Trend Micro announced today (November 3rd) that, in order to help people cope with the increasingly rampant and AI-driven fraud threats, its "AI Fraud Prevention Expert" app will provide three free anti-telephone fraud features, including caller ID, call blocking, and manual phone number search, allowing people to improve their fraud prevention capabilities at zero cost.
Mainstream rhetoric targeting 2025: Impersonating government and public sector officials
Trend Micro points out that unlike the traditional scams of "impersonating relatives and friends to borrow money" or "impersonating customer service to obtain ATM operation information," the mainstream telephone scams in 2025 will involve impersonating the government or government agencies. At the same time, with the development of AI technology, voice scams that use AI to impersonate others to commit fraud may intensify in the future (a Trend Micro survey shows that more than 70% of people in Taiwan are worried about this).
Trend Micro has compiled a list of the most common scam tactics used recently:
• Impersonating telecom customer service: By accurately revealing personal information to gain trust, they falsely claim that the user's mobile number has been stolen and sent fraudulent text messages, creating a "crime-related" scenario, and then inducing the user to provide financial account information.
• Impersonating household registration/land administration authorities: Using automated voice or human-like scripts (such as "Notification of mailing of household registration transcript") to trick people into providing personal information.
• Impersonating police and prosecutors: The charges against users involve money laundering and other crimes. The charges use the excuse of "non-disclosure of investigation" to create pressure and demand that victims transfer "deposits" to protect their assets.
• "One-ring" phone scams: By using an automatic dialing system that "rings once and then hangs up," the validity of the phone number can be tested, and even voice samples of the recipient can be collected.
Three free features: Caller ID, blocking, and manual search.
To address these threats, the "AI Anti-Fraud Expert" App is offering three free phone protection features starting today:
• Caller ID function: When an unknown number calls, the app will immediately assess its risk (fraud, advertising, international, or unknown) and display a "Suspected fraud or harassment call" warning on the phone screen.
• Incoming call blocking function: Users can enable settings to automatically block calls identified by the database as fraudulent, harassing, or even specific international calls.
• Manual phone search function: Users can manually enter unfamiliar phone numbers seen through SMS, the internet, or other channels into the app for querying, and the system will instantly compare and assess their risk.
By integrating local reward mechanisms, we can create smart anti-fraud tools.
Trend Micro's Product Marketing Manager, Zhu Fangwei, stated that fraudsters often exploit the public's trust in government agencies to commit fraud. With the proliferation of voice scams, using professional tools for fraud prevention has become crucial. Trend Micro aims to create a smart fraud prevention tool that is "accessible to everyone and effective for all" by providing free call protection features, combined with a global fraud database and a local user feedback mechanism.
Trend Micro emphasizes that in addition to the three features released for free this time, "AI Fraud Prevention Expert" also offers a paid version, which includes multi-layered protection mechanisms such as fraud verification, SMS filtering, AI face-swapping fraud detection, and "fraud warning radar," which can proactively issue warnings before users fall into traps.
