'Better dead than single': The dark comedy inspired by 'bleak' dating scene
Kat Sadler and her sister Lizzie Davidson on writing and starring in series two of Such Brave Girls. 
© 2025 BBCWorld Sat 1:15pm Dating app scam victims told 'don't suffer in silence'
Students are being targeted by romance scams on dating apps, but talking to a friend can help avoid the danger.
© 2025 BBCWorld Sun, 22 Jun 3:25pm It may look like a rom-com, but Materialists is not a first-date movie
Materialists may star Hollywood heart-throbs, but it's not quite what it appears. Director Celine Song talks about making a rom-com that shows the reality of modern dating.
© 2025 RadioNZ Thu, 19 Jun 9:55am NBA star accused of rape, years of abuse
Zion Williamson is being sued by a woman describing herself as a former dating partner and who alleges the New Orleans Pelicans star committed repeated sexual violence against her.
© 2025 Stuff.co.nz Sat, 31 May 8:35am ‘Heard a couple of cracks’: The brave Dolphin who played on with a broken rostrum
Why Kurt Donoghoe, who broke his nose, was never going to stay off the field – and his hopes that his new look doesn’t harm his chances in the dating game.
© 2025 Sydney Morning Herald Fri, 23 May 7:45am Fake AI voice scammers are now impersonating government officials
You probably know that it’s easy enough to fake audio and video of someone at this point, so you might think to do a little bit of research if you see, say, Jeff Bezos spouting his love for the newest cryptocurrency on Facebook. But more targeted scam campaigns are sprouting up thanks to “AI” fakery, according to the FBI, and they’re not content to settle for small-scale rug pulls or romance scams.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a public service announcement yesterday, stating that there’s an “ongoing malicious text and voice messaging campaign” that’s using faked audio to impersonate a senior US official. Exactly who the campaign is impersonating, or who it’s targeting, isn’t made clear. But a little imagination—and perhaps a lack of faith in our elected officials and their appointees—could illustrate some fairly dire scenarios.
“One way the actors gain such access is by sending targeted individuals a malicious link under the guise of transitioning to a separate messaging platform,” warns the FBI. It’s a familiar tactic, with romance scammers often trying to get their victims off dating apps and onto something more anonymous like Telegram before pumping them for cash or blackmail material. And recent stories of federal employees and bosses communicating over Signal, or some less savory alternatives, have given these messaging systems a lot of exposure.
Presumably, the scammers contact a specific target using an unknown number and pretend to be their boss or some other high-ranking official, using an attached voice message to “prove” their identity. These have become trivially easy to fake, as recently demonstrated when billionaires like “Elon Musk” and “Mark Zuckerberg” started confessing to heinous crimes via the speakers at Silicon Valley crosswalks. “Deepfakes” (i.e., impersonating celebrities via animated video and voice) have now become extremely common online.
The FBI recommends the usual protection steps to avoid being hoodwinked: don’t click on sketchy links over text or email, don’t send money (or crypto) to anyone without lots of verification, and use two-factor authentication. One thing I’ve recently done with my family (since my ugly mug is all over TikTok via PCWorld’s short videos) is to establish a secret phrase with my family to give us a way to authenticate each other over voice calls.
But with automation tools and hundreds of thousands of potential targets in the US government, it seems inevitable that someone will slip up at some point. Hopefully, federal law enforcement won’t be too busy with other matters to take care of real threats.
© 2025 PC World Sat, 17 May 3:15am  
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