this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
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More than half of Americans reported receiving at least one scam call per day in 2024. To combat the rise of sophisticated conversational scams that deceive victims over the course of a phone call, we introduced Scam Detection late last year to U.S.-based English-speaking Phone by Google public beta users on Pixel phones.

We use AI models processed on-device to analyze conversations in real-time and warn users of potential scams. If a caller, for example, tries to get you to provide payment via gift cards to complete a delivery, Scam Detection will alert you through audio and haptic notifications and display a warning on your phone that the call may be a scam.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago

This isn't really anything new. https://signal.org/

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Dumb as I am, I have a Pixel... the good thing though? Graphene OS is an option.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Last I checked it's only an option on non Verizon pixels or has Verizon stopped fucking things over.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

...is this some sort of joke my Nordic brain can't understand? I need to go hug a councilman.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

And? Google’s been listening to you for years and not only in english.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Most people here: Yes, I bought an advertiser’s device, hooked up in a million ways to that advertiser’s services, who’s well known for monitoring every aspect of the life of every person they can, but how dare they monitor this part?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

is this really official? seems like a fake site

[–] [email protected] 171 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (11 children)

No, no, Fuck You, no!!

I will have no phone that employs "Counterfeit Conciousness" to listen to every fucking word of every fucking conversation leading to (among others):

  • Further training
  • Data retention of complete call content somewhere (waiting to be hacked)
  • Possible reports to LEO (or worse)
  • ...whatever else I can't think of just now...

Fuck right off with this.

This solidifies for me I will never own a Pixel phone.

And, if this becomes ubiquitous in Android, I'll have to rethink that, too.

Doesn't mean I'll necessarily go to iOS; more likely completely rethink having a phone at all.

Fuck Google entirely. Don't be Evil my ass.

🙄 🤡 🖕 🖕

[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Additionally, just fucking stop scammers from using fucking gift cards.

Surely it's not that hard to detect that a gift card sold in Australia is being activated in Russia.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The gift card people have absolutely no motivation to fix this problem. They are making bank.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (4 children)

This solidifies for me I will never own a Pixel phone.

Sounds like a pixel phone is exactly what u want just u want GrapheneOS on it.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Fuck Android. Run Calyx or Graphene. it's not difficult for any PC enthusiast.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 week ago (3 children)

unfortunately both of those have a very small list of supported devices.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This ☝️, which nobody tells you, and then about 20 other things nobody tells you except that one Indian vlogger who installs everything on everything.

TL;DW - if you have a relatively recent Pixel, you’re probably good. Everything else, get out the forum posts, an old POS windows box you don’t mind trashing and start finding out what doesn’t work. You might get some Samsung to mostly work ok.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

And next phone same person buys is the latest same pay by installments piece of lock downed shit hardware. And continue to complain on lack of support for shitty hardware, shitty firmware and shitty software. Stop buying shit , custom roms have been around since android 1.1 . GOS and Calyx aren't recent inventions either.
Lineage official supports a fuckton of devices as well. Including every single pixel made. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ So quite well documented.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

on device

scam detection

I know I'll be downvoted into oblivion as I can hardly believe I've formed this opinion myself, but tbh this is a good application for some of this AI tech.

Anecdotally, a friend of mine grew up well-off; from an immigrant family but their parents were educated and in a lucrative profession so he always went to private schools etc. Fast forward to about 10 years after all the kids moved out; the parents had divorced amicably and his mom had a sizeable retirement along with the payout she had from the divorce. In the 7 figures - she never had to worry about money.

Anywho, mom ran into some medical issues so the kids had to get involved with her finances again, as she couldn't do it herself. Turns out that over the course of months or years, mom had been getting scammed to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars at a time, to the point where she had actually taken out a mortgage on the home she previously owned outright. They're still sorting things out but the number he has tossed out in the past is ~$1.4M that got wired overseas and is just... gone now.

So yes, I probably won't turn this feature on myself, but for the tens of millions of uneducated and inept people out there, this could genuinely make a difference in avoiding some catastrophic outcomes. It certainly isn't a perfect solution, but I suspect my friend would rate it as much better than nothing, and I would argue that this falls short of being "strictly evil".

[–] [email protected] 77 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah Google claims it's not recording, storing or being sent the conversations or sharing them with anyone, and that this is all done 'on-device'.

The thing is, I don't trust them. At all.

Maybe the terms and conditions will silently change. Maybe their definitions of "recording" and "save" will change. Maybe they're blatantly lying and are willing to pay a fine if they get caught.

Google's whole business model is harvesting and selling people's data, so I have to assume the worst intentions.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I took my dad for cancer radiation treatment. While in the waiting room, this little old lady came in. I saw her struggling to remove a necklace and offered to help. She had really tangled herself in it trying to get it on (definitely in a "chemo brain" mind fog).

She answered her phone, and I heard a very obvious scam on the other line. I tried telling her, and at first she tried to explain to me that I was wrong, it was some kind helpful people. I took the phone from her and confirmed it was a scam. I told the staff at the clinic but that was about all I figured I could do.

This Ai maybe could have helped. Maybe.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago

Chemo and alzheimer patients and their families are targets for that reason. Privacy was already a joke before DOGE copied it all off for Elmos Next Reich

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Jokes on them. I don't have phone conversations

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (9 children)

and when i do, they're not in English

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Yup... Time to go back to graphene OS. Just been lazy about putting it on this phone.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Reading this from GOS. Tapping freedom. Installation doesn't take more than 10 mins!

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nice, wholesale illegal wire tapping. It's OK, it's legal because it's AI and Google is totally not storing any recordings. They say this is all on-device, but that's an "oops" or equivalent from them hoovering up recordings of every phone call you use one of their ~~surveillance endpoints~~ phones on.

heavy /s

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (11 children)

What do you mean, "illegal?" If the phone user consents to turning it on, that makes it legal.

I hate to defend Google, but I will absolutely defend single-party consent for recording. Don't like it? Don't fucking call me in the first place. It absolutely grinds my gears when shitty software (including from Google) plays an obnoxious warning message when I want to record a call, even though I have the right to do so without warning.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

It's pretty easy to imagine all the ways this technology can because a nightmare. Maybe Russia puts AI spies on your phone that listen to see if you say anything bad about Putin to the person you are talking to and then pings their police and tells them what you said. Fuck you google for creating this technology.

Oh, and if you are part of the vast majority of people who aren't going to fall for a random 'gift-card' scam, this AI will always be running constantly draining your battery anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (4 children)

So, wait, Google can record calls, but we can't?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Member when they sucked up everyone’s wifi passwords and the world was like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm so tired of this. It feels like an onslaught.

Back in 2008 or whatever I let Google handle my voicemails, and I enjoyed the convenience of the machine-transcriptions.

Now I wonder if my voicemails are being studied and trained on or whatever.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

Part of the reason I haven't yet moved away from Google services on my pixel is because of the call screening and anti-spam features. I screen unknown callers pretty much all the time so Google is listening if they call me anyway. I'm fine with that, knowing A. That the callers get a heads up that they're talking to an AI and being recorded and B. That the ones who are human and trying to scam me generally don't call back once they know the line is being actively recorded.

There's no feature parity for this on any of the roms I would move to. Taking it a step further is unnecessary for me, and I'll probably opt out. But I can fully understand why someone might want it (for their elderly family members for instance).

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Great, more AI bloat from Google that is now listening in on my calls? How do I disable?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Try removing via ADB, maybe?

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