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.