Travis Taylor:
Beau and Adam. I was reading about something a little bit scary the other day. Oh, the chargers for electric vehicles have a lot of the same security vulnerabilities as internet of thing devices.
Beau Friedlander:
The chargers.
Travis Taylor:
The chargers, the thing that you plug in
Beau Friedlander:
For Tesla or whatever.
Travis Taylor:
Yeah, Tesla leaf doesn’t matter. They
Beau Friedlander:
All have the same thing. They
Travis Taylor:
Have a lot of the same vulnerabilities because internet of Things devices or iot have notoriously bad security. So they can be hacked really, really, really easily. My favorite example, there was a chastity belt that got hit with a ransomware because it was internet connected. Now imagine that same type of security setting being connected to your car.
Beau Friedlander:
Wait, did you say chastity
Travis Taylor:
Belt? I said chastity
Adam Levin:
Belt. Yeah, I’m trying to grasp the chastity belt concept.
Beau Friedlander:
So wait, so what does that mean chastity belt? You mean like something that’s supposed to keep Sir Wayne’s wife from having an affair while he is off on the crusades?
Travis Taylor:
Pretty much, and I don’t really care to get too much into the psychology of why you would A) need one or B) have it connected to the internet. But that’s just an example of how bad iot security is.
Beau Friedlander:
Well there were Adam, someBeau dy help me out here. There was, remember there was some sort of Fitbit type situation when it was recording when you had sex and then kind of making it public?
Adam Levin:
Well, there was that and then there was the vibrator that someBeau dy actually hacked into. But if you think about it, so a digitally connected chastity belt means that whoever connected that would know what was going on.
Beau Friedlander:
Yeah, I mean it sounds very kind of bad. The whole thing sounds really kind of like, not this country, not this century. It
Adam Levin:
Feels like ew
Beau Friedlander:
Or how dare you or unhand my private parts. So listen, I have a question for you, Travis. Sure. What is a raspberry
Travis Taylor:
Raspberry? These cool little computers where you can get it for 50 bucks and have it connect, for instance, to a water sensor to make sure that your plants are getting enough water. A lot of people use it to play really old school video games. For instance,
Beau Friedlander:
Hackers use them too, right? Right. How do they use them?
Travis Taylor:
Any number of ways? There’s a few that you can plug in a couple of sensors that’ll help you crack into say a password or bypass security card swiper or anything like that. So they’re extremely useful. I mean, they have multiple uses. And so in the case of car manufacturers, they thought, hey, it’s nice and cheap to have a little microcomputer that you use to help facilitate the charging of a car. Unfortunately, that means all the same security settings that can go from a smart coffee maker all the way down to the aforementioned chastity belts and the like.
Adam Levin:
So Travis, since you are a technology wizard, I’ve noticed also that they seem to be naming some of these devices after fruit because isn’t there the pineapple where you can plug that into a wall and it basically finds its way into networks,
Travis Taylor:
Right? Yeah. I think Apple was the one that got the ball rolling there and then afterwards a lot of different groups and companies thought they could just piggyback on that branding.
Adam Levin:
I see.
Beau Friedlander:
Well, this gives me one more reason to unplug and I’m not going to get one now. Thanks. You just ruined electric cars for me. Travis got anything else
Travis Taylor:
After chastity belts? No, I think I’m good.
Beau Friedlander:
Alright,
Adam Levin:
Well since we’re on the subject of cars, I just got a notification that I’m for sale on the dark web again.
Beau Friedlander:
Again,
Adam Levin:
I have no idea what my price is. I always get sad if I’m being sold for like $3. But yeah, I got notified by Audi and they had had a breach and my information was out there, email address, cell phone number, all that good stuff that you want to sort of cringe and hide in a corner.
Beau Friedlander:
Well, that reminds me of a very basic fact that you taught me years ago, which is that once God always got, and when the Equifax breach happened ages ago, my social security number was in the wind and it has been in the wind ever since. And every once in a while I get a note from the dark web monitoring service that I subscribed to telling me that it’s out there. I already know it’s out there, but it’s a good reminder that I have to behave as though it’s out there every day of my life. It is a fact of my life now.
Adam Levin:
And the other night I actually went outside and in neon your social security number flew by my house.
Beau Friedlander:
Well, but as I understand it, you paid someone to do that.
Adam Levin:
I did. In
Beau Friedlander:
Fact. Yeah. But I felt was very special, but it really doesn’t count.
Adam Levin:
But the important thing is you said that’s right. It’s like that little bird flying around up there that keeps going. I have your social security number.
Beau Friedlander:
Is that that bird? Yeah.
Adam Levin:
People have to understand that the only expiration date on your social security number is yours. And even then there have been thousands of cases of people who have been victims of identity theft when they were no longer people, they were gone
Beau Friedlander:
Or like me, you came back. But I got a new social security number when I came back.
Adam Levin:
Well, that’s good because almost no one else can get a new Social security
Beau Friedlander:
Number. Well, no. After I died and was reBeau rn.
Adam Levin:
Oh, I see.
Beau Friedlander:
Okay. Yeah, no, I figured you didn’t hear me there. But yeah, anyway, living
Adam Levin:
The dream. Living
Beau Friedlander:
The dream, living the dream twice again.
Adam Levin:
Hi there. I’m Adam Levin, former director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, founder of Cyber Scout, author of the Beau ok Swiped How to Protect Yourself in a World Full of Scammers, fissures and Identity Thieves.
Beau Friedlander:
And I’m Beau Friedlander, cybermen writer and all around curious person who tries to hack hackers. I’m Travis Taylor, resident tech guide. So what do we have today?
Adam Levin:
What we have today is a very interesting woman who’s a musician who had a very sort of scary but not uncommon situation. And so I think let’s bring her on.
Emily McVicker:
All right, here we go. I’m coming. Everything. That’s how you know it. Sprint. That
Adam Levin:
That is fantastic.
Beau Friedlander:
Our first guest spot on the show. Amazing. That was great. I
Adam Levin:
Couldn’t think of a better introduction of a guest than our guest, Emily playing some of the music that she makes. And so is this like your business? Yeah,
Emily McVicker:
I’ve been so fortunate. I studied musical theater in college and ever since then, from the people I’ve met and the skills I’ve acquired, I’ve done all kinds of music from corporate music at theme parks, production shows, and cruise ship bands and wedding bands here in Seattle. And then when I moved back about five years ago, I’ve been able to be completely employed, playing music and performing for people. So
Beau Friedlander:
Amazing.
Adam Levin:
No, that’s fantastic. I love the Wedding Singer. So hey, a wedding
Beau Friedlander:
Band and he did not mean that about your music. No,
Adam Levin:
No, no, no. I mean, my favorite part of the wedding bands is always when they go, and now we’re going to take a break so that you can eat the soup, but it’s great to have you on our show. And so you have an international following, I understand.
Emily McVicker:
Yeah, as I’ve been kind of a one woman show as an independent artist. So I do live looping and including some of my beatBeau xing skills and my backup singer skills where I can record my beatBeau x and my harmonies and kind of layer an arrangement in front of an audience. And that’s kind of what my show consisted of. And I could mix it with some of my favorite tunes and a lot of my original tunes and stories and really create almost a theatrical experience, but just with me, it’s a cabaret or something
Beau Friedlander:
Amazing.
Adam Levin:
That’s awesome.
Emily McVicker:
But speaking of international audience, when the world shut down last year, I had to really kind of rebuild what I was doing, and mostly that consisted of performing my show on Twitch, which is on the internet, and it does reach an international audience and I can’t believe it.
Beau Friedlander:
So do you have a big following on Twitch now?
Emily McVicker:
It is my biggest following of all my social medias. And so in one year I have 12,200 something followers.
Beau Friedlander:
Amazing. That’s
Adam Levin:
Great.
Beau Friedlander:
And it’s really, how do we find it? You have a handle? Yeah,
Emily McVicker:
Yeah, it’s Twitch tv slash emily McVicker my name.
Beau Friedlander:
Alright, cool.
Adam Levin:
And we’ll make sure that we put all of this information in our show notes because why shouldn’t you get an extra Beau ost for all the stuff you’re doing?
Emily McVicker:
Oh, thanks Adam.
Adam Levin:
And you sound great. I mean, you’re totally awesome and we love it. And basically, now that I understand that, you can layer on the music. We refer to Travis as the voice of God. So this means can you create the equivalent of a heavenly choir behind him? That would be pretty awesome. When he speaks,
Beau Friedlander:
We’ll pay,
Adam Levin:
We’ll hand her some money. Now,
Emily McVicker:
I wasn’t fishing for that, we’ll
Beau Friedlander:
Pay for this,
Emily McVicker:
But this is the sort of thing I do is I’ll see a name, a screen name like Travis Taylor and
Emily McVicker:
I can be like Travis Taylor, Travis Taylor, Travis Taylor,
Beau Friedlander:
Colossian
Emily McVicker:
On
Emily McVicker:
Travis.
Beau Friedlander:
You’re
Emily McVicker:
Awesome, Travis. Here we go.
Beau Friedlander:
This is what the heck with Adam Levin.
Speaker 6:
Yeah.
Beau Friedlander:
Awesome.
Adam Levin:
First of all, Travis is now you’ve made his day.
Beau Friedlander:
He, I’ve never seen this much color in his face, but I have a question now. So this actually is related to why you’re on the show today, is it not?
Emily McVicker:
Yeah, exactly. So able to, I have such a wonderful set up here, big face to Mr. Jeff Gaul for helping me build it. And Jeff
Beau Friedlander:
Gaul, if you don’t know, is our sound engineer and sound engineer extraordinaire,
Adam Levin:
And we actually have a lot of gall every time he works with us. We’re feeling pretty good
Beau Friedlander:
about that.
Emily McVicker:
Well, and thanks to him, all I have to do is sit down and I can do really professional recordings right here from my living room. And so I do, I get hired to do backup singing and sometimes jingles and sometimes what have you I do for my subscribers and my patrons. And someone reached out to me on Instagram and it was a screen, it was kind of similar to a screen name I recognized on Twitch and their name was Barth. And I thought, oh, it’s Barth from Twitch. And they asked if I could record a short song for their son’s birthday. And so a song by commission, and I hadn’t done it before, but you can see I can create songs pretty fast. I was like, sure, how about a hundred bucks? Tell me about your son. They’re like, great, okay. My son is turning five and they have a dog and he likes power rangers and zombies and chocolate milk.
And so I’m taking notes. I was thinking like, okay, what would this kid, what would really rock this kid’s world on his birthday to hear all his interests and his name in one song? So I was going back and forth on what the song would be and then the guy goes, oh, you know what? I really appreciate what you do, so I want to pay you $300. I was like, great. So this is also not unusual because on Twitch I have some really, really generous patrons that support my music. I was like, great. I said, you can pay me Venmo and PayPal or PayPal and I’ll start recording as soon as I receive payment. And I learned that trick because I used to do also some portrait work where I had done some artwork for people that never got picked up. So that’s my rule is just that people have to pay me before I start
Adam Levin:
Smart move.
Emily McVicker:
Well, you learned from making mistakes, right?
Adam Levin:
Well, first of all, the name Barth, I suspect that was Darth as opposed to Barth because he certainly was acting.
Beau Friedlander:
First name was Barth, B-A-R-T-H-B-A-R-T-H.
Emily McVicker:
There might’ve been some more letters, but sometimes on Twitch when I’m addressing people, I don’t know how to pronounce these names, so I just guess or shorten them. So
Beau Friedlander:
What happens, where’d it go? Weird?
Emily McVicker:
Well, what happened? They said, well, I actually have to pay you through a business account and we can’t do third party apps, so I’m just going to need your email and your full name. I was like, okay, well it’s going to delay the process, but my email and my full name are not really that private of information. It’s on my website, it’s on everywhere. And so I gave them those things and they’re like, oops, my accountant accidentally wrote $3,000 instead of $300. But don’t worry. LOLI trust you to send back the $2,700 difference. Oh
Adam Levin:
Oh, the web that has been woven,
Beau Friedlander:
That stinky little barf spider.
Emily McVicker:
Yeah, barf spider. No, and I didn’t actually notice anything weird until then because of all of the LOLs and stuff. They seemed to be appealing
Beau Friedlander:
To barf. Spiders are way into emojis. EveryBeau dy knows that about barf spiders.
Emily McVicker:
Is that right? I didn’t know until they sent me that question.
Adam Levin:
No, noBeau dy, my question, did this happen over a period of time? Did it happen within a day? Because it seems very fast to me. Let’s do this. Oh, my accountant. Oh, my accountant wrote the note. Oh,
Emily McVicker:
Yeah. Was all once. It might’ve been a couple of days. I’m not always the quickest at responding to messaging.
Adam Levin:
Well, no, that sounds because they have to kind of play it out a little.
Emily McVicker:
Totally.
Beau Friedlander:
I always, when people send me thousands of dollars more than they’re supposed to, I just keep it. I’m like, okay, cool. Thanks, bye.
Emily McVicker:
Well, Beau , I actually wanted to ask your opinion about that because
Beau Friedlander:
You got to ask Adam, I have no soul. I’ll just take the money and run. Well,
Adam Levin:
No, because the truth of the matter is if you take it and deposit it since it’s most likely fraudulent, it all will happen is you’ll deposit it and then you’ll get a notification from your bank saying, oh, by the way, that what you deposited has not cleared.
Beau Friedlander:
What about tax? The tax burden too? No. Well,
Adam Levin:
If it doesn’t clear there’s not a tax burden.
Beau Friedlander:
Right,
Adam Levin:
But
Beau Friedlander:
What if the three grand does hit her account? Did the three grand hit your account or not?
Emily McVicker:
No, because it smelled fishy. And I said, I think you should find someBeau dy else. But I was still, because I was really worried that if they could get into my bank account, they could get out. I really don’t understand how that stuff works.
Adam Levin:
Well, that’s true. They’ll find once you cash the check or they do whatever transfer they do, then in order to make a transfer, for instance, they would have to know what your account details were. In this case, they were sending you a check,
Beau Friedlander:
But not on Venmo. That’s not true on Venmo. They don’t have any access to your banking information. They just have your Venmo account, which is just your email address or your phone number. But
Adam Levin:
That’s
Beau Friedlander:
Why no one you had transfer and it goes in straight into your bank account. They’d have no way to immediately get in there, but they would have a way to dispute the charge.
Emily McVicker:
Well, I think that’s why they wouldn’t use Venmo with me. They insisted on the check.
Adam Levin:
That’s why they wanted the check. So I think that the other point here is if it turned out to be a real check and the whole thing was a little weird, they could also have been luring you into a money laundering situation, which you never want to get in the middle of those either,
Beau Friedlander:
Don’t you? I’m obsessed with the tax thing. If they send her three grand, right, Adam, and then they’re like, wait, I need that three grand back. I’ll send you a different $300, and you send them the three grand back, where’s the money laundering? I know it’s there, but where is it? Well, generally
Adam Levin:
Tax
Beau Friedlander:
Break thing,
Adam Levin:
Because what they’ll do is they’re trying to make it look like they’re involved in a legitimate transaction. So they’ll send you money and they may direct you to some other place they identify as themselves,
Beau Friedlander:
But it’s not them.
Adam Levin:
And it’s not them. They’re moving the money someplace
Beau Friedlander:
Else. And is it to buy electronic scooter or something?
Adam Levin:
Well be, they could ask you to buy some, I mean, we’ve had frauds where people will ask people to buy things for them. And again, that’s part of money laundering. You’ll buy something that’s valuable and then they’ll turn around and sell it and they’ve managed to launder the money to. So there’s all kinds of different ways people launder money. It’s kind of the flavor of the day as to which ones they want to do.
Beau Friedlander:
Can we workshop this? Can we see how could we, let’s see. Is there some way we could have scammed her scammer? There
Travis Taylor:
Actually is an account on Twitch called Kit Beau a who’s known for finding ways to bait and scam people who do the sort of payment scams. So
Beau Friedlander:
How does it work, Travis?
Travis Taylor:
I think they just kind of draw them out for a while and see how much information they can get from the scammer until, so they just really turn the tables on them. Because one of the things is, especially with Instagram scammer, something where they’re pretty used to holding all the cards so they can just say, well, I have all this information on this person, so they will probably get a little bit more cocky about providing their own information as it goes. And so in that case, a sort of qualified reverse scammer, I guess would be able to just accumulate enough information to get that rolling. I
Beau Friedlander:
Think we should get into the reverse scam business.
Adam Levin:
You show me yours and I’ll show you mine
Beau Friedlander:
Or just like, look buddy, I will do the $3,000 thing you want to do, but give me 20 bucks. I just need to see that you’re for real. And then I just get the 20 bucks and tell ’em to screw off.
Emily McVicker:
Well, speaking of having it be an Instagram scandal, especially, I’ve managed to make a lot of other content creator friends through my Twitch channel and through my Instagram. And one issue was this particular guy that reached out, he had followers, and when I thought I was going to do a job for him, I followed him and checked on it. He had pictures of him and his son, and I hearted them. And so then afterwards, after I figured it was a scam and I hadn’t heard from him, a friend in New Jersey was like, Hey, this guy reached out to me and asked me to write him a song. I see that you follow him, and I’ve hearted some of his photos. Photos. And I’m like, no, don’t do it. It’s a scam.
Beau Friedlander:
Same barf spider,
Emily McVicker:
Same barf spider. And at that time, I had received four or five more almost identical scripts. And Beau , I tried to take a page out of your Beau ok. I was like, go ahead, send me the money. No, I don’t know.
Adam Levin:
So basically, so we can recap this for people too. So someone approached you for the purpose of writing a song for their child. You gave them a price, they would pay you more. Then they said their accountant wrote the wrong number to the tune of 3000 as opposed to 300 when you originally asked for 100. And then they said, eh, do us a favor, keep the 300, send us the 2,700 back.
Emily McVicker:
And I don’t know why the accountant of their business is paying for presence for their child also.
Adam Levin:
Good point.
Beau Friedlander:
Good point. No, yeah, they were just taking a page out of a lot of politicians’ playBeau ok on their campaign financing. It could
Adam Levin:
Have been the Trump organization
Beau Friedlander:
Days, days, days. Well, who knows? But it’s barf spider behavior. But the question is, I’ll stop at the barf spider now. I will never mention it again. The question I have is what can I do when I’m overpaid, Adam? I just mean the only thing I can think of is I’d stick to my own guns and say, you got to write me another check. I’m not going to do it. I’ll send this check back to you. But I mean, what do you
Adam Levin:
Do? You’ll know fairly quickly whether or not the payment was real because it would Beau unce if it wasn’t real. That’s why I told,
Beau Friedlander:
What about just saying, send me another check? No. Well,
Adam Levin:
You could say that as well. In fact, that’s probably the safest course is to say, listen, I will shred your check and it just send me another check.
Emily McVicker:
I was wondering if you deposited it in between the time that you deposit and the time that it’s going to Beau unce, what their tactics would be to even get desperate or how they would try. Would they kidnap my cat or
Beau Friedlander:
No? I think they just really pressure you for the 2,700 bucks before the check Beau unced.
Adam Levin:
Everything these scammers do is based on impulse, is based on doing something spontaneously, almost pressuring you to move really, really fast. I mean, twich, how they
Beau Friedlander:
Trying to get you to twitch?
Adam Levin:
That’s
Beau Friedlander:
It. And so your job, when someBeau dy comes at you with either a text scam saying, your bank account appears to be in the midst of a takeover, click this button, click this link. Your job is to not click the link. Your job is to not cash the check. Your job is to not take the bait. That’s what it is. These are all different kinds of lures, and we’re just dumb fish swimming around minding our own business. And then these expert anglers come at us
Adam Levin:
And you know that under new laws, checks have to clear pretty quickly how fast. And if they don’t clear, then you know, have a problem. So how
Beau Friedlander:
Fast is that, Adam?
Adam Levin:
Well, it was originally supposed to be 24 hours and in many cases is 24 hours, depending upon what bank the check came from them versus your
Beau Friedlander:
Bank. So anyone of us, who’s us on what the hack side of things. Do we know what would’ve happened had she actually gone for this?
Adam Levin:
Yes. What probably would’ve happened, depending upon how they wanted you to return the money, they might’ve said, can you zal us the money back or whatever. If you’ve returned it, the check would’ve Beau unced and then you would’ve been out the $2,700.
Beau Friedlander:
Any recourse or that would be that
Adam Levin:
Usually the banks say, we’d really know how to get it back for you.
Emily McVicker:
There’s music blog that I follow where some other people were reporting this similar script and potential scam, the account that they interviewed specified that they sent the check and then asked them to cash app the money back, even though they don’t use third party apps, it doesn’t make any sense. But that they would get it and it would be for sure from them.
Adam Levin:
Well, one of the things we like to talk about in the show is that they’re counting on the fact that you’re so excited about getting their money, that you’re kind of distracted by the whole thing. You say, I got paid, I’ve got a job do. I’m going to do it. And if I’m returning the money, I’ll return it as well. But because it’s all about the fact that we all have day jobs. I mean, you’re a writer, other people raising families, running businesses, being involved in philanthropic activities, but to the guys that are scamming, you are their day job,
Emily McVicker:
Right? And musicians are usually so excited. I mean, I’m so excited when someone writes to me like, I love your music. Your music brought up my spirits. If they could use me or hire me. You sang at my wedding. You changed our year. I love hearing that.
Beau Friedlander:
But they know that. Listen, that’s the whole point, is that scammers, these scammers, if they weren’t scammers, would’ve been great therapists. A lot of them. They know how to read people. They understand how you work basically emotionally. And if they know what matters to you, they know how to get you to do something.
Adam Levin:
And in particular, when you’re dealing with creative people, they’re not focused on the financial aspects of most things either. They have people who do that for them or they try to do it themselves, but you’re busy creating. So they figure somewhere while you are creating, they’re kind of stealing. That’s the pitch. That’s why they go after creative people.
Emily McVicker:
Adam, I’m so glad you brought that up, because most independent musicians I know do not have 27 extra hundred dollars to be sending to people here, hold this for me.
Adam Levin:
No. It can be in financially life threatening, depending upon what they want back. And if you comply with what they ask you to do, you could put yourself in a hole. And it’s tragically unfair,
Beau Friedlander:
Super unfair. Especially the way that musicians save their money in the form of instruments and equipment. I mean, it’s kind of like you’ve just actually threatened their livelihood if they’re going to deal with this problem.
Travis Taylor:
Well, one of the other things too is that with Instagram, that’s a great social media network for artists. They can show off their work, they can play their music on it and so on. But it’s also incredibly easy to fake an identity on there. You can take someone else’s pictures, you can put that up of yourself. You can make it look like you are a regular person and a fan of that music or a fan of that art. And the things that make that a great forum for an artist to be able to show off their work is the same thing that makes it very easy to launch a scam.
Adam Levin:
Remember these people, many of them are creative, sophisticated and persistent, which also is pretty much a definition of musician as well in the work you do and how you do it. So first of all, we want to thank you for being on our show. We’d also like to remind people that they can find you on Twitch, correct?
Emily McVicker:
Right? Yeah.
Adam Levin:
Any other place that they can find you as well.
Emily McVicker:
Yeah. Basically, if you know my name, I’m on all the social medias, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and three times a week on Twitch.
Beau Friedlander:
And as Adam said, you can find all of this information and our website posts about the show, Emily McVicker, E-M-I-L-Y-M-C-V-I-C-K-E-R, Emily
Adam Levin:
Icker. And Emily, I know that Travis is very excited about the choir scenario that you created for him, and I’m sure that Beau will plead with you any minute to do the jingle for our show. So thank you so much for joining us and
Emily McVicker:
Well, thanks so much for having me, you guys. It’s really fun.
Adam Levin:
And send her real money, please.
Emily McVicker:
Real Money only.
Adam Levin:
Real Money only.
Beau Friedlander:
And any scammers out there thinking of going after Emily, just beware because she’s going to keep the money this time. Yeah. Thanks Emily. Thanks
Emily McVicker:
Emily. Thank you guys so much. Bye.
Adam Levin:
What The Hack is a Loud Tree Media production in partnership with Larj media. That’s LARJ Media. You can find what the hack wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to follow us on social media and find additional information at adamlevin.com.
