I want to tell you about a Tuesday afternoon in April.

The call came while I was at my desk. The caller ID displayed my bank’s name. The voice on the other end was professional and calm. It knew my first name. It knew the name of my bank. It knew the last four digits of my account number. It told me there had been suspicious activity and asked me to verify my identity by confirming my full account number so they could protect my account.

I almost did it.

Not because I’m naive. Not because I don’t know about scams. Because the call was designed by professionals who had done this thousands of times before, using tools that make the experience nearly indistinguishable from a legitimate call. The information they had about me was real. The urgency they created was precisely calibrated. The voice was smooth and unhurried — not aggressive, not pressuring. Just helpful.

🐾 · · · 🐾

What stopped me was a habit I had built three weeks earlier: I never verify anything on an inbound call. I hang up. I find the number myself. I call back.

I called my bank’s official number. They had no record of any suspicious activity on my account. No one from their fraud department had called me. The call was a scam — a sophisticated, AI-assisted, personally targeted scam that knew more about me than most of my friends do.

🐾 · · · 🐾

The reframe I want you to carry into this week

You are not a naive person who doesn’t understand technology. You are a sophisticated person being targeted by sophisticated operations who are now using sophisticated tools — specifically AI — to make their attacks more convincing than they have ever been before.

AI voice cloning can replicate a person’s voice from as little as thirty seconds of publicly available audio. AI can generate personalized phishing emails that reference your actual recent purchases, your bank, your neighborhood. AI can create deepfake video calls that look like your grandchild asking for help.

The response to this is not fear. It is using the same tools they’re using, better than they expect you to. That is what this week is about.

🎬 Watch Sunday’s video: Four AI prompts for four security situations — including the family verification system that takes ten minutes to set up and changes everything.

⬇️ ALL 4 SECURITY PROMPTS FROM SUNDAY’S VIDEO ⬇️

📌 Prompt 1 — Phone Call Verification

“I just received a call claiming to be from [bank / Medicare / government agency / family member] saying [describe what they said]. Before I do anything, please: (1) Identify red flags matching known scam patterns, (2) Tell me whether this organization contacts people this way legitimately, (3) Give me the official number to call back myself, (4) Tell me what I should never give out on an inbound call.”

📌 Prompt 2 — Suspicious Message Analysis

“I received a [email / text / message] I’m not sure about. Here it is: [paste or describe — who it claims to be from, what it says, what link it contains]. Please: (1) Identify every red flag — urgency language, suspicious links, unusual requests, (2) Tell me whether this matches how this organization legitimately communicates, (3) Tell me what to do instead of clicking any link, (4) Rate it: likely legitimate / possibly suspicious / almost certainly a scam.”

📌 Prompt 3 — Family Verification System

“I want to set up a verification system with my family for emergencies. Please: (1) Design a simple safe word or verification question — easy to remember, impossible to guess, (2) Write a short conversation script for explaining this to my [children / grandchildren / close friends], (3) Tell me what to do if I receive a distress message and can’t reach them through verification, (4) Explain AI voice cloning in plain language I can share without alarming anyone.”

📌 Prompt 4 — Scam Response

“I think I may have been scammed. Here is what happened: [describe exactly — what you clicked, what information you gave, what money you sent, when]. Please: (1) Tell me what to do in the next 30 minutes in priority order, (2) Who to contact first and what to say, (3) What to document right now, (4) What to watch for in coming weeks, (5) Where to report this officially. Be direct — I need to act quickly.”

👉 Sunday video link

Enjoying AI Puppy Playbook?
If these lessons are helping you, you can support the work and help me keep creating clear, practical AI resources for adults over 60.

Support AI Puppy Playbook:

Support AI Puppy Playbook

Have you or someone you know had a close call with a scam? Hit reply and tell me — one sentence or several. Your story might be what someone else needs to hear this week. 🐾

— Debbie
AI Puppy Playbook

The call that almost got me — and the three…