{"id":309049,"date":"2025-12-10T15:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T15:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/309049\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T15:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T15:05:09","slug":"fbi-warns-all-smartphone-users-stop-making-these-calls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/309049\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI Warns All Smartphone Users\u2014Stop Making These Calls"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FBI<\/p>\n

Why you should never call these phone numbers \u2014 ever.<\/p>\n

NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Updated on Dec. 10 with a new report exposing how this new threat works.<\/p>\n

Fresh from The FBI\u2019s account takeover<\/a> warning last week, with more than $260 million<\/a> already stolen in 2025, the bureau has issued a new warning for smartphone users. \u201cCriminals are pretending to be your bank to drain your accounts,\u201d it says<\/a>. But calling certain phone numbers also risks you losing all your life savings.<\/p>\n

In these attacks, \u201ccyber criminals gain unauthorized access to the targeted online financial institution, payroll, or health savings account, with the goal of stealing money or information for personal gain.\u201d Accounts are hacked \u201cthrough social engineering techniques \u2014 including texts, calls, and emails \u2014 or through fraudulent websites.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bureau says you should monitor your accounts, checking for anything unusual. But critically, if you see do anything unexpected, the bureau say \u201cdon\u2019t do an internet search\u201d for the bank\u2019s phone number. You must stop using search engines for numbers. \u201cContact the phone number\/website on the back of your card.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just as critically, \u201ctake a beat\u201d the FBI says. That\u2019s the theme<\/a> of its latest campaign for the holiday season. Attackers create a false sense of urgency to trick you into acting before you have time to think. There\u2019s a hacker accessing your account, they\u2019ll say, or a fraudulent transaction about to close. An urgent message or call is a red flag. Period.<\/p>\n

Google<\/a> has just issued the same warning<\/a>. \u201cCriminals impersonate banks or other trusted institutions on the phone,\u201d it says, \u201cto try to manipulate victims into sharing their screen in order to reveal banking information or make a financial transfer.\u201d<\/p>\n

An Android pilot now shows a warning if you share your screen with an unknown number while opening a banking app. \u201cThe warning includes a 30-second pause period before you\u2019re able to continue, which helps break the \u2018spell\u2019 of the scammer\u2019s social engineering, disrupting the false sense of urgency and panic commonly used.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only search engines. The same now applies to AI assistants as well. “You trust your search results. And you probably trust your AI assistant, too.” ZeroFox<\/a> says. \u201cBut what happens when both are being manipulated?\u201d<\/p>\n

This is \u201ca growing threat to organizations and brands,\u201d ZeroFox warns. “Especially as people increasingly turn to LLMs for fast answers to high-stakes questions like \u201cHow do I contact customer support for [Your Brand]?\u201d<\/p>\n

And this can fake any brand \u2014 however big it may be. MalwareBytes<\/a> says it found \u201ctech support scammers hijacking the results of people looking for 24\/7 support for Apple, Bank of America, Facebook, HP, Microsoft, Netflix, and PayPal.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new report from Aurascape Aura Labs<\/a> has just highlighted how simple an attack this can be. They have discovered, what they say is \u201cthe first real-world campaign where attackers systematically manipulate public web content so that large language model (LLM)\u2013powered systems, such as Perplexity and Google\u2019s AI Overview, recommend scam \u2018customer support\u2019 phone numbers as if they were official.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team says this isn\u2019t a new flaw, but rather an opportunity for a new threat vector \u201ccreated by the shift from traditional search results to AI-generated answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

This underlines why the bureau\u2019s advice is not to search numbers or ask LLMs to find them online. \u201cWhen querying Perplexity with: \u2019the official Emirates Airlines reservations number\u2019,\u201d the researchers say, “the system returned a confident and fully fabricated answer that included a fraudulent call-center scam number: \u2019The official Emirates Airlines reservations number is +1 (833) 621-7070\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n

It was the same with British Airways. \u201cWhen querying Perplexity with: \u2018how can I make a reservation with British Airways by phone, what are the steps\u2019, Perplexity responded with a detailed, authoritative-sounding step-by-step guide \u2014 and once again embedded a fraudulent U.S. reservation number, presenting it as a \u2018commonly used\u2019 British Airways contact: \u201cFor US customers, a commonly used phone number is +1 (833) 621-7070, where you will be connected to a reservations specialist.\u2019”<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not a BA number at all. Not even close. \u201cIt is the same scam call-center number observed in other poisoned contexts, now repurposed and surfaced across multiple airline brands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aurascape Aura Labs says \u201cthe same poisoning pattern appears in Google\u2019s AI Overview feature.\u201d After being asked to retrieve details, “the AI Overview generated a confident, instructional response \u2014 and embedded multiple fraudulent call-center numbers as if they were legitimate Emirates customer service lines.”<\/p>\n

That\u2019s worrying because it goers to the reliability (or otherwise) or AI search results. \u201cPoisoned content is not only influencing LLM-first products like Perplexity \u2014 it has begun to surface inside mainstream search experiences that now rely on AI-generated summaries, significantly expanding the reach and potential impact of the attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

An attacker can message and trick victims into placing calls to banks, having poisoned SEO results for the numbers they\u2019ll likely call. It\u2019s the same for all unsolicited support or security calls. You must stop making any calls to numbers searched online \u2014 or now via an AI assistant. Find verifiable contact details. Every time.<\/p>\n

The FBI has now issued a new Dec. 8 public advisory, warning \u201cdon\u2019t let scammers ruin your holiday season. As scammers increasingly use pressure tactics and artificial intelligence to defraud Americans out of their hard-earned money, the FBI is reminding everyone to protect themselves and their families from fraud this holiday season.\u201d<\/p>\n

This follows the same \u201ctake a beat\u201d messaging. “\u2019If you feel pressured to act fast, pay money, or turn over personal information\u2014take a beat. Stop and assess if what you\u2019re being told is real. Talk to your families. Protect each other from scams,\u2019 said FBI Director Kash Patel. ‘Scammers are banking on the fact that you\u2019ll feel too embarrassed to come forward and report the crime to the FBI. Don’t let them win’.”<\/p>\n

The other advice is to talk to your \u201cloved ones about not sharing sensitive information with people they have met only online or over the phone. They also should not send money, gift cards, cryptocurrency, or other assets.\u201d Vulnerable citizens, especially older generations, are especially susceptible to the new wave of scams doing the rounds.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s behind the bureau\u2019s other key warning in recent days, that attackers are now doctoring social media pictures to launch \u201cvirtual kidnappings<\/a>.\u201d These use the altered images to frighten relatives into thinking a loved one has been taken. <\/p>\n

\u201cCriminal actors typically will contact their victims through text message claiming they have kidnapped their loved one and demand a ransom be paid for their release. Oftentimes, the criminal actor will express significant claims of violence towards the loved one if the ransom is not paid immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Take a beat, as the bureau says. Take time to think. All these scams prey on a sense of dread and urgency, and most now use AI in some way to make it all look real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why you should never call these phone numbers \u2014 ever. NurPhoto via Getty Images Updated on Dec. 10…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[16214,123392,123393,123394,123391,116873,2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-309049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-fbi-android-warning","9":"tag-fbi-delete-texts","10":"tag-fbi-do-not-reply","11":"tag-fbi-iphone-warning","12":"tag-fbi-stop-calling","13":"tag-fbi-stop-texting","14":"tag-mobile","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}