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How to Protect Your Family from Predatory Scams

Our latest print issue delivers the kind of stories you send to everyone you love

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How to Protect Your Family from Predatory Scams

Our latest print issue delivers the kind of stories you send to everyone you love

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL BYERS

Published 6:30, OCTOBER 25, 2026

“This is the kind of story you send to everyone you love,” writes senior editor Harley Rustad about Rachel Browne’s cover story for The Walrus’s December 2026 print issue. Michael Byers’s sinister cover illustration captures the urgency and emotion behind Rustad’s comment, with a masked figure tugging on the strings attached to a marionette elderly man to puppeteer the extortionist “grandparent scam.”

“I’ve told my parents many times: I will never call them asking for money,” Rustad explains, touched deeply by Browne’s in-depth investigation into the con. “If someone does—even if the person claims I’m in trouble, even if the voice sounds exactly like me—it almost certainly is a scam. Hang up and give me a call.”

“The investigation is one of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve edited.”

But that’s not the only story from this issue primed to tug at readers’ heartstrings. Writer and The Walrus senior........

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