Morton Memorial Library and Community House

The scam call that sounds like your grandson

Scammers can imitate a person's voice from a short audio clip, sometimes only a few seconds. The result may sound convincing, but quality varies with the recording and the tool. Families are getting calls that sound like a grandchild in trouble, a wreck, a jail, an urgent need for gift cards or a wire before anyone can think. I am not telling you this to raise your blood pressure. I am telling you because the defense is nearly free and your family can install it this week at dinner. It is a code question. Pick something no recording could know. The name of the first dog. The street your mother grew up on. The vegetable your uncle refused to eat. Agree, out loud, all of you, that anyone asking for money under pressure answers the code question first, no exceptions, no matter how bad it sounds. The second defense is the callback, which worked on door to door salesmen in 1974 and works on cloned voices now. Hang up. Call the person on the number you already have. Real emergencies survive a callback. Manufactured ones collapse, because urgency is the product being sold. Last, treat the payment methods as the tell. Gift cards, crypto, wires to strange states, requests for secrecy. Those are the scam's fingerprints. The technology will keep improving. So does nothing about the callback. Hang up, call back, ask the code. Write it on the refrigerator.

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