Smishing and vishing will become major Second Amendment threats.
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by FBI Public Service Announcement issued May 15:
“Smishing is the malicious targeting of individuals using Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Message Service (MMS) text messaging. Vishing, which may incorporate AI-generated voices, is the malicious targeting of individuals using voice memos. Both smishing and vishing use tactics similar to spear phishing, which uses email to target specific individuals or groups,” the PSA states.
For gun owners, vishing could be the biggest threat.
“For vishing, malicious actors are more frequently exploiting AI-generated audio to impersonate well-known, public figures or personal relations to increase the believability of their schemes,” the FBI said in their PSA.
Spotting these fake messages is not too difficult, at least for now, but every day the messages become better as AI improves.
The FBI recommends you do not respond to any AI message. Instead, they suggest trying to identify a real phone number for the source and calling them to verify the authenticity of the message.
Thankfully, at least for right now, AI generated videos are still not quite there. The FBI offered guidance to spot these fakes.
“Look for subtle imperfections in images and videos, such as distorted hands or feet, unrealistic facial features, indistinct or irregular faces, unrealistic accessories such as glasses or jewelry, inaccurate shadows, watermarks, voice call lag time, voice matching, and unnatural movements,” the FBI recommends. “Listen closely to the tone and word choice to distinguish between a legitimate phone call or voice message from a known contact and AI-generated voice cloning, as they can sound nearly identical.”
Nowadays, most smishing and vishing attempts are done to create some type of financial fraud (theft) for the creators. However, as AI improves, the technology will undoubtedly be used to support the creators’ personal and political beliefs. Historically, as technology has improved, gun owners have become frequent victims.
It is difficult to predict how the new technology will be misused, but it will definitely be used to attack our Second Amendment.
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