Comment by imoverclocked
7 hours ago
So, you answer your phone to the scam and… now they have your voice too.
Talking on the phone is now an unmitigated liability.
7 hours ago
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.
> LPT: Please have a codeword or phrase that you use with your loved ones
They keep refusing ideas like these on the grounds of them being “not stupid” and “able to see through such attempts immediately, 100% of the time” and “do you think we’re stupid?”
They might actually be a bit stupid, but maybe they'll do it if you tell them it's because you are worried that you would fall for a scammer impersonating them. That at least would let them keep their stupid pride.
The article makes a point of explaining how the world-renowned expert on identifying deepfake scams can no longer pass his own tests.
If an expert can't distinguish, it has absolutely nothing to do with being "stupid" or not. So send them that, maybe.
If they are still stubborn about it, then thank them for contributing to the future funding of Scam the World With AI.
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You don’t even need this. You just ask “what did we do last Tuesday”. A scammer will hang up, even if the actual answer is “I haven’t seen you in two years”.
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.
Sometimes if I’m suspicious about the number now, I just answer and say nothing. A human will get confused after 5 seconds and say “Hello?Hello??” But the very shitty bots that usually call, just wait patiently for a long time for your hello, and don’t seem at all fazed by it.
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The article mentions this strategy, and points out that when confronted with an emotional emergency situation, the victims simply might not remember to use the protocol.
Not a bad idea, but not a brick wall.
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The only solution? Answer the phone in an over the top comedy accent, such as Simpsons characters, or just whatever comes to mind.
A terse, altered "Hello" is all I say. Sometimes I don't say anything. Most humans would wait a few seconds then prompt with "...Hello?", whereas bots tend to hang up after ~2s silence
That's my experience too. I mostly don't pick up calls from numbers that I don't recognize. On the very rare occasion that I am expecting such a call, I always stay silent after picking up. A real human will without fail start talking after a second or two.
When it is a human scam caller, what I sometimes do is to say "Hello" and then, when they start talking, and I can already guess they are full of shit, I act as if I am not hearing them properly and say "Hello?? Heeellooo? Hello?" Then they hang up lol.
Don’t you guys have phones that screen calls?
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I just don't answer the phone. If it's important, they can leave a message.
I actually fucking do this, and have done for a year or two. Sad state of affairs.
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...
It's Lenny
Thank you [0]. I searched and all I could find was Virgin Media's Daisy [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_(chatbot)
[1] https://news.virginmediao2.co.uk/o2-unveils-daisy-the-ai-gra...