Microsoft discloses how AI techniques have increased the risk of tech support fraud, employment fraud, and e-commerce fraud
Microsoft’s latest Cyber Signals report reveals that AI is fueling sophisticated fraud schemes in e-commerce, job recruitment, and tech support by enabling realistic fake websites, job offers, and social engineering attacks. The company has blocked billions in fraud attempts and urges users to stay vigilant and verify sources. According to the latest Cyber Signals study from Microsoft, artificial intelligence has significantly lowered barriers for hackers, enabling more intricate and believable fraud schemes. Microsoft rejected 49,000 phoney partnership enrollments, halted $4 billion in fraud attempts, and stopped over 1.6 million bot signup attempts per hour between April 2024 and April 2025. E-commerce fraud: AI can quickly produce realistic-looking phoney stores Thanks to AI algorithms, scammers can now create believable e-commerce websites in a matter of minutes rather than days or weeks. With artificial intelligence (AI)-generated product descriptions, images, and phoney customer evaluations, these websites mimic actual businesses. Another degree of dishonesty is introduced by AI-powered chatbots for customer support, which engage with consumers and postpone complaints using prewritten justifications to postpone chargebacks. Microsoft claims that the primary origins of this AI-powered fraud are China and Germany, with the latter being singled out due to its status as one of the largest e-commerce markets in the EU. In order to combat these assaults, Microsoft has incorporated fraud detection features into a number of its products, including Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Edge, which provide deep learning-based domain impersonation detection and typo protection for websites. Employment fraud includes phoney interviews and employment offers enabled by AI Generative AI has increased employment theft by allowing scammers to create phoney job postings, credentials that have been stolen, and AI-powered email campaigns that are directed at job searchers. These scams might appear authentic through automated correspondence and AI-powered interviews, making it more difficult to identify fraudulent offers. Warning signs include unsolicited job offers that seem too good to be true, requests for personal information, such as bank account details, and offers that make large compensation promises for minimal qualifications. Microsoft cautions job seekers to verify the credibility of employers by cross-referencing corporate information and to be wary of communications from free domains rather than official company email addresses. On official websites and platforms like LinkedIn. Tech support fraud: AI strengthens social engineering attacks Even if other tech support schemes do not yet use AI, Microsoft has witnessed financially motivated gangs like Storm-1811 use voice phishing to imitate IT support to gain victims’ devices through legitimate features like Windows Quick Assist. To produce more convincing social engineering lures, AI techniques can speed up the gathering and organisation of data on the intended victims.