The CyberGuy Report

Romance scams are the most expensive form of online dating fraud, and this one plays out like a true crime documentary with two victims instead of one.
Gabby met a man on LinkedIn who was already connected to a former colleague of hers, so she assumed he was real.
Over two years he asked for money, sent it back, and asked again, until the amounts got very large and the money stopped coming back. The photos used to catfish her belong to Brian Haugen, a real man in Los Angeles, and he joins me in studio to explain what a stolen face has cost him.
What You Will Learn This Episode:
- Why a romance scammer sends your money back early on, and what it is actually buying him
- How a scam account uses one shared LinkedIn connection to look completely legitimate
- What to watch for when an online dating match always has a reason they cannot meet you
- Why the amounts start small and climb slowly instead of arriving as one big ask
- The single request that will expose a catfish faster than anything else you can try
- Who the Yahoo Boys are and how an international romance scam operation actually runs
- What happens to the real person whose face gets stolen and used to catfish strangers
- Kurt's red flags for checking on someone you love who is dating a stranger online

Enjoying the show? Take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. Head over to https://cyberguy.com/podcast/ to find the show on other platforms. Have a question for Kurt? Call 877-655-KURT and leave a voicemail.

Flock cameras sit at the end of ordinary neighborhood streets in thousands of American towns, and one of them read Lindsey Isaacs' license plate wrong. Seven months later, the 23-year-old was surrendering herself on eight felony counts tied to a crash that killed three people. She was nowhere near the accident. She had a receipt, a car with no damage on it, and a vehicle that was not even the same color as the one witnesses described. This true crime story pinned an innocent person to the crime with just a flock camera, a plate number, and the officers who decided that was enough. I sit down with Lindsey to walk through the 13 days she spent in jail, the moment she realized what investigators had actually built their case on, and what mass surveillance on your own street now costs you in privacy.What You Will Learn This Episode:- How flock cameras work, and how one plate read can turn your car into evidence- What a plate reader captures about where you drive, and how long police keep it- Why a receipt and an undamaged car were not enough to stop an arrest- What a time and distance analysis is, and how it finally broke the case open- Why the color of a vehicle matters more than most drivers realize- What happens inside solitary confinement when charges get labeled severe- The safeguard Lindsey says should be required before any plate based arrest- Why "I have nothing to hide" is the wrong way to think about mass surveillance

Enjoying the show? Take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. Head over to https://cyberguy.com/podcast/ to find the show on other platforms. Have a question for Kurt? Call 877-655-KURT and leave a voicemail.

In August 2005, I flew to New Orleans on a trip with my parents and ended up trapped downtown as Hurricane Katrina came ashore. I got my mom and dad onto the last flight out, then checked back into a hotel that promised it was the "model of hurricane preparedness." Within days, the food was gone, the generators were dying, gunfire echoed through the streets, and nine feet of water surrounded the building. Carlos Amezcua, the KTLA anchor who interviewed me while I was trapped in New Orleans, joins me in studio to walk back through it. What I learned in those days became the Hurricane prep checklist I have used ever since, and I share all of it here.What You Will Learn This Episode:- How to find and save your home's exact GPS coordinates in under a minute, and why rescuers cannot reach you without them- Why your cell tower stops working roughly 48 hours after the power goes out, and what still works after that- What belongs in the Ziploc bag Kurt keeps ready at all times- How to choose an emergency radio that wakes you up before a storm arrives instead of after- Why a hotel or building that says it is prepared can still run out of food and water in days- How to set up Emergency SOS by satellite on your phone before you need it, and the one mistake that keeps it from working- What to keep charged, and where to store the backup power everyone forgets- Why the scams coming after a disaster can do as much damage as the storm

Enjoying the show? Take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. Head over to https://cyberguy.com/podcast/ to find the show on other platforms.

Voicemail with no missed call? That silent voicemail scam is how criminals confirm your phone number is real, and blocking the number will never stop it. A viewer named Mike started getting empty voicemails from numbers that never rang his phone. He blocked one. Twenty minutes later, another arrived from a different number. Then another. I explain how ringless voicemail works, why every number you block comes back as a new one, and why the call that comes next is the one that can cost you everything.What You Will Learn This Episode:- Why your phone never rings before these voicemails land- How ringless voicemail gets into your inbox without going through your phone- Why blocking the number does absolutely nothing to stop it- What scammers actually learn the second you open that message- How your phone number gets stamped confirmed and sold to worse criminals- The exact iPhone setting that makes unknown callers explain themselves first- What to ask your carrier for by name, because they will not offer it- How to report these calls to the FTC and get your number off broker lists

Enjoying the show? Take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. Head over to https://cyberguy.com/podcast/ to find the show on other platforms. Have a question for Kurt? Call 877-655-KURT and leave a voicemail.

Jennifer had never even had a speeding ticket. Then she posted on Facebook about the dirty water coming out of taps in Trinidad, Texas, and two police officers showed up at her front door with a felony warrant. 

She was handcuffed in her own front yard and held in the Navarro County Jail for 23 hours. Before the arrest, her post was mass-reported and wiped off Facebook by a group locals call the Cartel of Trinidad. 

The one person inside city hall who stood up and said this had gone too far was the town's judge of 16 years, Judge Bivens. What happened to her next tells you everything about how far a small town will go to keep people quiet.

What You Will Learn This Episode:
How a small group can get your Facebook post erased in hours, even when everything in it is true

Why a mom of four with no criminal record was handcuffed in her front yard and jailed for 23 hours

What happened to the Trinidad judge who refused to go along with the arrest

How a man holding a protest sign outside city hall ended up in the back of a police car

Why the city's water clerk lost her job for refusing to sign a statement

What Judge Bivens says the police chief told her before Jennifer was arrested

Why families in this Texas town say the tap water is burning their kids

What Kurt and Judge Bivens would say to Mark Zuckerberg about the takedown that started all of this

Enjoying the show? Take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. Head over to https://cyberguy.com/podcast/ to find the show on other platforms. Have a question for Kurt? Call 877-655-KURT and leave a voicemail.