Staying safe

Here's a secret about this lesson: you've been taking it all along. When lesson two said tastes and interests, never addresses and phone numbers - that was this lesson. When lesson six said fold the account number under before you shoot - this lesson again. You've been safe the whole walk. Today just gathers the rules into one room and adds the part nobody else has told you: what the scams look like now.

And one promise before we start: this is not the lesson where the internet tries to scare you back off the boat. You'll leave this page more confident, not less. Count on it.

The short list of never

Everything you type or photograph goes to a company's computers - that's been true since lesson one, and it's fine, because you get to decide what goes. The list of what never goes is genuinely short. Passwords. Your Social Security number. Full account numbers. And any code that gets texted to your phone - those codes are keys, and nobody honest ever asks you to read one out loud.

For everything else, you already own the rule, from lesson six: if you wouldn't say it out loud in a waiting room, don't type it or photograph it. Your name is fine - you'd say your name in a waiting room. The garden, the recipes, the trip to Ohio - all waiting-room talk. It's the wallet stuff that stays in the wallet.

One switch worth knowing about

There's a setting that deserves a plain explanation, because it's set to "on" when you arrive. Your conversations can be used to help teach future versions of the machine - your words, becoming part of its schooling. Some people shrug at that; the words in question are dinner ideas and hosta questions. Some people would rather not, on principle. Both are respectable.

The switch lives in Settings, under Data Controls - hunt for a line about improving the model for everyone. Flip it off, and your future conversations stay out of the schoolhouse. It's lesson three's lesson all over again: you don't have to flip it. You just deserve to know it's there. Rooms feel different when you know where the switches are.

Now, the scams

First, the reassuring part, and it's genuinely reassuring: the scams are not inside ChatGPT. The assistant you've been talking to for nine lessons doesn't call you, doesn't email you, doesn't want money. The scams come the way they always have - the phone, the inbox, the too-good ad - wearing AI as a costume. And the old con underneath hasn't changed since it was sold door to door. AI changed the costume, not the con.

Three costumes to know:

1. The borrowed voice. A phone call, and it's a voice you love - really their voice - a family member in trouble, needing money fast, begging you to keep it quiet. Here's what you know that most people don't: a machine can copy a voice from a few seconds of recording. The voice proves nothing anymore. The answer is beautiful and simple: hang up and call them back at the number you've always had. If it was really them, you'll reach them. It never is.
2. The costume shop. Look-alike apps and websites dressed up as ChatGPT, charging money for what's free or fishing for your information. Your defense is one habit: type the addresses yourself, the ones from these lessons - chatgpt.com and its neighbors. Doors you open beat doors that open at you.
3. "The AI says" sales pitch. An investment a stranger's AI has picked, a miracle cure a chatbot recommends, a sweetheart online whose messages read suspiciously well. When a stranger, an AI, and your money show up in the same story, the AI is decoration. It's the stranger asking.

And the one test that catches all three, in any costume, forever: hurry, secrecy, and money, together. Every scam needs all three - act now, tell no one, pay this way. Nothing honest needs them. Your bank never needs them. Real grandsons can be called back. When you smell all three at once, you can hang up mid-sentence and owe nobody an apology.

A few things you might be wondering

Could the AI itself scam me? The assistants in these lessons - the ones behind the doors you type yourself - are made by companies with reputations to lose, and they don't ask you for money in conversation. Stay behind those doors and the machine itself is the least of your worries. It's people who scam people. The machine just got added to some people's toolbox.

Can someone steal my identity from what I've typed? It only ever had what you gave it - and if you've been living by lesson two, you've given it taste, not identity. It knows you like plain words and grow hostas. Good luck to any thief armed with that.

What about all the papers I photographed in lesson six? Same two rules that were true then: fold the wallet stuff out of the shot, and remember the Library - the file drawer - holds copies until you empty it. Nothing new to learn; you learned it already.

What about the people in your life who worry about all this? Turn it around, kindly. After ten lessons, you know what a hallucination is, where every off switch lives, and why a voice on the phone proves nothing. That's more than most of the internet knows. Teach them the call-back rule at Sunday dinner - somebody at that table needs it.

What this looks like in real life

The call came for Nikki on a Thursday evening. Her grandson's voice - truly his voice, the laugh under it and everything - saying there'd been a car accident, he needed bail money wired tonight, and please, Grandma, don't tell Mom:

Notice the shape of her evening. No fear, no lecture, no swearing off telephones. One old rule, applied calmly, and then passed along. That's what staying safe actually looks like: not a fortress - a habit, shared.

That's the lesson

The never list is four items. The waiting-room rule covers the rest. One switch in Data Controls is yours to flip or leave. And every scam ever invented still needs its three ingredients - hurry, secrecy, money - which means you can smell every one of them coming. Next lesson takes on the question you've maybe been saving up: everything on this road so far has been free, so what does paying get you, and is it worth it? Plain dollars, no sales pitch.