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This will get much, much more ugly very quickly. Oh your daughter is spending her gap year in South East Asia? Find her social media -> download the videos wit

This will get much, much more ugly very quickly. Oh your daughter is spending her gap year in South East Asia? Find her social media -> download the videos with a sample of her voice -> generate audio of her asking you to help/send money because "she was robbed at a gunpoint" -> message your phone number/WhatsApp/Facebook account etc. These scams are possible now, but their quality will increase exponentially given that you won't need to know perfect English or be well versed in tech to do this.

localplume 4y ago
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mbauman 4y ago
It's the quantity that scares me the most. These methods are imminently automatable, especially with a connection to social media graphs.
KyleJune 4y ago
Currently they just say they have them. A more common one is pretending to be the police. They tell the family member that they have to pay bond for their child/grandchild to be released. My mom almost got tricked by a police scammer saying they have an arrest warrant for her due to not paying a debt and that she would be arrested if she didn't pay the money. Only reason it didn't work was because she didn't have the money and called me crying asking for help. Now she knows to never trust anyone requesting or demanding money over the phone.
macinjosh 4y ago
You don't even need the fancy fake voice. Scammers called my Grandmother once, this was about 5/6 years ago, pretending to be me, her grandson. Pretending to be me, they told her I was in jail for cocaine possession and that she needed to wire money to bail me out. She believed it at first and was in her car driving into town to wire the money when she decided to try calling my cell to check. I told her I was in my office at work, and that I don't do drugs, lol. I am glad she had the idea to call my cell! I am fairly certain the only reason it didn't work on her in particular is that she knows I am a giant computer nerd with no friends so that was not something I was likely to be doing, haha!

localplume 4y ago

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mbauman 4y ago

It's the quantity that scares me the most. These methods are imminently automatable, especially with a connection to social media graphs.

KyleJune 4y ago

Currently they just say they have them. A more common one is pretending to be the police. They tell the family member that they have to pay bond for their child/grandchild to be released. My mom almost got tricked by a police scammer saying they have an arrest warrant for her due to not paying a debt and that she would be arrested if she didn't pay the money. Only reason it didn't work was because she didn't have the money and called me crying asking for help. Now she knows to never trust anyone requesting or demanding money over the phone.

macinjosh 4y ago

You don't even need the fancy fake voice. Scammers called my Grandmother once, this was about 5/6 years ago, pretending to be me, her grandson. Pretending to be me, they told her I was in jail for cocaine possession and that she needed to wire money to bail me out. She believed it at first and was in her car driving into town to wire the money when she decided to try calling my cell to check. I told her I was in my office at work, and that I don't do drugs, lol. I am glad she had the idea to call my cell! I am fairly certain the only reason it didn't work on her in particular is that she knows I am a giant computer nerd with no friends so that was not something I was likely to be doing, haha!