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The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

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Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#61

Post by saidnooneever »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #36
offsign wrote: post #22

Sounds like AI is just greasing the wheels of a long established 'grandparent scam'... goes something like this: 1) voice one: young adult calls, sobbing 2) grandparent inquires with a name... "Ben, is that you?" 3) voice one: "Yes grandma, it's me, Ben... I'm in trouble, please don't tell mom 4) voice two: "Hello, I'm attorney..." My grandmother fell victim to this almost 20 years ago, which only stopped when Wester…

I told my parents that I will never ask for money, doesn't matter the situation, even with live video, it's trivial to generate live audio and video nowadays. I hope they got the message.

i agreed key phrases. id recommend it. something unrelated to the family and totally arbitrary, agreedupon only verbally. (or write it down for them if they are old and memory is an issue. you can remind them to read your note out loud.. easy).

this way, you do not footgun yourself in the event you'd ever need to ask something. Money isnt the only thing they can ask, and no one (i think) has a glass orb to tell their future and know for certain such a call would never happen. its easy to think it wont happen to you, i think that is most peoples' sentiment until it does. (having a need for help from family that is)

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#62

Post by saaaaaam »

skybrian wrote: post #21

This blog is kind of an interesting hybrid: > Every article published on SmarterArticles is authored and editorially controlled by Tim Green. Artificial intelligence tools are used within a structured and supervised workflow as research and drafting instruments. All arguments, framing decisions, source selections, and final publication choices remain human-directed and under my full responsibility. There are referenc…

Interesting. To me it reeks of AI, and the first major tell was the first paragraph, at which point I stopped reading.

> No human had. The crying had been synthesised from a fragment of audio, and the daughter she thought she was rescuing existed only as a pattern of numbers in someone else's machine.

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#64

Post by baxtr »

imoverclocked wrote: post #24

So, you answer your phone to the scam and… now they have your voice too. Talking on the phone is now an unmitigated liability.

I somewhere read about a service that would use AI generated voices to combat these scam calls, basically talking to the forever. Forgot the name though...

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#65

Post by chrisjj »

> ... the hardest for its victims to be believed about — because the evidence, by design, sounds exactly like someone they love.

Uh? Surely this makes believing the victims easy not hard to believe.

Its like revenge porn. "It's not me. It's a deepfake" is easy to believe.

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#66

Post by laszlojamf »

AI definitely amplifies this problem, but it's not like it didn't exist before. Old people get scammed the old way all the time too. My mom calls me every once in a while asking about some freebie offer that she gets emailed from sketchy domains claiming to be spotify or something.

Not saying that "there's nothing we can do" or anything, but it does feel like this is one of those instincts that you develop growing up with the internet. Like, my first instinct reading that (and I hope getting that call) would be "what the hell is the lawyer doing at the scene". You have to treat _everything_ coming through your phone as potentially untrusted. I don't have any data on this, but it feels like my friends, and especially younger people, do that automatically.

The primary defence against all phishing is to tell yourself: nothing is ever really that urgent. Nothing is ever that good.

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#67

Post by cogman10 »

loumf wrote: post #55
cogman10 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem described in the article is unsolvable Well, not completely unsolvable. But nobody would like the solution. What all these scams rely on is a way to transfer money in an irrevocable fashion. Restrict that in meaningful ways and you end a lot of the abilities for these scams to operate. You could, for example, outlaw gift cards as a start. You could force the likes of Western Union to have a holding peri…

Also cash? Scammers will (and do) send a mule to your house to pick up boxes of cash.

You certainly could.

There's a reason scammers rely heavily on things like gift cards, it's because hiring mules is expensive and creates a trail police can follow back to the scammers. It requires them to be in the same locale as the person they are scamming. Mailing cash is also pretty dicey for the scammers because you have to send the mail to a valid address. That becomes something police can trace.

If you wanted to completely eliminate scams then yeah, you'd also outlaw cash.

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#68

Post by mikepurvis »

saidnooneever wrote: post #61
Foobar8568 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I told my parents that I will never ask for money, doesn't matter the situation, even with live video, it's trivial to generate live audio and video nowadays. I hope they got the message.

i agreed key phrases. id recommend it. something unrelated to the family and totally arbitrary, agreedupon only verbally. (or write it down for them if they are old and memory is an issue. you can remind them to read your note out loud.. easy). this way, you do not footgun yourself in the event you'd ever need to ask something. Money isnt the only thing they can ask, and no one (i think) has a glass orb to tell their…

Key phrases make sense to put in place, but another easy safeguard is:

"Before you send anything to anyone, ever, call them back. Doesn't matter if it's me, the bank, a lawyer, whatever... tell them 'hang on I have another call coming in, let me just call you back in a few minutes, okay?'"

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#69

Post by chrisjj »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #36
offsign wrote: post #22

Sounds like AI is just greasing the wheels of a long established 'grandparent scam'... goes something like this: 1) voice one: young adult calls, sobbing 2) grandparent inquires with a name... "Ben, is that you?" 3) voice one: "Yes grandma, it's me, Ben... I'm in trouble, please don't tell mom 4) voice two: "Hello, I'm attorney..." My grandmother fell victim to this almost 20 years ago, which only stopped when Wester…

I told my parents that I will never ask for money, doesn't matter the situation, even with live video, it's trivial to generate live audio and video nowadays. I hope they got the message.

They might not believe it - for good reason.

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#70

Post by TomK32 »

abirch wrote: post #50
imoverclocked wrote: post #24

So, you answer your phone to the scam and… now they have your voice too. Talking on the phone is now an unmitigated liability.

A few years back, I would talk with scammers for a while to waste their time. Now I don't. LPT: Please have a codeword or phrase that you use with your loved ones so even if the scammers use your voice, they won't know the phrase.

I'm getting a lot of calls recently and don't give them more than a Hello and whatever music, radio show or Tour de France broadcast I'm listening to. Sometimes they hang in there for half a minute.
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