The increase in SMS scams involving AI

“One of the telecommunications’ most popular forms of fraud is the short message service (SMS). Mobile users have a valid fear about SMS spam, which disturbs telecoms network operators since it impacts their clients and costs them money.” (Hapase, 2024, p1)

Our research revealed a new wave of SMS scams involving AI. These scams involve SMS texts that pose as someone or an organization of importance to target the victim into revealing sensitive information.

How Scammers are Using AI in SMS Text Scams

• Posing as an employer looking for a victim as a possible employee to lure in to send money to the scammer
• Pretending a service failed and offering a malicious link pretending it is to help the user, a common example of this is receiving package delivery failed messages alongside a phishing link.
• Create fake security alerts, such as fraudulent activity in a certain account, putting a sense of urgency into the user to click a suspicious link

The Effect on People Falling Victim

“Phishing is a dishonest challenge to trick consumers into giving over critical information. These cyberattacks could be used to harm either particular people or significant organisations, based on the attacker’s desired objective” (Hapase, 2024)

What counters can be used

1. Check who sent it – Always search up the phone number if it links back to official organizations, or verify with the person who sent it if it was from a friend or family member who suddenly sent a weird, suspicious text
2. Never click on any links – No matter how official it looks, in this day and age, it might be safer to avoid all links sent to you. If you truly need to check on something, a better alternative will be logging in for yourself to check certain data, such as tracking updates.
3. Stay informed – With the era of the internet, it shouldn’t be difficult to take notice of new ways AI is used in new types of scams, keeping informed will also help develop a better common sense to be wary when something looks suspicious

Future of SMS scams

While it seems these scams are everywhere, cybersecurity experts are even starting to use AI to develop a countermeasure to prevent even receiving these types of scam messages in the first place:

“The author developed a model for detecting smishing that consists of the domain checking phase and the SMS classification phase. To effectively identify SMS phishing, the authors have checked the validity of the URL in the SMS”  (Hapase, 2024)