You wake up on a typical morning, walk to the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee, and pick up the newspaper or fire up your computer to read the daily news.
Suddenly your phone beeps and vibrates. You check it, and there’s an urgent text message saying your phone may have been compromised, referencing an actual social media conversation you recently had with a friend. It includes a link that you need to urgently click on, to prevent your personal information from being stolen.
You click on the link, and the web page (seemingly from Google or Apple) looks exactly like you would expect it to, with perfect logos and formatting; the text is perfectly worded with no spelling mistakes. There’s a technical explanation about why they flagged your device as potentially “compromised,” and a normal-looking button saying “Install required update.” Which you click on. After a few moments looking at an installation progress bar, you then get a comforting response in green text saying: “Issue successfully resolved—no evidence of compromise detected.”
And you are now owned. The hackers have installed spyware on your phone to silently steal your usernames and passwords, and before long, they have gathered enough information to impersonate you and access your online bank accounts, because you frequently do banking on your phone.
Several days later, they silently raid your bank accounts, and you wake up to discover that your bank accounts have been drained, and now you’re broke.
This is how easily hackers can ruin your life, if you don’t know the warning signs to watch for and how to protect yourself.
To make things worse: artificial intelligence (AI) has given the bad guys incredibly powerful tools to perpetrate scams like this, with a speed and an exceptionally convincing level of personalization never seen before.
With AI, sophisticated attack campaigns can now be launched with only minimal technical background, in minutes. Including information about your friends and conversations, automatically harvested from social media.
In the past, this required significant time, technical skills and years of training. With AI, sophisticated attack campaigns can now be launched with only minimal technical background, in minutes. Including information about your friends and conversations, automatically harvested from social media.
Here are some best practices to protect yourself, and what to watch out for:
- Never trust an e-mail, phone call, or text message with any of the following attributes, and (if you can) call or email the company back to verify, using their official phone number or email address:
-It’s from a sender that you are not expecting or do not recognize (e.g. from your bank, a shipping company regarding a missed delivery, or even the police);
-You’re pressured to act immediately or risk dire consequences;
-You’re told your device has a serious issue or virus and/or requires remote access to your phone or computer or installation of software to be fixed;
-The e-mail or text message contains spelling mistakes, poor grammar, or links that have nothing to do with the sender, or contain spelling mistakes themselves; or
- You’re asked to make an up-front payment of any kind, particularly if it is in gift cards or cryptocurrency.
- Always install the latest software updates to your phone(s) and computer(s) as soon as they become available.
- Avoid using the same password across multiple websites—especially banking websites—and use a password manager instead.
- Whenever possible, use multiple validation methods with websites (e.g. username/password + a separate passcode sent via text, often referred to as “multi-factor authentication” or MFA/2FA).
- Never share any personal information (e.g., Social Insurance Number, birth date, address, banking or credit card details, passwords, or health information) with anyone except trusted individuals or organizations, especially AI chatbots like ChatGPT.
- Make sure to have anti-malware software installed on all of your phones and computers which is trusted by multiple third-party reviewers (e.g. AV-Compartives, Cybernews).
Regardless, if in doubt, reach out to a friend or family member who can help you understand better what’s going on, or the Canadian Fraud Prevention Centre.
Hackers and scammers rely on fear, uncertainty, doubt, and lack of knowledge to trap their victims, which can be thwarted by educating yourself with the resources available and reaching out to trusted friends, family members, or the police if necessary.
