AI is Making Virtual Kidnappings More Real Than Ever

The Perfect Scam

AARP

True Crime, Aarp, Fraud, Society & Culture, Scam, Crime, Bobsullivan

4.5 • 980 Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s a typical busy day for Amanda as she sees her teenaged daughter off to work. But five minutes later, everything changes when she receives a call from a local number and hears her daughter’s voice crying. A man comes on the line with a chilling threat for Amanda if she doesn’t do exactly what he says. Technologies like AI are making virtual kidnappings and similar scams easier than ever for criminals. Bob talks with Vijay Balasubramaniyan about this ever-evolving technology and how listeners can protect themselves.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week on The Perfect Scam.
0:04.0	It felt like I was not even inside my body at the time.
0:09.0	While it was going on, I just, I got into fight or flight, and I was doing everything that they asked me to do because I figured any wrong move or anything that I said could have just sent them, you know, to want to hurt her.
0:29.9	Welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. One of the oldest problems in
0:36.2	technology is, how do you prove you are who you say you are?
0:40.3	How do you convince a website or a bank or a doctor's office that you are really you?
0:46.3	Authentication is the fancy name for this, but it could also be called the right human problem,
0:52.3	as in are you the right human to ask for this cash withdrawal or this data?
0:59.0	Well, one of the oldest problems in tech is now running right into one of the newest,
1:03.8	what some people now call the real human problem.
1:07.6	As in, does this request come from a real person or is it a computer creation,
1:12.6	a synthetic identity, a fake voice or video?
1:17.6	Solving both the right person and the real person problems, it sound a bit esoteric, but
1:24.6	now that computers are pretty good at pretending to be real people, well, the impact
1:29.1	can be quite terrifying. So we begin today's story with Amanda Murphy, a veteran and a mom,
1:35.8	who was convinced recently that she was talking on the phone with the right person, her daughter,
1:40.9	who found herself in a very wrong situation.
1:45.8	How long have you lived in Brian, Texas?
1:48.4	About nine years now.
1:50.5	Where'd you move from?
1:51.5	From Southern California.
1:53.0	That's a big change.
	...

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