“Can you hear me?” Those three words are the whole trick. Pick up the phone, hear a stranger open with that question and nothing else, and your best move is to say nothing and hang up.
The goal is simple. The caller wants you to answer, out loud, with a quick “yes.” Most people do it without thinking, because that is how a normal phone call starts. Often the caller hangs up the second you confirm you are there, according to the Better Business Bureau, whose most recent alert on the script dates from 2024.
What the Caller Is Actually After
Two things. First, proof that a real person picks up at your number, which turns you into a live target worth calling again and again. Second, a clean recording of your voice.
A random “can you hear me?” on an unsolicited call should be your first red flag, Kelly Richmond Pope, a forensic accounting professor at DePaul University, told HuffPost. If the caller uses your name, do not relax. Your name, address, and other details are easy to pull from public records and social media, and scammers drop them in to sound familiar so you lower your guard and share even more.
You may have heard that crooks use your recorded “yes” to approve charges on your phone bill, a trick called cramming. That is the theory the FCC flagged back in 2017, and nobody has documented it actually happening. The BBB says it has no Scam Tracker reports of money lost this way. AARP goes further and calls the voice-signature route no longer plausible, because multifactor authentication now sits in the way. What is left is still worth avoiding: handing a stranger a recording of your voice helps them and does nothing for you.
The AI Twist That Makes This Worse Now
A few seconds of your voice is enough to clone it. The FTC has shown a convincing clone built from under five seconds of recorded speech. Scammers drop your words into a text-to-speech program, type whatever they want, and the software reads it back in your voice.
Then they call someone who loves you. A parent picks up and hears their kid crying about a car crash or an arrest, in their real pitch and cadence, begging for money right now. The kid is fine and has no clue their voice is being used across town.
This is not a fringe worry. Complaints that mentioned artificial intelligence carried $893 million in reported losses in 2025, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report, which broke AI out for the first time that year. In 2024 the engineering firm Arup lost $25.6 million after a worker in its Hong Kong office joined a video call where every other face and voice on the screen was fake.
How Often This Is Happening
Scam and telemarketing robocalls hit a six-year high in 2025, running about 20% above the year before, according to PIRG. Pew Research Center puts the everyday reality at 31% of American adults getting at least one scam call a day, and 21% getting several.
The money adds up fast. PIRG puts the average loss among people who lost cash to a phone scam in the first half of 2025 at $3,690, up from $3,172 a year earlier. That is real rent, real groceries, real savings, gone to someone who counted on a single reflex answer.
Other Questions Built to Get a Yes
Smart scammers have moved past the exact phrase. Watch for any opener where the natural answer is “yes.” Common ones include “Is this [your name]?” or a version of “can you hear me?” that pretends the line is cutting out so you keep repeating yourself and hand over more voice to record.
Other scripts skip the yes and swing straight at fear or guilt. “We are collecting emergency donations” for some disaster, or a caller claiming to be a government agency threatening legal trouble unless you pay today. Real agencies do not work that way and give you time to sort things out through proper channels.
Let Strangers Talk to Your Voicemail
The easiest fix costs nothing: stop answering numbers you do not know. If it matters, they leave a message and you call back on your own terms with a clear head.
If you do pick up, stay quiet and let the caller speak first instead of leading with a bright “Hello? Yes?” An auto-dialer usually gives itself away with a click and a pause. The FCC says not to press any numbers to “opt out” or reach a live person, because that just confirms your line is active and invites more calls, and it tells people not to answer questions from unknown callers that can be answered yes or no. The number on your screen means little either. Caller ID authentication is now required on US internet-based phone networks, but PIRG found only 44% of providers reporting full implementation, and older networks cannot run it at all.
Add a call-labeling app while you are at it. Most carriers offer one, and free apps flag or block suspected spam before your phone rings. Signing up at DoNotCall.gov will not stop crooks, who ignore the law anyway, but it cuts the legal telemarketing noise so the real scam calls stand out.
Slow the Call Down
Scammers win on speed. The urgency is designed to push you into a decision before your brain catches up. Break the rhythm. Say “hold on, I need to grab a pen” and set the phone down for 30 seconds. That pause alone breaks the spell.
Then ask something only the real person would know and that is not sitting on their social media. Not a birthday or a pet name anyone can find on Facebook, but a shared memory or a small inside detail. If the caller stalls, changes the subject, or gets angry, you have your answer.
Set Up a Family Safe Word
Pick a word or short phrase that only your inner circle knows and that never gets posted anywhere online. If a panicked call comes in claiming to be your daughter, son, or grandkid in trouble, ask for the safe word before you do anything else.
If it is really them, they tell you. If it is a cloned voice, the person typing the script freezes. The FBI recommends exactly this, a secret word agreed with your family to verify who is calling. Keep it off the internet and out of earshot, because the danger was never that software guesses it.
While you are at it, lock down your accounts. If your Facebook or Instagram is public, anyone can grab your videos and pull the audio to feed a clone. Set your profiles to friends only, and tell the older folks in your family to do the same, because when older adults do lose money to a scam, they tend to lose far more of it.
If You Already Answered or Said Yes
Do not spiral. Saying “yes” once does not hand over your bank account. Check your phone bill first, because cramming is a phone-bill charge and it usually shows up as a dollar or two you would scroll straight past. Then run an eye over your bank and card statements for anything small and odd you cannot explain.
Report an illegal robocall to the FTC at DoNotCall.gov, and report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov if you lost money. The FTC shares both with law enforcement. You can also flag the call with your carrier; AT&T takes reports through the form at att.com/support/pages/report-call-or-text.
When a call feels off but claims to be someone you trust, hang up and call that person or company back on a number you already have saved. Do not redial the number that just called you, because a spoofed line can route your callback straight to the scammer.
This defense needs no new gadgets and no tech skill. It fits in one habit: when a stranger opens with a question, do not answer it. Let the call go, check things out on your own, and keep your “yes” to yourself.
