Must-follow ‘phone call rule’ can save you from AI ‘voice cloning’ – breaking it even once puts you at serious scam risk
BE very careful when you answer the phone: Criminals might be waiting with a dangerous AI tool.
Cybersecurity experts have warned over crooks using artificial intelligence to clone the voices of victims.
AI can copy the voice of a person based on just a few seconds of audio.
And this can be used to create convincing AI audio deepfakes, which can be exploited by criminals to hoodwink your friends, family members, and colleagues out of money or info.
That's why it's very important to avoid picking up calls from unknown numbers and immediately speaking, experts told The U.S. Sun.
"Never answer calls from unknown numbers,"; Chris Hauk, Consumer Privacy Advocate at Pixel Privacy, said.
"If a call from an unknown party is legitimate, they will likely leave a voice message telling you about the call.
"You can then return the call to a known good number and ask for the party that called.
"Don't worry, if it's important they'll find them."
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Just make sure you've got your voicemail set up first.
That way, you can avoid missing important calls – and prevent crooks from stealing your voice.
It's been available since iOS 13, so make sure you're running that version or later by going into Settings > General > Software Update.
Apple explains, "This blocks phone numbers that you've never been in contact with and don’t have saved in your contacts list.
"If you’ve previously texted with someone using their phone number or if a person has shared their phone number with you in an email, a phone call from that number will go through."
The iPhone maker recommends adding any important numbers to your contacts before turning this feature on.
Any call that is blocked by this feature will still go to voicemail and appear in your recent calls list.
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But it won't create a notification while the call is ringing.
If you think you're on the line with a scammer using AI to pretend to be someone you know, there are some other steps you must follow.