One of the most interesting, and at the same time most problematic examples of people taking advantage of the capabilities of the internet and social media in the last decade emerged in the form of catfishing.
This activity was a form of online identity fraud that involved utilizing the capability provided by the internet to download and upload any image, as well as the ability to create personas as you wish, to trick a victim into providing the individual with some material benefit, at their own expense.
Advancements in modern technology have allowed for many creative and effective solutions to help prevent money laundering online.
Advanced Catfishing Fraud
As stated above, there have been major advancements in technology since catfishing fraud first emerged as an online activity. The most prominent of these in the last few years, for example, would be the explosion in the use and potential of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.
This means that the online world is more secure than ever before. But, contrary to what you might think, catfishing fraud instead of decreasing, has only skyrocketed as a result of this advancement. This is because these same technologies are also able to be used to conduct more sophisticated catfishing activities.
The biggest contributing technologies in this regard would have to be the ever-increasingly available to the public technologies of face morphing and deepfakes. While previously this kind of fraud was limited to stolen images uploaded on a new account, now entire fake identities can be created using deepfakes.
This also means that people are no longer just limited to chat conversations to manipulate people in a catfishing scheme.
Let’s discuss modern security tech to prevent online catfishing fraud.
AI and Machine Learning
The key defense against this attack mimics the backend tech behind modern deep fakes. This can happen in practice in two ways:
The most obvious and common form of this happens through the AI-powered identity verification mechanism which is facial recognition. This solution can verify facial features against external records, such as ID documents.
This model detects suspicious catfishing behavior like quick responses, language inconsistencies, and odd activity timings.
Image Analysis
Image analyzing technology has progressed to the extent that detecting ulterior motives in images is now effortless.
Protect yourself from dating scams by being cautious on online platforms where individuals pretend to be someone else for affection.
Biometric Verification
Websites can enhance security by adding biometrics for user verification alongside multi-factor authentication. This can be through either a facial scan, fingerprint scan, voice recognition, or some combination of them.
Users may need live video call verification to prove account authenticity
Clear profile badges indicate if users completed rigorous identity checks, informing about risk levels. They would have when it comes to the identity of the users that they are interacting with.
Conclusion
As advancements in modern technology like artificial intelligence are implemented in more spaces to make our lives easier, they are also being used to enhance online catfishing scams. But, the same advancements are also making it possible to more effectively prevent becoming a victim to these age-old scams.
