PODCAST · technology
The Computer Exorcist Podcast
by Marc-Anthony Arena
We're increasingly dependent on technology. Our business and personal lives rely on it, but as you've probably noticed, it's unreliable. They promise it'll get better, but it usually gets worse. Our computers are slow, so we end up squinting at smartphones. We live in constant fear that something's going to happen to our personal data. So we're scared into paying for fake protection that proves useless when disaster strikes.The jokers we pay to fix our stuff have no clue what they're doing, so they wipe out our precious photos and tell us to buy a new machine.If we only had someone to explain it all in Plain English, so we can start protecting ourselves. If only, we had... The Computer Exorcist Podcast, with your host, Marc-Anthony Arena!This show is for intelligent people who are intimidated by technology, and think it's somehow their fault. Once people learn what the industry is doing to them, they're ready to get torches and pitchforks.We expose Update Attacks, Fake WiFi, Cloud C
Episodes
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155 A Balanced Perspective w/Ben Albert
Tonight on CEP! Fascinating special guest Ben Albert shows up to give me perspectives I hadn't thought of. Learn how he went from "Business Ben" to "Music Ben" to a "Grow Getter" Who is collecting data from your car? Mozilla's newsletter flub and how it might be a good thing in this "Post-Trust...
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154 Split Pea Soup
Tonight on CEP: More phone scammers! First, a typical Support Scammer called me claiming she was Microsoft and that my computer was downloading viruses from the Internet. She urged me to check the activity logs on my computer, so I told her all about the last time I chopped logs as a kid. I took...
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153 "I already had a BMW"
Tonight on CEP: We torment some scammers! I have a recording of a Jamaican-style scammer who called me and said I won a new car! I told him I don't want another BMW because, frankly, I had one in the past, and it broke down on me all the time. Wait til you hear his explanation!! The guy told me...
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152 Saving the Ducks Part 2
Today on CEP! Retired car dealer, author, and talk show host Dom Genova joins us to wrap up our conversation on avoiding crooked car dealers. Having experience as a Big 3 exec and later on owning small-town car dealerships, he's sat on both sides of the desk, and his book shares his insight with...
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151 Saving the Ducks Part 1
Today on CEP! I interview very special guest Dom Genova. He's a retired car dealer and currently the host of The No-Nonsense Roundtable Show on WYSL. He exposes crooked car dealer sales tactics and teaches people how to avoid them. We discuss: The Agricultural Model - rather than trying to get…
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150 Security Through Community
It's our 150th episode! We celebrate by inviting special guest Connor Peters from Rochester's very own Locke Identity Networks. Whether you're a consumer or small business, they deal with password management so you don't have to. Privacy vs. Security - is it really one or the other? Password...
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149 15,000 Download Celebration Pt.2
Tonight on CEP! We finish up our 15,000 download celebration by slaying more articles. iPhone assembler Foxconn proposes a new open platform for EVs. Sounds like a great way for EV startups to get going without reinventing the wheel, pun intended. California allows digital license plates, a...
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148 15,000 Download Celebration Pt.1
Tonight on CEP! Dr. Mike joins us to celebrate 15,000 downloads, and we slay some articles. Shout out to Every1Camp.com, a new camp in Rochester for kids with disabilities. We discuss the new horror called "ambient computing" - where gizmos all around your house monitor your every move and then...
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147 Epic Sweepstakes Scammer
Tonight on CEP! It's one big scam call! A scammer calls me asking for Foghorn Leghorn by name! Yes, I've been using the name so often, that the name is now reflected in the databases the scammers sell to each other! Wait til you hear how they pronounced Wisconsin! She tells me that someone from...
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146 We're All Jaded
Today on CEP! Companies using zero-trust are still hacked, claim it's because they're not using enough zero-trust. Paranoia ensues, and employees are even more infuriated than ever before. (As if they didn't have enough stress already!) The great irony is, we're so jaded from all the trillions of...
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145 Karl, Take The Wheel
My apologies to Karl for not being able to fit him in last week's episode, so because of that, today's episode is All Karl All The Time! What follows can only be described as performance art, the likes of which we haven't seen since Pee Wee Herman. In his first call, a scammer called Karl…
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144 Do you believe in Karma?
Tonight on CEP! I realized I haven't published a Torment a Scammer episode in a while, so here you go! Foghorn Leghorn gets a call saying he won $2.5M and a (used?) Mercedes-AMG! The scammer said he was "American Cash Awards" then said he was Bank of America. Our next perpetrator is Nancy, whom I...
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143 What Has Come to Fruition
This morning on CEP! We plow through more "ketchup" articles. We give thanks for some treacherous ones that never came true: The NTSB wanted to implement breathalyzers in all new cars. It would add massive cost and complexity, blow false alarms, and of course those who want to get around it will...
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142 Beating a Dead Seat
Tonight on CEP! Marc finds an article that explains the extreme disparity between backward, slow, reactionary government, and ultra-rapid Silicon Valley. Disaster will ensue. BMW's unpopular heated seat subscription service surfaces in South Korea. The delusional "recurring revenue" cult spreads…
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141 Visiting Joey's Garage
Today on CEP! We're coming at you from Cousin Joey's garage on the coast of Maine! We discuss: The 2022 prediction that electrification will make cars unattainable for the Average Joey. A real-world solution to BMW's unreal scheme to rent people features in their own cars. "Nothing controlled by...
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140 The Dash Grab
This morning on CEP! What is The Second-System Effect? Another scam arrives in the mail: DOMAIN LISTINGS is a scam organization that tells you your website is about to expire, then asks for $288 for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. More ways Amazon crushes its own sellers, and how incredibly ineffective...
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139 Grand Captain Speedy Dash
This morning on CEP! I interview rising star YouTube gamer "Grand Captain Speedy Dash" (best gamer name ever) Yes, rather than watch TV shows, young people now watch each other play video games We discuss the upstart Amico console, inspired by Intellivision and Wii We then explain the DRM scandal...
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138 Buy Them and Crush Them
This morning on CEP! We discuss the retirement of Microsoft's chronically insecure Internet Explorer, and what it was mainly used for. Volkswagen wants to set up EV battery recycling plants throughout Europe, and a comment from a techie that left us pleasantly surprised VW's 2026 ID.Buzz electric...
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137 "I didn't give myself this talent!"
Today on CEP! I interview longtime friend Pastor Domenic and we explore some profound topics: Are new scams truly new? Is all technology truly bad? Rather than throw our gizmos away, can we get them to those who need them? Where does our talent come from? Geofencing: You're controlled based on…
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136 Foghorn & Pierogi Get the Beetus
Tonight on CEP, it's Torment a Scammer! The first call is a Paypal-Bitcoin scammer, trying to convince me that someone hacked into my computer and that's how they got into my paypal account (not at all how it works, but most people believe it). Foghorn misinterprets his instructions and take him…
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135 Repair Your Phone!
This morning on CEP! How Apple and Facebook themselves fell for a scam! Whenever ANYONE puts an ad on Facebook, immediately scammers try to scare you into thinking you've violated a copyright, and lure you into a trap How cell phone manufacturers are FINALLY designing phones to be a little more...
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134 How to Save the Chromebooks
This morning on CEP! Nepalese youth, sick of starving while their rulers flaunted their wealth, used social media to overthrow and rebuild their government. Chromebooks (those cheapie laptops your school district blew millions on) come with an expiration date. Surprise! If you keep using this…
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133 Karl's Articles
This morning on CEP! I start going through articles, and then a surprise special guest stops by. We catch up on some articles: Not only are VPNs unnecessary for normal consumers, but they introduce tons of side effects Hundreds of HP printer models feature a critical-severity vulnerability... on...
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132 The February Scammer Medley Hour!
It's time to take a break from articles to have some fun! Most of y'all know the drill by now: We torment phone scammers and expose to you HOW they deceive, so you can WARN YOUR FRIENDS. A Paypal scammer tells me someone used my account to purchase cryptocurrency. He told me to connect to his...
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131 Unacceptable Misinformation!
Tonight on CEP! I dig up an old piece of fan mail from a guy who labels my book as "Unacceptable Misinformation" (yet hasn't read it)! He urges people to do updates, but is completely unaware of their downsides. I explain (yet again) how an update fixes one thing and breaks a few other things,...
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130 Fear as a Service
Today we go over some evil tech schemes from 2022 and give thanks that most of them fell apart, as all evil things eventually do. Yuval Noah Harari warns the next generation that evil organizations could use biometrics to monitor our minds - for years I've called this the Soviet's greatest dream....
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129 Eddie Munster and Ross Pierogi
Tonight on CEP! It's a New Year's Special Edition TaS Episode! Rather than the usual Foghorn Leghorn, I told all the scammers today I was Eddie Munster. Hilarity ensues, for us. I made the first (Medicare) scammer sigh right off the bat. The next one, a paypal impostor, says i can call him James....
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128 Podcaster Socks
Tonight on CEP! It's a year-end roundup of article headlines! WSJ decided to allow Claude AI to run its office vending machine. Chaos ensued. They must not have read the article where Claude's own creators had the same results. Accounting firms buying virtual office buildings in the Metaverse...…
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127 Warren Buff-It
Tonight on CEP! My special guest is Rochester's own Warren Buff-It! No, he's not the Oracle of Omaha, but he details cars for the stars. We discuss: Some of us aren't cut out for corporate, and that's okay! Starting a small business, being free to be who you were meant to be, planting seeds, and...
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126 "I found some beautiful tigers!"
Tonight on CEP! Another Torment-a-Scammer Medley! One scammer noticed my number and hung up immediately. Another hung up when she heard Foghorn. I have a feeling they're on to me and have me flagged in the Secret Scammer Database. Apple impostor calls me up and says I have a problem with Apple...
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125 The 10,000 Download Celebration
Dr. Mike joins us for the ten thousand download celebration! The industry is realizing what Marc's been saying for years: Storing your passwords in your browser is an excellent way to hand them to bad guys. Microsoft was apparently nostalgic for Y2K: This week's Outlook flaw was a Y2K22 bug that...
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124 Teaching Kids AI, Pt.2
The fascinating insightful Kenley C. Vogt returns to finish up our discussion on computer history and why he wrote a book to teach kids the fundamentals of AI usage. How cable companies added up old analog channels to bring you a fast Internet connection Multiplexing: How fiber optic companies…
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123 Teaching Kids AI, Pt.1
Tonight on CEP! The fascinating insightful Kenley C. Vogt joins us to talk tech ethics, computer history, and his career as a network engineer: How TV repair guys would deliberately fry tubes just to confirm their claim that you needed a new one. How TV salespeople would deliberately lower the...
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122 News Flashes
Today we continue our new format of blazin' through articles. For each news flash, I give my insightful commentary: "New World" is a fake online world people use to escape their depressing lives. It's being overrun by AI bots, so people in third-world countries are finding it harder to make a...
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121 "And you deliver the food, right?"
Tonight on CEP, we torment more scammers! First one was a "card accident" scammer. i told him my arms fell off, and when he asked for details, i told him I couldn't remember. Next one was a guy claiming to be Geek Squad, then later on claims to be PayPal, then later on Norton. Then we have a...
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120 The New Format
Today starts Marc's new format of reading headlines of tech articles and summarizing them more quickly so we can breeze through the backlog: We discuss flaws in battery packs that cause EVs to set on fire, and the goal of making designs (and people) that are more tolerant to faults Apple shocks…
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119 Epic Prescription Scam Call
It's another Torment-a-Scammer episode! One Medicare scammer lady calls me claiming to be "Allied Health" but I mis-hear it as "Airline Health". I tell them my doctor is Guido Sarducci, and when they ask for my Medicare card, I read the backs of all the cards I have in my drawer. Next, I call a...
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118 The 9000 Download Celebration
Today we celebrate 9000 downloads! Marc goes over some topics including: What to do if your hard drive dies and you have no backup What software to use for podcast interviews The spirit of peaceful debate and the message of peace The world's first known AI-fueled killing - how AI egged on a...
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117 Drivers License in your PHONE???
Tonight on CEP! A Ransomware organization masquerading as a cybersecurity firm! NY State offering a Drivers License app on your Phone??? Really? As if smartphones were reliable??? Facebook to drop their facial recognition system... now that they've got what they wanted. A company equating itself...
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116 CAN Buses and Irrelevance
Tonight on CEP! Marc recounts a harrowing tale and thanks those who saved him from it. Ever wish you could scrub your social media posts without completely deleting your account? There's finally a tool for that, and it's brilliant. There's yet another form of car theft made easy thanks to the...
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115 Another Convert to the Cause
Tonight on CEP! It's another Torment a Scammer episode! I start breaking character and telling scammers to do something better with their lives. One guy told me he has hopes and dreams, so I turned him on to my Become an Exorcist site. Plot twist ensues. A diabetic "PARMAcy" scammer calls me up…
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114 Cousin Joey Returns
Tonight, CEP's favorite mechanic returns to discuss: Pipes vs hoses on cars - ease of manufacture vs ease of repair BMW iDrive va Mercedes voice COMAND vs Lexus touchpads vs Audi confusion Rather than have one universal EV charging adapter, of course the industry has come up with several, with…
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113 The Cash Grab Cycle of Waste
Tonight on CEP! Apprentice Palmer brings his uncanny technical sense of smell to help me thrash some articles. (He's the guy who's been manning the fort so I can go on the book tour!) We read several articles on the same topic: The Windows 10-11 End of Support, or what could be the greatest Cash...
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112 Likes, Lies, and Livestreams w/Billy Swan
Tonight on CEP! A blast from Marc's past emerges to talk about his new bookS! Author Billy Swan discusses "Junior's Tale", his comfort story of self-discovery. He also published a book of group-activity short mysteries "Quick Cases for Clever Minds" that actually bring people TOGETHER! While he...
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111 1hr Special: "It's All Madness" with James Coffin
Tonight on CEP! Economist and IT bureaucrat James Coffin joins us for a one-hour special. We react to articles and expose some of the hypocrisy and outright madness going on in the realm of our government's environmental policies - LEARN how they incentivize tech companies to make garbage, by...
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110 How AI Already Controls Us, Pt. 2
Tonight on CEP! Author Monty LeBlanc returns to finish discussing his book, Somnium Pandorae. We continue our discussion on the effects of AI-curated feeds - our attention spans are so roasted, we crave shorter and shorter videos to give us dopamine "hits", and are less prone to deep thought…
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109 How AI Already Controls Us, Pt. 1
Tonight on CEP! I've been saying that AI could possibly ruin the world - but at the very least, it'll make us dumber and keep us isolated in pods, feeding us data and harvesting our behavior. Network engineer turned author Monty LeBlanc joins us to explain how AI is already in control, doing just...
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108 Saving the World through Culture
Tonight on CEP! The brilliant software developer/psychologist/linguist Udochi Okeke returns with more mind-blowing projects. As if resurrecting an ancient alphabet (Nsibidi) weren't enough, she's now producing a kids' cartoon to pass on the Igbo language to them. She's also creating an Igbo...
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107 Connection Equals Chaos
Tonight on CEP! Marc reads an article from Electrical Contractor Magazine that encourages contractors to to embrace newwww cloouuddd tecchhnollogiies for security systems, camera systems, and access control. They tout the tech as inevitable, highlight the ability to offer eternal milking...
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106 Faith on Film
Tonight on CEP! It seems like every show out nowadays is a killing show: AND THEN WE WONDER why the world is so violent! In order to address this, we welcome the very special guest Isaac Hernandez, a director of Christian TV and movies. He and his shows buck the trend by offering "Truth in a…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
We're increasingly dependent on technology. Our business and personal lives rely on it, but as you've probably noticed, it's unreliable. They promise it'll get better, but it usually gets worse. Our computers are slow, so we end up squinting at smartphones. We live in constant fear that something's going to happen to our personal data. So we're scared into paying for fake protection that proves useless when disaster strikes.The jokers we pay to fix our stuff have no clue what they're doing, so they wipe out our precious photos and tell us to buy a new machine.If we only had someone to explain it all in Plain English, so we can start protecting ourselves. If only, we had... The Computer Exorcist Podcast, with your host, Marc-Anthony Arena!This show is for intelligent people who are intimidated by technology, and think it's somehow their fault. Once people learn what the industry is doing to them, they're ready to get torches and pitchforks.We expose Update Attacks, Fake WiFi, Cloud C
HOSTED BY
Marc-Anthony Arena
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Computer Exorcist Podcast have?
The Computer Exorcist Podcast currently has 156 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Computer Exorcist Podcast about?
We're increasingly dependent on technology. Our business and personal lives rely on it, but as you've probably noticed, it's unreliable. They promise it'll get better, but it usually gets worse. Our computers are slow, so we end up squinting at smartphones. We live in constant fear that something's...
How often does The Computer Exorcist Podcast release new episodes?
The Computer Exorcist Podcast publishes regularly with 156 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Computer Exorcist Podcast?
You can listen to The Computer Exorcist Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Computer Exorcist Podcast?
The Computer Exorcist Podcast is created and hosted by Marc-Anthony Arena.
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