Humans have been engaging in fraud since the dawn of time. Primitive financial systems saw the use of unbalanced scales, swapping of livestock, and in pioneer times there were those who engaged in real estate fraud by selling land with faulty title – a well-known frontiersman, Daniel Boone, was sued more than once for his alleged, purposeful misrepresentation in both title and survey work.
Fraud in the twenty-first century happens less often with physical asset exchanges and more with digital assets. We are bombarded with emails, texts, and spam phone calls relaying that our information has been stolen or our bank account has been hacked motivating us to act now to save our money. It leaves us concerned with not being able to recognize genuine requests from those whose aim is exploitation of genuine lines of business.
The shift to fraud in the digital space tarnishes the beauty of financial convenience. The permeation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in digital fraud has given the unsophisticated criminal an advantage of scale at the cost of the unsuspecting individual.
Not all is lost or bleak as the fraudsters would like Bankers and Consumers to think. Consumers can protect themselves by adopting safeguards (see the 5 tips at the end of this article) and staying up to date on prominent schemes of fraudsters through online resources by reputable sources, e.g. Experian or the FBI.
5 Tips to Safeguard Against Fraud:
Urgent, unsolicited messages are red flags.
Make it a practice to delete emails with urgent calls to action. If the message is from your bank, call the branch or visit in person to see if the messages are legitimate.
Change phone call habits.
When answering an unknown number, it is best to pause to see if someone answers. Avoid saying “yes” or “Hello, this is {Insert Name}”. These calls are often recorded, and they can use your voice to generate an AI model of your voice when voice verification is required for access, e.g. calling customer service for your credit card.
Don’t click on advertisements.
Stick to websites you know and trust. Advertisements on the side of Facebook and other platforms can direct you to a data “pharming” website.
Use multiple passwords
Once information has been breached through a data leak – there were several in 2025 – through a webstore or online payment platform, we must assume the information we shared with the vendor is in the ether. The best passwords are based on nonpersonal information and are alphanumeric with special characters.
Opt-in to dual authentication.
Opting in when your bank or other service provider recommends dual authentication slows down the attacks and creates alert systems to keep access to your financial information secure. Even if a hacker steals your password through phishing, data breaches, or keylogging, they still need the second factor to log in.
