SIM swap swindle

In January 2018, Michael Terpin received an email from Google telling him a new device had gained access to one of his accounts. He yelled up the stairs to his wife: “I think we’re getting hacked again!” The previous summer, someone had hijacked the Terpins’ mobile numbers, getting their phone service providers to transfer the numbers to phones the attackers controlled. The technique is known as “SIM swapping.” The SIM isn’t swapped so much as the phone number, though. Transferring a number to a different phone with a different SIM card can give a hacker a way into someone’s email, social media and online storage accounts. This type of hack is proliferating: Last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation received 2,056 SIM-swapping complaints, with losses totalling $71.6m, up from 1,611 complaints and $68m in losses the year before. Experts say the true figures are likely higher.

(Adapted from “Teen Gamers Swiped $24 Million in Crypto, Then Turned on Each Other,” by Margi Murphy and Drake Bennett, published on August 4, 2023, by Bloomberg)

Using AI skillfully

A new study on the impact of generative AI on highly skilled workers finds that when artificial intelligence is used within the boundary of its capabilities, it can improve a worker’s performance by as much as 40pc compared with workers who don’t use it. But when AI is used outside that boundary to complete a task, worker performance drops by an average of 19 percentage points. The findings have implications not only for worker productivity but for organisations looking to successfully navigate what the researchers have termed the “jagged technological frontier” of AI — specifically, generative pretrained transformers (GPT), which produce text after being given prompts. Understanding the upper limits of AI’s abilities is imperative, particularly as those abilities continue to expand. Researchers have found that it is not obvious to highly skilled knowledge workers which of their everyday tasks could easily be performed by AI and which tasks would require a different approach.

(Adapted from “How Generative AI Can Boost Highly Skilled Workers’ Productivity,” by Meredith Somers, published on October 19, 2023, by MIT Management Sloan School)

High-earning pet psychics

Nikki Vasconez, a former lawyer, started working as an animal communicator four years ago. Early in her career, a video she made about a session with a dog named Albie went viral. The dog told her he didn’t like his nickname. She says he didn’t specify what it was, only that it made people think he was large and overweight. “Those were his exact words,” she says. “I later found out his nickname was Big Al.” Ms Vasconez charges $550 for 90 minutes and has a waitlist of 7,600 people. More people are seeking out pet psychics, who can earn hundreds of dollars an hour. Those who tell others about their experiences with animal communicators say they are more likely to be asked for referrals than be mocked. It is perhaps a natural progression in a world where guinea pig spa services exist.

(Adapted from “She Charges $550 for 90 Minutes and Has a Wait List of 7,600 People,” by Katherine Bindley, published on November 13, 2023, by The Wall Street Journal)

Increased migration

Hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over the world are making their way to the Southwest US border, with American and Mexican authorities reporting a surge in apprehensions of people from Asia and Africa as human smuggling networks widen their reach across the globe. Arrests at the Southwest US border of migrants from China, India and other distant countries, including Mauritania and Senegal, tripled to 214,000 during the fiscal year that ended in September from 70,000 in the previous fiscal year, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. Fewer than 19,000 migrants from Asia and Africa were apprehended in the fiscal year ended September 2021. Travelers say they exchange information and share videos of US-bound routes on Tik Tok and Facebook, while smugglers offer lodging and travel agencies advertise transport services.

(Adapted from “Migrants Are Flocking to the US From All Over the Globe,” by Santiago Perez, published on November 4, 2023, by The Wall Street Journal)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, November 20th, 2023