PROTECT YOURSELF FROM RISING FINANCIAL FRAUD

As scammers embrace new tech, use these strategies to safeguard your accounts.

- KERRI ANNE RENZULLI

Two in five adults experienced some kind of financial fraud or scam during the past year, a 34% increase over the same period a year earlier, a new Bankrate survey found.

What’s driving this increase? Financial scams are becoming more common because of the many different touch points you can have with scammers and the rapid proliferation of new technologies, especially artificial intelligence. Scammers are targeting people in advanced ways using AI, so it takes a lot of awareness to avoid making a mistake. How are fraudsters exploiting AI to scam us? Fraudsters use AI to send messages quickly to larger groups of people to try to increase their success rate. They’re using it to edit out typos and grammar mistakes, making it harder to spot fakes. Some scammers use it to create automated messages posing as your bank or other financial institutions, so you don’t really know who is on the other end.

Your survey found that people 55 and older are increasingly being targeted, with half experiencing someone attempting to access their information or spending money on phony services in the past year. Why is this demographic a fraudster favorite?