In this issue:

• Threat of the week: Internet crimes averaging now $19,372!

• ChatGPT can’t keep a secret

• Survey: How can I help? (I really want to know in this short survey)

Can you afford to lose $19,372 or more to scammers?

Of course not! This is exactly the reason I started the Cyber Safe Center newsletter. I don’t want you to be a victim to any scammers or digital threat. Even $1 would be too much.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released it’s Internet Crime Report 2024 from their Internet Crime Complaint Center. In 2024 they received 859,532 complaints. I’m sure this is a small percentage of people who have actually been scammed; there are likely tens of millions of internet crimes that go unreported each year. For example, I know that Facebook Marketplace–where people buy and sell things every day–is seeing a significant increase in scams and most of those probably don’t get reported to the FBI. (I’ll do a separate article in the future on Facebook Marketplace scams.)

In 2024, the FBI report states we lost $16.6 billion to internet crimes, up from $12.5B in 2023. This is real money lost by people who earn their living a respectable way. Our parents, our kids, our family, and our friends scammed by criminals. It’s astounding.

The report provides a breakdown of the total loss per age group. Not every complaint had an age range associated with it so these numbers won’t total to $16.6B, but they are still way too high in my opinion.

• Under 20 years of age, $22.5 million

• 20-29, $540.1 million

• 30-39, $1.4 billion

• 40-49, $2.2 billion

• 50-59, $2.5 billion

• 60+, $4.8 billion

For the people in my age group (50-59), there were 84,540 complaints for a loss of $2.5 billion. That’s an average of $29,571.80! I can’t imagine losing even a hundred dollars. Many people lost hundreds of thousands of dollars!

What tactics do the scammers use?

The top four crime types in 2024 were from phishing/spoofing, extortion, personal data breach, and non-payment/non-delivery scams. Malware like computer viruses only accounted for 441 complaints compared to the 193,407 phishing/spoofing complaints. This is personal, folks. They are going after people–not our computers–because we are easier targets.

I can’t stop scammers. All I can do is raise awareness. Please help by forwarding the Cyber Safe Center newsletter to your family and friends. I don’t want any of us to be victims.

ChatGPT can’t keep a secret

In corporations we are being trained on what information we can and cannot tell different AI platforms. For example, confidential business information should not be loaded up to the internet or ChatGPT.

But in our private lives there are things that we don’t want even our friends or family to know yet we are typing it into internet websites, search engines, and now AI platforms such as ChatGPT.

I get it. It’s extremely helpful to ask it questions or analyze our data. For example, I could (but won’t) upload all my credit card and banking transactions into ChatGPT for it to then tell me where I’m spending my money or to help identify deductible items for my tax return.

The problem is that every thing you upload can be used to train the AI and can potentially be accessed by others.

Here are the top 5 things to not load into internet search engines, ChatGPT, or any AI platform, unless you want the world to one day know it too.

• Medical results – even if you remove your name and information, the AI will know it was you that uploaded it unless you do some technical things to hide who you are.

• Identity information – driver’s license number, social security number, date of birth, address, and phone number. I’ll be doing a future article on how to use services to remove this info from various websites.

• Financial information – credit card, banking, net worth, retirement, and other financial info should never be uploaded to AI. It gives others knowledge which can be used for scams or fraud in the future.

• Logins – this seems obvious, but people are using AI to perform certain tasks which means the AI needs to mimic you. Make sure you trust the AI platform to secure your login information if you want to use AI to record online meetings or do your social media.

• Business information – there are people being fired because they have uploaded confidential information from their companies into public AI platforms like ChatGPT. Ask your company about their AI policy; they may have a private AI platform you can use.

Any time you use ChatGPT or one of the other systems, think to yourself, “would I be OK with this information being known by the world?” If the answer is no, then don’t do it!

“How can I help you” Survey

Can you take 2-3 minutes and let me know how I can help you? This survey is super quick and I’d really appreciate your help.

Google survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd2kmVgrRLvOjISbEr1nWfaefyA6rU8g2qHAYKnCa0E3VAkQg/viewform

Thank you so much!!!

Sincerely,
Cassie Crossley
Founder, Cyber Safe Center
https://www.cybersafecenter.com