Technology

This is what you are doing wrong when scammers call

Published

12 months ago

February 23, 2025

This is what you are doing wrong when scammers call

Cold calls are often a waste of your time and an unwanted interruption to your day. You might think that, at worst, you end up buying or signing up for something that you don’t really need or at an inflated price. But there’s a lot worse that could happen.

The line between spam and scam calls is often thin and blurred. The person on the other end of the call might sound like they’re trying to sell you something or conduct a survey, but this could just be a cover for them to try to extract personal information from you.

Personal information that they can then use to target you with an extremely convincing scam down the line or to gain direct access to your accounts.

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A woman receiving a scam call. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

HOW TO STOP ANNOYING ROBOCALLS

Security questions: A weak link exploited by hackers

Take security questions, for example. They’re pretty repetitive: your mother’s maiden name, your first pet’s name, your favorite elementary school teacher. A hacker does not need to know how to script a single line of code to break into your accounts; it’s often enough that they know these things about you and can convince your mobile carrier to activate a SIM card in your name.

This is all, let’s not mince words, scary, especially if you’ve just sold a vehicle or property and have the proceeds lying around or a nest egg account set aside for your retirement, because scammers and hackers can easily find out about title or deed transfers through data brokers like people finder sites.

Refuse to engage

Scary as it is, it’s also simple to protect against. Simple, but not always easy. If you just refuse to engage with these people, never giving up even a scrap of information, your risks of getting scammed or hacked plummet. Keep your personal information out of circulation in the first place (using a data removal service, for example), and they drop to almost zero.

A man receiving a scam call. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

HOW TO GET RID OF ROBOCALLS WITH APPS AND DATA REMOVAL SERVICES

When to hang up

So, once faced with a suspicious call, the solution is simply to hang up as soon as something seems off. And when is that, exactly? The moment someone calls you out of the blue and requires you to give or confirm any personal information. This could be the last four digits of your Social Security number, your address, which credit card company you’re with — anything that concerns you, specifically. If the caller turns up the pressure and starts trying to get you to stay on the line, either by enticing you with “rewards” or even threatening you with dire consequences, then you can be absolutely sure the call is not legitimate.

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?

The red herring of legitimacy

But what if the call is legitimate? What if you hang up on someone who was only doing their job? What if they were truly trying to help you? These are the doubts that scammers and hackers play upon to ply their trades. We’re all vulnerable to tactics like these, especially if caught off guard. Older adults are particularly vulnerable. Studies suggest that older people — who collectively lose over $28 billion to scams each year — are more likely to cling to initial impressions of trustworthiness, even when later behavior puts that trustworthiness into question. Scammers typically start their interactions with well-rehearsed, smoothly executed preambles, creating good first impressions. Older people are also more likely to put stock in good manners, finding it more difficult than younger adults to directly or indirectly question a caller’s intentions, let alone cut them off mid-sentence and hang up on them.

A woman frustrated by receiving a scam call. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

TOP 10 ROBOCALL HOTSPOTS IN AMERICA

Why call center staff won’t ask for personal information

So, how can you know if the caller is really who they say they are? That’s the question many people get stuck on. The twist? It’s a red herring. The fact is, it doesn’t matter if the call is legit or not. If it’s a scammer, they won’t be hurt or offended: rejection and hang-ups come with the territory. If it’s a real call, the caller also won’t be hurt or offended — here’s why. Call center staff and other people who make cold calls as part of their job are aware of the privacy and security concerns that such calls bring up. They know how dangerous it can be to divulge personal information over the phone, which is why they won’t ask for it. They should also be familiar with one of the best practices there is for dealing with suspicious cold calls.

10 ways to safeguard against phone scams and unwanted calls

1. Use the “Hang up, look up, and call back” method for verification: When in doubt, hang up the phone, look up the organization the caller claimed to be calling from (using its official website, for example), and call it back using the number you find there. If the call you received was above board, they’ll be able to redirect you back to the initial caller.

2. Don’t answer calls from unknown numbers: Let unknown calls go to voicemail, as legitimate callers will usually leave a message if it’s important.

3. Register your phone number on the National Do Not Call Registry: This can help reduce telemarketing calls from legitimate businesses, but it won’t stop scammers, illegal robocalls or exempt organizations (like charities and political groups) from calling you. Scammers often ignore the registry and use tactics like number spoofing to bypass it. Want to know more about why your phone still won’t stop ringing and what you can do about it? Check out our article on the ‘Do Not Call’ list loophole.

4. Use a spam blocking app for texts and calls: These apps can identify and block known spam numbers, significantly reducing the number of unwanted calls you receive.

5. Never give out personal information in response to unexpected calls: Legitimate organizations won’t ask for sensitive information over the phone if they’ve initiated the call.

6. Be cautious of pressure tactics or requests for immediate action: Scammers often create a sense of urgency to prevent you from thinking clearly or verifying their claims.

7. Set a password for your voicemail account: This prevents scammers from accessing your voicemail and potentially gathering personal information.

8. Be wary of caller ID spoofing — local numbers may not be local callers: Scammers can manipulate caller ID to display any number they choose, so don’t trust it blindly.

9. Don’t respond to questions, especially those that can be answered with “Yes”: Scammers may record your “Yes” response and use it to authorize fraudulent charges or changes to your accounts.

10. Invest in personal data removal services: To get fewer of these calls in the first place, you can enlist the help of a professional data removal service. These services can take your personal information out of circulation, including the contact details spammers and scammers use to call you. While no service promises to remove all your data from the internet, having a removal service is great if you want to constantly monitor and automate the process of removing your information from hundreds of sites continuously over a longer period of time. Check out my top picks for data removal services here.

IDENTIFY ANY MYSTERY CALLER FOR FREE WITH THIS PHONE NUMBER LOOKUP TOOL

Kurt’s Key Takeaways

If you receive a call that gives you any doubts at all, even if you can’t quite put your finger on why, then you should end the call and either go on with your day or look up the company and call it back on its official number. You can reduce the number of calls like this by signing up for a data removal service. This will leave fewer spam and scam callers with your contact details and other personal information — something they use to craft convincing backstories and put potential victims at ease.

Have you experienced an increase in robocalls or scam calls recently, and how are you dealing with them? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact

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Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

AI can’t make good video game worlds yet, and it might never be able to

Published

7 hours ago

February 15, 2026

Press Room

AI can’t make good video game worlds yet, and it might never be able to

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more news about video game industry’s pushback against generative AI, follow Jay Peters. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

Long before the generative AI explosion, video game developers made games that could generate their own worlds. Think of titles like Minecraft or even the original 1980 Rogue that is the basis for the term “roguelike”; these games and many others create worlds on the fly with certain rules and parameters. Human developers painstakingly work to make sure the worlds their games can create are engaging to explore and filled with things to do, and at their best, these types of games can be replayable for years because of how the environments and experiences can feel novel every single time you play.

But just as other creative industries are pushing back against an AI slop future, generative AI is coming for video games, too. Though it may never catch up with the best of what humans can make now.

Generative AI in video games has become a lightning rod, with gamers getting mad about in-game slop and half of developers thinking that generative AI is bad for the industry.

Big video game companies are jumping into the murky waters of AI anyway. PUBG maker Krafton is turning into an “AI First” game company, EA is partnering with Stability AI for “transformative” game-making tools, and Ubisoft, as part of a major reorganization, is promising that it would be making “accelerated investments behind player-facing Generative AI.” The CEO of Nexon, which owns the company that made last year’s mega-hit Arc Raiders, put it perhaps the most ominously: “I think it’s important to assume that every game company is now using AI.” (Some indie developers disagree.)

The bigger game companies often pitch their commitments as a way to streamline and assist with game development, which is getting increasingly expensive. But adoption of generative AI tools is a potential threat to jobs in an industry already infamous for waves of layoffs.

Last month, Google launched Project Genie, an “early research prototype” that lets users generate sandbox worlds using text or image prompts that they can explore for 60 seconds. Right now, the tool is only available in the US to people who subscribe to Google’s $249.99-per-month AI Ultra plan.

Project Genie is powered by Google’s Genie 3 AI world model, which the company pitches as a “key stepping stone on the path to AGI” that can enable “AI agents capable of reasoning, problem solving, and real-world actions,” and Google says the model’s potential uses go “well beyond gaming.” But it got a lot of attention in the industry: It was the first real indication of how generative AI tools could be used for video game development, just as tools like DALL-E and OpenAI’s Sora showed what might be possible with AI-generated images and video.

In my testing, Project Genie was barely able to generate even remotely interesting experiences. The “worlds” don’t let users do much except wander around using arrow keys. When the 60 seconds are over, you can’t do anything with what you generated except download a recording of what you did, meaning you also can’t plug in what you generated into a traditional video game engine.

Sure, Project Genie did let me generate terrible unauthorized Nintendo knockoffs (seemingly based off of the online videos Genie 3 is trained on), which raised a lot of familiar concerns about copyright and AI tools. But they weren’t even in the same universe of quality as the worlds in a handcrafted Nintendo game. The worlds were silent, the physics were sloppy, and the environments felt rudimentary.

The day after Project Genie’s announcement, stock prices of some of the biggest video game companies, including Take-Two, Roblox, and Unity, took a dip. That resulted in a little damage control. Take-Two president Karl Slatoff, for example, pushed back strongly on Genie in an earnings call a few days later, arguing that Genie isn’t a threat to traditional games yet. “Genie is not a game engine,” he said, noting that technology like it “certainly doesn’t replace the creative process,” and that, to him, the tool looks more like “procedurally generated interactive video at this point.” (The stock prices ticked back up in the days after.)

Google will almost certainly continue improving its Genie world models and tools to generate interactive experiences. It’s unclear if it will want to improve the experiences as games or if it will instead focus on finding ways for Genie to assist with its aspirational march toward AGI.

However, other leaders of AI companies are already pushing for interactive AI experiences. xAI’s Elon Musk recently claimed that “real-time” and “high-quality” video games that are “customized to the individual” will be available “next year,” and in December, he said that building an “AI gaming studio” is a “major project” for xAI. (Like with many of Musk’s claims, take his predictions and timelines with a grain of salt.) Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who is now pushing AI as the new social media after the company cut jobs in its metaverse group, envisions a future where people create a game from a prompt and share it to people in their feeds. Even Roblox, a gaming company, is pitching how creators will be able to use AI world models and prompts to generate and change in-game worlds in real time, something that it calls “real-time dreaming.”

But even in the most ambitious view where AI technology is feasibly able to generate worlds that are as responsive and interesting to explore as a video game that runs locally on a home console, PC, or your smartphone, there’s a lot more that goes into making a video game than just creating a world. The best games have engaging gameplay, include interesting things to do, and feature original art, sound, writing, and characters. And it takes human developers sometimes years to make sure all of the elements work together just right.

AI technology isn’t yet ready to generate games, and whoever thinks it might be is fooling themselves. But AI-generated video is still bad, and it was still used to make a bunch of bad ads for the Super Bowl, so tech companies are probably still going to put a lot of effort toward games made with generative AI. In an already unstable industry, even the idea that AI tools could rival what humans can make might have massive ramifications down the line.

But the complexity of games is different from AI video, which has improved considerably in a short period of time but has fewer variables to account for. AI game-making tools will almost certainly improve, but the results might never close the gap from what humans can make.

In a long X post, Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg argues that world models aren’t a risk, but a “powerful accelerator.”
While the video game industry probably shouldn’t feel threatened by AI world models just yet, generative AI tools will continue to be controversial in game development. Even Larian Studios, beloved for games like Baldur’s Gate 3, isn’t immune to backlash.
Steam requires that developers disclose when their games use generative AI to generate content, but in a recent change, developers don’t have to disclose if they used “AI powered tools” in their game development environments.
Some games, like the text-based Hidden Door and Amazon’s Snoop Dogg game on its Luna cloud gaming service, are embracing generative AI as a core aspect of the game.

NYU games professor Joost van Dreunen has a take on the situation around Project Genie.
Scientific American has a great explanation of how world models work.

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.

Jay Peters

Technology

Clean up your social media feed and cut the noise

Published

7 hours ago

February 15, 2026

Press Room

Clean up your social media feed and cut the noise

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Scrolling used to be relaxing. Now it often feels chaotic. That is not a coincidence. Nearly everything you see on social media is controlled by algorithms that track what you like, watch, click and ignore. Over time, those signals get muddy. One curiosity click can reshape your feed for weeks. The solution is not deleting your accounts. It is retraining the system.

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10 SIMPLE CYBERSECURITY RESOLUTIONS FOR A SAFER 2026

Your social media experience starts the moment you tap an app, and every click helps shape what shows up next. (Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

How social media algorithms decide what you see

Algorithms pay attention to behavior, not intention. They track engagement patterns and repeat what keeps you scrolling. If your feed feels off, it usually means the algorithm learned the wrong lesson. Resetting your feed helps correct that.

Note: This article is written desktop-first (PC or Mac). When a step is phone-only or significantly different on mobile, it is clearly labeled.

How to clean up your Facebook Feed

Primary device: PC or Mac. Phone differences noted.

Use Content Preferences to retrain Facebook (PC or Mac)

Facebook’s feed is built around people, pages and groups you follow, plus recommended content and ads.

Click your profile photo in the upper right
Select Settings and Privacy > Content Preferences

From here, you can:

Add people and groups to Favorites
Snooze posts temporarily
Unfollow accounts without unfriending them
Reconnect with accounts you muted before

These tools are easiest to manage on a desktop.

Filter your Feed view (PC or Mac)

To bypass the main algorithmic feed:
Click Feeds in the left navigation
Choose to view only Favorites, Friends, Groups, or Pages

This shows content chronologically within those categories.

Hide and flag posts as you scroll (PC, Mac and phone)

On any post in your Facebook feed:

Click the three-dot menu in the upper right of the post
Choose Hide post, Snooze, or Unfollow, depending on what appears

Hiding posts and snoozing or unfollowing accounts sends the same signal to the algorithm. Use these options often. Facebook responds more reliably to repeated negative feedback than occasional clicks.

For suggested posts and reels, you may also see Not interested. Selecting it further trains the feed away from similar content.

Cut down ads and sensitive topics (PC, Mac and phone)

When ads appear:

Click the X to hide them
Or use the three-dot menu to hide or report

For deeper control:

Go to Settings and Privacy > Settings
Open Account Center
Click Ad Preferences > Customize ads
Select See All next to Ad Topics
Click View and manage topics
Click the topic name
Choose See less
Repeat this for every topic you want to limit.

To block specific words in comments:

Click your profile picture (top right on desktop)
Settings & privacy → Settings
In the left column, click Profile and Tagging
Under “Profile,” look for Hide comments containing certain words from your profile and click on the arrow next to it.
Choose a list of words, phrases or emojis you want to hide from your profile and type them in the box.
Click Save below it.

Using a computer gives you deeper control over social media settings that are harder to find on a phone. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

How to clean up your Instagram feed

Primary device: Phone only

Instagram does not currently offer a reliable, universal option to reset its algorithm. Feed control on Instagram is manual and behavior-based. That means the app learns from what you hide, mute, unfollow and ignore.

Tell Instagram what you do not want to see (phone)

On posts that miss the mark:

Tap the three-dot menu
Select Not interested, Mute, or Unfollow, depending on what appears

Use this consistently. Instagram responds more to repeated signals than one-off actions.

Fine-tune who appears in your feed (phone)

Visit accounts directly and tap Following to manage how their content shows up.

From here, you can:

Mute posts or stories
Add or remove Favorites
Restrict interactions
Unfollow the account

These actions immediately influence future recommendations.

Review account-level controls (phone)

Open Settings and review:

Muted accounts
Blocked accounts
Close Friends

Cleaning up these lists helps reduce clutter and repetitive content.

When a new Instagram account makes sense

If your feed still feels off after manual cleanup, starting fresh is the most effective reset.

To do this:

Log out and create a new account
Follow only accounts you truly want to see
Avoid mass-following during setup

Instagram’s algorithm is heavily influenced by early behavior, so a slow, intentional start matters.

Some users may hear about an Instagram “reset” feature, but as of now, it is not consistently available across accounts.

Fine-tune who you see (phone)

Tap the three-dot menu on posts to unfollow or favorite accounts.

From any profile, tap Following to:

Add Close Friend
Add Favorite
Mute posts or stories
Restrict interactions

Unfollow

Under Settings, review:

Muted accounts
Blocked accounts
Close Friends

Instagram’s feed is trained by what you hide, mute, and unfollow, not by a single reset button. (iStock)

How to reset your TikTok For You page

Primary device: Phone only

Train the feed gradually (phone)

Press and hold on a video
Tap Not Interested

Consistency matters here.

Remove past likes (phone)

Go to Profile
Tap the heart icon
Unlike videos that may be influencing recommendations

Refresh the entire feed (phone only)

Tap Profile
Tap the three-line menu
Go to Settings and Privacy > Content Preferences
Tap Refresh Your For You Feed
Confirm

This resets recommendations but keeps your following list.

For a total reset, unfollow accounts manually or start fresh with a new account.

TikTok’s For You page reacts quickly when you mark videos as not interested or clean up past likes. (iStock)

How to reset YouTube recommendations

Primary device: PC recommended

Clear or limit watch history (PC, Mac and phone)

On mobile:

Tap You
Tap the gear icon
Select Manage All History
Tap DELETE

On desktop:

Click your profile photo
Select Your Data in YouTube
Open YouTube Watch History
Click Manage History
Click DELETE

From here, you can:

Delete today
Delete custom range
Delete all time

Remove past feed feedback

Primary device: PC or Mac

This setting is easiest to access on a computer.

Go to YouTube.com and make sure you are signed in
Click your profile photo in the upper right
Select Your Data in YouTube
Scroll to the section labeled YouTube Watch History and click the right arrow
Click Manage your YouTube Watch History
Click Saving Your Watch History

On the history page:

Scroll down until you see YouTube Customize Your Feed Feedback
Click Delete to remove past feedback selections

This removes videos you previously told YouTube you wanted to see more of.

5 TECH TERMS EVERY SMARTPHONE USER SHOULD KNOW

Continue training the feed (PC, Mac and phone)

On individual YouTube videos:

Click or tap the three-dot menu next to the video
Select Not interested

Repeat this on videos that miss the mark. YouTube relies heavily on repeated feedback signals. This option is not consistently available on the YouTube mobile app. Use a computer for the best results.

Reset subscriptions (PC, Mac and phone)

Subscriptions heavily shape recommendations. Unsubscribe from channels you no longer watch. Rebuild your list intentionally.

YouTube recommendations are driven by watch history, search history, and subscriptions you may have forgotten about. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

How to reduce noise on X

Primary device: PC preferred

Adjust interests and ads (PC, Mac and phone)

Click your profile icon.
Go to Settings and Privacy
Click Privacy and Safety
Select Content You See
Open Interests

Here, X lists topics it believes you are interested in.

Uncheck interests you no longer care about
There is no “unselect all” option
Changes must be made one by one

This affects both recommended posts and ads.

Adjust ad personalization settings (PC, Mac and phone)

This is where “Ads Preferences” actually lives.

Click or tap your profile icon
Go to Settings and Privacy
Select Privacy and Safety
Scroll down and click Ads Preferences

From here:

Turn off Personalized ads
Review Ad categories and disable what you can
Turn off Ads based on inferred identity, if shown

X does not allow full ad removal, but these steps reduce targeting.

Train the feed as you scroll (PC, Mac and phone)

On posts or ads you do not want to see again:

Click or tap the three-dot menu
Choose Not interested, Block, or Mute, depending on what appears
Also:
Unfollow accounts that no longer add value
Block advertisers directly when possible

Repeated feedback matters more than occasional actions.

When starting a new X account makes sense

X’s algorithm is less forgiving than most platforms. If your feed feels irreparable, the most effective reset is:

Creating a new account
Following only accounts you truly want
Avoiding mass follows early on

Early behavior heavily shapes long-term recommendations. X offers fewer feed controls than most platforms, so changes may feel slower and less dramatic.

Small, consistent actions on your phone can gradually retrain algorithms and reduce daily feed fatigue. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

How to clean up Threads

Works on PC, Mac and phone

Control what appears in For You

On the For You feed:
Click the three-dot menu
Mark posts as not interested, mute or block

Use Hidden Words (PC and phone)

Open Settings
Go to Hidden Words
Add words, phrases or emojis separated by commas

These filters apply across Threads and Instagram.

How to make LinkedIn useful again

Primary device: PC recommended

Switch to recent posts (PC and Mac)

At the top of your feed, click Sort by: Top
Change it to Recent
To make it permanent:
Go to Me
Click Settings and Privacy
Select Preferred Feed View
Choose Most recent posts
Click the left arrow to save

Reduce ad targeting (PC and Mac)

Go to Settings and Privacy
Open Advertising Data
Select Interests and Traits
Turn off categories you do not want

Aggressively train the feed (PC, Mac and phone)

On unwanted posts:

Click the three-dot menu
Select Not relevant or Not interested
Under My Network, review Followers and Following and unfollow accounts that add noise.

Take my quiz: How safe is your online security?

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Kurt’s key takeaways

Social media feels overwhelming when it runs on autopilot. A few minutes of cleanup can dramatically change what you see. Algorithms respond to clarity. The clearer your signals, the better your feed becomes. You do not need to quit social media to enjoy it again. You just need to take control.

If your feed reflects your behavior, what does yours reveal about how you spend your attention right now? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com

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Technology

Jikipedia turns Epstein’s emails into an encyclopedia of his powerful friends

Published

19 hours ago

February 14, 2026

Press Room

Jikipedia turns Epstein’s emails into an encyclopedia of his powerful friends

The folks behind Jmail are at it again with a clone of Wikipedia that turns the treasure trove of data in Epstein’s emails into detailed dossiers on his associates. Entries include known visits to Epstein’s properties, possible knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, and laws that they might have broken. The reports are dense, listing how many emails they exchanged with Epstein, basic biographical information, and details about how they’re connected.

Beyond that, there are entries for the properties Epstein owns, detailing how they were acquired and the alleged activities that took place there. There are also entries for his business dealings, including his relationship with JPMorgan Chase.

It is worth noting that the entries are AI-generated. While a casual glance seems to suggest Jikipedia is citing its sources, it’s still possible (if not likely) that there are some inaccuracies contained within them. The Jmail X account said that they’ll be implementing the ability for users to report inaccuracies and request changes soon.