What you’ll learn (TL;DR)
- Deepfakes use AI to create realistic fake videos or audio, enabling scammers to impersonate trusted professionals.
- Scammers can create fake property listings or misleading virtual tours, tricking buyers into paying for non-existent properties.
- Pay attention to inconsistencies in virtual interactions, such as unusual backgrounds or behaviors, which may indicate a deepfake.
How Deepfakes Are Impacting Real Estate
If you’ve kept up with cybersecurity news, you’ve likely heard about deepfakes—those AI-crafted videos or audio clips that can mimic someone’s appearance or voice. While they’re often associated with entertainment or politics, deepfakes are becoming a growing concern in the real estate industry. Scammers can now, with more realism than ever, impersonate real estate agents or other professionals involved in home purchases to try and intercept payments. Scammers can also use deepfakes to create fake property listings, tricking buyers into making payments for properties that don’t exist.
Despite their cutting-edge appearance, deepfakes rely on a classic trick called social engineering—a method that’s been around since the mid-20th century. In this article, we’ll dive into how deepfakes amplify social engineering tactics and what steps you can take to protect your real estate transactions and personal security.
Deepfakes and Social Engineering
Social engineering is the manipulation of people into sharing confidential information or taking actions that benefit the scammer, often by appealing to emotions rather than attacking technology. Deepfakes take this manipulation to a whole new level by making the deception even more convincing. While deepfakes may be a newer technology, the tactics of tricking people into trusting false information have existed for ages.
The real danger lies in how realistic these deepfake scams have become, making it much harder for victims to spot the deception. Imagine a scam where a deepfake video of a well-known financial expert, someone trusted in the industry, endorses an investment opportunity. Many potential investors could be convinced to send substantial amounts of money, only to realize too late that the video was fake. Even after learning the truth, the video still seems convincing.
Deepfakes are synthetic media where a person's likeness is manipulated using advanced generative artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, making it appear as though they are saying or doing things they never did. This technology can be used maliciously to deceive homebuyers, leading to financial loss and identity theft
Understanding Deepfakes
Deepfakes are created using deep learning algorithms, which are sets of instructions followed to complete a task or solve a problem. When creating a deepfake, the goal is to replicate a person’s appearance. The process begins with data collection, where a large dataset of images or videos of the target person is gathered. This data is then used to train the AI model to understand the person's facial features, expressions, and movements. Once trained, the model can swap the target person's face onto another person's body in a video, creating a convincing deepfake.
Risks of Deepfakes in Homebuying
- Impersonation of real estate agents: Scammers can use deepfake audio or video to impersonate real estate agents or other professionals involved in the transaction. This can lead to fraudulent communications, such as fake emails, calls, or video messages that appear to be from legitimate agents, providing false information or instructions. Additionally, deepfake videos can create misleading virtual tours of properties, showing features that don’t exist or hiding defects.
- Fake listings: Cybercriminals can create listings for properties that don’t exist, tricking buyers into making deposits or payments. They can also use deepfake images or videos to make a property look more appealing than it is, leading buyers to overpay or make decisions based on false information.
- Identity theft and financial fraud: Scammers can use deepfake technology to create realistic but fraudulent identity documents to bypass verification processes. By impersonating parties involved in the transaction, scammers can intercept payments or redirect funds to their accounts.
- Manipulating legal documents: Deepfakes can be used to alter or forge legal documents, leading to fraudulent agreements. Scammers can also replicate signatures, making it difficult to detect forgeries.
Detecting Deepfakes and Preventing Deepfake Scams
Detecting deepfakes can be tough. Security companies are working hard on technology to spot them by analyzing things like blinking patterns, lip movements, reflections, shadows, skin texture, and hair. Deepfakes often fail to perfectly mimic natural blinking or lip movements, and they might show unnaturally smooth skin or odd inconsistencies in hair.
Unfortunately, these subtle clues are hard for humans to detect. Fortunately, by following key social engineering best practices, we can stay secure during the homebuying process:
- Verify identities: Always verify the identity of the person you are dealing with through multiple channels. For instance, if you receive a call from someone claiming to be a trusted contact, always follow up by reaching out directly through known, legitimate contact details (i.e., contact information from the official company website) rather than relying on information provided in the communication itself. Whenever possible, meet in person to confirm details and verify identities.
- Use trusted platforms: Conduct transactions through trusted and secure platforms. Be cautious of content from unknown or unverified sources.
- Use context: Pay attention to inconsistencies or red flags in the interaction. For example, your realtor FaceTime calls you to talk about your upcoming closing. What might be some red flags? First, your realtor has never called you via FaceTime before. Secondly, your realtor works in your hometown, where it is the middle of the day, but you notice that the background on the FaceTime video has shadows and is dark. Lastly, you notice a lot of background noise—usually your realtor calls you from her office, but it sounds like they are sitting in a crowded call center. It is very difficult to spot a deepfake, but you might be able to detect clues in the background that signal something inauthentic.
- Stay Informed: Keep up to date with the latest fraud schemes and how to detect them. Educate yourself and others about the signs of deepfakes and encourage a critical approach to consuming digital content.
Here is an advanced practical tip: Perform a reverse image search to check if the image or video has been used elsewhere on the internet. Investigate the source of the content and be cautious of content from unknown or unverified sources.
