No, it’s not a thing.
First of all, no contract that I’ve ever heard of is bound by an audio file of someone’s voice.
Second, I’m not an expert, but I’m willing to be any audio system can tell the difference between a live (analogue) voice and a digital recording, even if your ears can’t.
Third, even if a voice print was used as a binding contract, how would anyone know it’s YOURS? There’s no Registry of Voices.
My point was - if a company claimed you had agreed to a purchase of their magic elixer and billed you or something or somehow got your credit card, by the time the consumer bureau got 100 complaints about the same fraud from the same company, I assume they would be in a bit of legal trouble. The credit card company would also have something to say to them. The “switch long distance providers” I assume worked because you pay your phone company, and they forward the costs for the long distance charges to the company you are allegedly signed up for. So unless you read your bill carefully or noticed an uncalled for increase in long distance charges, nobody notices… Unless the long distance company investigates why so many customers are ditching them. I assume there are similar scams over subscriptions, but the key is you have to not notice your payments have changed to someone else.
I tend to either wait, on unrecognised numbers, to listen to what they are selling, if I even bother answering.
The word “What” is more used than “Yes”; the words “drug addict” and “bankruptcy” often feature if I am in a good mood.
I try not to troll, but… I cannot help myself on occasion with these assholes.
It helps that my country specifically has made cold calls illegal, so after the unfortunate early stages I can quote the specific law that must make them stop, so the phrase “section 45(b) of the South African Electronic Communications and Transactions Act” is way more likely to come out my mouth than the word “yes”.
I so very rarely get similar calls that I think I am on an international (or maybe just Nigerian) blacklist for being a terrible, terrible “customer” experience.
I’m not sure how to place this statement. Are you talking about something like the 1970s? That would have been the beginning of digital recording technology. Likely even your ears would have been able to tell the difference between live and recorded, as well as between digital and analogue recording.
The supposed fraud back then would certainly have used analogue recording only. It would have used an analogue recording of you saying yes “live”. However, because the entire scam would have relied on a recording, there was nothing to be distinguished by any supposed technology.
In our modern era everything, of course, is a digital recording, including the voice of the person you are speaking to “live” on the phone.
This is one of those mild fears that nags at me. There are worse fears keeping me up at night, but this is still an unpleasant one.
You see, I record a ton of YouTube videos, and I have never made a serious attempt at anonymity–for example videos of my wife and I playing as a piano/bass combo always have both of our names.
So in my photography videos there are hours and hours of me saying so much stuff that AI would be able to make a perfect me.
On a positive note, I run my mic through a channel strip to do standard voice processing (compression + desser + expander + parametric EQ) so the nice rich radio voice that AI will generate will probably not match my natural voice.
Its how the trick old people into sending money overseas to a young relative in trouble. Pretty sure this is how they scammed my elderly aunt out of $5K by someone sounding just like my brother claiming to be in the hospital in Barcelona.
Yep. And that’s why I tell everyone I can about “proof of life” questions. That’s those kinds of questions that Vietnam-era pilots had to provide on a file card before going into combat, things like “What car did you work on with Kyle last summer?” that nobody would ever figure out.
I have already told my dad that if he ever hears me with a tale of woe on the phone, he ought to be asking questions about what we had for lunch last time we met and similar things.
ETA: Forgot to mention, the purpose of the note cards for the pilots was so that if they were ever shot down and calling for help on the radio the rescuers could prove they were who they said they were and not the enemy impersonating them.
So, two factor authentication, invented before the internet.