Recent advancements in AI might be making it harder for users to spot fake scam messages.
Know more: A survey of 7,000 adults in seven countries (including India) has found "consumer overwhelm, caused by increasingly believable text, email, and social media scams amid a rising AI-powered scam surge."
The survey was released by McAfee Corp on Wednesday, 8 November.
Over 49 percent of respondents said that "scam messages no longer have typos or errors, and are very believable as a result, and that scam messages are harder to identify because they are often very personal."
Around 60 percent of Indian respondents said that "it has become harder to identify scam messages, attributing this trend to hackers using AI to make their scams more believable," as per the survey.
Why it matters: “This onslaught of scam messages is a drain on people’s time, energy, and finances," McAfee Product SVP Roma Majumder said.
The bait: The following types of messages are the most believed, according to the report:
"You’ve won a prize!" messages (41%)
Fake missed delivery or delivery problem notifications (23%)
Information about a purchase the recipient didn’t make (24%)
Sign-in and location verification messages (24%)
The switch: Fake job offers (64%) and bank alerts (52%) are the most common types of messages that people fall for, the survey found.
It also found that 82% of surveyed Indians have clicked on or fallen for fake messages.
Bonus: "[Surveyed] Indians receive nearly 12 fake messages or scams each day via email, text or social media daily," the report said.
"An average Indian consumer spends 1.8 hours a week reviewing, verifying or deciding whether a message sent through text, email, social media is real or fake," it added.
Guards up: In order to help people navigate the growing menace of online scams, The Quint has put together a special series of immersive guides called Scamguard.
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