“It’s the golden age of AI scams”: How to foil these vicious frauds ?

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While AI can sometimes make our lives easier, these technologies are also a boon for cybercriminals. They are taking advantage of this to deploy large-scale scams with tenfold efficiency. The latest figures on the subject are dizzying. Let's take stock.

When AI helps scammers

Visa indicates in particular that the number of credit cards blocked worldwide for potential fraud during Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday is up 200% this year compared to 2023. The company very clearly attributes this increase to AI tools used for malicious purposes. The same trend is observed at Mastercard, which explains that it blocked nine times more fraud attempts for Thanksgiving and Cyber ​​Monday than a year ago.

In fact, American consumers are estimated to have lost $8.7 billion to fraud in the third quarter of this year alone, a 14.5% increase over the same period in 2023.

In concrete terms, hackers are using AI to write and send phishing text messages or through programs that test a huge amount of stolen credit card information. Scammers also occasionally use it to create fake online ads or fake sites that encourage Internet users to share sensitive information.

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The response is being organized

Faced with this immense challenge, major banks have started to use AI tools for payment validation and to try to prevent fraud. However, and the figures cited above demonstrate that this strategy is not enough.

Public awareness work is necessary in this regard. Indeed, although scammers use AI, their strategy remains the same to push us into making mistakes. It is a question of creating a sense of urgency in their target. Sometimes, they refer to imminent danger or an offer that is too good to be true. This is where we must all react and take the time to think before taking action.

The Vitale card, a source of scams

As we have just seen, scammers do not take vacations, quite the contrary. In France, we recently told you about this scam that is taking advantage of the upcoming arrival of the dematerialized Vitale card. The criminals thus send fake emails from the Health Insurance which invite the target to renew their Vitale card as soon as possible.

Victims are then directed to a fake site that prompts them to update their personal data. Malicious actors can potentially get their hands on highly sensitive information, such as social security numbers and bank details. More information in our previous article here.

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