How to protect your holiday shopping from AI scams

This is fascinating. I'm so excited about this next interview. So that holiday deal that comes in your inbox, right, the delivery alert on your phone, are they real? Are they a scam? And here's the problem. If they're scams, AI making those scams way harder to spot. So how do we find out if we're being scammed? Let's find out with Sean Calfin right now, the chief information security officer for PayPal and Venmo. I am thrilled that you're here, Sean. How's it going today? Very well. Thanks for having me. Good, my pleasure. Okay, let's just jump into it. So I remember like back in the day, they would tell you like, look for the misspelled words, look for the bad grammar, those like telltale signs that the message coming to you wasn't from a real legitimate company. But I feel like now AI is making that even harder to spot. So what should we as consumers be looking for to know that we're being scammed? Well, AI is changing the game. Scams are increasing and becoming more complex. Fraudsters are using AI to create more polished and personalized emails, text messages, and websites, making them harder to recognize. But the underlying tactics remain the same. Scammers impersonate trusted brands, create a sense of urgency, and create emotional pressure to get you and trick users to send money or share personal information. Scammers are betting that we're going to act before we think. And my most important advice is to slow down and be cautious. Yeah, I can tell you I've already been getting these. I've gotten text messages telling me my delivery is lost and click on this link. And I didn't order anything, so I know it's not legit. So what are the basic things? I mean, are there really simple things that we could look for and identify and say, okay, I'm not clicking on that link? 100%. I always recommend using unique and strong passwords and apply multi-factor authentication where you can. I also recommend when we think about never sharing your password or one-time passcode with anyone, no reputable company will ever ask you for that information. And lastly, I like the stall method for identifying a suspicious email. S is for sender. Check the email address, not just the display name. T is for tone, for any aggressiveness or urgency. A is for attachments. Always be wary of the attachments on an unknown email. L is for links. Inspect the links carefully before you engage with them. And the last L is for login. Never log in from the email or text message. Always go to your app or go to the browser directly and type in the merchant website. I love that stall. I'm never going to forget that now. And also, you know, a lot of my friends are buying specifically from social media, seeing things on TikTok and Instagram and buying from those vendors. Is there a good way to check to make sure those are legitimate vendors? I always go back to the stall method as you walk through them. But for merchants on our platform, on our PayPal and Venmo platform, we have verified merchants on the platform as we go through those checks to ensure they're the legitimate merchants. Yeah, we talked about AI. Are you guys using AI on your end to spot some of these scammers and fraudsters? Yeah, as fraudsters are using AI to harm people, at PayPal and Venmo, we're using AI to protect our customers. We have advanced capabilities and teams of experts that are analyzing signals, behavior patterns, and other data points where we can protect and stop the scam before they even reach the customer, or via our AI-powered scam alerts and friends and family, we alert the customer that it might be a scam. All right, Sean Kaufman, this was really great information and so helpful. We so appreciate you. I know it's a busy time of year for you guys going into the holidays, so we appreciate the time, and we'll see you next time, okay? Thank you. All right, the stall method, don't forget that.