Lock and Code

Mar 09 2025 129 ep. 40 mins 343
Lock and Code Podcast artwork

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.

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How ads weirdly know your screen brightness, headphone jack use, and location, with Tim Shott

Mar 09 2025 43 mins  
Something’s not right in the world of location data.In January, a location data broker named Gravy Analytics was hacked, with the alleged cybercriminal behind the attack posting an enormous amount of data online as proof. Though relatively unknown to most of the public, Gravy Analytics is big in the world of location data collection, and, according to an enforcement action f

Surveillance pricing is "evil and sinister," explains Justin Kloczko

Feb 23 2025 28 mins  
Insurance pricing in America makes a lot of sense so long as you’re one of the insurance companies. Drivers are charged more for traveling long distances, having low credit, owning a two-seater instead of a four, being on the receiving end of a car crash, and—increasingly—for any number of non-determinative data points that insurance companies use to assume higher risk.It’s

A suicide reveals the lonely side of AI chatbots, with Courtney Brown

Feb 09 2025 38 mins  
In February 2024, a 14-year-old boy from Orlando, Florida, committed suicide after confessing his love to the one figure who absorbed nearly all of his time—an AI chatbot.For months, Sewell Seltzer III had grown attached to an AI chatbot modeled after the famous “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen. The Daenerys chatbot was not a licensed product, it had no relation

Three privacy rules for 2025

Jan 26 2025 37 mins  
It’s Data Privacy Week right now, and that means, for the most part, that you’re going to see a lot of well-intentioned but clumsy information online about how to protect your data privacy. You’ll see articles about iPhone settings. You’ll hear acronyms for varying state laws. And you’ll probably see ads for a variety of apps, plug-ins, and online tools that can be diffic

The new rules for AI and encrypted messaging, with Mallory Knodel

Jan 12 2025 47 mins  
The era of artificial intelligence everything is here, and with it, come everyday surprises into exactly where the next AI tools might pop up.There are major corporations pushing customer support functions onto AI chatbots, Big Tech platforms offering AI image generation for social media posts, and even Google has defaulted to include AI-powered overviews into everyday se

Is nowhere safe from AI slop?

Dec 29 2024 38 mins  
You can see it on X. You can see on Instagram. It’s flooding community pages on Facebook and filling up channels on YouTube. It’s called “AI slop” and it’s the fastest, laziest way to drive engagement.Like “click bait” before it (“You won’t believe what happens next,” reads the trickster headline), AI slop can be understood as the latest online tactic in getting

A day in the life of a privacy pro, with Ron de Jesus

Dec 15 2024 33 mins  
Privacy is many things for many people.For the teenager suffering from a bad breakup, privacy is the ability to stop sharing her location and to block her ex on social media. For the political dissident advocating against an oppressive government, privacy is the protection that comes from secure, digital communications. And for the California resident who wants to know exactly how

These cars want to know about your sex life (re-air)

Dec 01 2024 45 mins  
Two weeks ago, the Lock and Code podcast shared three stories about home products that requested, collected, or exposed sensitive data online.There were the air fryers that asked users to record audio through their smartphones. There was the smart ring maker that, even with privacy controls put into place, published data about users’ stress levels and heart rates. And t

An air fryer, a ring, and a vacuum get brought into a home. What they take out is your data

Nov 17 2024 26 mins  
The month, a consumer rights group out of the UK posed a question to the public that they’d likely never considered: Were their air fryers spying on them?By analyzing the associated Android apps for three separate air fryer models from three different companies, a group of researchers learned that these kitchen devices didn’t just promise to make crispier mozzarella sticks, cru

Why your vote can’t be “hacked,” with Cait Conley of CISA

Nov 03 2024 39 mins  
The US presidential election is upon the American public, and with it come fears of “election interference.”But “election interference” is a broad term. It can mean the now-regular and expected foreign disinformation campaigns that are launched to sow political discord or to erode trust in American democracy. It can include domestic campaigns to disenfranchise voters in bat