>> You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself.
This has slowly eaten away at the idea that we used to live in a high trust society that has now completely transformed into a society where you cannot trust anything, ever, in any capacity.
I felt like I had kind gained back some control from not clicking on any links in emails and using my phone sparingly. But with this new crop of AI tools, you're right, it makes it a lot easier to separate you from your money and the criminals are becoming way more sophisticated and persistent in their attacks.
Communities used to be smaller, even in big cities, so the number of scammers you encountered was fewer.
Now that long distance calls are free, the Internet connects you to everyone else on it, and paperwork is digitalized across entire populations, the reach - and therefore statistical likelihood of encountering- scammers is much higher.
Scammers have more incentive to reach widely than anyone else (well, except advertisers, but that's something of a fine line). So the ratio of scams to non-scams went way up.
This has slowly eaten away at the idea that we used to live in a high trust society that has now completely transformed into a society where you cannot trust anything, ever, in any capacity.
I felt like I had kind gained back some control from not clicking on any links in emails and using my phone sparingly. But with this new crop of AI tools, you're right, it makes it a lot easier to separate you from your money and the criminals are becoming way more sophisticated and persistent in their attacks.