Guardian Labs Develops AI-Powered Phone Scam Detection

## A Personal Experience Sparks Innovation Rita Barbosa's grandmother was a victim of a phone scam, which led to the purchase of four water filters worth €4,000 each. This experience sparked the idea for Guardian Labs, a startup that aims to prevent phone fraud before it reaches the user. Barbosa's grandmother was left feeling vulnerable and dependent on others, highlighting the need for a solution to protect individuals from scams. ## Introducing Guardião Guardião is an AI-powered system that serves as a first line of defense against phone scams. It uses local AI models to analyze incoming calls and messages, identifying potential scams before they reach the user. The system checks known scam information and analyzes the content for tactics such as artificial urgency, emotional pressure, or requests for banking codes. If a scam is detected, the system can block the message or call before the user is exposed to it. ## A Country-by-Country Approach Guardião is designed to address a broad range of scams, from voice phishing and fraudulent messages to malicious links. However, understanding scams requires a country-by-country approach, as the tactics used in one country can differ from those in another. For example, in Portugal, the most common scam is the "Hi Mum, Hi Dad" scam, where fraudsters impersonate a victim's child and create a sense of urgency to transfer money. ## Continuous Training and High Accuracy Guardian Labs continuously trains its models to improve accuracy and mitigate false positives. The company has achieved high accuracy, with a small number of false positives not being a significant concern. The risk of false negatives, allowing a genuine scam to slip through, is considered a greater priority. ## Expanding Beyond Individual Protection Guardian Labs is not only developing Guardião but also an intelligence platform that enables fraud to be stopped at the corporate and institutional level. The company is partnering with banks, telecom operators, and law enforcement authorities to provide intelligence on active international scam campaigns. This can help flag and report mule bank accounts, potentially allowing them to be frozen before victims transfer money. ## A Lean Team with a Big Impact Guardian Labs has achieved a lot in less than a year, with a lean team of three. The company has raised pre-seed funding and is planning to make money through B2B relationships with banks, insurers, and telecom operators. The goal is to make Guardião free for individuals, as the company believes that this type of protection is a human right.