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Romance scams used to feel like a cliché. Everyone pictured an email from an overseas “prince” that was poorly written and full of typos and pleas for cash. Now, that cliché is dead. Todays romance scams are industrial-scale operations. Attackers use artificial intelligence to clone voices, create deepfake video calls, and write scripts with large language models (LLMs). In 2024 alone, the Federal Trade Commission reported that financial losses to romance scams skyrocketed, with victims losing $1.14 billion. The real number, hidden by shame and silence, is likely triple that. Romance scams arent just a tragedy for the victims. A successful scam is a massive risk for businesses, too. When an employee with access to sensitive data or funds is compromised, the “heartbreak hack” can harm an entire organization. What Today’s Romance Scams Look Like Phase 1: Contact. Romance scams often start on dating appsbut theyre also prevalent on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedInwith a seemingly innocent message. These scams arent necessarily about love; theyre about establishing trust. For example: Is this Alex? We met at the conference last week, or Sorry, wrong number, but your profile photo is lovely. The goal is to continue the conversation on an encrypted app, such as Telegram or WhatsApp, where traditional security measures cant monitor conversations. Once contact is established, the manipulation becomes emotional. Phase 2: Love bomb. Over weeks or months, the scammer builds intimacy. Theyll share mundane details, such as photos of their dog or personal struggles. But with todays AI upgrade, LLMs can craft empathetic responses that mimic shared information to gain trust. Eventually, the relationship is leveraged for financial gain. Phase 3: Pivot. Once trust is established, the conversation pivots. The scammer doesnt ask for a plane ticket or emergency money. They talk about success. They might say, My uncle has an exclusive crypto trading algorithm. They’ll agree to teach the victim how to invest, showing massive (yet fake) returns on a legitimate-looking app. Then, the victim invests large sums of money. What makes these scams especially dangerous is that old warning signs no longer apply. When the Bot Flirts Back We used to say, If they wont video call you, its a scam. That advice is now obsolete. In deepfake video calls, for example, scammers use real-time face-swapping technology. On your screen, the person moves, blinks, and smiles, wearing the face of the stolen identity. While the tech is good, its not perfect. Tip: Look for blurring around the neck and hairline or glitches when they pass a hand in front of their face. In voice cloning, scammers send voice notes that sound exactly like the person in the photos. Free AI tools now require less than 10 seconds of audio to clone a voice with 85% accuracy, enabling voicemails that reinforce the persona’s reality. Organizations Need to Pay Attention You might be thinking, Why is it a CISOs problem? Take the now-former CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank, who fell victim to such a scam. Convinced he was investing in a crypto opportunity for his “friend,” he embezzled $47 million of the banks funds, leading to the banks total collapse and a 24-year prison sentence. Had the bank’s chief information security officer known what was going on, the situation might have been identified earlier and nipped in the bud. Here are three forms of the corporate blast radius. Embezzlement: Employees with access to payroll or wire transfers may “borrow” company funds, believing theyll pay it back once their “investment” clears. Sextortion and blackmail: Scammers typically encourage victims to share intimate images. Once they have this, it becomes leverage. BYOD malware: The “trading app” the victim installs is often sophisticated malware that gives the attacker backdoor entry. If that device connects to your corporate network, the attacker is inside. How to Stop a Romance Scam Defending against romance scams requires recognizing patterns in infrastructure and the psychology of influence. Here are three tips to avoid falling victim to a fraudster. Watch for the vibe shift: If a romantic interest mentions cryptocurrency, foreign exchanges (forex), or nodes within the first few weeks, its a 100% positive indicator of a scamno exceptions. If theyve been patient for months, but suddenly an opportunity is closing quickly, this is manufactured urgency designed to bypass critical thinking. The “specific action” test: Try to hop on a video call, and take two actions. First, ask the person to turn their head all the way around. Deepfake models often struggle with extreme movements or facial expressions, and the face can glitch. Second, ask the person to wave a hand in front of or behind their head. AI often gets confused about which object is in front, leading to face distortion. Move beyond awareness training: Social engineering defense used to be treated as a training problem, measured by click rates and phishing simulations. But modern attacks go beyond inboxes, and they dont wait for employee mistakes. Todays most damaging campaigns leverage impersonation tactics across email, messaging platforms, and social media, often targeting trusted relationships. Defense requires moving beyond reactive training toward early detection of impersonation and coordinated disruption, supported by human rsk management practices that help employees recognize how attacks like romance scams begin and escalate. Trust, But Verify Theres now little distinction between personal life and corporate risk. When an employee or executive is emotionally compromised, so is the organization. Human intuition cant win a fight against AI-powered psychological warfare. The heart will always be a vulnerability, and in the age of AI, its also an attack vector. Romance scams prove that attackers dont need to break a firewall; they just need to break a heart, and its time to defend with rigor.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During an earnings call in June 2025, KB Homes McGibneywhose company prefers outright home price cuts over incentives when adjustments are neededsaid that some buyers turning to competitors are effectively overpaying for new builds to obtain mortgage rate buydowns. If those buyers need to sell in the near term, he warned, they could find themselves underwater and unable to recoup the artificially high base prices. “I believe that there are [builder] customers that are overpaying for the home to effectively get an incentive… They may potentially be upside down when they try to sell that home, McGibney said back in June. In January 2026, ResiClub interviewed KB Home CEO Jeffrey Mezger and COO Rob McGibneybeginning March 1, 2026, McGibney will assume the CEO role. During that conversation, ResiClub asked KB Home about that upside-down comment. Mezger and McGibney reaffirmed their stance, saying theyll continue to lean into transparent pricing over incentives. We believe in price transparency, Mezger tells ResiClub. Our biggest competitor is resaleand [resale] sellers dont offer incentive packages. In the view of KB Home executives, leaning too hard into incentive-driven strategieswhen affordability adjustments or net effective price cuts are needed to meet the marketcan translate into inflated base prices, larger loan balances, and greater near-term resale risk if a buyer needs to move sooner than expected.Our buyers tell us they like the clarity, McGibney tells ResiClub. They [our buyers] know exactly what theyre paying for I think [transparent pricing] really lowers that risk of [the buyer] overpaying for a home and potentially being upside down. Not long after mortgage rates spiked in 2022 and the pandemic housing boom fizzled out, many large homebuilders began offering sizable mortgage rate buydowns. Some have gone as far as shelling out $40,000, $50,000, or even $60,000 toward forward commitments that can get a borrowers mortgage rate below 4.99%or even 3.99%. Through an economic lens, the homebuyer is still ultimately paying for those buydowns if the headline price isnt coming down. According to AEI Housing Center, 64% of new single-family home sales in June 2025 by the 21 largest U.S. homebuilders included a permanent buydowncompared with 13% for all other new-home sales. Many large homebuilders do this because arbitrage in the bond market allows them to achieve a marginally larger reduction in a buyers monthly payment for each dollar spent on mortgage rate buydowns than for each dollar spent on outright price cuts. Here’s what Edward Pinto, senior fellow and co-director of the AEI Housing Center, wrote in a report published in November 2025: Why dont [more] builders just cut prices instead? The main reason is that permanent buydowns are far more cost-effective lowering the rate [via forward commitments for buydowns] by 100 bps costs the builder roughly 3.2% of the sale price. To achieve the same monthly payment through a direct price cut, the builder would need to cut the price by 10%. Furthermore, once a builder cuts the price on one home, buyers would expect similar discounts for the entire subdivision. But there is another factor at work. Permanent buydowns funded through bulk forward commitments are excluded from the seller concession limits, which cap how much a seller can contribute toward the borrowers closing costs. For Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seller concessions are generally limited to 3-6% and for FHA the limit is generally 6%. Over 40% of sales by large builders have a combination of seller concessions plus permanent buydown cost in excess of 6%.”
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E-Commerce
Start in a low-level position and work your way upward. Does that even apply anymore? In fact, the career ladder doesnt work for everyone anymore. Right now, as technology disrupts the work rules, there are no clear paths forward. The linear career path changed somewhere between the rise of the gig economy and the rise of artificial intelligence. Companies are restructuring. Some industries may collapse entirely in the next five years. Ive gone from studying law to studying software entrepreneurship to being a self-improvement essayist. My career is still an experiment in progress. The world of work is changing. And Im changing with it. The people who make it are not those with impressive titles, but those who are willing to adjust to the new 21st-century workplace. Thats why these ideas matter right now. I hope they help you rethink your work life. 1. Build skills, not titles If the promotion is not coming, dont dwell on it. Or obsess over the next one. Focus on what you can do to take control of your skills. The title may look great on LinkedIn, but you will want more than that. Do more for your present skills. Can you get good at other skills beyond your current expertise? Can you interpret data? Manage difficult conversations? Build better relationships with the people on your team? These skills travel with you. Titles dont. Titles change, while your values and skills evolve. You are either ahead of change or being left behind. Dont focus too much on reaching the final level of management. Stack indispensable skills you can take anywhere. That means take that weird project nobody wants. Youll learn something. Say yes to the cross-functional teameven if its more work. Learn the skill that scares you a little. You will probably be terrified in the process. But you will learn a thing or two. That new skill will open more doors than any title ever could. 2. Think in networks, not hierarchies The org chart lies to you. It tells you theres one path up. It tells you your bosss boss is more important than the engineer in another department. Or to keep your head down and wait your turn. You are better than that. Ignore it. The most valuable people I know have spider-web abilities. They know people across industries, across functions, across companies. When opportunity knocks, it usually comes through someone you helped three years ago, not through your annual review. I worked with the Microsoft small-business team a few years ago because someone saw my work on a blog. If you can help a former colleague troubleshoot something, try to find a pocket of time to help. You never know how you could cross paths again. Be curious about what others doeven when you are out for a chat. Start small. Message someone whose work you admire. Just say you admire it. Introduce two people who should know each other. Share what youre learning. Publicly. Even if it feels scary. Make yourself useful to people you respectnot just to your boss. Useful to humans doing interesting work. 3. Experiment like your career depends on it Sometimes it does. Whats risky is betting your entire future on one carefully planned path. Diversify. Its easier said than done, but do what you must within what works for you. It will become the foundation for a career you didnt even plan for. Be ready for what could happen. You could be sabotaging your work life if you are waiting for the right time or the perfect plan. Your experiments dont need to change your entire work life. Youre not quitting your job (unless you are, in which case, have fun). Youre just testing things. You could spend a few months learning something unrelated to your job after work. Youll gain skills youd never get at work. Start a personal side project with no clear return on investmentjust because it interests you. Follow your curiosities. Experiment your way into new skills. Those that fail teach you what you dont want. The ones that succeed show you possibilities. 4. Redefine what “success” means for you Ask yourself: Whose definition of career success am I pursuing? I ask myself that question all the time. I spent my twenties trying to impress people. I wanted to work for a prestigious company, and have an impressive title. I got the offer. It didnt feel right. I turned it down. Ive never looked back. Your success may not be the pursuit of a career ladder. It may be living a life that fits you. Maybe success is the flexibility to pick up your kids from school. Or working on problems that matter. Maybe its having time to train for something youve always wanted to do. Maybe its all three, in different seasons of your life. My point is, you get to decide. And you get to change your mind. Find answers to these questions: What does a good day look like for me? What am I optimizing for right now? Money? Learning? Growth? Time? What would I do if I wasn’t trying to impress anyone? Your answers will change over time. Thats fine. You are evolving. The 21st-century career right now is not linear. But you have more choices. More opportunities to find your zone of genius. The uncertainty is the opportunity. Every unexpected change in your career. Every time the path disappears. Thats where you get to choose who you become. Youre not climbing a ladder anymore. Youre exploring what could be. Thats more interesting, I think. You get to build something wider and more uniquely yours. So stack those skills. Grow your network. Run your experiments. Define success on your terms. The career you build wont look like anyone elses. Its yours now and in the future.
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E-Commerce
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