AI-powered voice assistants can be incredible helpful things, but sometimes they're helping the wrong people.
Share to twitterAlexa. Siri. Google. Cortana. Virtual assistants have exploded in popularity and with good reason. Sometimes talking to a device is just more convenient than pulling one out and typing on a touchscreen when you need to get things done.It might be quicker, for example, to ask for the weather forecast, a stock quote, currency conversion, or the results of last night's big game than to look it up yourself.
It seems the BBB has been receiving a number of complaints about this sort of thing, which shouldn't come as a shock. Tech support scams have been around for years. One of the reasons they're suchVirtual assistants need to deliver a consistent experience to their users. That consistency makes them a dependable source for information. It also makes them a target for scammers who stalk their victims via search engines.
Some of the most common starting points for tech support scams are search engine advertisements and"poisoned" search results. Poisoning happens when scammers use SEO techniques to trick engines like Google or Bing into sliding an untrustworthy website into their indexes. When you ask a smart speaker or the virtual assistant on your phone, however, you're depending on the assistant to return the best result. And you're probably not thinking that a scammer could have gamed the system so that a phone number that's read back to you will lead you into a trap.
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