Old Tricks, New Tools

The tools of deception have changed dramatically. Many of the tricks have been working for centuries.

Today’s scammers can clone voices, generate convincing identities, manufacture evidence, automate conversations, and reach potential victims at enormous scale. Beneath those capabilities are psychological techniques that would be familiar to confidence artists from another era: urgency, authority, social proof, emotional manipulation, misdirection, and carefully constructed stories.

In this wide-ranging session, Perry Carpenter connects the history and psychology of the con with the rapidly changing technology behind today’s scams. Drawing from cognitive science, classic confidence schemes, current fraud trends, social engineering, deepfakes, and generative AI, he reveals how old methods are being amplified by powerful new tools.

Audiences will see how modern attacks are constructed, why familiar psychological techniques remain so effective, and where emerging technology changes the equation. The session provides a framework for understanding deception across eras and technologies, helping attendees recognize the underlying mechanics of a scam even when the surface details are completely new.