Catfishing scams are the deceptive and malicious practice of either creating a fake identity or pretending to be someone else (who actually exists) on an online platform. This activity usually has the purpose of engaging in misleading or fraudulent relationships for some form of personal gain.

With modern innovations in technology, this age-old malicious practice of the internet instead of dying down has in fact evolved, and become even more propagated because of new tools and technologies, especially artificial intelligence.

These new tools have created a new scope of possibilities for these kinds of scammers, putting the average internet user in the modern age at risk.

The Evolution of Catfishing Tools

In the initial days of online catfishing, these schemes worked using simple yet elaborate lies, and the only tools at the disposal of these scammers were fake photos that were taken from social media platforms and shared forward.

Very limited options and mechanisms for verifying a person’s identity meant that it was next to impossible to truly be able to tell whether a person actually was who they were claiming to be. Add to that lesser technical expertise and general insight among the common public as to how the internet truly worked were what these scammers leveraged to be able to engage in these activities.

Modern Innovations

Nowadays, catfishing fraud works off of a multitude of different technologies to create highly convincing identities. They can leverage a combination of loopholes in social media websites, dating apps, and the multimedia nature of most online platforms to be able to manipulate someone into believing their artificial identities.

The ease with which a person can gain knowledge of the intricacies of digital technologies in today’s world works to these scammers’ advantage. They combine this knowledge with fabricated identities and elaborate backstories to get people to believe them.

Deepfake Technology

One of the most major innovations in modern technology has to be the creation of convincing deepfakes. Unfortunately, this modern marvel has become the foremost tool for scamming people in modern catfishing fraud.

Deepfakes use artificial intelligence technology to create hyper-realistic footage or audio of an individual, who can be a real person or a synthetic creation. Catfishing scams use these highly realistic recreations to be able to conduct video calls with potential victims, and even create fake videos on social media of their manufactured identity account.

With the continual advancement in the realism of this tech and the increasing availability of it to the average person, it is becoming more and more impossible to be able to tell what is real and what is fake during online interactions with people.

AI Chatbots

A second major artificial intelligence-based tool that helps these scammers to create highly realistic fake identities is the large language model, which is often used to create chatbots that can have highly convincing, human-like responses and conversations with real individuals.

These chatbots have the ability to mimic human conversation, which means that people engaged in malicious practices can use them to make identities seem more realistic by giving them unique personalities, ways of speaking, and more. This again adds to the ability of these people to make their fake persona feel more and more like an actual person, that would not be easy to discern as fake.

These two technologies, deepfake and AI chatbots combined make it possible for people who engage in online catfishing scams to create virtual fake identities that are highly realistic and are largely able to convince the average user of being a real person. The relative novelty of both of these systems means that the average person is not yet completely aware of how one can differentiate between fake and real when it comes to them.

Modern Social Platforms as a Breeding Ground

The majority of social media and dating apps make for fertile ground for catfishing internet scams because of the multiple vulnerabilities that are inherent to these platforms. The sheer number of users and accounts in these spaces makes it difficult by itself to determine who is who. Combine that with the ease of making multiple profiles and you have the perfect space to promote these activities.

Modern emerging social spaces like VR chat rooms add a slew of problems and concerns. The concept of manufacturing a digital persona has reached a new height, with digital avatars and so on. The highly immersive nature baked into these platforms means that it is even more difficult here than in traditional social media to tell what is real.

Closing Thoughts

The presumed increase in the use of VR and even AR technologies for social interaction in the not-too-distant future means that many new problems will emerge when it comes to catfishing crime and related fraud. As people become more and more aware of how these modern systems and technologies work, there is also a need to be aware of the risks that they pose.