Bitdefender announced it has joined the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), a large consortium with the goal to strategize protection of consumers from fraud, as a Foundation and Advisory Board Member. The partnership is designed to help combat a sharp increase of sophisticated online and mobile-based (SMS) scams, particularly with the rise in readily available generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications, through public awareness/education campaigns, collaborative research, shared insights and technology applications.

"Our mission is to bring technology providers together with governments, law enforcement, consumer protection organizations and other key stakeholders to fight a massive global criminal network specializing in online scams and consumer fraud," said Jorij Abraham, managing director, Global Anti-Scam Alliance. "Having the ability to leverage Bitdefender's deep technical knowledge and decades of scam-focused research is critical in our work to help educate the public and build a truly global, cross-sector network to disrupt cybercriminal operations."

Online scams and fraud continue to increase each year. According to The Global State of Scams - 2023 report, losses due to scams reached an astounding one trillion US dollars. In the recent Bitdefender 2024 Cybersecurity Assessment Report scams delivered via text messaging were the most common security incident consumers faced, affecting nearly half of overall respondents.

While scams themselves are nothing new, the frequency and severity have significantly increased with the accessibility of AI and large language models (LLMs). The barrier of entry for criminals is now extremely low for quickly creating convincing content and near perfect copy in any language.

Bitdefender offers a wide array of technology and resources for stopping online scams and fraud. The consumer product lines incorporate core antimalware protection along with digital identity protection and solutions for protecting user privacy. Additionally, the company has one of the industry's largest threat intelligence repositories powered by hundreds of millions of sensors continuously collecting endpoint threat data (including scam campaigns) worldwide.

Bitdefender recently introduced Scamio, a next-generation scam detection tool built on AI. Completely free to use, Scamio delivers a strong second opinion and suggested actions on potential fraud attempts by instantly analyzing emails, text messages, images, individual links, and even QR codes dropped into the chatbot. Scamio use is gaining popularity and has been recommend by top media publications.

"The availability and easy access to LLM-based AI has been a gamechanger for cybercriminal activities leading to a rapid evolution of the threat landscape," said Razvan Costache, director of business to consumer innovation at Bitdefender. "We are pleased to join GASA as a Foundation Member and advisor. Although the term "scam" may seem benign, it is responsible for delivering the majority of malware we see today and duping people out of finances and personal information. We look forward to pooling our resources and collaborating to tackle this serious societal problem together."