This is a frequently heard piece of advice: When you get a cold sales call, do not use the word “yes” in any context - scammers might record it, paste it in a sound file right after a question whether you agree to a contract, and then claim all sorts of excessive payments.
The whole thing sounds questionable to me. I doubt that in a dispute, a sound file obtained by such means would ever hold up as evidence that a contract was concluded. In any case, even if the advice was possibly true in the past, I suppose modern voice synthesis AIs could generate a “yes” that sounds like mine from a recording of my voice where I don’t actually say the word.
So what’s the Straight Dope? Was the “Don’t say yes” rule ever as important as common wisdom has it? If so, does it still apply?
That’s why I almost never answer unknown numbers, except when they are from my area code (could be a business or institution that isn’t in my contacts), and then only with “Hallo”. If something fishy like a machine answer or a sketchy introduction from a real person follows, I immediately hang up. But I never bought the myth(?) that one recorded “Yes” could stand as proof for making a contract of some kind.
ETA: IIRC, it’s even illegal here in Germany to record a phone call without the explicite consent of the person being called, so that would be the first line of defense against some business claiming to have a binding contract with you from saying “Yes” in a phone call.
Experian, one of the 3 major credit bureaus in the US, claims this is definitely a thing:
The “say yes” scam is just one of many scams that fraudsters have cooked up. To prevent being lured into a “say yes” scam, don’t answer calls from phone numbers that you don’t recognize and don’t give out personal or financial information to someone you don’t know. And in case your identity ends up being stolen in a “say yes” scam, consider signing up for Experian’s free credit monitoring service.
It is alternatively known as the say “yes” scam. Reports on this hoax and its circulation on social media sites have continued into the 2020s in the United States. Government entities, such as police departments or state financial agencies, have sometimes unknowingly contributed to the credibility of the hoax by reporting it to the public as it if was factual.[2]
Security experts have explained that the calls were likely an automated dialer employed by a telemarketing firm to confirm the authenticity of the telephone numbers on its dialing lists, not an attempt at financial fraud.
Wiki links to snopes, which as of 2023 regards the rumor as “Unproven”
Primarily, we haven’t yet been able to identify any scenario under which a scammer could authorize charges in another person’s name simply by possessing a voice recording of that person saying “yes,” without also already possessing a good deal of personal and account information for that person, and without being able to reproduce any other form of verbal response from that person.
Moreover, even if such a scenario existed, it’s hard to imagine why scammers would need to utilize an actual audio recording of the victim’s repeating the word “yes” rather than simply providing that response themselves. As far as we know, phone companies, utilities, and credit card issuers don’t maintain databases of voice recordings of their customers and use them to perform real-time audio matching to verify identities during customer service calls.
It was an issue way back in the before times, just after the breakup of AT&T, when telecom companies selling cheap long distance proliferated and were guilty of dubious tactics for getting new customers.
Early on, they could just submit an order to change your long distance service at your local exchange carrier with very little verification - just “here’s the number, switch them to us” was all it took. Occasionally, they might have to show the evidence of a call between the long distance company and the customer that the local company could verify. When lots of customers got slammed - their service was changed without their acquiescence or even knowledge - Congress passed a law mandating certain measures for verification of the switch. One of them was a recording of the phone call processed by a third party verification service, which would listen in on a call between a company, saying “Would you like to change your service to XYZ long distance?” and the customer saying “Yes”. Some companies tried to hoodwink the verifiers by playing a recording of the customer saying “Yes” to validate their slam, so if they could get the recording and splice it together with their own question, they could get a new customer who would hopefully be none the wiser.
Almost nobody has to go through this anymore, as long distance is usually provided for free by local providers. I changed my long distance about 15 years ago or so and still had to go through the ringamarole then.
This is not a thing (exceptions below) and I challenge anyone to find a case where it really did happen; NOT where they heard it happen.
The exception is that a few decades ago there was ‘slamming’ where, for example, a phone company will call your number and say: ‘Hello this is the phone company, we are going to change you over to XYZ now, is that ok?’
and the confused person will sometimes say…’huh, oh, phone company, yes, I guess so.’
Now they have a recording of you agreeing to them changing the phone service to their company. They have the whole conversation with context and apparently constituted a legitimate contract.
Note that this DOES NOT mean they recorded only your one word ‘Yes’ to be used for any random thing.
Think about it…..does it even make sense to you? How does the simple word ‘yes’ from you allow them to demonstrate you agreed to a random thing…..How do they prove that this is actually your voice and your single word out of context? It could be anyone who remotely, maybe, possibly sounds a bit like you.
So then….WHY call you in the first place. If they can supposedly take a single ‘yes’ that they claim is you….why do they even need to call you and solicit a ‘yes’ at all. They could get the same result by just making their own recording of ‘yes’ and claiming it was you.
The rumor is based in fact from a different circumstance from decades ago but is not true according to how it is portrayed. A simple answering of the single word “yes” has not caused anyone to be falsely agreeing to a legal contract.
Slamming, as I described above did most definitely happen and I can attest to that.
In fact, I worked at one of these exact companies for an extremely demoralizing year and a half back in the very early 90s. In the lingo of the field, the company was a “switchless reseller,” which a type of outfit that proliferated in the period but has since gone essentially extinct.
We definitely slammed customers, on a routine basis. Our model was to pitch the prospect over the phone, and then get them to agree to receive a more detailed proposal. There was a “request form” they had to sign, which “authorized” us to review their activity and assemble a “personalized” contract offer. It was all bullshit — we wanted the signature so we could transpose it onto a contract and fax that to the backbone company that physically managed the traffic. Naked fraud.
However, it was done by leveraging the signature, not by recording the target’s voice. We’d heard the stories of that being done — in the sense that you hear about someone finding a deep-fried rat in their KFC bucket — but we didn’t do it ourselves, and we didn’t know anyone who did. But we were certainly scummy enough that if it were a real thing, we would have done it.
From this, I’m pretty confident in my belief that it was a warning without concrete precedent. Sure, maybe hypothetically, it would be possible to do it, like it’s also possible for someone to make a batch of taffy infused with LSD and hand it out to kids at Halloween. But the technical possibility of something being done doesn’t mean it happened in actual fact.
I keep seeing this myth repeated. Whilst it’s probably useful to be wary in any discussion with unknown parties, or with people trying to get you into a contract, it’s pretty absurd to imagine that just avoiding saying ‘yes’ (or presumably anything affirmative) would, if this scam actually existed, be adequate. I mean if you say ‘no’, someone could hypothetically edit that into a conversation where the question that precedes it is “You don’t want to miss out on this deal, do you?”
Also one of the other markers of this being a myth is it’s always “This actually happened to someone I know”, but when you probe that, it’s always “Well, it was the relative of someone I know”… “Well, it was a friend of a relative of someone I work with”.
Indeed, on your last point. That’s why I deliberately compared it, above, to a couple of well known urban legends with similar word-of-mouth transmission. “I’m sure I heard about this once” is a very common way for something to enter the gray zone of “not quite a fact, and yet…”
With unknown numbers I range between entertaining light banter and full on legal attack, depending on my mood.
In both cases I am being a complete dickhead, but I no longer get cold calls at all. I’m not even running software for number recognition.
Like this bank loan salesman cold caller, the poor guy had my office in tears of laughter as I informed him of my “financila status”, my “HIV status”, my “debt staus”, my “homing crisis”, m
Many years ago, I was a telemarketer. I used that training once. After the initial pitch I turned on my friendly voice and said:
“Hi this is a cell phone. Let’s report you to the FCC!. How do you spell your real name?”
She hung up on me.
We were taught to ask how they spell their last name as we started to fill in the order form. We were also told that we should give a name but not necessarily the real one.
I don’t know whether it is a myth or not, but I have had more than conversation that went somewhat like this:
“Is this Czarcasm?”
“This is Czarcasm.”
Pause…
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. Is this Czarcasm?”
“You have reached Czarcasm.”
Pause…
“Is this Czarcasm?”
“This is Czarcasm.”
Pause…then the caller hangs up.
I have not worked in a call center, I cannot imagine the sadness of the “training” meeting where some bland manager has to present a phone call to teach staff.
And I worked in online casinos, where tempers do get a little wild after a big loss.
We had one famous recording where some “whale” had lost over a million US$ and he was unhappy.
The manager took over the call, but “training purposes” was not the reason the recording was circulated amongst staff, supposedly as an example of how to handle the situation…but actually because his incoherent rage was quite funny.
Being the online casino industry, my high level boss compted him the next day, and he was back in our system.
I generally don’t answer unknown #s (if I have my phone near me and if Iremembered to switch my phone off of silent mode!). My wife occasionally will and her approach is: