March 7, 2024
"'You take thirty or sixty seconds of a kid’s voice and log in to ElevenLabs, and pretty soon Grandma’s getting a call in Grandson’s voice...'"
"'... saying, "Grandma, I’m in trouble, I’ve been in an accident."' A financial request is almost always the end game.... 'And here’s the thing: the bad guy can fail ninety-nine per cent of the time, and they will still become very, very rich. It’s a numbers game.'... In 2020, a corporate attorney in Philadelphia took a call from what he thought was his son, who said he had been injured in a car wreck involving a pregnant woman and needed nine thousand dollars to post bail.... In January, voters in New Hampshire received a robocall call from Joe Biden’s voice telling them not to vote in the primary. (The man who admitted to generating the call said that he had used ElevenLabs software.) 'I didn’t think about it at the time that it wasn’t his real voice,' an elderly Democrat in New Hampshire [said]... 'That’s how convincing it was.'"
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This election is going to be full of AI fakes that boomers are going to fall for.
Yet another reason to send no caller ID calls to voicemail. But, anyone who has posted their voice on social media might already be cloned and deep faked.
Maybe they will use AI to Milli Vanilli the State of the Union tonight.
Happened to friends of mine (don't know about computer generation). Grandfather was told grandson in jail. He was set to send the cash but decided to bring the parents into the picture over the objections of the "grandson". Grandson just happened to be at his parent's house when grandpa called.
I fear for a family member who is very open to these types of scams.
And here’s the thing: the bad guy can fail ninety-nine per cent of the time, and they will still become very, very rich. It’s a numbers game
Only someone completely ignorant of hit rates would phrase it that way. Ten percent is unheard of. HBS will be contacting these rich bad guys soon…
This happens a lot. My Mom moved in with me last April, and she got a call here that she panicked about. I grabbed the phone, and they hung up. That is exactly what they did, using my brother, without naming him as the victim. She told her brother in Connecticut about it, and he said the same thing happened to him.
…half a dozen of these to clients. When you raisins get one of these calls you need to hang up and call your grandchildren. Ask your children to give you their phone numbers…
Simple in principle, but maybe difficult to do, but as a first step don't record/broadcast your voice using TikTok, Instagram, whatever. For many, it's too late. I wonder if all those Zoom calls I was involved in during the pandemic are sitting out there waiting to be discovered...
A couple years ago my wife got scammed out of $1,000 by someone claiming to have kidnapped our adult daughter.
I probably would have paid too so as pissed off as it made me, I was not upset with her.
No AI was involved. Just someone screaming I distinctly in the background.
There was a trash of this at the time, police advice was to hang up.
It's an old scam.
John Henry
Joe Biden's American Nightmare. No way these thugs would dare to pull this off if Trump was in charge.
At one point the Nigerian prince scam must have been believable. We saw through the ruse pretty quickly. We'll also see through the AI scam, but how long until we do? Our skepticism meter needs to rise sharply.
Your contacts app should have the numbers of anyone you care about. These scammers aren't going to be calling from that number — unless they've figured out how to look like they are — and you should have your phone set to ring only if it's really from one of those numbers. Are they going to leave voice mail? Will their number even show up on the list of calls received?
Anyway, for your loved ones, you should have a way for them to convey that it's really them.
I suspect the article is published because of the political use, the fake-Biden robo-call, etc.
I never answer the phone to a political call and I don't know why anyone still does other than that they're so unsavvy they don't know how to avoid it.
I guess the smart thing to do is to set up code words with your family beforehand. If your grandson doesn't say "coconut," you know it's not really him.
"AI fakes that boomers are going to fall for."
Yeah, those silly boomers. Not smart like the younger folx...
It is possible to spoof numbers, but the typical phone spammer is only sophisticated enough to spoof numbers in the same area code. They typically cannot match numbers of acquaintances. I always teach to ignore unsolicited contacts of all kinds, but the trick is the young people that haven't learned to let it go and older people that just think it is courteous to respond. Me, I'm like MTG with a BBC reporter.
As for political... I typically get unsolicited text messages, but either that or a call is an immediate block for the number.
I do wonder why all these AGs and DAs can come up with novel lawsuits to go after Trump, but can't figure out how to put companies that enable these scams out of business.
Each one of my contacts on my cell phone has a unique ring from the default. All default rings I let go to voicemail. The home number has a conventional phone but has a display that indicates a contact, the phone number, or “Potential Spam.” The latter two we let go to an external answering machine. That way if it turns out to be someone we’re doing business with we can answer.
We told our kids and then our grandson that if they ever did anything to end up in jail, we would come visit them.
Scam calls to the elderly kicks off the plot for The Beekeeper. A decent movie if you like action and righteous violence.
As others have said, those scam calls don't rely on AI to work. My elderly mom received one where the caller posed as one of her grandchildren. He said he was in jail, and urgently needed bail money. The caller didn't have the name of a grandchild or attempt to mimic a voice.
Since Mom didn't recognize the voice, she assumed it was one of the grandchildren who didn't call often. That pissed her off since he never called just to check on her, but now that he needed something, she gets a call. The scam failed because my mother was a cynic, not because she was suspicious.
Scammers with better information and AI to mimic a real voice, will be more successful. Phone companies could surely do more to impeded scam and spam calls.
Hey Janelle. What's wrong with Wolfie?
Wolfie's just fine. Where are you?
Your foster parents are dead.
Voice Over Internet Protocol and spoofed caller ID was the early combination for scams in my area code. I now get scam calls from dalits named "Oscar" and "Joseph" pushing some kind of health insurance. "Cassidy" is usually the robo caller.
Great annoyance.
If you answer a robocall they may well be recording your voice!
Pressing "1" on a robocall always results in an answer from some foreign call center.
And yes, the calls come from area codes from all over.
You know how copyrighted photos can be watermarked?
Why not watermark audio created/altered via digital means?
Have an intermittent audio saying “the voice you are hearing is a digital creation” or something along those lines.
Like when people are recording a telephone conversation let’s say and there’s a beep to let the recorded party know they are being recorded.
This kind of thing can be remedied.
If a number is spoofed, calling back won't work, ergo, a scam wouldn't let you call back at the spoofed number, but a desperate child in need of your thousands would. My Panasonic phone has a big red 'Call Block' button that makes a satisfying space-laser zapping sound when you block one of those RNC callers and such.
Speaking of big red buttons, I hope nobody calls Joe using Jill's voice. Hoo boy.
I never answer any phone call unless I know who the caller is first. They can leave a voice message if it's something important.
Just a reminder, Charlotte Cowles, who pens a financial advice column, was scammed out of $50,000 by a con man who claimed to be a CIA agent and ordered her to stuff a shoe box full of cash and hand it to a courier in a white Mercedes.
https://nypost.com/2024/02/15/business/ny-magazines-financial-advice-columnist-lost-50k-to-scam/
In January, voters in New Hampshire received a robocall call from Joe Biden’s voice telling them not to vote in the primary. (...) 'I didn’t think about it at the time that it wasn’t his real voice,' an elderly Democrat in New Hampshire [said]
If Biden sounded at all coherent, then they should've realized it couldn't be him!
I am skeptical of the premise of this article. While I can think of ways that enterprising scammers might connect a specific robo-generated voice to a specific target the comments here along with a little more consideration indicate that it would likely be a lot of unnecessary work. It also sounds like the software is used for AI generated or text to speech functions, not Autotune-style voice modulation. How is the scammer going to handle any interactivity from the subject during the call? It's more likely that a live person can get the subject to believe their voice is distorted by panic and a bad connection than a recorded message (unless the point of the call is to get the subject to act on a voicemail.)
As our host noted, this seems like little more than a hook to get people to read about a 'dirty tricks' robo-call in furtherance of the 'Republicans are the ones who are REALLY subverting elections' meme.
I knew it wasn't really Biden when he said "Don't vote in the primary" instead of "Hoopty fringe...uhhh...clearlike sectioning ashtrays."
They can leave a voice message if it's something important.
"Grandpa Lone, this is Procedural. I'm using my friend's phone. We were just outside of Barstow on the edge of the desert when my car broke down and the drugs are starting to take hold and I need some money to pay the tow and get it fixed and it's gonna take 'til at least tomorrow to get the parts and I don't have enough and I really, really need your help...so please pick up when I call back. Thanks Grandpa. Love You."
Two-factor authentication.
“In 2020, a corporate attorney in Philadelphia took a call from what he thought was his son, who said he had been injured in a car wreck involving a pregnant woman and needed nine thousand dollars to post bail.... “
Almost exactly the same thing happened to ny partner’s mother and sister. Difference was son was a litigation atty, doing some criminal work. I think that the big warning sign was that they wanted cash. They sent a “courier” out to pick up the cash. We see with Fanni Willis, her bed partner, and her excuse that she just had that much cash lying around, the reality that it doesn’t work that way in the real world. Esp when dealing with the Justice system. You need checks, wire transfers, and credit cards for billing, taxes, and an audit trail. And real couriers have photo IDs, DLs, and license plates. Photograph them on your phone, and they will likely run. Also, about the only thing that might get an attorney stuck in jail is aggravated DUI resulting in death, etc. Is your loved one someone who might drive totally blasted? And if they are, a couple days in the clinker might do them good. Also, the mere mention of civil lawsuit and damages should raise a major red flag - criminal and civil don’t mix.
This is just another step in the erosion of our formerly fairly high trust society. If you can’t trust the voice of a loved one, who can you trust? I would suggest safe words or the like. Maybe challenge/response tuplits - you say something, and they provide the agreed to response. With my daughter, it would probably be fairly easy - I know her hot buttons. For example, I call her and her friends “Doctoretttes”. Or use her mother’s real name, instead of the one adopted after our divorce. Or just start with our nicknames form each other. The point is to have some sort of second level verification in place with loved ones.
“And yes, the calls come from area codes from all over.”
Well, to be fair, most robocalled and roboscammers are too sophisticated for this. I distrust calls in this order of area prefixes: 775, 970, 602, 480, and 406, in that order. I also question unknown numbers starting with 303 and now 702. I have a canned text message on my IOS devices that requests that they respond with their name and business name by text message. About 80% are undeliverable - because they were VOIP calls that had fabricated the source phone#. Every once in awhile I get a response asking who the heck I was, and I respond that I was responding to an incoming call, and someone was using their phone#.
When Mom died, her grandchildren were listed in the obit, and sure enough, Dad got a call from someone purporting to be my nephew asking "Grandpa" for monetary help. It helped that my Dad was not called "grandpa" by anyone.
Nicknames are wonderful things if they're not publicized. My college roommate (not really) contacted my on Instagram. I asked him what was my nickname for him. Never heard back.
Further clouding the point of this story .. from NBC news on 8 January 2024
The New Hampshire attorney general’s office on Monday sent a cease-and-desist order to the Democratic National Committee after the national party demanded state Democrats “educate the public” that their upcoming presidential primary is “meaningless.”
In its letter to the DNC, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office declared that that demand was illegal voter suppression and warned the DNC to stop trashing their primary or risk “further enforcement action.”
So if the DNC was telling NH Democrats that it was pointless to vote in the NH Democrat primary, why is this particular robo-call being framed as a scam?
It will get worse.
Really great story about this kind of Deep Fake stuff in the BBC detective series The Capture.
Highly recommended.
Surprised the Democrats haven’t found a way to use it against Trump yet.
If you only answer the phone if the number is listed in your contacts, then an actual friend or relative who had to use another phone would never be able to reach you. They could leave a voicemail---but do you check voicemails from unfamiliar numbers?
“In 2020, a corporate attorney in Philadelphia took a call from what he thought was his son, who said he had been injured in a car wreck involving a pregnant woman and needed nine thousand dollars to post bail.... "
Frankly, if they're asking $9,000 in bail money, I'd make my son sit in jail overnight so I could go in person the next day and make sure it was legit.
We've got a family code word for validation of situations like this, and another that indicates that the caller is speaking under duress or threat.
I just stayed with my mom for about a month. She and my dad still have a landline. They got endless calls from people saying "yeah, I just got a call from this number??" I can't figure out what the scam is. Are they trying to get her to talk? I understand it's possible someone was spoofing her number, but I don't believe that many people would call back to an unknown number to find out why they called. The scam has to be in the call itself.
Anyway, once I started answering the phone, the calls slowed to a drip and then pretty much stopped.
Anyone else have this happen?
I've been saying this for years, audio scams will be the next big thing.
My kids are older now, but I know of families that have code words that only they know for situations like this, or picking up kids from school, etc.
Not a bad idea...crude but effective two-factor ID.
Absolute
Insanity
'Joe Biden's American Nightmare. No way these thugs would dare to pull this off if Trump was in charge.'
I would propose the death penalty for perpetrating such a scam, and Trump might even agree.
@Jersey Fled said: "Surprised the Democrats haven’t found a way to use it against Trump yet.".
You said this, when I think you really might have meant 'Surprised the Democrats haven't been caught yet, using it against Trump'.
Scammers can be convincing. While everyone seems to think they won't fall for it, invariably after hearing about some scam, the chances are that they will, at some point, start falling into the scammers trap.
At one point the Nigerian prince scam must have been believable. We saw through the ruse pretty quickly.
The Nigerian Prince and lots of variations on the scam go way back. I was receiving paper letters by mail asking for money in the 80s. I have heard that a variation goes back to the 40s "I was with 1st army in Germany during the war and my squad found a bunch of gold that we hid. We need $2,000 to go get it. Etc"
And it is still ongoing. I still get emails with scams like the Nigerian one. I have not noticed any from Nigeria recent years but don't pay a lot of attention.
419eater.com is a counter scam site. They make Nigerian scammers prove they are real and the results can be hilarious. Here they make them perform the Dead Parrot sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5QMKLjjm8&t=143s
It is a numbers game. Send out 10,000 emails and get a .1% response that is still 1000 responses. Convert 1 into a $2,000 payout and you could make a pretty good living.
Conventional direct marketing by legit, known, companies via junk mail generates a 2-3% response rate if it is really successful. You just keep casting your line till you hook a fish.
John Henry
We'll also see through the AI scam, but how long until we do? Our skepticism meter needs to rise sharply.
Btw. Where are the parents that it’s up to grandmas to bail out grandsons?
Jordan Peterson is coming to ATL. I’m going to try to sneak in 😉.
My phone notes “possible scam” on calls from unknown numbers. I hang up. Never do they leave a vm
@Bob Boyd
The scammers could do better if Hunter S wrote their scripts.
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