Receiving a call from a child in peril is scary for parents. Fraudsters are improving their fake kidnapping call.
We’ve heard of these calls in our neighborhood, and these scammers want to intimidate parents into paying ransom over the phone.
An unknown number called Colorado Springs parent Jenn Suess.
“She appeared like a small child about my daughter’s age uncontrollably weeping saying’mom’ over and again. I panicked. She recounted the odd call to News5 as “are you ok?”
Before reconnecting the girl, a guy demanded cash for her protection.
She questioned the caller, “If you’re my daughter, tell me your full name.”
She failed. Jenn got off the call and soon confirmed that the girl on the phone was not her daughter, who was safe at work.
Criminals can clone a caller’s voice in 3 seconds.
Experts believe the scammers have used new technologies to make their ruse more believable in the year after Jenn received that shocking call.
Pikes Peak State College Professor Dr. Dennis Natali stated, “I’m very concerned if we don’t have this conversation this is going to go rampant fast.”
Dr. Natali has studied artificial intelligence for years and tells us how scammers are trawling social media for 3 seconds of audio. That’s enough to clone your family’s voices for the ransom call.
Dr. Natalli remarked, “Basically you’re putting too much information out here on social media. The fraudster watches you and thousands of others.
They will take your voice print and use an AI emulation to voice-clone you with any text. Help, Mom? They’ll phone you because they found you online and say, “We kidnapped your kid, send money now,” and they’ll put up so many technological filters that you can’t get your money back. you’re out… and your kid’s upstairs.”
Jenn believes her experience will warn against these calls and increasingly more actual attacks.
“With big data and everything out there, they can access information through data leaks and various things where they can customize it and make it more real and more probable for you to fall prey to something. “I don’t want anyone hurt,” she replied.
