From Edie: Learn how to use AI to spot online scams, identify common red flags, analyze suspicious messages, and verify information before you click or respond.
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How to Use AI to Stay Safe Online (Part 1): Detect Scams Before You Click
by Edie Melson @EdieMelson
I’ve been online for a long time.
I remember when social media felt a lot like walking into a room filled with people we knew—or at least people who knew people we knew. Yes, there were problems, but most of us didn’t approach every friend request, email, direct message, or interesting post wondering whether someone was trying to steal our identity.
Those days are gone.
Scams have become more sophisticated, and artificial intelligence has made some of them even harder to recognize. Messages are better written. Images are more convincing. Fake accounts look more legitimate. And scammers have gotten very good at pushing the emotional buttons that make us react before we stop and think.
But there’s another side to AI.
The same technology that makes some scams harder to recognize can also help us recognize them.
I’ve begun thinking about AI as another tool in my online safety toolbox. Notice I said tool. AI isn’t a lie detector.
AI Is a Safety Tool—Not a Lie Detector
This distinction is critical for all of us to remember. We can use AI to help us:
- Spot red flags we may have missed.
- Analyze suspicious messages.
- Explain why something feels off.
- Suggest safer next steps.
But AI can’t guarantee something we see or read is legitimate. Artificial Intelligence should never replace common sense, and this tool certainly cannot tell us whether or not a stranger on the Internet is trustworthy.
That means I don’t blindly trust AI any more than I do the person who just sent us a Facebook message claiming I’ve won a new car—and you shouldn’t either.
Instead, I want us to use AI to help me slow down and investigate. And that brings me to one of the simplest online safety habits I’ve adopted.
Before You Click—Ask
Scammers depend on our reactions. They want us to click before we investigate. They want us to panic before we think. They want us to answer before we verify. AI gives us a place to stop between receiving something and reacting to it.
For example, instead of clicking the link in a suspicious Facebook message, we can take a screenshot and ask AI:
“Is this Facebook message likely to be a scam? Explain the red flags you see.”
If we receive a strange text message, we can copy the text—without including sensitive personal information—and ask:
“Analyze this text message. Does it contain common signs of a scam?”
For an email, we might ask:
“What red flags do you see in this email?”
Or even:
“What information should I never provide in response to this message?”
These are simple questions, but they force us to do something scammers desperately don’t want us to do.
The common denominator in all of these? STOP. Yep, that tiny interruption can make a huge difference.
Common Scams AI Can Help Us Evaluate
Unfortunately, there isn’t just one kind of scam we need to recognize. There are truly too many to mention here and the list just keeps changing and growing.
Some of the common ones we may encounter include:
- Fake Facebook friend requests
- Romance scams
- Giveaway scams
- Fake copyright violation notices
- Phishing emails
- Fake customer support accounts
- Marketplace scams
- Fake charities
- Employment scams
- Cryptocurrency investment scams
I want to call special attention to fake copyright violation notices.
Those of us who are writers, photographers, bloggers, speakers, and other content creators are particularly vulnerable to this one because copyright matters to us. Imagine receiving a message that says someone has filed a copyright complaint against your Facebook page and unless you respond immediately, your page will be removed. And this has happened to me—more than once.
When we read this accusation, our heart rate goes up. We’ve worked years building that platform. We don't want to lose it. And that emotional reaction is exactly what the scammer is counting on.
Five Red Flags AI Is Good at Spotting
While scams vary, many of them use the same psychological tricks. AI can be particularly useful for identifying five common warning signs:
1. Urgency
“Respond within 24 hours.”
“Your account will be permanently deleted.”
“This offer expires in 15 minutes.”
Scammers don't want to give us time to investigate.
2. Fear
Fear shuts down our ability to think clearly.
Your account has been compromised.
You owe money.
Someone you love is in trouble.
Your computer has a virus.
Your page is about to disappear.
The exact threat changes, but the goal is the same: make us afraid enough to react.
3. Secrecy
Any time someone tells us not to tell anyone else what is happening, alarms should begin going off.
Scammers often isolate their victims because another person may immediately recognize the scam.
4. Odd Requests
Buy gift cards.
Move the conversation to another platform.
Send money in an unusual way.
Provide a verification code.
Give someone remote access to your computer.
One strange request doesn't automatically mean something is a scam, but it should be enough to make us stop and investigate.
5. Fake Links
This is one of the biggest.
A link may look legitimate while actually taking us somewhere entirely different. The presentation highlights urgency, fear, secrecy, odd requests, and fake links as recurring warning signs.
And here's an important rule I've adopted:
If a message tells me there is a problem with one of my accounts, I don't use the link in the message to investigate it.
I open a new browser window or the company's official app and go to the account myself.
Five AI Prompts We Should All Know
One reason people sometimes hesitate to use AI for something like this is because they don't know what to ask.
Our requests to AI don't need to be complicated.
Here are five prompts worth keeping somewhere handy:
- Analyze this message for signs of a scam.
- Is this website likely legitimate?
- Does this Facebook message look suspicious?
- What questions should I ask before responding?
- What information should I never provide?
In addition to these, I ALWAYS give AI a role to guide the answers I receive.
For example:
“Act as a consumer fraud expert. Analyze this message for signs that it could be a scam. List the warning signs you find, explain why each concerns you, and tell me how I can independently verify whether the message is legitimate.”
That last part is important. I don't just want AI to tell me what it thinks. I want AI to help me verify.
AI Should Make Us More Careful, Not Less
This is the piece I don't want us to miss. Using AI to analyze scams doesn't mean we hand over our judgment to technology. It's exactly the opposite. We're using technology to give ourselves another set of eyes. If something makes us uncomfortable, we don't have to decide immediately whether we're overreacting.
We can investigate.
If a message scares us, we don't have to respond while we're afraid.
We can investigate.
If an opportunity sounds amazing but something about it feels wrong, we don't have to choose between walking away and blindly trusting it.
We can investigate.
That is one of the greatest advantages AI gives us.
It gives us another way to ask questions before we act.
And when it comes to staying safe online, asking one more question is almost never a bad idea.
In Part 2 (tomorrow), we're going to look at some additional ways we can use AI to investigate what we see online—including images and viral posts. I'll also share my Three Question Rule for responding online and, most importantly, the information we should NEVER put into an AI program.
Now it's your turn. What online scam are you seeing most often right now? Have you ever used AI to help determine whether something was legitimate? Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
Don’t forget to join the conversation!
Blessings,
Edie
TWEETABLE
She and husband Kirk have been married 44+ years with three grown sons and four grandchildren. They live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and can often be found with their big black dog hiking the mountains. Connect with her at www.EdieMelson.com and through social media.
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