Central Bank: scammers began to imitate the voices of relatives of a potential victim

Bank of Russia: scammers have begun to imitate the voices of potential victims’ relatives more often

Fraudsters who seek to deceive Russians are using a new method – faking the votes of loved ones and acquaintances of potential victims. This was reported by the press service of the regulator, the Central Bank of Russia, for fraud prevention. Attackers imitate the voices of people the victim knows, using special programs to trick them into providing personal information or transferring money.

Fraudsters are increasingly using combined fraud schemes, mainly telephone. They create address schemes based on information that a citizen posts on open Internet resources, for example, about his relatives, friends, work or leisure activities. The Central Bank regulator advises people to be careful and not post personal and financial information on social networks and other open resources. You also need to be careful when sending information from documents in instant messengers and social networks, and also not enter your data on dubious sites. Any monetary transactions at the request of persons received by telephone do not need to be completed.

The Central Bank regulator recommends calling the person on whose behalf the scammers are calling to clarify the information and avoid being scammed. The field of voice deepfakes is actively developing, but it is still difficult to plausibly clone someone else’s voice, said Dmitry Anikin, senior data scientist at Kaspersky Lab, last November.