December 9, 2023

This year, during the current Holiday Season, consumers in the United States are forecast to spend roughly $960 billion on goods and services from retailers. Each year, the season, which is roughly the six weeks from Thanksgiving to Christmas, accounts for a fifth of the total annual sales of retailers in the country.

The Holiday Season is also a time of widespread online identity theft, scams, and frauds. They include romance scams, people falsely claiming to be the government, a relative in distress,a well-known business, or a technical support expert, all seeking to get a consumer’s money.

Banks warn consumers to take extra precautions to avoid being scammed. Some banks also offer extra protection. “We monitor your accounts to help identify unusual activity and contact you if we do,” says a message to customers from one bank.

In 2022, online scammers defrauded American consumers of $8.8 billion, nearly triple the amount stolen in 2020, according to the Federal Trade Commission.  

This year, “Scammers capitalized on a lot of major moments,” notes Hari Ravichandran, founder and chief executive of Aura, in a post on LinkedIn this week. The top ten scams Aura identified this year include an influx of fake websites pretending to sell genuine tickets to Beyonce concerts and an increase in fake ticket sales for the concerts on third-party reseller sites.  

Another top scam involved many fake websites pretending to be certified sellers or offering pre-order sign-ups of iPhone 15, after Apple introduced its latest generation phone. Some of the other top scams were tied to dating and romance around Valentine’s Day; a lottery jackpot prize of $1.25 billion; and a sharp rise in fraudulent websites related to the April 18 income tax filing deadline.

Based in Burlington, Massachusetts, Aura sells digital services which provide security and privacy to consumers, protecting their identity, online accounts, and digital devices. It has over a million customers worldwide; and more than 500 employees.

Prices for Aura’s services range from $144 a year for a single user to $288 a year for a family of five adults and unlimited number of kids. The family service provides online and device security for 50 Devices (10 per adult); scam phone calls and message protection; identity theft protection; financial fraud protection; fraud remediation; parental controls; and up to $1 million in identity theft insurance per adult.

Apparently, Aura’s service is not without problems, including with customer relations and its cancellation policies. Several customers have posted complaints on the site of the Better Business Bureau (BBB). “I have tried to reach AURA.COM for 10 days (about an identity issue). No one answers the phone. I have emailed no one emails back” according to one complainant on the BBB site. Aura responds to complaints on the site.

A serial entrepreneur, Ravichandran, 49-years-old, founded Aura in 2017. Three years earlier, he “was surprised to learn that my credit information was stolen,” he writes in a blog on Aura’s website. “I spent a lot of time researching what to do. I quickly learned that digital security was a big problem…The products that were supposed to help me were confusing, difficult to use, and expensive. But, most importantly, no one product could give me all the solutions I needed.”

In 2018, Ravichandran founded Jump Ventures, which collaborates and invests in innovative, fast-growing businesses. In 1997, he founded and was CEO of Endurance International, a Burlington, Massachusetts, provider of cloud services to five million small businesses worldwide. With more than 3,500 employees it had an enterprise value of $3.5 billion.   

Ravichandran has over 40 approved or pending technology patents to his name. He earned an MBA from the Wharton School, 2008; studied electrical engineering at Stanford, 1996-1997; and earned a B.S. in computer engineering from Mississippi State University, 1996.

In 2021, Aura raised $200 million in a funding round at a valuation of $2.5 billion. In all the company has raised $650 million. In addition to General Catalyst, Warburg Pincus and other venture funds, investors include Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of Hollywood studio DreamWorks, and actor Robert Downey Jr., who was a hacking victim. Katzenberg and Downey are on the board of Aura.  

In 2021, Aura’s revenues were more than $220 million. Since then, annual revenues have risen by more than 50% and the company is profitable, according to statements by Ravichandran.

The top online scamming method used in 2023 was synthetic voice fraud. Scammers used "voice cloning", generated by artificial intelligence, to create convincing imposter scams by manipulating short audio clips from social media. 

In 2024, Aura anticipates this trend to continue and expand to other mediums, as AI makes it easier to duplicate and edit legitimate videos, images, websites, emails, and text messages for nefarious purposes. “It’s scary to think about, but we could see scammers use AI and public social media photos to create compromising photos as a means to extort payment from targets,” according to a news release by Aura.

Aura points out ways consumers can avoid scams. For instance, it lists three ways to identify fake ticket scams before buying:

• The deal is too-good-to-be-true on social media and online marketplaces.

• The seller wants you to pay by wire transfer or gift card.

• They ask for unnecessary personal information.

Similarly, Aura lists three ways to spot a phony product before purchasing:

• The product is advertised at an unbelievably low price.

• The product photos are of poor quality or are difficult to see.

• The online seller doesn't have any terms and conditions on their website.

Speaking of his interest in technology-based solutions, Ravichandran states on his LinkedIn profile that he “had the good fortune to start early, make many many many mistakes, learn from them and continue to build. I have loved technology since I laid my hands on an 8085 microprocessor when I was 10…I have also had the good fortune of working with wonderful people, mentors, and partners, whom I learn from every single day.”

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