CRANSTON. R.I. (WJAR) — Cyber security experts warn 2023 is shaping up to be a dangerous year, thanks to huge advances in artificial intelligence technology.

Author of Identity Theft Alert and Bentley University Professor Steve Weisman says the bad guys also have access to this technology, and they're already using it to rip off big companies.

“We're going to see deepfake technology and deepfake technology you may be familiar with as far as having someone appear in a video. We used to see kind of funny ones where someone would be looking at President Obama or others, but it can be done with both video and audio,” explained Weisman. “In fact, in Germany, there was a company that was the victim of a cyber attack using deep fake technology.”

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Weisman continues, “They went online, went on YouTube actually and got audio of the CEO, and they used that audio with artificial intelligence to place a phone call to one of their subsidiaries in England and convince them to send a couple of hundred thousand dollars to scammers.”

Here's the problem -- even if these sophisticated scammers aren't targeting you directly, they're targeting companies that have your personal and financial information.

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So how do you protect yourself when data breaches are constantly happening?

“No matter how good you are at protecting your personal information, like you said, you are always as vulnerable as the most vulnerable companies, and a lot of companies just aren't taking the steps they need,” explains Weisman. “So the first thing is you don't give your social security number out, willy-nilly to any company that asks for it. So for instance, your physician may ask for your social security number. They don't need it.”

Weisman also warns, “You want to freeze your credit -- that's a really important thing because it's a fail-safe.”

He explains, “Even if someone gets your information, they're not going to be able to access your credit and get loans in your name.”

Weisman also says you should always use dual-factor authentication whenever you can, because it's likely at least one of your passwords has already been compromised in a data breach.”