According to the FBI, 2024 saw a 33% rise in money lost from online scams. October is Cyber Security Month so Radio Catskill spoke with Mike Sinno,  the Director of Security Engineering at Google. He says artificial intelligence is one of the reasons scams are getting harder to spot:

"Using AI, the attackers are really supercharging themselves because it used to be you'd get an email and it was pretty obvious that it was phishing. The grammar was wrong. There were bad references. But now you can just prompt engineer it and say, 'write me an email that says this, and it's grammatically perfect...' So it's very easy for people to fall for. I know plenty of technical folks that, if you're under enough stress or you're not paying a hundred percent attention, it's very easy to just click on the thing because you're trying to get it done. And then you realize later on that they took your credit card number or whatever they were asking for."

Sinno explains that basic steps like creating unique passwords and verifying suspicious texts can make a huge impact. But, there's a responsibility on companies as well. Google, like many tech companies, has drawn concern over the use of AI data. Sinno says he cannot speak to specific policies but that users should be aware of privacy terms when interacting with any artificial intelligence.

He says Cyber Security Month is primarily about awareness and that at its core, internet safety can be remarkably simple. "My mom always said when I was little, 'don't talk to strangers.'" He emphasizes, "You need to approach everything with a level of skepticism that if you're not a hundred percent sure who you're communicating with, you need to verify it."