Say that Barack Obama, or Joe Biden, or some famous Hollywood celebrity is giving a phone call to someone (who normally wouldn’t expect such a call; maybe one of those “Obama-calls-103-year-old-American-WWII-veteran-to-wish-Happy-Birthday” feel good stories, or Biden calling some Democratic get-out-the-vote local group in rural Michigan to offer unexpected encouragement, etc.)
How do they authenticate themselves in such a way that their listener is convinced that they’re hearing the real Obama or Biden (or Johnny Depp, or Brad Pitt, or Jennifer Lawrence, or whoever) and not in fact an imposter or prankster? Merely having a similar voice seems like it wouldn’t necessarily suffice; it wouldn’t be that hard for someone to imitate Obama or Pitt’s voice.
I think if some intelligent sounding person said, “I’m Amy Houser, I work for the office of Barack Obama. Mr. Obama would like to schedule a phone conversation with you on the 15th of January. Do you accept?”
I probably wouldn’t question if it was legit. assuming there was a valid reason he would want to call me in the first place.
But if it wasn’t from a number I knew I would not answer it, especially from a politician as they attempt to contact me several times a day already. If they left a message I would just delete it as just another BS attempt to trick me into donating money. Phone calls are not going to work on me.
Perhaps if they contacted someone high up in my company and word came down through my management I’d take it seriously.
That’s because right now your just a pleb like the rest of us. Now imagine you did something that got national attention. You’ve got reporters, and all sorts of people calling you.
your phone answering habits might change under that situation.
No, I’d be even more mistrusting of unknown people contacting me. Now if I saved someone’s life and Joe wanted to contact me he could have the local police contact me who I knew since I already have a relationship as a hero.
But I would not have answered the phone for him to tell me that. No way. Maybe if the local reporter who interviewed me confirmed or gave me a heads up that someone important was trying to contact me I might listen.
I raised this in the context of a [hypothetical] call from someone alleging they were Benedict Cumberbatch. Because the only questions I could ask them involved information in the public domain, it was pointless asking for verification like ‘So “Benedict”, when is your birthday?’, because they could google it as well as I could. Unless you had a mutual childhood friend who could tell you the name of his pet rabbit as a check, you’re pretty much in the trust zone.
Britain’s Royals seem to be very susceptible to phone pranking of this sort.
I firmly believe that Bill Gates or Tom Cruise is not going to cold call me. People in power would either work through a chain of command that I am familiar with like the police or press, or they would send representatives over in person first and convince me to take a call. Sort of like in the movie The Right Stuff were VP Johnson sends over someone familiar to John Glenn’s wife. And then she still refuses to talk after knowing its actually him.
But enough of my hijack. This is GQ and I am guilty of speculating.
If I got a phone call from the Washington, DC area code (202, FWIW), and I heard a voice saying, “This is the White House, please hold for President Biden,” I’d see little to no reason to doubt the caller’s authenticity. Of course, why Biden would be calling me (there is absolutely nothing special about me) is another matter entirely, but…
I’m with HeyHomie. I do not have caller ID. If I received a call from someone identifying themselves as a former President, random celibrity, or the sheriff I would accept it is them. Why not? I’m not a local mover or shaker, rich, or in any other way a notable. Even if they are complete fakes, I have nothing to lose.
You folks out then that won’t pick up the phone unless you know the caller personally are missing out on those occasional calls that might be useful to you or them. I’m constantly baffled by how disinterested those with multiple communication tools refuse to use them. I have a landline. I answer the phone if it rings and I’m not too busy to answer.
In one of his books, Berkeley Breathed, who at the time was drawing Bloom County, describes how he got a phone call from then President Reagan. Apparently, Reagan liked the careful drawing of Nancy Reagan that Opus had in his office while he worked. Anyway, at least some of the steps are detailed: someone from the White House staff calls his publisher and asks to get contact info, I would assume they could use a letter, on letterhead. The recipient vetts the communication, just like a bill or a request for information to receive payment. Then a person called Berkley, and said the president would be calling soon. Then the president called Berkley and said the picture was nice.
I can’t find that story online. But the process has at least that many steps. For the 108-year old, they can work with the nursing home, since they are unlikely to have living next of kin, and much less likely to be living alone.
Not a phone call situation but years ago, AOL had forums (including a Straight Dope one) for fans of various areas of entertainment. Some of these forums were for fans of a particular author. I participated in a forum for fans of SF author Harry Turtledove.
One day a new poster showed up and identified himself as Harry Turtledove. I recall that several of the people in the forum accused him of being an imposter. I think it took a week or so before he convinced them that he was in fact who he said he was.
Caller ID is sadly mostly useless as it can be trivially faked. Something phone scammers worked out out ages ago.
The usual mechanism to authenticate call is to ask the recipient to call back on a publicly known phone number that is clearly authentic. If the White House has a listed public affairs phone number, you could get asked to validate that the number is good and call back on it.
This is clearly going to be handled by el-presidente’s “people” and you will get connected when the handshake is done. If you have “people” they will do it all on your side, and let you know.
In a more modern world, you could use public key encryption to provide authentication. But most people are not used to this as a mechanism.
