This transcript was generated automatically, and has not been manually verified. It may contain errors and omissions. In particular, speaker labels, proper nouns, and attributions may be incorrect. Treat it as a helpful guide rather than a verbatim record — for the real thing, give the episode a listen.

GRAHAM CLULEY. What is brilliant about Columbo is that most murder mystery shows, it's normally about who committed the crime. Not with Columbo, you know that from the very beginning. It's not even how the crime was committed, you saw it with your own eyes the first 15 minutes of the program before Columbo even shows up. You see the murder, how it's been done. It is all about how will Columbo wrap this guy up in knots. Can I just put my cigar out somewhere? It's terrific, it's sweet. I'd say it's sweet. It is sweet. I'm not sure I'd

---

CAROLE THERIAULT. Say it's... I wouldn't say it's... What? I wouldn't say it's the all and end all of television, but I think if you were feeling unwell, right, and you wanted something like a bit... You know... What?

---

GRAHAM. Stingrays, Soccer and Smart Homes with Carole Theriault and Graham Cluley. Hello, hello and welcome to Smashing Security episode 236. My name's Graham Cluley.

---

CAROLE. And I'm Carole Theriault.

---

GRAHAM. Hello, Carole.

---

CAROLE. Hello, Graham.

---

GRAHAM. That's unusual that you greet me. Jeez. This week we're joined by a returning guest, it's BBC technology reporter Zoe Kleinman. Hello, Zoe.

---

CAROLE. Hello, Graham and Carole.

---

GRAHAM. Hi, welcome back.

---

CAROLE. Thank you, thanks for having me. You've been a busy girl.

Well yeah, quite busy, quite busy growing a human actually.

---

GRAHAM. Yeah, you're seven months pregnant, that's how busy you've been.

---

CAROLE. It's my lockdown surprise. I wish I'd just started baking sourdough instead.

---

GRAHAM. Well at least it's proof that you did have some fun during lockdown. There comes a point when you've watched everything on Netflix and you think what are we going to do now.

---

CAROLE. We ran out of TV, that was the problem. Let's thank this week's sponsors: 1Password, Offensive Security and Privacy.com. It's their support that helps us give you this show for free. Now, coming up on today's show, Graham, what do you got?

---

GRAHAM. I'm going to be asking the question, how do you find someone who simply won't respond to your texts?

---

CAROLE. Okay, weird. And what about you, Zoe?

I want to be talking about the football.

---

GRAHAM. Ooh, we never get sports on this show, this is fantastic.

---

CAROLE. And I'm doing IoT here, IoT there, and IoT flipping everywhere. All this and much more coming up on this episode of Smashing Security.

---

GRAHAM. Now, chums, chums, do you remember the old days? Way back when?

---

CAROLE. Well, it depends how old, Graham. Not when you were young.

---

GRAHAM. How far back are we going?

---

CAROLE. Yeah, exactly.

---

GRAHAM. I don't think youngsters today quite understand what it was like for us before mobile phones existed.

---

CAROLE. Oh, it was rubbish, wasn't it?

---

GRAHAM. Do you remember, not only do we have to make small talk with our partners or look out the window on the bus, but we also had no way of contacting people immediately.

---

CAROLE. Do you know, I used to have to take a two hour bus ride to and from school for about five years and I couldn't read on buses because it just gave me a headache. And when I got my first Walkman, it was like the best thing ever. Do you remember phoning people up and having to ask their mums and dads if you could speak to them?

---

GRAHAM. Yes, and then saying, I'm sorry, they're busy.

---

CAROLE. Yeah.

---

GRAHAM. Way back then, you'd arrange to meet someone at a particular time, right? Maybe you'd send them a letter or a home in pigeon. You'd tell them in some fashion, maybe a landline, that you'd be at Covent Garden beside the kiosk selling sausage rolls at precisely noon. And there you would be at noon munching your sausage roll in a smoggy London, waiting for your friend to show up. And you had no idea if they were likely to get there or not.

---

CAROLE. Yeah, but you had no anxiety about that either.

---

GRAHAM. Well, exactly. The world has changed, hasn't it?

---

CAROLE. Yeah, I didn't care at all.

---

GRAHAM. You would hang out there. You wouldn't know, you'd read your book, right? You'd sit and read your book or listen to your Walkman. Right. Well, way back then, you wouldn't know what had happened to the person you were meant to be meeting up with or whether they were likely to turn up. They could have been waylaid by a sequence of unfortunate events. 1894, do you remember the great horse manure crisis of London? That was a problem because there were so many horses leaving manure everywhere.

---

CAROLE. Did you get shot on then?

---

GRAHAM. People were catching typhoid fever. In the old days you'd easily hang around for a couple of hours wondering if someone was going to turn up, second guessing whether you told them the right place to meet you and you might never find out what happened to them until weeks later when you happened to bump into them. So it was a bit of a problem getting a hold of people. So there was that. But also maybe you want to know where your partner is. Your partner might say they're going down the chess club for a match, but in fact they're popping down the aisle of the supermarket and steal some time with a woman at the checkout.

---

GRAHAM. Track. So it's not always easy to work out where someone is, if they're not going to help, if they're not going to play the part, if they're not going to answer the phone.

And this is a problem which the United States Secret Service had recently when they were trying to get hold of a person of interest. Because I was reading on Forbes that the Secret Service had attempted to have a chat with a chap called Abdul Inousa.

And Abdul Inouza, he was indicted a couple of months ago for allegedly carrying out romance scams. Nasty.

Now, according to the reports, Abdul had created numerous fake personas to trick people into falling in love with him. Yeah, a normal romance scammer.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I hear phrases fake personas, I can't help but think of fancy dress shops.

---

CAROLE. You want them to have a different outfit for each, yes.

---

GRAHAM. I'm imagining someone dressed up as Long John Silver or do you remember that white suit Richard Gere wore in Officer and a Gentleman? Yeah, maybe an Irish leprechaun, a Wookie in your case, Carole, because there's a broad spectrum of women it would be.

---

CAROLE. It would be in your spectrum would be Diana Rigg but a live version.

---

GRAHAM. Oh, yeah, we're preferably alive, yes, when it comes to Diana Rigg. And about 36.

Okay, right. Okay, so you're ageist as well. Wow.

Well, no, it's just that Diana Rigg doesn't, I mean, she was still obviously a lovely woman in her 80s, but somehow I'm not sure it would have worked as well.

---

CAROLE. You know, it works both ways with romantic scammers, doesn't it? Sometimes there's a team of them pretending to be one person.

So you think you're speaking to the same person consistently, but you're not. So how would that work, Graham, would they have to share the outfits?

Right, pass the hat. It's my turn to be Geoff.

---

GRAHAM. Maybe they could be a pantomime horse. So sometimes you get the front end, sometimes the back end talking to you.

I don't know. Mind you, you'd have to want to marry a horse, wouldn't you?

Are you talking about fervor things here? No, not anything fervory.

Anyway, according to the boys in blue, this chap, on at least one occasion, he disguised himself as a woman called Grace.

---

CAROLE. Do you mean on Zoom or on a video chat?

---

GRAHAM. Well, over the internet. I mean, it's a much easier trick to pull off over the internet than in person.

---

CAROLE. I'm just wondering if it's just audio. Maybe he just did it for fun and it didn't matter.

---

GRAHAM. With a squeaky voice or something. I'm not sure, I don't know, I don't have those details.

That's an important question. Anyway, Grace, according to Abdul, he claimed that Grace owned a cocoa plantation in Johannesburg.

And she was going around wooing wealthy men online, saying she needed a bit of cash to do some maintenance around the plantation. And this was one of Abdul's personas, actually.

Exactly. Right, right. And she'd say, don't worry, once we're married, the plantation will make us some cash.

We'll have cocoa coming out of our ears. You know, we'll be rolling around in it.

That doesn't sound very nice, but okay. Could be worse places.

But now sure enough some people did fall for this and they wired money to Grace or rather Abdul as a result. So the investigators were trying to trace this scammer, right, because people had complained that they'd lost loads of money and they hadn't ended up owning a cocoa plantation with Grace.

But they weren't able to locate Abdul. So what the Secret Service did is they found they had a mobile phone number which they believed belonged to him.

Presumably at some point that number was exchanged with one of the victims maybe for a bit of sexy chit chat, a bit of messaging. Okay, right, right, right.

So you have to ask yourself what did the lead investigator do? Put a wig on and act a girl?

No, no he didn't. If it'd been me I might have messaged them saying hey haven't chatted for a long time, yeah, how's the plantation going?

You know, yeah, that's what I'm thinking, yeah. Kissy, kissy, kissy, right?

Yeah. Well, they didn't do that.

What they did was they sent him a rather less romantic text. And they said, Mr. Anousa, call me sometime whenever you get the chance.

Thanks, Terry Hendrick from the US Secret Service.

---

CAROLE. And they wonder why he didn't reply. They haven't really got the hang of this dating thing, have they?

---

GRAHAM. Abdul might have thought he was being scammed himself. It's, oh, yeah, as if the US Secret Service are going to text me.

---

CAROLE. That's true. Have you got millions of dollars to put in my account for me?

---

GRAHAM. They then followed it up with another text message. They said, we have an arrest warrant for you out of Huntington, West Virginia.

Please get in touch at your earliest convenience. We want to arrange for you to turn yourself in.

It's a bit those scam phone calls. Friend of the show, Mark Stockley, has been on Twitter complaining that he's given about five scam phone calls a day, claiming to come from HMRC where a robot says, you know, you're about to be fined or you're going to be jailed for tax evasion.

I think—

---

CAROLE. There's a lot of warrants out for my arrest at the moment, actually.

---

GRAHAM. Ooh, Carole. Hello, where have you been up to?

But that's another story. So, basically, Abdul was being asked out on a date by the Secret Service.

Yeah, but badly. Badly, very unsexily, not really charming.

It really—

CAROLE. It really annoys me when the authorities undermine everything that we tell people. You know, if somebody messages you saying they're from the Secret Service, they're probably not. If your doctor messages you and wants you to send your date of birth and your bank account, it's not your doctor. And then the doctors go, oh, no, actually, we do do that. And you're like, well, why are you doing that? Stop doing that.

---

GRAHAM. Well, I think in this case, it was desperate measures, wasn't it? They've tried everything else to track him down and they're thinking, okay, we'll bend the rules on this occasion. But I hear what you're saying.

---

CAROLE. Well, they're not asking for dinner and dining here, though, right?

---

GRAHAM. No, they want him to show up so they can arrest you. They're basically saying you're in trouble. We're on to you.

---

CAROLE. Best if you come in pronto. Yeah. But what would you do if you got a text like that? I don't think you'd ring them back and go, hi. So if I was a law-abiding citizen and wanted, I guess I would probably not ring back, but I might contact the authorities that they claim to be from saying, I'm this person. So doing it through that way.

---

GRAHAM. You would contact a lawyer.

---

CAROLE. Yes, you'd contact a lawyer.

---

GRAHAM. And say, why don't you get back to these guys? Well, that is what happened. So Abdul contacted a couple of lawyers. They actually turned him down. They said, no, no, we're not getting involved in this. But they did contact the Secret Service and say, we've been contacted by this guy who wants us to represent him, but we're not going to do that. So when the investigators heard, they hadn't heard back from Abdul, but they'd heard from these lawyers.

---

CAROLE. Sorry, I'm kind of shocked by that. Surely everyone has a right to legal counsel, right?

---

GRAHAM. Yeah, but as a lawyer, you can choose what case you want to take on.

---

CAROLE. Sure, but then you don't go to the other side going, by the way, guess what happened? Right? It just seems a bit shitty. I don't know. Anyway, carry on. Sorry.

---

GRAHAM. Anyway, so the Secret Service thought we've probably got the right number here because not only has our iPhone said that the message has been read, but these couple of guys got in touch saying that they were contacted by Abdul, right? Fair. Yeah. So how else are they going to find him if he's refusing to reply and refusing to turn up at the coffee shop? Well what they did was they went to Verizon the cell phone operator and they hit them with a search warrant to provide location data for the phone. And you think that's the end of the story, you think oh well that's it then they found it, but no.

---

CAROLE. Ah, no no no no no because the data they received back from the cell phone operator wasn't precise enough. What do you mean?

---

GRAHAM. Didn't give them the exact address and I assume not, maybe I— there's a lot of assuming here. Yeah. So it probably gave them the rough geographic area but wasn't enough to actually find this chap.

---

CAROLE. A bit of a blow for Verizon's reputation isn't it?

---

GRAHAM. Well I mean do cell phone operators know exactly where we are?

---

CAROLE. Well they would arguably tell you that they do don't they? Well Google certainly does. You know I always assumed they could do it within a few hundred meters but maybe no more than that.

---

GRAHAM. Amazon would know. Amazon. Yeah. Well, the Secret Service began to get worried because it had been now two weeks since they sent the texts and they were worried that this chap would flee the country to escape justice. So they decided to use another method. And there is something in America called an E-911 phase two data request. Because when you ring up the police or the ambulance or something like that, the emergency services on 911, they can gather more accurate location information, maybe within thirty or forty feet. So you're right. They do know where you are, but it's something which they only collect on very specific situations. So something where it's a sort of life-threatening scenario.

---

CAROLE. Oh, I find this such a relief. I'm really pleased about this.

---

GRAHAM. So they can tell the police or whatever. They say, oh, yeah, he's down the hill, in that little ditch over there.

---

CAROLE. It's like they turn it on in an emergency or in a specific circumstance.

---

GRAHAM. Yeah. You're assuming. Well, I'm sorry for not being an expert on this, but yes, they have a means of collecting this data. So the investigators, they went to a judge and they said, look, we'd like to do this. And we'd also like to plant what's called a stingray. And a stingray, if you've heard, I think we may have chatted about these a long time ago with Lisa Vaas when she was on the podcast. My goodness, what a memory I have. A stingray is a hardware device which pretends to be a cell phone tower. And you set it up in a location. And as mobile devices connect to it trying to get a signal, it's looking out for the phone numbers of the people who are connecting to it. You sort of set it up in a particular place and wait for someone to come along. And they're quite controversial, these stingrays, because of the amount of data they can scoop up from innocent parties.

---

CAROLE. It's kind of scary that I be walking down the street and I just get scooped up by one of these. There's nothing I can do.

---

GRAHAM. Right. Now, they say that they delete any data which they're not interested in. So they look out for specific numbers and they ignore it.

---

CAROLE. Say all the stingray operators in the world. Okay.

---

GRAHAM. But of course, it may mess up with your actual connection to the internet if you're suddenly connecting to things that you didn't really want to connect to. Because there just happens to be someone who's planted this thing down the bottom of your street.

So there are moves ahead. There's a, I think it's, is his name Ron Wyden? There's a US senator who's quite hot on security and privacy, and he's been putting forward a motion to insist that anyone who wants to put a stingray in place has to get an appropriate warrant from the court showing probable cause.

---

CAROLE. Can you use them in Europe? That sounds like a GDPR nightmare.

---

GRAHAM. I think they are used around the world. Again, this is something which has been quite controversial.

Now, we don't know if this is the way Mr. Abdul was eventually caught, but he was arrested last month. He's currently out on bail. But I found it rather fascinating that the cops would actually just simply text a suspect and ask him to turn himself in when they had no other way of communicating with him, and then would go to such lengths to try and locate him.

---

CAROLE. Sometimes you have higher expectations of the security services, don't you? You sort of expect them to be a bit more sophisticated, maybe.

I had a really weird experience once where someone, I don't know, the closest I've ever got, if indeed it was that, to somebody approaching me, I think, sort of in a roundabout way, asking me whether I'd ever thought about working for security services and then asking whether, you know, I would like to meet them and could they pass on my number? And I was, I really, I very much hope that GCHQ knows how to get hold of me. I'm really not that hard to find. If they can't find me, then I'm slightly worried about the state of the security services.

Anyway, I think I talked myself out of it because I never heard from anybody. Or at least I don't think I did. Who knows?

---

GRAHAM. Carole, what have you got for us this week?

---

CAROLE. Did you watch the football on Sunday?

---

GRAHAM. Football? Yes. Is there a football game?

---

CAROLE. Graham and I watched it together, actually.

---

GRAHAM. We did. One of those weird, weird times.

---

CAROLE. How romantic. When we were in the same physical space.

---

GRAHAM. Yes, that's right. Wow.

---

CAROLE. Did you enjoy it?

---

GRAHAM. Yes.

---

CAROLE. So we were fighting because Graham just kept saying, oh God, just get to penalties. And I was taking the athlete's side going, you've done 90 minutes of running around and now you've got to put your life on the line.

---

GRAHAM. I don't see what the point is of extra time. I think football could be made much more entertaining by releasing crocodiles onto the pitch or making the goals larger. I just think it can be a little bit dull.

So I the penalties, although possibly it didn't go quite as well as England hoped.

---

CAROLE. I did feel for them all, actually, because I don't think I could run up and down a football field for more than six and a half seconds.

---

GRAHAM. Well, not when you're seven months pregnant, probably.

---

CAROLE. I'd still be there, to be honest. Waddling my way towards probably the wrong end of the goal who knows.

Anyway, yes, massive cultural highlight for lots of people, the final of the Euro 2020 men's tournament, England versus Italy. Lots of passion and excitement and I think especially coming off the back of the year and a half we've had of the pandemic and lockdown and everything else, there was a lot of excitement wasn't there and goodwill riding on this finale. And I think 31 million people watched it on the telly, there were 60,000 people in Wembley watching it, you know, huge gig.

And of course England lost right at the very end on penalties and there's lots of discussion around that which I am absolutely not qualified to get into. And there was also lots of discussion wasn't there about the players they picked to take the penalties, the fact that you know some of them were really very young and it's a lot of pressure.

And I did think watching it, my goodness, doing a penalty shootout that is more psychology in a way than skill isn't it? Because the you know the crowd and the pressure, oh I don't know how they cope with it actually psychologically. Unbelievable isn't it, especially at 19 years old. You know I was a mess when I was 19 years old, absolutely.

---

GRAHAM. Never mind Chris. I thought, well, this is kind of tradition. I thought this is rather lovely. This is what we do. This is sort of the British way, well, the English way, certainly. It's a bit Pancake Day or Troop in the Colour. It's, well, this is nice. Who would want it any other way than this?

---

CAROLE. Well, we were close, but no cigar, I suppose. And obviously, there was a lot of disappointment, a lot of upset.

Some people took it very badly. There was unfortunately then a bit of a torrent of abuse directed primarily at the players who had failed to score in the penalty shootout, all of whom are young black players, and the abuse that was directed at them was racist. There's no way of sugarcoating it, it was racist.

Was this online? Largely, well, largely on social media. Yeah.

And there was sort of a big problem with people feeling that it wasn't dealt with fast enough. And I feel in a way, yes, it happened on Sunday night, but we have this story time and time again, don't we, where social media just cannot cope, it seems, with any sort of volume of this kind of horrible content.

And it's a really interesting one to look at I think, putting the football aside, what do they do? You've got two billion people using Facebook uploading their own stuff in real time, whatever it is. You couldn't possibly have an army of moderators, human moderators, big enough to deal with all of that.

So they go right, well we can't manage this, so we are gonna go for the automated. We're gonna spend loads of money and they have spent loads of money and invested in all the resources that these massive companies can have, trying to build algorithms that can seek this stuff out and delete it automatically.

But the algorithms aren't good enough either and so they don't understand nuance, they don't understand cultural differences, they don't understand why it might be okay to say something in one context but not in another. To give you an example, one of these young footballers, somebody put an emoji of an orangutan underneath one of their posts on Instagram.

Right, now clearly in the context of what's going on, the fact this is a young black player who's missed a penalty, it wasn't done nicely, was it? No.

But the algorithm looks at that in a completely detached manner and goes oh that's an emoji of an orangutan, there's nothing wrong with that. And so people were reporting it and the algorithm was coming back going, no, well, we think it's okay, actually. We know that the technology isn't perfect, but the technology thinks this is okay.

And there was this big sort of, well, clearly it's not okay and you can appeal that decision, but then you join the queue of however many people are also joining that queue, waiting for a human moderator to get to this content and then make a decision about it. And it's just kind of brought that whole story back up.

In the meantime, it's been widely condemned by everybody. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said people should be ashamed of themselves for posting this stuff. The FA has said it's terrible. The Met police have said it's terrible.

Everybody is widely condemning it. I think Harry Kane, the England captain, said, if you're doing this, you're not an England fan and we don't want you. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't happening and that it wasn't being taken down fast enough.

And the second point about this is something I bang on about often. Traditionally, and still, social media platforms are not considered to be publishers.

So, if somebody wrote something that on the BBC website where I work as a comment, then it would be the BBC that would be immediately responsible for getting rid of it and we would be in lots of trouble if we didn't deal with it extremely quickly. But the social media platforms don't have that regulation, they're not governed by Ofcom in this country, they don't, they're self-regulated.

It's changing, it's coming very slowly towards them, but they just don't have that responsibility and the question is how long can they get away with that? Yeah, well, they waited too long and the tech firms got too powerful.

And the legal quagmire that everyone has to wade through for the benefit of all the lawyers involved is horrific. So I feel for legislators as well. But yeah, absolutely, they should be considered publishers.

They are making a fortune based off all this content that you and I are putting up there for free. And they should therefore be accountable for it.

It's a difficult one because it's an impossible thing, isn't it? But equally, it does seem mad that they have managed to not have any responsibility at all for this stuff that's really being seen and shared by an extraordinarily large audience.

I'm always amazed when someone's hand is forced how quickly they can change an entire category of things. Wasn't there this, I can't remember the story now, which is very irritating. Graham, do you might remember?

There was some porn site. It was in Montreal or something. Sorry,

---

GRAHAM. Why are you thinking I'd know about this? Because it's a porn site.

---

CAROLE. I think you spoke about it. Oh, right. I'm not trying to make it.

But anyway, within a week, they changed everything to ensure that only adults would view the content that they were putting out. Within a week, the whole system had changed. And I think you had to register with credit cards and all this stuff.

GRAHAM. Yeah, but you know, that can cause problems as well because you really don't feel comfortable with some of these social media sites actually being the custodians of your identity information and being the ones you have to upload details to. No, I think you stay off them. I think there's a really good case for anonymity in some cases, you know, where I'd hate to see that go. I don't think there's an easy solution to this. And maybe that's the problem is that we're looking for a 100% solution and it simply doesn't exist.

And maybe what needs to happen is we need to have better systems for alerting when there's inappropriate content and for it to be dealt with more quickly and not get too hung up that some things will inevitably get through. But if we give people better tools for filtering out the hatred stuff, that would be a good thing.

---

CAROLE. So do you know the hatred stuff and the racist stuff that you saw, are people doing these from their legit accounts, or are they creating pseudo-anonymised accounts? I think a lot of it came from anonymous accounts. Right. There were a few people who appeared to have shared this sort of stuff from named accounts.

---

GRAHAM. There was one guy who I heard reportedly might have lost his job as an estate agent or may be being investigated because there were comments that his account posted. I believe he said that his account was hacked. And so it wasn't him who posted this thing.

---

CAROLE. Wienergate. There have been a few incidents of people who were identifiable who have since said that they have been hacked. Now, obviously, it probably won't take very long to clear that up if they have. So that will be a relief for them, I'm sure, once the police have identified those culprits.

But I think the anonymity debate is ongoing, isn't it? On the one hand, as Graham says, there are occasions absolutely when it's necessary. On the other hand, it just seems to be an irresistible way for some people to express this sort of thing.

---

GRAHAM. So have you been a victim of maybe nothing as bad as what these footballers have received? But because you're in the public eye, Zoe, and you pop up on our television and talk about things, do nutters abuse you on social media?

---

CAROLE. I'm nothing like an England footballer. I do get hassles sometimes, yeah. I mean, I have a Jewish name, so occasionally I get antisemitism. And that tends to come in a little wave that I always think something sparks it. Somebody somewhere says something and then it sparks and then it ends up with me being included in it and I report it.

And sometimes it's dealt with and sometimes it isn't. I mean, you know, I don't think the reporting process is brilliant if I'm honest from personal experience. I think Carole you may well agree with me this being a woman on social media full stop is enough to sometimes attract attention that you don't want.

Yeah that's why I'm not on it. Yeah well I'm on it as little as I can be sometimes I get close to that actually I think you know what why am I doing this you know I guess I work in a field as well I work in tech and it's something that some men think is for the men and women don't really understand so you know my male colleagues and I can tweet something really quite similar and they will get oh yes good point mate and I will get what are you talking about you've got it all wrong blah, blah, blah, you know.

And sometimes I think, well, I don't know why I'm bothering with this. I don't need this in my life. You know, I've got enough going on. But I think I kind of feel it's important that in a small, tiny way that I stay because if all the women left, then, you know, then their voices don't get heard at all. And I feel very strongly that that would not be great either.

---

GRAHAM. You know what? I've just had an idea. You know, you could have a, so you could have a button to report abuse, right, which goes to Twitter, it goes to Facebook or Instagram or whoever it is to report that someone's done something offensive, maybe there should be a separate button on these social media sites, which is report to their mum. And it sends the message that they've posted.

So when you create an account, you don't just have to enter your details, you also have to enter the details of your mum. And it sends to them a message saying, do you know what your son or your daughter has just posted up on social media?

---

CAROLE. Maybe you should be leader of the world. Thank you. Yeah. Finally. I think that's a great idea. I mean, you hear stories occasionally, don't you, where people track down their trolls and contact their parents and it's, you know, justifiably mortifying.

---

GRAHAM. Carole, what have you got for us this week?

---

CAROLE. We're kicking off my section with the very nascent idea or one of the very nascent ideas of smart technology. Okay, we're heading back to the 80s. And I'm going to give you guys a YouTube link. There we go. So you guys check this out. And if you see if tell me if you remember this.

---

ROBOT. Let you turn things on or off from anywhere in the room. Just plug in the clapper and a television, lamp, stereo, almost anything you want to clap on and off.

---

ROBOT. Clap on, clap off, clap on, clap off.

---

GRAHAM. This is amazing. I don't remember this advert, but so this is a clap on light.

---

CAROLE. Yeah, clap on, clap off. Everyone my age and lived in North America will know this. Clap on, clap off.

I've never seen that advert. Well, I was in love with this product. I just wanted it so badly. And my parents just thought I was insane. But I just thought how brilliant.

And look at us now 40 years on, and we have all manner of tech in the home. All promoted to make our lives something. So some of them is safer, right? So you have home security or health monitoring tech or smart toilets to alert you to poo or pee concerns.

Sorry, what? There is. There's these smart toilets, but then we'll do health checks on your ablutions.

---

GRAHAM. Oh, right. Okay, let's sift through. And then

---

CAROLE. tell you, hey, eat more fiber, Graham. All right. Nice.

Yeah. And you've got smart tech to make it cozier, right? So you might get blinds that shut and set themselves exactly to 38 degrees. You can catch the last few rays of sunlight at a particular time.

Or you can come home and have the light set just right, your favorite podcast playing Smashing Security, obviously, or they make your life more convenient. You can run the dishwasher or washing machine from your iPhone or Android. You can review the contents of your fridge while you're going to the shops to see what you need to buy. You don't even have to make a list anymore.

Graham, you have a smart Hoover, don't you?

---

GRAHAM. Well, I don't know if I call it smart. I have a robot Hoover. I can press a button. It's not IoT, though. No, it's not on the internet as such, but I can press a button and it will go and clean mine.

---

CAROLE. Yeah. So a dumb, but yeah.

So all this stuff, right? And smart tech now is actually becoming a key feature in many new house builds. So I was looking at the UK Homeowners Alliance, and they say a key pro to buying a new build is modern living. Top spec new builds have all the latest tech with smart home features.

And there was another property rag called UK Property publications. And they are saying that you really want to install this smart tech because it can reduce your home insurance premiums. Because, you know, by installing smart tech devices, consumers are taking a greater stake in their own home insurance cover, they say. So demonstrating responsibility by being spied on all the time. And in exchange for that, you get lower premium offerings.

And in these houses, they're building the tech right into the walls. And there's this kind of laissez-faire attitude. Like you want to buy this, you want to live easily, you want smart home technology that runs in the background requiring little to no input from the owner.

Do you think that's worrying? Would you buy a new house with smart tech? I can't even buy a smart TV, so I'm the wrong person to ask. But I was going to ask you guys, if you were on the market for a new house, would you be put off by built-in smart tech?

---

GRAHAM. Oh, I just think it's more things to go wrong. But you know, maybe I'm a granddad. I don't think I am a granddad, but

---

CAROLE. Well I'm torn with this. I'm somewhere between the two camps. I've embraced it to an extent and I love the convenience of it but the security leaves me a bit cold.

And I don't have a tracker, a family tracker on my phone. Lots of my mum friends they all track each other and my partner's in the Navy and he's at sea at the moment and he said oh why don't we do it and then you know you might be able to see where I am and I was well I don't think I will be able to because you know I don't think I'm allowed to see where you are but we looked into it as an option.

And you know my kids don't have phones yet but they're getting to an age where they will and I love the idea but I looked at the one that most people seem to be using and I was horrified by it. I just thought I just don't want this you know I know it's only my family I think it's only my family that's another issue isn't it but also I just I don't want that. I don't want to be tracked. I don't want people to know where I am you know it comes back to what you were saying earlier and growing with the story with the phones you know sometimes you just want to be doing what you're doing and not thinking about people watching you do it.

But that said sometimes the convenience of it is just amazing isn't it and the thing is they talk about all the bells and whistles, but they don't ever really address many of the negatives involved. Right.

So the thing I'd worry about with a tech house that was all built in is how have you future proofed this? Right. So and what if something goes really wrong? How do I get in there to go fix it? Yeah. How do I how does it get patched if there's a vulnerability, for example?

Yeah. I mean, not that. It's not future. No. I don't. How can it be? We don't even know. It's so fast right now. We have no idea what we'll be doing in 10 years.

I remember being delighted when plug sockets came out with USB. I thought that was the future. And now I don't have anything that's USB. It's all USB-C, so none of my plugs are any good anymore, which is a tiny example.

That's a perfect point. So case in point, so Samsung have smart washing machines. Who knew? And you can download an app and then you can control when you launch the washing cycle or you can make adjustments, yada, yada, right? when you're doing something else?

I have to admit, I have one. Oh, interesting. Okay, perfect. I didn't know that. Do you have the app as well?

Well, no, I don't. I don't have the app. The reason I bought it is very low tech. What I really like about Samsung washing machines is there's a little tiny door in the middle of the big door that you can open when you find the sock on the stairs. And that is why I've got it.

---

GRAHAM. Really? Oh, so it's got a little port hole in the main...

---

CAROLE. Yeah, you can hit pause on the cycle and this little sort of trap door opens and you can put in everything that you found you've dropped on the way to the washing machine, which I don't know about you, but I do all the time. That's cool. That's why I bought it. Forget the app.

Yeah, so it's important to note, actually, that even if you buy one of these smart washing machines, it does work without the app. It does. Right, so it works as a normal washing machine, but you can get the app as well to do cool stuff.

So this is all great, except according to Vice, these apps that control the internet connected appliances actually require all the phone's contacts and the phone call app, the phone's location and camera and without saying yes okay you can have access to this, the app does not work.

---

GRAHAM. Is this so your washing machine can email your friends to say Graham has finished his washing, he might now smell nicer or something in his Samsung washing machine?

---

CAROLE. Yeah. Why is it okay for Samsung to snuffle this information? Do you think they did it by design to get all this info? Or do you think it was an accident? Or do you think they didn't really know what they were doing and they just said, yeah, okay, let's take everything we can. Tech naivete, effectively.

I think it's a land grab. I don't think it's just Samsung. They're all at it. I got some earbuds recently that I will tell you more about in a minute, and I really like them but when I went to set them up they wanted access to my call history. I'm like why? Why does a pair of headphones have to know who I've been phoning?

So I just hit the no button. I was going to say something a bit stronger than that. I hit the no button and occasionally now I get this little thing going oh would you like us to know your phone history? I'm like no, why do you want to know it so badly? Hey Carole, maybe you're in a better mood today. Do you want to give us access? Exactly. You've had a nice time. You've been to the football. Let us see who you've been ringing.

So I checked out the app, right, on the Apple App Store. And Samsung have not even yet provided to Apple what data they collect from users, which is late to the ballpark on this one. But the ratings are abysmal. And apparently on Android, it's the same. They're all about two out of five. And there's a slew of reviews that basically are complaining about these unnecessary permissions.

So then I was thinking, maybe Samsung have hit hard times. Don't have enough resources or funds to help improve the app. So I wanted to see what their net worth was. Do you want to guess?

---

GRAHAM. I like the theory, Carole. I suspect they're making quite a lot of money, aren't they?

---

CAROLE. Well, yeah. So $300 billion net worth. The thing that bugs me about that is if you went around and asked people on the street, what do you think about Samsung? I reckon most would say, oh, it's a pretty respected brand. Don't you?

---

GRAHAM. See, I'm not sure they're doing this to grab, because they're interested in grabbing your address book and doing something nefarious about it. I think there's probably some daft functionality to recommend this washing machine to a friend. And that bit of functionality requires access to your address book or something or makes it a smoother process. And they haven't thought it through. And so the people developing the app just simply thought, oh, this is easy to do, we'll just turn that on.

I tend to believe more in the cock-up theory of history than conspiracy.

---

CAROLE. Only when it's convenient, I think, is what I'd say to that for you. But the way I'm distilling this in my head, but tell me if you guys think something differently. Companies are going to be flogging smart tech and touting the whole fear of missing out messaging because there's a number of clear wins, right? One, collect and use the data for research to build more services that you can sell to people or to improve your marketing to try and target your audience better and to potential new revenue streams. The Peloton monthly fee so you can get yelled at and ride with other people on our screen, right?

---

GRAHAM. So you're thinking this may be a case of foam-o with the Samsung washing machine? Hashtag dad joke.

---

CAROLE. Foam, what would be the A for?

---

GRAHAM. Just it's the sound of it, Carole. Please don't ruin the joke.

---

CAROLE. Oh, oh, oh, yeah. Good. I mean, I guess this is how we pay for stuff though, isn't it? Data has become a currency that we're not aware of. Yeah, and they're kind of stealing it from us, kind of. That's the thing, right? You're not selling it to them. You're paying for the item and then they're taking that for free in exchange.

---

GRAHAM. Why do you need that at all? Oh, you've got a little special second door in the front of this amazing Samsung washing machine, according to brand ambassador Carole Theriault. She's the new Nanette Newman.

---

CAROLE. I should say that other washing machines are available, shouldn't I? But I don't know if they've got the little door. But what about all the other things? The automated blinds and the automated lights and the automated music system and the automated everything. There are 7 billion connected IoT devices. Seven out of 10 homes in the states are said to have at least one and the market last year was considered to be at 24 billion, so much less than what Samsung actually are worth and expected to reach 70 billion in 2026. So that's a huge growth there.

There's a darker side to this as well that I'm ashamed to say I don't know loads about, but I have seen some research suggesting that smart tech can be used in the home to control partners. You know, the person who sets it all up has all the access to it, and often the partner who tends to more often be the woman might not know how to use it. So the doors can be locked, the heating can go up, the music can go on and it can all be controlled by an abusive partner.

And the person who's being controlled might not know how to make it stop.

Yeah, you head for the door and they lock the door on you. Yeah, exactly. There's been cases of that. I'm going to look into that. That sounds absolutely awful.

So just out of interest, the big challenges in the IoT world, this is according to a research paper by a team at University of Glasgow. There's four big ones. One is scalability. There is a huge number of devices already out there that require simultaneous connectivity. And how are we going to scale that in the next coming years?

Security and privacy is massive on this. As we've been talking about, lack of privacy standards and security solutions is ongoing. And there's challenges in designing large scale distributed heterogeneous IoT networks. So we have all these different types of stuff and they're all made differently and on different systems. And how do they all talk and work together on one system? How do we create this? And there's so many challenges for all of that.

And of course, there's the environmental impact, right? So communications are fairly efficient, but all the hardware, your light switches or your plug sockets, Zoe, when you change them, what are they going to do? No one wants those.

And I would also argue that in a way, if you're getting something that's branded Samsung or Amazon, well yeah no Amazon is massively into its smart tech isn't it, you know if you get a big brand like that they're more likely to be more accountable and transparent than your dodgy crap that you find on eBay or on a marketplace somewhere that's come from who knows where and has who knows what in it.

Yeah totally, you know there's a ton of cheap stuff, isn't there, that will do the job, but nobody knows what it is or where it's come from. I know, it's disgusting.

Apparently, there's a big disconnect. So, this other paper was saying there's a huge disconnect between the people that are actually flogging this IoT stuff, and they're really focused on the bells and whistles and how it'll improve your life and give you convenience. But what buyers are anxious about is lack of security and privacy.

And I think your example on what you were just saying earlier is I know I don't want you to track me all the time. It's exactly how I look at these things. But maybe we're fairly educated in tech. And so we know to look for these things. I don't know.

But the paper is saying we are not going to hit growth in this area if people that create the IoT don't take security seriously, and don't talk about security and privacy and make it a real priority.

I'm not anti-IoT everything, but I can put my own on with my clap in my hands, right? I don't need a nap to do it for me.

But isn't it fun? My kids have named my, I've got a couple of smart lights and my kids have named them. So now we say, you know, turn on Jane or turn on Bob or whatever. And they think that's hilarious.

I bet kids are actually driving force of it. I bet parents buy it a lot to keep the kids happy, right?

I think they are. Yeah, my kids use the Echoes more than we do, for sure.

---

GRAHAM. I would a real magical, smarter system. I can just clap and a genie would appear and a puff of smoke and do whatever I command. I could call it Geoff, maybe.

You could just make some friends, right?

No, I think that'd be too difficult, actually, Carole.

Create a culture of security with 1Password. Around 80% of business data breaches are due to weak or reused passwords. Well, using 1Password can close the gaps in your company's security and help your employees stay secure wherever they are. With the right tools and the right mindset, you can create a culture where your employees feel empowered to share responsibility for security risk management. 1Password makes the secure thing to do the easiest thing to do by letting your employees stay secure without slowing them down. 1Password makes it easy for employees to play their part in personal security and by extension, the security of your company and customers. Learn more and try 1Password free for 14 days at 1Password.com.

---

Carole. Smashing Security's new sponsors, Offensive Security, are industry leaders in providing training for your organization. The training is designed by the same minds behind Kali Linux and OSCP. Oh, now you're paying attention.

So Offensive Security offer a number of different programs. There's the OffSec Flex program, which allows you to train on your own schedule. There's the OffSec Academy, offering industry-leading OSCP certification through dedicated one-to-one mentoring and virtual training. Or if you want to develop your team's pen testing skills in highly realistic simulated networks, offensive security experts have got your back.

See, it comes down to this. The skills gap is increasing, meaning it's more important than ever to train your staff effectively and efficiently. Learn more about offensive security at smashingsecurity.com slash offsec. That's smashingsecurity.com slash offsec.

---

Graham. This episode is brought to you by the folks at privacy.com. Privacy lets you buy things online using virtual cards instead of having to use your real ones, protecting your identity and bank information on the internet. What a fantastic idea that is and a great way of keeping your details out of the hands of the bad guys.

Right now new customers will automatically get five dollars to spend on their first purchase. All you've got to do is go to privacy.com slash smashing to sign up now. And thanks to privacy.com for supporting the show.

And welcome back and you join us on our favourite part of the show, the part of the show that we like to 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 chooses saying. It 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 wish. It doesn't have to be security related necessarily. Better not be.

Well, my Pick Of The Week this week was inspired by a comment I made on a recent episode. And in fact, having mentioned it, a friend of the show, Thom Langford, actually gave me a mug with a picture of this fictional character on the front of it. One of the greatest television shows ever. It is, of course, Columbo.

---

Carole. Oh, my goodness.

---

Graham. Which I adore. For any youngsters who have never watched Columbo but listened to podcasts, let me explain to you the premise of Columbo. A rich person commits a murder. Lieutenant Columbo, he bumbles in in his rain jacket, and the rich person assumes that Columbo is a buffoon, thinks he can be outfoxed. But Columbo keeps on showing up at the rich person's house. Columbo isn't interested in any other suspects. Right from the very beginning of the movie, he knows who the suspect is.

---

Carole. Yeah, just one more thing.

---

Graham. And the rich person becomes increasingly frustrated because Columbo is deducing what's going on. He's like a hound dog. He doesn't let go. Can I just put my cigar out somewhere? That's a brilliant impression.

What is brilliant about Columbo is that most murder mystery shows, it's normally about who committed the crime. Not with Columbo. You know that from the very beginning. It's not even how the crime was committed. You saw it with your own eyes. The first 15 minutes of the program before Columbo even shows up, you see the murder, how it's been done. It is all about how will Columbo wrap this guy up in knots and get him ultimately to admit their guilt. It's terrific. It's sweet.

---

Carole. I'd say it's sweet. I'm not sure I'd say it's – I wouldn't say it's – What? You wouldn't say it? I wouldn't say it's the be-all and end-all of television. But I think if you were feeling unwell, right, and you wanted something a bit, you know, like eating ice cream. It's kind of like eating ice cream. You just get to watch it. It's very comforting. It's like a little blanket. It's not murder, she wrote.

---

Graham. Oh, no, it's about the same level. It's about the same level. Oh, for goodness sake. It is not the same level at all.

---

Carole. What's wrong with Angela Lansbury?

---

Graham. Well, nothing at all. She's been very good in some things. Absolutely, an absolute star. Right. Mary Poppins, Manchurian Candidate. But I'm talking about Peter Falk, the late Peter Falk as Columbo in the 1970s. That's when Columbo was at his height. It had guest stars like Martin Landau, Patrick McGowan, William Shatner. I've even seen one with Johnny Cash. Wonderful. So absolute legend.

Go and find them. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be streaming anywhere. So you have to catch them in the afternoon somewhere or maybe find them via some nefarious other means or buy the box set. I think it's brilliant. One of the greatest TV programmes ever.

---

Carole. I remember watching it when I was a student. I feel nostalgically it was fun. But it's been so long since I've been a daytime TV viewer that I don't know if it would actually stand the test of time, Graham.

---

Graham. It does. And you had directors like Sam Wanamaker, Steven Spielberg. He directed some of them. It's amazing, Columbo. Go and check out Columbo. Zoe, what's your pick of the week?

---

Carole. Well, I've dramatically changed my mind about my pick of the week in the last 24 hours, but I'm going to stick with it and then explain why it's currently not my favourite thing. I got some earbuds which I didn't think I needed. Quite happy with wired headphones, thank you very much. You know, again, as you were saying, it's just a bit of hardware, isn't it, that's eventually going to end up in a landfill.

But they are noise cancelling and they're brilliant. I take them off now and I can't believe how loud the world is because they tune out so much of the background noise that just is annoying, isn't it? Especially when you're working at home, if you're trying to do something and, you know, my whole street is having home refurbishments and they've been perfect. What

---

GRAHAM. Is the make of these earbuds?

---

CAROLE. These particular ones are Bose. If you've got someone in your house who snores, then they're great.

Oh, really? Does it work that? Oh, now Crow's interested. Honestly, without naming and shaming anyone, if you have someone in your household who snores, then give it a go.

Oh, yeah, we do. We do. So I love them. They were not cheap. And I don't like that particularly because, again, it's like, well, they're headphones. You know, why am I paying top dollar for these?

They were a gift from my partner. I probably wouldn't have spent the money myself, but there you go. And I love them.

However, in the last 24 hours, I've changed my phone. I've finally moved on from my budget Android, which stood me in good stead, but has basically become a landline because the battery is so poor.

So I've upgraded to one that is more expensive and I'm hoping is just going to have a bit more oomph to it. And I cannot get these earbuds to acknowledge that they have a new master, which is my new phone.

I can't get the Bluetooth to recognize the phone. And when I go to it and it says, you know, what are you trying to connect here? Have you got blah, blah, blah? And I go, yeah, I've got those. I've got noise cancelling headphones. And then I click that and it goes, well, activate the Bluetooth. And I do. And it goes, this page will change when we found your headphones.

Well it never changes so I'm like okay I need the help section there's a button at the bottom brilliant says if you've got a problem go here brilliant click that button what does it take me to the page to buy more earbuds oh that's so irritating I don't want more earbuds I want the earbuds I have to work on the new phone

---

GRAHAM. Listeners if any of you can help Zoe well I think I've got the solution for Zoe actually oh yes I think Zoe all Zoe needs to do is go on Twitter and explain this problem and I'm sure about 20 men will mansplain to her what the process is

---

CAROLE. Although just tell me I'm wrong I've got it all wrong I can't possibly be right about this I sometimes wonder if you can tell how effective a tweet or an article or whatever is by how often it gets mansplained back to you afterwards

---

GRAHAM. I love it girl what's your pick of the week

---

CAROLE. Okay are any of you two into cooking shows the TV shows or YouTube videos

Not really well things like bake off but I'm not massively I get it okay so you guys will can snooze fest through my pick of the week then because I love them but what I hate about most of them is there's absolutely almost nothing to do with cooking you know it's all about you know who's doing what and the relationships and all the blah blah and I kind of like that yeah and I want the tech right I want to know the techniques and stuff so so enter Kenji Lopez-Alt okay that's his name he's been cooking been a chef for decades and maybe five years ago he put together a rather excellent book called the food lab better home cooking through science it's a fascinating book I have it I've had it for years recommend it to anybody who wants to learn more about food and making it taste better now Kenji also has a YouTube channel and these videos consists of a camera strapped to his forehead as he cooks up a dish. And it can be a late night snack or it can be a big, I don't know, spaghetti bolognese or making a burger, it doesn't matter.

And you have this kind of cook stream of consciousness where he's going, oh, actually, I think I might have more salt. And then you see him playing with it and tasting it and then deciding what to do.

But it gives you some kind of feeling of what it's like to be in a kitchen without anything being edited out, right? You don't have all the glossy, glossy pics and the glossy smiles and all that garbage. It's just really hardcore cooking.

So if that sounds like your thing, you can check out. He's got literally hundreds and hundreds of videos available, and it's called Point of View Cooking. And you can find it on his YouTube channel called Kenji Lopez-Alt.

Okay. Fantastic. You guys are going to be checking that out. But some of you listeners will. I know, and you'll love it. I know.

All right okay yeah I'm more of the delivery app end of things I'm afraid at the moment I'm so lazy my partner does most of the cooking and he's not here and he's like have you actually eaten a hot meal yet I'm like no

---

GRAHAM. Well that just about wraps up the show for this week Zoe I'm sure lots of listeners would love to follow you online mansplain things to you what's the best way for folks to give you advice about your earbuds

---

CAROLE. Yes please I'm available for mansplaining on Twitter at ZSK.

---

GRAHAM. Terrific. And you can follow us on Twitter at Smash Insecurity, no G. Twitter wouldn't allow us to have a G. And you can also join us on our Smashing Security subreddit. And don't forget, if you want to ensure you never miss another episode, follow Smashing Security in your favourite podcast app, such as Overcast, Spotify and Google Podcasts.

---

CAROLE. And thank you to this episode's sponsors, Offensive Security, 1Password and Privacy.com and to our wonderful Patreon community. It's thanks to them all the show is free.

For episode show notes, sponsorship information, guest lists, and the entire back catalogue of more than 235 episodes, check out smashingsecurity.com. Until next time, cheerio. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye.

I cook for you, Zoe. Oh, are you in London? Are you all the way in London? No, I'm not in London. I'm in Hampshire. Oh, that's not that far.

Last night for dinner, I had half a tube of Pringles and a cereal bar. I felt very forlorn. It's bad, isn't it?

I know I do cook for my children, by the way, but I just don't bother cooking for myself. Yeah, but you got one in your belly, honey. I know. That's the other one. That's the one. And you matter.

Otherwise, you're writing articles. You're just going to go waffle, waffle, waffle. No food in your belly.

I just had a scan this morning actually before doing this and they said that the baby's got a bit of a chubby belly. I was like well haven't we all, let's not fat shame.

Hello everyone, Carole here. I have some exciting news. Today I am recording this on Wednesday 14th of July at 12:30 BST. And at this time, we have exactly 599 reviews from people like you. 599!

Alex Gurr, the 599th reviewer, writes, "It's more fun than security and I love it for this. One could mumble about security breaches but only you guys could laugh from them. Thanks a ton for all the efforts and looking forward to hearing every new episode. P.S. Carole don't discharge Graham for being 10 minutes late."

So Alex Gurr, thank you for your review and I promise I won't. I act tough and I give him a hard time, but I love him really. At least let's tell him that, you know, for the show. Huge hugs. Thanks for your support. It means the world. Stay safe and see you next week. Thank you.

-- TRANSCRIPT ENDS --