Romance scams are an especially dangerous threat because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making victims out of people that recently lost loved ones. Malicious actors frequently target people that got recently got a divorce or were widowed after the death of their partner. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that they create fake profiles that have an air of legitimacy to establish relationships with their victims and attempt to extract financial resources from them by taking advantage of this tenuous trust.
Much of the online scam landscape relies on users not having well trained eyes and ears that can spot a scam a mile away. Deepfakes depend on this lack of knowledge as well, with them becoming a major aspect of the war of disinformation that is starting to come about in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These deepfakes are also being used in romance scams by using their technology to create images of people that bear no resemblance to any real life individuals but nonetheless look real enough to trick people into believing they are.
Deepfakes can play a role in crypto scams as well, because people are more likely to trust a crypto scheme if the person selling the scam has a profile picture of a human face. In spite of the fact that this is the case, consumers can be taught to spot these deepfakes and made wary of the various scams that they might come across online thereby making them less likely to fall for them.
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