MOSCOW, August 9 Fraudsters have begun using artificial intelligence to fake audio and video messages on behalf of victims to their acquaintances, said Alla Khrapunova, curator of the People's Front platform «Moshelovka».
«The activity of hacking WhatsApp accounts (owned by Meta* corporation) has increased now. Having hacked an account, scammers instantly download all existing correspondence, voice and video messages. With the help of AI, messages are faked on behalf of the victim to their friends. At the same time, the intonation, facial expressions, and usual phrases of the victim are preserved, which inspires trust in the friends to whom the scammers send such deepfakes,» the expert said. 
According to her, in a fabricated «dialogue» scammers increasingly avoid talking about money at the beginning of the conversation, and begin their attempts to mislead with familiar topics. Only then do they move on to attempts to gain access to money.
In such cases, Khrapunova advises contacting the friend who is asking for help in any other way and clarifying whether it is really needed. It is also recommended to use the «security question» mechanism, when you can ask a question in the correspondence, the answer to which is known only to the account owner.
«If the fraudster indicated in the correspondence to which account the financial aid should be transferred, it would be useful to take a photo of the screen and send the fraudster's account details to the bank — this way the details can be included in the Bank of Russia database, on the basis of which other banks can suspend the flow of funds to this card,» Khrapunova advised.
If a person discovers that their account has been hacked, they should use the «Status» option in another messenger or social network to warn their contacts about the hack, Khrapunova noted. And in the hacked WhatsApp account, in the «Linked devices» tab, all active sessions should be disabled.
* Meta's activities (social networks Facebook and Instagram) are banned in Russia as extremist.
«If you can't log into the messenger, completely deleting the app from your device and reinstalling it will help. After that, you must set up a two-step login verification in your security settings,» Khrapunova emphasized.
To prevent hacking, the expert recommended being more careful when reading QR codes. «There are a great many of them, and scammers take advantage of people's curiosity by inserting malware, viruses, and remote access to the victim's device into the codes. Many instant messenger users often send each other animated postcards — they also pose a threat. Animated images allow viruses and malware to be inserted into their code, which is downloaded to the device unnoticed by the user,» the expert said.
According to Khrapunova, you should also be careful with links to the web version of WhatsApp in Google search results.
«For security, you should disable automatic saving of correspondence to Google and automatic file downloads in the messenger's security settings. You should not use the web version of WhatsApp on other people's devices and it is better to install an antivirus on your phone,» Khrapunova urged.