Digital technology advancements have always been a double-edged sword. As quickly as tasks become easier to accomplish online, crooks find ways to exploit the new technology.

“There are great things that artificial intelligence can do in the technology sphere,” said Stephen Miller, D.C.’s chief technology officer. “There’s also very bad things that artificial intelligence can do.”

With more than one billion websites on the internet, the D.C. government’s office of the chief technology officer said cybercriminals have ever-improving tools in attempting to separate money and data from unsuspecting victims.

Emails containing spelling errors, or those sent from non-registered email domain names, have been relatively easy to spot as scams.

“We all get text messages and phishing emails all the time that have enticing links in them,” said Miller. “What AI has done is it’s found ways to make those emails more grammatically correct and make it seem like they’re more reputable than they actually are.”

While clicking on a link may bring you to a familiar site, Miller suggests taking an extra step to verify its authenticity, by entering the domain name yourself: “If it’s Macy’s, type out Macy’s. If it’s Amazon, type out Amazon, instead of clicking on that link.”

He said to use care when a link takes you to an unfamiliar website.

“If it’s a site you’ve never heard of, do a little bit of online research,” Miller said. “With a quick Google search on that site, you may find other customers saying the deal was too good to be true.”

He added that you should stick with trusted payment methods.

“If it’s something that’s reputable, like PayPal or Apple Pay or Google Pay, that’s certainly going to be better than ‘Jim’s Credit Card Payment Service’,” said Miller. “And Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal have additional security measures that are built-in, like credit cards, which have more fraud protection than debit cards.”