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The printing press, the steam engine, the personal computer – every so often, new technology takes the world by storm and revolutionizes the world. Everything has its pros and cons, however, and the world’s most recent technological revolution – artificial intelligence (AI) – is no different. AI-driven Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are powerful tools that can help us in many ways, but they come with their own set of security concerns that need to be addressed.

Most people believe that they would never fall victim to a phishing email because they can spot the signs of the scam. We’ve all gotten those phishing emails or text messages that are so glaringly obvious in their fakery, it’s laughable. Often that’s because they were written by people who are not fluent in the recipient’s language.

But now, with the help of AI, even cybercriminals who aren’t particularly gifted writers can execute more convincing phishing campaigns. Threat actors from all over the world can use AI to craft phishing messages in your native language without so much as a misplaced comma, so we can no longer rely too much on spelling and grammar mistakes to distinguish an unsafe email from a legitimate one.

How can you continue to stay safe from phishing in the age of AI?

• Watch for “urgent” requests. Scammers try to create a false sense of urgency to short-circuit your thought process and frighten you into clicking or calling them right away. Instead, take time to verify everything, especially if it involves sending money, giving access to your computer, or sharing personal information.
• If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Another way scammers try to short-circuit your thought process is to offer something that is unrealistically generous.
• Make sure you’re scrutinizing the sender’s email address/phone number on any message you receive that’s asking you to provide sensitive information or open a link or attachment. Spoofed (when someone disguises an email address, sender name, phone number, etc., to convince you that you are interacting with a trusted source, often done by changing one letter, symbol, or number) email addresses can be tricky to spot, so take a close look to be sure you recognize the sender ([email protected] vs [email protected]). To make matters worse, the caller ID on a call or text message can be set to anything the fraudster wants it to say.
• Next, avoid clicking links in emails or texts. Instead, use a search engine to find the page you need to get to. Malicious links can lead to webpages that plant malware on your device or harvest your sensitive data.
• Avoid opening unexpected attachments sent by email. Even files like word documents or PDFs can contain malware, so it’s best not to download as few attachments as possible.

Finally, never respond to a suspicious message. While it can be amusing to try to “waste the time” of a suspicious sender by responding with false information or sarcastic comment, it opens you up to further threat. When in doubt, don’t click, don’t respond, don’t share! Just delete the message and move on to things more worthy of your time.