GoKawiil
Tech News
A technology writer describes receiving a highly personalized PR solicitation email that referenced detailed facts about their book and career, prompting a closer look at how scammers now use AI to craft convincing, tailored pitches. The piece compiles guidance on recognizing red flags in such messages and verifying unsolicited outreach before responding.
Apple has introduced a security feature called Impersonation Risk Detection in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 aimed at flagging social engineering scams. When a supported app detects a user is about to take a sensitive action, like making a payment or changing a password, it analyzes account and device signals and returns one of three risk levels: unknown, medium, or high. The receiving app then determines how to respond to that risk score.
Apple has introduced a new opt-in security feature called Impersonation Risk Detection in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, designed to identify social engineering scams as they happen. The feature runs entirely on-device, analyzing behavior in real time and sending only a risk label—not underlying personal data—to supporting apps.
DetectifAI, a San Francisco startup founded by Tarini Padmanabhuni, has built AI models designed to run directly on smartphones to flag AI-generated voices in real time during calls and voice messages. Padmanabhuni started the company after her grandfather was scammed out of money by a deepfake voice impersonating his brother's kidnapping. The company is pitching its software to phone manufacturers to embed detection directly into device operating systems rather than relying on cloud-based analysis.
Criminals in Portugal, France and Germany have been mailing counterfeit credit cards and letters warning recipients that their card is expiring, urging them to scan a QR code to "activate" a replacement. The code leads to a fraudulent banking site that harvests login credentials, giving attackers access to victims' real accounts. Some fake cards even bear the recipient's actual name to increase credibility, according to digital banking advisor Georg Hauer.
Security firm Nisos ran a sting on a suspected North Korean operative who applied for a remote AI engineering job, sending a surveilled laptop to a US 'laptop farm' in Florida. Over subsequent months Nisos tracked the operator communicating with 22 others and four US-based facilitators while connecting from near the North Korea-China border. A joint advisory from US, Japan, Australia and Germany law enforcement says the broader campaign, called WaterPlum or Contagious Interview, has infected over 30,000 devices in 100+ countries and drained more than 7,000 crypto wallets.
Asus disclosed that a breach affected part of its eShop platform, exposing customer contact details and order records, though it says no payment or financial data was compromised. The company has not specified how many customers were affected, which regions were involved, or how long the breach lasted, and says it has contained the incident and is investigating.
A wave of phishing emails impersonating invitation platforms like Paperless Post and Evite has been spreading contacts' names to trick recipients into entering email or phone credentials to view fake event details. Journalist Eric Umansky was among early victims, waking to messages asking about a party he never planned, despite having two-factor authentication enabled on his account. The FTC issued a consumer alert in May after receiving a rise in reports of the scam.
Jay Jones, an out-of-work copywriter who calls himself 'The Profiler,' says he has spent months tracking down fraudulent job postings and recruiter accounts, mostly on LinkedIn. He told the Wall Street Journal he has helped get nearly 60,000 fake listings and about 7,000 fraudulent recruiter profiles taken down, often by spotting shared photos, near-identical bios, and matching profile URL patterns.
Sweden's national police authority, Polisen, has launched a campaign called 'Dare to be rude' featuring four Swedish celebrities, aimed at encouraging people—especially the elderly—to be blunt or hang up when they suspect a scam call. Polisen reports fraud losses in Sweden reached 5.7 billion SEK (about $575.3 million), with phone-based scams impersonating banks, agencies or police among the most common tactics used against people over 60.
LinkedIn announced new verification tools letting members confirm their workplace or university through vouches from two or more connected colleagues who've known them for at least a year. Company page admins can now also remove profiles falsely claiming affiliation with their organization from search results. LinkedIn says over 115 million of its roughly one billion members have already added some form of verification to their profiles.
LinkedIn introduced tools letting members vouch for colleagues' or classmates' work history, distinct from endorsements, and gave companies new controls over who can associate with their brand on the platform. The company said its existing verification tools have already confirmed 115 million users and over 700,000 companies.