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00:00:01
You Can't Fight What You Don't Measure, A conversation with Ken Westbrook, Founder and CEO of Stop Scams Alliance
134 Plays2 days ago
What if one of the biggest reasons we’re struggling to fight scams is that we don’t fully understand the scale of the problem?
In this episode of Scam Rangers, Ayelet Biger-Levin welcomes back Ken Westbrook, founder of Stop Scams Alliance and former CIA analyst, to discuss why scams should be treated as a national security threat, and why doing that starts with better data.
Ken shares the story behind Stop Scams Alliance’s collaboration with Gallup and what the new research reveals about scam victimization in America. The findings paint a troubling picture: roughly one in four Americans report having been scammed, nearly three-quarters of victims say the experience negatively affected their mental health or well-being, and 98% of U.S. adults believe scams pose a threat.
The conversation goes beyond the numbers to explore what needs to happen next: the role financial institutions can play in scam intelligence and reporting, how technology and AI can strengthen defenses, the need for greater public-private collaboration, and what it would actually mean to treat scams as a national security priority.
In this episode:
- Why traditional reporting doesn’t capture the true scale of scams
- What the Gallup research reveals about victims and the impact of scams
- Why financial institutions could play a larger role in scam intelligence
- How AI is changing both scam attacks and defenses
- Why stronger collaboration across government and industry is critical
- Why we need consistent measurement to know whether we’re actually making progress
Link to the Gallup survey: https://www.gallup.com/analytics/711827/scams-in-america.aspx
About Ken Westbrook
Ken Westbrook is the founder of Stop Scams Alliance, a nonprofit bringing together stakeholders across the scam ecosystem to improve how the U.S. prevents and responds to scams. Before founding the organization, Ken spent 33 years at the CIA as an analyst — experience that now shapes his approach to understanding and combating scams as an organized, evolving threat.
Stop scams Alliance: https://www.stopscamsalliance.org/
About the Host
Ayelet Biger-Levin is the founder and CEO of RangersAI and host of the Scam Rangers podcast. A fraud and cybersecurity expert with more than 20 years of experience, she has held leadership roles at companies including IBM, RSA Security and BioCatch.
Through Scam Rangers, Ayelet brings together experts from financial services, technology, behavioral science, law enforcement and policy to explore how scams work, why people fall victim, and what we can do to build greater scam resilience.
www.rangersai.com
Follow Ayelet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayelet-biger-levin/
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Transcript
Scams as National Security Threats
00:00:02
Speaker
But if it's a true national security threat, and I'm aware of how to do national security threats, having spent some time in this business, there's some features of that. Like number one, I'm not aware of a national security threat that does not have a coordinator at the White House level.
00:00:16
Speaker
Well, guess what? Scams do not have a coordinator at the White House level. I'm not aware of a national security threat that has no appropriation from Congress. Scams has no appropriation from Congress. We're just not yet organized to fight the organized crime gangs that are attacking us.
Introduction of Guests and Stop Scams Alliance
00:00:32
Speaker
Today, ScamRanger is a returning guest to ScamRangers podcast and has really, over the last few years, been very, very active in the scam prevention space. I'm very excited to host Ken Westbrook, founder of Stop Scams Alliance, and you'll tell us all about it. Ken will share a little bit about his background with the audience because I think that your background in the intelligence community is extremely important in the way you navigate your activity in the space.
00:01:06
Speaker
Welcome to Scam Rangers, a podcast about the human side of fraud and the people who are on a mission to protect us. I'm your host, Ayelet Bigger Levine, and I'm passionate about driving awareness and solving this problem.
Founding of Stop Scams Alliance
00:01:26
Speaker
So welcome. Great to have you. Ayla, it's always a pleasure to be with you, believe me. seven Great. We actually saw each other last week and we'll talk a lot about that. That's a main point today for the Gallup survey launch. And I did want to go back, though, and maybe briefly, if you can remind our listeners or to them the new listeners, how you started, why you started Stop Scams Alliance and what your goals are. Well, I started Stop Scams Alliance because, frankly, an incident that happened to my mom on Valentine's Day 2023, she ah got a pop-up on her computer that said her computer had been hacked and she needed to call Microsoft Support. And when she did, she was in the hands of transnational criminals who ended up stealing most of her life savings.
00:02:14
Speaker
And when I ah learned about this incident, ah first of all, after taking care of mom, ah one of the things I did was to go on podcasts to learn more about this. And one of the podcasts I ran into was yours um in the summer of 2023. And I just became aware that that this is a ah real phenomenon that deserves attention. i had I was retired from the government at the time. I spent 33 years at the CIA as an analyst, and I'm i'm used to um ah analyzing national security threats. And I came to believe that what happened to my mom was actually a national security threat that's happening to millions and millions of people in the United States, and we needed to do something about it.
00:02:56
Speaker
So one of my first things, ah in the intelligence community, when you're under attack and you need to measure national security threats, you want to measure it in a number of ways. You measure it, you have sonar, you have radar, you have all the tools at your disposal to measure these things properly.
Alliance's Mission and Inspiration
00:03:13
Speaker
But I looked into how we were measuring scams and I learned to my chagrin or my horror that we were not doing a very good job of measuring it. Okay, so you started a nonprofit, Stop Scams Alliance. Tell me about the word alliance and the name Stop Scams Alliance. Well, so the idea here is ah to create an alliance of the various parts of the scam ecosystem, which spans tech companies, social media, telecommunications companies, financial institutions, consumer groups in the government. There's a large group of people who need to come together to fight this systematically.
00:03:50
Speaker
So I admired very much the work of a group in the UK called Stop Scams UK, and they created an alliance of the ecosystem. And I figured, first of all, I looked around to see whether anything existed here in the US like that and and couldn't find one. So that's why in 2023, we established a nonprofit that has as its goal to bring together the the scam ecosystem.
00:04:13
Speaker
And so why is it important to have a U.S.-based organization focused on this versus like ah an international one? Well, I think it's important to have both. um I admire very much the work of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, which is an international group, Stop Scams UK, which is UK-focused. But in the in each country, there are unique
Need for U.S.-Focused Scam Organization
00:04:34
Speaker
jurisdictional regulatory circumstances. So GASA, the the Global Anti-Scan Alliance, is not likely to get involved in particularly regular regulations in a particular country like the United States since they're they're global in focus. And so that's why we we felt that ah a U.S.-based organization was necessary.
00:04:55
Speaker
A hundred percent, Erin, and and the the regulatory landscape and the impact on that. And if we don't, you know, take action first here and then, you know, then share globally, I think it's going to be much harder. So what have you learned over the last two years and what what was your focus?
00:05:11
Speaker
What have we learned? Boy, i learned a lot. I've met a whole lot of people, a lot of people who are very earnest in their desire to stop this scourge. Nobody likes scammers and everybody wants to stop them. But what I've learned too is that everybody has different ideas about how to do it. Driven in part, I think, because different people bring different experiences, a different lens, and a different view of how scams even happen. It's, you know, it's it really interesting to start to dive into when you meet people, well how do you think scams occur most often? And and ah the the answers are kind of all over the map, frankly. That's one one of the reasons why I think proper measurement is important to this issue.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah. So let's get to that. So you started to talk about the fact that you didn't, you you're used to using data and you haven't seen data.
Limitations of FTC and FBI Data
00:05:59
Speaker
So there is data out there, right? The FTC and FBI, the IC3 report, there are reports to talk about scams in depth. And those reports are used to make decisions and taking action on the scam. So why did you feel like we need another report, another survey? Well, so what you're referring to are the FTC and the FBI, both of which accept reports from victims who self-select to report to the government that they've been scanned.
00:06:29
Speaker
ah But the the FBI and the FTC would be the first to say that that's just a ah very small fraction of the total. ah In all of their reports, they say that these scams are significantly underreported, but they really don't know by how much. The FTC has ah had a has had a guess, but the FBI won't even ah take a stab at how much is underreported. They just say it's underreported. One way to think about this is how do we measure other crimes in the United States?
00:06:56
Speaker
let's say car theft or let's say robbery or vandalism, the way that we measure it is two ways. We do it via victim reports that go to the police and then the police roll those up into a national database. That's one way we do it. The other way we do it is through a survey because we recognize as a country that everybody's not going to report to their local police And so every year, the Census Bureau does what's called the National Crime and Victimization Survey, which is a very large survey of households in the United States. And there, that's used to determine the the real crime prevalence married with the the victim reports that go through the through the police system. So we've always believed as a country for decades that we need to measure crime in two ways to get an accurate measurement. But when it comes to scams, we don't do either.
00:07:43
Speaker
We do. If a police report is taken, it is there is a police report taken. But my understanding, it goes into an other category in the in the police report. So in other words, a car theft, there's a particular category of car theft.
00:07:57
Speaker
A robbery has a particular category of robbery. But if you if you report a scam, it goes into the other category and therefore can't be rolled up. And then on the ah the national survey side, to get around the underreporting that comes through the police channels, the Census Bureau has not done a survey of fraud since 2017. They did one in After that,
00:08:19
Speaker
they they haven't done one Meanwhile, in the yeah UK and Australia, the governments do annual surveys of their population. So they have many, many years, decades worth of data. And in the US, we just don't have that data. We all we do have, as you referred to, is the victim reports, which is a tiny soda straw of the real story.
00:08:36
Speaker
So I'm assuming that your goal is to convince authorities to include scams into the census reports. But until that happens, we probably need data to show them that it's required. So it's kind of a catch-22 here.
00:08:51
Speaker
So a few years ago, you managed to
Revealing Scam Victimization Rates through Surveys
00:08:53
Speaker
get one question, right, into a report, and that drove the evolution of what is your like your latest collaboration with Gallup. So can you tell us a little bit about that, the background, and then how how this latest survey evolved? Yeah, when my mom was scammed in the spring of 2023, one of my first instincts was to learn. of the reasons I wanted to learn about this was to comfort my own mom to tell her how many people this was happening to. But there weren't very good statistics out there. So I happened to know the chairman of our board knew the people at Gallup very well. So she introduced me to Gallup, which is amazing.
00:09:28
Speaker
ah one of our foremost polling companies in the United States. And um I convinced them, they've been doing surveys on crime for many decades, actually. But I convinced them that if you ask a person, are you the victim of theft, and they were a scam victim, they would say no to the question about being a victim of theft, because scam victims don't perceive it that way. They perceive that they gave their money away instead of being of a theft people think of someone taking money out of your pocket and that's not what happened in a scam exactly so it now it is actually a theft but people tend not to think of it that way is what i told gallup and so with that um with that advice they put a question about scams into their crime survey for the first time in october 2023 and that's where the first time that we learned what the the true victimization rates were Because up to that point, it just even Gallup wasn't measuring it properly. So then that's what led to, and that was just one question, and it was sort of it was groundbreaking at the time. But we of course, I thought we needed to learn more about that and do a deep dive.
00:10:39
Speaker
And that's when we started to raise the funds to do another larger
Industry Coalition and Survey Findings
00:10:43
Speaker
survey. And um in order to raise the funds, you know, thinking about what you stated earlier about Stop Scams Alliance, bringing the industry together. telcos, social media, and nonprofits, different organizations in this space. How was their response and reaction to your desire to do this?
00:11:00
Speaker
Well, it varied. I think some some companies were nervous about it because they didn't know what would come of it. But we ended up getting 12 companies to come together in a coalition that spanned social media companies. We have two of them in in ah in our donor set.
00:11:14
Speaker
ah Telecom, we had two telecom companies. Financial institutions, we had, I think, three financial institutions and trade groups that that represent financial institutions. And also some threat intelligence companies. These are companies that that gather information about fraudulent websites and and fraudulent banking activities. And they have an interest in this, too. So we ended up getting 12 companies to step up to the plate to to find a new Gallup survey. And then to work with Gallup to make sure the the questions were correct, because when it comes to surveys, it's really, it matters a lot how you ask the question and how you interpret the results. So we had the help of these 12 companies in doing that.
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that is so critical when you run research to, you know, have on one hand the experts in research who really know how to do this well. And then on the other hand, the experts in the industry who really know know what the questions are, the burning questions in the industry.
00:12:14
Speaker
So let's talk a little bit about the survey results. What surprised you in the findings? Well, one thing that that surprised me, I think, is ah remember we we were talking about the FBI and the FTC reporting systems. And so that was my frame of reference, what the data that we had from the FBI and the FTC. And I knew from the FTC especially that they believed that people who lose more money are more likely to report. So there was ah there's a selection bias in the in the data that the government releases from the FTC and the FBI. But when we when we did the Gallup survey, which was ah did not serve from selection bias because it was a representative sample, I was surprised at the effects of that. For example, what happens, I think, in the FBI and the FTC reporting is that the very large um scams like investment scams get reported very often to the FBI and the FTC. But what
00:13:11
Speaker
if you If you survey all of America, what you find is that there's a lot more than I believe or understood of scams that are just $100 or $200 here and there. And those add up when you when you think about Most of those are not reported to the government.
00:13:28
Speaker
So the government doesn't see very much of those small scales because what they see is are the very large dollar losses that tend to be reported to them more often. Yeah, the long tail is extremely long um of of the smaller scams and impacts a lot of people. And from a psychological perspective, one of the things that we know now about scam victims, and you know we we know a lot, we are some of them, um is that no matter the size, there's always a psychological impact that is long lasting. In extreme cases, it it can, well, not not so extreme, but in in some cases it can lead to PTSD. But I think even loss of $100 is something that you always beat yourself up on. Like, how could this happen to me? How could have been you know so reckless? and And that does have impact. So let's talk a little bit about that. What from the survey emerged on you know the emotional well-being of individuals and the trust in general in communications?
00:14:27
Speaker
Well, first of all, you're absolutely right. I
Mental Health Impacts of Scams
00:14:29
Speaker
saw this in my own mom when she was a scam victim. She just couldn't let it go. You know, my brothers and I would tell her it wasn't her fault. We would tell her that it happens a lot of people, but she just wouldn't let it go. And like so I saw that personally in my own family situation.
00:14:47
Speaker
When you look at the Gallup results, they verify this. They ended up saying that that nearly three quarters of individuals who say that they've experienced a scam say that it had a negative impact on their mental health or or well-being. And you if you compare, if you combine that with Gallup's finding that ah a quarter of Americans now have been scammed, so that's some 65 million people. And then three quarters of them are reporting significant mental health impacts. That's pretty remarkable finding of how many people are affected by this. And then also, as you mentioned, the lack of trust. I saw that in my own mom. She didn't trust her computer anymore.
00:15:27
Speaker
She was really reluctant. She was always on guard and wary ah about ah ah banking online and all that kind of thing. But after the scam, she just became more and more of a reckless.
00:15:39
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just thinking how scary that is when, you know, I see and I had a conversation with one of the financial institutions in the room. We know that many financial institutions want to go digital and close their branches and go, you know, more and more online. But I do see, and that's what I heard, an opposite trend here because of this situation. financial institutions understand that maybe it's not the right move. Maybe we need to be more in the community and talk to people face-to-face because trust is a huge deal if you want to keep business going.
00:16:12
Speaker
And that's something that definitely the Gallup survey were revealed and Speaking of financial institutions, one of the interesting, um not surprising, but interesting points was ah the reach out to financial
Bank's Role and Protocols
00:16:24
Speaker
institutions. People who do report, mostly report to financial institutions first. That's their first, ah or the first line of defense in this scenario is is really the the financial institution. So what are some thoughts that you had around that and and but and the role of financial institutions and and being the first responders? Well, I think that banks and financial institutions in the U.S. should give some thought to, if they're interested in combating scams, which I believe they are, then I think that they need to be a part of the intelligence gathering system. Since we learned that most people report to their bank, very few people report to the federal government. i mean, I'm talking about, we found that about 7% of people reported the FBI, about 10% of people reported the FTC. And now while we might be able to- Of the people who report? Of the people who report, 7% FBI,
00:17:20
Speaker
ten percent ftc And now you might think I hear a lot of people say, well, that's because they're ashamed to report. And if we just reduce victim shaming, we'll get more reporting. And that's true to some extent. But the real reason people don't report is they don't think it'll do any good. We've found. They're not wrong for them. And other surveys too, by the way. And I look too at the reporting rates in the in the UK. They have really tried hard. They've created a centralized reporting system. They have other mechanisms in place to really try to get people report. But the the government there says it's no more than about 15%. So even if we put a real hard press on reporting, I don't think we're going to be able to increase it that much through the federal government mechanisms. Meanwhile, most two-thirds of people report to the banks. So what if we were to use that mechanism to collect more data and get it to the federal government for action? So that's something that um actually in the UK, they've had a banking protocol in place since 2018. If someone walks into a bank, says they're a victim of a scam, the teller is instructed after a certain point to bring in the police. The police then put that a police report together and get it into their reporting system. So in the UK, they're trying to harvest the fact that people walk into the bank or call a bank and say that they're a scam victim. Yeah. And so what's happening here? um I'm talking to some banks about doing a pilot about doing that. And um I am getting a friendly hearing, but ah we're we're working on it. Let's just say that. So I want to switch to talk about how you're taking this data further from here and what what you're looking to do with it. I know that you've you've also been involved in suggesting policy um or or providing recommendations, first as part of the Aspen Institute ah Policy Task Force for for scams, um but also just generally you're you're very involved connected and and and looking to promote this topic with
Influencing Government Policy with Data
00:19:20
Speaker
the government. So tell us a little bit about that type of activity and and how this data helps you support action in this. Well, a couple things here. you Remember, I served for 33 years in the federal government, so I do have contacts there. and one of our the purposes is to help the government understand the true harm of scams so that they can make better policy decisions themselves. For example, at the at the launch event that you attended, we had people in the audience from ah the Secret Service, from the FTC, from the State Department, and other organizations. And after that, I've been in contact with them to share the data with them. I want the government to understand these data because it's better than the data that they have themselves. And they need to um incorporate that into their ah policy process as they advise their their bosses. there One of the things that's going on now is the government is in the process of responding to a presidential executive order that was issued on the 6th of March. It asks four agencies of the government to come up with a plan for combating combating transnational cyber criminals. And one of the data points for this is the harm that's now occurring in the U.S. And that's going to be informed by the Gallup survey information. So that's one thing is just better information for the federal government. Another more um significant point, perhaps, is on the same
Supporting FCC Rulemaking with Data
00:20:40
Speaker
day that the Gallup survey ah data were released, we issued an ex parte presentation with the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, because they're in the process of a rulemaking process that would raise standards for caller ID to make caller ID more difficult to spoof.
00:20:56
Speaker
And the FCC makes judgments on the basis of cost benefit. they're They're getting a lot of advice from the telecom industry about the cost of this, but they're getting very few ah data points about the potential benefits, which are measured by the harm that's now occurring ah in the telecommunications system. So we provided to the FCC a the the Gallup survey information, which shows that ah telecom, both phone and text is one of the favorite methods that scammers use to contact victims. So i hope that that data will be a part of the FCC's decision-making process.
00:21:35
Speaker
Before we get back to the conversation, I wanted to share something we believe deeply at Ranger's AI. The future of fraud prevention isn't just about detecting suspicious transactions. It's about giving people the confidence to make safer decisions before money moves.
00:21:49
Speaker
Every day, customers receive texts, emails, phone calls, and messages that look legitimate. By the time the transaction reaches the bank, the customer may already have been manipulated.
00:22:00
Speaker
And that's why we built ScamRanger. ScamRanger helps people evaluate digital communications in real time, understand the warning signs of scams, and know what to do next. It empowers customers to make important decisions while giving financial institutions another layer of insight and protection. Because the strongest defense against scams isn't just better technology, it's building scam resilience one decision at a time.
00:22:23
Speaker
Now, let's get back into the conversation.
00:22:29
Speaker
One of the things that you've been really, really involved in is, as I mentioned earlier, the Aspen Institute Task Force. you I think for a while you've been thinking about this problem and what should be done um you know on a public and private sector level.
Tech Companies' Role in Scam Prevention
00:22:44
Speaker
And you contributed a lot to the thought process there. You've been involved. And now we're a year almost. and They launched their policy national strategy recommendations in the fall last year. We're a year after. What are your observations about what is happening, what has changed? um It's going to take time. We have a lot of forces moving together, but are we moving? What what are your thoughts ah on on the progress that's been made? Well, ah the the places where I'm most optimistic and see the the most movement ah to me the In the technology sector, I see a lot of movement to use artificial intelligence to protect us. You know, everyone here on the podcast knows that the criminals are using AI to attack us. They're doing that through deep fakes and ah using AI to create the perfect phishing email. emails and and to increase the volume of their attacks and to decrease the the cost to them of doing the attacks well. So the U.S. has the best AI in the world. And if we put our minds to it, our AI is better than a their AI. So there are signs that Google, Microsoft, and more recently Apple
00:23:58
Speaker
are using AI at the device level or at the browser level to detect the the patterns of scams that are occurring and then to warn the victims or or even block a communication if if that's necessary. And I think that those are really key things and so I really applaud those efforts. and Those are those I know Google started doing that about a year ago. Apple just released their own version of this about last week.
00:24:23
Speaker
ah Microsoft also is starting, they say, to ah block a tech support. The tick tech support scam was the one that got my mom. She was using a Microsoft operating system when that happened. And Microsoft, starting some months ago, ah started to use AI to detect the signs of a tech support scam at the browser level. So all those are are very very um you know useful kinds of tools, I think, in our in our disposal.
00:24:47
Speaker
and So I think that one one of the things that I really liked about the Aspen recommendations, it it kind of was divided into three. um One, so there was public sector, private sector. On the private sector side, there was all the things that you can do to collaborate and share data. But also the first what thing was you know think about what you can do internally. What can you change within your processes to combat scams? And all of the examples that you gave here are companies looking inward and saying, okay, what can we do on our own to improve this and and to make things better? So kudos to all these companies, to the tech ah providers. And there's a lot more to do
00:25:27
Speaker
And then from a collaboration standpoint, kind of as an observer in the industry, um i know where we've been talking about it for a long time.
Industry Collaboration and Information Sharing
00:25:36
Speaker
Do you see any material advancements in in collaboration and then also on the public sector side.
00:25:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's there's both collaboration and information sharing. And so on collaboration, there's more and more conferences all the time. the Global Anti-Scan Alliance gets kudos there for convening people, oh goodness, every few months to have the industries come together and talk. All that's very useful stuff.
00:26:01
Speaker
There's more hearings on Capitol Hill now than there used to be. i i used to say that back in 2023, when my mom was scammed, there were more hearings on UFOs than there were on scams. And now that's completely reversed. The Congress is meeting all the time and calling in industry experts. So there's more and more talk about it.
00:26:18
Speaker
to be sure. And there there are some indications that despite the legal difficulties, there's more information sharing occurring too. This is especially true with um with websites and and the global signal exchange that's been established. And then ah Meta has its own thing that's called FIRE, F-I-R-E. It's an information exchange system. And I know that there's a a lot of talk going on about about increasing information sharing too. So that's all encouraging, but not enough yet. That's that's the the point is that these these are we're just in kind of the early stages of doing this. And um we we just need to all to increase the velocity. And if we don't, when you look at the FBI data, the one thing the FBI data is good for in the FTC data is judging a velocity year over year because they've been doing this. their
00:27:08
Speaker
um victim reporting for some time now. And with they're both reporting 30% year-over-year increases in the losses that are being reported. And that's just not sustainable. If you fast forward a few years, everybody in United States will be a scam victim at that point. And we just we don't want to have that kind of society. We need to raise our defenses faster than that.
00:27:28
Speaker
Right, and I think that's definitely one of the challenges that we are slowly making progress. And you know if you want to move fast, move alone. If you want to move far, move together. But the pace needs to pick up because we are behind. And think one of the challenges is going to be, think we've proven as a scam-fighting community that this is a problem. This is a problem that we need attention to. Now it's become, let's say, quote unquote, board boardroom conversations in the in the public sector as well. But we need to move faster. So any thoughts on how we can do that? Well, so that's that's one of the reasons that I think that data
Importance of Data in Fighting Scams
00:28:10
Speaker
are important. We're in a situation as a society where we are under attack by transnational criminal organizations who are ramping up their attacks. We have to think of this as we are going to be at war with these guys, with these criminals for decades to come. and they're going to be increasing their attacks and we're going to be trying to defend and we're going to have to to raise our defenses as a as a society to combat this this ah scourge the one of the findings from the gallup survey by the way says that virtually all adults 98 of us adults say that scams pose a threat to individuals in the u.s okay So we're going to need to spend money on defenses because defenses are not free.
00:28:50
Speaker
And what when you have a distributed system between government and ah private sector, and then the private sector itself is divided between telecom and social media and banks, there's going to be a lot of arguments about who pays the bill.
00:29:04
Speaker
And are we making progress? So to me, the answer to this is data. In order to have a year-over-year data that everybody can everybody can measure whether we're making progress or not, we can measure whether this intervention makes a difference or that intervention makes a difference. Otherwise, we're flying blind and we're wasting money.
00:29:24
Speaker
To me, it's very much a resource um effectiveness issue. And that's why we need data to to inform our public debate going forward.
00:29:34
Speaker
so I'm hearing you and I'm saying to myself, I don't think we're treating this as a national threat yet. No, we're not. We we are starting to say the words, which is the first step. You know, two years ago, we weren't even saying those words. I was in op-eds and people were looking at me like I was crazy. But more recently, in the last year, the Aspen Institute says it's a national security threat. Google has a blog that says it's a national security threat. Microsoft says the same thing. There's over, let's see, 40 companies signed a letter that the Aspen Institute put together that labels this a national security threat, and they sent that letter to Congress. When you listen to congressional hearings, they're increasingly saying that this is national security threat. So that's the first step is to say the words. But if it's a true national security threat, and I'm aware of how to do national security threats, having spent some time in this business, there's some features of that. like Number one, I'm not aware of a national security threat that does not have a coordinator at the White House level.
00:30:31
Speaker
Well, guess what? Scams do not have a coordinator at the White House level. I'm not aware of a national security threat that has no appropriation from Congress. Scams has no appropriation from Congress. I'm tracking now over 40 bills in Congress, and there's not a dollar in any of them.
00:30:45
Speaker
Exactly. That that was you know missing to the money. Where is the money to fight this? right So we don't have either the organization from an organizational standpoint or from a budget standpoint. We're just not yet organized to fight the organized crime gangs that are attacking us. The the organ the criminals are themselves organized. They collaborate. In fact, Interpol has a study in March where they project a sharp escalation in scam activity worldwide, in part driven by AI and in part driven by the increased collaboration that they're seeing on the part of the criminals. So that's why if we don't start to collaborate as as a government and between the government and the private sector and then within the private sector, ah the bad guys are going to eat our lunch because they're organized and we're not. Continue to eat our lunch. Yeah. Wow.
Future Survey Plans and International Cooperation
00:31:31
Speaker
So, Ken, what's next for a Stop Scams Alliance? Where are you going from here?
00:31:35
Speaker
um Well, one thing is we've already started to enter into discussions about whether a a new survey would be useful for next year. For one thing, that would give us start to give us trend information. So you'd have two data points and then three and then four so that we can measure whether we're making progress or not in the fight against scams and and also to measure how scams are changing over the course of time.
00:31:59
Speaker
um And we can also, with a larger survey, do a deeper dive into how scams occur. This was already, I think, the deepest dive that's ever been done. But you know when you start, when you put your head to it, there's there's additional ah details that we can know about how scams occur and over what platforms they occur and the chronology of them and in order to get the best data that we can to raise defenses appropriately. So there's we've already started discussions about whether a new survey would be useful. Also, there's people we didn't survey the first time around. the The first survey focused on U.S. adults. There's some thought that we should be measuring teenagers, for example, because teenagers are being scammed, as you well know. And also small businesses, which is ah another group that's being hammered, I believe. But there's there's not a lot of data out there um about even the small business community and the extent to which that they're being victimized by by ah fraud scams. And then there's the question of international surveys. As I mentioned earlier, the UK has one at the government level. Australia has one at the government level. ah Guess what? You can't combine these and because it's apples and oranges.
00:33:07
Speaker
So what if there were international cooperation in creating surveys that would allow us to compare internationally? That's just another thought. Yeah. And I think I mentioned this too. One of the double click for me would be that I would be really interested in and or the question maybe I have for you is what data will help us sound the alarm on the situation? You know, what kinds of impacts? I think financial, we definitely have that data, but definitely the emotional and trust elements to me are really going to make a difference when we understand the situation there. Yeah, and the answer is I don't know exactly what it is. um What we are trying to do is to gather the data that informs policymakers the best we can and to allow them to make the best judgments possible. We did do a number of things in this Gallup survey that are unique. I don't think have ever been done before.
00:33:59
Speaker
For example, we measured veterans and military separately in order to understand their victimization rate compared to the general population and found that that veterans are being are being victimized at at the same rate as everybody else.
00:34:12
Speaker
We asked people, what do you think, is the government doing too much or too little in this area? And it turned out that 86% of people said that they thought the government was doing too little. And earlier, I told you that 98% of people think that scams are a threat. So ah you put the threat together with the government's not doing enough. And that, I think, is a a call to arms for the U.S. government to hear the people say that they're they're inviting government action to fend off these attacks. You know, my my dad is 90 years old and he says, Ken, when I'm on my phone, it feels like I'm being attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes because it just people were attacking me all day long, you know? And that's what a lot of people feel like. Most people now are getting scam communications once a day or at least weekly. So they see it every single day on their phone.
00:35:04
Speaker
I wanted to thank you so much for all this work. um You're very, very passionate about you know making the world a better place, focusing on scam protection and and getting the evidence and data. At the end of the day, i really think your work and the research that you're doing it and and not just the research, but analysis and then, okay, so what is next is is really fueled a lot of the work in the industry. talked about the Aspen Institute your involvement there. and and other initiatives. And I just am a big supporter. And maybe just to disclose it, I joined as a kind of an advisor as well, because because I truly believe that your work is is critical to fighting this fight and and getting policy and and action behind it. So thank you, Ken, so much for your time and for joining the podcast and sharing what you're working on with us. Oh, you're welcome, Ayelet. It's always a pleasure to talk to