Building the digital armor: here are Verizon's tips on how to combat phone fraud

It's tax fraud season. I mean tax season. And Verizon wants to help us combat the tax-related scams, which have surged by over 300% in the past six years, according to reputable agencies.

Be aware, be very aware!

Staying ahead of the curve is vital. Nowadays, scammers increasingly use AI-driven deepfakes and voice mimicry to impersonate IRS agents and tax pros to harvest your data.

Think of the upcoming Verizon tips as a "digital armor" built on the latest cybersecurity insights.

Things have changed

Scammers and scams, like many other aspects of our lives, have evolved rapidly since 2020. Once upon a time, it was pretty easy to detect a robotic call or a phishing email – the voices were soulless and the messages were incoherent and full of typos.

Today, with the generative AI capabilities, scammers can come up with almost perfect – and highly personalized – ways of reaching out to you.

They even resort to "voice cloning" technology. This one tries to mimic the speech patterns and emotional urgency of loved ones in distress.

Threats left and right

"When bad actors utilize voice AI cloning, they can also spoof phone numbers—meaning you could receive a call from a family member's number, using their actual voice, to orchestrate very convincing scams", says James Perry (Assoc. Director of Product Development at Verizon).

Your phone number is the master key to your digital life, making it a prime target for sophisticated tactics like SIM swapping. In this scheme, scammers attempt to hijack your mobile number to gain access to your private accounts and sensitive data.

What to do?

To stay safe, you should treat your digital identity like a physical home by ensuring every "door and window" is locked. This starts with activating the Number Lock feature in the My Verizon app to prevent unauthorized transfers, setting a unique and complex account PIN and enabling real-time alerts so you are notified immediately of any suspicious changes to your settings.

Building effective "digital armor" also requires practical, everyday habits to defeat AI-driven threats.

You should establish a family secret word to verify the identity of relatives, as scammers now use voice cloning to mimic loved ones in distress.

Additionally, never use public Wi-Fi for sensitive tasks like filing taxes or banking; instead, prioritize your encrypted cellular data or a VPN to keep your information secure. You can also frustrate automated scam systems by letting unknown numbers go to voicemail or waiting a second before speaking if you do answer.

One can never be 100% safe 100% of the time, but it's important that each and every one of us take some extra precaution.