Something odd happened to me,has it happened to anyone else?

[Saphhirefox]

Okay so recently a random # texted my grandma a photo of my sister.

A COMPLETELY random number, and the weirdest part is that my mom, or anyone else in the family, doesnt post pictures of my sister online. So someone couldntve grabbed the image off of one of my family members social media
Oh and the image was AI. It was like a close up of my sister but she had long hair (She is a little kid and her hair isnt that long). The image , like i said was super up close . Also it was in black and white/grayscale.

I could tell it was ai bc 1. My sisters hair isnt long and straight like that 2. It was weirdly blurred and it looked like parts of the image were melting together and 3. It didnt even really look like her.

It was a COMPLETELY RANDOM NUMBER from a 928 area code, Which is Arizona. My family and i are in the USA but not arizona or anywhere near it. We dont know anyone in Arizona either.

The only thing i can think of is that it could be a photo of me when i was younger run through AI, because it looks a lot like a christmas card from when i was 2-3, and i looked alot like my sister when i was younger. I dont think my mom ever posted that photo publicly though.

And yeah basically i want to know, have you ever been sent photos from a random number/personal photos of family from a random number? Its really creeping me and every one else out

[Saphhirefox]

Bump (is this on the front page still ?)

[Imbion]

That’s definitely not normal, but it does have an explanation. I have a background in education about fraud and scams, and this sounds like a case of that.

There’s a lot of sketchy ways to get data. Just because of how the internet and data infrastructure is set up, someone sketchy will get your data eventually. Fraudsters will take massive databases of dubiously obtained data (either from database breaches or from purchasing data) and then use that information to target people. The eldery are a common target because they tend to have a decent amount of money and are generally tech illiterate.

So what likely happened is that scammer obtained her number and personal data through one of those means -> Use that data to find family members to get their attention -> Send an AI generated picture from a burner phone of a family member -> Response if given confirms this is the person they think it is, that it is their family member, will respond to weird messages, and is a valid number -> Follow up with further scam and fraud attempts.

Usual procedure to weird messages like this is to not respond at all and to block the number to deny them information. If she has responded already, it’s not the end of the world - however it is very likely that she’s become the random target of fraud and phishing. Which is annoying, but unfortunately not uncommon.

Either way I recommend finding some resources on how to spot fraud and phishing attempts, particularly scams that utilize generate machine learning (AI), and making sure to educate her and your family on how to protect yourself from such attempts. Common practice is to share a distress codeword that only you and your family know to confirm its who you’re talking to over the phone and/or internet.

Those operations are ultimately a money making scheme. They cast a massive net with their low cost operations and rarely target anyone in particular, but just spam out as much stuff as possible in hopes of getting a few lucrative hits.

Unless things escalate I wouldn’t worry about your family’s personal saftey, as hunting and hounding a single family isn’t profitable when they could just cast a wider net.

[Saphhirefox]

That’s definitely not normal, but it does have an explanation. I have a background in education about fraud and scams, and this sounds like a case of that.

There’s a lot of sketchy ways to get data. Just because of how the internet and data infrastructure is set up, someone sketchy will get your data eventually. Fraudsters will take massive databases of dubiously obtained data (either from database breaches or from purchasing data) and then use that information to target people. The eldery are a common target because they tend to have a decent amount of money and are generally less tech illiterate.

So what likely happened is that scammer obtained her number and personal data through one of those means -> Use that data to find family members to get their attention -> Send an AI generated picture from a burner phone of a family member -> Response if given confirms this is the person they think it is, that it is their family member, will respond to weird messages, and is a valid number -> Follow up with further scam and fraud attempts.

Usual procedure to weird messages like this is to not respond at all and to block the number to deny them information. If she has responded already, it’s not the end of the world - however it is very likely that she’s become the random target of fraud and phishing. Which is annoying, but unfortunately not uncommon.

Either way I recommend finding some resources on how to spot fraud and phishing attempts, particularly scams that utilize generate machine learning (AI), and making sure to educate her and your family on how to protect yourself from such attempts. Common practice is to share a distress codeword that only you and your family know to confirm its who you’re talking to over the phone and/or internet.

Those operations are ultimately a money making scheme. They cast a massive net with their low cost operations and rarely target anyone in particular, but just spam out as much stuff as possible in hopes of getting a few lucrative hits.

Unless things escalate I wouldn’t worry about your family’s personal saftey, as hunting and hounding a single family isn’t profitable when they could just cast a wider net.

Oh my god, thank you so much for responding! I honestly think the photo looks more like me than my sister and my mom used to post photos of me online when i was younger, so its probably from that (Although my grandmas numbers area code is in another state, now thinking about it i did visit that state when i was younger, and my mom uploaded pictures of me then, so maybe from that) i did teach my grandma to recognize ai so she realized it was a fake almost immediately, and she didnt respond. I was pretty worried (so was the rest of my family) so again thanks for responding !!!

EDIT: i spoke to my mom and the christmas card photo of me was posted online on a friends website for horseback riding (I used to do horseback riding lol), an ai bot maybe got the image from there

[Saphhirefox]

Bump to see if anyone can give me any more insight

[Saphhirefox]

Bump to see if anyone can give me any more insight

[Saphhirefox]

Bump to see if anyone can give me any more insight

Were still a bit confused !

[manuscript]

This is why it’s so bad to post pics of your kids online lol people are not normal you may want to speak to a legal person

[Meowmocha]

Sometimes we get e-mail where the sender has the name of someone we know, but it's not actually them. And often the e-mail address is something really fake-looking. Scammers have been getting people's personal information for ages, even before AI. Sometimes I wonder where they even get this stuff.

[Saphhirefox]

This is why it’s so bad to post pics of your kids online lol people are not normal you may want to speak to a legal person

Really wondering where they got the image though considering my mom stopped posting photos of me around 2015-16 and youd have to dig through a bunch of random stuff to get to it