How to protect your voice from being used in AI scam calls

SALT LAKE CITY — That automatic, robotic message you often get when your call gets sent to someone’s voicemail? Yeah, I agree. It’s so impersonal, so boring and so lame. Naw — it’s perfect for protecting your identity from being used in AI scam calls, said Brian Long, CEO of cybersecurity firm, Adaptive Security. “Your voicemail greeting is the only thing an attacker needs to make a deep fake of your voice,” Long said. He said one of the biggest schemes bad guys pull with AI is imposter scams. “What's particularly scary is they can use the voice of a friend, a loved one, in order to ask you to do something,” Long said. Yeah, imposter scams have long been an issue. We have all been bombarded by those incessant robocalls, right? For decades, it's been criminals pretending to be your credit card company, the IRS or some other official agency or company. Now, thanks to AI, it's getting more personal. “What's happening in a lot of these cases is that it's actually someone in another country who has a strong accent or other issue, and they're using these AI tools to get beyond that,” Long explained.

Protecting your voice

And as we have reported, it doesn't take more than a few seconds of hearing your voice for a bad guy to clone you. Long said don't make it easy for them by giving a sample to anyone who calls and hears your outgoing message. “If the voice mail greeting today is your voice, delete that voice mail greeting and go with the default robot voice,” he advised. While you're at it, posting videos on social media that include your voice or your kids' voices might put you in the crosshairs of bad guy prepared to extract those voices for use in AI scam calls.

Related topics