Chapter 1: What alarming trend is the FTC warning about this tax season?
Scammers are working overtime this tax season, and the FTC just sounded the alarm. Here's what you need to know. I'm Kim Commando for NetSuite. AI is everywhere, and companies using it have the advantage. If your revenues exceed seven figures, get their free guide, Demystifying AI, at netsuite.com slash Kim.
It's tax season, and the FTC is warning of what it calls a big wave of outright phone scams. The criminals claim to be from the IRS or something official sounding like the tax resolution oversight department. Of course, there is no such government department.
The caller, usually a real human or AI that sounds like one, says you haven't paid your taxes and they are here to help by connecting you to a so-called tax resolution officer. Again, no such thing. This is a $12 billion scam sweeping America. They're going to attempt to intimidate you to pay them to clear back taxes. Hang up, even if you owe back taxes. because the IRS never calls.
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Chapter 2: How do scammers impersonate the IRS to target individuals?
All right, let's start off with some things that you need to know about that are happening in the tech space. And we're going to start with... five years ago if you wanted to pull off a big cyber crime you needed to have connections you needed skills maybe you needed some money uh you needed to know how to get into networks i'm over four yeah
And if you wanted to run a phishing operation, you had to find an actual hacker who knew their way around the dark web and could collect these email addresses for you and then write custom malware and then figure out how you were going to get it out there around all the spam filters.
These back in the day hackers sound pretty smart.
They could have went out and got legitimate jobs. They probably could have. And you also had to know someone who knew someone. You couldn't just go into the dark web and go into a forum and say, hi, I'm Kim. I need stolen credit cards. What's up, guys? So today, anybody with a credit card and a Telegram login, you rent artificial intelligence.
that will write the phishing scripts, clone the voices, generate the fake voices, comes up with all the emails, gives you all the addresses that you want, and the prices start at around $30 a month. That's why we get so many phishing emails and scam emails, because it's dirt cheap. It's like Fiverr for felons.
LAUGHTER
Their mom must be so proud. Oh, absolutely. My little boy scammed four old ladies last week. Aww. He made almost $17,000.
This is a question that we're getting asked a lot. How do I get my site indexed by AI because AI has destroyed my web traffic? It's a sad reality. I don't want to say who it is. Okay. Because this was said to me in a private conversation.
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Chapter 3: What tactics do scammers use to intimidate their victims?
Okay. But I was astounded that a major, major, major publication on the internet says they will be gone within two and a half years, three years. Like a magazine? Huge. More. Just huge, huge, huge. Because their traffic is down almost 80%.
Chapter 4: What should you do if you receive a suspicious call about taxes?
Is it the New York Times? No. Okay. They have a big digital subscription. But the company I'm talking about is right up there. Okay. And the CEO was actually complimenting me, saying that because they don't have anything other than articles that are available anywhere else. you know, and they, there's nothing there. So how do they pivot? How do they save themselves?
They're just going to accept extinction. He said, you know, it's kind of, it's, it's when you think about, it's kind of like you take this big monolith and you're like going hard to pivot because of the size. Exactly. Exactly. So if you want to get your site into AI, it's called AIO, not EIO, AIO. Artificial intelligence optimization.
Now, what happened was that a lot of SEO, search engine optimization, that they came out and they said, all right, if you write little chunks of data and give a whole bunch of lists, then AI will love you and they will start recommending you.
Chapter 5: How has cybercrime evolved in recent years?
No, no, no, no, no. That's not how it works. As a matter of fact, Google came out and they said that what AI really wants from your site is for you to write for humans, not algorithms. So forget the list, forget the little chunk size. Use clear headlines, author bylines, actual credentials, sources, citations. and have other people recommend you.
Can I be a skeptic? Yes. And say why the Google wants that, and I, that's right, I said the Google, is so that everything is easily read by AI so we can learn the headline, know who wrote it, and steal everything from it. Yes. Oh, okay.
Yes. I'm glad we're on the same page. Just so, yeah, just so we're all clear.
We're going to steal from you. Could you please leave the front door unlocked? That's basically what they're saying.
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