How To Use AI Chatbots to Stay Safe Online

The internet is a wild, wonderful, and increasingly dangerous place. Every day, new scams, phishing attempts, and data breaches make headlines. It feels like you need a degree in cybersecurity just to check your email without worry. But what if I told you the technology that built this complex digital world could also be your personal, always-on bodyguard? Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn't just for writing emails or generating images anymore—it's evolving into one of your most powerful tools for digital defense. In this post, I'll cut through the jargon and show you exactly how to put AI to work, turning your devices from vulnerable targets into virtual fortresses. Here's what you need to know:

The increasing sophistication of Generative AI tools means you can now use this technology as your own personal security advisor. Instead of relying solely on built-in software, you can directly leverage large language models (LLMs) to proactively protect yourself. Using these tools to analyze risks and coach yourself on better security habits, you essentially get an AI-powered consultant that helps you stay ahead of the latest social engineering tactics.

Find Out How Much Of Your Personal Information is on the Web. Generative AI can help you uncover how much of your personal information is online by guiding your search strategy, drafting privacy-focused queries, and recommending tools like DeleteMe or Incogni that scan data broker sites. Pairing AI with privacy tools and manual searches gives you a clearer picture of your digital footprint and helps you take control of your online presence. You can use the following prompt:

"Help me find out how much of my personal information is publicly available online. I want to know what shows up when people search for me—like contact info, photos, or social media profiles. Can you guide me through the best tools and search queries to use?"

Phishing Analysis & Coaching. While phishing emails are often easy to detect, with the help of malicious AI programs, there are many sophisticated ones that can still be very convincing. can copy and paste a suspicious email message into an AI tool and ask it to analyze the tone, grammar, and urgency to see if it resembles a scam. AI will allow you to spot the red flags that even advanced human eyes might miss, especially when scams are written with perfect AI-generated grammar. You can also do this to detect phishing websites or even phishing SMS text messages. For websites, just copy the web address into your AI chatbot and have it scan the website. For SMS text messages, copy the message into your chatbot like you would an email.

Data Privacy Policy Summaries. Many privacy policies allow companies to sell your personal data to third parties. When these third-party organizations are breached, your information is leaked to the dark web. To find out what all of that legal jargon is saying, you can paste dense, multi-page Privacy Policies or Terms of Service into your favorite AI chatbot and ask it the following prompt: "What personal data does this site collect, and does it sell my information?" This allows you to save hours of reading and quickly understand the actual privacy risk of a new app or service before you sign up.

Secure Password Phrase Generation. You can use your favorite GenAI tool to help you generate long, complex, and memorable passphrases that are too long for brute-force attacks. Passphrases are passwords created by combining two or more words together. An example of a passphrase is "TheStrongDonkeySipsTea!" Ask AI to help you create a unique, strong login phrase that you can actually remember, minimizing the need for password reuse. Make sure you save that passphrase in a password manager. These tools use AI as they can scan the dark web and notify you if your passphrase winds up on the dark web.

Building Your Human Firewall. You can ask your favorite AI chatbot to help you build your human firewall to help you avoid a variety of cyber threats. You can start with the following prompt: "Write a persuasive email trying to trick me into clicking a link"

Other prompts you can use are:

"Write a short, persuasive text message (under 160 characters) that a scammer might send to try and trick a person into resetting their two-factor authentication (2FA) for their bank account. Make it urgent and appear to come from a legitimate source.

"I am trying to decide whether to download an app that offers [App Function, e.g., 'free photo editing']. Based on that function, what is the maximum level of permissions the app should need (e.g., location, microphone, contacts, storage)? Suggest what permissions I should absolutely deny."

"Increase your family's cybersecurity awareness by proactively learning the methods hackers use.

"I need to securely share a highly sensitive document with a colleague. Compare and contrast three secure methods (e.g., encrypted file, secure cloud folder, or a dedicated secure messaging service). For each method, state the single biggest risk and the best way to mitigate it."

"I have an old, unused social media account on [Platform Name, e.g., 'Twitter/X' or 'LinkedIn']. List a step-by-step checklist for properly deleting or fully deactivating this account to minimize my digital footprint, including the specific steps for data download."

"Assume I am a privacy-conscious user setting up a new [Device Type, e.g., 'Android phone' or 'Windows 11 laptop']. What are the top five non-default settings I should immediately change to maximize security and privacy, and briefly explain why each change is important."

Hopefully, this will give you tips on ways you can use your AI Chatbots to help you protect yourself from online cyber threats. If you enjoyed this post, let me know in the comments below. If you have any questions, please reach out via email or on social media. I'm always available.

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