August 2026
Kellerman had just finished an account of a refurbished phone that arrived with spyware already on it. Her point is about legitimate companies rather than criminals: the effort of not being taken advantage of has spread into ordinary transactions. The host followed by naming it as a visible slide into a lower-trust society, and Kellerman called it exhausting.
Transcript
Yeah.
Wow. What a story.
Yeah. It's not just an immediate, hey, click this link for something plausible looking prize. It's, it's so degrad. It's so frustrating now that it feels like every action you take, no matter what, you have to avoid being scammed, even from like legitimate businesses. It's like their business model is scamming you now, even for like technically legitimate businesses. Getting a getting a refurbished phone should not involve the opportunity to put spyware on it. But that is where we are. It's exhausting.
Yeah. It's, I, I think I've seen a lot of social media chatter about this kind of thing lately about moving into a lower trust society, uh, as in we're watching it happen very quickly in the United States and the emotional mental toll it takes on people. And it's real. It's real. And it's something I think we don't call out specifically on this show because we're sort of talking around it. But I mean, we're seeing a lot of it. And And this is a great example of a way that you wouldn't have to expect. You would need to also keep your guard up. And yet, there it is. Yeah, I should
not need a PhD
in investigative journalism to want to buy a $200 couch or something. Like,