Caught my own dad in a deepfake video call last week

My dad called me from his trip in Chicago and asked for $500 for an emergency. Something seemed off with his eye movements so I asked a question only he would know and the call froze. Scary stuff how real it looked even with a 5 second delay on the connection.

3 comments

3 Comments

park.miles1mo ago

My aunt fell for one of those last year, so I set up a code word system with my whole family now. We picked "blueberry pancakes" because it's dumb enough nobody would guess it. I also started doing a quick check on video calls where I ask them to touch their nose or look left, deepfakes struggle with those random physical movements. The delay is a dead giveaway too, real video calls don't have that kind of lag usually (unless their wifi is trash). It's annoying we have to do this stuff now, but better safe than sorry.

evan_cooper731mo ago

And here I thought the only thing worse than my grandma asking me to fix her printer was having to quiz her about blueberry pancakes before I can trust she's real. Next thing you know, I'll have to ask my dad for last week's football scores to prove he's not a deepfake. Honestly, at this point I'm half expecting a ransom call from a cartoon version of my mom demanding bitcoin for the real one.

sage_moore371mo ago

@park.miles is onto something with that code word system, but I gotta gently push back on one thing. Real video calls actually CAN have that kind of delay, especially if someone's on hotel wifi or a mobile hotspot (like my dad was in Chicago). The 5-second delay they mentioned is actually pretty common for international calls or bad connections, so that alone isn't always a red flag. What really matters is combining that with the physical movement test @park.miles mentioned, deepfakes still mess up stuff like blinking patterns and rapid eye movements. Good on you for having a backup question ready though, that quick thinking probably saved you $500 right there.