- Over the weekend, some Democrats received calls asking them to sit out the New Hampshire primary.
- The audio on the call was a deepfake recording of President Joe Biden.
- As AI becomes cheaper and more powerful, experts say we have entered a dangerous new era for spam calls.
Robocall fraud experts told Business Insider that New Hampshire voters received a robocall with a deepfake voice of President Joe Biden instructing them to skip the state’s upcoming primary. He said the incident was “the tip of the iceberg” and warned there was more to come.
NBC News was the first to report a robocall telling voters to skip Tuesday’s primary.
“We know from the vote count that it’s worth voting Democratic,” he said on a conference call, referring to the deepfake recording of Biden. “It’s important to preserve your vote for the November election. We need your full cooperation to elect a Democrat.”
It’s difficult to say exactly how many New Hampshire voters received calls, but Aaron Foss, CEO and founder of Nomorobo, used the company’s many honeypot cell phone numbers to He estimated that the number was probably “less than 5,000.”
Foss and Jonathan Nelson, director of product management at Hiya, a company that provides protection from spam and scam calls, explained that they have long predicted that robocalls would impact the 2024 election.
“We knew this day would come, and now it’s here,” Foss said, adding that we’ve already seen deepfake Biden audio reinventing old fraud scams. said. Fictional Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.
“There’s no question in my mind, this is going to be the toughest presidential year we’ve ever seen when it comes to robocalls and activity like this,” Nelson added.
New technology means bigger bets than ever
This year in particular will be bad for robocalls, Nelson said, not only because it’s an election year but also because fraudsters have access to more sophisticated technology. Over the past year, the cost of consumer access to his AI has become cheaper, allowing deepfakes to become increasingly improved.
Now, you can trust the number you call, but “you can’t even trust the voice” on the other person’s phone, he said.
“This happens all the time,” Foss said. “Scammers jump on new things to step on his toes and rip them off.”
Both Foss and Nelson said they expected this robocall revolution to occur, but the latter said the total influx of robocalls (both Biden deepfakes and unrelated ones) that Hiya saw over the weekend It added that it was “unprecedented.”
The FCC has a lot of work to do to fix this.
There are plenty of perfectly legal, sometimes annoying, but not scam robocalls made every day, such as appointment reminders, two-factor authentication, and even reminders to get out and vote. Still, Nelson said the total number of robocalls he saw over the weekend was a first.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spike like this in just two days, to be honest with you, in all the research I’ve done,” Nelson said of the torrent of spam calls to New Hampshire. Told. -Base numbers. “Only one state is going to be completely bombarded? That’s kind of unprecedented.”
When it comes to robocalls, you may be able to stop scams by simply putting certain phone numbers on your “do not call” list.
But in this case it’s much more difficult than that.
In the New Hampshire phone scam, the phone number voters saw when they called was “spoofed,” or forged, to appear to be from the leader of a pro-Biden super PAC.
The Federal Communications Commissionstir/shakeFoss said that fraudsters are still able to circumvent the technology and steal from super PAC leaders. He pointed out that he was able to forge the phone number.
