scams Archives - Unintended Consequences

Last week we learned that customers of Garmin, maker of GPS-enabled tech for sports, automotive, aviation, and other use cases, couldn’t fully use their devices, sync, or connect for updates. As the story unfolded and the company eventually announced that this was the result of a ransomware attack, it reminded me of a pattern I’ve written about before — the trade-off between operational improvements and additional systemic risk.

Garmin, and many other companies, provide what has become essential technology. This article is an exploration of unintended consequences related to system dependence, navigation, international differences, hacker ambitions, and potential future outcomes.

Garmin uptime — A snapshot of Garmin’s recent uptime for its aviation service flyGarmin.

Continue reading “Garmin Hack and Dependence”

Today I was reminded of the first post I ever wrote on this blog (Voice AI, Telecom, Scams, and Co-evolution), back in 2018. My first article was focused on second-order effects of emerging voice AI capabilities and projected a number of scams that the technology would enable.

While this tech also has many positives, I always try to get a fuller picture by looking at the system.

The world is full of trade offs. In the case of voice AI in the article, we have the ability to scale up scams that historically worked, but only in small does. The “hey grandma” scam was one example. As I wrote back then:

“An older scam that this tech will scale is what’s known as the “Hey, Grandma” scam, where a grandparent gets a call from a “grandchild” in distress. There are different flavors of this. For US grandparents the story is often that the grandchild got into legal trouble and needs money wired. In China and Taiwan, it’s often that the grandchild has been kidnapped and is being beaten up. Again, wire the money.”

Continue reading “Scaling a Scam (The Twitter Hack)”