Artificial Intelligence is already being used by hackers to mimic your voice combined with misuse of other technology that allows them to spoof your phone number. So imagine you get a phone call from your boss asking you to read off sensitive information that he/she urgently needs. Or a call from a family member in distress and seemingly in danger. You recognize the voice and the number matches too. But… the call is being generated by AI and sent from an app designed to spoof the real phone number. How would you possibly know? The scary answer is you probably wouldn’t, just like virtually all of the people who are victims of this type of high-tech assault.
What’s the defense?
If you plan ahead and educate your work team—and your family—a secret “safe” word would be a good low-tech solution to a serious high-tech problem. Just make sure your safe word is truly safe and not something that can be obtained via an online search.
Ethical hacker scams 60 Minutes staffer to expose weaknesses