I am a pretty savvy guy, tech-wise, for a 60-year-old. I see these "phishing" scams every single day. They come via email, via text, via phone. They are getting more and more sophisticated and frequently cause me to pause and consider whether they are legit: so I fear that one day I will fall for one of them. More importantly I wonder ho…
I am a pretty savvy guy, tech-wise, for a 60-year-old. I see these "phishing" scams every single day. They come via email, via text, via phone. They are getting more and more sophisticated and frequently cause me to pause and consider whether they are legit: so I fear that one day I will fall for one of them. More importantly I wonder how the less aware masses can possibly avoid getting scammed. It's a problem.
The latest scam trend is the AI-generated voice. If you have a loved ones who post regularly on the TikTok or the Insta, their voice can be modeled and replicated by voice filter, so that somebody calling can sound like, say, your daughter who's been in an accident and totaled the car and needs you to wire money asap. So these days you need an agreed-upon safe word or a security question to ask to make sure the person is actually the person. Frightening.
The phishing scams are the main reason I use alias forwarding email addresses when I sign up for anything. When I get that email from Geek Squad, I can instantly see if it was addressed to the same email address I would've given to Geek Squad. If it's instead addressed to the email I used to subscribe to The Gene pool, then I know it's a scam.
A recent thread in the Language Snobs Я Us FB group asked, if you were taken hostage, what message you would send to signal that you were writing under duress. One of the suggestions was, "I'm alright."
I don't worry a lot about AI voices, as my children are not on social media AT ALL, much less vocally. We haven't established a safe word, but I think I could reference events only we would know about in a way that would let me know whether the call was genuine or not.
I am a pretty savvy guy, tech-wise, for a 60-year-old. I see these "phishing" scams every single day. They come via email, via text, via phone. They are getting more and more sophisticated and frequently cause me to pause and consider whether they are legit: so I fear that one day I will fall for one of them. More importantly I wonder how the less aware masses can possibly avoid getting scammed. It's a problem.
The latest scam trend is the AI-generated voice. If you have a loved ones who post regularly on the TikTok or the Insta, their voice can be modeled and replicated by voice filter, so that somebody calling can sound like, say, your daughter who's been in an accident and totaled the car and needs you to wire money asap. So these days you need an agreed-upon safe word or a security question to ask to make sure the person is actually the person. Frightening.
The phishing scams are the main reason I use alias forwarding email addresses when I sign up for anything. When I get that email from Geek Squad, I can instantly see if it was addressed to the same email address I would've given to Geek Squad. If it's instead addressed to the email I used to subscribe to The Gene pool, then I know it's a scam.
A recent thread in the Language Snobs Я Us FB group asked, if you were taken hostage, what message you would send to signal that you were writing under duress. One of the suggestions was, "I'm alright."
If it goes to the email you gave Gene, that might just mean he wasn’t kidding about needing paid subscribers.
I don't worry a lot about AI voices, as my children are not on social media AT ALL, much less vocally. We haven't established a safe word, but I think I could reference events only we would know about in a way that would let me know whether the call was genuine or not.
Yep. I'm sure most people could. The key is knowing that such a scam is possible.
Good point. AARP has done a good job of reporting such scams in its publications, which I read regularly.