Living room discussion about AI, empathy, and scams

[azurelunatic]

I got a sketchy phone call about a bank card today, one that appeared to have the phone number of my bank. When they asked for the last eight of my bank card, I said "I'm just going to give you a call right back!" and ended the call. (The first 8 numbers on a 16 digit card are institution specific, so giving someone who knows your bank the last 8 is giving them the whole thing, basically.) Unfortunately I will have to call back tomorrow since there were Problems.

So the living room is talking about the application of things like ChatGPT in gaining empathy, and raised an important point:

the "con" in "con man" is "confidence".

ChatGPT is going to be great at getting the human connection part in conning people out of various money and information.


Also my phone number and bank information are probably part of some kind of leak.

Comments

[musyc]

Ew. Good on you for recognizing the scuzziness.

[azurelunatic]

If I'd known even a little less, they coulda got me. Which is why I'm posting about this one.

[senmut]

HUGS. That's terrible.

[azurelunatic]

It was deeply, deeply obnoxious. And today after calling my bank I called my mom to warn her about the possibility, and about why the last 8 are important.

[silveradept]

Ugh. Good for having the feeling of suspicion about the thing. Hopefully your institution will help you get everything squared away and no longer subjected to scammers.

[azurelunatic]

Well, they confirmed that there are no suspicious transactions and no fraud alert on the card.

And, looking at their website, I see that there's a scam alert including spoofing, posted today.

[alexseanchai]

good!

[jecook]

Here's hoping that it's not a genuine issue, although I hear letting the bank know that someone just tried to phish you is sometimes appreciated?

Remember folks, Caller ID can be easily and trivially spoofed; it was never designed to be, or intended for, authentication.

If it's the IRS? SCAM, they send certified letters long before they serve arrest warrants.
If it's the FBI or law enforcement? 95 percent it's a scam. (The ONE TIME I was called by the attorney general's office was because I was an indirect victim of insurance fraud.)They will also send certified letters, or serve you directly.
If it's 'your' bank or financial institution? Tell them this is a bad time, and call them back when you feel safe to do so.
If it's Apple / Microsoft / Some other tech company? SCAM, they will never call you if your computer has a virus.

[azurelunatic]

Yup, I called them first thing this afternoon and now there's a new phone scam alert on their website, posted today.

Plus I called my mom to specifically mention that this had happened, in case someone decided to target her too. She's getting older and struggles with some tech things, so she appreciated the heads-up.

[krait]

Hurrah to all of this; it's a reminder we could all use from time to time.

I've been lucky so far that the only scam calls I receive are low-effort ones, most notable for what they don't include. "This is a call regarding your credit card account" - oh, yeah, which one? Because I note you carefully avoided naming a card issuer. "We're calling because your insurance payment wasn't received and your coverage may be canceled" - Funny how you haven't mentioned what type of insurance it is, pal. That type of thing.

A coworker got hit recently by a much more targeted one, though, where they were able to withdraw money from his account - and then spoofed a phone number in order to pose as the bank's fraud department and get him to transfer MORE funds to them directly. O.O It's always worth taking an extra minute to slow yourself down and remember that scammers want you to be panicked, because urgency and distraction are their best protection. If something seems even slightly sketchy or risky, give yourself five minutes to think things over and recall the right way to deal with the situation. Nothing legitimate is going to begrudge you 5-10 minutes. It's better to have one late payment than pay a phony company and then have to pay the real one; better to have scammers withdraw $1000 than to throw them $2000 yourself on top of that.

Oh, yeah...

[jecook]

I have what might also be an artifact-level rant about the current state of Alleged Intelligence, why it's the current massively overblown fad that will make a few dishonest people mildly rich at the expense of everyone else (including the environment) and why I think it went horribly wrong. However, I need to remove most of the weapons-grade language from it first. :)

Re: Oh, yeah...

[azurelunatic]

sithjawa predicts that the bosses who are currently All In on AI because all of their underlings Suck!!!! will become extremely disenchanted about a year from now because a) their underlings are not mind readers and that's why they can't meet your inflated expectations and you suck at describing what you want when it's even possible, and b) AI will suck even more at it

Re: Oh, yeah...

[alexseanchai]

but AI doesn't require paychecks

[ephemera]

We had a cyber-safety briefing from the police at work a couple of months back, and you are very much correct - there are already targeted AI tools out there for the bad actors to use: cross that with a dataset of leaked data to add real-life confirmation data, and you have a mess waiting to happen.

(I have, and encourage my parents to have, an "if you called me, I'm telling you nothing" policy - which works except with my ex-banks security team, who could only call out, and that's why I no loner bank with them...)

[azurelunatic]

That's an incredibly good reason to ragequit a bank.

Smart eyes!

[jesse_the_k]

Hooray for your "this feels sketchy" intuition.

MyGuy worked in a building that shared with the VA hospital, so he had to get a federal clearance. That info was breached almost a decade ago, and he's had to cope with a plethora of bullshit since. Including one person who hacked his email--the hacker changed MyGuy's password, locking him out. Oh that took months to clean up after.

Re: Smart eyes!

[azurelunatic]

Oh, that sounds gnarly.