The FTC is trying to help victims of impersonation scams get their money back

Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a caller mode to combat the impersonation scams that it says outgo radical $1.1 cardinal past twelvemonth alone. Effective today, the agency’s regularisation (PDF) “prohibits the impersonation of government, businesses, and their officials oregon agents successful interstate commerce.” The regularisation besides lets the FTC straight record national tribunal complaints to unit scammers to instrumentality wealth stolen by concern oregon authorities impersonation.

Impersonation scams are wide-ranging — creators are connected the lookout for fake podcast invites that crook into letting scammers instrumentality implicit their Facebook pages via a hidden “datasets” URL, portion Verge reporters person been impersonated by criminals trying to bargain cryptocurrency via fake Calendly gathering links.

Linus Media Group was victimized by a thief who pretended to beryllium a imaginable sponsor and managed to instrumentality implicit three of the company’s YouTube channels. Some scams tin besides beryllium precise intricate, arsenic successful The Cut fiscal columnist Charlotte Cowles’ story of however she mislaid a shoebox holding $50,000 to an elaborate scam involving a fake Amazon concern account, the FTC, and the CIA. (See also: gift card scams.)

The bureau is besides taking nationalist comment until April 30th connected changes to the rule that would let it to besides people impersonation of individuals, specified arsenic done the usage of video deepfakes oregon AI dependable cloning. That would fto it instrumentality enactment against, say, scams involving impersonations of Elon Musk connected X oregon celebrities successful YouTube ads. Others person utilized AI for much sinister fraud, specified arsenic dependable clones of loved ones claiming to beryllium kidnapped.

In announcing the last regularisation past month, the FTC illustrated the behaviour it’s targeting:

Using authorities seals oregon concern logos erstwhile communicating with consumers by message oregon online.

Spoofing authorities and concern emails and web addresses, including spoofing “.gov” email addresses oregon utilizing lookalike email addresses oregon websites that trust connected misspellings of a company’s name.

Falsely implying authorities oregon concern affiliation by utilizing presumption that are known to beryllium affiliated with a authorities bureau oregon concern (e.g., stating “I’m calling from the Clerk’s Office” to falsely connote affiliation with a tribunal of law).