My ‘daughter’ texted for help. Luckily, I ignored it

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“Hey Dad, I’ve broken my phone, this is my friend’s number. Can you message me?”

And there I was: hook, line and would have been sinker until my “daughter” asked for an urgent cash transfer and I came to.

The “Hey Dad” or “Hi Mum” scam, which originated in Europe, is relatively new to Australia but has caught hundreds of victims, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. But when your child calls you with an emergency, what are you meant to do? Do family members now need three-factor authentication?

Crime has never slept, and with the help of AI it will never need to.Dylan CokerFor a sceptic by profession and, I’m told, a hugely annoying fact-checker by temperament, I am strangely a sucker for scams. After arriving in Istanbul this year I was scammed twice within an hour of landing at the airport. Those nice men helping with the train ticket machines, what harm could they do? About a hundred dollars’ worth, it turned out. And the shoe-shine guy whose brush fell on the street – why wouldn’t I pick it up and chase him to give it back?

These are analogue, old-time scams compared with the golden age of cybercrime we are entering. Just the other day a very nice book club flattered me silly about something I’d written, and if I only sent them a small payment they could promote me to their readers. And let’s not even get started on those attractive Ukrainian ladies.

Internet scams are not new but a tipping point seems to have occurred in the past few months. The majority of my incoming online traffic is now trying to trick, rob, threaten or blackmail me. More than half of my social media feed is now deepfake videos, outright lies and hoaxes, or posts from some pelican pretending to be the US president. I now eye my devices like they’re pet snakes. One lapse of vigilance and they’ll get me.

Is it just me? Has the Turkish shoe-shine guy been talking to my algorithm? No, according to the ACCC, which reports that scammers’ income from Australians went past the $2 billion mark in the past year. By category, investment scams ($837.7 million) were top, followed by payment redirection (such as the “Hi Mum” – $166.8 million), romance ($139.9 million), phishing (fraudulently obtaining passwords – $97.6 million) and remote access scams (tricking you into installing malware – $69.9 million).

Online scams peaked during the COVID pandemic and dropped when we got out of our homes again but are again on the rise, say the ACCC and the government-funded ScamWatch. Their characteristics are changing rapidly. On top of personal scams, major cybercrime incidents have affected Optus, Qantas, Medicare, Ticketmaster and Woolworths, among other companies.

It’s not personal, we’re assured. There isn’t some evil genius sitting at a computer in Nigeria who’s decided he’s my daughter. In fact, it’s far worse. The technological capacity of artificial intelligence has made scamming almost infinitely scalable. This week’s rush of warnings about AI’s threat level are not about some rogue HAL developing a mind of its own; they’re about the sheer numerical probability of replicable AI agents breaking through data security systems on a mass scale. And if a chatbot can potentially disable a city’s power grid or hospital network, I think it can log into my bank account.

AI scams include voice cloning, where you are called and asked a question and your voice is recorded and used to generate a clone that can set up online payments without your knowledge. Raising the alarm about voice cloning, Louise Baxter, head of the British National Trading Standards scams team, said, “What we’re seeing is a deeply disturbing combination of old and new: traditional phone scams supported by disturbing new techniques. Criminals are using AI not just to deceive victims but to trick legitimate systems into processing fraudulent payments.” If they can do it with your voice, they can do it with your face.

Statistically, the main victims of internet scams are the elderly. But the elderly also offer an unexpected source of hope. I warn my mother not to answer any phone call when she doesn’t recognise the number, and to treat emails and texts with suspicion. Fortunately, her natural wariness is an ally. She will only deal with a bank by going to the branch and talking to a teller.

It feels like a throwback to the face-to-face past but it actually might represent the future. The better criminals get at penetrating online security, the sooner companies, institutions and their customers will have to go back to the days of human interactions in bricks-and-mortar premises.

But what of criminality’s other effects? I’m aware that I am encouraging my mother to isolate herself, to distrust potential human contacts. That can’t be good for her but it’s an unavoidable result of technology that has increased convenience and profitability while inviting risks that were not conceivable until recently. In the online environment I am beginning to feel like the proverbial old-age pensioner too terrified of muggers to go onto the streets. The streets are a lot safer than your phone.

To be scammed you have to have a desire that is strong enough to make you vulnerable. Greed, of course, is the most scammable weakness. But our better angels are equally exploitable. Of course you want to help your child when they’ve broken their phone. Of course you want to help any victim of misfortune. Leave aside the get-rich-quick schemes; the darker legacy of scammers is when they put an end to acts of kindness and trust, the connective tissue of community.

The federal government’s newly announced social media laws, focusing on the perils of “the algorithm”, have triggered a debate about free speech and Big Brother. But the dynamic of online communication has advanced beyond the dangers of misinformation and addictiveness: crime has never slept, and with the help of AI it will never need to.

Just the other day I got a message from my “son”. He had a new phone number and wanted to be connected to a family chat group. He needed money. Wised-up, I saw a scam and didn’t reply. Eventually, through convoluted means, I contacted him and found out that the message was genuine.

Imagine that: a simple communication between family members that required investigation to figure out if it was real. These are the costs that don’t show up on bank accounts.

Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.

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