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Recently I have been getting a few vague, nearly inaudible calls. The voice on the other side sounds so bad, I can't understand a word they were saying. After picking up the phone (answering with my name), turning up my sound, and asking a few times to speak up, I got weirded out and hung up.

Trying to look up the phone number got me nowhere, and after picking up the second time, and not saying anything, they hung up after about half a minute. Still sounding vaguely like a Dutch voice (my native language). I blocked them afterwards, got another call from another similar—but slightly different—number. (Which I didn't respond to). I got a WhatsApp message from them (and blocked them after taking a look at the unknown profile picture), with the blocked number.

After doing some online research, I believe this to be part of an AI voice clone scam, but am uncertain in how exactly they work, how much 'data' they need, and what to do more than just blocking them.

How does this scam work?

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    This isn't really a personal finance question. Maybe we need a separate stack for "am I being scammed, how does this scam work, how do I get out of it?"
    – keshlam
    Commented Aug 14 at 13:49
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    @keshlam I saw a lot of scams on this stack exchange, and don't think there is a better place for this question currently.
    – vinzzz001
    Commented Aug 14 at 13:57
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    I've raised the question of whether it's in scope on Meta. Not every question is a good fit for SE.
    – keshlam
    Commented Aug 14 at 14:00
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    "I can't find a better place" does not automatically translate into "therefore it's on-topic here".
    – brhans
    Commented Aug 14 at 15:33
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    This question about "AI voice cloning" seems more appropriate either on Information Security (scam-related) or Artificial Intelligence (technology-related).
    – Andrew T.
    Commented Aug 15 at 2:26

2 Answers 2

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If the call is inaudible, just hang up. Block the phone number if your service supports that. If it doesn't, consider signing up with NoMoRoBo.

I have simply stopped accepting phone calls from any number I don't recognize; if they have something legitimate to say, they can leave a message. And overnight I put my phone in do not disturb mode, where only a small number of people can cause it to ring, even if I do know them.

It may just be a very confused wrong number. Two decades ago, I got a long series of calls, each time at some obscene hour of the morning, with very faint audio from somebody who seemed to be speaking Italian and didn't understand when I told them in English they had the wrong number. If I just stayed silent, they apparently didn't know how to hang up, since the line would remain open until I did. Finally, I used translation software to prepare a script in that Italian saying"I don't know who you are, and I don't know who you are trying to reach, but you have the wrong number. You are waking me up. This is very annoying. Please, stop. Do you understand?" and read that off to them next time they called. There was a pause, they said something, they hung up and the calls did stop.

So it's possible you just have somebody clueless on the other end of the line. But it's not impossible that they're trying to record your voice, so if you can block them, that probably is the preferred solution.

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How does this scam work?

I don't know exactly. I suppose when you answered the call, you talked for a short time of period to get to know who's calling.

What I could imagine is that they are collecting your voice data and possibly could fake your voice to call someone you know in person and would recognize this voice as yours.

They could tell the actual victim that you are in trouble and that you need urgently money to escape the trouble.

To make this work, they would need some of your voice material as well as know your social network.

This is just one possible scenario. Regarding they could fake your voice, there could be several more options like faking audio messages where you confess unethical behaviour to pinch money from you.

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  • That is presuming that it is, in fact, related to capturing the victim's voice. That is entirely a guess, from what little we've been told. I would argue it's a premature guess. It may be worth discussing how such a scam could possibly work, but that starts to branch off into a large number of scenarios and is pure speculation.
    – keshlam
    Commented Aug 15 at 15:42
  • @keshlam This is a plausible scenario. There are many examples of this kind of scam where the elderly are told their grandkid is kidnapped. It's pretty much guaranteed that AI will be used for that purpose, if it hasn't already happened. You're correct that's just one possible scenario, but a good one to help people understand the risks involved with talking to unknown callers.
    – JimmyJames
    Commented Aug 15 at 17:22
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    It could be. On the other hand, for now at least it's moderately unlikely anyone will go to that much trouble any time soon while voice acting is still more convincing, not least because it can handle nonverbal vocalizations l. And frankly trying to play "how, in detail, will they try to scam me" is a distraction. I just think we could be handling this whole issue better. But that might require writing an article and posting it as a self-, answer... Or posing it elsewhere, as has already been done many times, probably better.
    – keshlam
    Commented Aug 15 at 18:31

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