Voice Cloning Scam – Part 1

I most recently wrote about financial scams in this blog back in October but a recent story on the tv news caught my eye. I wanted to share it here as another example of the “dark side” of technology to which seniors especially can be susceptible. It involves voice cloning.

Advances in technology have also made fraud easier to pull off. In this case artificial intelligence (AI) allows for someone to create fake audio of someone’s voice and it doesn’t require any special equipment. It’s something almost anyone can do online and can fool friends and family of the person whose voice is “faked”.

Here’s how it works. You might get a phone call from your granddaughter who is in trouble. She needs money wired or electronically transferred. Maybe a kidnapper gets on the phone and says he’ll return her for a ransom. It sounds like your granddaughter’s voice, except it’s not. Scammers are able to find real audio of your granddaughter on social media. AI technology allows them to create new audio of your granddaughter that sounds just like her.

This type of capability is readily available on the internet for anyone to use. The FTC is now warning the general public that this type of scam will become more prevalent and it will target particularly the elderly who may not be as aware of this technology and many of whom may have a sizable nest egg making them a financially profitable target.

There are some steps you can take to spot these scams and prevent yourself from being victimized. Next week we’ll discuss them.