Date: October 28, 2025
Duration: 9:34
On this episode of the Mason Vera Paine Show, Google Trends expert Jenny Yang speaks about the most searched online scams. Jenny breaks down what Americans are searching for the most when it comes to scams. Jenny also speaks about how AI is stepping up to block bad ads and unwanted calls and which scams are trending as we head into the holiday season.
Episode Highlights: Cyber Security Awareness with Jenny Yang
- 0:26 – Jenny Yang shares the top cybersecurity concerns, including the rising interest in identity theft protection, phishing techniques, and how online scam searches have become more complex.
- 1:29 – Mason recalls his mother nearly falling for a tech support scam, prompting Jenny to discuss new AI-powered features Google uses to disable suspicious links and protect less tech-savvy users.
- 3:28 – Jenny covers how the Google Pixel phone uses AI call screening to help users identify and avoid scam phone calls, emphasizing how the technology transcribes calls in real time.
- 5:58 – Jenny outlines major scams to watch for, including customer service scams, package tracking scams during the holiday season, and toll road scams, showing these tactics target people of all ages.
Cyber Security Awareness
Announcer – 0:00: Mason Vera Paine.
Mason Paine – 0:01: According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report, Americans lost $16.6 billion to online scams in 2024. With October marking Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Google Trends expert Jenny Yang joins me to speak about trending scams and AI powered protections. Thanks for joining me, Jenny.
Jenny Yang – 0:20: Happy to be here.
Mason Paine – 0:21: When it comes to trends in cybersecurity, what are people really concerned about the most?
Jenny Yang – 0:26: I know cybersecurity has been a massive top concern for a lot of different people, especially across over the US where over 50% of US consumers are perceiving that there’s an increase in scam year over year. And I think it is very much kind of reflecting in the search results that they’re looking for as well. So I know a lot of people are looking for at least over the last 12 months, looking for identity theft protection, different types of phishing techniques. You can see that the questions are getting a little bit more complex involved. So it’s like, what is geo phishing? What is a phishing email, online fraud and protection and how to prevent online fraud. So that’s definitely been some of the top search terms that we’ve kind of noticed over the last 12 months.
Mason Paine – 1:02: Yeah, you know, my poor mother, she actually was kind of almost a victim. She was looking for tech support for Apple and she just did a quick Internet search of like Apple tech, give me phone number and it gave her some international number in India. And I remember my mother was talking to someone, I’m like, why is she resetting her password? And I’m like, let my mother be my mother. And then she’s like something about a gift card. And I was like, okay, now I have to step in.
Jenny Yang – 1:29: It’s absolutely like I can only imagine like, because I know my mom kind of said something similar to me but luckily not clicked on the links and my stomach just frothed and you’re just like, oh no, I hope you haven’t gone too far. So it is definitely. I’m glad she reached out to you. That’s definitely one of the things that we’re actually trying to make a little bit easier for people like your mum. The people who don’t live and read Keck, they in day out. So if they do go and see something that doesn’t seem quite right, especially if it’s like an email for instance, or a text message that look bam and malicious, we actually now have this little banner on top that on the messaging app they’ll go through and say like, hey, we’ve actually disabled the link for you so that you’re not going to inadvertently pass on a link that is going to be malicious in nature. Unfortunately, it is one of those things where the actors are getting smarter. Unfortunately, we’re trying to put in additional controls and use AI to kind of make it easier for people like your mom, my mom, to kind of prevent being scammed in the first place.
Mason Paine – 2:25: How fast is the technology to keep up with these scams though? Because I imagine you bring in some security measure and these people are just as quick to countermeasure it.
Jenny Yang – 2:34: Oh, a hundred percent. So like, okay, so I know the hot topic at the moment is AI, right? So we’re definitely seeing quite a few of like you know, bad actors are using AI. But on our side we’re also using AI for good. So, so what that kind of looks like actually what it would have already looked like and still is is like when you’re using Gmail for instance, it scans your attachments to make sure that you’re not getting any viruses or like malicious attachments across. And that AI ML capability, the machine learning capability has already existed for multiple years. So we’ve kind of now started expanding that set of capabilities across to multiple different platforms as well now. So yeah, we are actually using AI to kind of make our security controls a lot better and easier so that know the improvements of that kind of make it more scalable and protect all of our users.
Mason Paine – 3:19: I know a lot of this is Internet based what you’re talking about, but what about cell phones? Is this something that Google will do with a Google Pixel, like some kind of cybersecurity in it?
Jenny Yang – 3:28: Wig, that’s a really good question. So I selfishly, and this is definitely not endorsed, I have a Pixel at home as well that I use for my work calls. If I get a spam phone call for instance, I just use the screen function. So the phone number is coming through. I can use the screen function where it’ll go through and the AI will go and pick up the call and then do transcription. Say like this is, this is going through and like thing is this actually a scam and you can see the transcription in real time, which I always thought was like super cool. But one of the other nifty little tips that you can also check for, and it’s pretty easy if you’re getting it on your mobile device is what phone number and what region the call is coming from. So if it’s coming from a region or a country that you don’t recognize and it’s going like oh, why is this country, why is it, am I getting a phone number from the country that I don’t recognize? Then it, it definitely helps give you like a bit of a second glancing moment as you kind of look at the screen while incoming and then you go like, oh, I’m going to decline it because I actually don’t think this is legitimate.
Mason Paine – 4:22: You know, I’ve declined so many phone calls that I’ve not accepted phone calls from my doctors because of that. And I’m like, that’s not my fault you changed your phone number.
Jenny Yang – 4:30: I know, it’s definitely. Well, it’s just because it’s so easy to trick people now. And so we’re trying to put in extra additional measures and I’m glad that at least you’re kind of looking out and being very, very cognizant of it. So that’s really, really good.
Mason Paine – 4:42: Now when it comes to like AI though, is there any other ways that AI is being used besides just like screening your, your emails and your calls and stuff?
Jenny Yang – 4:52: So actually a good example of this is we use AI to block bad ads. So a good example of it is like we’ll go back to your mom’s example of like dirking up the tech center, the right tech help center kind of phone number. So we actually to go through and do detect and see if it is a bad ad or not. And we’ll go through and B, there is like fake business impersonations or harmful downloads that don’t seem appear to be legitimate and all try and attempt to go through and use it to block bad ads from being like popping up, so to speak.
Mason Paine – 5:21: That’s wild. I can’t imagine that these like, these people take the time out to build a semi believable website. They could have used their power for good in this case, you know, I know absolutely.
Jenny Yang – 5:33: I think about this all the time. I just go like people, some people have too much time on their hands. Like if they were doing it for good, we could do so much more. And that’s like, I don’t know, I’m pretty lucky in Google because we at least get a lot of smart, capable people who are like working could build a lot of good, but we can help out a lot of global audiences and yeah, I’m pretty lucky.
Mason Paine – 5:52: What are some major scams that people should watch out for, like the ones that aren’t as obvious?
Jenny Yang – 5:58: Well, some of the common ones that we kind of really see are like the ones that your mom encounters, which is like a customer service Type scam. We also see a lot of, especially going into like the holiday season with all the Black Friday sales, you’ll see a lot of like package tracking scams. One of the ones also recently that me and my friend were just talking about was toll road scam. And she actually was second guessing it a little bit as well because she was like, oh, I feel like I might have actually had like, you know, unpaid tolls there. I just need to go through and pay. And so she was very, very close to like second guessing herself and then just double checking, just making sure, okay, this is actually malicious. This isn’t a real toll road scam. So these, these things are so common and they definitely happen.
Jenny Yang – 6:35: These are just some of the ones that are top of mind.
Mason Paine – 6:38: Before I let you go, I am a little curious. I know we talked about our parents a little bit, but what about any other generation? Are anybody else falling for these like scams a lot?
Jenny Yang – 6:48: It is very, very common across all generations. Not just like our parents generation. To be honest, the way that I kind of like to think of it. And I use my best friend as an example. So my best friend is a nurse. She doesn’t live and breathe tech the way that I do. She pretty much the same age as me. But just because the fact that like her focus and her priority is on like caring for people is not as aware of all the possible tech scams that could go around.
Jenny Yang – 7:12: And so for me, just as important as it is to teach her, as it is to teach my mom, I like that.
Mason Paine – 7:18: I like that a lot. I know personally for me, the way I used to deal with viruses and Trojans and everything, I would just throw the laptop away. But that was like early 2000s when they were a little bit cheaper, when you would get them refurbished. And you know, you go on torrid sites and you don’t know what you downloaded. So it’s like, oh, just, it’s junk and you just toss it. And now I’m, I’m like, okay, I can’t put anything anywhere. So I just.
Jenny Yang – 7:44: I know. And like tossing out a phone is very expensive, isn’t it?
Mason Paine – 7:48: Absolutely. I went and I wanted to get another pixel and because my phone got bricked, I think it was like a Pixel 6. And I was like, oh, I was just gonna move Kurtzil. And I was like, okay. But it was like, oh my God, how, how expensive is this? And I was like, oh, no. And like you said, I really liked that you could do the screening, the call screening that saved my life. So many times because it’s like, who’s this number? Oh, you know, it’s this person or it’s that person. Like, what am I talking to? It was so funny to see the transcription.
Jenny Yang – 8:17: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I, I actually thought it was like, it was a really good feature when it came out. And I think one of the things I’m pretty lucky with at Google is you get to see a lot of like the really cool are being developed and you’re just like, oh, I can’t wait for the public to kind of see this new feature that like that’s getting rolled out that will actually protect our you all the better. And literally just an education exercise of, hey, did you know that this feature actually existed?
Mason Paine – 8:39: So yeah, that is really cool. Oh, good for you. Being able to see behind the curtain a little bit.
Jenny Yang – 8:45: Yeah, Very, very lucky.
Mason Paine – 8:47: Well, Jenny, thank you so much for being with me today. For those listening, where can they find any information about everything we talked about?
Jenny Yang – 8:54: So the one thing that I usually recommend for people the most, whether it’s a stranger on a feed, stranger on the train or bus or whatever, would be go to my account.google.com, visit that website, just do your general security hygiene checkup. There is also a really great site called Safety Google, so would recommend checking that one out. If you want something fun, at least for you and me both to play with our mums, there’s a new game that’s actually come out called the Scam Ready. So if you want to see who’s better at spotting scams, because you never know, she might just be better than osa, like your mum might be better than both of us at plotting scams. So Be Scam Ready is the game that’s being launched out.
Announcer – 9:30: This has been the Mason Vera Paine Show. Thanks for listening.
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