The Mossos d'Esquadra warn of scams involving voices created by artificial intelligence.

BarcelonaIs called voice hacking –voice hacking– and it's one of the thousand ways scammers find to steal. The Mossos d'Esquadra have already received complaints from people who receive calls from known numbers in their address book and who, in the voice of a daughter or partner, ask for money. In reality, it's a voice created by artificial intelligence that attempts to simulate those of the victims' trusted people with the aim of getting them to make a financial transfer or provide key information to empty their account. The alert was issued this Monday by Mossos d'Esquadra spokesperson Montserrat Escudé during the event organized by the Movement to Stop Elder Abuse. It's not that this new technique puts the group in the crosshairs, but it does indicate that they are a particularly vulnerable group. Age is one of the factors that makes older people one of the targets of thieves and cyber fraudsters, but there are others that also contribute, such as the lack of a social network and emotional support and unwanted loneliness.

On this day, which coincides with the International Day of Awareness of Abuse and Mistreatment in Old Age, Escudé has admitted that the lack of official statistics on violence against the elderly is a "symptom of negligence, institutional violence," which is unable to put children at risk, is on the rise. In the last five years, the number of victims of crimes The number of people over 65 years of age has grown by 3%, reaching 19%., but complaints are still minimal, the tip of the iceberg.

Faced with this situation, the police spokesperson offered some advice to try to reduce the risks (useful for the entire population): "Be wary of calls from your son asking for money," she indicated. "Look for a keyword, ask a question that only those at home can answer." In other words, "the best prevention is distrust," she stressed.

The loneliness factor

Without police data, it is social services that provide a snapshot of the level of violence experienced by older adults. A decade ago, the Anoia Regional Council opened the EAVA (Association of Elderly Persons) (EAVA), a pioneering service in the comprehensive approach to aging, which has been replicated in the Bages SEAV (Association of Elderly Persons) (SEAV). Cases of abuse are reported to these units, primarily by the police, basic social and healthcare services, or nursing homes. Geriatric psychologist Glòria Fité explained at this conference that the main aggressors are professional caregivers and family members, who exploit the elderly's trust and emotional dependence to take over the management of their assets for their own benefit or outright steal from them. In the case of families, abuse is mostly perpetrated by children or grandchildren with addiction problems.

All abusers share, on the one hand, a feeling of shame and, on the other, an attempt to justify or minimize the abuse because the alternative is loneliness, as explained by SEAV social worker Aida Morales, who emphasized that abuse is only... On the contrary, it is presented as a sum of various degrees of physical and psychological abuse, negligence in care, and economic abuse.

In addition to the prevention Escudé referred to, both Morales and Fité pointed out that "coordination" between the different agents who detect abuse must be fine-tuned. With regard strictly to economic abuse, the psychologist complained that banks "do not help" to make things easier for a group that is not accustomed to using passwords and digital services: "Withdrawals from ATMs or banks on-line They generate dependence on others and also make them more dependent," Fité indicated. This dependence often produces abuse by trusted people, who take control of account numbers and a lifetime's savings. This is often overlooked. On this point, Fité explained how at the beginning of the training she gives to social workers, only "one or two" raise their hands when asked if they have detected abuse.