Police warn of phone voice scam
SOUTH-WEST residents have been warned about a scam involving telephone voice recognition.
The advice is if you receive a phone call and somebody asks, “can you hear me”, don’t say anything and hang up.
The scam has arrived in Australia after being used in the United States and Britain.
The scammer may ask several times “can you hear me?”, to which people would usually reply “yes”.
The scammer is then believed to record the “yes” response and end the call.
That recording of the victim’s voice can then be used to authorise payments or charges in the victim’s name through voice recognition.
Because it is the person’s own voice authorising transactions, it makes it hard to dispute later if a victim claims they were scammed.
