Deepfakes replace women on sextortion calls | Hacker News Reader

Deepfakes replace women on sextortion calls

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

25 pointsComodoHacker6 comments

> Within two days, they exchanged phone numbers and a video call was made by the woman.

The real story is: while common people cannot get a mobile phone number or open a bank account without providing personal details going back seven generations under so-called KYC norms, these scammers have access to a seemingly infinite supply of both.

AFAIK, there's no US requirement for telecoms to KYC. You can buy prepaid sims and top up cards in nearly every grocery and drug store for cash. The only thing is if you want wifi calling, carriers may require a most commonly used address for e911.

Banks do have KYC, but money muling has been a thing for years.

This is a story out of India. Here, you cannot do any of those things without providing government-issued IDs and address proofs.

Fair enough, I missed the domain, and didn't read the article.

I assume the phone rules have been tightened up since I visited India somewhere around 15 years ago when the rules said you needed government ID and to submit stuff, but I hadn't brought the right documents with me, and they let me leave with an activated SIM and said it would turn off in five? days if I didn't submit the application. I was only there for less than the time they said I needed to submit by, but the SIM kept working overseas for several years.

> phone rules have been tightened

I don't think there have been any material changes in the rules. The problem is the scale at which these companies operate and the question of responsibility. While the regulators occasionally impose financial penalties on these companies for violating norms, I have no idea who verifies that every single customer has been vetted.

> In fact, cops at city cyber cell officials say that the sextortionists appear to have adopted a new modus operandi – generally such calls needed a woman accomplice, but the new technology has even done away with that

What it allow is to make the whole process fully automated. Every step from the woman to the threats can be generated by a program.

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