The psychology of scams: how cybercriminals are exploiting the human brain

Last year more than £11.4 billion was stolen from people in the UK by cybercriminals. As technology becomes more sophisticated, so do the methods cybercriminals can use to commit their crimes. Our ever-growing reliance on technology in day-to-day life is constantly exposing new vulnerabilities cybercriminals can exploit, while at the same time, AI has lowered the skill barrier making it easier for even non-sophisticated criminals to launch advanced attacks.

But it’s not just weaknesses in our technology that can put us at risk of being scammed. In a world where AI tools can clone voices in minutes to generate convincing deepfakes, create fake websites or write thousands of seemingly legitimate reviews in an instant, social engineering tactics are evolving at a terrifying rate, putting even the most cautious individuals and businesses at risk. 

Scammers’ psychological playbook 

In our busy lives, we are reliant on our ...