Over the past few months, we have come across numerous cases where sophisticated AI tools have been used to duplicate a person’s voice and trap a person in financial scams. Experts have also warned that AI is opening new avenues of online fraud.
It seems Google’s AI overviews and the AI Mode results could unknowingly entangle you in a similar trap. The owner of a real estate firm recently reported how they came across a phone number while looking up Royal Caribbean’s customer service number. The number they found in the Google AI Overviews section at the top of the Search page wasn’t real and was run by a scammer instead.
“I’m sharing this as a public service announcement. With AI-generated results and spoofed numbers, the game has changed,” Alex Rivlin, owner of the company, said in a Facebook post. He added that he managed to escape at the last moment, but not before he had already handed over his credit card details to the bad actor.
Another report mentions a similar fake support number attached to Southwest Airlines. The number that appears in the Google AI Overview doesn’t appear on the Southwest Airlines website, and apparently handled by tricksters trying to charge hundreds of dollars for fixing a misspelled name on tickets.
Why is it risky to seek helpline numbers with AI?
On Reddit, I came across a report detailing the account of an individual who was also on the verge of getting scammed after looking up the number of a food delivery service’s customer support contact on Google Search. The scam has already tricked many, and a 65-year-old man recently lost over three thousand dollars after looking up “Swiggy call centre” on Google Search.
To test whether the issues persist, I looked up “swiggy customer care number” and switched to the new Google AI Mode. This is where the confusion begins. Swiggy’s website clearly mentions that they do “not have any official customer care phone lines. Beware of fake numbers.” Google’s AI mode says Swiggy “primarily” refers users to solve the issue within the apps. Underneath, it adds that “some sources mention these numbers as Swiggy Customer Service contact options.”
This is again confusing and misleading in its own right. One of the numbers is only for partner onboarding, and not for “customer care,” which was the original search query. Moreover, the two other numbers don’t appear on an official Swiggy directory. Furthermore, one of those numbers even appears in a report lodged by a misled customer on the non-profit ConsumerComplaintsCourt website.
How to proceed safely?
This is not a unique problem. For a while now, Google Search results have been flooded by fake numbers in the guise of customer support helplines, waiting to scam an unsuspecting user. But with the advent of AI tools in Search, such as AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, the risks have multiplied.
“Scammers have discovered that they can flood user-generated content sites and forums with fake phone numbers for major businesses, then trick callers into sharing their credit card information,” Lily Ray, Vice President of SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive, wrote on LinkedIn.
Experts at Odin and ITBrew also highlighted how hackers can write a “command that Gemini must include the message and its phony tech-support contact number in its summary response.” Google, it seems, is aware of the problem.
Google told The Washington Post that it continues to remove unreliable entries from AI Overviews. In the meantime, as an average internet user, the best advice that I can give you is that for all customer support helpline numbers and email addresses, visit the official website of the companies and look up the required contact details.