In a chat, a familiar person or a new contact asks you to record your voice: “say the phrase, so we confirm it is you”, “we need a sample for sign-in”, “read the digits out loud”. The phrase is short, the tone is friendly. It feels as if a voice note risks nothing, because it is not a code from the bank.
Do not send your voice to a stranger, and do not send it into a chat like that. The recording can later be placed instead of you, when somewhere a login is confirmed or your family is asked for money. Do not figure out how the recording is turned into a confirmation. Simply do not give the sample. Check a real person with a call to a number you already had.
What happens
They ask you to say specific words or numbers. That is not small talk. From a piece like that they assemble a phrase that later confirms an action, or a voice note to relatives asking to lend money. You think you helped “confirm an account”, and you handed your voice to someone else.
The contact can be familiar by name. The account may have been used by someone who is not yours, or it is a new number with someone else’s photo. A request for your voice from there does not become normal. Call the old number from the phone book. If the person asked for nothing like that, do not make the recording and do not go back into the chat.
A real app that you yourself opened from the icon sometimes asks you to say a phrase on its own screen, for your own sign-in. That is not a file you must send to the other person. If they ask you to carry the phrase into a chat, into an email, or “forward it to an operator”, that is no longer your sign-in. Close the window and do not record a voice note.
The digits they ask you to read can be a code that is waiting for confirmation right now. Reading them aloud into a chat is the same as forwarding an SMS code. Do not read them. Do not send an ordinary “hi, it is me” either, if the other person insists on a recording specifically by voice and is in a hurry.
If the recording already left, warn the family: they may call you or write with a voice that sounds like you, and ask for money or a code. Let them call you back on the old number, not the new one. Change the passwords of important accounts yourself, if in the same conversation you also named mail or a bank. A bank code that is then asked from a relative in “your” voice is not dictated by the relative either.
What to say instead of a recording
You can not answer. You can write in text: I do not send my voice into a chat, I will call myself. And call the old contact. Do not say back the phrase they dictated, even “as a joke, one take”. One take is exactly enough.
Tell children and parents separately: if someone asks to record a voice “for confirmation”, they do not make the recording, and they call you with an ordinary call. A family rule is more useful here than sorting out whose conversation came first.
A work chat where “HR asks for a voice sample for a pass” is checked with a live person in the office, not with a recording in a messenger. A pass is not confirmed that way. If a colleague writes from a new number and immediately asks for your voice, dial their old phone. Do not read a pass number and an SMS code aloud into the same recording: that is already two secrets in one file.
A repeated request “just one word, to test the microphone” is the same request. You test a microphone with your own phrase, which you chose yourself, and you do not send it to anyone. Do not say their text even in a whisper. A short file leaves just like a long one.
What to check, in order
- Do not record a voice note with the phrase they ask for “as confirmation”, and do not send it into the chat.
- Do not read digits from someone else’s message out loud. It can be a code.
- Call the person on a number that was in the phone earlier. Not on the contact that was sent today together with the request.
- If your own app shows a phrase on its own screen, that is not a reason to forward the recording to an operator in a messenger.
- If you already sent the voice, warn people close to you not to trust a voice note that asks for money, and to call you back on the old number.
- Do not send a bank code and a password into the same conversation, neither before the recording nor after.
- Do not make a “short take to test the microphone” with their text. The text was exactly what was needed.
- Do not add a new chat to the family group because of this request.
Where people usually go wrong
- They record their voice because a “familiar” person asks and the phrase seems harmless.
- They read digits out loud and think it is not a code.
- They call back the new number from the same chat.
- They forward the recording to the family with “look what they are asking” and multiply the sample.
- They trust the next voice note in their own voice and transfer money.
Do not record or send a voice into a chat for “confirmation”. Do not read digits aloud. Call the number that was already in the phone, and warn people close to you not to trust a voice note like that.
What to do today
If the request is still sitting in the chat, record nothing and call the person on the old number. If you already sent the recording, write to your people that any call in your voice asking for money should be checked with a call back to you, not with a transfer. Do not put a bank code into that conversation, and do not record a second take.
Next, that voice often asks the family for money: a message that says “mom, transfer money right now”.
