alt Hacker NewsSounds like AI is just greasing the wheels of a long established 'grandparent scam'... goes something like this:
1) voice one: young adult calls, sobbing 2) grandparent inquires with a name... "Ben, is that you?" 3) voice one: "Yes grandma, it's me, Ben... I'm in trouble, please don't tell mom 4) voice two: "Hello, I'm attorney..."
My grandmother fell victim to this almost 20 years ago, which only stopped when Western Union refused to let her continue sending wires... she was forced to call her daughter (at which point they just called my brother.)
Our takeaway (at the time)... the voice doesn't even need to be terribly accurate, since the original interaction is brief / somewhat inaudible over the tears. Typically just requires an older vulnerable adult, a lucky strike with the initial setup (e.g. grandparent actually has a grandkid), and a lot of high pressure / duress salesmanship.
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"Greasing the wheels" seems right in principle, but possibly putting the accelerant factor a bit... mildly. Like going from burning the turkey in the oven, to deep frying and burning your whole house down.
> cybercrime losses across the United States rose 26 per cent in a single year
> The FBI was candid that even these figures understate the problem. AI attribution in the report reflects only what victims recognised and reported, and most victims of a cloned-voice call never learn that a machine was involved at all.
> INTERPOL found that AI-enhanced fraud is roughly four and a half times more profitable than its traditional equivalent, and that so-called agentic AI systems can now autonomously plan and execute entire fraud campaigns, from reconnaissance through to the ransom demand.
I told my parents that I will never ask for money, doesn't matter the situation, even with live video, it's trivial to generate live audio and video nowadays.
I hope they got the message.
YC S27's ScamMyGrandparents.com lets you simulate these against your own grandparents, so you can shame and educate them when they naively wire your college trust fund to a safe account. You are able to refund either the whole amount, or keep some for yourself since they won't know any better. The cost of service is variable depending on how many homes they own.
I remember my JROTC instructor also running into that and how she said afterwards they have a secret phrase between them two as a way of verifying it's truly them.
lucky strike is the key here they can do this with VOIP really easily to massive amounts of numbers. its staggering amounts if you look at the traffic really. worst is if they proxy that via residential proxy services which often come from end-user / individuals phones so the traffic is hard to detect for carriers etc. since it looks like a regular VOIP app connection.
It's not "just" greasing the wheels, because previously each call required a human being to spend the equivalent amount of time on the phone with a victim, interacting with them - you couldn't just play a cassette tape at them, you know?
And it likely requires working with other people, your "employees", who are both a liability, and a cost.
With AI, you can make a thousand calls in parallel, for significantly cheaper, out of your own basement.
This greases the wheels of voice fraud like a gatling gun greases the wheels of hitting a guy with a rock.