Deliveroo gets swallowed up, OpenAI gets purposeful & how not to get 'Tinder Swindled'
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Last year, long crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her car. Karen Reid is arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The six-week trial resulted in anything but resolution. We continue to find ourselves at an impasse.

I'm declaring a mistrial in this case. But now the case is back in the spotlight, and one question still lingers. Did Karen Reid kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reid is innocent. How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristen Thorne, investigative reporter with Law & Crime and host of the podcast, Karen, The Retrials.

This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth. I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be. I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her. Listen to episodes of Karen, the retrial, exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. This episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by Vanta.

Let's talk about something that might be keeping you up at night. Cybersecurity. According to Vanta's latest State of Trust report, it's the number one concern for UK businesses. And that's where Vanta comes in. Whether you're a startup, growing fast or already established, Vanta can help you get ISO 27001 certified and more without the headaches.

And Vanta allows your company to centralize security workflows, complete questionnaires up to five times faster and proactively manage vendor risk to help your team not only get compliant, but stay compliant. So stop stressing over cybersecurity and start focusing on growing your business in 2025. Check out Vanta and let them handle the tough stuff. Head to vanta.com forward slash the times tech to learn more.

Because when it comes to your business, it's not just about keeping the lights on. It's about keeping everything secure. Can I just speak for a moment about Mark Zuckerberg? Did you know that there's a gap between the demand, the market demand for friends versus supply? Is that right? I've always found that actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a big supply demand imbalance. The demand is about 15 per person.

But most people only have about three. Sounds about right. How possibly could we close that supply-demand gap? Hmm, let me have a think. I don't know. What's he got in mind? AI, perhaps? Whoa. Just insert a dozen new AI friends into your life and therefore supply-demand gap. Close more money for...

Meta, Facebook, Instagram, whatever. Problem solved. And they can all flatter us like ChatGPT started doing. Yeah, be super sycophanty. Coming up on the Times Tech podcast today. We'll be joined by the subject of Netflix's Tinder swindler who in a world of deep fakes and online scammers wants us to trust again. To trust again. I can never trust again. And we'll talk about Deliveroo or as we call it in America, DoorDash.

Which were actually two different companies, but not any longer. Speaking of friends, we all need more. Maybe it's not a done deal yet. Food delivery and online safety coming up. I'm Katie Prescott, Katie in the City of London. And I am Danny Fortson, Danny in Silicon Valley. But before any of that, Katie, before scammers and scoffers, we should talk.

about open AI because the not-for-profit for-profit roller coaster that has been at the center of

so much controversy at that company appeared to be kind of resolved. I feel like we've heard that one before. It's like turn, turn and turn again. There's been so much debate about the structure of this company. It was what founded as a nonprofit in 2015 by Elon Musk and Sam Altman among others. And that was all about making sure that artificial general intelligence benefited all of humanity and

it sort of switched about a bit in 2019 when it created this strange hybrid structure, which I don't know, it feels like the kind of source of all its ills. While the non-profit was still the parent organization, it had a for-profit and that meant it could bring in the cash, but, you know, keep some kind of moral high ground. Yeah, and that's what really opened the way for this just deluge of money, primarily, at least initially, from Microsoft. But it's also raised controversy because, you know,

As you bring in more money, you have more cooks in the kitchen, so to speak, and people have different ideas about what you should and shouldn't be doing. It temporarily led to the very dramatic firing of Altman a couple of years back. That lasted all of five days. And then he was back, but it was really around this conflict between are we a nonprofit or are we just another giant rapacious tech company who's trying to raise a bunch of money and take over the world? Yeah.

And then, of course, they just recently got a new huge slugger investment from SoftBank, $30 billion. And as part of that deal was, OK, we're going to give you this money, but you actually have to just fully convert.

to a for-profit company. Yeah, I was really surprised by this announcement then because I spoke to someone inside SoftBank at the time and they said, yeah, we're absolutely reassured by what we're hearing from OpenAI and this is the reason that we're putting the money in. But in his letter to his employees this week, Sam Altman said...

which they always do when they come up against this issue. OpenAI is not a normal company and they sort of plead this startup status despite the amazing power that it has and the enormous valuation. It's like, oh, we were born on a kitchen

on a kitchen table. We're still new. Anyway, so now, yes, the sort of punchline is that they're going to be overseen and controlled by a non-profit. And it'd be interesting to see what SoftBank thinks about that. Yeah, well, SoftBank has apparently said they're cool with it, but it's going to be a slight change. So the company said, you know, the out-for-profit LLC, which has been under the non-profit since 2019, will transition to a public benefit corporation, a PBC. I know.

I need a family tree or something. I know, exactly. And a purpose driven, you know, PBCs are purpose driven companies and they're meant to be set up to balance the kind of the profit motive with a kind of broader social mission. And so the nonprofit will control still be a large shareholder of the PBC, but give the nonprofit better resources and in the future be able to effectively go public.

But theoretically, the mission remains the same. This new public benefit structure, I think the nonprofit is going to have a smaller stake in this new iteration. But theoretically, it undoes the shackles that's been holding it back. It's just a big old cluster and lots, lots and lots of details remain unresolved.

I think, intentionally vague at this point. Yeah, which is a shame because I think the vagaries of the previous iterations were part of the problem, right? And that's partly why Altman got pushed out. And of course, bubbling under the surface of all of this is the lawsuit that Elon Musk started, I think, stopped one and started another one against OpenAI for changing the structure because he was involved at the beginning and he was...

Rightly or wrongly, whatever your views are on Musk, he said, actually, they shouldn't have swerved from their original mission. Well, I mean, he makes a kind of quite pithy point, which I think there's definitely some validity to, which is like, look, we started this nonprofit. I funded it almost solely from day one.

You start a nonprofit, you get all these tax breaks. And of course, you're trying to develop technology for the good of the planet, blah, blah, blah. And then you do the switcheroo where you're like, just kidding. We're going to set up this new structure and then raise billions of dollars from Microsoft, basically become a kind of almost a captive subsidiary of Microsoft and turn it into something that is totally unrecognizable from that initial start.

So I do have some sympathy to that view, although they've said, look, you know, we tried to keep Elon around. He was like, if I can't control it, I'm out of here. They published all these emails back and forth. It all got very, very messy. And of course, what has Elon done in the last two years? He's set up Grok, raised tens of billions of dollars, which is a direct competitor to OpenAI. And he's doing the same thing OpenAI is doing. It's just all...

A big mess. But there's one other aspect of this that I think is worth talking about. And that is the end, the slow end of the bromance between Sam Altman and Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft. Aww. Yeah. Well, they have been so close. So very close. It was one Davos ago and beyond where it felt like every single stage. Four score and many Davos ago. Yeah.

Every stage it had Sam and Satya. Exactly. Who we must say not to, you know, a little bit of humble brag here. They're both friends of the pod. They are. You know, they've both been on this very fine program, but you know, in some relationships, they just kind of peter out. Others blow up spectacular. You come home and you find all your belongings on the front lawn.

So it's not that. It's more of the kind of like this. Estacia hasn't thrown the television out the window. No, it's a steady disintegration. But there's a story that came out this week around as part of this whole grand restructuring of open AI, you know, Microsoft has put $13 billion into the company.

which has given them huge influence, including like total access to all of their APIs, their tech to use however they want, integrate it with all their products. Like they have the rights to the technology and a profit share and all of this stuff. It appears that OpenAI, Sam Altman is going out and telling people like, look, under this new structure, that 20% revenue share, which is quite chunky for Microsoft, that's going to go down to 10% over these next three to four years.

Microsoft has been studiously quiet. We don't know what one, they still have to approve this kind of new public benefit structure, whether they like it or not. They have to approve this new arrangement around profit sharing. And they could very well still be like, look, we've owned up to 49% of you. We basically funded you. Your things run on our servers. No. Or whatever. But I think that's also going to get...

potentially quite messy and kind of convoluted just like everything else with OpenAI. Yeah, absolutely. And it's like you said about SoftFang, they might have openly said, yeah, we're happy with this, but you wonder what's going on behind closed doors. You never know, really, do you? The inside of someone else's relationship. Yeah. And I think ultimately, just like everything, it's all about money and power. I was looking at a chart of OpenAI's revenue, 2023, a billion dollars.

2024, $3.7 billion. 2025, they're projecting $13 billion. And then 29, 54, 86. By 2029, they're projecting $125 billion. Now, of course, you can't live and die by a deck. But I just think it shows kind of where they think they're going. 20% of $125 billion is a lot of money.

And it's a lot more than 10%, which is what they want to get. But we're just a startup. Exactly. But we're just a startup. We're a different type of company. So again, I think when the prize is so vast, you know, people's elbows get super sharp and the drama gets very high. So I don't think this story is over at all. No.

It'd be really interesting to see what Satya does. Should we move on from one bromance to another? Oh, yeah. Which is a cross-Atlantic bromance, this one. So Deliveroo is one of the big delivery companies here in the UK, and it was founded by an American entrepreneur called Will Hsu in 2013. But his delivery journey mirrors this.

Tony Shoes, he started his company at the same time that DoorDash was founded in America. And where I'm going with this is that on Tuesday morning, Deliveroo recommended a final offer from DoorDash to buy its company to its shareholders. So yet another British tech business that's being gobbled up, eaten up. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

Buy an American tech firm. But this was not the most interesting thing about Tuesday morning for me. Oh, do tell. What was the most interesting? I got to speak to Tony and Will. So Tony was over in, the CEO of DoorDash, was over in the UK to kind of make this announcement. And obviously, you know, one of the first things I wanted to know was, Will Shu, famous entrepreneur here, what are you going to do next? And he wouldn't say. He wouldn't even say if he was staying on, which was...

Yeah. And then the other curiosity is DoorDash said 15% of, they had 15% of share, of share ownership approval. Hmm. But the biggest shareholder of Deliveroo is Amazon. Hmm.

And so there was this other silence, a silence from Will Shue about what he is going to do next. Is he going to stay at the business? Is he going to leave? We don't know. Is he going to take his big bag of money and go sit on the beach? 185 million pounds, actually. 185 million pounds. Or, you know, is he going to stick around? But as the founder of the business, this is his baby and it's been his life's work. You'd think that they'd want him there at least for a time, which is normal. But anyway, he wouldn't say. But absolutely.

Amazon is yet to declare its hand. And I think that's really, really interesting because they need 75% of shareholder approval to get this over the line. And Amazon is mulling over what to do clearly. And they're either thinking we're going to make a rival bid

Or actually, maybe we don't think the price is high enough. I could see them. I mean, without just coming at it cold, I could see them maybe even making a rival bid. But again, that's maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe they'll just take the money because it is a different type of business. But they do, you know, they're pretty good at logistics and delivery. But you're dealing with restaurants and all that stuff. It's a bit of a different thing. They've already got some integration into the delivery platform. So I think you're right. I think it's not.

wholly unlikely that they'd come forward. And it was slightly weird that they weren't anything to do with the announcement. Yeah. I mean, they are the world's greatest logistics company, but at the same time, the grand scheme of things is Deliveroo is the juice worth the squeeze. You know, it's a UK company.

It's not the biggest. Do you want to really make a go of this? And I think they probably have bigger fish to fry, but they may, even if they just like, look, give us, you know, 20% more or whatever. Can I take you back to 2020? Yeah.

Go on. I was thinking about DoorDash because DoorDash is so interesting. I find this is like the tale of two delivery companies. DoorDash and Deliveroo were founded both, founded in 2013. And then in 2020, DoorDash went public. And I don't know if you remember 2020, there's this pandemic thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. I think I remember it. Yeah. Everybody was ordering food and it was like a moment, right? And also the markets were going crazy and DoorDash was like, we're going public.

And I remember looking at the numbers and it was like losing tons of money. And I talked to a couple of analysts and they're like, this may be the next WeWork. This is a terrible IPO. I wrote a piece. The title is why DoorDash could be 2020's worst float, stock market float. And one of the analysts I spoke to said, this makes no sense. This company is worth zero. He was saying they would have to increase sales by 46% a year for a decade to

to turn its minus 8% operating margin, 20% profit and growth market share to more than the entire size of the entire global food delivery market as it exists today. So he was like, this is a disaster. This is just brush of blood to the head. Markets are crazy, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it went public at 102. Now it's 190.

Wow. It's like the opposite story to Deliveroo. Correct. Which I think is so interesting. Like this is a company and they just, aside from one three month period in the pandemic when everybody was stuck at home and like, don't breathe on me, they finally broke into profit in October. Yeah. Yeah.

Six months ago. It's interesting, though. I mean, I was speaking to lots of city analysts about this yesterday, and they said, actually, it has performed a lot better than the market's given it credit for. So it floated at 390, and its sale price, should it go ahead, is 180p.

Usher. So half. Less than half. But the take here in the city is that actually this is yet another example of, you know,

London not being a brilliant place for tech companies. Well, this was kind of my point. Yeah. Exactly. So people, you know, the city just not really recognizing in a way, you know, that you do in America, how tech companies work. Yeah. And like, you know, there's spectacular blowups, but there's also like, you know, Amazon took, you know, more than a decade to turn a profit. DoorDash took...

What, 2013, 12, 12? Yeah, over a decade to turn a profit. Just broke into the black in a sustainable way.

And its shares have doubled. And, you know, you have a kind of a critical mass of people in the city, stock market analysts, institutions who are willing to buy what they're selling. And I feel it feels like in the UK there just isn't. And whether Deliveroo is like the greatest thing since sliced cheese or a bad company kind of in a way.

It's not like it doesn't matter, but it's just like this is just yet again a British tech company who's like just completely hasn't found the support in the city. And all of a sudden it's worth half of what it was when it floated. And now it's being taken out at a bargain basement price by a U.S. competitor. Yeah. But I mean, you know, good news story for.

For Will Shue, who... 185 million quid. Yeah, and he doesn't say it publicly. He doesn't like bashing the city, but I have sensed from him over the years a certain amount of frustration at, you know, going through the very difficult journey, for want of a better word, building up this business, employing lots of people. I mean, sure, it's had its problems.

problems in terms of, you know, employment, how drivers are treated, all this stuff. But the sense that you get from a lot of British entrepreneurs is that they put a lot of work into starting these companies and actually it's just not valued and you're better off running a mining business. Yeah, exactly. Because that kind of plays on the London market's kind of history and where it feels most comfortable.

I just think it's interesting that these companies were founded in the same year. And obviously DoorDash has a much bigger domestic market, like five times as big. So it's easier to grow in that sense. But just the institutional support and the diverging fortunes, I just think is really interesting. And we talked about that a little bit with Tim Steiner from Ocado the other week, what they're doing. They're down, what, 90 plus percent?

And again, you can talk about the merits of that business, but I would guess that, you know, a robotics warehouse startup in California.

on NASDAQ would have a better reception than it does on the London Stock Exchange. It's interesting as well that you use that phrase, the worst IPO, in your article because that's what one of the bankers, one of the company's own bankers said about the Deliveroo IPO, that it was the worst in London's history. I think its shares dropped 26% in the first day. And the 390 price that they floated at was at the bottom end.

Wow. You know, so anyway. Yeah. I'm just owning my, you know, sometimes every once in a while I get it right. Sometimes I get it wildly wrong. And it was a very fun one to write like, ha ha ha, worst IPO of the year. And then it's doubled and taken over the planet. Gobbling up other people. Speaking of like gobble, gobble, yum, yum, ingesting, et cetera. Should we take a break? And after I've digested, you know, it's morning time here. I might go get a biscuit.

Can we talk about the Tinder swindler? Yeah, I hope it goes down well. Oh, thank you. This episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by Vanta. Let's talk about something that might be keeping you up at night, cybersecurity. According to Vanta's latest State of Trust report, it's the number one concern for UK businesses. And that's where Vanta comes in.

Whether you're a startup, growing fast or already established, Fanta can help you get ISO 27001 certified and more without the headaches.

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Last year, law and crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her car. Karen Reid is arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The six-week trial resulted in anything but resolution. We continue to find ourselves at an impasse.

I'm declaring a mistrial in this case. But now the case is back in the spotlight. And one question still lingers. Did Karen Reid kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reid is innocent. How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristen Thorne, investigative reporter with Law & Crime and host of the podcast, Karen, The Retrial.

This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth. I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be. I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her. Listen to episodes of Karen, the retrial exclusively and ad free on Wondery Plus. So Katie.

How do I know I'm really talking to you, Katie Prescott, the Katie Prescott? If I said, I promise it's me. No, no, I need more than that. So romance scams don't always, or I'd say rarely, have a happy ever after ending. But this one that we're about to talk about really does. So I've been speaking to Pernilla Schaworn. She's a Swedish lady who became really famous as part of a documentary on Netflix called...

Tinder swindler guess what that's about and for the benefit of those who haven't watched it it's

which shows her and some other women who were swindled out of large sums of cash. She lost about $45,000. Wow. They met a guy on Tinder called Simon. He posed as the wealthy son of a diamond magnet. And because he introduced him to other people, they ended up believing his story. And when he said he was in trouble, gave him money. And well, it turns out he wasn't who he said he was. And I still don't even know if I'm talking to the real Katie Prescott. Yeah.

Well, fast forward seven years and she's put her experience of this into a new app to get people to prove they are exactly who they say they are. So let's hear from her and how she came up with the idea for the business. It was definitely after my experience with the Netflix documentary, The Tinder Swindler. And after that, I was starting to do keynote speeches around in the world. I was doing a lot of talks pro bono just for school classes, for example.

And I had all these victims reaching out to me and I felt a bit like powerless. And especially when going out into school classes with these kids that are in their age between like 13 to 15 years old, and they were always allowed to ask me questions. And in the end, I always asked, well, can I ask a question? Everyone was like, yes, yes. And I was like, how many of you are interacting with strangers online that you don't really know or met in person?

And 90 to 95% of the classes raised a hand. And you could just see the faces on the teacher just like went white. 13 to 15 year olds. Yes. And that really, really scared me and really affected me. And just like, what type of system do we have to actually create trust for this new generation of young people that are coming out and they're spending so much more time on the internet. They are doing it from a much, much younger age and

And how can we protect them? And how could have I protected myself? I was very much blamed for, well, how couldn't you know that he wasn't who he said he was? I thought I had done every check. I had met friends.

I had met colleagues. He had a verified account on Instagram, for example. I checked into hotels. I definitely know now hotels don't have a high security level. They welcome him by name. He was flying around.

Like I got so scared and I was like, what else could I have done? It's not like I could send that private detective out to every new person that I meet, like going back to this, like building trust again. So I was like, it's not that we have a tool to actually do this, like just send a link.

And then funny enough, I got reached out to by my co-founder, Swaybh Mettie, and he reached out with this idea that he had got inspired by watching the documentary to actually do something about this. So that is when we started co-founding iDefire, which is an identity verification app, human to human. This system have

been out there for years, but it's only been for companies to verify their customers and not for us to be able to verify each other. So basically doing instead of standing there and just saying, why don't you do anything? Why does Meta do anything? Why don't Tinder do anything? Why doesn't all of these companies do anything? We just decided, well, let's do it ourselves. And how does it work? So basically to have the highest level of gold verification,

In the app, you scan your passport and we collect the data there. Everything is encrypted. And there you also do the liveness check with the biometric that is collected from the picture of your passport. So this is the highest level of identification process that you can go through. It's the same one that you use when you go through custom data.

With the deepfake and everything today, that is the only system that you can trust. When someone says that you can verify yourself through an ID card, for example. Well, you can do that, but we can only verify that you're interacting with another human, not their identity. And all these platforms claim that this is a safety verification system. It is not because the deepfake runs through today.

So we also have a low level where you can basically just make sure that you're interacting with another human. But you decide on what information to share. It's not that information that is collected is publicly shared or anything anywhere. So let's say, for example, I want to go on a date with someone.

I can ask them to identify themselves and I decide I want to share my name, maybe just my surname or whatever I decide and my age. And that is what is required from the other person as well. So that is mutually shared when the other person accepts. And I would say that the core business where this is, is actually when you do secondhand sales. So let's say you want to buy or sell a

that you have found where most of the scams, for example, are happening. So then you can use IDifier as well. Or for example, are you a kid and interacting? Well, are you really talking to another kid or who are you interacting with? So it is from 13 plus, the app that is working right now. It's not for the younger generation there. I think we have to give a

the total control but I would love to say I'm never going to give my kids a

a phone until they're 18. But sadly, I don't think that we can do that today. Yeah. I've told my kids 36 for a phone. Yeah. I think, I think that's when I started to feel like a grown up. Sticking to the line. I don't know about that. So essentially it's a little bit like, um, I've just done a DBS check for my daughter's sports club that I'm helping out at.

And they've had to take all that information from me. And I've done it as well for legal paperwork. So it's a little bit like what you might use in the corporate world, but just made much easier for

And for lower level transactions? Yeah, so this is exactly what the businesses are using today. It's just that it hasn't existed for the human or the consumer to have the power. Like, let's say, for example, someone calls and say, hello, my name is Carla Anderson. I'm calling from Lloyds Bank. Okay, well, can you identify yourself? You can require them to send just like a notification and just say, well, is your name Carla Anderson?

for example. So it's not only for you to verify to the company, like you can go vice versa. And it's on an app, is it? It's not specific to different platforms? No, it's not. So it's not locked anywhere. And I think that that is the most important thing with creating this app is that we don't have to put trust in all these different type of platform. We can have a separate service where we can use

cross or anywhere we want to so yes it's a separate app that you can use anytime you want and I think that this is the new type of technology that we need today with the AI and deepfake and how that is being used today and how did you get your funding for it so we got funding from two investment companies in Sweden which one is actually part government and

government investment as well, which is a big thing here in Sweden to get that. So it's definitely an improvements mark. You go through several checks and we are going to run for a second investment round a little bit later on for the summer as well. I wasn't sure if you'd got some of the money from the documentary. Yeah, not that much. I wish I would have got paid per view, but documentary doesn't really work in that spectrum. And

How are you finding it in terms of launching the app and how many users have you got? Because it's a very competitive space, this at the moment, as people are becoming more and more aware of fraudsters and misinformation. Well, this isn't just only about fraudsters and misinformation. It's also about building digital trust. Wow.

in general. So it's not a tool only to prevent fraud in itself, but the launch itself, we just launched and we have incredible great feedback from it and hoping to move forward and build it even better and bigger and have the new features coming out very soon as well and working on that. And you spoke about AI earlier. I mean, since your experience in 2018,

We've obviously seen the surge in generative AI and the widespread use of it. How do you think that has changed?

online fraud and what you're hearing from people in your daily interactions as they approach you about about how fraud is perpetrated it's a game changer for right it's it's a nightmare um i think it's very very scary um remember you had sam altman say that also that transition will be messy and very painful and i would say you will not get that it already is

And fraudsters and everyone are using very good technology today. I've seen some of them that they're using. I do not want to share them, but they make it incredibly believable. And especially with the voice cloning and everything itself. I think most people today have their voice out there in a clip on social media or something as well. And that can be used. They just need a few seconds to take your voice. So...

I think it is very scary. So I normally would have went out to say in fraud prevention, like use a code word within the family. But now I can actually say use the app. Instead, who is really calling? Is your kid really in trouble? Or does your mom really need help? So I think it is an important tool, but it's definitely a scary future. You've seen some of the cases, especially with company fraud, where they would book a meeting, a video meeting, even for example.

And you have put several people on the board with that, but it's deepfake. And they have spoofed your email, which means that it looks like the meeting is sent from your CEO's email address, for example. So it looks very legit. So yeah, it's a scare. And then, I mean, this happens so much in just like the last two years that...

I think what we are looking at in two years, uh, it's going to be quite, quite scary. It's going to be scary numbers. So what other tips do you tend to give people? So use a code word so that you can be sure that you're talking to people. Now I say use a code word, uh, within the family that only you guys know. And, um,

Stay aware, like think back and do a second thought when doing something and try not to be so impulsive. And I think especially this is quite sad, especially when talking about trust. Like today, you can't trust what you see or hearing anymore.

And I think that that is a new adaption that we people need to do, that we are grown up or spend the last decades with trusting what we can see. We can't trust what we see and hearing today. So is this politician really saying these things or is that fake? So the internet haven't really developed into becoming a trust source anymore.

Are you starting to see that change at all? So here in the UK, the online safety bill has come in this year, which means that certain platforms have to have ID verification in place before people can access them. I think there's something similar in Europe, which came into force a couple of years ago as well. Is that the direction of travel, do you think?

I think definitely they need to have this in place. But I think a lot of the systems today have something installed, but is it really working? And I think that that is the question that we need to say. But when we're looking at it, I think UK is very much moving forward, especially within the fraud industry. I think Australia is definitely a step ahead as well.

Even though if UK have this law, you still interact with people somewhere else. Like we work remote today, for example. So what's the plan for the business? You talked about...

Raising your second round, have you got goals for the number of users, whether you want to integrate it with different platforms? How do you see it developing? Hopefully it will develop quite fast moving forward. We will do a second investment round, but we are also looking at implementing new technologies as well. But I want iDefy to become something normal that you do. Well, have you iDefied yourself?

I wanted something, an app that everyone have in their phone and use for a daily basis. And hopefully I have a future plan that I think we're looking at a road with like one, two years ahead. People need adoption to change their natural behavior because this is something that we have been naturally been doing before, but it's something that we need to implement and start doing. So I think people definitely will start seeing the usage of it.

I guess a lot of people, though, be worried about privacy.

Because there's this constant toss up, isn't there, between, you know, as you say, transparency, improving you are who you say you are. But also, would you really want to share your information with someone who you don't know who you're just buying a sofa from? Yeah, but you decide where you want to share. So let's say, for example, that you are selling a sofa. You don't have to disclose that much. You can decide just saying that my name is Pernilla.

And that's it. You don't have to share all your information, for example. I wouldn't want to share all my information with someone that I go on a date with, for example. I would find that very scary. What if it's a stalker or something? But the information's there in the app to prove that you are who you say you are. Yes, absolutely.

Like I said, it's a mutual sharing and you click the boxes on what you want to share. And that is what both of you are sharing. It's interesting. You said earlier that things like sofas are kind of becoming the most common fraud. Yeah. Is that the case? It's people buying cars on eBay and that sort of thing.

Yeah, I would say Facebook marketplace is a very common space for fraud itself in general. That is where we lost like the biggest amount of money. And I mean, that is why 71%, for example, like in the UK don't even report when they have been scammed. Yeah, because, well, what are they going to do? I tried to buy a radio for 20 pounds. Okay, well, we don't see why...

someone would do anything for me not getting my 20, 30 pounds back, for example. So when you look back on this very strange experience that you had, a really, really unique experience involving a number of people in quite an elaborate fraud,

How do you think you've changed because of it? And what have you learned from it? Well, I went into a very dark place when all of this happened to me. But then I got very much fueled on meeting other victims and talking to other victims and just seeing and educating myself how the system was working.

and fuel that into power. I also think that my view on justice have changed a lot during the years. In the beginning of the years, it was a lot about him getting caught or him getting exposed and not letting him do this anymore into power.

transitioning into changing the industry itself to prevent fraudsters from operating and also building safety for consumers in general. So no, I feel like I got my power back. And in a way, I have found an industry that I'm very passionate about. I have my own personal experience from living this and seeing this from a victim's perspective as well, that is

I think it's so easy to just see the numbers and the statistic and everything and not see the human behind the cases. Because the worst thing when it comes to fraud, for example, it's not when I'm talking to victims of my own experience, it's not the money that is lost. It's the amount of trust that we lost. You lost the trust and you were abused.

I would love to see romance fraud in specific or investment fraud to be viewed as actually emotional abuse because that is what it is. It is an abuse that these victims have been living through. So it's an interesting one, isn't it? The idea that, you know, you can't trust all of these platforms. She was talking about Facebook Marketplace there, but eBay, for example, are based on trust, on, you know, rating systems, for example. But this just goes...

big, big step further. Yeah. Our producer forwarded this very interesting survey from Cyberspace Ireland. 4,000 kids found that 43% of them between ages 8 and 13 have talked or are talking to people who they've never met in real life on social media and gaming platforms. And that was in 2019. Those platforms have only grown. It's all very scary. And a couple of things she's had resonated with me. One, Facebook Marketplace.

We had two cars in the past five years that we've sold through Facebook Marketplace. And like you put something up on there, it's the best place to sell a car, at least in the US. You're swiftly inundated with all these like expressions of interest. Half of them are bots.

And then you get a few real people, but then you get to like, okay, I'm selling my 2006 Prius. You're going to come to my house and hand me some either cash or a cashier's check. And hopefully this all turns out well. And I'm like, do you invite them to your house? Do you meet them somewhere neutral? I'm doing this as a six foot four man, not as a woman.

There's just a lot of vulnerabilities here. And it is, you have to be super, super careful about all of this stuff. But I do think it's just like the idea of just like...

How do you trust anyone or anything online is so fascinating and totally unsolved right now, which is quite scary. And it is really coming into its own here. I mentioned the online safety bill. And that is something that companies at the moment, tech companies that are operating in the UK are really muddling through and looking at different solutions to check that people really are who they say they are. And I think as regulators here start clamping down on that behavior, making sure that the users are being properly checked. Yeah.

that's also, that space is going to explode. Yeah, and it's also a question of incentives, right? They can do some incredible things with technology, but the whole, oh, it's just so hard to verify a person as a person. It's just so such, it's such nonsense. Like if they're incentivized,

by, you know, positively by more money coming into their coffers or major penalties if they don't sort it out. I think that will also move the needle. Well, there you go. A romance scam with a happy ending. Well, yeah. Talk about time

Well, talk about turning a negative into a positive. I mean, I admire her for it. Yes, yes. Thank you for doing the interview. I thought that's totally fascinating. I hadn't heard about the Tinder swindler, but I'm about to. I think I'm going to put that on my watch list. Yeah, no, you should. It's really good. Goodbye. Goodbye. See you next week. This episode of the Times Tech podcast is sponsored by Vanta.

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