One family password against a cloned voice on the phone.
Criminals can now copy a voice from a few seconds of audio. The call comes in sounding like a son, a daughter, a grandchild. They are in trouble, it is urgent, and they need money now. The voice is right, so the rest of it gets believed.
This is one word, agreed in advance, that only the family knows. If the caller cannot say it, it is not them. That is the entire product.
There is nothing to install and nothing to buy. It is a citizens' initiative, not a company, and it does not want your money.
The group that gets called most. The scam works precisely because the love in it is real and the voice is convincing.
The word has to be agreed before it is needed. Choosing it is a five-minute conversation at a kitchen table.
Voice cloning has stopped being expensive. The defence has to be something a person can use while panicking.
Which is why the whole thing is built around one line: panic first, then the word, then your help. A real emergency survives the ten seconds it takes to ask. A fake one does not.
Every part of this could have been an app with an account and a subscription. It is a word. The reason it works is that it needs no device, no signal and no battery at the moment it matters — which is a stranger's phone call at nine in the evening.
We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right people. Sometimes we aren't, and we'll say so in the first email rather than the third meeting.
hello@stupidgood.co