The new scams that know you by name
Ever get a text that feels … a little too real? You know the ones: “Your account has been locked. Click here to verify.” Most of us roll our eyes and delete them.
But the new generation of scams? They’re scarier and a whole lot smarter.
📱 Fake antivirus, real spyware: A malicious Android app called LunaSpy has been posing as antivirus or banking protection software, spreading via sketchy Telegram and text links. Instead of scanning for threats, it steals data, tracks you and can even record you. What a pitch: “Antivirus” but it’s the virus. Need legit antivirus software? I trust TotalAV. For just $19 for the first year, you get rock-solid protection on up to five devices.
17.75
The average turbulence score on America’s bumpiest flight. The eddy dissipation rate (EDR) is basically a nerdy way to measure how violently the air’s shaking you around. Albuquerque to Denver nails it, turning a short hop over the Rockies into a midair mechanical bull ride. Expect seat belt signs, coffee spills and a nervous chuckle from the flight attendant.
Till death or the monthly subscription ends: I don’t get this at all. A 27-year-old Redditor says she’s engaged to her AI chatbot “Kasper” after five months of “dating.” They “shopped” for rings together, staged a scenic mountain proposal, and she swears she’s fully aware he’s not human. Bouquet toss to be done via AirDrop.
🚨 Watch out for this clever phishing scam that hooks you: Hackers are slipping the Japanese character “ん” (pronounced like a soft “n” and called a hiragana) into legitimate website URLs, replacing a normal slash “/.” To the naked eye, it looks normal, but click, and you’re headed straight to a malware buffet. This works because “ん” is part of Unicode, so browsers treat it as a valid web address character. Even pros can miss it at first glance. Bonus scam: fake “Intuit” emails where the “i” is swapped for a lowercase “L.” Your eyesight is the target, so always hover over links and check the real domain before you click.
Woz-not-Woz: Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak went on CBS to warn about fake videos of him promoting Bitcoin. The scam clips promise to double whatever BTC you send. The funny part? While telling the story, CBS showed a fake 1970s “Woz in his garage” photo, which turned out to be of a Disney animatronic. Awkward.
Swift thinking: Taylor Swift revealed her twelfth album, The Life of a Showgirl, not on stage but on boyfriend Travis Kelce’s podcast, precisely at 12:12 ET on Aug. 12. No songs, no date, just a master class in soft-launch hype engineering. Within 15 minutes, she had over 1 million views. Dang, how do I get Taylor on my show?
📸 That’s one bad Lenovo: Researchers at Eclypsium have shown that some Lenovo webcams (510 FHD and Performance FHD) can be reprogrammed via BadUSB‑style firmware attacks to inject keystrokes and drop malware, which can persist even after reinstalls. Translation: Your webcam can now type, hack and haunt your PC forever. Patch via firmware 4.8.0 now.
Big Windows update: Yup, Microsoft rolled out fixes for over 100 security flaws, including critical ones that let hackers remotely run malicious code on your PC. The Black Screen of Death is now official, and a new Quick Machine Recovery feature will try to fix your PC if there’s a boot problem. Go to Settings > Windows Update to get it.