(TargetDailyNews.com) – A watchdog group is warning that artificial intelligence (AI) is expanding the number of scams job seekers are likely to face.
The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) said that reports of job scams were up by 118 percent compared to 2023 numbers. Job scams are taking up a much larger percentage of their reports proportionally; the increase still happened even though total scam report volume to the group was down by 18 percent.
A statement from ITRC said they saw a big jump in fake job listings in 2023 and 2024. The ads are put up by would-be identity thieves hoping to get personal information from victims they can use to steal more than just their identity. The listings show up on legitimate employment sites and online spots dedicated to professional networking. The thieves are getting much better at appearing above board, and ITRC lays that at the feet of the increasingly sophisticated AI tools available to the public.
Most Internet users have already seen what are called “deep fakes.” These are videos of apparently real people walking and talking in such a realistic way that many cannot discern that they are not real. For example, last year actor Tom Hanks lashed out at the creators of a dental advertisement that generated a realistic likeness of the actor without his permission.
ITRC said scammers create user profiles on popular job sites such as LinkedIn. Sometimes they go so far as to put up entire polished websites that appear to represent legitimate businesses that lure job applicants to apply and disclose personal information the con artists will then swipe.
After a target believes he has booked an interview with a real person at a real company, the scammers stall and persuade the applicant to start communicating over email, text, or video chat. The purpose of this is to get the applicant to “fill out paperwork” and prove their identity to the fake employer.
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