In recent years, cyber threats have become a serious problem for users, as behind every click, like, call, SMS, or email hides a potential scam that can result in the theft of our personal and banking data.
For this reason, both users, brands, and manufacturers have taken action to stop these attacks and try to detect them before it’s too late. That’s why raising awareness of these types of dangers has multiplied, and at the same time apps and devices offer more and more tools to help us detect when it’s a threat.
For example, now when we receive a call from a suspicious number or receive an SMS, many times our Android phone itself alerts us that it could be spam or some type of fraud, and there are even occasions when the number has already been reported as such and it directly blocks it.
However, cybercriminals are increasingly using more sophisticated techniques that seem very real, so detection systems are sometimes unable to detect when it is a potential scam. And of course, not all advances in Artificial Intelligence serve to generate texts, images, or anything else, and there are other uses where we can take advantage of this technology, such as our cybersecurity.
This was explained by the company during Google I/O, its developer conference, last week where they showed a new capability of their AI to end spam calls. Calls have become one of the most common ways to scam users, and that’s why Google has introduced this AI tool to prevent it, although it has a downside.
It is a new function of Android that alerts the user on the screen when one of the calls we are receiving is not trusted. The only problem is that to do it and prevent you from falling into a scam, Google’s AI has to listen to our conversations, as the algorithm interprets if we are being asked for any data that is compromised or out of the ordinary, and informs us of the risk of providing this information.
In other words, if, for example, someone calls us and asks us to transfer all our savings to an overseas account, the AI detects that something is wrong and alerts us that it is suspicious behavior of being a scam.
It is true that the measure, although it is good news and very useful for our cybersecurity, has the drawback that you are allowing Google to listen to all your conversations, which is a setback for your privacy. Therefore, the company has not left users any other option than to maintain their privacy in exchange for being exposed to phone scams, or to give up their privacy and be protected by Google’s detection systems.
