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Lock and Code

Lock and Code tells the human stories within cybersecurity, privacy, and technology. Rogue robot vacuums, hacked farm tractors, and catastrophic software vulnerabilities—it’s all here.

technology tech news

All Episodes

53:12

Enshittification is ruining everything online (feat....

Lock and Code ·

2026/01/11

There’s a bizarre thing happening online right now where everything is getting worse.Your Google results have become so bad that you’ve likely typed what you’re looking for, plus the word “Reddit,” so you can find discussion from actual humans. If you didn’t take this route, you might get served AI results from Google Gemini, which once recommended that every person should eat “at least one small rock per day.” Your Amazon results are a slog, filled with products that have surreptitiously paid

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35:44

ALPRs are recording your daily drive (feat. Will...

Lock and Code ·

2025/12/28

There’s an entire surveillance network popping up across the United States that has likely already captured your information, all for the non-suspicion of driving a car.Automated License Plate Readers, or ALPRs, are AI-powered cameras that scan and store an image of every single vehicle that passes their view. They are mounted onto street lights, installed under bridges, disguised in water barrels, and affixed onto telephone poles, lampposts, parking signs, and even cop cars.Once installed, these

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44:13

Pig butchering is the next “humanitarian global...

Lock and Code ·

2025/12/14

This is the story of the world’s worst scam and how it is being used to fuel entire underground economies that have the power to rival nation-states across the globe. This is the story of “pig butchering.”“Pig butchering” is a violent term that is used to describe a growing type of online investment scam that has ruined the lives of countless victims all across the world. No age group is spared, nearly no country is untouched, and, if the numbers are true,with more than $6.5 billion stolen in 2024

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27:33

Air fryer app caught asking for voice data (re-air)

Lock and Code ·

2025/11/30

It’s often said online that if a product is free, you’re the product, but what if that bargain was no longer true? What if, depending on the device you paid hard-earned money for, youstillbecame a product yourself, to be measured, anonymized, collated, shared, or sold, often away from view?In 2024, a consumer rights group out of the UK teased this new reality when it published research into whether people’s air fryers—seriously–might be spying on them.By analyzing the associatedAndroidapps for three

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33:01

Your coworker is tired of AI "workslop" (feat. Dr....

Lock and Code ·

2025/11/16

Everything’s easier with AI… except having to correct it.In just the three years since OpenAI released ChatGPT, not only has onlife life changed at home—it’s also changed at work. Some of the biggest software companies today, like Microsoft and Google, are forwarding a vision of an AI-powered future where people don’t write their own emails anymore, or make their own slide decks for presentations, or compile their own reports, or even read their own notifications, because AI will do it for them.But

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51:10

Would you sext ChatGPT? (feat. Deb Donig)

Lock and Code ·

2025/11/02

In the final, cold winter months of the year, ChatGPT could be heating up.On October 14, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the “restrictions” that his company previously placed on their flagship product, ChatGPT, would be removed, allowing, perhaps, for “erotica” in the future.“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues,” Altmanwrote on the platform X. “We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems,

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27:05

What does Google know about me?

Lock and Code ·

2025/10/19

Google is everywhere in our lives. It’s reach into our data extends just as far.After investigatinghow much data Facebook had collected about him in his nearly 20 years with the platform, Lock and Code host David Ruiz had similar questions about the other Big Tech platforms in his life, and this time, he turned his attention to Google.Google dominates much of the modern web. It has a search engine that handles billions of requests a day. Its tracking and metrics service, Google Analytics, is

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50:13

What's there to save about social media? (feat. Rabble)

Lock and Code ·

2025/10/05

“Connection” was the promise—and goal—of much of the early internet. No longer would people be separated from vital resources and news that was either too hard to reach or made simply inaccessible by governments. No longer would education be guarded behind walls both physical and paid. And no longer would your birthplace determine so much about the path of your life, as the internet could connect people to places, ideas, businesses, collaborations, and agency.Somewhere along the line though,

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52:41

Can you disappear online? (feat. Peter Dolanjski)

Lock and Code ·

2025/09/21

There’s more about you online than you know.The company Acxiom, for example, has probably determined whether you’re a heavy drinker, or if you’re overweight, or if you smoke (or all three). The same company has also probably estimated—to the exact dollar—the amount you spend every year on dining out, donating to charities, and traveling domestically. Another company Experian, has probably made a series of decisions about whether you are “Likely,” “Unlikely,” “Highly Likely,” etc., to shop at a

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48:28

This “insidious” police tech claims to predict crime...

Lock and Code ·

2025/09/07

In the late 2010s, a group of sheriffs out of Pasco County, Florida, believed they could predict crime. The Sheriff’s Department there had piloted a program called “Intelligence-Led Policing” and the program would allegedly analyze disparate points of data to identify would-be criminals.But in reality, the program didn’t so much predict crime, as it did make criminals out of everyday people, including children.High schoolers’ grades were fed into the Florida program, along with their attendance

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37:13

How a scam hunter got scammed (feat. Julie-Anne Kearns)

Lock and Code ·

2025/08/24

If there’s one thing that scam hunter Julie-Anne Kearns wants everyone to know, it is that no one is immune from a scam. And she would know—she fell for one last year.For years now, Kearns has made a name for herself on TikTok as a scam awareness and education expert. Popular under the name@staysafewithmjules, Kearns makes videos about scam identification and defense. She has posted countless profile pictures that are used and repeated by online scammers across different accounts. She has flagged

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40:31

“The worst thing” for online rights: An...

Lock and Code ·

2025/08/10

The internet is cracking apart. It’s exactly what some politicians want.In June, a Texas law that requires age verification on certain websites withstood a legal challenge brought all the way to the US Supreme Court. It could be a blueprint for how the internet will change very soon.The law,titled HB 1181and passed in 2023, places new requirements on websites that portray or depict “sexual material harmful to minors.” With the law, the owners or operators of websites that contain images or videos or

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52:02

How the FBI got everything it wanted (re-air, feat....

Lock and Code ·

2025/07/27

For decades, digital rights activists, technologists, and cybersecurity experts have worried about what would happen if the US government secretly broke into people’s encrypted communications.The weird thing, though, is that it's already happened—sort of.US intelligence agencies, including the FBI and NSA, have long sought what is called a “backdoor” into the secure and private messages that are traded through platforms like WhatsApp, Signal, and Apple’s Messages. These applications all provide what

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45:29

Is AI "healthy" to use?

Lock and Code ·

2025/07/13

“Health” isn’t the first feature that most anyone thinks about when trying out a new technology, but a recent spate of news is forcing the issue when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI).In June,The New York Times reportedon a group of ChatGPT users who believed the AI-powered chat tool and generative large language model held secretive, even arcane information. It told one mother that she could use ChatGPT to commune with “the guardians,” and it told another man that the world around him was

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45:26

Corpse-eating selfies, and other ways to trick...

Lock and Code ·

2025/06/29

There’s a unique counter response to romance scammers.Her name is Becky Holmes.Holmes, an expert and author on romance scams, has spent years responding to nearly every romance scammer who lands a message in her inbox. She told one scammer pretending to be Brad Pitt that she needed immediate helphiding the body of one of her murder victims. She made one romance scammer laugh at her immediate willingness to take an international flight to see him. She has told scammers she lives at addresses withlewd

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46:15

The data on denying social media for kids (feat. Dr....

Lock and Code ·

2025/06/15

Complex problems often assume complex solutions, but recent observations about increased levels of anxiety and depression, increased reports of loneliness, and lower rates of in-person friendships for teens and children in America today have led some school districts across the country to take direct and simple action: Take away the access to smartphones in schools.Not everyone is convinced. When social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt proposed five solutions to what he called an "epidemic of

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31:33

What does Facebook know about me?

Lock and Code ·

2025/06/01

There’s an easy way to find out what Facebook knows about you—you just have to ask.In 2020, the social media giant launched an online portal that allows all users to access their historical data and to request specific types of information for download across custom time frames. Want to know how many posts you’ve made, ever? You can find that. What about every photo you’ve uploaded? You can find that, too. Or what about every video you’ve watched, every “recognized” device you’ve used to log in,

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26:11

How Los Angeles banned smartphones in schools (feat....

Lock and Code ·

2025/05/18

There’s a problem in class today, and the second largest school district in the United States is trying to solve it.After looking at the growing body of research that has associated increased smartphone and social media usage with increased levels of anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and isolation—especially amongst adolescents and teenagers—Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) implemented a cellphone ban across its 1,000 schools for its more than 500,000 students.Under the ban,

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46:12

The AI chatbot cop squad is here (feat. Emanuel...

Lock and Code ·

2025/05/04

“Heidi” is a 36-year-old, San Francisco-born, divorced activist who is lonely, outspoken, and active on social media. “Jason” is a shy, bilingual teenager whose parents immigrated from Ecuador who likes anime, gaming, comic books, and hiking.Neither of them is real. Both are supposed to fight crime.Heidi and Jason are examples of “AI personas” that are being pitched by the company Massive Blue for its lead product, Overwatch. Already in use at police departments across the United States, Overwatch

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36:30

Did DOGE "breach" Americans' data? (feat. Sydney...

Lock and Code ·

2025/04/20

If you don’t know about the newly created US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), there’s a strong chance they already know about you.Created on January 20 by US President Donald Trump throughExecutive Order, DOGE’s broad mandate is “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”To fulfill its mission, though, DOGE has taken great interest in Americans’ data.On February 1, DOGE team members without the necessary security clearancesaccessed

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151 results

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