How to avoid being zoomed by deepfakes

The more people wise up to the possibility of fakery, the less chance the scammers will have. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PIXABAY
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Is the boss who’s giving you an order real or just realistic? Deepfakes are now taking Zoom calls to another level of awkwardness, by making us question whether our co-workers are genuine.

A finance worker in Hong Kong transferred more than US$25 million (S$34 million) to scammers after they posed as his chief financial officer and other colleagues on a videoconference call, marking perhaps the biggest known corporate fraud using deepfake technology to date. The worker had been suspicious about an e-mail requesting a secret transaction, but the scammers looked and sounded so convincing on the call that he sent the money.

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