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AI, huge hacks leave consumers facing perfect storm of privacy perils

Hackers are using artificial intelligence to mine unprecedented troves of personal information dumped online in the past year, along with unregulated commercial databases, to trick American consumers and even sophisticated professionals into giving up control of bank and corporate accounts. Armed with sensitive health information, calling records and hundreds of millions of Social Security numbers, criminals and operatives of countries hostile to the United States are crafting emails, voice calls and texts that purport to come from government officials; co-workers or relatives needing help; or familiar financial organizations trying to protect accounts instead of draining them. “There is so much data out there that can be used for phishing and password resets that it has reduced overall security for everyone, and artificial intelligence has made it much easier to weaponize,” said Ashkan Soltani, executive director of the California Privacy Protection Agency, the only such state-level agency. The losses reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center nearly tripled from 2020 to 2023, to $12.5 billion, and a number of sensitive breaches this year have only increased internet insecurity.

Full report : Nearly unlimited, highly personal info is available for anyone willing to pay. AI provides many ways to turn that into illicit profit or undermine national security.