Millions of Walmart shoppers are being targeted by scammers — FCC issues major warning
The impact of AI is visible in every industry and all walks of life, since it has emerged as a tool to increase the productivity and efficiency of human beings. But the flipside is that it has also made scammers even more dangerous and hard to detect. The latest company to have become inadvertently involved with scammers is the retail giant Walmart. Con artists are calling people posing as Walmart employees, and things have gotten so bad that Washington has had to intervene.
A recent report in The Street suggests that scammers disguising themselves as Walmart employees are linked to 16% of phishing attacks globally, and they are using an AI voice. They identify themselves as Carl or Emma, and say that there was a pre-authorised purchase of PlayStation 5 orders from a person’s Walmart account for an amount of just over $900.
It was the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Enforcement Bureau that laid out the details of the scams in a report. It had also ordered SK Teleco, the voice service provider, to immediately stop AI calls impersonating Walmart employees. Failure to permanently deal with this situation within a certain period of time will lead to the telecom company’s removal from U.S. communications networks.
The AI scam calls ask victims to call back or connect to live operators. Once they are in contact with a live operator, people are asked to share personal information like their social security number. A lot of people understand that a scam may be at play at that point, but some might still fall victim to it. The FCC is doing whatever it can to prevent such activities, and it has sent a strong message.
“Scammers and thieves using our phone networks to defraud consumers or steal personal data is illegal, and voice service providers must be part of the solution. While most providers understand this responsibility, we won’t tolerate those that turn a blind eye and allow shady robocallers on their networks,” said FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. The commission cited data from industry watchdog Industry Traceback Group that traced 29 of the robocalls to SK Teleco.
It also gets its data from the third-party robocall blocking service YouMail, which said that almost 8 million robocalls were made. As a result, the pressure is now on SK Teleco to stop these practices or face severe consequences. “If SK Teleco fails to take swift action to prevent scam calls, the FCC will require all other providers to no longer accept call traffic from SK Teleco. SK Teleco has 48 hours to effectively mitigate illegal traffic and 14 days to take steps to prevent a recurrence of such traffic on their network,” the FCC noted.
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