more money.
And he sent me some articles, which I read and.
I was like, wow, to really explain a lot, my heart still wasn't believ
it, but my head was questioning it.
So I, I said to him, I. I'm not ready to cut it off.
I, it didn't change the love I felt for this man.
And he's tell him that I'm out of town for a couple weeks and you can't get the money
until you sign, a funds release form.
I'm like, okay, that'll stall.
And he's that'll give you some time to figure out what's going
on, wrap your head around it.
And so that's what I did.
I kept, and I kept him, I kept him going for a week.
I was sending all the love messages and poems and.
So as far as he knew I was still gonna send him $50,000.
And then about a week later it was starting to get really
difficult to keep up the facade.
So I, I thought, and I told everybody, I, I had already done a police report.
I told my friends, my family, and I was visiting my family.
this was late December and.
He said, why don't you cut him off here while your family is here to support you?
I'm like, yeah, that's probably a good idea.
So he's I would just block him.
And I'm like, no.
He has to know that I know.
So my cousin wrote this like really clever poem.
Basically telling him to F off.
And so I sent it to him and it was great.
it was brilliant, and I sent it to him and then I blocked him.
But I started questioning, what if I broke his heart?
What if he's real?
So the next day, of course, what do I do?
I check my spam and sure enough, there's a message from him saying,
how could you think this of me?
I, I don't understand what got into you.
And he always used my fear against me.
he said, are you just, are you gonna forever push away any man who loves you?
And just this ridiculous stuff.
I'll just keep loving you until the specs in your mind clear.
And that really got me at the time.
Now when I look at that, I laugh, but I, so I got back in touch.
I'm like.
I told my friend, I said, I'm not gonna send any more money, but I
have to know I have to play this out.
And she's okay.
So somebody at least knew so I can be accountable.
So I get back in touch, and this was only for a couple of days and.
I just, I started seeing through him, he was just gaslighting me.
He would tell me that he, I love, he would say, I love you and I can't
stop loving you, but you broke me.
How could you do this?
And don't ever hurt me again, but I still love you and I forgive you.
and it just started feeling really toxic.
And then.
Then he said, what if I had taken my own life and that was the last straw?
I'm like, I don't, even if you're real, even if you are real, I
don't want a relationship with someone who's threatening suicide.
I had enough self-awareness at that point, and I had an, I was grounded
enough to say, I don't want that.
I don't care how much I love you.
And so then I sent him, another, like a long message confronting him on every.
Everything that, that he did and why it was a scam and
he never answered any of it.
And so he came back with one last dish effort and said, I, I don't think anything
I do or say will matter until I'm home.
And he was telling me that the lie is the fear in my mind
and everything it's creating.
And I'm gonna get sick mentally and emotionally if I keep believing this.
And I confronted him on how he would isolate me.
He goes, I'm not isolating you when I'm protecting you.
And all, what do you say?
At the end of the day, all you have is yourself.
And I'm like, that's not true.
So I just, my last message was, I don't trust you.
I don't believe you.
I don't wanna talk to you, but if you're real, bring me my money.
Prove me wrong.
Maybe we'll talk.
And then I never heard from him again.
So it was a very long, convoluted, crazy sophisticated scam.
Yeah.
Thank God for your financial manager being trained in this.
Yeah.
I wrote a book, I wrote and published all the chats and I dedicated,
he's in my dedication part of it, so yeah, he's my godsend.
Yeah.
This happened to a friend of mine.
It's, and I think part of the thing that I, and I'm not gonna project on you,
but part of the thing I think I hear people go through is, guilt that I fell
for this and all that sort of stuff.
And in reality it's so common.
and like I said, a friend of mine, a friend of my wife and I, phoned me
and said the same thing, that you'd met this person and all this stuff.
I'm a cybersecurity guy.
Right away said this.
Why?
because I, this, I get all this research.
This is, there's something wrong here.
And I didn't think she was gonna talk to me again.
It was, and, but eventually, I guess it worked.
And what would you advise people to do when having had that perspective?
How can people be helpful in these situations?
I think even if you, romance scams are tricky because victims are manipulated
into trusting only them, and if you try to push them, they're just gonna push back.
I think.
Maybe somehow subtly bringing it up or, somehow it's a tough one.
Like just listen to them 'cause they're not gonna wanna
believe it until they're ready.
because they're, the sophistication is real.
He sent me documents and I. Like a, he sent me a flight itinerary and
the return location wasn't here.
And now, now I know there's the scam detection software.
And I remember I put a docu, I tested it out, I put a document in there because
there were typos and I did question.
I'm like, I, it's a different country, so maybe that's why.
But it did bring up, it did say it was a scam and I might have at least.
I thought twice.
and now that's out there, I think that's a great tool to help victims.
even if you still can't quite believe it, it's something, it
might trigger something, it might get them out of the scam sooner.
So I think having these tools are critical, but also people
that can just listen and create a safe space for victims to share.
Yeah.
And what would you advise Anybody who was caught up in something like this or felt
that they were, but didn't wanna push.
we, there is this thing about we don't wanna push people out of our
lives who we could fall in love with.
And if we only fell in love with perfect people, my wife would've never married me.
For sure.
Everybody's in the.
How did, how do you, what would you tell somebody based on what you'd
learned that would help them, at least get past that idea of the suspicion?
You mean if they were questioning it and Yeah.
But didn't want to get out it?
I would say, when you start the question, Yeah.
what would you do differently now?
I guess if I'm saying.
I would've listened a little, I would've listened to that
intuition a little closer.
even though that part of the brain is hijacked.
You know what I mean?
It's, I would've looked more carefully, talk, if you don't feel comfortable with a
friend or family, because there's a lot of stigma around it, reach out to, Or there's
other groups like white cybercrime.org that, talk to someone that's experienced
in this that's biased and won't judge.
that, again, if you someone that feels safe, I, and does that make sense?
No, that makes perfect, that makes absolute perfect sense.
Okay.
you said you'd written a book about this?
Yes.
But what's the book called?
. My book is called Diary of a Romance Scam When Swiping Right Goes Wrong.
And I guess where that came from is my situation's unique in that when it
all ended, even before I cut 'em off, I made a decision, like a very quick
decision to not let it destroy me.
I was going to, I knew I had to go through the pain, I had to experience it.
I'm no stranger to grief.
I know the process.
I know it has to come out.
I know it has to be dealt with.
At the same time, I said, I'm gonna get out there and I'm gonna win my life.
And write a book.
And sometimes, we say that it's just, it ends up being just talk.
But I just, a few months after the scam ended, I just started writing
and I didn't know what I was gonna write at first, so I thought, why
don't I publish all the text messages?
So I started just writing and copying and pasting messages,
and I wanted to write about.
Not just my story, but the red flags and resources and I think an important chapter
that I have in there is about what it was like to grieve a romance scam, because
it's very different when it's somebody.
That's not even that person.
Like they've stolen a profile and they're not even that person.
And so you're grieving two different aspects.
You're grieving this person that never was, but also, and it's messy because it's
like there's still love for this person.
Even though that they're a scammer, the heart doesn't care.
the mind knows, but the heart.
Not rational.
And so I just wanted to try to convey that to victims.
And and I started an LLC called a voice for unrequited law.
My hope is to speak at venues and to share and educate, like with my story.
And, so it's just this whole thing's taken on a life of its own.
So I decided to survive and so I could help other people 'cause
not everybody comes through.
I don't know how to say it.
It really does shatter a lot of people, more so emotionally than
financially, and they don't know how, they don't know where to go.
they feel shame, and I, it just, this should not happen to anybody.
we all have loss in our lives, but this isn't something that
people should have to deal with.
Yeah.
There's a friend of mine who's a songwriter I guess he said it
more poetically, but it was that, and it's the same thing when
your heart gets betrayed, it's.
There's twice the loss, I guess is what I'm saying.
yeah.
it's just, it takes longer.
the, one of, some of the things I really advocate for, it's, this one's
an important one that I tell podcasters, I tell, journalists is changing
the language that we use because I think that changes the, the focus.
It takes the focus off the victim and puts it on the criminal.
And the fact that so much of the language says we fall for scams, we
fall victim to them, but really we are targeted and manipulated into them.
And then the fact, It's always stated that we lose money, but we, it's
really stolen through coercive control.
it's, to me, it's no different than having a gun held to your head and an TM and
someone saying, gimme all your money.
It's just that the gun is the love bombing and it's subtle.
It's disguised on the romance and it's takes a lot longer.
So that's, those are like big things.
People on because I think from the language and people
don't, are not intentional.
Most people are not intentional with that.
It is rampant though.
I think that's an actually great thing to think about is how we can
change that language and, yeah.
Yeah.
And what would you do?
What would you, just for your suggestions, what would you say if you were asking
people to reshape their language?
This is a really good idea, I just wanna pursue this for a second, but how would
you reshape the language, or how would you reshape the way we talk about it?
I would say language matters more than you know, because when the.
We say that victims are, that people fall victim to a scam.
It sounds like it's their fault that they fell for it.
They're the quote unquote stupid ones.
'cause that's what people call us.
They think we're stupid and that we just fall for this, this scam.
We fall in love and we're desperate.
And so I think saying falling victim highlights that and
people don't realize it.
And then by saying that we either that we give money to scammers,
especially in romance scams.
We, we do, it does look like we give it freely, but it's really outta it's,
we are manipulated and so we, in that sense, we're giving, we don't consent
to giving money to someone that.
Isn't who they say they are.
We can send it to giving it to the person we thought was the love of our life.
So in that sense, it is stolen and it's not like we lost the money in taxes.
You know what I mean?
We misplaced it.
it is literally, it's fraud.
It was stolen.
Yeah.
And by people who are astonishingly good at this know.
and these are.
These are just average people, they are professionals, , I think that's one of the
things I try to get, try to get across.
And one of the reasons I wanted to do this show, I want people to feel that,
wait a minute, this can happen to anybody.
I'll just tell you one quick story was I was, at a conference
and I'm a cybersecurity guy.
I, I got hacked at the conference by a friend of mine and he nodded
to me from against the room, and it was, don't get too full yourself.
this can happen to anybody.
It can't happen to anybody.
And it's usually intelligent people.
Because I was reading this the other day that because we think
like we have this hyper awareness, we, we'll, I, how to say it?
Delve into the details so we think we know what to look for and.
When something gets past us, we think, at the time we're thinking, oh, okay, we did
our due diligence and this must be okay.
yeah.
The, it's easier to, it's easier to phish at least the cybersecurity
world to phish a smart person.
Yeah, because we think we know what to look for.
we think we're, but we all have vulnerable moments where we're, I've had it at work
where we get test, phishing emails, and if you fail, you have to do training,
and it's happened, it happened to me.
It's it just catches you in an off moment, a dis you're distracted and
before you know it, it just can happen again, even when you've been scammed.
It has been a pleasure to meet you.
I'm you too.
I'm sorry for the circumstances under which that started, but
I am, but I'm so to met you.
Thank you very much for doing this.
Thank you, Jim.
Thanks for having me.
This blew me away.
This woman is incredible, to be so honest, so forthright.
It's a long and protracted.
And she only escaped a much more major loss by the skin of her teeth.
There was.
So these things are, but it is the same psychology, isn't it?
It's the same thing that we, that drives fishing.
It, they catch a person when they're vulnerable, ca make, make
them think that you can trust them and, and proceed from there.
I guess that is there a big difference with the romance scams.
Besides the time.
So yes, there are differences, right?
So the, at the end of the day, it's all about social engineering.
And social engineering comes in many forms.
So you can have, it's about how you react, whether it's emotionally,
whether it's through anxiety, through excitement, you have a different,
type of scam that can be put at you.
Let's say it's holiday season, right?
You're getting ready for shopping.
the emotion there is excitement looking for that deal, trying to find something
that you would not be able to afford because it is amazing discounted price.
So that is an emotion, a different type of emotion.
The emotions with romance scams are slightly different because
yes, there is love involved, right?
There is trust involved and.
That's what they play into.
So it's very normal to see social engineering scams.
A wide array of emotions that humans have are basically exploited.
But in romance scams, I think it's more about, love, trust, building
that emotional connection with somebody before they hit heart.
Yeah.
And one of the great things about research is breaking through stereotypes.
And I, so I don't wanna stereotype your firm, but you're a technology firm.
you deal with cybersecurity.
What brought you into this realm?
That's a really good question.
I think at the heart, the answer, the heart of that
question is why we do what we do.
And I think there is a bigger why for us, which is how do we help people?
Keep in mind that McAfee used to be a very broad enterprise slash consumer company.
More recently, we become very consumer focused because we, that there is
this huge market where people are getting scammed and there's not much
focus, In general, when you hear about security, you hear about infrastructure,
security, security against, the electricity grid, whatever, everything
related to how we live our lives.
But then those fall more on the enterprise side.
But in the consumer space, the growth of scams and how it's impacting people
financially has been going exponentially.
So for last year in the US it was about 16 billion, and we expect it
to grow even more in the FTC report, which hasn't come out for 2025,
but we expect it to be much higher.
So the rate at which it's growing on the consumer space is incredible.
And I think one of the key driving factors, which is leading this is ai.
The tools that are available are incredible and at the heart of.
AI life, social engineering.
So it has allowed social engineering to become much better, right?
More real, more effective.
And therefore you're seeing this emergence in scams, which these
scammers, where they're utilizing these tools to make any of these scams,
whether it's romance scams or other scams, more real and more believable.
And that.
Is what's driving this, huge increase in scams.
So why does McAfee care?
Yes, we care about protecting people.
In all respects.
Now, there are things that we can't do because yes, some of them are physicals,
scams versus digital scams, right?
But we are trying to join the dots.
We are trying to connect the two worlds together, and the core of that is helping
consumers out right at the end of the day.
We want to keep people safe.
And one of the means that we also do this, even if it's not through digital
protection, is through education, ? And so some of these reports, some of the scams
that we talk about, we protect you as much as we can with the devices, but we also
put more information out there to just educate you and safeguard you overall.
Yeah, and I, and that's one thing I think we talk about the amount that's
lost or the amount of dollars, but the reality is nobody really knows because
the stats are that about 15% of people actually report, if you're lucky.
Because of the shame, because of the fact that, and I point out, I've
talked about my father was scammed, because he thought my brother
was in trouble and he sent money.
My father was and was a very intelligent man who knew the world, who would, was,
had traveled the world very well educated.
Hit him in the middle of the night at two o'clock in the morning
with something and he succumbs.
So it's, this is something that we don't talk enough about, but
I hope through talking about it, I hope by sharing stories,
people will hear it more and more.
So maybe they'll feel that, wait a minute, is that I should check that out.
if we do nothing else than that.
I think we've done a good job, and I applaud the research
that you guys have done.
Yeah, no, thank you.
Yeah, and I don't have to say like you will see it.
Everybody is experiencing this sort of evolution, ai, right?
Where.
Just four years ago, the scams used to be very dry over emails, but now
you're seeing the videos and not everything that is AI generated is bad.
there's a huge element of creativity there, but you can tell that the
videos are getting more real.
The audio is getting more real to the point where as a human,
it becomes more difficult for you to perceive fake from real.
And That is definitely one of the reasons, and I a hundred percent agree with you.
The best it gets the best of the best.
So you could be the most tech savvy person in the world, right?
You could be a technology specialist, a coder, a developer, but there are
fake job scams out there that have gotten people who are desperate, right?
So again, like in that desperate situation, you do things that
you would never have done.
And the reality and the pragmatism in many ways can be lost.
When you see something, it's a, it's about.
Making hay while the wind sun shines, and that's what scammers are really good at.
Yeah.
and I think you're absolutely right.
I really appreciate what you said about, they'll adapt to the different emotions.
Sometimes it's to desperation, sometimes it's to loneliness,
sometimes it's excitement.
These guys are really good.
I wonder just how much better they've gotten.
And one of the things we talked about earlier that, that I caught in there, and
I was even, we, you talked about ai and even this is a, this is an older story.
It's had time to, she's had time to publish a book, but even then the scammers
were starting to use AI and deep fakes.
so if we'd spoken about AI back in 2018, right?
We knew that this is coming.
but then, a few years ago when we started seeing a lot more companies creating voice
clones and things like that, we had a separate report on that a few years ago.
that's when the ham mom scams.
Scams, sorry, started, that's when the hey mum scams started, right?
Ever since we've seen, exponential growth in the adoption of these tools.
And one of the reasons why is because there is a very low bar to entry.
it was very difficult to install these tools in the past.
It's much easier to find services that offer this to you for a very
small, subscription amount, right?
So you can create clones, you can create videos.
there's hardware if you wanna do it at home.
most of the laptops, most of the devices are very powerful that you can create.
Live videos.
So for example, Beth spoke about coming on the camera for a brief moment and
speaking to this person in real time.
Yes, you can face off somebody's face on a video.
In real time today, you couldn't do that two years ago.
You couldn't do that very, very effectively, two, three years ago.
But the technology is there.
You can do that in real time, so it's only getting more real and
it's only going growing much faster.
and the business establishments that are adopting these techniques
are the scammers, right?
So they have effective centers where they've set up, they've got the
right tools, they've got the right software, and then they target you.
Yeah, and one of the things that struck me out of this was how deep the
research was and how she confessed.
He knew every psychological trigger to use, and I wanna stress this.
Again, this is not some woman who's desperate to meet a man or any of those
fictions that you might have in your head.
This is a very careful manipulation of someone over a long period of time.
Now, I can't help but wonder.
I presume that these people have PhDs in psychology, or at least they have
that advice, but they also, I think, are using AI very effectively to study
people online, and that has two aspects.
One is maybe we have too much information about ourselves online, that is
not just our names and addresses, but our preferences, who we are and
all that, and our vulnerabilities.
That's true.
So one of the advices we always given our consumers is that don't overpost online.
Don't put too much information online.
Be cautious about what your privacy settings are for whatever platform
of choice that you are plugged in.
Social platforms especially, right?
And because.
It's not difficult for scammers to go and cultivate information about
you and then use that against you.
So it goes from being a generic scam to a more spearfish scam where they try you and
once they hook the victim, once they find the right victim that fits the persona,
then you'll see that crescendo effect.
It builds up, so they already have.
Some information about you, but then they get a conversation, into, they
get into a conversation with you.
They learn more about you as a result of that conversation.
That's where the trust starts building up.
And soon enough, they know enough about you that they
can scam you in multiple ways.
So not only can you get scammed.
In a romance scam, for example, at the moment, it sets you up for something
called a replay attack, right?
Where you could have other scammers that are now sold, that information
that was given out by you, either in the romance scam or through
phishing or multiple ways, could be a part of a breach as well, right?
But once multiple scammers have the information and they know that this
is a gullible victim, then they can have more scams targeting you.
It's not uncommon to see that once you get scammed you will be, subject
to scams again, like the ransomware thing where if you get hit and pay
the ransom, they know you pay ransoms.
. And the other thing about this though, with the AI aspect of it was in this story
was how many documents they could produce.
and how they could have these forged documents that looked real,
that had all, and reams of them.
And I, I think, wow, in the old days, if you had to do that by
hand, you'd be, it would be tough because they were all customized.
These was, this was set up to perfectly match this scam.
And I guess now with ai, that's really easy to do.
AI has actually leveled the playing field in many ways.
Like it is a convergence of automation and ai, That's making
a bigger, splash right now.
Because, in the past you had to spend a lot of time coding,
things like that, right?
But now you don't have to be like this hacker that we thought about
who is supreme at, cracking code and finding exploits or whatever.
No, it's simple, right?
You can do a lot more.
In a much easier way, you just have to talk your way into
creating a PDF document that looks real, or images for that reason.
So the amount of effort that goes into building these tools, automating these
tools is way easier than it used to be.
And therefore, the scale of attacks has increased tremendously.
Yeah.
And there is a technology side to this and I was catching that just in
some of the things I was looking at.
And I thought about this because I'm pitched.
I guess once you turn, you're over 65, you really still are a target group.
'cause I get all of these young women who write me and I know they see me
online and no, I'm not that good looking.
Sorry, I get pitched all the time.
Oh, hi.
And some of them are pretty too.
They're not just the usual.
scammed to try and get you romantically or anything like that.
Some of them are, hi, Jim.
I, you met me six months ago.
and they, and we talked, I just wanted to get back in touch.
Now if you send me that type of text, don't bother.
I'm gonna delete it.
But a lot of people don't.
hey, like some of the advice you give generic consumers doesn't
apply to media people, right?
Like you are out there, your voice is out there, your face is out there.
you definitely are targets for scams as well now.
Yeah.
you will get a lot of unsolicited messages coming from people and you romance
scams especially, that's how it starts.
the initial contact is very, it is like a mistake that happened.
Somebody said, sent a message to the wrong person, but got you hooked
into a conversation, Hey, are you meeting me for this party on Friday?
And you're like, Hey, no, you got the wrong person, but I
hope you enjoy your party.
And then they were like, you seem like a really nice person.
Would you like to chat?
So the people who get who are gullible and wanna be helpful,
because that's in our nature, right?
We wanna help people and direct them the right way.
Those are also the people who get scammed because once you engage
with these unknown people, you never know where it's gonna lead.
And everybody wants, like you, you want something exciting.
that sort of a interaction sometimes can be exciting, but it can also be dangerous.
But I've met people online who I, whose company I enjoy.
I met some great people who were doing great work online.
I just don't, I be, I've learned not to respond to some things, but that
doesn't mean that, that I wouldn't be vulnerable to them otherwise.
And, but now with ai, they're constructing whole, from I, from your
report, they're constructing whole dating services and that are out
there as, I guess honey pots or traps.
there's, different ways that they try to, get you into the scam.
So one of them is, it may not even be a scam.
It could lead to malware.
So for example, if you're looking for a dating app, people just,
Trojan is such dating apps.
And then before you know it, you have an information stealer on your machine,
which is harvesting information.
Once they get that information, they might call you back.
some of these mobile apps can, take your.
Images from your phone and send it across.
So there's, it's not only scams, it can be malware as well.
But just coming back to the point you made about romance scams, one
of the things that I would advise people to do is that at some point
you might wanna meet that person.
The flesh, right?
Because one, one of the common tactics you'll observe is that they're always
trying to shy away from those meetings.
They will always find an excuse not to meet you in person, right?
And so if you see that happening, that's a huge red flag, right?
Same thing for job scams and other scams.
Like at the end of the day, like you wanna meet the person you
are interviewing or the person you're interacting with, because.
That's when the rubber hits the road.
Like you know that, okay, this person is genuine only when you meet them in person.
Now, the other thing is, the other red flag is when some
of these scammers try to.
Encourage you not to talk to your family, right?
Or the victim themselves.
They don't want to disclose a romantic relationship with their family.
And one of the things that probably BET did really well in her experience was she
spoke to her financial manager, right?
she was able to get advice from somebody who had an unbiased
view of the situation, right?
And in many scams.
I would highly encourage you to keep your family involved in
who you interact with, right?
Because you might get advice from somebody within your family who you
really trust as opposed to somebody you don't trust, ? And that can be a
big difference between getting scammed and not getting scammed and scam.
It's not only scams, it has a whole emotional impact.
there are people who st like the psychological effect this
can have on you is tremendous,
? And In many ways, the further you get in, the more damage that'll be done.
So by engaging with your family, with trusted people early on, getting their
opinion is probably a good sort of, approach to these situations as well.
And I can't say enough about the fact that, you talked
about our financial manager.
We, in all aspects of corporate life need to train people
to deal with this situation.
It's really important.
Anybody who touches money.
Anybody who touches a flashpoint where this can occur.
And her, obviously her financial advisor had been well-trained not only to
spot this, but in how to deal with it.
I, we used to have a lot of scams where.
People would be scammed into getting these gift cards.
I'm sure it still works, but what's taken a lot of that out of the market
is just training people to say, you're buying too many gift cards.
Can you talk to me about why you need them?
Maybe I can help you out.
And I, I can't say enough about that training and.
Banks, cashiers, everywhere else.
And I think also everyone who's in a public area, even your managers need
to be able to help be able to be there and understand when this is happening.
And if your employees are threatened, and I'm not saying that people who
fall victims of romance scam are gonna be a threat for your company.
I'm not saying that at all.
But as cybersecurity professionals, we need to know this because
people who are under duress.
Are a threat, and that, that's just the reality of the world.
We have a police scandal in, Toronto, near me.
And, the, one of the policemen who was caught up in this, everybody
thought of him as a straight up guy.
He ran into real financial trouble.
All of a sudden he, he finds a way out or he thinks he finds a way out.
we have to, we need to spot this as professionals as well.
I guess I'm saying we all need training and we all need awareness.
Yeah.
in security we call it a kill chain.
So it starts.
At one point, and there are multiple vantage points along the
way before you get scammed that you can pick these signals up.
And if you see the scammers, they'll initially touch base with you on
text messages, then they'll get you to go to WhatsApp, then they'll get
you to go to Telegram and engage with some financial advisor or
somebody on the other side, right?
And so I think we are trying to figure out.
What are the right vantage points that we can help people at?
And it's almost impossible for every organization to be plugged
into every part of that kill chain.
And therefore, like you correctly said, yes, we try to pick it
up early on in the kill chain.
but you need some plugins at financial institutions, right?
When the money is gonna be gone.
whether it's a Bitcoin transfer, whether it's a gift card, whether it's
a financial, a financial transfer that happens, at the bank itself, right?
it's not about who's sending the money.
It's important for banks to understand who's receiving the money, right?
Because.
To be able to be effective in catching these scams, you have to build a good
profile on who's on the receiving end, because at the end of the day,
those, that's where it all ends up.
It all ends at who receives the money.
And we as an industry, as an organization, really need to organize ourselves
better across this entire industry to build the right security measures
at every part of that, kill chain.
Yeah.
good advice on that.
there are technical aspects to this though, and I think you've got, you.
You do some filtering of some of these messages, so you can actually
get, and I, I, you sell the product and I, I'm not trying to sell your
product, but I'm just saying there are technical things that you can do.
You can get some basic filters.
I and I, we've always said, don't fall in love with technology.
it won't save you all the time, but it can help . What types of things can
technology do to help make this better?
There's so much that we are doing now, we are monitoring.
Every aspect of your interaction, okay?
So that we can safeguard you as much as possible and be investing in those areas.
So what are the different ways that you can get scammed, right?
It's not just over email anymore.
It's over text messages, it's over social platforms.
It's also the physical world where you go and scan a QR code, right?
it's just don't, that's all I can, sorry.
That's all I can say about QR codes.
Just don't, yeah.
it's, so yeah.
Where McAfee's investing is trying to use AI against ai, like how do we leverage ai.
To fight ai.
And so we are building the right tools for text detection, for email detection, for
deep fake detection, but besides that, we also have things like malware protection,
mobile protection, like I explained to you for the Trojan Malware, URL protection
and there's many more, including.
Personal identity protection, right?
Because at the end of the day, you might do everything right as a consumer, right?
You may be super cautious about where you post your information, how you
interact with strangers, but then it might be an organization that manages
your data that gets breached, right?
So it's important that you're also investing in, identity
monitoring, dark web monitoring.
There's a whole suite of things that technology can help with.
And in this world of ai.
Based on our discussion, I can say that it becomes very difficult for
the human eye or the ear, depending on whether it's video or voice, or
both, to identify fake from real.
And so you almost need these tools that are highly trained and are
capable of helping you identify that synthetic information that
we are processing every day,
so it's not.
It's not just you who's gonna be able to solve all these issues.
You need some sort of tools to help you.
And that's where, I think digital assistance are becoming very valuable.
What do you see as the future of this?
what are the things that you're looking at going forward?
I feel that consumers are gonna be more susceptible to these
attacks moving forward, and it's only gonna get, grow a lot more.
on the enterprise side, like I would say that you have a lot of security measures.
You have a security operations center, for example.
people dedicated to securing your organization.
They look at all of that.
But on the consumer side, you'd really need more of that in this.
Age of ai just two weeks ago or just a week ago.
there've been all kinds of exploits related to open claw or mold port.
I don't know if you've heard of that, but oh, we've done a fair bit on this.
that's, you've heard me on QR codes.
Just say no.
If you've, if anybody says to put open claw on your machine.
Just say no.
The, it's but that's where we leave, that's where we are heading.
So if you think about it, open claw is a good demonstration
of what's to come, right?
Agent AI is gonna be a part of our lives, whether we like it or not,
It's complicated to the general consumer to install open closet, so
they probably won't do it anyway.
But at some point when applications and organizations start building that into
software that they provide you, which has an agentic component into it, that
opens you up to a bunch of supply chain attacks, all kinds of activities where.
you're enabling your browser to act on your behalf, to buy tickets
on your behalf, to do bookings to the point where you're giving
them your financial information.
your API keys, all of that.
And that sets up the attack surface, like in an, in, that, that attack surface
just got way broader than it used to be.
And so I see that.
Becoming more important in the consumer's life on being able to
safeguard and protect themselves.
Because you're gonna have to use automation, you're gonna have to
use tools, fight AI against ai.
Like I said, it's just gonna be a part of everybody's lives.
Yes.
And I think it will be, and I think it's inevitable too.
and by the way, I'm not a ludite.
I'm a tech guy that's, I love this stuff.
I just think if you don't understand how something works fully.
You can't think it through and you can't find an expert to guide you on
it or really solid information about it, don't put it on your machine.
And that's really my message for people because if the message from the developers
of Open Claw is if you really not, if you don't understand what the command line is.
How to work that better than anybody else.
Don't install this stuff because there's a whole pile of things behind it.
It will we'll catch up and, people, companies like yours will
build security and people will build secure aspects of this.
But it, you don't wanna be first in this sort of thing
or I guess the emotion again.
I wanna, I want to be first at this, that it's emotions that get us into trouble.
Yeah.
For anybody developing software and there's a lot of people who are trying
to come up with great ideas, right?
It, there's a race to build these agentic tools and everything.
I think the underlying message to everyone is, keep trust and safety in mind.
build that foundation from day zero, right?
Because that's how you keep everybody safe and like you correctly said,
the key message to the consumers is.
Don't take things on face value.
Trust your gut.
Trust your intuition, and really trust the source.
do not install things where you don't have a good understanding or
you haven't had a second opinion.
go to trusted websites, use trusted software, but then also look at,
who's developing that software?
are they a trusted organization that really invests in security, right?
Because at the core of everything is gonna be security.
Yeah, and a huge amount of, I, I apologize if I'm talking down to a huge
amount of our audience are cybersecurity professionals, and, but this is the
type of messaging I think you have to have the courage to take out to people.
Even though you're excited about technology, you have to have the
courage to be a wet blanket from time to time, or at least to
say, you need to stop and think.
We're also excited about this, and I go back to this open cloth thing, the.
The tsunami of YouTube videos that are still out there telling
people to move ahead with this.
and just jump in and just do, this is exasperating for me.
because they could, if they were professionals and they're
the, and the ones exist.
People are talking about, Hey, I'm gonna tell you about the risks.
I'm gonna tell you about how you can do this.
We're gonna walk this through and I'm gonna, and I'll explain that.
But the minute we get into the hype of technology, especially in the consumer
space, all of that goes, it's our job as professionals to help regulate that.
I don't know how else to explain it.
Yeah, absolutely.
everybody plays a part here.
whether you are a victim of a scam, if you're a developer, if
how do you spread that information?
How do you help the, your peers and everybody else gets safer.
So I think everybody wants to do the right thing, at least
from a security point of view.
But there's a lot of vulnerabilities along the way that'll come up unintentionally,
that we need to be aware of and be cautious about as we build forward.
Yeah, and my intent with this conversation was not to provide
everybody with all the answers, but to at least start that conversation
and start them to think about it.
I love to hear back from any of our listeners who've got information they
wanna share or ways in which they think we should be tackling this.
We.
Whatever you've got to say, I'm interested in hearing it.
We have the report and we'll make that link available to you on the show notes.
You can find those@technewsday.ca or.com.
Either one, take your pick.
So that's tech newsday.ca.com and we'll put that there.
We'll put it on the YouTube video as well, and I'll put it address of Project
Shamrock and a link to Beth Highland's book as well in case you wanna share that.
We just need to start the conversation.
We don't have to be perfect at it.
I guess is my message.
Abha, do you have a last message for our audience?
No, just, ensure that you maintain digital hygiene and, that's one
step in the right direction.
Great.
Thank you so much.
We've been grateful to have McAfee's head of Threat Research, Abha
Karnik, and, welcome, to the show.
I hope to have you back.
Thank you, Jim.
It was wonderful talking to you.
Appreciate it.
And that's our show for today.
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