Fraudsters are out of control. Every year there are scammers and cybercriminals Earn billions by tricking people into spending their money. Love scam, Business email compromise, Investment fraud, Sextortion– The list of ways criminals exploit people is almost endless and constantly changing.
Added to this are identity theft scams, in which a criminal pretends to be someone known to their target and steals money. More and more often, people and especially families are being asked to create passphrases or passwords among themselves. At the beginning of December, the FBI issued a recommendation that people “create a secret word or phrase with your family to verify their identity” and British bank Starling has also published Guidelines when creating secure sentences with others.
It’s a simple, if not new, approach – one that has the potential to be effective. For example, if you receive a message or call from your “son” or “daughter” and they are urgently asking for money to get out of trouble, asking them to provide a pre-agreed passphrase can shed light on whether it is real she acts.
“Scammers use manipulation tactics to put the victim in a vulnerable state where they act out of panic, urgency or a strong desire,” says Erin Englund, director of threat intelligence at fraud detection company BioCatch. “With a passphrase or similar prepared strategy, victims can quickly verify the legitimacy of an unusual interaction and take control.”
The call to create family passwords or passphrases comes as fraudsters increasingly use AI. Machine learning has made it possible for criminals to create Imitate deepfake videos People and voice cloning with just a few seconds of audio. Scammers have used these voice clones To pretend Family members have been kidnapped and are demanding a ransom for their release.
“AI poses a major risk to businesses and families,” said Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security. Tobac says companies she has worked with have fallen victim to artificial intelligence-cloned calls that also used fake phone numbers attempting to impersonate business executives.
“Plus, every day I hear from a few families who have fallen victim to AI attacks via phone calls, where a nephew, grandchild or sibling has been hysterically cloned because they were kidnapped or were involved in a car accident where they hit a pregnant woman and need money for legal action fees and bail,” said Tobac.
Create a good family password
As with your online passwords, there are some things you should and shouldn’t do when creating a common passphrase. First of all, you shouldn’t confuse a passphrase with one of your passwords, and it shouldn’t be anything that a scammer can easily find – such as street names, birthdays, pets, or other personal information that might be shared online.
“Consider everything you or your loved ones post online as data available to scammers,” says Englund. “Even if you keep all social media private, your data is available to your connections and followers who can be hacked.”
