Everyday we have a war waged against us with all sorts of threats. Threats on our computers, tablets and smart phones. Threats at home or at work. We receive junk emails or telephone marketers all vying to separate us from our hard earned money. We install filters into our software that wages our battles for us. As the services upgrade our protection we have our defenses updated. These unsung heroes get little from us. Much of it goes un-noticed by us.

Our Social Media receives much talk today about their filters. Whether mechanical logarithms or otherwise. Whom they ban from their space, and why, is a hot debate. Social Media is self-policing their platforms in the hope of keeping the “hoards” from the gates.

Twitter is late to the game it seems, but they just announced that they will be adding a new feature. The feature is in the test phase. They hope this addition will make every subscriber happier and better protected. Late, or not, efforts in this regard is always good news.

Internet attacks are resulting in big losses for individuals or companies. A case in point is a group in Nigeria called “Curious Orca”. This scammer has gained notoriety because of the sheer size of their background work and their success in bilking funds from people on a worldwide basis. They are patient, they are smart, and they have developed a large base of targets. Their success will keep them active for some time to come.

Other groups will learn from what Curious Orca did and these villains will emerge to cash in on Curious Orca’s success.

Will machine learning and artificial intelligence make these attacks on your wallet easier? Perhaps they will, but legitimate email marketers are learning to put more effective campaigns together. They will take advantage of this technology. In the short term, they may be able to bypass these current checks and defenses that we have assembled against them. In the long term, this is still an active game that is witness to rapid change.

Will technology save unsuspecting people, or firms, from being taken advantage of? Perhaps, we see new developments that give us hope. It is not easy and there is a lot of incentive on both sides of these battle lines. Victories may be short lived though.