Many people have expressed concern that artificial intelligence may soon replace their jobs. Meanwhile, scammers are increasingly using AI to create fake job ads that steal your identity too. A new report from the Identity Theft Resource Center found that consumer reports of job scams jumped 118% in 2023 from the year before. Worse, the organization found that thieves are harnessing AI to generate increasingly legitimate-seeming communications, including bogus job postings.
“The rapid improvement in the look, feel and messaging of identity scams is almost certainly the result of the introduction of AI-driven tools,” the ITRC wrote in its June trend report. As AI tools become more widely available and easier to use, researchers said, scammers have used them to refine their communications. The result is that scammers sound more authentic and believable, particularly when speaking with potential victims in other countries.
When it comes to fake job postings, scammers often use the ruse of “paperwork” to convince victims to share personal information like their Social Security, driver’s license and bank account numbers for direct deposit.
“Most victims did not think anything was strange — we are in a new era of remote work, and using technology to communicate is very normal,” the ITRC said in its report.
According to the group, the primary defense against these scams is to pick up the phone and verify contact directly from the source.
These scams are just the latest in a long list of ways AI tools are being used by people acting in bad faith. Companies across the internet have struggled to keep up as people have used AI to create disinformation and misinformation, including computer-generated images of real people in faked situations. Some of these AI-powered attacks have turned deeply personal, with the likeness of global celebrities including Taylor Swift being stolen for deepfaked pornography, music and other content.
Media and technology experts warn this will likely get worse, especially because AI is good at learning how to manipulate people with whom it’s interacting.
“These (scams) will be very good at convincing people,” Geoffrey Hinton, a former Google scientist who’s considered a “godfather of AI,” told CBS’s 60 Minutes last year. “They’ll have learned from all the novels that were ever written, all the books by Machiavelli, all the political connivances, they’ll know all of that stuff and know how to do it.”
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Concern over the potential misuse of AI, and other problems, hasn’t stopped big tech companies from racing to integrate the technology into their product offerings. Amid their enthusiasm, this approach has already led to decidedly mixed results. Google, for instance, ended up apologizing and slowing the release of its AI Overviews summaries for search results after the feature spread racist conspiracy theories and dangerous health information.
Meanwhile, Facebook and Instagram changed their approach to labeling posts detected as having been edited or created by AI, after incorrectly labeling a photo by former White House photographer Pete Souza.
Even startups like OpenAI have disclosed high-profile efforts by hackers connected to foreign governments to spread disinformation, efforts that if successful effectively tear away at our shared understanding of reality.
Growing scams
Some of the job scams start as fake listings on reputable job search sites, such as LinkedIn, Indeed and ZipRecruiter.
Fraudsters then convince victims to go through a fake interview or hiring process, where they’re asked to share personal information that can be used to steal their identity. In some cases, scammers also ask for login information to websites like ID.me, which partners with the US government to verify digital identities for people interacting with the Internal Revenue Service, Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration.
The ITRC said many people don’t realize things are wrong until after the scammers get the information they want and stop responding.
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Though job and business-opportunity scams represent a small percentage of the fraud that happens online, this scamming segment is growing. In 2022, people told the US Federal Trade Commission they’d lost $367 million to job and business scams, with the median loss calculated at $2,000.
The ITRC said the information that scammers steal is increasingly being used for “more severe” schemes, including fraudulently applying for new auto loans and credit card accounts.
As AI becomes even more capable of recalling information and re-creating people’s identities, including their voices, criminals will have even more tools with which to steal identities and commit fraud.
