As people become increasingly lonely and AI proliferates to become powerful tools for cybercriminals, the "loneliness epidemic" has become a serious security crisis.
Loneliness has never been more serious. Besides harming mental health, it has become a real threat to security.
Exploiting the loneliness of their victims, cybercriminals are deploying one of the most dangerous scams today: romance scams.
As processes become more professional and are powered by modern technology, romance scams can absolutely be carried out on a massive scale.
Attackers build relationships and trust with their targets through dating apps or social media. AI chatbots are used to create scenarios and situations in various languages.
With the single population constantly growing, researchers believe that automation technology will give scammers even more power.
According to Fangzhou Wang, an assistant professor of cybercrime research at the University of Texas, these forms of fraud are becoming increasingly organized.
They recruit personnel from all over the world , targeting all kinds of victims. Dating apps and social media become fertile ground for scammers.
In the US, victims of romance scams reported losses of nearly $4.5 billion over the past 10 years, according to an analysis of the FBI's annual cybercrime reports.
Over the five years leading up to the end of 2023, romance scams caused losses of approximately $600 million annually, rising to nearly $1 billion in 2021.
Romance scams all take place online, with criminals sending Facebook messages to hundreds of victims at once, or matching them with any profile they find on dating apps.
Although criminals operate in various locations, from Yahoo Boys in West Africa to scam camps in Southeast Asia, they all follow a common manual for creating an emotional connection with their victims.
Elisabeth Carter, associate professor of criminology at Kingston University London, calls romance scams the “most devastating” scam a person can ever encounter.
Online dating has become an everyday occurrence in modern society. According to Assistant Wang, she has seen evidence of scammers using AI generation to produce content for online profiles.
Some criminal gangs in Southeast Asia have developed AI tools for their scams. In October 2024, a report published by the United Nations revealed that organized crime had “written personalized scripts to deceive victims while communicating in real time in hundreds of languages.”
According to Google, phishing emails sent to businesses are being written using AI. The FBI also notes that AI allows cybercriminals to message victims more quickly.
Cybercriminals employ a range of manipulative tactics to ensnare victims and build romantic relationships. These include asking intimate questions that only close friends would ask, such as about dating history or past relationships.
They also create intimacy through "love bombing" techniques, displaying intense affection to speed things up. As the relationship progresses, they will often refer to the victim as boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, etc.
Professor Carter emphasized that the core tactic used by con artists is to portray themselves as vulnerable and unfortunate. Sometimes they even claim to have been deceived themselves and are wary of trusting others, creating the impression that they are not scammers.
That would be very useful when progressing to the money scam stage. They would explain they're having financial problems in their business, then disappear and return a few weeks later.
The victim may want to help and proactively approach the scammer to send money. The scammer will initially refuse and try to persuade the victim not to transfer the money, all to manipulate the victim psychologically.
According to Carter, the language of a con artist is quite similar to that of a domestic abuser.
In many cases, the perpetrators successfully seduced people who were struggling with loneliness, according to Brian Mason, a police officer in Alberta, Canada.
When working with victims of fraud, it's very difficult to convince them that the person they're talking to doesn't love them.
In one instance, the victim even contacted the scammer again, continuing to transfer money just to see his picture because she was lonely. At the end of 2023, the World Health Organization declared high levels of loneliness a threat to people's health.
Stigma and shame are the main reasons why victims find it difficult to accept the reality they face. Carter notes that attackers exploit this psychology by telling victims not to reveal the conversation to others because the relationship is too special and no one will understand.
Maintaining a secret relationship, combined with other tactics to trick victims into transferring money instead of asking for it, makes it difficult even for the most cautious individuals to recognize that they are being manipulated.
According to Carter, the victims not only lost a lot of money but were also deceived by the people they loved and trusted most. "Just because it happened online, because it was completely fake, doesn't mean they didn't have real feelings," she said.
(Synthetic)
Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/dai-dich-co-don-and-nhung-cu-lua-bac-ty-2371850.html
