Forget Hustle Culture—AI Is Busy Catfishing Your Grandma 👵🤖💸

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(Originally shared in another community—posting here for those not plugged into that thread, because this one’s too juicy to miss! LOL)

So apparently Brett Johnson—the guy who used to make millions stealing identities before he found Jesus (or at least LinkedIn)—is warning us about the next wave of cyber threats. Spoiler alert: it’s not some Hollywood hacker in a hoodie; it’s AI doing the dirty work at industrial scale.

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Here’s the boil down of his three horsemen of the Fraudpocalypse:

• Deepfakes 🎙️ → Forget Nigerian princes. Now it’s your “CEO” calling with a perfect voice clone asking you to wire money.

• Scam farms 🏭 → Organized fraud sweatshops, now turbocharged by AI. Think call centers, but instead of selling you extended car warranties, they’re running mass scale scams with scripts written by ChatGPT’s evil twin.

• Synthetic IDs 🪪 → Frankenstein identities stitched together from real and fake data. They slip past banks and credit checks like butter.

And Johnson’s “solutions”? The usual corporate kumbaya:

• Use multi factor authentication (because hackers love when you add one more step before they steal your stuff).

• Freeze your credit (translation: lock the barn after the horse has already been deepfaked).

• Don’t overshare online (LOL, good luck telling that to TikTok zombies).

• Verify before you trust (which is basically “don’t be dumb,” but dressed up as advice).

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🎯 My Take

Cybercrime isn’t just evolving—it’s scaling like a startup 🚀. AI is the new intern, except it doesn’t complain about unpaid overtime while it’s busy writing scam scripts and generating fake passports.

The real defense? Stop pretending tech alone will save us. Awareness, skepticism, and a healthy BS meter (mine’s calibrated daily) are the only shields left.

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So next time you hear “⚡AI is changing the world⚡,” remember: it’s not just building apps—it’s also building scam farms.

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Sources:

MSN / Business Insider, "Reformed hacker who made millions stealing identities warns of 3 rising cyber threats — and how to stay safe"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/reformed-hacker-who-made-millions-stealing-identities-warns-of-3-rising-cyber-threats-and-how-to-stay-safe/ar-AA1QrUk5?ocid=socialshare

(Research/Writing assist from Copilot, image generated by the same)

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