Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform..It’s no secret that AI is improving the way scammers operate.
Phishing texts are more convincing than ever, and malicious emails can look legitimate for longer than just a glance.Attackers are getting smarter about how they trick people into handing over money or personal info.But the good guys are getting better, too.
Earlier this week, Malwarebytes, best known for its real-time anti-malware protection software, launched a new AI-powered feature aimed specifically at mobile scams.I’ve been testing it out for the past few days.Here’s how it works and my quick thoughts on it.
It’s called Scam Guard In a blog post last Tuesday, Malwarebytes announced that it was adding a new feature called Scam Guard to its app on both iOS and Android.It’s the company’s latest line of defense for mobile users, which already includes features like Identity Theft Protection, Ad Blocking, Call Protection, a built-in VPN service, and a few more.While most of those are proactive and reactive in detecting or preventing threats, Scam Guard is something different and rather genius.
The feature works as a real-time AI assistant, set up as a chat, similar to Gemini or ChatGPT, that gives instant feedback on whether something might be a scam.When a user receives something perceived as sketchy, all they have to do is drop in a screenshot or paste the suspicious content.Scam Guard will then search its system for similarly flagged instances, determine if it is malicious or spam, and provide tips on what to do next.
“Scam Guard is unique in that it’s backed by Malwarebytes’ extensive threat research knowledge base, making it both effective and efficient,” says Malwarebytes.It’s easy to tell when it doesn’t recognize something; Scam Guard will alter its language to reflect a level of confidence.Plus, it will conclude the chat by asking the user if it can report the email or text to its Threat Intelligence System for “further investigation.” This is the real bread and butter that sets Scam Guard apart from just asking any number of other free LLMs, “Is this a scam?” ChatGPT might tell you all the indicators and what it , but Scam Guard isn’t guessing as much.
Combined with Malwarebytes’ already massive database of spam and threats and its ability to take in current real-world data points constantly, this gives the feature a real leg up.In my testing, Scam Guard correctly identified nearly every spam and scam message I threw at it, both emails and texts.Its guidance was very specific to the content and not overly general safety advice.
For a brand-new feature that Malwarebytes says continues to learn “from users who submit new or unknown scams,” I was pretty impressed.Scam Guard is available for free and paid Malwarebytes Mobile Security users on iOS and Android.It also doesn’t require installing an additional app.
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