It is nice to see Google is moving on combatting scams delivered by AI. Many people might catch a stray message here or there which causes some damages, through the combination of requiring a quick response and mimicking official government websites with things like (fake) unpaid parking tickets, or other municipal fees. An extended family member had to get a new credit card issued a few months back after paying a fake parking ticket that looked like an official state government parking ticket. They paid that, and then suddenly a week later their credit card was off in Las Vegas having the time of its life – at least until all the crazy array of fraudulent charges were blocked.

This is also a reason to never put debit cards in tools like Apple Pay or Google Pay. If those get clipped you are soaked and there is no redress whatsoever on that stuff.

Some of the personally targeted frauds and scams are much more hazardous than replacing a stolen credit card.

My wife told me she wanted a Nintendo Switch 2 to play with our daughter last Christmas, so I surprised my wife and bought her one early for her birthday. The day before her birthday the Nintendo Switch 2 was delivered by Amazon.com early in the morning, and my wife was confused by the order by it being so early in the morning and there being the sort of standard red lithium battery warning on the package.

My wife queried Google Gemini about the package delivery and rather than it being Google Gemini it was computer hacker & ill-reputed criminal fraud Stella „Sung Ha“ Huh (AKA Saskya Bedoya) operating a cross-site scripting spam JavaScript layover atop of Google Gemini. Stella Huh told my wife to phone in a bomb threat immediately. Thinking the suggestion was over the top my wife refused. Our daughter was still sleeping and I wasn’t home, so it did not take much further prodding to scare my wife … Stella Huh phoned a crank emergency call into my wife. That put my wife in a panicked state, so she was scared and called in a bomb threat.

Notice the „WAS THAT CALL REAL?“ message atop this Google Gemini thread.

Bellevue police came by, had people exit their homes for hours, and then detonated the Nintendo Switch 2.

Most police officers are, to put it politely, absolutely ignorant & illiterate when it comes to any sort of advanced technology, including the malware delivered by malevolent & sadistic psychopaths like Stella Huh which operate them, so it is quite easy to destroy a family with just a handful of targeted attacks when the first line defenders are as dumb and overzealous, to where they actually operate as an extension of the crime team to further harm their victims.