4 ms·

If we assume that you can actually scare the parents into paying a ransom, in the end the impact is... a lot of stress + financial loss. And this assumes that t

by Eridrus 10y ago

If we assume that you can actually scare the parents into paying a ransom, in the end the impact is... a lot of stress + financial loss. And this assumes that the parents can't get in contact with the kid, the police can't get in contact with the kid and the scammers have enough savvy to accept untraceable money. All of which points to this being more of a movie plot than something that will happen in reality. And even if this were a credible threat, logically we should be more concerned about direct financial theft since it has the same impact, but is far less elaborate (but still far less common than other types of cybercrime).

lazaroclapp 10y ago
Do you know how many calls you can get in a year of scammers pretending to have kidnapped members of your family in some developing countries? The only real difference from that to this is the added tech-savyness of obtaining real recordings instead of bad acting, which some scammers are actually likely to have by virtue of purchasing this data the way they currently purchase phone numbers, names and CC numbers. The police in those places won't bother going after a phone scammer that only took money (say, in the form of a non-cryptocurrency digital cash transfer that was quickly exchanged for cash), even if the criminal is fairly traceable in theory. When the rule of law is such that only about 2% of murders ever get investigated, this sort of thing just becomes the background noise of un-safety.
orless 10y ago
One of the typical scams in Russia is a message to the parents "mom, I out of money on my phone, please drom 20$ to this number" or "dad, I scratched someone's car need 2000$ right now". In Germany it works with grandparents. They get calls from someone impersonating their grand-child in trouble. This works because in many families grandparents live separately and sometimes don't have much contact to their grandchildren (apart knowing that they exist). This threat is so real that there are police posters about this in community centers. So this works over text messages or phone calls without much sophisticated mimicing. I just imagine a whole new spin of this when AI/DL tech becomes a commodity. So I quite disagree with the "movie plot" estimation of the threat.

by Eridrus 10y ago

lazaroclapp 10y ago

Do you know how many calls you can get in a year of scammers pretending to have kidnapped members of your family in some developing countries? The only real difference from that to this is the added tech-savyness of obtaining real recordings instead of bad acting, which some scammers are actually likely to have by virtue of purchasing this data the way they currently purchase phone numbers, names and CC numbers. The police in those places won't bother going after a phone scammer that only took money (say, in the form of a non-cryptocurrency digital cash transfer that was quickly exchanged for cash), even if the criminal is fairly traceable in theory. When the rule of law is such that only about 2% of murders ever get investigated, this sort of thing just becomes the background noise of un-safety.

orless 10y ago

One of the typical scams in Russia is a message to the parents "mom, I out of money on my phone, please drom 20$ to this number" or "dad, I scratched someone's car need 2000$ right now". In Germany it works with grandparents. They get calls from someone impersonating their grand-child in trouble. This works because in many families grandparents live separately and sometimes don't have much contact to their grandchildren (apart knowing that they exist). This threat is so real that there are police posters about this in community centers. So this works over text messages or phone calls without much sophisticated mimicing. I just imagine a whole new spin of this when AI/DL tech becomes a commodity. So I quite disagree with the "movie plot" estimation of the threat.