With artificial intelligence voice scams costing billions globally, cybersecurity experts are urging families to adopt secret codewords to verify identities during emergency phone calls, according to BBC News. Criminals are increasingly using advanced deepfake technology to clone the voices of loved ones, tricking victims into handing over thousands of dollars in moments of manufactured panic.
Elizabeth Benz, a mother from Buffalo, New York, experienced this terror firsthand in September 2025. She received a frantic phone call from someone sounding exactly like her 16-year-old son, John. A stranger then took the phone, claiming he had harmed her son`s friend and would do the same to John unless she brought a ransom of $7,500 to a local parking lot. Benz was driving to the location when her older son managed to contact John, confirming he was safe at a football game and that the entire situation was an elaborate artificial intelligence scam.
The financial toll of these crimes is staggering. In the United States alone, victims lost an estimated $148.2 billion to online scams in 2025, with artificial intelligence-enabled fraud accounting for over $6.3 billion of that total, BBC News reported. Hany Farid, a leading expert on deepfakes and co-founder of GetReal Security, warned that these scams are being perpetrated on a massive scale worldwide. He advised that the average consumer is entirely unprepared for a late-night call from a loved one or a superior demanding urgent financial help.
Scammers often trawl social media platforms to harvest short audio clips, which are then fed into software capable of mimicking a person`s exact vocal tone, pitch, and emotional inflection. The artificial intelligence models only require a few seconds of raw audio to generate convincing, customized sentences. By targeting the protective instincts of parents and relatives, criminals bypass logical reasoning and force immediate action.
To combat this rising threat, experts universally recommend establishing a family password. This codeword should be easy to remember but impossible for a scammer to guess, such as an inside joke. If a family member calls claiming to be in an accident or requesting urgent money transfers, the recipient must ask for the password before taking any action. Benz noted that her family actually had a codeword, but the sheer panic induced by the scammer made her forget to use it, highlighting the need for mental preparation.
Gary Schildhorn, a lawyer and scam-safety advocate who narrowly avoided a similar fraud, identified three primary red flags during these calls. Scammers always create a false sense of urgency so victims have no time to think. They also demand untraceable funds, such as cryptocurrency or gift cards, and attempt to isolate the victim by keeping them on the phone and preventing them from contacting anyone else.
Islamic scholars frequently remind the public of the Quranic principle of verifying distressing news before reacting, as stated in Surah Al-Hujurat (49:6). This timeless directive requires individuals to investigate alarming information thoroughly, a practice that perfectly aligns with modern cybersecurity protocols requiring verification before transferring funds. In an era where human senses can be easily deceived by technology, pausing to verify the truth remains the strongest defense.
