And he carries on. When my neighbor is at home, I find the rise in heat enables me to turn my central heating off. Unfortunately, he's frequently away for long periods in the winter. My suggestion that he should turn up his thermostat before he goes away met with a frosty response.

Ah, get it?

Get it? Yeah, very good. However, we have discovered that if I shout Alexa through his letterbox, I can control his heating.

I love that so much.

Smashing Security, Episode 115: Love Nests and Is Two-FA Destroying the World? With Carole Theriault and Graham Cluley. Hello, hello, and welcome to Smashing Security, Episode 115. My name is Graham Cluley.

And I'm Carole Theriault.

Hello, Carole.

Hello, Graham.

And we are joined this week by a special returning guest. He hasn't been on for some months. It's Mr. BJ Mendelson. Hello, BJ.

Hello. Is it me you're looking for?

Yes. I'm so glad you're here. I know that when you're on the show, it's going to be a fun one.

You know, it's somehow appropriate he's quoting Lionel Richie.

I love Lionel Richie. It's my karaoke go-to.

Is it?

Yeah. Hello, is it me you're looking for?

And it's royalties, Carole. And it's also Valentine's Day.

That's right.

Yes.

So we've got a special romantic episode of Smashing Security coming up for you. And what else have we got coming up, Carole?

So we have an awesome episode this week. Graham is talking about a new class action suit someone has taken against Apple, and you won't believe what's written in the fine print. We have our guest BJ talking about IoT Nest devices and how they can spy on you. And because it's Valentine's Day, I'm talking about romance scams and catfishing. All this and so much more coming up on Smashing Security.

Now I have bad news for you. You may have noticed millions of people are suffering. People are starving, they're clothed in rags, the economy is in ruins. It is the end of times.

What are you talking about?

I'm painting a picture of how everything is going to look in the year 2020, Carole, because the end of times are upon us.

I thought you were describing Brexit.

Yeah, it might come earlier in the UK. That's true.

Graham, what are you smoking? I don't understand.

Well, you may be wondering what is going to break down society as we know it. Will it be climate change? A meteorite strike? An outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism?

Our listeners aren't 12 years old.

Well, I'll tell you what it's going to be, Carole. It's going to be two-factor authentication.

Ah, jeez. Yes. I'm putting down the popcorn.

It's the evil of our time. It's so inconvenient, it's been accused of being such a nuisance that it is causing economic harm and inconvenience in millions of iPhone users around the world. And the champion, the visionary who is leading the cause against two-factor authentication, is a chap, an American, actually, of course, of course, called Jay Brodsky, who has brought a class-action suit against Apple in California.

Surely that must happen often. They must get class actions all the time.

I think they do things quite a lot, yes.

But this one tickled you.

Well, he is the savior. He is our savior. He's going to protect us from economic ruin.

Jesus Brodsky.

Well, I don't know if his middle name's Jesus or not, but anyway.

Well, he's American, so there's a good chance it is.

Right?

He is suing Apple because two-factor authentication on an iPhone or an iMac takes too much time. In his class action suit, which I will link to in the show notes, he alleges the following: that Apple enabled two-factor authentication on his account without his explicit consent.

Outrageous.

Which ignores the fact that Apple actually only offers 2FA on an opt-in basis. But never mind, let's not get bogged down in the details here or any truth. He also says that 2FA is too inconvenient to actually set up, requiring several steps on several devices.

Is he able to buy stuff on Amazon without too much difficulty?

Well, he hasn't enabled 2FA on that, I imagine, has he?

Right, right.

He says 2FA, once you've got it installed, is too darn inconvenient to use as well. Because, get this, 2FA apparently requires him to remember not only his password, but also have access to a trusted device.

Sorry, he says too darn inconvenient in his class action suit?

Well, I don't know if that's an exact quote, but basically, yes.

Oh, right, okay, okay.

I think that's legalese.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I gotta brush up on my legal reading.

Anyway, he says that you have to have access to a trusted device if you're using 2FA, which is of course the whole point. Of how 2FA is supposed to work. He says that Apple don't let you disable two-factor authentication after it's been enabled. So once you enable 2FA on your Apple accounts, there's a 2-week grace period. This bit is actually true. This is the one alleged thing that he says which appears to be true because there is this grace period during which you can deactivate it. But after that, you are permanently 2FA secured.

Really? I didn't know that. Oh, so what if you turned it off on the 14th day and then turn it back on?

Oh, I don't know. You know, that sounds like the kind of thing, which would be rather inconvenient in itself.

He could add it to his list.

He says, what a nuisance it is that two-factor authentication is required every time an Apple device is turned on. Now, I have an Apple device. I just turned mine on about 5 minutes ago. I didn't need to use two-factor authentication at that point, so I'm not sure that's complete. It seems to me like what he really needs is not a class action suit. He needs technical support because he's set something up wrong. But no, that's not the way it works in America. He's launched a class action suit and get this, He claims that two-factor authentication takes between 2 to 5 minutes to complete. And in the class action, he describes the multi-step process. He says, first of all, I have to enter my selected password on the device that I'm interested in logging in on. And then I have to go and enter my password on another trusted device to log in. And then optionally, I have to select a trust or do not trust pop-up message response. And then I have to wait for a 6-digit verification code and enter that onto the device. He says that every time he tries to log in, it takes him between 2 and 5 minutes with two-factor authentication. Now, I'm trusting that you two fellows have got two-factor authentication enabled on your devices. Does it take 2 to 5 minutes for you?

It takes about less than 30 seconds.

Right.

Yeah, right.

And the dudes at Apple Insider, they were slightly suspicious of this claim as well. So they got their stopwatches out and they tried to be as lackadaisical and slow as they could and slow slowth-like, and they reckoned it took them 22 seconds to complete the process. So according to Brodsky, he reckons millions— and by the way, Carole, this is real quotes from the class— millions of Apple users are suffering harm and economic losses because of the huge amount of time that two-factor authentication is taking up, but because of the interference with the use of their phones.

And presumably he has 50 case studies showing this.

Well, he's had his own experience because he hasn't been to the Genius Bar to find out how to do it. I just think, will someone please buy this guy an Android phone or an old buzzy Nokia brick instead? Because he clearly can't cope, can he, with an iPhone? Don't knock the Nokias. No, I like Nokias. They're cool.

I like Nokias, yeah.

Yeah. Good battery life and no two-factor authentication, right? Nothing built in. Snake. Well, don't snake. That's right. You'd probably have SMS-based two-factor authentication, which of course isn't as secure as—

Predictive texting.

Oh, you know what? I tried to use an old Nokia phone a year or so ago. I couldn't do predictive text. It was just what? I don't know how to do this any longer. I didn't know what to press. Disaster.

So you don't have a— my house, I have two doors and there's kind of an airlock if you don't have the keys, because in England you don't have automatic fire door unlock from the inside, outside you do in America or Canada. Right, right. So I got locked inside this kind of portico. Right? And I had only— I only had an old Nokia phone that someone had just given me that day because my phone was in the house. And I know what you're saying. I tried to text a friend. I only had one phone number in my head that I remembered. And I tried to put it into the phone to text them to say, help me because you have keys of mine. And I couldn't do it. Sorry, Carole.

And you were texting, how?

I was panicking, actually.

Open my doors,

I have a question. So this guy is saying there's millions of Apple users are suffering harm and economic losses. I mean, has he seen the AirPods?

So this class suit is seeking fines and penalties in accordance with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. please. Sorry, Dave, And he's saying, look, I want all funds, revenues, benefits that Apple has unjustly received. can't do that. He's also claiming that Apple is violating California's own Invasion of Privacy Act, whatever that means. I don't quite understand how that works.

I think this is absolutely ridiculous. Can I make—

Yes.

Can I give you what I think is going on here?

Please do.

I think he's trying to raise a big stink so that Apple just goes, oh, just give him $10 grand so he goes away.

Oh yeah, maybe.

Yeah, I think so.

But the thing is, for the sake of the 22 seconds that he lost through his— although he's claiming it's 2 to 5 minutes— we are— the courts are going to be tied up, the lawyers are going to get rich, and everyone's wasting time. And we right now are wasting time on our podcast talking about this buffoon.

You are wasting our time.

Who brought this object to our table today. It's ridiculous. We need a better story than this. BJ, I hope you've got one for us.

I wish I did. But mine actually deals with two-factor authentication as well.

You guys.

In short, there's been a series of incidents involving Nest devices in the United States. So one just this week involved someone getting into the Nest and basically spying on someone's kid, which has actually happened quite a number of times before with different smart devices. But this is the most recent occurrence. And then last month, this is my personal favorite, someone had hacked a Nest device out in California and had told the family who owned the device that North Korea had just launched an intercontinental ballistic missile. Oh my God. And they only had a few minutes left to live. And so you figure, all right, well, this is a serious thing, right? This is the kind of thing that you would expect a tech company to say, all right, we're not going to let this happen.

Because that family were terrified, weren't they? I remember reading the reports.

Well, yeah, I mean, I'm making light of it because I'd like to think that Americans could exercise common sense and not get their news from smart devices.

But where are you supposed to get your news from? Stone tablets?

No, but in their particular case, they didn't even know that their Nest had a speaker. They suddenly thought, you know, they were watching YouTube or something on the screen or a TV program, and suddenly this voice came out warning them of a missile attack.

And they were "Shit!" Okay, sorry, can we back up just a bit? I'm actually not sure what Nest do. I know Nest were bought by Google. Is that right?

Right. They're mostly known for the smart thermostat, but they also have Nest cameras, which is the big thing that they've been pushing. And what's interesting about the Nest camera is that, or at least the sales pitch anyway, is that you could just leave it recording for hours and all that video gets stored over in Google servers.

Thanks, Google.

Yeah. But we know what the flip side to that is, right? So the reason why I brought up the story and it was related to the one that we were just talking about is because Nest basically said, yeah, you have to do a better job of protecting yourself.

To the user, to the people that buy.

Ah. And so, you know, last month they had told the Mercury News who reported on the North Korea story that they're actively introducing features that will stop compromised passwords and other credentials to be used to log into Nest devices. But then just this week, just from the Chicago Tribune, the response was essentially, you know, they're sending an email out to users telling them what they can do to get the most out of the security features. They're essentially just passing the buck onto the users.

Okay, I see I'm getting on my soapbox again here. BJ, if I called you up and said, oh my God, you won't believe what happened yesterday. I left my front door open and some guy came in and stole all my stuff. Poor me, right? You might sympathize with me on the phone, but then you'd probably call Graham and go, "Oh my God, she's so ridiculous," right? Or if I didn't put my seatbelt on in the car, I think I would be blamed for, you know, if I died, right?

It's almost your car goes honk, honk, honk, honk, honk, or beep, beep, beep, doesn't it? If you don't have your seatbelt on, it warns you about that.

That's true.

Now, in these particular cases, people are setting up their Nest, and I imagine the problem is that they are using passwords that have already been compromised. And so hackers are able to guess the password, or they know the password because those users have used them elsewhere.

It's worth pointing out that Nest specifically said to the Mercury News that two-factor authentication actually would eliminate this type of security risk, which isn't entirely accurate.

Yeah, two-factor. It certainly makes it much harder for the hackers to get in. And that's why we recommend generally that people enable it.

It takes a long time though.

Gee, there are still ways.

It takes 22 seconds.

There are still ways sometimes of getting past it, but—

But finally he gets it. Jesus. I was sitting in my head, one Mississippi, two Mississippi. He's older, guys. He's older.

So actually all this story of these, you know, what should we call them? Dinguses? We're not allowed to say Alexa, are we? These sort of things that trigger people's devices. All these dinguses. There was a great letter in The Times, The Times of London, just last week, which I will link to in the show notes because someone also posted it up on Reddit about a guy who wrote, "Sir, the owner of the flat directly below mine would endorse your leading article, which advocated turning off voice-activated devices." And he carries on: "When my neighbour is at home, I find the rising heat enables me to turn my central heating off." You know, he's like a parasite, basically, living off his neighbour's heat. "Unfortunately, he's frequently away for long periods in the winter. My suggestion that he should turn up his thermostat before he goes away met with a frosty response." Get it?

Get it?

Yeah, very good. "However, we have discovered that if I shout Alexa through his letterbox I can control his heating."

I love that so much.

So finally, there's a use for these voice-activated devices. If your neighbour has them, you can use them to your benefit.

I thought they worked though. They had voice recognition in them a little bit. So what, you have to put on an accent to do that? I didn't know anyone could control them.

No, I don't think they do have voice recognition. I don't think they're tied to a particular voice. I think just about anyone.

Okay, listeners, tell us.

Well, we wouldn't know because we don't have them, do we? No, we don't. Thank goodness.

No, I don't have any of those home assistants. My husband's my home assistant. Let's see if he listens. Shush. We don't say his name.

No, not Valentine's Day.

Husband.

Don't activate him. So Carole, what's your story for us this Valentine's Day?

Graham. Yes. I want you to hark back to your single days for a moment. The pre-family time when you were a single fella.

Ah, yes.

Now don't think back to the '70s. I want you to imagine that all the internet conveniences that exist today exist in this world of yours too. So I'm going to set the scene. Valentine's Day is fast approaching. And single Graham is perusing his online dating profiles because of course you would have. You have dating profiles online. I mean, what else are you going to do these days?

Of course.

Now I'm imagining one of the contents of one of your profiles would be avid Doctor Who fan who loves a bit of chess.

That's going to attract the girls.

And seeks some fun times.

Yes.

Fun times while watching Doctor Who.

Oh, God. And BJ, you would probably have a female wrestler with a love for comedians.

Yes.

So single Graham suddenly gets a like on his dating profile.

This is weird.

And her name is Gigi. Bonjour. And Gigi's profile pic is hot.

Right.

A spitting image of a young Diana Rigg crossed with a coquettish Cher.

Okay, well, the first half was good.

And single Graham, you click on Gigi's interest and you see that chess and Doctor Who are mentioned. And Gigi even reveals that she likes eating tuna and peas for breakfast. Just like you, you weirdo.

Just like me, yes.

So basically, single Graham is instantly gaga for Gigi. And immediately likes her profile back. She messages you, you message her, and soon you're chatting late into the night where she flirtatiously calls you her little Ood. That's a Doctor Who monster, right?

It is.

Ood, object of desire.

Yes. Yeah, no, it's really gross. Yes. Now, Gigi says she's desperate to meet you, but she has itsy bitsy cash flow problem and her car's in the shop.

Oh, bless her.

And she's late on her rent. And you say, ch-ch-ch-ch, don't worry. Single Graham to the rescue. And you lend Gigi some cash and she's so grateful and she tells you how much she loves her little Udi. Now, at some point, perhaps early in your relationship, because you're pretty savvy, or very late if you weren't, you start feeling a little uneasy because she keeps coming up with excuses when you make plans to meet. So sorry, Single Graham, I have to get the cat groomed, or, family emergency, need to jump on a flight, or dang it, Single Graham, my colonoscopy is today.

Which is suspicious, because normally it'd be me coming up with those sort of excuses. I just wouldn't the pressure of actually meeting a member of the opposite sex. I'd the idea of it, but then it's oh no, no, no, let's not bother with that.

But you've given her so much money.

I have.

She's not answering your messages anymore. And you realize that you've been catfished. So the reason this is news is because UK's Action Fraud has just released numbers on romance scams. Turns out that 2018, more victims in the UK than ever before have been conned out of these so-called scams. Collectively, £50 million has been nabbed from UK victims, says Action Fraud. That's a 27% increase over 2017.

Right.

Do you think it's surprising that women represent 63% of the victims? Are you surprised that women are more victims than men?

No, I'm not. No.

And they've lost twice as much as men on average.

Because I think women are more romantic, aren't they? Generally. I can imagine. And women have a heart, and women are more likely, I think, to dish out some money, I suspect.

We're easy to woo. You just go, hey gorgeous.

No.

Hey gorgeous, come over here. You know how to whistle, don't you? No, I just I just think, anyway, I can believe it. I can believe it. I'm not saying that men don't fall for it as well, but—

The most costly romance catfish I saw involved a guy who swindled a 78-year-old woman out of nearly $1 million US. Yeah, right? And we know that catfishers often target lonely hearts to effectively steal their money, but not all. Check these out. So this one guy worked for a repossession company, right? And he says he routinely catfished people on Facebook who'd been hiding their cars from repo man. And he'd play the sexy lady, lure them into nearby bars so he could repo their car in the parking lot.

That's awesome. That's fantastic.

I've got another one. This one's pretty amazing. So this woman's aunt is worried that her niece isn't safe online, right? She wants to teach her a lesson. So aunt creates an online male profile and manages to connect with her niece.

Diana Rigg. Okay.

Unfortunately, the niece immediately gets saucy before soon asking her new suitor to kidnap her so she can get away from her aunt. And the niece even gives the kid— this is unbelievable— the niece even gives him instructions to kill her aunt and the other people in the house, and she ends up being arrested.

That's taking kinkiness to a whole new level, isn't it? I think so. It's what— so this is what some woman says when she's flirting, say, oh, you sound really hot, by the way, can you kill my aunt and everyone else in the house?

I suspect with that one, she knew it was the aunt. See, that's what I think. That's what I would do. I can't imagine an aunt would outwit a savvy teen.

That would be the only defense, wouldn't it?

Well, then yeah, she should have called me. So how do you avoid catfishing? There seems to be a surge. Advice includes doing reverse image searches, right, on Google. This is a quick and dirty background check to see if the images they're presenting to you as their hot selves are actually just an underwear model from a Sears catalog or a female grandmaster playing chess or whatever it is.

But yes, they've grabbed a picture.

Or a Diana Rigg Oh, lovely. Look at their check-ins on social media to see if the holidays or locations they say they're in match what they tell you. And when I read that, I had a weird thought because we often tell people, hey, maybe get off social media, right? But then you don't have a profile. slash Cher combo. So maybe it seems the more internet savvy you are, the less likely you are to get a date out there. And that's a tragic thought.

Oh, so if you're acting securely, people won't find you on social media and they'll be suspicious of you and think you must— So what you need to do is, if you're not on social media, you need to create a fake social media account purely with your real picture. A lot of this advice, Carole, appears to me to actually be digital stalking which you're advocating. Is that right?

Okay, you may want to try also doing a video chat so you can interact with them in a live context. It would be pretty hard to fake an interaction pretending you look like Claudia Schiffer.

Be careful with that one, though.

Oh, because of the deepfakes?

No, no, no. Because there have been a lot of ghastly sextortion scams and things where people think they're talking to some sexy lady. And then they're asked to get their Bezos out, and that ends up on video, and they end up blackmailing you. So you've got to be— So keep your trousers on if you're going to do that kind of thing, right?

Yeah, that's true. Just be celibate. Give up.

You know what? I don't think that's a bad idea at all.

A friend of mine was catfished. I don't think I've ever told this story anywhere before.

Exclusive!

It's going back to the primordial days of the internet, right? So it's going back to about 2001. I was a freshman at Alfred State College and a friend of mine had been flirting with this girl for about a good 6 months.

Okay. And she'd been sending him pictures and she's like, "Oh, you know, I'm going to come up and see you." And he's all excited. He's like, "Wow, look at these pictures."

So critical thinking was not, you know, a strong suit for him. So he was all excited about this girl. And the day of the meeting comes. And so this girl drives 600 miles from the middle of New Jersey to Alfred, New York. And there's two occupants in the car. One of them looks a model. The other does not.

Okay.

Can you guess which one was catfishing my friend?

The model.

Right. So, yeah, the best part of the story, though, is that I wound up befriending the model.

So she's now my wife.

Back of the net, BJ! Back of the net!

Well, so just imagine though, this kid— I've been mocking this guy for six months saying she doesn't exist, she doesn't exist. And then, for me to go and hook up with the model and he gets stuck with the person catfishing him, we were not friends long after that.

Holy moly!

That's what I said. BJ, you bastard! I, I did.

I told him it wasn't really his fault that his buddy got catfished, right?

What about the bro code? The bro code's been broken. You cock-blocked him.

What a wingman. What a shitty wingman.

And my crow. Yeah.

So Graham, as your longtime bud, I hope you would have told me about ChiChi because that's apparently the biggest advice of all is tell your friends about the relationship. So BJ's story. Yeah. But I hope you tell me and then I could do a recon mission, right? I could go find out. See if anything smells fishy.

You're my wingman, right?

That's right. Wing lady. Wing lady.

You're not gonna let me down BJ let down his buddy, right?

No, no, definitely not.

I'd hate you to get off with Diana Rigg Crow rather than me.

So would I. I'd hate it.

Not as she is now.

Okay, well.

Goodness sake.

Is she still alive?

Oh, how do you—

Are you not running a password manager in your organization? What are you thinking? Check out LastPass Enterprise. Just go to this URL: lastpass.com/smashing. Here you can learn all about what password managers can do for your firm, and you can learn more about LastPass Enterprise. I mean, if you want to solve poor password hygiene, if you fancy securing every password-protected entry point in your business, slide on over to lastpass.com/smashing. I use them, so you should check them out. Hey Graham?

Yes?

So I've got a problem.

Yes?

I use a cloud service, I put all my files and data up there, and I'm kind of nervous about prying eyes looking at it. Any advice?

Yeah, you've got to encrypt it.

Before I load it up?

Well, I would recommend so, because any file which you put on Dropbox or Google Drive or OneDrive or those other sort of cloud services, it could be accessed by that company or indeed law enforcement or any hacker who broke into your account. So what I would recommend is use a piece of software like Boxcryptor. It's what I run on my computer, and any file, before it gets uploaded to those cloud services, gets encrypted with my own keys, which I control. So the cloud service itself can't see the contents of the files which I'm putting on the cloud drive. It's all encrypted.

Cool, I'll check it out.

Go to Boxcryptor.com, and thanks to Boxcryptor for supporting the show this week. And welcome back, and join us on our favorite part of the show that we call Pick of the Week.

Pick of the Week.

Pick of the Week.

Pick of the Week is the part of the show where everyone choose something they like. Could be a funny story, a book that they've read, a TV show, a movie, a record, a podcast, a website, or an app. Whatever they like, it doesn't have to be security related necessarily.

Definitely should not be.

Now, my Pick of the Week this week is a website and it is a website called howlongtoreadthis.com.

Okay.

It's a great idea. I'm a very busy man. I don't drink coffee, which means I don't have a great deal of time to read books. Yeah, I was just gonna say, you don't read books either. But if I were to ever read a book, I would use a website like howlongtoreadthis.com.

Why?

Because what it does is it measures, it gives you a little test and it measures how quick your reading speed is. And then it says, oh, if you want to read Doctor Who and the Curse of Pedalodon, that will take you at your current reading speed 9 hours 33 minutes, or whatever it is.

Should we do a race? Choose a book.

Oh, I don't know. What book?

I don't know.

What book is famous?

Joy of Sex.

Oh, for goodness. I think it's mostly pictures, Carole. I don't know. Oh, it is here.

It's here.

It's here. Okay. I've just looked it up. The Joy of Sex, the ultimate revised edition. So what it's done is it's given us about 150 words which we have to read. Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort. Start reading now.

Go.

Erotic.

Accelerating. Pleasurable. Sexuality. Shh, done.

No, you're not.

Okay, it got long, it got long. I got halfway through.

I got through it.

Carole, when it comes to The Joy of Sex, you shouldn't really finish that quickly. Okay, well, I've lost my place now. I'm just going to say I'm done, right? It says it will take me 3 hours and 59 minutes to complete The Joy of Sex. I think I could probably do it in about 8 minutes. Really? At your age?

It's a bit quick.

Including getting my trousers off. That can take a while. So there you go.

What do you think about this, BJ?

A lot of things, but it says it's going to take me 2 hours and 25 minutes to read it.

Are you guys looking at similar books underneath?

Oh, hang on. Oh yes, similar books.

Because mine has She Comes First.

Oh, I've read that.

Have you? Is it good?

It's very good.

I think I've got it behind me. It's The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman. I think that's what I was buying.

The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman.

That should have been my pick of the week. I will say this for the book. I think that every guy should read it, and that's all I'll say.

Well, there you go. BJ on Valentine's Day, how wonderful. What's your pick of the week?

Today is the one day every year where no one laughs when they hear my initials. My husband would love it.

To visit.

So I have two things. One is a quick little one. The other is the actual real one. So I don't know if any of you have watched the Grammy Awards, but they did this thing this year where after about 60 seconds, they started playing this really long dramatic music to force people off stage. And I really want that as a real-life superpower, particularly when someone is telling you a really long, boring story. You could just summon the music.

Oh, so you want the superpower that summons the music?

Yeah, no, it'll tell you the hurry of that.

Oh yeah, yeah, sorry.

Yeah, okay, could be handy on this show.

So the best example is, you know, I love my mom, but my mom is the world's worst storyteller. And so sometimes she'll buy something from QVC and it'll take what really should take about 5 minutes to tell you, it takes about an hour and a half.

Last one, pretend you're your mom.

Okay, so I was watching QVC and I ordered these shoes and I— wait, no, what time was that? Oh, it was about 8 o'clock. And so I ordered these shoes and they were red and then they said that they were on sale for a limited— nope, but they were on sale yesterday. Nope. So they were on sale for a limited time for $19.95. Exactly.

And so my—

Anyway, fascinating, BJ.

Thank you very much.

Did you have a proper pick of the week?

Yes, I did. So this year is the 20th anniversary of The Sopranos on HBO. So I've decided I haven't rewatched it since it wrapped up, and I found it's just a wonderful time capsule of all things '90s. And so I remember distinctly when I was in high school, if I had to call home, going and using a payphone.

Carole, play the music.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too.

And that's something that you see in one of the episodes is the kid Anthony going and using a payphone to call home. And each episode seems to be this wonderful '90s time capsule. So even if you don't like the weird dream sequences and the dumb ending, I do recommend coming back and checking out The Sopranos just for the sheer '90s of it.

I think that's an excellent one. You know, my other half has never seen The Sopranos at all, and I really— it's so good.

No, it is.

It's so good.

Very cool. Carole, what's your pick of the week?

Well, staying with my Valentine's Day theme, do you guys believe in soulmates?

I do.

Do you?

I do.

Perfect. So let me introduce you to a wonderful XKCD What If analysis on the concept of soulmates. So my actual choice, just to be clear, my pick of the week this week is XKCD's What If website.

Okay.

And I'll focus on a single entry, although there are literally dozens and dozens and dozens of them. And all of them are fairly in-depth and a little bit wacky. And I chose this one. What if soulmates existed? So the first thing the article assumes is that your soulmate is set at birth, right? So you know nothing about who or where they are, but as in the romantic cliché, you will recognize each other the moment your eyes meet. So in other words, in order to spot your soulmate, you need to see them. So for starters, there's so many questions, is your soulmate still alive, right? There's 100 billion or so humans that have ever lived on Earth, but only 7 billion are alive now. So if we're all paired at random, 90% of our soulmates are long dead.

That's uplifting.

That's unfortunate.

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.

Or, for example, you might think, well, no, no, I want someone who obviously is alive. But then there's also age restrictions, right? It would be completely zany if my soulmate were 95. Watch it, Graham.

I'm still holding out for Diana Rigg. I'm not going to let that get in the way. So it all has to do with eye contact, right? But then think about how many times you make eye contact with people, right? 3 people a year.

So if you need two pairs advised to meet, how do we game this? And the article comes up with eye contact could work digitally, right? So you could do it online. So perhaps all we need is a modified version of Chat Roulette. So they suggest that if you use a system 8 hours a day 7 days a week, theoretically this modified chat roulette system could match everyone with their exact soulmate within a few decades. Just a few decades. Full-time job, no holidays, few decades.

A few decades.

Okay. Now there's one big problem with all this that I spotted.

Oh, the only one? I spotted one.

I spotted a big one. What if you're blind? Yes. They don't deserve a soulmate. They're being punished by God. Yeah, what if you're a hermit? What if a technophobe? A lot of problems with this. But anyway, it's very charming. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful stuff.

It is, actually. I have had a chance to read this and it is absolutely charming. I really recommend— I mean, there's very little that this chap who does XKCD does wrong, is there? He's a very, very entertaining and thought, "Oh, I'm sure he'd love to be on the show." He would love it. He'd have to get past. Okay, well, on that Valentine's Day note, so, Carole, have you given us an uplifting message for Valentine's Day or not from that? I'm not quite clear.

Have I given you an uplifting message?

With your pick of the week, has that actually cheered us up? Has that given us hope for soulmates?

Yeah, well, look, I think if people out there are listening today and today is Valentine's Day, then I'm very touched you're spending it with us. So happy Valentine's Day to you. There you go.

You sad sacks. And that just about wraps it up. BJ, I'm sure a lot of our listeners would like to keep in contact with you. What's the best way for people to do that?

555.

That's right. Yeah, so my phone number is on my website, but the easiest thing is over at Twitter @BJMendelson and over at BJMendelson.com. I have a bunch of stuff I'm working on this year, but you guys can check out my rendition of A Christmas Carole starring Donald Trump as Ebenezer Scrooge.

Is this in comic strip form or something?

No, no, this is prose. This is an ongoing prose novel that I'm publishing to bjmendelson.com.

Okay, well, we'll link to that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And folks can also follow us on Twitter at Smashing Security, no G. Twitter wouldn't let us have a G. And you can also join us in discussion on Reddit. We have a thriving Reddit subreddit right now for Smashing Security. You can get there really quickly by going to smashingsecurity.com/reddit.

And thank you to our sponsors this week, LastPass and Boxcryptor. These guys help us give you these episodes for free. If you want more fab guests on the show, help us boost our listenership. We need you guys, we need you. So send us some reviews, send us some love.

Until next time, cheerio, bye-bye, bye-bye.

Now, why am I talking about catfishes? I'm not making a catfish molehill here, or mountain out of a catfish molehill. You— What? What? I was just gonna get rid of that. I'll just get rid of that. I'll just— I was— I was— this is my head. I was thinking, you know, make a mountain out of catfish.

Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Move on. Move on. Move on.