WASHINGTON, D.C. — Artificial intelligence is making online scams harder to spot, and seniors are increasingly in the crosshairs.
A new Senior Planet from AARP survey finds just 7% of older adults feel very confident protecting their personal information online. 70% percent aren’t confident knowing what’s safe to share with AI.
Scams aren’t just getting smarter. They’re getting harder to see coming.
“It’s a real moving target,” said Dr. Tom Kamber, the executive director of Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) from AARP. “The challenges that older adults are facing are really changing.”
Kamber said AI is giving scammers powerful new capabilities.
“The quality of the scams has increased and now they are indistinguishable from professional banking sites or professional health sites,” Kamber said. “These scam artists now are using AI to polish their scams so it seems extremely real, right down to the ability to take a photograph of one of your relatives off of Facebook and create a video from that relative, saying that they’re kidnapped or they’re in jail somewhere, or they got somebody in trouble and they need you to send them money right now.”
Kamber noted that pressure and urgency are often tell-tale signs of a scam.
“If you’re getting a message, it says ‘Go to your bank account and send the money within the next hour, it’s got to get done right away,’ that should always stop us in our tracks to say something is wrong,” said Kamber.
And when it comes to AI itself, it’s important to treat your personal information like cash — don’t hand it over freely.
“We cannot be sharing personal financial or personal health information that has the detail that you would not expect people would normally put on the Internet,” said Kamber. “Don’t share that with AI chatbots.”
The best defense may still be the basics: strong passwords, another layer of login security, like multifactor authentication, as well as a few extra seconds to think before you act.
“This is definitely the era in which we should be using password managers,” said Kamber.
In a world where seeing isn’t always believing, experts recommend to slow down, verify and think twice before you click.
For additional information, including free online classes and tutorials, click here or visit SeniorPlanet.org.
Additional online privacy and scam information can be found here.
