Skip to main content
Campus

What to watch for as scams become more common

Student studies at BYU Library
A BYU student uses a computer at the Harold B. Lee Library. Digital tools have made it easier for scammers to target American citizens. (Olivia Wettengel)

According to the Federal Trade Commission, consumers reported losing over $10 billion to fraud in 2023. This figure increased by 14% over 2022, with consumers reported to have lost approximately $8.8 billion.

“Digital tools are making it easier than ever to target hard-working Americans, and we see the effects of that in the data we’re releasing today,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a February 2024 press release. “The FTC is working hard to take action against those scams.”

BYU cybersecurity professor Derek Hansen said scams are becoming more common.

“We’ve had digital or communication-based scamming around for a long time, but it does seem to be on the rise. There’s some changes that have happened recently that make things a little more common and effective,” Hansen said.

He said common scams to watch out for are phishing emails, spear phishing, vishing (voice phishing) and voice cloning.

Spear phishing is when a scammer uses background information about a potential victim to make themselves more trustworthy. Vishing would include, for example, fake calls about computer breaches. Voice cloning is even more sinister.

“Some programs are good enough that they can clone your voice and it will be indistinguishable. People get calls and they have trouble telling if they’re talking to their own kid or not,” Hansen said.

Hansen said the mother of one of his graduate students was recently the victim of one of these scam calls.

“In this case, my graduate student’s mother got a call, and it sounded like her daughter saying she was kidnapped, and she totally believed it because the voice sounded so authentic," Hansen said. “They just had a short thing that her daughter said, and then the kidnappers gave this big story about how they weren’t planning on kidnapping her, but she saw them doing something.”

He shared that the would-be kidnappers kept the student’s mother on the phone “for hours” and said if she called anyone else, they would harm her daughter.

“So, then they end up having her wire transfer money to some account and then it ends, and here she is traumatized. She’s paid all this money and it’s just terrible. And then she finds out her daughter was fine the whole time,” Hansen said.

He said that kind of impersonation attack “wasn’t really possible before,” but he expects that it will become more common as scammers see how successful it is.

Hansen also mentioned that the use of artificial intelligence in scams is becoming more prevalent.

“We don’t really have good data on how much it’s happening, but it seems to be happening more. There have been similar attacks, but they couldn’t be done at this scale before,” he said.

Hansen said that there are often stereotypes about older people being susceptible to scams, but especially with the use of AI, it’s becoming easier to target people in all age groups.

“No one’s immune to scams,” Hansen said. “It’s more that we are more likely to fall for ones that have to do with the things that we care about.”

Spencer Cannon, who is the public information officer for the Utah County Sheriff’s Office, said scams have been a major issue in the area.

“There are a broad variety of scams. The ones that we hear and see the most about are the ones where people call us and they either are curious because they got a phone call from somebody that said they had a warrant or they missed jury duty or something like that,” Cannon said. “Those are the most common ones, but there’s a number of other ones.”

Cannon recently shared a post on the Utah County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page about a close call a woman had with scammers. The woman told the Sheriff’s Office she received a call about a warrant she could pay with Bitcoin.

“Every part of me said this was a scam but he was so believable and manipulative that I followed his instructions. I almost paid, but I hung up beforehand,” the post quoted the anonymous woman as saying.

Cannon agreed with Hansen that anyone can be vulnerable to scams.

“The people that are pushing these scam efforts have a good way of reaching out to people and finding out what their interests are, what their weaknesses are, what their concerns are, and they have answers for all of them,” Cannon said. “I understand being taken in by it. These scam artists take advantage of people’s desire to be helpful and to be good citizens.”

Cannon said it’s “the right thing” to hang up if one receives an unexpected call asking for money because scammers have been known to spoof phone numbers in an effort to make their calls look legitimate.

“Most people who have a warrant are gonna have a pretty good idea why. But if you get a call (saying you have a warrant) and you have no clue what they’re talking about, then hang up, look it up yourself, call and find out,” he said. “What seems like them (scammers) being nice and polite is not nice and polite – it is completely evil, the way they take advantage of people.”

Cannon said those who wish to double-check whether they have a warrant can call the police agency or input their name into a warrant search at warrants.utah.gov.