Apart from antivirus apps, the cybersecurity industry has traditionally been business to business, with regular internet users left on their own to protect themselves. And older people, who did not grow up with the internet and smartphones, are perhaps the most vulnerable.
ZoraSafe, a startup founded by sisters Catherine Karow and Ellie Karow King wants to step in and help them out. Their idea is to create an app that not only protects older people against scammers and hackers, but also teaches them how to stay safe through gamified microlearning, as Catherine and Ellie told TechCrunch ahead of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, where ZoraSafe will be part of Startup Battlefield.
The app is not out yet, but Catherine and Ellie expect to launch it in a month. They said it will cost $12.99 a month for individual subscribers, and a higher rate for family and group plans.
The first version of the app, Catherine explained in a phone call, will have several features, such as a mode to scan QR codes for malware or phishing, the ability to send suspicious SMS text messages and emails to ZoraSafe to get them checked out, and a feature to share a known scam or threat with the app so it can be added to a database to help other users.
“We’re trying to incentivize social sharing of scams, so we can also alert the entire Zora network at once, so one person is alerted by that scam, and then we can make sure everyone in that community is protected immediately,” Catherine said.
Future releases will also include a feature that will allow users to get ZoraSafe to join a suspicious phone call, so the company’s AI system can detect if it’s a scam or a deepfake call. In that case, however, the app will not be listening to or recording the calls, according to Catherine.
Once the app detects a threat, it will spin up a chat that will explain to the user what that threat was and teach them how to spot and deal with similar situations in the future, Ellie said.
“The whole purpose of which is to build resilience and hopefully make it so that even if you’re not directly interacting with the app, you’re a little bit more aware when you are interacting online,” she added.
Ellie said that the AI engine is designed with privacy in mind, doing 85% of the processing on the device, and only 15% in the cloud, which she claimed will be “sanitized of your personal information before it leaves your device.”
Catherine also said they are planning to make an “NFC sticker” that will be incorporated in phone cases so that users can quickly pull up the app if they get a deepfake call, or even if they fall and need to alert their caretakers. That’s one of the ways they plan on getting around iOS’s restrictions on apps monitoring what happens on other apps. Another way is to have a “Share to ZoraSafe” option in the iOS menu that will allow users to send text messages or emails to the company’s systems.
Eventually, the sisters said they want to expand ZoraSafe to children, too, partner with schools, and launch the app in different languages, starting with Spanish.
If you want to learn more about ZoraSafe — while also checking out dozens of other companies, hearing their pitches, and listening to guest speakers on four different stages — join us at Disrupt, October 27 to 29, in San Francisco. Learn more here.
