BBB warns of ‘voice cloning’ scam on the rise

JACKSON, Tenn. — The Better Business Bureau is warning people of a scam that creates fake calls and mimics people’s voices.

New AI technology allows scammers to imitate someone’s voice, making it extremely difficult to determine if you’re talking to a loved one or a stranger.

Toddnetta Trice at the Better Business Bureau of the Mid South tells us more on how this works.

“But a lot of times, people are recording our conversations and we do not know, but a lot of the times, we miss that or we did not hear it, and we’ll be like ‘what’s that, what’s going on?’ Voicemails is another one, so of course if you have that personalized voicemail, and people are calling you, all it takes is a tiny small sample for them to clone that voice,” Trice said.

The BBB has recent reports of this scam occurring in West Tennessee.

“We had a gentlemen who spent hours on this work-from-home job, where they wanted to record his voice for a job that had him selling airplane tickets, and so, he said that he went whole five days of them recording his voice — I’m pretty sure that they’re going to use his voice for artificial intelligence in the nearby future,” Trice said.

This is a very clever scam, but here are some ways to avoid it.

First, resist the urge to act immediately. If something doesn’t feel right, hang up and call the person they are imitating instead of the number they dialed from.

“Secure your accounts, so whether you’re at home or at work, you want to set up those multifactor authentication for email logins and for things of that nature,” said Trice. “I know it’s a headache, but it protects you. Last but not least, at work, train your staff. So create a secure culture at your office by training employees in internet security.”

The BBB is working to find a solution to AI voice cloning scams.

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