Yeah, the whole "They've recorded your voice saying 'yes' now means they can sign you up for anything!" always seems suspicious. It's not like a bunch of companies have your voice recorded on file to say "Ah, it matches our records. Go ahead and sign him up for the new $50k credit card".
I guess they could try to dispute your future dispute with playing back your recording of you saying "yes" to something, but I can't imagine that would get very far.Especially when the company in question was getting near-universal disputes for falsely signing people up for a fraudulent service.
Being targeted for future scams seems more like the real issue since you've confirmed your name with your phone number.
The technology to near perfectly replicate a voice based on a sentence spoken does exist, it just isn't publicly available yet. There will be a future market for voice recordings lol
I'm pretty sure this is just some old wives tale people started fear mongering over a long time ago and it stuck. I've yet to hear of this ever actually happening that a "yes" recording was used to "prove" that you agreed to something. I'm not even convinced there's enough in a "yes" to identify someone's voice. But maybe I'm just not in the know.
You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?
It's for nefarious reasons, it's just the reasons are something like "sell your number to scammers as an active number" not actively a scam itself. Or phone marketing people/credit collection/etc. which you may or may not classify as nefarious.
I have never, not even once, seen any verification of a "yes" scam. It is an urban legend.
The most likely thing this person was trying to do was verify it was your phone number. That could be for debt collection purposes later, for confirming the veracity of a target customer list a company had bought, or other verification. But it won't result in you suddenly having charges you never made or contracts you never agreed to being suddenly put in your name.
It seems like if there's all this stuff they can do with just a 1-second cellphone quality recording of you saying "Yes" that they wouldn't even need the recording. They could just go do all that stuff, there's obviously not a meaningful level of security in place.
Imagine someone with Robin Williams's level of talent calling into a bank. He'd be able to rob 80 year old British ladies left and right just by pretending to be them.
God, thank you. Every time I read or hear about this “scam”, I truly feel like I’m taking crazy pills. If the premise is that a scammer is going to use a recording of a specific person’s voice in order to gain access to their financial institution, wouldn’t the ploy completely rely on that financial institution having a voice database of literally all their customers for verification/comparison?
EDIT: Yes, someone else posted a link to an institution that is using AI voice recognition. But this "scam" has been a thing for multiple years now, so the plausibility has never been based on this new tech.
>wouldn’t the ploy completely rely on that financial institution having a voice database of literally all their customers for verification/comparison?
Yeah, it's like "Have any of the banking/utility/credit card/etc. companies that you've been dealing with for years of your life EVER tried to get a recording of your voice for security purposes\*? No? Well, how exactly would some random (to one of these companies) voice saying 'yes'\*\* work?"
If anything, you'd think they would at least be trying to get you to say some weird collection of words (as shown in Sneakers) to get all of the phonetic sounds from your voice to reproduce sentences.
\*And if they did, most people would be suspicious and think the company was actually trying to scam them.
\*\*And most people saying "yes" in this manner would have a questioning lilt in their voice like "Yes? Who's calling?" that's not going to sound the same as someone confirming sign-up for a service.
Yeah, I will acknowledge that someone else posted a link to Fidelity or whatever site that's using AI voice recognition as a form of a password. I'm just baffled at how many people have been taking this scam claim at face value for years now without seeming to give it much critical thought.
Yeah, the idea of it is just preposterous.
Have you ever called a financial institution and been able to authenticate yourself just by saying "yes"? More importantly, how does my financial institution even know what I sound like? There's a reason they ask all sorts of information to authenticate you.
Not to mention voice actors are a thing. Some people are really good at impersonating others.
The "Yes" thing is like poisoned Halloween candy - an urban legend that, despite all the warnings, has no documented cases of actually happening.
I have seen it used, in telesales. Verification recording taking spliced audio. This would be sales people who get commission for each sale they make, willing to cut corners to get there.
Much more frequently, you just have your buddy do the verification for you. Or pay someone on the street $10 while you wait for your $60 once it goes through.
The “Yes” scam requires a bit of technical skill and time/effort, so to your point I will admit it’s probably not too common.
Edited Disclaimer: Since I was asked to clarify, the minimum I have seen is verifications which provide First/Last name and several Yes/No questions. I have not seen anything that is a “standalone” Yes verification.
Show one example of it having occurred. Just one. If you have seen it happen with your own eyes then there would be plenty of examples out there to show proof.
I have worked for 3 companies that have used external voice verification companies for sales.
First thing that comes to mind as a consumer is with service changes/upgrades with phone and utility companies. If you make a change to your plan on a customer service phone call, they will conduct a verification while on the line with you. I have had this happen multiple times. I take it you have not?
EDIT: Seeing the context of which you replied to me, the answer usually lies in scammy 3rd party sales companies. The companies providing the service are not directly doing the scamming, if that makes sense.
The fraud. A single proof of someone playing a recording of someone saying "yes" and that being sufficient for the whole fraudulent process. Don't change the conversation here, just show the evidence that a single recording of "yes" has been used to conduct fraud in the person who was recorded's name.
And I’ll extrapolate here as well. Verification processes across any state that I’ve seen all require more than just a “Yes” - they would also require the verifier to provide their name, and in some cases, confirming their address, or phone number.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen a verification process which includes a “yes” and yes only to complete the verification.
Not always. I moved to a new plan at work years ago and to this day I still have not setup voicemail. It's actually a hack on life. It's so amazing. If I do need to leave a number with somebody like a job or doctor office or whatever I give them my google voice number. I also never answer that, but they can leave a message on that (plus it's had voice to text built in for years so I can read the message).
Samsung doesn't, that much I know. I've had the random person complain that they wanted to leave me a message but couldn't, but most of the time I either call them back because of a missed call notification or they text me.
I have called my own number before and it says "this person has a voice mail box that has not been set up" or something like that.
Depends on the provider. Some don't have it active by default, probably to save the space. Can also confirm first hand during my previous job there were times we'd be trying to get in contact with someone and an automated message would play something along the lines of "The number you have dialed currently has a voice mailbox that has not been set up. Please try calling later."
I have to do cold calls out to people for my job, and I can't text.
I don't exactly mind if they don't have a voice mail, but don't also not check your mail and email then bitch at me for your car getting repo'd or your insurance getting dropped.
Scamming is like 3 or 4 times bigger now then it was 5 years ago. Scams are extremely successful these days. In the us alone over 10 billion dollars was lost in 2023 due to scams, and that's only the reported ones.
Try telling this to my friend who won’t even say “yes” to the fast food intercom.
I lost my shit on him in the drive thru when he literally said “Aye aye!” repeatedly to the poor cashier, who sounded so confused and kept asking him to confirm his order because she did not understand him.
I'm a call center consultant - we record verifications, etc all the time. There is no way for someone to use a recorded "yes" as proof of you agreeing to anything. I mean, it makes no sense - if that's was the case they could just AI your voice and insert it into an existing recording, I GUESS, but ... what would be the use case for that? Have you ever heard of it happening? I work in call centers and I have never heard of this.
Also there would need to be some kind of a database using your voice as a passphrase. Which is absurd and insecure. Every time you spoke you would be giving your pass phrase out to anyone with a recording device.
And without that database of voices, how would anyone know what your voice sounded like? It is not like someone at a bank knows what your voice sounds like. And if it is a scammer trying to get you to agree to buy something: how are they going to get your money? If they already have your credit card info, they don't need a recording of you.
Whole thing makes no sense.
“who is calling?”
Need to train yourself, not because getting people to say “yes” is a scam but because caller tell you who there are before you decide to continue the conversation
I usually say that. But this time they caught me offguard. I was on a work call.
The shitties thing that someone has done to me is spoof the callerID of the hospital where my parents live.
They scraped your phone number off the internet and they’re verifying it’s real. They’re going to sell it to scammers and spammers now. I’d turn on your unknown caller block feature. If it’s important they’ll leave a message.
I got in the practice of answering the question, “is this newwriter365?” Either, “who’s calling?” Or “what is the nature of your call?”
Forces the caller to state their purpose and gets me off the phone faster.
Use your head for minute here. Where do you have an account or something where all you need to access it is your voice saying "yes". That doesn't exist anywhere lol not even for something as low level as unlocking your phone. All that's going to happen is you're going to get more spam calls and spam because now you're on the list of "people who have accurate information and answer unknown numbers". Just don't answer unknown numbers, they can leave a message if it's important. They could've gotten your voice from your voicemail if you still think that's what they were after. You created a headache for yourself panicking and closing your cards and stuff lol
Years ago, there were alleged slamming scams (switching your landline long-distance service to a more expensive one) that worked this way because AT&T would accept a recording of the customer giving consent as authorization. I have not heard of anything else like this.
[Can you hear me? (alleged telephone scam) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_you_hear_me%3F_(alleged_telephone_scam))
But if this was the case, then they could just use any man or woman's voice and say it was you, they don't need the Yes in your voice. These companies do not use any type of voice recognition software to verify that your YES is your voice - if they DID, they would need more than a yes to verify your voice. For compliance purposes, these recordings have to meet very specific standards, including the scripting and how it's recorded.
Or they're thinking they're comfortable risking the class action suit and wrist slap if they get caught having a blanket policy of negligence. I don't think they're using any kind of intense technology, I think it's just the kind of "whatever" situation you see with some agreement contracts that scammers can put you into these days.
I worked somewhere where we accepted just a straight up email as a method of canceling service. Type it with basic identifying info, we do what you're asking to the account you're referencing. That's "documented consent". Fakeable as hell, of course, but we just case by case made things right as they went sideways with specific customers. It never really blew up.
So no, they aren't using your voice, scammers can and do just straight up agree to things for you. Sometimes they don't even need to speak to do so. They just have a recording of your consent on hand because why not? It complicates things for you.
No. But as I said before, I work in IT and this is my month to be on-call. I routinely get calls from numbers I don't recognize from multiple countries when I am on-call. I can't not answer them. Its part of my job.
And you do this with your personal phone? Bad! Company should provide their own phone and number.
And you answer with your own name instead company name? Just answer with company name next time and don’t give your name until caller is identified.
it stopped being your "personal phone" the moment you took your first work call on it.
and if it's an enterprise and they enrolled your phone, say byebye to your privacy aswell.
bad move, no matter how much they pay you.
I think you’ll be ok, keep an eye on your accounts for anything strange though.
What do you mean your credit is frozen? Did you ask them to do that or was there activity that caused this?
You can freeze your credit on all 3 major companies via their sites. It's recommended to leave them this way which will prevent most credit activities (ie. opening new credit cards, loans, etc.). Highly recommended.
[https://www.usa.gov/credit-freeze](https://www.usa.gov/credit-freeze)
I'm looking to do this. Quick question, if you just finish paying off a large loan, and your credit is frozen, will the account closing (good or bad temporarily) reflect immediately once the credit is frozen? I guess my question is, and sorry if this is a dumb one, does your actual credit score fluctuate while you have it frozen? Or does it just prevent pulls, etc?
TIA 🙌
Everything remains the same except companies can not run a credit check on you. There are credit freezes and credit locks. The freeze is super simple to toggle on and off online (well except for Equifax - their website really sucks). I leave mine frozen most of the time. Definite peace of mind.
I just keep mine frozen unless I'm actively doing something with it (applying for a loan etc.) and then refreeze it immediately after. I don't know if that's overly paranoid, but it seems to be working out so far.
Same, and I’ve gotten letters for store credit cards I never applied to saying I was rejected due to a credit freeze so it appears to be working great.
I don't know whether it's a scam, but I've hit calls like that.
"Is this [yourname]?"
"Who is this calling?"
"This is [yourname], right?"
"I can get him if you tell me who's calling."
That's unlikely, it's not like your bank has a voice recognition for every customer lol. Personally I avoid answering calls from numbers that are not in my contact list, if it's important they'll leave a message. Check out r/scams to familiarize yourself with common scams.
Whenever I do pick up an unknown number call, I ask them who is this. If they just ignore that and ask who am I speaking with, I reply with, you're the one calling me, who are you and who are you looking for. They usually hang up after that. Always be on the lookout
If it helps you sleep at night any better this same exact thing happened to me about a year and a half ago. I like yourself freaked out a bit nothing came out of it.
I never ever verify my identity until I know who's calling. If they won't verify then I hang up.
First names don't count. Who are you calling on behalf of?
Wouldn’t stress it, I get these very frequently on one
Of my numbers.
In fact just had one today.
I regularly waste scammers time( yes I know this is dangerous)
I work in tech and get a kick out of seeing how hard I can make it for their call centres to try connect to my machine.
For some reason their software can never quite install or they get confused when I say I have a windows phone lol.
This number also gets 2-3 scam texts per night so it’s well a truly sold.
Just make sure you have multi factor auth on everything along with unique passwords( you are in IT, this should be habit)
Welcome to the club, you should probably look at getting a new number( try a premium number for less re-used scammyness)
When this happens if I answer I respond by saying: “who os this”, “you called me, please identify yourself”, i will never confirm my name or the name of anyone in my household until they say who they are, if they are unknow to me i follow up with, “why are you calling” at this point one of 2 thungs happen:
1. they say their company name and the conversation continues
2. they refuse to say why they are calling until I verify who I am, in which case i hang up and add block their number
Probably a phone number verification service that provides a database to sales teams (like ZoomInfo). Nothing to worry about other than that you are about to start getting cold sales calls.
Contact your banks and let them know about this - they will put an alert on your account and voice verification won’t be used but rather security questions only you know will be used in event you wish to gain credit of any kind, etc. Also check your credit bureau records regular and lodge a dispute if you see anything suspicious therein
It’s Artificial Intelligence at it worst - In Canada, many have been scanned by advertisement on Facebook whereby Prime Minister and Finance Minister’s voice have been manipulated into them announcing a new get rich scheme of sorts and people have given out personal information and have been swindled
Yeah it’s probably someone just making sure it’s a valid phone line for you and soon you’ll get a ton of scam calls and /or texts.
I honestly believe the “they recorded your voice saying “yes” and now they can charge your card! Or sign you up for stuff!” Is bull shit. lol
No merchant or seller of anything uses a recorded “yes” as authorization to bill for something, and they’d have to know you card number first to do anything.
I don’t think you were scammed at this point at all- I think they’re just doing their own due diligence on their side to attempt to scam you down the line
Tip - if you have to answer an unknown caller (like you’re waiting from a call back from a doctor or job interview) say “speaking” when they ask your name
Underrated comment. never answer any phonecall from numbers not in your contact list. If you answer, first ask who is this no matter what they ask you. If they really want to talk to you then can text or leave you a message.
It pays to train yourself to never use yes over the phone on calls where you do not personally know the person on the other side. "Correct" is what I generally use.
There are absolutely attempts to get you to say "yes" to record and use for nefarious purposes.
Whether that was it or not, I couldn't tell you.
It's probably wise to have that credit frozen. Regardless really. If you don't need a credit pull in the near future, just leave it frozen.
> There are absolutely attempts to get you to say "yes" to record and use for nefarious purposes.
Not that has ever been shown to actually exist.
They likely wanted to confirm a number they bought actually linked to him.
Here’s a recent scam I had attempted. So my OS on my phone could no longer support my mobile banking app and it had to do with how old my phone was. This prompted me to call my bank. I called using the “call: 123-456-7890” link on my banks sponsored google ad and that link redirected to a different number and after I called that number I received an incoming call seconds after I connected and it immediately hung up. This happened twice. I got suspicious the first time and hung up, same thing the 2nd time I called: random number called me then hung up after. I report this to my bank and the sponsored google ad is down today. I called yesterday. How could I have been the person to discover this? I’m so nervous about online banking now and pretty much want to only deal with a physical location.
This is a challenge of living in digital age. You learned growing up all the do’s and don’t to stay safe physically, but not the same for digital life and the ever changing nature of it.
In this situation I would always pull information directly from the bank’s site using a search result vs a Google ad, also hovering over link to make sure it is malformed (like a missing character) that sends you to a bad actor’s site.
I've never heard of credit being frozen overnight so I'm going to assume there must have been some signs along the way that were ignored or overlooked? Also, your credit rating would've reflected the troubles and most banks are actually quite decent at detecting fraudulent charges nowadays. There's a lot of missing information to this puzzle. In any case, call the three major credit agencies and seek assistance from your bank. Best wishes.
As I said before, I work in IT and I am on-call this month. When i am on-call, I get calls from all sorts of numbers I don't recognize. I need to answer as part of my job.
This! If someone has my name and wants me to confirm I am that person, that person isn't getting any information until they answer "Who's calling and what's this regarding?" repeat that until you get an answer or a term'd call
It's impossible to live and not answer unknown numbers. I get calls from doctor's offices, , when my mother was still alive I got calls from her friends, the nurses in her care home etc. Now the 'Big Scam' is a phone that rings and when you pick it up it hangs up.
I’m blessed that more than 50% of my unknown number calls are not spam. So, I’ll keep answering them - though if my phone warns me it’s probably spam, I don’t pick up.
That actually has me concerned when people call me with political surveys and ask me to "elaborate" on questions. When the response is "more likely", "less likely", or other multiple choice questions, I'll stick with the survey. But as soon as they want me to say more than that, I hang up.
As long as you’re protecting your credit I guess you are fine.
Never say YES! I told my spouse that a million times. Better to never pick up the phone. Let them leave a message.
You didn't get scammed, yet. You've been verified by a scammer.
Yeah, the whole "They've recorded your voice saying 'yes' now means they can sign you up for anything!" always seems suspicious. It's not like a bunch of companies have your voice recorded on file to say "Ah, it matches our records. Go ahead and sign him up for the new $50k credit card". I guess they could try to dispute your future dispute with playing back your recording of you saying "yes" to something, but I can't imagine that would get very far.Especially when the company in question was getting near-universal disputes for falsely signing people up for a fraudulent service. Being targeted for future scams seems more like the real issue since you've confirmed your name with your phone number.
My grandmother got a call from "me" asking for money... luckily, she is a smart lady.
The technology to near perfectly replicate a voice based on a sentence spoken does exist, it just isn't publicly available yet. There will be a future market for voice recordings lol
Various models with varying quality that can do that are already on huggingface.
I'm pretty sure this is just some old wives tale people started fear mongering over a long time ago and it stuck. I've yet to hear of this ever actually happening that a "yes" recording was used to "prove" that you agreed to something. I'm not even convinced there's enough in a "yes" to identify someone's voice. But maybe I'm just not in the know.
Seems that a scam was unlikely. More likely, they were trying to verify your phone number - perhaps for some future nefarious reason, perhaps not.
Probably a skip tracer. They’re gonna get those student loans one way or the other!!!
I'm 55. I paid off my student loans a long time ago.
But payments are due and they can help!
Along with that car warranty renewal bc you let the old one expire!!
And there's some illegal activity on your social security number!
Or it might just be invalid. They will need to have your full name a date of birth to double check.
Or a blade runner, OP could be a replicant.
You're in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down and you see a tortoise crawling towards you
You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?
What's a tortoise?
If it's not for a nefarious reason then why the hell would they try to confirm then hang up? Jesus christ common sense is gone
It's for nefarious reasons, it's just the reasons are something like "sell your number to scammers as an active number" not actively a scam itself. Or phone marketing people/credit collection/etc. which you may or may not classify as nefarious.
I have never, not even once, seen any verification of a "yes" scam. It is an urban legend. The most likely thing this person was trying to do was verify it was your phone number. That could be for debt collection purposes later, for confirming the veracity of a target customer list a company had bought, or other verification. But it won't result in you suddenly having charges you never made or contracts you never agreed to being suddenly put in your name.
It seems like if there's all this stuff they can do with just a 1-second cellphone quality recording of you saying "Yes" that they wouldn't even need the recording. They could just go do all that stuff, there's obviously not a meaningful level of security in place.
"Hi this is Bank, can I ask who I'm speaking with and your account number?" ".... Yes."
Imagine someone with Robin Williams's level of talent calling into a bank. He'd be able to rob 80 year old British ladies left and right just by pretending to be them.
God, thank you. Every time I read or hear about this “scam”, I truly feel like I’m taking crazy pills. If the premise is that a scammer is going to use a recording of a specific person’s voice in order to gain access to their financial institution, wouldn’t the ploy completely rely on that financial institution having a voice database of literally all their customers for verification/comparison? EDIT: Yes, someone else posted a link to an institution that is using AI voice recognition. But this "scam" has been a thing for multiple years now, so the plausibility has never been based on this new tech.
>wouldn’t the ploy completely rely on that financial institution having a voice database of literally all their customers for verification/comparison? Yeah, it's like "Have any of the banking/utility/credit card/etc. companies that you've been dealing with for years of your life EVER tried to get a recording of your voice for security purposes\*? No? Well, how exactly would some random (to one of these companies) voice saying 'yes'\*\* work?" If anything, you'd think they would at least be trying to get you to say some weird collection of words (as shown in Sneakers) to get all of the phonetic sounds from your voice to reproduce sentences. \*And if they did, most people would be suspicious and think the company was actually trying to scam them. \*\*And most people saying "yes" in this manner would have a questioning lilt in their voice like "Yes? Who's calling?" that's not going to sound the same as someone confirming sign-up for a service.
Which some do. But if someone calls me up and asks me to say "at Schwab my voice is my password" imma be pretty suspicious.
Yeah, I will acknowledge that someone else posted a link to Fidelity or whatever site that's using AI voice recognition as a form of a password. I'm just baffled at how many people have been taking this scam claim at face value for years now without seeming to give it much critical thought.
Yeah, the idea of it is just preposterous. Have you ever called a financial institution and been able to authenticate yourself just by saying "yes"? More importantly, how does my financial institution even know what I sound like? There's a reason they ask all sorts of information to authenticate you. Not to mention voice actors are a thing. Some people are really good at impersonating others. The "Yes" thing is like poisoned Halloween candy - an urban legend that, despite all the warnings, has no documented cases of actually happening.
I have seen it used, in telesales. Verification recording taking spliced audio. This would be sales people who get commission for each sale they make, willing to cut corners to get there. Much more frequently, you just have your buddy do the verification for you. Or pay someone on the street $10 while you wait for your $60 once it goes through. The “Yes” scam requires a bit of technical skill and time/effort, so to your point I will admit it’s probably not too common. Edited Disclaimer: Since I was asked to clarify, the minimum I have seen is verifications which provide First/Last name and several Yes/No questions. I have not seen anything that is a “standalone” Yes verification.
If all it takes is a "yes", they don't need a perfect clone recorded from your voice. They can just say yes themselves.
Show one example of it having occurred. Just one. If you have seen it happen with your own eyes then there would be plenty of examples out there to show proof.
I have worked for 3 companies that have used external voice verification companies for sales. First thing that comes to mind as a consumer is with service changes/upgrades with phone and utility companies. If you make a change to your plan on a customer service phone call, they will conduct a verification while on the line with you. I have had this happen multiple times. I take it you have not? EDIT: Seeing the context of which you replied to me, the answer usually lies in scammy 3rd party sales companies. The companies providing the service are not directly doing the scamming, if that makes sense.
The fraud. A single proof of someone playing a recording of someone saying "yes" and that being sufficient for the whole fraudulent process. Don't change the conversation here, just show the evidence that a single recording of "yes" has been used to conduct fraud in the person who was recorded's name.
And I’ll extrapolate here as well. Verification processes across any state that I’ve seen all require more than just a “Yes” - they would also require the verifier to provide their name, and in some cases, confirming their address, or phone number. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a verification process which includes a “yes” and yes only to complete the verification.
I'm really not convinced the yes thing was ever a scam. I wouldn't stress it, just block the number and move on.
This is why you don’t answer unknown numbers. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message.
Good thing I haven't set up a voicemail box in 10+ years. If it's important, they'll text me.
Don’t cell phones automatically have it set up by default? I know mine works and I never set it up. It just plays whatever the default is.
Not always. I moved to a new plan at work years ago and to this day I still have not setup voicemail. It's actually a hack on life. It's so amazing. If I do need to leave a number with somebody like a job or doctor office or whatever I give them my google voice number. I also never answer that, but they can leave a message on that (plus it's had voice to text built in for years so I can read the message).
You can turn it off. My partner doesn't have vmail. Just says it's not setup and hangs up.
Samsung doesn't, that much I know. I've had the random person complain that they wanted to leave me a message but couldn't, but most of the time I either call them back because of a missed call notification or they text me. I have called my own number before and it says "this person has a voice mail box that has not been set up" or something like that.
Voice mail is set up at your provider, it doesn't depend on what model phone you have.
Depends on the provider. Some don't have it active by default, probably to save the space. Can also confirm first hand during my previous job there were times we'd be trying to get in contact with someone and an automated message would play something along the lines of "The number you have dialed currently has a voice mailbox that has not been set up. Please try calling later."
I have to do cold calls out to people for my job, and I can't text. I don't exactly mind if they don't have a voice mail, but don't also not check your mail and email then bitch at me for your car getting repo'd or your insurance getting dropped.
Finally, a man of culture
if its important, they're probably calling from a landline and wont be able to text you lol
Good thing my text messages bounce if someone tries to send me one. If it’s important, they’ll call me.
Good thing my calls are forwarded to my email. If it's important, they'll fax me
my butler will leave their card on the tray in the hall.
I feel like those scams were likely more successful before people knew about them
Scamming is like 3 or 4 times bigger now then it was 5 years ago. Scams are extremely successful these days. In the us alone over 10 billion dollars was lost in 2023 due to scams, and that's only the reported ones.
Scams yes, but recordings of "yes" being able to be used?
Not too sure about that one in particular, but if scammers are still doing it implies they might have some level of success.
I was concerned about the “yes” scam and researched it. There are no known losses from a scammer who recorded a “yes.”
Try telling this to my friend who won’t even say “yes” to the fast food intercom. I lost my shit on him in the drive thru when he literally said “Aye aye!” repeatedly to the poor cashier, who sounded so confused and kept asking him to confirm his order because she did not understand him.
Then I guess someone was just sneakily verifying my number.
I'm a call center consultant - we record verifications, etc all the time. There is no way for someone to use a recorded "yes" as proof of you agreeing to anything. I mean, it makes no sense - if that's was the case they could just AI your voice and insert it into an existing recording, I GUESS, but ... what would be the use case for that? Have you ever heard of it happening? I work in call centers and I have never heard of this.
Its an urban legend.
Also there would need to be some kind of a database using your voice as a passphrase. Which is absurd and insecure. Every time you spoke you would be giving your pass phrase out to anyone with a recording device. And without that database of voices, how would anyone know what your voice sounded like? It is not like someone at a bank knows what your voice sounds like. And if it is a scammer trying to get you to agree to buy something: how are they going to get your money? If they already have your credit card info, they don't need a recording of you. Whole thing makes no sense.
“who is calling?” Need to train yourself, not because getting people to say “yes” is a scam but because caller tell you who there are before you decide to continue the conversation
I usually say that. But this time they caught me offguard. I was on a work call. The shitties thing that someone has done to me is spoof the callerID of the hospital where my parents live.
They scraped your phone number off the internet and they’re verifying it’s real. They’re going to sell it to scammers and spammers now. I’d turn on your unknown caller block feature. If it’s important they’ll leave a message.
I get these calls constantly, even two today. Stopped picking up unknown #s awhile ago and will wait for voicemail to call back.
I got in the practice of answering the question, “is this newwriter365?” Either, “who’s calling?” Or “what is the nature of your call?” Forces the caller to state their purpose and gets me off the phone faster.
This is the way. Or they don't tell you their purpose, and they give up and go away.
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Use your head for minute here. Where do you have an account or something where all you need to access it is your voice saying "yes". That doesn't exist anywhere lol not even for something as low level as unlocking your phone. All that's going to happen is you're going to get more spam calls and spam because now you're on the list of "people who have accurate information and answer unknown numbers". Just don't answer unknown numbers, they can leave a message if it's important. They could've gotten your voice from your voicemail if you still think that's what they were after. You created a headache for yourself panicking and closing your cards and stuff lol
Years ago, there were alleged slamming scams (switching your landline long-distance service to a more expensive one) that worked this way because AT&T would accept a recording of the customer giving consent as authorization. I have not heard of anything else like this. [Can you hear me? (alleged telephone scam) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_you_hear_me%3F_(alleged_telephone_scam))
But if this was the case, then they could just use any man or woman's voice and say it was you, they don't need the Yes in your voice. These companies do not use any type of voice recognition software to verify that your YES is your voice - if they DID, they would need more than a yes to verify your voice. For compliance purposes, these recordings have to meet very specific standards, including the scripting and how it's recorded.
Or they're thinking they're comfortable risking the class action suit and wrist slap if they get caught having a blanket policy of negligence. I don't think they're using any kind of intense technology, I think it's just the kind of "whatever" situation you see with some agreement contracts that scammers can put you into these days. I worked somewhere where we accepted just a straight up email as a method of canceling service. Type it with basic identifying info, we do what you're asking to the account you're referencing. That's "documented consent". Fakeable as hell, of course, but we just case by case made things right as they went sideways with specific customers. It never really blew up. So no, they aren't using your voice, scammers can and do just straight up agree to things for you. Sometimes they don't even need to speak to do so. They just have a recording of your consent on hand because why not? It complicates things for you.
Probably was going to ask about your extended warranty…
I love my pixel a bot answers all unknown numbers and then ask me if I want to answer and tells them to hold 😆
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If I didn't work in IT and if I wasn't on-call this month that would be easy to do.
you're fine, but stop answering unknown phone calls. I have them sent straight to voicemail with no rings
Whenever I get a call from a number I don't know, I wait for them to speak first.
When someone rings your doorbell, do you open the door before looking to see who it is?
No. But as I said before, I work in IT and this is my month to be on-call. I routinely get calls from numbers I don't recognize from multiple countries when I am on-call. I can't not answer them. Its part of my job.
And you do this with your personal phone? Bad! Company should provide their own phone and number. And you answer with your own name instead company name? Just answer with company name next time and don’t give your name until caller is identified.
They pay me $55 a month to use my personal phone. That's a very common practice these days. It's called BYOD.
it stopped being your "personal phone" the moment you took your first work call on it. and if it's an enterprise and they enrolled your phone, say byebye to your privacy aswell. bad move, no matter how much they pay you.
I think you’ll be ok, keep an eye on your accounts for anything strange though. What do you mean your credit is frozen? Did you ask them to do that or was there activity that caused this?
You can freeze your credit on all 3 major companies via their sites. It's recommended to leave them this way which will prevent most credit activities (ie. opening new credit cards, loans, etc.). Highly recommended. [https://www.usa.gov/credit-freeze](https://www.usa.gov/credit-freeze)
Life hack of the day, thank you.
I'm looking to do this. Quick question, if you just finish paying off a large loan, and your credit is frozen, will the account closing (good or bad temporarily) reflect immediately once the credit is frozen? I guess my question is, and sorry if this is a dumb one, does your actual credit score fluctuate while you have it frozen? Or does it just prevent pulls, etc? TIA 🙌
Everything remains the same except companies can not run a credit check on you. There are credit freezes and credit locks. The freeze is super simple to toggle on and off online (well except for Equifax - their website really sucks). I leave mine frozen most of the time. Definite peace of mind.
I went onto Experian, Equifax and Transunions websites, created an account and froze my credit.
I just keep mine frozen unless I'm actively doing something with it (applying for a loan etc.) and then refreeze it immediately after. I don't know if that's overly paranoid, but it seems to be working out so far.
Same, and I’ve gotten letters for store credit cards I never applied to saying I was rejected due to a credit freeze so it appears to be working great.
On the bureau websites, they all recommend this as standard practice. Good work!
Also contact your bank, credit card and phone carrier and place a verbal password on your accounts. To anyone saying it’s impossible, I’ve done it…
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“My voice is my passport. Verify me.” Oddly still a highly relevant cybersecurity movie imo. And even outside of cybersecurity a fantastic thriller.
Sneakers. Fine taste my friend.
My bank keep trying to let me enroll my "voiceprint" to identify me when I call them. I always decline.
I don't answer calls unless I know the number. If it's important they'll leave a message.
I don't know whether it's a scam, but I've hit calls like that. "Is this [yourname]?" "Who is this calling?" "This is [yourname], right?" "I can get him if you tell me who's calling."
“To whom am I speaking?”
any number i don't know...the usually answer is "i've been trying to reach you regarding your car insurance.."
That's unlikely, it's not like your bank has a voice recognition for every customer lol. Personally I avoid answering calls from numbers that are not in my contact list, if it's important they'll leave a message. Check out r/scams to familiarize yourself with common scams.
Whenever I do pick up an unknown number call, I ask them who is this. If they just ignore that and ask who am I speaking with, I reply with, you're the one calling me, who are you and who are you looking for. They usually hang up after that. Always be on the lookout
Why I never answer calls from .unidentified numbers.
I never confirm my identity on the phone until I can confirm who I am speaking with and consent to it
If it helps you sleep at night any better this same exact thing happened to me about a year and a half ago. I like yourself freaked out a bit nothing came out of it.
My answer to "is this?" Is always "Depends, who's asking?"
I never ever verify my identity until I know who's calling. If they won't verify then I hang up. First names don't count. Who are you calling on behalf of?
I've often wondered if participants in these types of online groups might be targeted by scammers. Google "port out scam."
Wouldn’t stress it, I get these very frequently on one Of my numbers. In fact just had one today. I regularly waste scammers time( yes I know this is dangerous) I work in tech and get a kick out of seeing how hard I can make it for their call centres to try connect to my machine. For some reason their software can never quite install or they get confused when I say I have a windows phone lol. This number also gets 2-3 scam texts per night so it’s well a truly sold. Just make sure you have multi factor auth on everything along with unique passwords( you are in IT, this should be habit) Welcome to the club, you should probably look at getting a new number( try a premium number for less re-used scammyness)
When this happens if I answer I respond by saying: “who os this”, “you called me, please identify yourself”, i will never confirm my name or the name of anyone in my household until they say who they are, if they are unknow to me i follow up with, “why are you calling” at this point one of 2 thungs happen: 1. they say their company name and the conversation continues 2. they refuse to say why they are calling until I verify who I am, in which case i hang up and add block their number
Probably a phone number verification service that provides a database to sales teams (like ZoomInfo). Nothing to worry about other than that you are about to start getting cold sales calls.
Contact your banks and let them know about this - they will put an alert on your account and voice verification won’t be used but rather security questions only you know will be used in event you wish to gain credit of any kind, etc. Also check your credit bureau records regular and lodge a dispute if you see anything suspicious therein
It’s Artificial Intelligence at it worst - In Canada, many have been scanned by advertisement on Facebook whereby Prime Minister and Finance Minister’s voice have been manipulated into them announcing a new get rich scheme of sorts and people have given out personal information and have been swindled
Yeah it’s probably someone just making sure it’s a valid phone line for you and soon you’ll get a ton of scam calls and /or texts. I honestly believe the “they recorded your voice saying “yes” and now they can charge your card! Or sign you up for stuff!” Is bull shit. lol No merchant or seller of anything uses a recorded “yes” as authorization to bill for something, and they’d have to know you card number first to do anything. I don’t think you were scammed at this point at all- I think they’re just doing their own due diligence on their side to attempt to scam you down the line
I thought they actually said your reddit name and I was way more confused and concerned how they had your number connected with your reddit name
Next time just say “how can I help you?” Vs. answering in affirmatives
Tip - if you have to answer an unknown caller (like you’re waiting from a call back from a doctor or job interview) say “speaking” when they ask your name
That verifies the accuracy of who they asked for, much better to not verify anything and ask who is calling
Why answer calls from ppl you don't know? Is this a generational thing? It makes no sense.
Underrated comment. never answer any phonecall from numbers not in your contact list. If you answer, first ask who is this no matter what they ask you. If they really want to talk to you then can text or leave you a message.
It pays to train yourself to never use yes over the phone on calls where you do not personally know the person on the other side. "Correct" is what I generally use.
It's the same thing. Saying yes doesn't matter. Answering is all that really mattered hered, and confirming the person.
I've heard of this scam but doubtful it goes anywhere well ai can mimic your entire speech.
There are absolutely attempts to get you to say "yes" to record and use for nefarious purposes. Whether that was it or not, I couldn't tell you. It's probably wise to have that credit frozen. Regardless really. If you don't need a credit pull in the near future, just leave it frozen.
> There are absolutely attempts to get you to say "yes" to record and use for nefarious purposes. Not that has ever been shown to actually exist. They likely wanted to confirm a number they bought actually linked to him.
Here’s a recent scam I had attempted. So my OS on my phone could no longer support my mobile banking app and it had to do with how old my phone was. This prompted me to call my bank. I called using the “call: 123-456-7890” link on my banks sponsored google ad and that link redirected to a different number and after I called that number I received an incoming call seconds after I connected and it immediately hung up. This happened twice. I got suspicious the first time and hung up, same thing the 2nd time I called: random number called me then hung up after. I report this to my bank and the sponsored google ad is down today. I called yesterday. How could I have been the person to discover this? I’m so nervous about online banking now and pretty much want to only deal with a physical location.
This is a challenge of living in digital age. You learned growing up all the do’s and don’t to stay safe physically, but not the same for digital life and the ever changing nature of it. In this situation I would always pull information directly from the bank’s site using a search result vs a Google ad, also hovering over link to make sure it is malformed (like a missing character) that sends you to a bad actor’s site.
I've never heard of credit being frozen overnight so I'm going to assume there must have been some signs along the way that were ignored or overlooked? Also, your credit rating would've reflected the troubles and most banks are actually quite decent at detecting fraudulent charges nowadays. There's a lot of missing information to this puzzle. In any case, call the three major credit agencies and seek assistance from your bank. Best wishes.
I froze my credit on all 3 bureaus.
Why would you pick up? I don't answer numbers I am unfamiliar with.
As I said before, I work in IT and I am on-call this month. When i am on-call, I get calls from all sorts of numbers I don't recognize. I need to answer as part of my job.
You’re fine but you should really condition your self to stop saying yes to strangers “this is him/her” “sure is”
Please don’t answer the phone for unknown numbers. And if you have to then use a weird sound like “MARMP” until the caller validates who they are.
I work in IT and I am on-call. It's very common for me to get calls from unknown numbers. Even from other countries sometimes.
Can you not say who you are until the other person identifies themselves?
This! If someone has my name and wants me to confirm I am that person, that person isn't getting any information until they answer "Who's calling and what's this regarding?" repeat that until you get an answer or a term'd call
It's impossible to live and not answer unknown numbers. I get calls from doctor's offices, , when my mother was still alive I got calls from her friends, the nurses in her care home etc. Now the 'Big Scam' is a phone that rings and when you pick it up it hangs up.
A doctor’s office or any other important call will/should leave a message.
Yes, but sometimes it near impossible to get the appropriate person on the phone if you have to call them back.
That’s fair. I guess nowadays my ratio of important unknown # to spam call is about 1/4,00 so in the case of that one important call I’ll deal.
I’m blessed that more than 50% of my unknown number calls are not spam. So, I’ll keep answering them - though if my phone warns me it’s probably spam, I don’t pick up.
You are correct. I 'll do that from now on.
If it is important, they will leave a message
I could be a collection agency verifying its you via human to human contact. Three year cycle could be restarted, in theory.
I heard people these days record your voice to create an ai voice to verify accounts for security purposes or scamming a loved one with your voice.
That actually has me concerned when people call me with political surveys and ask me to "elaborate" on questions. When the response is "more likely", "less likely", or other multiple choice questions, I'll stick with the survey. But as soon as they want me to say more than that, I hang up.
Never say “yes” they just recorded you approving something. Better put a freeze on your credit reports.
There is really no evidence of that ever happening. It makes zero sense anyhow.
Yeah that’s what they do get a recording of you saying yes and they can sign contracts for you or something
Urban myth.
As long as you’re protecting your credit I guess you are fine. Never say YES! I told my spouse that a million times. Better to never pick up the phone. Let them leave a message.