People who don't use ad blockers are living dangerously these days.
It is pretty easy to spot a fraudulent call now a days, you just wait about 5-8seconds before picking up any unknown mumber, never pick up anything from your area code and do not speak until someone speaks to you. The first step will usually get your call ended when you pick it up because someone else picked up before you and the last step for a real person you can usually hear them breathing.
However, I still get a lot of fraudulent phone calls and most people I know do too. It used to be the case that you could spot a fraudulent call instantly. Most of them came from Indian call centres from people with thick accents. Those accents can now be eliminated with AI[1]. Robocallers have also, of course, embraced AI and are rapidly becoming more and more sophisticated. I worry that, soon, some of the more vulnerable people I know will be unable to spot these for what they are.
As cheap as an Indian call centre is, AI promises to let scammers canvas a much broader slice of the population for marks and exploit them at a fraction of their current costs. It would be nice to see at least some effort from the AI giants go into helping telcos spot and block fraudulent AI callbots.
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[1]https://www.techspot.com/news/106983-new-ai-voice-technology...