Cybersecurity Risks: Protecting Your Money in the Age of AI and Social Media
Sandra found the group on Facebook in February. It was called something like “Women Building Wealth After 50,” and the woman who ran it, a stranger named Diane who seemed warm and genuine, posted screenshots of her trading returns alongside encouraging messages about financial independence. Other members commented with their own success stories. Several said Diane had personally walked them through opening their first investment account.
Sandra is not a careless person. She is a retired teacher with a master’s degree who manages her finances carefully. After a few weeks of watching the group, she messaged Diane directly. Diane was patient and reassuring, recommending a trading platform that looked professional, complete with a working dashboard, real-time charts, and a customer support line that answered when Sandra called with questions.
By the time Sandra tried to withdraw her money, close to $34,000 had moved through the platform and out of her reach. Diane stopped responding. The group, along with every testimonial in it, vanished within days.
The Scale of the Problem
What Sandra encountered wasn’t a crude scam. It was part of a pattern the FTC has been tracking closely: in 2025, nearly 30% of people who lost money to a scam said it started on social media, with reported losses reaching $2.1 billion, an eightfold jump since 2020.
Investment scams accounted for the single largest share of that, $1.1 billion, more than half of all social media scam losses, and many follow Sandra’s path: an ad or post promising to teach you how to invest, a friendly figure who builds trust, and a private group full of believable, fabricated success stories. Her experience is increasingly common. And the platforms scammers use to find their next target are getting more sophisticated every year.
The FTC also identified a disturbing trend in fraud effectiveness. In 2023, 27% of people who reported fraud said they actually lost money. By 2024, that figure had jumped to 38%. The same volume of fraud attempts was converting at a substantially higher rate, which researchers attribute to the constantly evolving tactics of these scams. This includes AI-enabled personalization of phishing and impersonation scripts that make fraudulent communications far harder to identify.
How AI Is Being Used Against Investors
Artificial intelligence has given fraudsters capabilities that did not exist five years ago. AI can now generate personalized phishing emails that can reference identification information that makes targeting feel legitimate. In many cases, individuals may not be aware that this information is leaked; a person’s name, their investment platform, their recent transactions, and other details could all be scraped from data breaches and social media profiles, creating communications that feel authentic rather than generic.
Deepfake technology also allows scammers to create video and audio content that appears to show real individuals, including investment professionals and celebrities, endorsing fraudulent schemes.
“I have seen the fraud landscape change dramatically in the past couple of years,” says Sal Strazerra, Chief Technology Officer & CISO at David Lerner Associates
“Scams that we used to think of as obviously suspicious now come off as more reputable and professional by using AI-generated conversations, recollecting personal details, and impersonating the identities of loved ones and coworkers.”
Protecting Yourself: Practical Steps
While scams are getting harder to identify, there are still actions that can be taken to keep information more secure online.
“Never let someone you met exclusively through social media direct your investment decisions, regardless of how credible they appear or how long you have been in contact. If an investment opportunity arrived through a social media advertisement or message, treat that origin as a red flag,” says Strazzera.
Beyond that principle, several practical steps meaningfully reduce exposure to digital investment fraud.
- Use multi-factor authentication on every financial account. A stolen password provides limited access to an account protected by a second verification layer. Enable login notifications so that any access to a financial account triggers an immediate alert.
- Review account activity regularly, not just balances but individual transactions, so that unauthorized activity is caught quickly.
- Be skeptical of urgency. Legitimate financial institutions do not require immediate action through a link in an email. If a message creates time pressure around a financial decision, that pressure is almost always manufactured.
- Verify independently. If you receive communication that appears to come from your investment platform or a known contact, verify it through a channel you initiate, by calling the official number or logging in directly to the platform rather than through a provided link.
- Apply the same scrutiny to investment content that you would to any other consequential decision. The financial qualifications of a social media creator are almost never verifiable. The regulatory accountability of an influencer recommendation is essentially non-existent.
“At David Lerner Associates, the best protection we can offer our clients is a relationship. In an age when so much financial business is done online or over a screen, we’ve stayed committed to something increasingly rare: meeting our clients in person, in their homes or in our offices,” says Martin Walcoe, CEO and President of David Lerner Associates.
“Over the years, we come to know their voices as well as they know ours. That familiarity is something a scammer can’t fake, and it’s why our clients feel comfortable picking up the phone and asking us before they act on anything that seems off.”
Sandra now uses a separate email address for every financial platform she accesses, has enabled multi-factor authentication across all accounts, and no longer clicks links in financial emails, regardless of how legitimate they appear.
What she lost cannot be recovered. What she learned is available to anyone who does not want to learn it the same way she did.
Material contained in this article is provided for information purposes only. It is not intended to be used in connection with the evaluation of any investments offered by David Lerner Associates, Inc. This material does not constitute an offer or recommendation to buy or sell securities and should not be considered in connection with the purchase or sale of securities. These materials are provided for general information and educational purposes, based on publicly available information from sources believed to be reliable. We cannot assure the accuracy or completeness of these materials. The information in these materials may change at any time and without notice. The subject of this article is fictitious and created for illustrative purposes only. It is based on events of a similar nature and should not be interpreted as a direct depiction of any specific individual, organization, or incident. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or actual events is purely coincidental.