One of the hottest tech topics of the day is artificial intelligence, or AI. Debates rage about its merits and detriments, depending upon its application for specific uses, such as education, law and entertainment.
One use that should not catch many by surprise is the increasing use of AI for scams.
One of the newest scams is voice cloning. By taking a short sample of someone speaking, as little as a few seconds, an AI-based voice cloning program can generate entire phrases and, in some cases, carry on conversations.
It’s not hard to see how this technology can be used to fool folks into believing the loved one or business associate is genuine and in real need of assistance. Anecdotally, most scams thus far have been of a personal nature, asking for money, but cases where the bad guys try to get logins into computer systems have become more and more prevalent.
Where does the voice sample come from? Most times it’s from social media, but for more high-profile targets, such as entertainers or politicians, it can be taken from other sources. In one case, the CEO of a large financial organization was recorded while presenting at a conference. Later, that CEO’s voice was cloned and used to try and trick his IT staff into changing his password.
Luckily for this firm, they had established protocols involving password changes, including not giving out passwords orally and confirming the identity of the requester before making any changes. All businesses and government agencies should create such policies. Regular updates to such policies are key. After all, many organizations used to rely upon voice verification as part of their policy before the advent of voice cloning.
What about ordinary folks on the street? Vigilance has always been preached and this is even more critical nowadays. Unfortunately, such scams require that we all be negative nellies and skeptical of any such calls.
The bad guys are typically after one thing: money. So that should be the first warning: Are they asking for money? Most scams not only involve money, but untraceable funds such as wires, Zelle or Venmo, bitcoin or the reddest flag of them all, gift cards.
Secondly, some form of independent verification should be done. The crooks always try to impute a sense of urgency; this has been the case for virtually all scams ever. But some basic checks should be executed. If they say they’re calling from a police station, hang up and call the station directly. If they say they’re calling from a credit card company, check the website or call the number on your card. In fact, many legitimate calls from financial institutions instruct you to do just that.
Finally, much like the misspellings, typos and grammatical errors in the Nigerian email scams of years past, the bad guys in these new scams are typically not the most polished of storytellers. In most cases, the explanation for why money is needed is often full of holes and the fake conversation is very stilted.
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John Agsalud is an IT expert with more than 25 years of information technology experience in Hawaii and around the world. He can be reached at jagsalud@live.com.
