The Brief

Don't be duped by a scam made with artificial intelligence tools this holiday season. The FBI issued a public service announcement earlier this month, warning criminals are exploiting AI to run bigger frauds in more believable ways.

While AI tools can be helpful in our personal and professional lives, they can also be used against us, said Shaila Rana, a professor at Purdue Global who teaches cybersecurity. "[AI tools are] becoming cheaper [and] easier to use. It's lowering the barrier of entry for attackers so scammers can create really highly convincing scams."

There are some best practices for protecting yourself against scams in general, but with the rise of generative AI, here are five specific tips to consider.

Beware of sophisticated phishing attacks

The most common AI-enabled scams are phishing attacks, according to Eman El-Sheikh, associate vice president of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of West Florida. Phishing is when bad actors attempt to obtain sensitive information to commit crimes or fraud. "[Scammers are using] generative AI to create content that looks or seems authentic but in fact is not," said El-Sheikh.

"Before we would tell people, 'look for grammatical errors, look for misspellings, look for something that just doesn't sound right.' But now with the use of AI … it can be extremely convincing," Rana told NPR.

However, you should still check for subtle tells that an email or text message could be fraudulent. Check for misspellings in the domain name of email addresses and look for variations in the logo of the company. "It's very important to pay attention to those details," said El-Sheikh.

Create a code word with your loved ones

AI-cloned voice scams are on the rise, Rana told NPR. "Scammers just need a few seconds of your voice from social media to create a clone," she said. Combined with personal details found online, scammers can convince targets that they are their loved ones.

Family emergency scams or "grandparent scams" involve calling a target, creating an extreme sense of urgency by pretending to be a loved one in distress, and asking for money to get them out of a bad situation. One common scheme is telling the target their loved one is in jail and needs bail money.

Rana recommends coming up with a secret code word to use with your family. "So if someone calls claiming to be in trouble or they're unsafe, ask for the code word and then [hang up and] call their real number [back] to verify," she said.

You can also buffer yourself against these types of scams by screening your calls. "If someone's calling you from a number that you don't recognize that is not in your contacts, you can go ahead and automatically send it to voicemail," says Michael Bruemmer, head of the global data breach resolution group at the credit reporting company Experian.

Lock down your social media accounts

"Social media accounts can be copied or screen scraped," warned Bruemmer. To prevent impersonation, reduce your digital footprint. "Set social media accounts to private, remove phone numbers from public profiles. And just be careful and limit what personal information you share publicly," said Sana. Leaving your social media profiles public "makes it easier for scammers to get a better picture of who you are, [and] they can use [that] against you," she said.

Sophisticated scammers will glean information from social media accounts to craft more personalized messages to their intended victims.

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Clement Mahoudeau

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AFP via Getty Images

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Carefully check the web address before inputting any sensitive information

Scammers can use AI to make fake websites that seem legitimate. The FBI notes AI can be used to generate content for fraudulent websites for cryptocurrency scams and other types of investment schemes. Scammers have also been reported to embed AI-powered chatbots in these websites, in an effort to prompt people to click on malicious links.

"You should always check your browser window … and make sure that [you're on] an encrypted site. It [will start] with https://," said Bruemmer. He also said to make sure the website domain is spelled correctly, "[fraudulent websites] can have a URL that is just one letter or character off."

If you're still on the fence about whether the website you're using is legit, you can try looking up the age of a site by searching WhoIs domain lookup databases. Rana said to be extremely wary of websites that were only recently created. Amazon, for example, was founded in 1994. If the WhoIs database says the "Amazon" site you're looking up was created this millennium, you know you're in the wrong place.

Be wary of photos and videos prompting you to send money

The FBI warns generative AI tools have been used to create images of natural disasters and global conflict in an attempt to secure donations for fraudulent charities. They have also been used to create deepfake images or videos of famous people promoting investment schemes and non-existent or counterfeit products.

When you come across a photo or video prompting you to spend money, use caution before engaging. Look for common telltale signs that a piece of media could be a deepfake. As Shannon Bond reported for NPR in 2023, when it comes to creating photos, AI generators "can struggle with creating realistic hands, teeth and accessories like glasses and jewelry." AI-generated videos often have tells of their own, "like slight mismatches between sound and motion and distorted mouths. They often lack facial expressions or subtle body movements that real people make," Bond wrote.

"It's very important for all of us to be responsible in a digital AI-enabled world and do that on a daily basis … especially now around the holidays when there's an uptick in such crimes and scams," said El-Sheikh.

California Democrats are targeting a handful of vulnerable GOP state legislators in hopes of flipping their seats blue.

What are their chances? Tuesday’s election results will offer an early clue.

Embattled Republicans from Sacramento to San Diego have drawn a crowded field of Democratic challengers. The primary, where the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party, will decide which Democrats will face off against those GOP incumbents in November.

Democrats in those competitive districts are banking on President Donald Trump’s waning popularity and the impact of his policies — chiefly high tariffs, immigration crackdowns and the war in Iran — to hurt Republicans. To fend off the challenges, GOP incumbents have tried to keep Trump’s name at a distance while appealing to their base of Trump loyalists.

In Riverside County, expect a rematch between Assemblymember Leticia Castillo, a Corona Republican, and Democratic Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, who lost two years ago by a razor-thin margin despite amassing a significant war chest. Tonight’s election will likely foreshadow the results in November, when the two will meet again for a final matchup.

In the Coachella Valley, three Democrats are vying to unseat GOP Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez of Coachella, who has adopted a more moderate perspective on immigration than his fellow Republican colleagues. Similarly, in three other purple districts, from northern Sacramento County to Orange County, tonight’s election will test the Republicans’ popularity.

Democrats are also playing defense in Southern California: Sen. Catherine Blakespear, an Encinitas Democrat, faces Republican challenger Laura Bassett tonight in the toss-up district in San Diego County.

In some of California’s deepest blue corners, Democrats running for open seats are fighting each other to break through. In the coastal Southern California district that includes Malibu and Santa Monica, half a dozen Democrats are vying to succeed Sen. Ben Allen, who is running for insurance commissioner. In Los Angeles, a fierce five-way race has split some of the most powerful labor unions and Democratic groups to replace Democratic Assemblymember Mike Gipson, who will term out by the end of the year.

In San Diego, the race to replace GOP Sen. Brian Jones, who is also terming out, is a battle between two Republican factions that offers a glimpse into the future direction of the party: Will a moderate San Marcos city councilmember endorsed by Jones be more palatable than a far-right firebrand? We’ll find out.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Some elected offices are pit stops. California’s lieutenant governor is one of them.

Voting ends on Tuesday and voters are choosing between an unusually competitive roster of candidates for the No. 2 job in the state, an office few aspire to without one key disclaimer: It’s a step on their way to another job in politics.

The lieutenant governor wields little power beyond stepping in when the governor leaves the state. But it’s been used as a slingshot to the governor’s office before, by Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Gov. Gray Davis, and seeking the office is often a signal that its officeholder has higher political ambitions.

State Treasurer Fiona Ma, Newsom administration official Josh Fryday and former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs are the leading Democratic candidates in a top-two primary that will send two candidates on to the November general election. Fryday, who heads volunteer programs for the state, has amassed the biggest treasure chest — nearly $4 million — and is backed by teachers unions and the governor.

Ma, a longtime politician with deep roots in San Francisco, has endorsements from influential labor unions and has raised about $2.8 million. But her run for the second-highest statewide office is shadowed by 2021 sexual harassment allegations that Tubbs supporters have latched onto. Ma has called the allegation “frivolous”, but the state paid $350,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by one of her former employees.

Tubbs was among the first to announce his campaign in 2024. Once a progressive star, he rose to political stardom 10 years ago as a young big city mayor who piloted a guaranteed income program in Stockton. Ousted by a Republican newcomer, his political career seemed to fade and he went on to lead Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, an advocacy organization. It’s his first crack at public office since then, and he’s garnered support from progressive Democrats and the powerful union SEIU California.

Longtime state lawmaker Gloria Romero is the leading Republican. Romero spent 12 years representing east Los Angeles in the state Legislature as a Democrat. She switched parties in 2024.

Higher education at the forefront

The major Democratic candidates have struggled to set themselves apart on policy. Because the lieutenant governor sits on all three college governing boards, each has claimed they would work to make universities build more housing and lower tuition costs. This has included practical solutions from directing Federal Student Aid applicants to food assistance program CalFresh, to more far-fetched ones such as free tuition for in-demand programs such as nursing.

The lieutenant governor also sits on the commission responsible for millions of acres of public land. Fryday thinks identifying more undeveloped land to build student housing on will help lower tuition costs.

Ma wants Cal State universities, which rely heavily on state funding, to find other revenue sources through partnerships with private companies.

At an April candidate debate in Los Angeles, Tubbs said he supports freezing tuition but did not elaborate on how he would make up the loss in revenue.

Romero seeks greater transparency about faculty, salaries and housing allowances and would push for more student representation on the UC Board of Regents.

To set themselves apart, the Democrats have leaned on their distinct backgrounds. Fryday has made clean energy a core part of his campaign as a former executive of a clean energy organization started by billionaire gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer. Ma has framed the job as another bulwark against the Trump administration. Tubbs, who works as an unpaid economic adviser to Newsom, has focused on affordability and cutting tuition for low-income families.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

A quiet primary race for state superintendent of public instruction is winding down Tuesday, with no clear front-runner emerging from a wide field of well-qualified candidates for California’s top schools job.

Ten candidates — including several legislative veterans — are vying for the opportunity to oversee the state’s 10,000 public K-12 schools during a tumultuous time. Schools are grappling with AI in the classroom, budget uncertainty, declining enrollment, lackluster test scores and other challenges.

The job itself is also up in the air. Gov. Gavin Newsom in January proposed an overhaul of California’s school governance structure, with far fewer duties for the superintendent. Instead, the State Board of Education, an 11-member body appointed by the governor, and a newly appointed education commissioner would hold most of the decision-making power. The superintendent would act as more of a policy advocate.

The shift would streamline a cumbersome and often opaque bureaucracy, adding transparency and accountability, Newsom said. It would also align California with most other states. Candidates for the superintendent position blasted the proposal, saying it takes away power from voters and concentrates too much control with the governor’s office.

Newsom and the current superintendent, Tony Thurmond, are both termed out this year.

Charter schools are no longer a divisive issue

The race for superintendent — at times, in previous election cycles, one of the most expensive and contentious races on the ballot — has been unusually quiet this year. In the most recent poll, conducted in April, no candidate garnered more than 10% of voters’ support, and 32% of voters were undecided. As of last week, no candidate had raised more than a few hundred thousand dollars. That’s in contrast to the 2018 superintendent race between Thurmond and Marshall Tuck, a former charter school executive, which generated more than $50 million in donations.

But there have been a few surprises in the race. The California Teachers Association and its historic nemesis, the California Charter Schools Association, endorsed the same candidate: Richard Barrera, a San Diego Unified school board member who was little known outside San Diego until this year. Both groups cited his accomplishments on the school board and his commitment to public education.

The dual endorsement shows how much has changed in education debates. For the past two decades, charter schools have been the No. 1 division in the superintendent’s race, generating millions in campaign donations from both sides. This year the subject has barely been mentioned, probably because charter school enrollment appears to have plateaued and both types of schools are now dealing with the same issues.

Another surprise has been the popularity of Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified school board. Shaw made headlines in 2023 when she took on Thurmond over the privacy rights of transgender students, and has made anti-LGBTQ policies the focus of her campaign. In the April poll, she was tied with Barrera.

Other top candidates include: Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, former head of the Assembly education committee; Josh Newman, former head of the Senate education committee; Anthony Rendon, former speaker of the Assembly and a longtime early education program administrator; Nichelle Henderson, a Los Angeles Community College District board member, and Ainye Long, a teacher in San Francisco Unified.

The nonpartisan position pays $210,460 a year.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Californians finish voting Tuesday for who they think can best tackle one of the toughest jobs in the state: insurance commissioner.

The commissioner is responsible for regulating the nation’s largest property insurance market that includes home and auto, plus health, pet, ride-hailing and life insurance, as well as workers’ compensation.

But the hot topic in the past few years as wildfire risk has increased has been home and fire insurance. The next commissioner will face many challenges that include trying to balance property insurance availability with affordability. Some insurance companies that had stopped renewing policies or writing new ones in the past few years are now taking advantage of new regulations that allow them to use new tools in setting their rates. This generally means premiums will rise as the Insurance Department, headed by the commissioner, is likely to keep approving increases in homeowners’ insurance premiums.

The new commissioner will also have to deal with the aftermath of last year’s Los Angeles County fires. Insurance-claim delays and denials are a key part of the slow pace of rebuilding and recovery. State Farm, California’s largest individual insurer, and the FAIR Plan, the state-mandated fire insurance provider of last resort, are both facing lawsuits from homeowners and legal action from the insurance department over their handling of claims from those fires.

The leading Democratic candidates are state Sen. Ben Allen, who will be termed out of the Legislature; Jane Kim, head of the California Working Families Party who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; Patrick Wolff, a financial analyst who has never held public office; and Steven Bradford, the former state senator and assemblymember. Neither of the leading Republican candidates has held statewide public office, either: Stacy Korsgaden, a longtime insurance agent, and Merritt Farren, an attorney who lost his home in the Palisades fire last year.

The candidates CalMatters interviewed mostly agreed on the problems that need to be tackled but proposed different solutions. A few of them have called for increased financial involvement by the state: Kim wants to establish a state authority for wildfires and floods funded by a portion of policyholders’ premiums. Farren wants to create a state reinsurance authority funded by a fee insurers charge their policyholders, something both Kim and Allen have expressed interest in. Bradford said he would study a public-private partnership to help keep insurers writing policies in California.

Consumer advocacy groups and former insurance commissioners say the job is complicated and involves a “brutal balancing act” that takes into account the needs of homeowners, business owners, landlords and renters while keeping insurance companies confident that the rates they’re charging match the growing risk of wildfires in the state.

U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, the Democratic congressman whose district includes much of Contra Costa and Solano counties, was the state’s first insurance commissioner and held the position two different times. He told CalMatters that the commissioner job is “complex, hard, detailed work.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.