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Interactive

Scam and Deepfake Lab

Five approaches to practise on, written out the way they actually arrive. Every safe answer works identically whether the voice was faked or genuinely your sister — which is just as well, because telling the difference is not a skill anybody reliably has.

If it has already happened

  1. Ring your bank now, on 159 or the number on your card. The first few hours are when money can sometimes be stopped, and every hour after that makes it less likely.
  2. Then report it to Action Fraud, or 101 in Scotland. It is free, it takes a few minutes, and it is how patterns get spotted.
  3. This happens to careful people, constantly, and the scripts are built by people who do nothing else. Being taken in by one is not evidence of anything about you, and the embarrassment is the part that costs the most, because it is what keeps people from ringing on the first day.

What we can honestly say about spotting fakes

You cannot reliably tell. Not with practice, not with a good eye, and not because you are the sort of person who is careful. For a competent fake of somebody specific, an ordinary person's success rate is not meaningfully better than a coin toss, and every year it gets worse rather than better.

Neither can we, and neither can the tools that say they can. Detector software gives a probability, and a probability is exactly no use in the only moment that matters, which is when somebody is asking you to send money in the next twenty minutes.

That sounds like bad news and is not. Every drill here has a safe answer that works identically whether the thing was a fake or your actual sister, and none of them requires you to be right about which it was.

Five to practise on

Pick what you would really do, not what you think is wanted. Getting one wrong here is the most useful thing that can happen to you on this page, and nothing is scored or remembered.

1

The safe account

Phone call · claims to be Your bank's fraud team

Your phone rings. The number on the screen is the one printed on the back of your card.

A calm, professional voice says there have been three attempted payments on your account in the last hour, from an address in another city, and that two have been stopped.

They read out your last genuine transaction correctly. They know your address.

They say the account is compromised and they need to move your balance to a new safe account in your name while the old one is closed. They will stay on the line and walk you through it.

What do you do?

2

Hi Mum

WhatsApp, from a number you do not recognise · claims to be Your daughter

“Hi Mum, this is my new number — dropped my phone down the loo, absolute nightmare. Can you save it?”

You reply. The conversation sounds like her: the same turns of phrase, the same way of typing, a joke about your dog by name.

“While I have got you — I cannot get into my banking on this phone yet and I have got a bill due today. Could you pay it and I will send it straight back tomorrow?”

She asks you not to mention it to Dad because he will only worry.

What do you do?

3

The video call from your boss

Video call on your work chat · claims to be Your finance director

A video call comes in on the tool your company actually uses, from an account with the right name and photo.

It is her. Her office behind her, her voice, the way she starts every call with “right, quickly”.

There is a supplier payment that was supposed to go yesterday and did not, and the contract is at risk. She needs it sent in the next twenty minutes, to account details she pastes into the chat.

She says she is about to go into a board meeting and cannot take questions, and asks you to confirm when it is done.

What do you do?

4

The refund you did not ask for

Text message · claims to be HMRC

“HMRC: our records show you are due a tax refund of £312.40 for the 2025-26 year. Claim before 28 March to receive it.”

The message lands in the same thread as previous genuine texts from HMRC on your phone.

The link goes to a page that looks exactly like the government site, asks you to confirm your details, and then asks for the card you would like the refund paid onto.

What do you do?

5

The investment everyone is in

Social media advert, and then WhatsApp · claims to be A well-known presenter, and then a broker

A video of a presenter you recognise, on a programme you recognise, describing a platform that has made ordinary people a great deal of money. The voice is his. The mouth matches.

The comments are full of people saying it worked for them.

You sign up out of curiosity and a broker rings within the hour. He is knowledgeable, patient, and does not push. Your first small deposit shows a gain by the end of the week.

He suggests a larger amount, and says the window on this particular position closes on Friday.

What do you do?

Advice that has stopped working

All of this was true once. It is repeated years after it stopped being true, and each one is now a way to be confidently wrong — because somebody who checks for it and does not find it concludes the thing is genuine.

  • Count the fingers, or look at the hands

    Worked: Roughly 2022 to 2023, for still images

    Fixed. Hands were an early weakness in image generators and they were an obvious, embarrassing bug, so they were among the first things worked on.

  • Watch for unnatural blinking

    Worked: 2018, in early research papers

    Fixed within months of being published, which is what happens to any tell that gets written up. It has been repeated as advice for years after it stopped being true.

  • Look for bad lip sync, or a mouth that does not match

    Worked: Until about 2023 for video calls

    Unreliable. It still fails sometimes, which is the problem: you will see it occasionally and conclude that when you do not see it, the thing is real.

  • Listen for a flat, robotic voice with no breathing

    Worked: Until about 2023

    Gone. Current voice cloning works from under a minute of audio and reproduces breath, hesitation and regional accent.

  • Check the spelling and the grammar in a scam message

    Worked: Genuinely useful for twenty years

    Over. Bad spelling was never incompetence — it filtered for people who would not notice — and a fluent message costs nothing to produce now. A well-written approach is not evidence of anything.

  • Ask them to turn their head, or wave a hand in front of their face

    Worked: Briefly, for live video

    Increasingly unreliable, and worth understanding as a category rather than a technique: anything that circulates as a trick becomes a thing the tools are tested against.