AI-Collar Crime
The old saying used to be, “hold onto your wallet (or purse).” Now it’s, hold onto your mouse and check your credit card closely.
AI, remember, is short for artificial intelligence. As my friends at Wikipedia explain it, “AI or machine intelligence (MI) is intelligence exhibited by machines, rather than humans or other animals.” Mathematics, and specifically statistics, is a fundamental tool of machines and machine learning. This is not a technical column, but it’s necessary to establish some basics. AI is far beyond what I’ll describe since it’s now in the realm of problem solving and mimicking human intelligence. Yet, even as I’m typing this, a simple form of AI is correcting my spelling and grammatical errors. So much for the job security of copy editors.
At the beginning of last month, my McAfee anti-virus subscription was up for auto renewal. I did wait a day before it expired and manually renewed the anti-virus program. Type in the credit card info, click the mouse, and faster than you can say, “beam me up Scotty,” an updated anti-virus program is downloaded into your computer. My techie contacts have told me that these programs are not up to date with the accomplished hackers. But what is a clueless computer user like me to do? I admit the protection may be superficial window-dressing, but I’ll take it. Mind you, it’s not for free.
At the end of the month I was going over the credit card bill since there were quite a few Amazon charges on it. If you like books and check your e-mails often, beware BookBub which offers you a variety of 5 e-books a day that you can buy with, mercy on me, one click. Not only do I buy e-books this way, I go into the Amazon site and buy hardcover or softcover books. Yes. I’ve run out of shelf space and now think that BookBub, a well-designed smarty book selling program, should be banned.
So, I was checking the credit card bill. There was my McAfee purchase on August 6th. But there was a second, more expensive McAfee charge on August 7th. How did this happen, I ask? Auto renewal was not possible since the credit card listed with auto renewal was scrapped by Chase Bank since there was unauthorized usage by unknown persons.
Therefore, if McAfee had my old, defunct credit card number on file, how did they do the unnecessary auto renewal? What I think happened is that their program read and stored my new credit card number and used it to auto-renew. Auto-renewal does not require my presence or any action on my part to renew and charge my new credit card $50. In essence, I end up paying $35 for a 1 year McAfee subscription on August 6th, and the Intel computers signed me up for a redundant 1 year subscription on August 7th. To say I was upset just doesn’t describe my state of mind.
I called right after that and had McAfee/Intel delete the $50 charge as well as auto-renewal. The call center person I spoke with was polite and intelligent. I sensed he’d been through this before. But how many people sit down and examine their credit card bill closely? I encourage you to do that and to be on the lookout for robotic crime.
Why call it AI-collar or robotic crime? Because some programmer wrote the algorithms, the code to reach into our credit cards when we weren’t looking. One way to avoid this trap is to check the “no” box on any auto-renewal subscriptions for magazines, software, or frozen steaks delivery regardless of how convenient it seems at the moment. I did have the anti-virus renewal date written down, but I don’t usually do this, and in a year I can forget I ever pre-ordered for the rest of my life.
We live in an interesting age. Some people have smart refrigerators that automatically order stuff from Amazon that the fridge is low on. Why is that drone dropping 50 pounds of butter on your front lawn?