Scam Calls

India is the world’s second most populous country, with about 1.4 billion people. The increasing scam calls are mounting day by day and is getting disruptive. Mobile users are expected to lose a massive $58 billion to fraudulent scam calls globally this year.

Scammers are using artificial intelligence to sound more like family members in distress. People are falling for it and losing thousands of dollars. The loss due to fraudulent robocalls is a rise from $53 billion mobile subscribers faced last year. This is a significant increase and highlights the growing scale of the problem.

Advancements in artificial intelligence have added a terrifying new layer, allowing bad actors to replicate a voice with an audio sample of just a few sentences. Powered by AI, a slew of cheap online tools can translate an audio file into a replica of a voice, allowing a swindler to make it “speak” whatever they type.

AI voice-generating software analyzes what makes a person’s voice unique — including age, gender and accent — and searches a vast database of voices to find similar ones and predict patterns.

There is growing unsolicited calls which are often irritating and trigger you the most when you are caught up in work or a meeting. Due to frequent calls, people often miss important calls too as they keep their smartphones on silent mode.

Scam calls can take many forms, including phishing scams, robocalls, and other types of fraud. They often use social engineering techniques to trick people into giving away sensitive information, such as passwords, bank details, or personal data. They can also be used to spread malware and other forms of malicious software.

Sometimes these spam calls are also fraudulent calls, which target receivers pretending to be from a bank or related other deceptive identity. To get rid of these calls, people try to block contacts. However, blocking every single spam number is not possible. But there is a way through which you can block and report spam calls in bulk or stop receiving spam calls and messages.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) started the National Customer Preference Register (NCPR), formerly the National Do Not Call Registry (NDNC) initiative to help people block spam calls. People can sign-up for the service to stop all telemarketing communication or calls from select sectors.

It’s a dark impact of the recent rise in generative artificial intelligence, which backs software that creates texts, images or sounds based on data it is fed.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA