When the scam uses AI
Cloned voices, flawless grammar and a video call that is not who it appears to be. What changed, and what still works.
The advice used to include "look for bad spelling". That advice is dead. A scammer with a chatbot writes better English, and better French, than most real companies, and can do it in your own language at no cost.
What is actually new
- Perfect writing. Grammar and spelling no longer tell you anything, in any language.
- Cloned voices. A few seconds of someone speaking, from a voice note or a video online, is enough to generate a convincing call from them.
- Video that is not real. A face and a voice on a video call can both be generated, well enough for a short call on a small screen.
- Scale. The same personalised approach can be sent to thousands of people at once, each one referencing details scraped from their public posts.
What still works
- Agree a word with your family. One ordinary word nobody else would know, asked for when money is involved. A cloned voice does not know it.
- Hang up and call back on the number you already have. Not the number that called, and not a number they give you.
- Ask something only they would know, that is not on any of their public profiles. Not a birthday; something from a shared memory.
- Slow down. Every one of these depends on you acting inside the next few minutes. There is no real emergency that is made worse by one verifying phone call.
- Reduce the raw material: set social media to friends only, and think about how much of your voice is public.