Damien Fortune-AI Fraud is even worse than the old kind

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Artificial intelligence creeping into our lives as we speak more
and more every day, and there's obviously some downsides to this.
Joining us now to talk about protecting ourselves. Damien Fortune,
who is a cybersecurity expert, Welcome in. Damien's so glad
to have you with us.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I had a case, well, I experienced this with my
in laws one time. They got a call from who
they thought was their nephew or their grandson brother, my nephew,
and he's a college student. And the phone rings and
my mother in law picks it up and hey, this
is Tyler. I've been in a car accident and I
need two thousand dollars right now. I can't get my

(00:39):
car towed. It's really damaged. YadA, YadA, YadA, And it
sounds just like him. And she's like, well, where are you?
Have you called the police, Yeah, they're here, but I've
got to get money wired or the toe company's not
going to blah blah blah blah. So she's like, well,
hold on just a second, and then you know, her
husband said, who is that. It's Tyler. He needs two
thousand dollars. Hang that phone up, and she hung up,

(01:02):
give me the phone. I'll call Tyler and make sure
so you know, they called his cell phone. Obviously Tyler
answered it and he was, you know, in a class
in college, and no, that wasn't him on the phone.
It's amazing how AI really does, you know, transform fake
into reality and make people believe that it's not you know,
somebody that they think they're talking to.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Absolutely. I mean, these the technology has gotten so far
ahead and been made so available to everyone that these
the bad actors can be really prolific and really convincing.
You know, the the Nigerian prints writing you a badly
worded email offering to share his inheritance with you is
a thing of the past, right. I mean, you can
use chat, GPT and some of these other things to

(01:45):
send out thousands upon thousands of scams every single day,
and they're just gonna be more and more convincing.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
You know, I got duked myself when I got an
email from who I thought was FedEx to track a
package and it wasn't, and I clicked on it and
it opened it up, and all of a sudden, you know,
there's you know, all kinds of spam coming all over me.
You know, there was some issues with my bank account,
you know, and I had to call Wells Fargo. Thank

(02:12):
god I called before because they talked me all the
way down the path of maybe because I called for support.
Then I go on Google and give me Apple support.
First thing I click on is what pops up, And
of course that was a fake one and they got me.
So I was a double whammy almost in trouble by following.
And I'm supposed to be somebody that's watching out for

(02:32):
this stuff and we talk about it all the time,
So how could I possibly get myself duped into this?
But sure enough I came close to get in some
serious trouble. So when you talk to folks about this
or address companies with this, yeah, there's a lot of
benefit with AI, But where do you start with how
to protect yourself from this and things to watch for
before you get sucked in? You know.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
The big thing is is all of these scams try
to get you to act quickly, right, So it's this
situation designed to make you panic. Hey, you get a
text message from the traffic cop saying you blew through
a stoplight and they've got your on your license plate
on the camera or your nephew's hurt or something like that.
So the real thing that you have to do is
just take a second breathe think about it. Most of
the time, these scams kind of fall apart if you

(03:15):
look at them a little closely, so they're all designed
to kind of prevent you from doing that. You know,
if it's someone that sounds like your nephew on the phone,
they might have the voice that are they saying what
he would say. If you're getting an email from a company,
is it does the email address check out? It's really
those small little things. Just take a second look at
it more closely, and you can normally figure out that
it's a scam.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Are there ways to put blockers on phones or computers
that recognize AI. I mean, let's fight technology with technology
where they can catch that before it gets to you.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Unfortunately, under the current laws now there's a something called
phone spoofing, so a lot of times these guys will
set up a machine that's essentially calling people from a
rotating telephone number, so it's really hard to you're playing
them all with the bad guys essentially, so you know,
it's an arms race. Unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Well, I've also seen that you know, somebody told me
one time. Listen, whoever sends you an email, whoever calls you,
whoever texts you, delete it and then call that entity
back and see if it's for real. For instance, if
FedEx says this is a link to track you know,
forget about it. Call FedEx and get the real tracking number.
Or your bank says, you know, we've seen an overdraft here,

(04:26):
fix that by sending one hundred dollars now click this link.
Forget it. Call the bank yourself. Same thing with you.
You went through a speed pass toll bridge in Florida.
We got you on camera. Pay the one hundred dollars
fine now, or else we're suspending your license. Forget it.
Call them yourself, right, so if they initiate the call,
delete you can always to you know, contact them right

(04:50):
exactly right. Yeah, well, buddy, I sure to appreciate your
time this morning. Thank you so much. It is eight
seventeen now Alabama's Morning News. I'm telling you it's everywhere.
It's se these days with people coming after you trying
to get your stuff, So just be careful.