Your phone rings, and without thinking, you answer it. It's your spouse. Or your grandma. Maybe the friend you're always posting TikToks with online. And they're asking for your help. 

They've been in a car accident, and you have to provide some personal information as their emergency contact. They're in jail and need you to bail them out. Or maybe it's even simpler than that: Grandma can't log into her account and needs to send you a code. Can you please read it to her? 

The familiar lilt of their voices catch you off guard — only none of them are real. 

Their voices have been cloned, and malicious actors are donning their audio likenesses to scam you out of your personal information, and sometimes cold, hard cash. That number is growing, making even more people susceptible to the deceptive tech, but there are very simple ways to protect yourself and your loved ones.  

Scroll through TikTok, and you'll come across hundreds of stories detailing tales concocted by scammers to impersonate your loved ones. In one such video with more than 450,000 views, a young woman writes that her mother was nearly scammed by an imposter who imitated her grandmother's voice. The only way they caught it? Grandma is no longer alive. 

Scams are on the rise. 2 billion to digital crimes , a jump of more than 25 percent from the year before. Recent data from digital security company NordVPN found that a growing number of scammers are pitching voice scam services to bad actors on dark web forums and Telegram channels.

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