WIRED Roundup: DHS Privacy Breach, AI Romances, and Google Sues Text Scammers

Zoe Schiffer: So, changing direction, our next story deals with another inescapable fact of modern life: text message scams. Brian, how many scam texts or calls do you say you receive in a given week these days?

Brian Barrett: I mean how much did you receive during this recording? It continues, and that doesn’t even include politicians, who are legitimate but annoying. No, they’re steady, Zoe. The most consistent communication in my life is from scammers.

Zoe Schiffer: Yes, the same thing. So, we really have no way of knowing for sure, but along with millions of other Americans, you may have been the target of a Chinese network of scammers called Lighthouse. Over the past few years, the group has sent millions of fraudulent text messages, often impersonating the USPS or toll collector, and is said to have made more than $1 billion from their schemes. Our colleague Matt Burgess has learned that Google filed a lawsuit this week in the US to prosecute 25 unidentified individuals allegedly working as part of this fraud network. The group’s name, Lighthouse, comes from the software they sell to help scammers scam people. It was developed by cybercriminals and sold, which really blew my mind, as a subscription service for less technically capable scammers. You can purchase a weekly, monthly, seasonal, annual, or perpetual subscription. They run a professional operation there.

Brian Barrett: Just make sure to turn off auto-renewal in case you don’t want to get that bill after your free trial.

Zoe Schiffer: Yes, you really need to make sure there is a strong ROI before you commit.

Brian Barrett: Yes. It’s great, and we’ve seen that in ransomware as well, like the ransomware service. Now you have fraud as a service. The level of professionalism in these operations shouldn’t surprise me, but it always surprises me in one way or another. Google’s filings claim that Lighthouse offers more than 600 phishing patterns that scammers can use to try to steal people’s personal information. You can choose from over 400 entities or organizations to impersonate. It’s really specific, it’s very complex, and I think what’s interesting to me here as well, Zoe, is that these lawsuits always seem so futile.