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. They can even conduct calls with victims combining a deepfake with voice manipulation software, allowing for a much more convincing form of fraud.
Technological Solutions
Now, let’s talk about some of the solutions that have come in the form of modern security and authentication technology, that can help to prevent or reduce the instances of this catfishing fraud online.
AI and Machine Learning
The most common solution for the prevention of this form of attack comes from the same backend technology that is used to make modern deepfakes: machine learning and artificial intelligence. 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 detect and analyze the facial features of a person, to see if they match some external record, like an identification document for example. This can be used to ensure that the person involved in the conversation, or holding the account, is actually who they claim they are.
Artificial intelligence modes can also be trained to have the capability of behavioral analysis. This kind of model can detect unusual behavioral patterns that might be indicative of a catfishing scheme, like unusually rapid or fast responses, language use inconsistencies, and odd online activity timings.
Image Analysis
Image analyzing technology has become advanced enough in a world where creating artificial imagery is little to no effort that it can be effectively utilized to detect whether an image has been made with some ulterior motive.
This can be highly useful on dating platforms to prevent yourself from becoming a victim of dating scams, where people are pretending to be someone else to get your affection and attention. Deep learning can be used to detect signs of manipulation or inconsistency in images of people, and some tools can even detect if they were made entirely using AI.
In addition, something as simple as a reverse image search on Google can be useful to see if the image that a certain user is using on their account belongs to them, or if it was stolen from online.
Biometric Verification
In addition to multi-factor authentication, websites can integrate biometrics-based authentication and user verification onto their platform to add an additional layer of security and make it much more difficult for someone to impersonate another person online. This can be through either a facial scan, fingerprint scan, voice recognition, or some combination of them.
Another version of this might be the requirement for the user to conduct a live video call with a representative as a check to ensure that they are a real user making an account.
Combining this with clear indications on profiles (badges, for example) that show whether a user has completed and undergone these rigorous identity checks can ensure that users know the level of risk, or lack thereof, that 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.
