Scammers. You’ve got to love the hard-working, conniving, devious, evil bastards. I’m going to tell you about the AI holiday photos scam and how to avoid it. Normally I would have shared this information directly to my social media feeds, but Meta won’t play nice here in Canada and let me link to legitimate news sites, so you get a post instead.

The scam itself is rather simple, especially given that scammers have already purchased, stolen or simply downloaded the personal information of almost everyone at this point.

All they do is scan for recent holiday photos on places like Instagram and Facebook, automate identifying where the pictures were taken using AI, and then send you a fake text from your bank claiming that an unauthorized charge was made to your card while you were living it up in Nova Scotia.

Quoting The Guardian:

McAfee, the producer of anti-virus software, used two freely available AI models to test more than 21,000 travel images. One of the models identified 91% of images accurately while the other got 87%. Staff were then asked to replicate the experiment with their own pictures and became uncomfortable with how easy their travels were pinpointed.

The company says that it shows that computers don’t need photos to be tagged or attached metadata to identify where they are taken.

The addition of information about where you were adds an air of legitimacy to the text message they sent, making it more likely you will interact. This credibility is even higher if you’ve been cautious about what you posted to social media and never shared your actual location, just the pictures.

To be fair, this scam has existed since before AI, and can be achieved by scanning the tags and locations posted by much less careful users. AI just makes it even easier for the scammers.

I promised a solution to the problem, and it’s simple. Don’t post your holiday snaps online, and if you absolutely have to give in to that need to have your ego stroked by strangers liking your posts, then wait a few days until after you’ve returned to do it.

You could always buy a Polaroid camera. I hear they’re making a comeback. Think of the fun you could have sitting around reminiscing while flipping through curated photo albums with your friends and family, instead of casting your photos app to your TV and praying that a photo of your penis isn’t shown to grandma.