Jennifer DeStefano's phone rang in January with a terrifying call from her sobbing 15-year-old daughter, saying she'd been kidnapped. But as a relieved DeStefano soon learned, her daughter was safe and the call was a scam.
“A reasonably good clone can be created with under a minute of audio and some are claiming that even a few seconds may be enough.” Mom wary about answering calls for fear voice will be cloned for future virtual kidnapping.
it’s much easier to take just about any girly voice and call hundreds of people instead of taking the time to make a single convincing call. Someone will “recognize” that voice.
Yes, the article is about a specific instance of it happening.
I think this might be a case where the generic “scams generally work best if done low effort” doesn’t apply, since to be successful, this sort of scam requires some specifics. The not-kidnapped daughter was away training for a ski race. Blasting “we kidnapped your daughter” to people whose daughter is sitting on the couch next to them or people without daughters doesn’t work at all.
The article mentions people lose an average of $11k in these scams, which means they’re probably working best when targeting people with some savings.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
nice idea - but improbable
it’s much easier to take just about any girly voice and call hundreds of people instead of taking the time to make a single convincing call. Someone will “recognize” that voice.
Did this happen already?
Yes, the article is about a specific instance of it happening.
I think this might be a case where the generic “scams generally work best if done low effort” doesn’t apply, since to be successful, this sort of scam requires some specifics. The not-kidnapped daughter was away training for a ski race. Blasting “we kidnapped your daughter” to people whose daughter is sitting on the couch next to them or people without daughters doesn’t work at all.
The article mentions people lose an average of $11k in these scams, which means they’re probably working best when targeting people with some savings.
the title already is about “improving kidnapping scam”
so yes, that “kidnapping scam” seems to be a thing
and scams generally work best if done low effort
fun fact: most of the time you don’t want to waste time on less-guilible people, so making your scam less obvious isn’t that usefull.