Calls

“It’s probably not your mother.” Google has set out to end deepfakes in calls once and for all

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Google has just given a twist to its system for detecting possible fraudulent calls, focusing on one of the most current problems related to them: identity theft using deepfakes. Through an update to the Phone app, all devices with Android 12 and above will be safer than ever starting this month. The problem. Despite the efforts of both operators and the Government itself, in Spain More than 135 million calls were blocked and five million SMS with fraudulent intentions. Globally, about 30% of these calls have fraudulent intent They were deepfakes. According to data from the March 2026 Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment According to Interpol, the impersonation fraud led to more than 400 billion losses. How they achieve it. The scammers, as Google explains on its blogare able to spoof the phone number by routing calls through software. In other words, it is relatively easy to impersonate another person’s phone number and, when they call us, it appears as a sender that we have saved. If they manage to clone the voice using artificial intelligence, the result can be disastrous, since it is practically indistinguishable from reality. The new. Starting this month, the Google Phone app will be updated with automatic spoofing detection. It is an addition to the detection of SPAM which we already had, capable of detecting deepfakes in an advanced way. When a contact calls us and the Phone app is being used, the sending mobile phone sends a signal to our phone via RCS. So that? To verify that the call is coming from that contact’s legitimate device, and not from a scammer who has spoofed the phone number. That is to say: even if someone manages to copy a number and impersonate it, the additional authentication that Google requires when making the call cannot be replicated. How will we know. The feature will arrive globally in the Google Phone app and, in the event that a fraudulent call is detected, we will see a “it may not be X person” notice. If we decide to take it, it will be our responsibility. The curious thing is that, on the call screen, the impersonated contact will continue to appear. The main limitation of this function is that it depends on whether we use, yes or no, the Google Phone app. In other words, if they call us from iOS or using another application, this additional verification system is not required. In Xataka | Record spam calls to report: what the Spanish Data Protection Agency allows and how to do it

I have tested the Logi Dock, the combination of USB-C hub, speaker and microphone for video calls. It’s a sum that makes a lot of sense.

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I have been working from home for nine years. It wasn’t long ago that I realized that my laptop, a 2021 MacBook Prois the answer to a question that no one has ever asked me: “what do you want, power or flexibility?”. I answered flexibility, but I didn’t know until it was too late. The MacBook Pro is always on the table, but sometimes it also travels or I take it to the cafeteria when my head demands a different environment. It is a desktop computer that from time to time has to go outside. Logitech, who knows a lot about peripherals and how we work, has understood this very well. The Logi Dock is not just a hub of ports to compensate for the fact that recent laptops are not as generous in ports. It is a value proposition that goes beyond: it is an operations center that stays on the desktop while the laptop comes and goes. One USB-C cable to connect everything when you arrive, one to disconnect everything when you leave. That, in practice, has a higher value than what appears on a specification paper. Behind the dock there…: HDMI 2.0 (4K, 60Hz, HDR). DisplayPort 1.4 (4K, 60Hz, HDR). 2 USB-A (USB 3.1 at 5 Gbps). 2 USB-C (USB 3.1 at 5 Gbps) 1 extra USB-C on the side with 7.5W fast charging. and USB-C upstream dedicated to 100W for the laptop. All in a single connection strip that you never touch again. What it does not have is Thunderbolt, Ethernet or card reader. View of the ports of the Logi Dock. A side USB-C is missing, designed primarily for charging the mobile phone. Image: Xataka. There’s that USB-C on the side. Image: Xataka. Immediately the most important question about this product appears, which deserves a completely honest answer. A hub USB-C generic costs between 30 and 80 euros. This dock right now it costs from 276 euros on Amazon. What justifies paying five or ten times more for the Logi Dock than for a simple hub USB-C? That’s the gist. The short answer is that it depends on whether you need what’s extra, not whether you appreciate what’s equal. Ports are ports. What sets the Logi Dock apart from any other hub random are two things: the speakers and the microphone. And that changes the equation… for a specific user profile. In my case, I have had it connected to the MacBook Pro M1 Pro and the Huawei MateView 28 inches. Keyboard, mouse, Scarlett 2i2 interface with the Rode PodMic for the podcastand charging the laptop at 100W. A cable from the Mac to dock. Everything resolved. I start with what does not have a hub anyone and it does have the Logi Dock: the speakers. My Huawei monitor has a built-in speaker that does the bare minimum. And those on the MacBook, which stays closed to one side, are “trapped.” With a hub Generic would have solved the connectivity, but not the audio: the Logi Dock provides good speakers and a microphone designed to not sound boring during video calls. The buttons are designed to be used as quick access during video calls, and also to join them directly with Logi Tune. Image: Xataka. Image: Xataka. The Logi Dock’s 55mm drivers with their side-mounted passive radiators produce full-bodied sound, some bass, and enough clarity to listen to music while working. It is not an audio monitor. But it doesn’t pretend to be either. In the video calls in which I have used them, giving up the headphones, the microphone beamforming six capsules works well. My interlocutors do not complain and background noise is reasonably attenuated. The real argument for the Logi Dock is not that it is the best at anything, but that He’s good enough at everything at once. The texture of the fabric mesh, in macro photo. Image: Xataka. Three months of use have also shown me where it is weak. No Thunderbolt, no Ethernet, no card reader… The touch buttons on the top panel work fine, but calendar integration via Logi Tune is the most dispensable part: with the Mac you already have your notifications, and join a meeting with a tap on the dock It is a shortcut that in practice you almost never use. It sounds like a function forced in to reinforce its proposal and better justify its existence. In my opinion that value is not there. What you do use, every day, is the most difficult to quantify: the absence of friction. He dock It’s been plugged in for months and has never given me a single problem. does not ask drivers to reinstall or annoying updates, the ports work well and there is no audio that is lost when waking the Mac from sleep. Is it worth paying five times more than a hub generic? If your desktop already has good speakers and a microphone, or if you simply prefer using headphones, probably not. Buy the hub cheap and you will save. But if in your case the Logi Dock becomes the only real speaker on the desk, the microphone in meetings and the only cable that connects and disconnects the laptop every day, then the comparison is no longer with a hub of 60 euros. It is with “a hub “more speakers, more microphone, plus the convenience of everything coexisting without conflict in a single block.” And that last comparison is won by the Logi. Featured image | Xataka In Xataka | The Nike Mind 001 are the strangest shoes I have ever tried. And that is precisely why they are being sold This device has been provided for testing by Logitech. You can consult how we do reviews in Xataka and our relations policy with companies.

300,000 kilometers from Earth you can now make video calls. Artemis II is using telemedicine technology

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We have normalized video calls so much that we hardly think about what happens behind when we press a button and another person appears on the screen. We do it daily, with WhatsApp, FaceTime or any other platformwithout stopping at the network, the servers and the connections that hold that conversation in real time. It is a technology that we take for granted, even when we use it thousands of kilometers away within the Earth itself. But as soon as we leave that environment and go much further, to hundreds of thousands of kilometers, what seemed everyday begins to take on another dimension. ‘Hello’ from space. That change of scenery we talked about has a very specific example in Artemis II. The mission took off on April 2, 2026 and has taken astronauts back to the Moon after more than 50 years without manned flights in that area. In the middle of that journey, a milestone has occurred that until now we had not seen on this scale: video calls made from deep space through a platform called VSee. Wiseman’s message. Beyond the technical milestone, there is a scene that sums it all up. Reid Wisemanmission commander, posted a message on X in mid-flight that allows us to understand what that connection really means. “Distance makes the heart grow fonder… it didn’t take 219,669 miles to remind me how much I love Ellie and Katey,” he wrote, alluding to his daughters. Ellie and Katey are precisely his two daughters, and the message has special weight because Wiseman was widowed in 2020, when his wife, Carroll, died. The figure is not minor either: at that moment, the ship was about 219,669 miles from Earth, about 353,500 kilometers. Click to see the original publication in X Before Artemis. Although what we are seeing now marks an obvious leap, the truth is that video calls in space are not an absolute novelty. On the International Space Station, astronauts have been using video communication systems for years, both to talk to their families and to collaborate with teams on Earth.Video exchanges were already taking place in 2010 for educational purposes, and by 2015 this practice is described as common within the station’s operations. That is to say, the novelty is not in speaking by video outside of Earth, but in doing so at this distance. The difference. The International Space Station moves in low Earth orbit, a few hundred kilometers high, while the Artemis II Orion capsule has reached hundreds of thousands of kilometers from Earth during its trajectory around the Moon. In addition, it reached distances that exceed historical records of manned missions, including the maximum so far attributed to Apollo 13. For this reason, everything indicates that a video call made at that point is the furthest ever made by humans. Why telemedicine. This is where one of the most striking questions appears. If we are talking about a video call, why not use conventional tools like the ones we use every day? The answer has more to do with the conditions of the communication than with the function itself. Solutions like those of VSee have been designed to operate in networks with high latency, data loss and unstable connections, just the type of environment that NASA had already been facing for years in its space communications. More than a question of brand or custom, the key is the robustness of the system. The network that makes it possible. For this conversation to be sustained, a good application is not enough. Behind it is a global infrastructure designed specifically for deep space: the NASA Deep Space Network. This system is supported by three large stations located at strategic points on the planet, in Goldstone (United States), Madrid (Spain) and Canberra (Australia), which work in a coordinated manner to maintain continuous contact as the Earth rotates. In the case of Spain, the Madrid station is part of the network that makes this type of link possible, something especially relevant to understand that these communications also depend on infrastructure located in Europe. Images | POT In Xataka | There is a spontaneous competition to design the “flag of Humanity.” And the best design is an engraving of the Pioneer

Brussels points to its “addictive design” and calls for changes

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Maybe TikTok be one of the many applications installed on your mobile. It’s even likely that in recent days you’ve found yourself swiping almost without realizing it through a flood of videos competing for your attention. However, the European Commission does not look favorably on some of the dynamics of this social network, and everything indicates that the experience as we know it could change sooner rather than later. Addictive design. Brussels has focused on what it considers a possible “addictive design.” In a statement published this Fridaythe Commission points out several functions of the platform that, in its opinion, respond to a constant reward mechanism guided by the algorithm, something that “encourages the need to continue browsing and activates the ‘autopilot’ mode in platform users.” With the focus on minors. The executive arm of the European Union maintains that the company would not have taken into account relevant indicators of compulsive use, such as the time that minors spend on TikTok during the night, the frequency with which they open the application or other similar parameters. Added to this is the risk that “minors have an experience that is inappropriate for their age due to a misrepresentation of their age.” Insufficient measures. The community evaluation preliminarily concludes that the platform “does not appear to implement reasonable, proportionate and effective measures to mitigate the risks derived from its addictive design.” According to the Commission, current screen time management and parental control tools are not sufficiently effective: in the first case, because they can be easily circumvented; in the second, because they require additional skills on the part of the parents for their activation. The changes sought by the Commission. Beyond the diagnosis, Brussels also makes clear what kind of changes it hopes to see. In this phase, the Commission considers that TikTok would have to tweak basic elements of its design, such as progressively deactivating functions associated with continuous consumption (including infinite scroll), introducing truly effective pauses of use, also during the night, and adjusting its recommendation system. The objective would be to mitigate the risks that the analysis itself links to the current operation of the platform. How we got here. The origin of this research is found in the Digital Services Law (DSA), approved in 2022 to impose stricter obligations on large platforms operating in the European Union. The procedure against TikTok began on February 19, 2024 and is still ongoing, so there is still a long way to go before a final decision is made. As in any process of this type, the company has the right to defend itself. TikTok may examine the file and respond in writing to the preliminary conclusions. If these are confirmed and the company does not take the necessary measures, it could face a penalty of up to 6% of its global annual turnover. The company has already reacted. In an email sent to Xataka, TikTok’s Spanish office states that “the Commission’s preliminary conclusions present a categorically false and totally unfounded description of our platform, and we will take all necessary measures to challenge these conclusions by all means at our disposal.” Topic of the moment: social networks. All this occurs in a European context that is increasingly demanding with the use of social networks by minors. France has taken the first step to prohibit access to minors under 15 years of agewhile in Spain The Government of Pedro Sánchez is working on a similar measure with the intention of setting the limit at 16 years.. Images | Guillaume Perigois | Eyestetix Studio In Xataka | The science of “doomscrolling”: how technology hacked psychology so we can’t let go of our phones

do not pick up calls from numbers I do not know

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The phone rings, you look at the screen and pick it up thinking “who is it?” or worse yet “let’s see if it’s the electrician.” What you receive on the other side is a recorded voiceover, silence for response or perhaps a person willing to sell you something you don’t need. You hang up. Nothing would happen if it weren’t for the fact that the same thing happened to you the day before yesterday. And last week. So one day I made a decision: I would only take the call if I knew who was on the other end. For great evils, great remedies. This decision came after years of enduring unwanted calls and trying everything. Yes, I’m in the Robinson list and I also signed up for the list Stop Advertising the same day I discovered its existence. For trying, let it not be. The problem is that although they work, They are not infallible: If the company that is going to launch the advertising campaign in question doesn’t even look at it, you’re in the clear. Or if you hire a third party that uses unreliable databases. Or if directly, they don’t care: these lists are subscription services to which the company may not be signed up because it costs them to assume the risk. But there is already legislation against spam. Have them, haylas and without going any further, now there are prefixes that serve as an alert or established schedules. However, the reality is that although you may receive some less, you continue to receive them because well, once the law is done, the trap is done: many companies find loopholes through which to sneak in, some as simple as outsource the service to a foreign companywhere state law does not apply. Or that the service in question is considered “of public interest.” Or because you have unsubscribed and they can pick you up. Or the most common and that falls on the consumer’s side: because we have authorized it at some point. That damn check you marked without reading. Yes, it is true that technically you could dedicate yourself to searching and searching among the services you have contracted to deactivate that option (without going any further, I did it with Vodafone and Penélope Seguros), but it involves thinking about what services you have, going to the apps, searching through the menus and marking while crossing your fingers so that you don’t leave anything out. Deactivating that option in Vodafone, the telecom company of which I am a customer Bombing and security. It is true that taking a call in isolation is not that big of a deal. It is not the first time that the typical demoscopy service has called me and I spend a quarter of an hour answering. The problem is when a company calls you several times in a short period of time. And not just one company, because this siege operation can be followed by several corporations. They call, you answer and another operator from the same company calls again to offer the same thing a few days later. But there are two potential cases that are worse: that you answer “yes”, that short and innocent word is recorded and then it is used to sign you up for services, such as the police warned a couple of years ago. Given this possibility, you can consider the option of remaining silent, but not even then: if a telemarketing company uses auto dialing softwarewhen you pick up the system, it registers the answered call event and your number is marked in its database as active, as told by cybersecurity expert and head of Cybersecurity at GMV Paula González in Damn. Isn’t it killing flies with cannon shots? Maybe when faced with this decision not to answer calls from unknown numbers, someone will throw their hands up thinking about the calls you miss: that call from the doctor, the electrician who never arrives, or from a delivery person. The reality is that it has not come alone: ​​Google It has a great call filter. on Android and in my case, as an iPhone user, I have found my best ally in the live voicemail function of iOS 26 with the option to request a reason. When a call comes in from an unknown number, the phone asks you to explain the reason for the call from the beginning. And here it depends on who is calling: when the call is blatant spam, they usually don’t leave a message and if they do, they will never receive my response. If you have any interest (for example a delivery person), leave me a message. Being a live mailbox, I can even pick up the call instantly, when the call is no longer unknown. In Xataka | Apple introduced the SPAM call filter as the star feature of iOS 26. It took me a week to deactivate it In Xataka | If you are tired of receiving spam calls every day, good news: MasOrange is tired too Cover | Ivan Linares

In 1982 Seiko created a watch for making calls and watching television. His only problem was arriving too early

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History is full of devices that were ahead of their time. I am not referring to literary or cinematographic machines like the tablet by Kubrick or the multiple predictions from Verne, but to other devices that were put on sale decades ago and now we realize that they are very similar to some of the latest gadgets on the market. One of these inventions was Seiko TV Watch. In its day this rarity was considered and recognized as the smallest television in the worldand even made appearances in some movies, but today no one can miss its striking resemblance to current smart watches, and in a way we could say that we are facing a distant relative. The history of this device began in 1972, but the first step was not taken by Seiko but by another North American company called Hamilton. They were the creators of Press P1the first digital wrist watch in history. The Japanese they acquired to Americans, and they embarked on their own path into the digital age by launching their first watch of this type in 1973. At that time it was said that society was moving towards a revolution in visual information, and to join it with its new range of watches the japanese company started to work on the research and development of liquid crystal panels (LCD) with active matrix that were capable of reproducing moving images. Over the following years, these efforts helped their watches become increasingly smaller and thinner, with higher component density and more energy efficient. They were also implementing new functions such as stopwatches and calculators. After three years of development and hundreds of millions of yen invested, the summer of 1982 Seiko advertisement in Tokyo a new watch. It was about TV Watchthe first to finally allow us to watch television on our wrist. This was Seiko’s TV Watch A watch that you can watch television on. Today this concept seems simple, but back then being able to carry it out was a little more complicated. The TV Watch was made up of three different elements that had to be connected together for it to work. The result was a science fiction product, yes, but a little uncomfortable to wear. On the one hand we had the clock, but we had to connect it to a radio and television receiver the size of a walkman. We also needed headphones, and these also had to be connected to the signal receiver. And how could you carry so much cable with you in a fairly comfortable way? Well, very simple, pay attention to this drawing that appeared in your manual. As you can see, the trick was to put the receiver cable under the sleeve to connect it to the watch. But in case we didn’t want to complicate our lives, the TV Watch also had a function to listen only to the audio of television broadcasts. The watch itself had dimensions of 40 x 49 x 10 millimeters and a weight of 80 grams, and all its magic was concentrated in its innovative 1.2-inch white and blue LCD screen with a resolution of 32k pixels and 10 shades of gray. I also had a second smallest screen in which we could see the time, set the alarm and use the stopwatch as with any other digital watch. During the presentation of the device, its creators had to give certain explanations about how they had achieved such ingenuity. They said their new panels controlled the molecular arrangement of liquid crystal within an electric field, and that this made it possible to create miniature images with very low power consumption. Especially when compared to the cathode ray tubes of conventional televisions. The receiver measured 74.5 x 125 x 19 millimeters and weighed 140 grams. This made it too big to carry in a back pocket, but perfect for the inside jacket pocket. Its battery consisted of two AA batteries that gave it a range of five hours, and it tuned both FM radio and television on VHF & UHF channels. What could have been and was not The TV Watch arrived on the Japanese market in December 1982 with a single DXA001 model that cost 108,000 yen, although a second, cheaper DXA002 model was later released. The difference between the two was that the second included a hearing aid instead of headphones, and its price dropped to 98,000 yen. In exchange, these two models today would be worth around 600 and 500 euros respectively. The presentation of the device managed to generate a lot of interest, and the watch made front pages of newspapers and headlines on television. It was considered an innovative product for allowing us access a large amount of information in real timeand it attracted so much attention that a year later it also ended up reaching the US market. Errr, okay? During its launch in Japan, Seiko managed to sell 2,200 units, and the president of the company’s North American subsidiary said that the reception from the American media had been so good that he believed he could sell all the ones they manufactured. This optimism translated into the production of between 15,000 and 20,000 units ready for export. But not everyone saw the TV Watch as an invention destined to revolutionize the market. In fact, it is known that at Sony they came to say that their laboratories had the capacity to develop a similar product, but that They didn’t think there was a big enough market. for this type of devices. In the end it turns out that they were right, and the watch did not end up becoming a successful product. In the TV Watch curriculum we find several dates indicated. In 1982 he won the Nikkei Award for Superior Quality Products and Services, and a year later he made an appearance in Octopussythe new James Bond movie. The watch culminated its career in 1984 by entering the Guinness Book of Records as … Read more

We have been fed up with spam calls for years and operators are finally going to do something: MasOrange will be the first

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We have talked about countless methods to try to deal with incessant spam calls; tricks to identify themas record them to be able to report… Operating systems have protections such as Google call filter and even The Government has promoted regulations to finish them off. It is striking that, given this panorama, we have not seen initiatives promoted by the operators themselves until now. MasOrange lays the first stone Image: MasOrange The operator has been the first to launch a tool to protect your customers from spam calls and fraudulent, it is a call filter that works directly on your network. To do this, MasOrange has teamed up with Hiya, a company specialized in caller identification using AI. The function It’s called ‘Visible Call’ and what it does is identify incoming calls suspected of fraud or spam. Through a notice on the screen, customers can decide whether to pick up or not. The functionality is free and will be activated on all terminals that have the function VoLTE. MasOrange’s proposal is very similar to other call filters such as Truecaller or the one that is integrated into the Android Phone app. The difference here is that it works directly on the network, so it will not be necessary to install any app. The first proposal to a problem that comes from afar The problem of spam calls is not something that started the day before yesterday; We have been suffering from them for years and it is not only about annoying business callsin recent years Telephone frauds have skyrocketed. The situation was such that we should have taken action on the matter much earlier. The operators They started blocking fraudulent calls and SMS this yearbut it was not on his own initiative, but as a consequence of the package of measures promoted by the Governmentwhich includes blocking calls from international origin and prohibition on making commercial calls using mobile numbers. According to an OCU survey from June of this year, 92% of respondents claimed to receive spam calls. This was before the new regulations came into force, but currently things are not looking much better. According to Facuaas of October of this year 4 out of 10 consumers continue to receive commercial calls. MasOrange brings its first proposal to a problem that, despite the obstacles, continues to find cracks through which to sneak through. Now the rest of the operators need to follow in their footsteps. Image | Pexelsedited In Xataka | Apple introduced the SPAM call filter as the star feature of iOS 26. It took me a week to deactivate it

How to customize ChatGPT to choose its default personality, what it knows about you and even what it calls you

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Let’s tell you how to customize ChatGPT to adapt it to the way you want to use this artificial intelligence. You will be able to customize the way he responds, or even the way he communicates with you. All with things that you can customize within the settings. We are going to explain to you all the things you can customize about the behavior and memory of ChatGPT. And remember that all of this is optional, because you actually have a button to activate or deactivate the option. Enable personalizationand by disabling it you can make nothing you change take effect. Customize how ChatGPT responds to you Within the ChatGPT settings you have a section called Personalize. In it, you will be able to detail many aspects of your user experience with ChatGPT, so that everything is more personalized. One of the most important things is to configure how you want their responses to be. ChatGPT Personality The first thing you can do is adjust AI personalityso that you can choose the way in which the answers that the AI ​​gives you are written. By default, their personality is happy and adaptable, but you will be able to choose up to four different ones. They are the following: Cynical: ChatGPT responses are made with a critical and sarcastic tone. Robot: ChatGPT responses are made in an effective and direct tone. Attentive: ChatGPT responses are made with a thoughtful and understanding tone. Geek: ChatGPT responses are made with an exploratory and enthusiastic tone. Custom instructions If none of these personalities convince you, you will also be able to customize it manually giving you instructions on what your tone should be. This way, you can make ChatGPT become a much more personal assistant adapted to what you expect from its responses. For that, you have to go to the section Custom instructions. Below, you’ll have a writing field, where you can hand-write the type of tone you want the AI ​​to use. Below you will also have several examples, and you can simply click on it. Configure what ChatGPT knows about you Below the personality-related options, you have several options to define your data personal. For example, in Your Nickname You can choose a name or nickname so that ChatGPT always refers to you when answering your questions. After the nickname, you also have a section to specify Your profession. Thus, the answers he gives you can be adapted when appropriate using terms that you may know a little more about. It will also be able to guide you with answers and solutions to your work, and even ask you explicitly without having to specify what you work or study. Lastly, you also have a section More about you with which you can give more information about your interestsyour values ​​or your way of thinking. This way, you can make sure that your answers can address or give you examples of things that interest you, or simply leave out some things that might offend your values. Here, you are free to explain everything you want about yourself, you can explore and add things to adapt ChatGPT as much as possible taking into account the things you want it to take into account about you and your context. Manage what ChatGPT remembers and then you have the memory section. When you talk to ChatGPT, at any time you can say something the AI ​​thinks is important about you. It can be anything from a plant that you have because you have asked him about it to your personal tastes, and he will remember this to use when he thinks it is necessary. For example, your plant can appear in the background when you ask it to create images. If you click on the option Manage memoriesyou will see a list of all the things that ChatGPT has been saving about you on its own. Here, delete all memories or others individually, and it even has a search engine for cases where there are many about you. But if you don’t like this, you can disable memory usage. Disabling the option Reference saved memoriesChatGPT will no longer store them and refer to them when responding to you. And then, you also have one last option to Reference chat historywhich you can activate or deactivate. This will allow ChatGPT to take into account other conversations to mention things you have talked about in them, without having to save them in memories. With all these things, you should know that you can change everything according to your needs. You can activate or deactivate options depending on what you need, or directly deactivate all these customizations in case you don’t need anything. In Xataka Basics | The best prompts to save hours of work and do your tasks with ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or other artificial intelligence

Calls and SMS pretending to be our bank are the past, scams with AI cloned voices are the future: Crossover 1×26

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Scams are a lifeless thing. They surround us and they flood us because we have never been more connected and more distracted. And scammers and hackers know this and try to get more out of it. And that’s how it goes for us. We talk precisely about that reality in this episode in which Jaume Lahoz has as a special guest Maria Aperadoran expert in cybersecurity and criminology, and who makes an exhaustive review of the techniques that are most used to scam us. The ones before, and the ones now. Thus, it tells us about banking scams and identity theft, but also about the danger that the user faces when they install fake applications or when they resort to pirated software and broadcasts: in many cases, saving some money to watch a match or be able to play a video game can make let’s install some malware without realizing it and, of course, ending up being very expensive. But all these methods are now added the danger posed by artificial intelligencewhich allows cybercriminals to attack more and better than ever. especially with deepfakes and cloned voices that can end up convincing us… and ruining us. There are, of course, ways to protect yourself and to avoid possible scares. María Aperador tells us about all of them and opens a door to hope. As that one said, be careful out there. On YouTube | Crossover

One of the most downloaded apps for iPhone pays for recording calls to train AI models. It is a security disaster

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The sale of personal data is not a hypothesis, it is an expanding reality. Just look at Spotify: Recently a service appeared that paid those who delivered their profile and their listening summaries to resell them to technology companies. The approach was as simple as disturbing, because it became something as innocent as our musical habits. Neon Repeat the scheme, but transfers it to a much more sensitive land, telephone calls, where intimacy becomes the product. We are talking about an app that decided to convert phone calls into the new digital gold. His proposal is direct: “Speak, record and charge.” It promises users to win “hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year” simply allowing their conversations to transform into training material for artificial intelligence systems. The hook worked. In a matter of days he went from irrelevance to place Within the top three positions In the Social Networks category in the United States App Store. How neon works. The neon mechanism is designed for each call to translate into money. It promises to pay 30 cents per minute when two users of the app talked to each other, 15 cents if the call is with someone external and establishes a stop of 30 dollars daily. To this adds a referral system that offers 30 dollars for each new user. The recording, According to your policyalways affect the sender and, when both used neon, to both parties. Conditions of use. Beyond payments, the true neon reach is in its Terms of service. There the users give the company a “world, exclusive, irrevocable and transferable” license on their recordings. This permit includes rights to sell, modify, create derived works and distribute the audio in any format, present or future. To this is added a section of functions in beta, without guarantees or responsibility in case of failures. The amplitude of that assignment makes it difficult to foresee how far the use of the recordings can go. Where is available and how popular it is. Neon’s initial success was as fast as unexpected. At the time of writing this article, it is number 2 of the most downloaded social applications in the United States App Store. The application, however, seems restricted to that market: in tests carried out from Spain is not among those available or allows its download. The security failure. The story took an unexpected turn when a technical analysis revealed that Neon did not protect the information of its own users. As Techcrunch discoveredjust create an account and review network traffic with a tool like Burp Suite to access others. Shortly after the notice, the founder closed the servers and sent an email announcing a pause ‘for security’, not to mention the filtration. What was exposed was especially delicate: Telephone numbers associated with accounts Public links to audio recordings Complete call transcripts Metadata with duration, date and payments obtained Telephone numbers, recordings and transcripts are not accessible is not a minor failure. With this data, private conversations could be rebuilt and associated with specific people. The risks range from attempts to impersonate identity to the creation of synthetic voices. What Neon says in front of what we know, Neon defends that their processes protect users: anonymity of conversations, elimination of personal information and sale only to reviewed companies. However, the ruling showed that these systems are not infallible. The official communication after temporary closure spoke of “adding extra security layers”, but omits to recognize the filtration. Neon’s fall does not erase the background question: what price does our intimacy have when artificial intelligence demands more and more data? The model to pay for calls can reappear in other forms and other markets, because the need to train systems will continue to grow. What happened in the United States is an early warning that we are not talking about science fiction, but about real proposals that already touch the user’s door. The decision, ultimately, is personal. Images | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 | Screen capture | Neon In Xataka | A new generation of robots promises precision and efficiency. It also opens the door to cyberspage risks

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