A hacking expert was hired by 60 Minutes as an experiment to try to pull off a scam, and how they did it was remarkable.
Once they got cell phone numbers of the reporter and their assistant from online sources, they "spoofed" the reporter's phone number, so that a call to the assistant came up as coming from the reporter. Then they used AI to mimic the reporter's voice and asked the assistant for a passport number. The assistant of course instantly and without any suspicion complied.
The report is mostly about how scammers are targeting senior citizens, but the expert emphasized, "Everybody would get tricked with that." Scammers apparently just need phone numbers, some personal information, and a voice sample.
The full report is here.
And this is 60 Minutes' advice on how to avoid this type of insidious scam. Seems to me that once someone asks for some type of information that can be exploited, or of course money, you have to be suspicious, even if the call seems exactly like it's coming from someone in your life.
