Unmasking AI-Powered Scams: Scotty's Cybersecurity Insights for 2026 cover art

Unmasking AI-Powered Scams: Scotty's Cybersecurity Insights for 2026

Unmasking AI-Powered Scams: Scotty's Cybersecurity Insights for 2026

Listen for free

View show details

About this listen

 Hey listeners, Scotty here, your go-to scam slayer with the tech chops to keep you one step ahead of these digital dirtbags. Picture this: it's early 2026, and scammers are leveling up like it's a cyber arms race. Just last month in November 2025, Thai cops busted a crew of Chinese fraudsters who weaponized AI to clone voices and even fool bank biometric systems—think deepfake faces blinking and nodding on video calls to bypass security. Pol. Col. Neti Wongkularb from Thailand's Technology Crime Suppression Division spilled the beans to Thai PBS Verify: these creeps start by calling from a weird number, claiming it's their new one after ditching the old. They chat casually, hang up, wait a day or two, then hit you with a sob story—like pretending to be your kid stuck with a big purchase, begging for 10,000 to 100,000 baht to tide them over till they reach their spouse.

Don't fall for it, folks. If that familiar voice pipes up from an unknown number, politely ghost 'em, hang up, and ring back on the saved contact to verify. Set a family passcode—some secret only you and your loved ones know—for those urgent video pleas. And scrub those high-res selfies from social media; they're scammer gold for training AI clones.

Over in Greece, police just nailed their first smishing ring—Chinese SMS blasters firing fake alerts to snag your data. Cambodia's cracking down hard too: they deported Chinese tycoon Chen Zhi this month for running massive scam ops from Phnom Penh, and over 400 Indonesians got "released" from compounds in Bavet after forced gigs in romance and crypto hustles. One 18-year-old Sumatran kid escaped after eight unpaid months, passport held hostage by his "Chinese boss." Meanwhile, Thailand's Royal Thai Police Anti-Money Laundering Centre, led by Pol Gen Ittipol Atchariyapradit, seized 10 billion baht in assets last year, froze 800 mule accounts, and cuffed 32 in Operation Khayee Hua Jai Thotsakan.

Stateside and beyond, watch for AI-powered phishing mimicking your boss's emails, MFA fatigue bombs flooding your phone till you cave, malicious browser extensions spying on keystrokes, and DNS redirects hijacking your bank login. Dutch police even sold fake tickets last week to demo how easy it is. CIRO in Canada just fessed up to a phishing breach exposing 750,000 investors' SINs and incomes—no passwords, but prime identity theft fodder.

Stay frosty: enable MFA with authenticator apps, not just pushes; block at the DNS level; patch everything; limit browser add-ons; and think twice on pop-up updates. Banks like Bank of East Asia never SMS links for logins or OTPs—per Hong Kong Monetary Authority alerts.

Thanks for tuning in, listeners—subscribe for more scam-smashing tips. This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease.ai.

For more http://www.quietplease.ai

Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta

This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.