Comment by Foobar8568
6 hours ago
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.
6 hours ago
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.
Fortunately for me, my parents wouldn't be able to get the live video working.
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)
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?'"
I overheard a cab driver being scammed by someone claiming to be HMRC (UK version of the IRS), and when he asked to call them back they managed to convince him to call them back on Viber, and he was about to when I intervened and pointed out to him that 1) what I'd overheard was blatantly a scam, 2) if he was unsure, to go to their official website and find their number...
If you're going to get people to call you back, it has the problem of ensuring that they call you back on your real number - giving reasons why they have to call you back on some other number is way too easy ("I've lost my phone", "my phone is at home", and so on)
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"They say they're going to cut a finger off every time you hang up."
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Not a thorough safeguard, if scammers have half a brain cell they can provision a VOIP number for such a request. They’re nothing if not accommodating.
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“But, Ben, you didn’t ask me for money when you called last night at 2AM. You asked for $4,000 in Fortnite gift cards to be released from Mexican prison. Thankfully 7-11 had them and was open!”
The best things to stop these AI voice schemes, is to agree on a family password. The cloned AI voice will not known it.
That's a great idea. What do you use as your family password?
Nice try, but our password is the same as the password to my HN account, and for security HN automatically censors your password if you type it in a comment. See: *******
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Nice try.
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I recently did the same, and I, too, hope they got the message. We agreed that there is nothing that needs to be acted upon immediately, and that anything questionable would be discussed with the whole family first.
They might not believe it - for good reason.