Misinformation and scams in the midst of the LA wildfires.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Kimberly Adams.

As the fires continue burning in Los Angeles, many people are going online to find ways to support victims displaced temporarily or permanently by the disaster.

But like we've seen in the aftermath of recent hurricanes and floods, bad actors are spreading misinformation, causing confusion and financial scams.

We spoke with Steve Grobman, chief technology officer at cybersecurity firm McAfee to learn more.

We're seeing cyber criminals and scammers take advantage of the situation in a whole host of

ways from fake GoFundMe sites to fake sites that are trying to extort fraudulent campaign donations.

A lot of this is really being fueled by the ease of communicating with mass populations through social media

and some of the relaxation of content

moderation and the use of things like generative AI to really inflame some of the feelings

behind the event and push it really towards the cyber criminals being able to make money off

of it. Can you give us a couple of examples?

What kinds of misinformation about the LA wildfires, for example, have you noticed so far?

So a lot of what we've seen is, you know, number one, celebrities endorsing charities that don't

actually exist.

So we've seen the likes of Emma Watson and Kim Kardashian having a fake account set up, representing them,

talking about contributions in order to provide relief for the victims of this event. And in both cases, those were just completely fake.

We've also seen the use of generative AI to misrepresent what's actually happening.

Some of the most viral pictures that we've seen in this case are things like the Hollywood sign

being engulfed in flames.

And McAfee was actually able to take some of these images and use our latest deep fake

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