AI Contributes to Rise in Cybercrime: Here’s How to Protect Yourself
By Movieguide® Contributor
Cybercrime is on the rise, thanks to AI technology that makes it harder and harder to figure out if you’re being scammed or not.
Global cybercrime costs are expected to “grow by 15 percent per year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion USD in 2015,” according to Cybercrime Magazine.
The outlet continued, “Cybercrime has hit the U.S. so hard that in 2018 a supervisory special agent with the FBI who investigates cyber intrusions told The Wall Street Journal that every American citizen should expect that all of their data (personally identifiable information) has been stolen and is on the dark web — a part of the deep web — which is intentionally hidden and used to conceal and promote heinous activities.”
READ MORE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ‘DARK WEB’ SITE TELEGRAM
Will Maxson, Assistant Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Division of Marketing Practices, points to the rise in AI tech and tools that can make scams hard to detect.
“You can have extremely accurate voice cloning done very quickly,” he explained. “Video cloning has become better and better, more seamless, and harder to spot, really every day.”
CBN reported that “older Americans are especially vulnerable, with seniors reporting nearly $2 billion in fraud losses last year.”
Phyllis Weisberg, 90, fell victim to a scam that ended with her losing $20,000.
“My first reaction was total embarrassment, that I would do anything that stupid,” Weisberg said, but she’s now sharing her story with others to warn them about the dangers of such scams.
“All I can do is hope that my story helps just one person,” she said.
The National Council on Aging shared some red flags people should be on the lookout for to avoid getting scammed, such as “unusual requests for personal information, outdated content, overly formal language, [and] requests for payment in unconventional forms.”
The NCOA also advised those who think they’ve been targeted “Don’t engage, secure your accounts, [and] report the scam” to the FTC.
READ MORE: HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM CYBER ATTACKS
