As we come to the end of another tough year with… how many new Covid variants? It’s important to remind ourselves that the holidays are peak feeding season for the hack, crack and malware miscreant community.

So no, there are no “surprise” Amazon gift cards coming to you and… that attachment is only going to blow up on the Windows machine and steal your secrets.

Remember to initiate all outbound connections where you enter a username and password and if it’s worth keeping safe, it’s worth turning on 2FA (two-factor authentication).

For this week’s journey, we start with a SIM card, end with an Onion and circle the globe in-between.

We learn about naughty telecoms carriers, a frozen health department, and Microsoft taking down some bad actors acting badly.

We discover why secret agents in the cinema use Nokia phones, why Elon is the only one flying for NASA, and some interesting new features being rushed to Instagram the day before the Senate hearings.

This is without a shadow of a doubt the best IT Privacy and Security Weekly update yet, so grab your boots and your overcoat, and let’s get to swashbuckling “same as we ever did”!

Find. the transcript for this week's podcast here.