Fighting Online Scams

And this innovation is aimed at a very vulnerable subset.

Online scams targeting senior citizens represent a significant and growing global threat. In 2023 alone, individuals aged 60 and over worldwide lost a combined total of $3.4 billion to fraud, an almost 11% increase from 2022. As bad as those numbers are, they are likely underestimated, as many incidents go unreported due to embarrassment, lack of awareness, or fear of losing independence. Studies indicate that older adults are often disproportionately affected by certain types of scams, such as tech support schemes, prize/lottery scams, and romance fraud, often suffering higher median losses when they do fall victim.

This is an issue on multiple levels. It's a population cohort with unique vulnerabilities, from reliance on near-liquid capital to a deficit in digital literacy. And it's a bunch of bad actors acting with increased sophistication and more refined techniques, including the use of AI to create more convincing and pervasive scams.

But people are working to fight this problem.

We go deeper about one specific person after the paywall: