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Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

Wait, so this is for strangers too? That seems rather ill-advised. I suppose it's a way to make people buy iPhones so they don't get ignored by other iPhone users because of the missing picture?

Now the scam callers will not only be able to spoof the FBI's phone number, but show a badge and a threatening full screen message too!

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> Now the scam callers will not only be able to spoof the FBI's phone number, but show a badge and a threatening full screen message too!

Do they do that now with iPhones? It seems like the requirement to be using an Apple account would significantly hinder the scammers.

Somehow iMessage scams have been getting popular lately. Every once in a while I get a few phishing messages a day through iMessages. Then after a week it stops (they got caught, exploit closed, I don’t know).

More worrying that they could grab a photo off FB and spoof a family member. Lots of people would ignore the number if the face and name were familiar. How many people actually memorize phone numbers any more?

I suppose they can, but it wouldn't be a very convincing scam without a good voice replicator. Grabbing pictures is easy but isolating and replicating voices is still quite difficult, especially with the heavy accent many scammers seem to have.

The time of video call scams will come, but I don't think we're there just yet outside very targeted attacks on people in power or with huge amounts of wealth at their disposal.

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