Jordan Peterson writes about grandparent scams, deepfakes, and AI.

[Yung]

I can't say I necessarily agree with his conclusion.

All the more reason to make sure you've raised children, and perhaps in turn, grandchildren, to not spend more time on screens than they do interacting with meat in meatspace.

https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/blog-posts/i-didnt-say-that/


I Didn’t Say That

I can tell you from personal experience, for what that’s worth, that it is far from comforting to discover an entire website devoted to allowing whoever is inspired to do so produce audio clips imitating my voice delivering whatever content the user chooses—for serious, comic or malevolent purposes. I can’t imagine what the world will be like when we will truly be unable to distinguish the real from the unreal, or exercise any control whatsoever on what videos reveal about behaviors we never engaged in, or audio avatars broadcasting any opinion at all about anything at all. I see no defense, and a tremendously expanded opportunity for unscrupulous troublemakers to warp our personal and collective reality in any manner they see fit.

Wake up. The sanctity of your voice, and your image, is at serious risk. It’s hard to imagine a more serious challenge to the sense of shared, reliable reality that keeps us linked together in relative peace. The Deep Fake artists need to be stopped, using whatever legal means are necessary, as soon as possible.

[Joe in PNG]

On the way to lunch* a few weeks back, someone called my dad and claimed to be "his favorite nephew", and was up with some friends up north.
Dad asked what the guys name was, and he just hung up- but I can imagine this working on a less savvy older person.



*Since he has that fancy interconnected stuff in his car, the call was (like most spam calls he gets) a topic of group conversation with the lunch bunch.

[awp_101]

Someone almost got my 93 y/o Grandmother this year by pretending to be my nephew. I say almost because on her way from the bank to wherever she was supposed to go to send the money she pulled out in front of someone and got t-boned. She wasn't seriously injured but it was her second totaled car in under 6 months.

I suppose it turned out OK because she didn't lose her money, no one in either car was killed or crippled and it finally convinced her to give up the keys but like the songs says

I ask you please just give us
5 minutes alone

[Darth_Uno]

Someone called my 88 yo grandma claiming to be me. My grandma thought it didn’t sound like me, and then “I” asked how Grandpa Jim was doing. That’s an odd question because nobody ever called him Jim, and also because he’s been dead for a few years.

[olstyn]

I was very proud of my grandmother a few yeas ago when they tried to hit her with that scam. She's always been sharp; she started asking questions the caller didn't have good answers for ("which grandson?" to which the reply was not a name, but "your oldest one"), and then refused to send any money. She contacted me afterward to verify that I was not in fact in jail. :)

[Poconnor]

I fear this technology will kill wire taps and recorded police interviews. Imagine a criminal defense lawyer playing a fake recording of the arresting officer’s voice. Then telling the jury it was fake and the police faked the evidence against the defendant. Talk about reasonable doubt. They hit my parents a few months ago with my 16 year old son had been hurt. My parents called me and they were very upset. They really believed the call. My mother kept saying but they knew so much. Makes me think I need security questions and passwords to teach my kids.

[Caballoflaco]

They hit my parents a few months ago with my 16 year old son had been hurt. My parents called me and they were very upset. They really believed the call. My mother kept saying but they knew so much. Makes me think I need security questions and passwords to teach my kids.

Do your folks have Facebook, and what are their privacy settings? I could take twenty minutes worth of notes off most older folks completely public Facebook pages and socially engineer the shit out of them.

ETA:they could have gotten info off your kids social media too.

[CleverNickname]

Do your folks have Facebook, and what are their privacy settings? I could take twenty minutes worth of notes off most older folks completely public Facebook pages and socially engineer the shit out of them.

ETA:they could have gotten info off your kids social media too.

Facebook/social media can be a vector, but it's definitely not the only way. Someone tried this scam on my grandmother about 7-8 years ago, and she never had any sort of social media account. Go to any number of white pages-like sites today and for anyone you look up they'll give you a list of people associated with that person. It's a lot more difficult to get your info removed from those sites, mainly because they just resell data collected elsewhere and so even if you do get your info removed from one site, new sites just keep popping up with the same info.

[Caballoflaco]

Facebook/social media can be a vector, but it's definitely not the only way. Someone tried this scam on my grandmother about 7-8 years ago, and she never had any sort of social media account. Go to any number of white pages-like sites today and for anyone you look up they'll give you a list of people associated with that person. It's a lot more difficult to get your info removed from those sites, mainly because they just resell data collected elsewhere and so even if you do get your info removed from one site, new sites just keep popping up with the same info.

Indeed, but the little details you can pick up off social media would add a lot to the “but, they knew so much” quotient.

ETA: some sort of a family codeword/phrase is really not a bad idea if everybody can remember it.

[Joe in PNG]

Indeed, but the little details you can pick up off social media would add a lot to the “but, they knew so much” quotient.

ETA: some sort of a family codeword/phrase is really not a bad idea if everybody can remember it.

It also makes it a hell of a lot easier if all the info is right there, phone number included.