As you trawl your favorite vacation applications for the best last- second summer vacation deals, know that you’re never alone, website scammers are even searching—for you. According to security experts, having a healthy dose of skepticism when searching for deals can help you avoid being a victim of would-be con artists. Although changing some of your online habits might be necessary, Isaac Asimov, a well-known author and skeptical author, once said that “victorsies over rooted patterns of thought are never won in a day or a year.” It does require time, test, and a few issues to fight online thieves successfully, but knowing what you’re up against is half the battle. We’re below to assist you in understanding what you’re up against and what you can do to defend yourself. How does the sleaze work: Scammers use stolen or artificial intelligence to post false ads on vacation rental websites to pull victims. The ads frequently feature incredibly low rates for lodging in well-known vacation spots. A false booking site that infects your system with malware or only collects your bank information and other personal information can be found by clicking on a hyperlink in the listing. The scammer has long since passed by the time you arrive at the target for your alleged trip.
According to a May 2024 statement from security contractor McAfee, virtual travel deceiving is big business. One in three survey respondents claimed to have been hacked into a scam involving travel, and almost a quarter of them lost more than$ 1,000 in one scam. I recently interviewed Abhishek Karnik, McAfee’s head of threat intelligence research. Karnik explained to me that social engineering is the foundation of scamming, and that the best social engineers are adept at gaining trust from their targets quickly and effectively. He advises using a base of doubts when browsing the internet. Additionally, Gurnick cautioned that generative-AI software introduces a new, a little terrifying obstacle to avoiding online scams. ” In today’s day and age, seeing and hearing is not believing in many cases”, said Karnick. Because of new tools based on generative AI, a deep fake of a person can be created using only a photo, a brief video clip, or a few minutes of audio. AI- Powered Apps Make Creating Deepfakes EasyIn April, I met with Ben Jacob, a senior security researcher at SecureWorks. He and his team showed me how to create video and voice deepfakes using free or inexpensive generative AI tools. In the demonstration, Jacob only needed a short video clip taken from his company’s YouTube channel to produce an audio clone of himself. A three-minute video sample of Jacob’s voice was added, creating a believable deep fake with a slight French accent.
Scammers can use real people’s photos, videos, and voices to help make their crimes more believable. ” Everybody has a Facebook profile with pictures that can be animated”, Jacob said. ” People have profiles photos on LinkedIn or YouTube. The most common scams reported by travelers are those that result from entering stolen credit card or banking information into a fake website, clicking on phishing links, or seeing fake vacation destination photos. Criminals can easily create fake websites, fake hotel photos, and even fake travel agencies using third-party software that do n’t have the same content-generation restrictions as OpenAI or Microsoft. The McAfee report’s other data reflect public concerns about tech-aided scams. More than half ( 57 % ) of Americans surveyed said they are concerned about deep-fakes and AI-enhanced scams. One-third of the respondents reported that they no longer believed in planning and booking vacations online.
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I questioned Karnick, a leader in the cybersecurity industry, about what he could do to combat the growing scam problem online. His response was straightforward:” You have to use technology to help you. In our world, we are using AI to fight AI”. He noted that his business is adding AI features to its security systems that people can use to thwart defiant social engineering schemes. Stay Vigilant While Making Summer Travel PlansUltimately, it’s up to all of us to protect ourselves, and working vigilance into your online routine may be a good place to start. It’s crucial to strike a balance between the excitement of planning and the need for caution, Karnick said. He advises using a password manager to store your login information for each website, checking the address bar on the website to make sure you’re booking with a trustworthy company, conducting reverse image searches for listing photos on vacation booking websites, reading hotel or website reviews before booking, and using a password manager.
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Another defense tactic is to become familiar with typical social engineering techniques. Romance scammers and tax season scammers are great at utilizing high-pressure sales techniques to entice customers by being overly affectionate or overly familiar with their targets while swindling offers that are too good to pass up ( and also too good to be true ). Embrace your inner skeptic, even if it dims your optimism a little. If a deal seems too good to be true, keep scrolling. If your gut tells you something is wrong with a vacation listing, or that the voice of the salesperson on the phone does n’t sound quite right, or that the syntax of the text you received does n’t make sense, do n’t ignore that feeling. The experts I spoke to agreed that focusing on your intuition when shopping online for travel deals can help you avoid shady social engineering tactics.
It’s Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online
