Unsure if the person you’re interacting with may be a fake? This Chrome extension can detect fake profile pictures with 99.29% accuracy

Unsure if the person you’re interacting with may be a fake? This Chrome extension can detect fake profile pictures with 99.29% accuracy

As we discussed last week, financial scams may be on the rise in 2022. Social engineering is a pretty common tactic utilized by scammers when it comes to siphoning funds from unwitting victims, but there are some tools you can use to combat it.

Recently a company called V7 Labs has released an extension for Chrome that’s able to detect artificially generated profile pictures, such as those created by Thispersondoesnotexist.com (see below for an example).Examples of "ThisPersonDoesNotExist"

The Fake Profile Detector extension can help you detect if a social media profile picture is a fake just by right clicking on it, it’s able to zero in on things you may miss at first glance – such as a pupil that’s not in the right place or clothing that appears to be bleeding into the skin. The extension does not work with video (yet). Also, just to note you should always verify an extension is from a trusted source before downloading it to your browser.

Social engineering scams aren’t limited to just financial scams, they’re also utilized to gain information or to spread misinformation. As AI tools have grown more sophisticated it’s not easy to rely on someone’s profile picture to give you a good indication of who you’re talking to online.

It’s also very easy to create fake profiles using real pictures, even pictures of people you may actually know. It’s typical for the scammer to start the conversation off with they got “locked out” of their main account and would like you to add their new one. You should also confirm with your friends and family before accepting a request from a new account.

Or maybe it was their actual social media account, but a scammer was able to gain access. Sometimes scammers may even leave the password alone. The victim then may not know they have an intrusion, and the scammer just monitors and deletes messages of the conversations they’re having without the victim’s knowledge.

We have created this chart of the top five things you should watch out for when it comes to social engineering scams.

Click to download the full size version.

Social engineering is not limited to just social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The most common type of social engineering are phishing attacks, and scammers setting their sites on businesses to take advantage of may have an easier time of convincing a user they are who they say they are when it comes to the more casual relationships we tend to have with colleagues.

We wrote a blog explaining what to look out for when it comes to phishing emails, but at Valley Techlogic we also think this issue can be tackled from a software and training perspective.

The tools we utilized will make sure that much of that suspicious spam never makes it to your end user, and the training we offer to our clients can help them make sure that if an employee does get a spoofed phishing email – they know exactly what to do about it.

To learn more, schedule a free consultation with our sales team today.

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This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/valleytechlogic.