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We’ve got you covered Unsolicited calls For years, so when Google Give me details about what’s new Android A feature designed to detect and report spoofed calls, you’re ready to hear more. What I didn’t expect from the demo was hearing my own voice.
“I’m so excited to interview you today about this new fake call detection feature!” I heard myself say, as a headshot I’d used publicly for years appeared on the demo device. The caller ID name said “Lily.” “Unfortunately, I lost my wallet and I’m stuck. Is there a chance you can Venmo me so I can take an Uber to the interview?”
When my disembodied voice dialed softly, a pop-up window appeared as an overlay on the regular call screen: “This may not be Lily. Someone may be pretending to be calling from your contact number.”
For Android phones calling each other, the new feature checks digital validity and notifies you with a pop-up warning if the call is not coming from your contact’s smartphone and may be a scam. When the feature flags a call as a scam, it immediately removes the contact’s image from the background of the call to emphasize the seriousness of the situation (this was not shown in the experimental prototype that Google prepared for WIRED). The feature also changes the entry in Android’s recent call log to say “Unknown Caller” instead of displaying the contact name.
Spam calls have been a scourge for decades, and the threat is growing as attackers begin incorporating AI voice cloning tools into their attacks, making it possible to convincingly imitate a victim’s acquaintance, or even a family member, in real time. And while a Pay for many years It improved traditional robocall detection, did not solve the problem, and not all spam calls were flagged. These calls that keep slipping through the cracks are a particular problem as attackers focus their attention on impersonation scams, making it look like their call is coming from a number you trust, or at least know, and then using AI tools to make it look like the person you expect when you answer it.
With these types of invasive and potentially devastating scams on the rise, Dave Kleidermacher, vice president of security and privacy at Android, and Eugene Lederman, product manager for security and privacy at Android, say there is a real desire within Google to move defenses for victims forward. They stressed that although the obvious strategy is to try to fight fire with fire, i.e. using AI tools to help detect transcription in calls, this strategy alone is insufficient. It can have false positives and false negatives, but it can also fuel an endless arms race between attackers and defenders.
“We’re always looking to see if there’s a provable method, or something with much higher confidence that we can do,” says Kleidermacher.
This feature is built on the RCS communications standard and integrated into Google Dialer. Starting today, updates will start rolling out to all Android phones running Android 12 (starting 2021) and later. The mechanism uses RCS to digitally link your phone number to your physical smartphone. When you call another Android user, your device will send what Kleidermacher describes as a “real-time, silent background confirmation signal” to the device of the person you’re calling to verify the legitimacy of your call. If this device-based confirmation is missing, Google Dialer will flag the call.
“If you’re calling me and we’re in each other’s mutual contact databases, and we both use Google’s dialer that has this capability built into it, I’ll always know whether or not you did it,” says Kleidermacher. “If someone tries to call me through a VoIP session or other mechanism and spoofs your phone number and voice, the caller will say that’s not you.”
