I f you haven’t seen it, there’s an unsettling two-minute video circulating online called “ A Message from Ella. ” A young girl stares anxiously into the camera as she explains to her parents how identity thieves destroyed her credit, scammers cloned her voice to commit fraud, and an AI-generated deepfake featuring her face swept through her school, wrecking her reputation. Ella isn’t real—the clip is part of a European online privacy-awareness campaign—but it’s profoundly uncomfortable.