AI technology is evolving at a rapid pace. This unique new technology has helped coders, businesses, mapping technologies, financial planners and, unfortunately, scammers.
A recent report from Bolster.ai states there has been a 94 per cent increase in AI based scams, with a projected loss of more than $10.5 trillion by 2025.
If you’ve been anywhere on Facebook marketplace in the last little while you may have noticed a frequent rise in complaints about purchases leading to fake addresses, non-delivered items or even entirely fake pages.
This rise in scammers is mostly due to the availability and the advancement of AI. With a couple prompts and some patience a person can make dozens of fake accounts with photos, frequent posts and even post interactions with other AI accounts owned by the scammer.
Outside of Facebook Marketplace, these scammers can use fake accounts to send phishing links.
These are malicious links that when clicked on can track your online and personal information with data mining software.
These links can be sent over Facebook or even to your personal email if listed. Make sure to never click on a link unless it is posted or sent by someone you have met outside the internet.
Here are some things to keep in mind when it comes to browsing marketplace safely:
- Avoid accounts with no profile picture or limited or even no activity on their profile, unless you know them personally
- Avoid recently created profiles, with lots of activity in a short time.
- Avoid pages with generic or copy-and-paste posts, as well as pages with lots of AI generated photos.
- Avoid sellers with no reviews or negative reviews from other buyers/sellers.
- Avoid profiles with mismatched posts and strange or incorrect information.
- Avoid ridiculouslty cheap offers or items.
If you have trouble identifying AI-generated photos or text, there are websites that can identify them for you. These include but aren’t limited to sightengine, Is It AI?, Quillbot and GPTzero.
AI isn’t just used by Facebook scammers. There is a world of scams that use AI tools to catch you off guard.
One new scam stems from AI voice calls.
Have you ever gotten a call in which the other end was completely silent and then quickly hung up? These calls are the first step in tricking you into giving away your hard-earned cash to scammers.
These calls are looking to get one thing from you: Your speech and voice patterns.
In most cases, these calls are not made by humans. They are mostly bot calls where the only thing on the other end is a recorder that will feed your voice into an AI system.
Reports say that it only takes around 30 seconds of decent audio to replicate someone’s voice.
After this system gets enough information it will call your relatives and friends seeking more personal information or requesting money. A common method to obtain this money is by applying pressure to the possible victim.
This can come in the form of an AI voice requesting money for bail, money to pay back angry debtors, money for a lawyer, and even money for a ransom for themselves or another loved one.
This because stress and pressure tactics can stop a person from stepping back and more closely examining the situation or checking with other loved ones to confirm.
Scammers have even been known to use AI voicing to urge victims to not tell other family members about the fake incident out of embarrassment or due to legal issues.
So how do you avoid these scams? First and foremost, it’s always a good idea to double-check. If you do get a call saying a family member is in jail and needs money, just hang up and call back or call another family member to confirm. Sometimes that’s all it takes to avoid someone taking advantage of you.
Another good way to avoid these scams is to avoid picking up calls from unknown numbers.
If you do end up taking a call from a suspicious source wait a while, if there is no reply followed by a dropped call, its likely you just avoided a possible scam.
Scammers can get your number from a lot of sources for example, if your number is publicly listed, if you click on a phishing link, or if you use torrenting and pirating sites, these can all be used to get a hold of your personal phone number.
Other ways to avoid falling victim to these calls or other similar scams include:
- Having a safe word for loved ones to use over the phone in emergencies.
- Blocking scam and suspicous looking calls immediately
- Register your family’s numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry
Avoid giving or posting any unnecessary personal details over the phone or social media. (names of friends, events you are attending, place of business, etc)
However, the most important advice to take away for these new scams, comes from an old, time-tested phrase: If it seems too good to be true, it usually is.
