The Rise of AI-Powered Scams

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Author: AJ

Romance Scams – It’s A(I) match!

May 19, 2025 / / 0 Comments

AI used in dating apps

“The women fell into financial ruin because they trusted a man using a false identity to disguise his true self (Garaad, 2022, Hassan, 2022, Nicholson, 2022). Operating under a false identity, the man would charm women by presenting a distorted image of his wealth, convincing them to loan him money. Subsequently, he would defraud them of hundreds of thousands of dollars (DiLillo, 2022, Hassan, 2022).” (Lokanan, 2023)

Our research shows that AI is being used actively within popular dating apps. Not only is it used to create complete fake profiles of people who don’t even exist, but some people use AI to alter their real selves into someone that looks more desirable, to scam people out of their money.

 

How Scammers Are Using AI in Dating Apps

  • Create profiles of someone who doesn’t exist
  • Use bots to attempt to contact other people posing as someone interested, which later may need financial assistance shortly after
  • Real people use AI to paint themselves as someone more successful, even luring victims to real dates, which escalates to financial scams later down the line

How these scams affect victims

“The relationship may continue for months or even years before the fraudster’s true identity is exposed, leaving the victims with a profound sense of betrayal, emotional turmoil, and financial devastation (Button and Cross, 2017, Cross and Layt, 2022, Cross and Lee, 2022).”  (Lokanan, 2023)

How to protect yourself from these scams

  1.  If it’s too good to be true, it probably is –  Common sense can help in detecting fake profiles, if details don’t add up, inconsistent images of the person’s facial appearance (or even none at all), and if their description feels artificial, even for a human.
  2. Love bombing – If the person is quick to be very affectionate with you or shows nothing but perfect messages even after showing incompatibilities or negative traits of themselves, it might be a scam in trying to lure your trust into a financial scheme. While love bombing isn’t a direct sign of a fake AI profile, it is a major indicator that it might be someone trying to gain your trust
  3. Lack of online presence – Although some people may like to keep a more private precense online, if a person in a dating app has no other precense in any other apps or even refuses or comes up with excuses to not share them, the sender may be either a full AI or someone using AI to assist in gaining your trust.

The future of AI account detection in dating apps

“The solution is to let the algorithms handle the prediction and ensure that individuals registered on the dating sites are safe and can detect red flags of fraud early in the introductory process. Regarding fake profiles, AI-powered systems can process large amounts of user data, including users’ biographic information, message patterns, behavior, and profile verification, to detect red flags that manual processes may miss” (Lokanan, 2023)

data of fake profiles

SMS Scams – Someone you know is sending you an urgent link

May 19, 2025 / / 0 Comments

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)

 Google's AI detecting scams

 

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