0041: Vishing: Every Old Threat Is New Again

Raw transcript

people can use their voice for any
number of things it’s
for all intents and purposes a very
biological technology in and of itself
your voice is neutral
it can be used for good
and it can be used for bad and there’s a
new
bad thing
on the horizon we’ll talk about it next
on this episode of the vo heroes podcast
[Music]
there’s a new word in the lexicon for an
old con an old
sort of thing that’s been
mechanized and adapted to modern
technology
it’s called vishing v-i-s-h-i-n-g
vishing now you may be familiar with
phishing
p-h-i-s-h-i-n-g that’s when somebody
sends you an email
with a link in it
that looks
legitimate
you know there’s something i need you to
take care of here’s a document to
download but when you do that it has a
payload of some sort of malware that
either infects your computer
or
takes you to a site that tries to get
your credentials
phishing it’s an email that you get well
now
now the scammers have kind of modified
that
and added a human element to it you know
phishing is a very uh automated inhuman
kind of scatter shot approach
well they’ve added voice
to this process where what you get in
your text or your email
is a
some sort of a a quandary a conundrum
this is not right uh a bill that you
need to pay or
a um
a penalty that you’ll pay if you don’t
do something
but that’s okay here’s a special phone
number that you can call if you want
information
and when you call that phone number
instead of getting a recorded message or
an ai voice you get an actual human
being
often offshore to us in the united
states
who wants to kind of guide you into
installing software
that lets you lets them
take over your computer it’s not the
typical kind of phone scam where they
say oh you need to pay your tax bill so
go buy a whole bunch of itunes uh gift
cards or amazon gift cards
this is an attempt to install software
on your computer that either sets you up
for ransomware
where it locks up your entire computer
unless you pay the money to unlock it
or simply gives them remote access so
they can install other
kinds of software that
in the guise of trying to help you
based on that first email that you got
um
that it uh
won’t help you it will hurt you
and that notion of adding that human
peace to it that phone call
that conversation with somebody
who has been trained
to
be persuasive trained to sound
legitimate sound like they’re trying to
help you but when you install that piece
of software to help
it actually helps them take over the
computer so be careful about wishing
uh i’ve actually included a link in the
show notes to this episode
to an article
uh on tech republic
that talks about vishing from the
perspective of a a technical standpoint
a a piece of software that microsoft put
out that that the wishers are are using
because it has a lot of issues currently
in
big company spaces and even with
individuals but this process can be used
by anybody
and the thing is
everything old is new again
there’s nothing about this actual
process and end result that is any
different from any other phone scam it’s
just how they get to you
how they try to make you feel
comfortable how they try to make you
feel like they’re going to help you
and then through this process of an
initial contact via email
and then a second contact via voice and
on the phone
uh can lead to some consequences so
really be careful about this i’d love to
know if this has happened to you i’d
love to know if there’s something
that has actually occurred
over the last i don’t know a few years
that follows this pattern
it’s a new word but it’s not a new scam
so just be aware let me know in the
comments below this
uh if you’re not looking on voheros.com
go leave your comments there that’s
where everybody gets to have a
conversation about it
and we will talk to you next in the next
episode i’m david h lawrence the 17th
thank you so much for watching and for
listening and i’ll see you soon
[Music]

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