The Security box, podcast 243: The Multi Billion Dollar Cybercrime Industry

The technology blog and podcast and TSB

Hello folks, welcome to podcast 243 of the technology program known as the Security Box. On this program, we've got plenty of news notes and the landscape, and a very interesting topic that deals with the economy of the Cybercrime Industry.

The title of the program is

Let's get started by talking about our Trivia.

The question this week is:

Which series predicted smartwatches decades before they existed: A) The Jetsons, B) Star Trek, C) Knight Rider or D) Dick Tracy? The answer awaits you at the end, no time travel required.

So what was last week's trivia?

According to the Kim Komando Newsletter in the Web Watercooler section, what is the percentage of Gen Zers who are OK of sharing their data for free?

• A: 25%
• B: 50%
• C: 80%
• D: 88%
• E: 95%
• F: 100%
• G: less than 25%

Now, for the answer for last week's question if you'd rather read.

Answer: D: 88%

"That’s how many Gen Zers are cool with sharing their data for free. Now, Verb.AI’s giving them a reason to actually profit from the surveillance. Gen Z: simultaneously terrified of phone calls and totally fine letting a startup track their every digital move. “It’s not stalking if it’s opt-in,” apparently."

Thanks for playing!

We've talked about the criminal underground on a regular when it comes to the various groups that create ransomware and force your average person to pay because their files are locked up.

But there's another aspect of the underground that we have not talked about, at least not directly.

Did you know that the people that are used to scam you are actually taken from other parts of the country and held in places that are designed for them to do their job? They're promised that they'll get paid, and some may escape as they've never gotten paid but got kidnapped.

Multi-billion">https://technology.jaredrimer.net/2025/04/22/multi-billion-dollar-cybercrime-industry-moves-around/">Multi-billion dollar cybercrime industry moves around is the blog post I wrote, introducing the article Multi-billion-dollar">https://cybernews.com/cybercrime/multi-billion-dollar-cyberscam-industry-spreading-worldwide-un-says/">Multi-billion-dollar cyberscam industry spreading worldwide, UN says which came from Cyberscoop.

As part of this, I surprised the group and we talked about things that you can do to verify like looking them up through an application like Find My Friends, now known as Find My for IOS. I'm not sure, but there may be a similar app for Google, please consult someone with more experience. If we find something, we'll update in a future podcast, but I thought I heard of people using things like Find My to do this unless its only for devices. That's our research, if we find anything new, we'll bring it out.