One simple yet effective trick to fight AI scams, according to cyber influencer Caitlin Sarian
You can’t really trust anyone online, as scammers seize any opportunity they can think of to steal your money, data, and your most private pictures.
Caitlin Sarian and Josh Murphy
You can’t really trust anyone online, as scammers seize any opportunity they can think of to steal your money, data, and your most private pictures.
Caitlin Sarian is big on social media. With over 1.6 million followers on Instagram alone, her purpose is to educate the general public about scams and provide safety tips. She’s our latest guest on the Cybernews podcast on YouTube, and she kindly agreed to talk to us about the spiciest scams online and how to protect yourself and your loved ones.
Sarian mentioned quite a few scams that people can easily fall for. For one, scammers impersonate celebrities and run fake giveaways to steal people's data and money. Sarian said she was the victim of such a scam herself – someone online pretending to be the Cybersecurity Girl (her online alias) to defraud people.
Scammers also pretend to be creators, reaching out to people and saying they want to work with them. But here’s the catch – before they can start, they need a small amount of money first.
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“People on social media who have millions of followers will reach out to me and be like, ‘Do you need a sales plan?’ I'm like, no, I don't need it from you. I'm not even responding to this because I don't think you're real,” she said on our podcast.
She also touched upon sextortion scams targeting, as Sarian put it, “younger boys” who are tricked into sending intimate photos of themselves to the scammer.
“The scammers say, you better keep sending these photos, or I'm going to tell and show the world. Or pay us money, and we'll stop,” she said.
With AI, the digital realm is only becoming more dangerous. Soon, it will be nearly impossible to distinguish what’s real from what’s fake. Even when your loved one calls via video chat, you won’t always be able to tell whether it’s really them.
“AI-generated content is super scary to me, but there's only so much we can do, right?” the cyber influencer said.
One piece of good advice is to have a safe word or phrase you always use when talking to your loved ones to make sure it's really them.
For more insights and tips on how to stay safe online, listen to the podcast in full.