Yes, advancements in AI help people from different walks of life, but they have some cons. One of the most exploited con has been AI voice cloning. Over the years, it has reached the point where most people can no longer tell a deepfake voice from a real one.
Scammers already know this, and they’ve been spoofing users’ contacts, cloning their voice, and committing financial frauds for quite some time. Android’s new fake call detection is designed to stop that exact scenario before it costs you.
How does fake call detection actually work?
Fake call detection is an industry-first feature. It identifies when a caller is not who they claim to be, even when the caller ID looks legitimate and the caller’s voice sounds familiar.
Without any action required from you, the feature operates silently in the background. When a contact calls you, and both of you are using Google’s Phone app, the caller’s device sends an encrypted confirmation signal to your device, functioning like a digital handshake, verifying that the call is coming from that person’s phone.
This handshake is built on end-to-end encrypted RCS technology; the verification is completely private. When a scammer spoofs your contact’s number, the signal will be absent, and your device immediately pings your contact’s actual phone to check whether they are making a call.
Does the feature work for all Android phones?
When their real device confirms it is not making a call, a warning appears on your screen, telling you the call may be fake and that you should immediately hang up. The entire process happens instantly, before the scammer has had a chance to manipulate you.
Fake call detection is enabled by default. It is rolling out globally in Phone by Google this month, starting with Pixel devices, running on Android 12 and above. The only catch is that both the caller and the recipient must be using Phone app and the recipient’s device also needs RCS enabled in Google Messages.