The Scammer's Playbook Remains Consistent As Their Production Quality Has Skyrocketed

Cybersecurity researcher Jessica Barker recently recreated five common scam scenarios using a single AI-generated photo and a cloned voice for each. Fake emergencies. Fake executives. Fake friends in trouble. Each one engineered to trigger urgency, fear, or sympathy, and to remove your ability to stop and think.

The tools are free. The results are convincing. And the underlying scripts are exactly what scammers have always used, because they work.

When emotions are heightened, skepticism should be too.

We can't train people to reliably detect deepfakes when the technology is outpacing detection. What we can do is train people to recognize the emotional pattern of being manipulated: the sudden urgency, the request for secrecy, the pressure to act before verifying.

For nonprofits especially, building a culture where it's safe to slow down and verify is the real security control. A real emergency can survive a two-minute callback. A scam usually can't.

Inspired by a video and LinkedIn post from Jessica Barker MBE PhD, shared by Lance Spitzner of the SANS Institute.