Q&A of the Day – Identity Theft in the Age of A.I.
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio Can you explain why AI makes ID theft more likely? Also do the current ID theft services stand up to it?
Bottom Line: It was a couple of weeks ago that I touched on cybercrime in the age of A.I. in my top three takeaways. I hit on it for two reasons. We learned of the first known A.I. involved identity theft issue which involved those who had subscribed to the premium ChatGPT service around the same time we also learned that South Florida was still ground zero for identity theft. A quick refresh on the local threat... South Florida is the top region in the country for identity theft according to a new report by Updgraded Points. According to their finding, the Miami metro, which encompasses Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, has the highest rate of identity theft with greater than 87 victims per 10,000 residents annually – meaning 1 out of every 115 South Floridians become victims annually. South Florida leading the country for ID theft and related scams isn’t anything new. It’s been this way for decades and the reason is a byproduct of the old saying about why a bank robber robs a bank...” it’s where the money is” as the saying goes. South Florida’s not just one of the wealthiest areas in the country, we have the largest senior population in the country as well – common targets of our society's evil doers. South Florida’s not becoming less wealthy, and none of us are getting younger, so it’s a near-certainty we’re going to remain under as big of a threat of scammers as anyone for the foreseeable. That makes your questions not only good ones but smart ones to be thinking about.
Regarding the increased threat of A.I. being used to steal information and for identify theft, there’s a lot that surely is just developing but the two biggest changes with the use of it, is speed and predictability. Scammers have long used bots to take info like email addresses and usernames and attempt to access accounts with auto filled passwords. In the age of A.I. it’s more intuitive and it can happen much more quickly. Rather than random predictions based on the most commonly used passwords, A.I. can quickly scour the internet for information about you creating a profile that can more intelligently predict the personal information about you that’s not public. This includes the dark web as well. In other words, even if you search for your own personal information online, what’s being searched is often far more extensive. If you’ve ever had accounts hacked and personal info sold in data batches on the dark web, and most of us have to some degree, many years' worth of old info can be scoured in seconds. Basically, a computer program can intelligently create data profiles that used to require a person cyber stalking someone to do. For this reason, using not only complex passwords, but also passwords that are random to you is important. And that’s in addition to using different passwords for different services so that if one is compromised it’s isolated to one service. But the bigger risk remains true identity theft.
From attempted new accounts opened in one’s name to state created ID’s that all happens faster once one’s compromised. Over the past two years A.I. led machine learning for the purpose of ID theft led to nearly half of adults having at least one account compromised or opened in their name fraudulently. What’s more, Lexis Nexus found existing fraud discovery models are ineffective at detecting between 85% to 95% of likely synthetic identities showing how likely scammers are to be effective if they’ve enough info on someone to impersonate them. And then there are the impersonation scams. It’s recently made the news that voice capture and emulation is being used to use a person’s contact list to make calls sounding as though our friends and family are in trouble and need immediate financial assistance. The era of deep fakes is here and it’s already impacting with those types of scams. Now for the better news.
Just as A.I. and machine learning is being used by bad actors, it’s also being used to combat them. The era of multi-tiered authentication is here and is part of it. You’ve likely noticed that anytime you attempt to access most accounts from a new device there’s an extra level of authentication which must take place. Trends in ID theft are also quickly analyzed and predicted by A.I. programs. A.I. is used in everything from corporate security protocols to anti-virus software programs and ID theft services. And that takes us to your question about ID theft protection services and the current threats. As to the question about whether good ID theft protection services are effective in combating issues. The answer remains yes. In multiple ways.
A good service will notify you immediately if anyone, yourself included, is involved in a credit application, any transaction involving public records (IE property transactions) and will provide you with the option of easily locking your credit so it can’t be accessed when you aren’t applying for a new line of credit but can be unlocked when you are seeking a new line. Over the years I’ve been targeted for about every type of ID theft there is. Right down to someone trying to establish a license in another state as me. Every time there’s been an issue it’s been detected, and I’ve been able to stop the issues before becoming a victim. In the age of A.I., and living in South Florida, it’s likely we’re only going to face more pervasive threats going forward. So yes, they’re effective and yes, I highly recommend using one.