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Barclays Voice Security

Posted: October 1st, 2018, 12:24 pm
by Bouleversee
Barclays have offered me some voice recognition security system to obviate the need for providing personal information if I telephone, which I rarely do. Is this a good idea? Is it guaranteed to work properly and to be safe? It would certainly be useful on occasions such as last week when an ATM swallowed my card without giving me any money and I did not have the tbn etc. with me.

If this is not the correct board, perhaps the mod. would kindly transfer.

Moderator Message:
I am transferring this to "Computers, TV, Phones" viewforum.php?f=39 where the relevant suspiciously inclined and technically knowledgeable people hang out. I'm leaving this as a shadow. regards, dspp

Re: Barclays Voice Security

Posted: October 1st, 2018, 10:38 pm
by dspp
Can anyone help ? So far I have been ignoring the equivalent thing from HSBC ........

regards, dspp

Re: Barclays Voice Security

Posted: October 2nd, 2018, 12:52 pm
by Slarti
Being somewhat paranoid about new systems, I wouldn't go for it unless it had worked without error for at least a year, which the Barclay's one hasn't

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39965545

Slarti

Re: Barclays Voice Security

Posted: October 2nd, 2018, 1:07 pm
by Bouleversee
Thanks for that link, Slarti. When the Barclays chap suggested voice security, I did suggest that a good mimic might fool it and said I would leave it for the present and think about it. I think I'll leave it at that for the time being.

Re: Barclays Voice Security

Posted: October 2nd, 2018, 1:19 pm
by Infrasonic
Bearing in mind the major banks recent history with online banking outages I wouldn't rely on their IT 'innovations' currently.
Voice recognition can be thrown by things like heavy colds or accents even if it is the intended user.

I fondly remember the old days of DTMF strings for telephone banking, a bit fiddly initially but it always worked, especially once I saved a load of DTMF options strings to my Nokia 9110.
Do any of the banks still do DTMF as a telephone banking option? I wouldn't mind reactivating it as a plan B with all these online outages.

Re: Barclays Voice Security

Posted: October 2nd, 2018, 1:41 pm
by UncleEbenezer
Bouleversee wrote:Thanks for that link, Slarti. When the Barclays chap suggested voice security, I did suggest that a good mimic might fool it and said I would leave it for the present and think about it. I think I'll leave it at that for the time being.

Indeed. I've read some accounts of this in the techie press, but I haven't followed it closely enough to offer useful advice. From memory, the systems do a great job distinguishing different speakers in a general corpus of speech samples, but issues like mimics, trained voices, or family resemblances may not have been so well studied.

Statistically speaking, the question of interest is slightly different. It's not "is there someone out there who sounds exactly like me" (likely), but rather "does a fraudster targeting my account sound like me" (vastly less likely, even if they've heard the real you). The most likely mimics are probably members of your family: in addition to the genetic similarity, they'll naturally share a lot of your mannerisms. I find all the adult male members of my family - from my dad to my older nephews - very similar on the 'phone.

I'd treat it as additional to other security: perhaps allow it alone for non-sensitive queries but not for accessing actual money.

Re: Barclays Voice Security

Posted: October 2nd, 2018, 3:09 pm
by Bouleversee
I'm not sure how you would be able to do one without the other.

Re: Barclays Voice Security

Posted: October 2nd, 2018, 3:20 pm
by Slarti
UncleEbenezer wrote:Statistically speaking, the question of interest is slightly different. It's not "is there someone out there who sounds exactly like me" (likely), but rather "does a fraudster targeting my account sound like me" (vastly less likely, even if they've heard the real you). The most likely mimics are probably members of your family: in addition to the genetic similarity, they'll naturally share a lot of your mannerisms. I find all the adult male members of my family - from my dad to my older nephews - very similar on the 'phone.


I wonder how it would handle a recording of the account holder's voice being played back?

Slarti

Re: Barclays Voice Security

Posted: October 2nd, 2018, 3:39 pm
by Infrasonic
Slarti wrote:
UncleEbenezer wrote:Statistically speaking, the question of interest is slightly different. It's not "is there someone out there who sounds exactly like me" (likely), but rather "does a fraudster targeting my account sound like me" (vastly less likely, even if they've heard the real you). The most likely mimics are probably members of your family: in addition to the genetic similarity, they'll naturally share a lot of your mannerisms. I find all the adult male members of my family - from my dad to my older nephews - very similar on the 'phone.


I wonder how it would handle a recording of the account holder's voice being played back?

Slarti


You'd hope the initial part of the ID security check would be some sort of random question, like what is 2+2? or similar, to avoid the issue of voice bots or recordings being used. As AI gets better though I'm sure even that would get gamed. Random 'telephone marketing' calls as a way to harvest voice prints for keywords seems an obvious route...