Protecting Your Voice and Identity

BOSSes Anne Ganguzza and Tom Dheere, your "real bosses" and co-hosts, connect to dive deep into the critical world of online security and scam prevention for voiceover professionals. They unpack Tom's recent harrowing experience with an AI voice cloning scam, offering a candid look into the crucial insights needed to navigate digital threats and build a truly secure business in today's landscape. Listeners will discover the essential role of vigilance and proactive measures in protecting their assets, gain an understanding of emerging scam tactics, and appreciate the power of community in safeguarding their careers. Anne and Tom also discuss practical pathways for secure transactions and the evolving nature of digital defense.

 

00:01 - Anne (Host)
Hey guys, it's Anne from VO BOSS here. 

00:04 - Speaker 2 (Announcement)
And it's George the Tech. We're excited to tell you about the VO BOSS. Vip membership, now with even more benefits. 

00:10 - Anne (Host)
So not only do you get access to exclusive workshops and industry insights, but with our VIP plus tech tier, you'll enjoy specialized tech support from none other than George himself. 

00:22 - Speaker 2 (Announcement)
You got it. I'll help you tackle all those tricky tech issues so you can focus on what you do best Voice acting. It's tech support tailored for voiceover professionals like you. 

00:32 - Anne (Host)
Join us guys at VO BOSS and let's make your voiceover career soar. Visit voboss.com slash VIP-membership to sign up today. 

00:45 - Speaker 3 (Announcement)
It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey, hey, everyone, welcome to the VO BOSS Podcast. 

01:04 - Anne (Host)
I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey, hey everyone, welcome to the VO BOSS Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I'm here with my real boss, Tom Deere. I had to think about that, Tom. We've been together so long. I was like what is our subtitle here? We are real bosses. 

01:20 - Tom (Host)
Yeah, we're real bosses. Thanks for having me back, Anne. 

01:23 - Anne (Host)
How are you doing, Tom, my real boss? Co-host. 

01:26 - Tom (Host)
All things considered, I'm doing okay, I had a weird experience recently which it seems like a lot of voice actors are experiencing. I got an email from someone expressing interest in wanting to cast me for a voiceover project. Oh yes, I looked at it and it was this long-form project, something like 9,000 and change words. And I looked at it and I'm like and you know I was reading the ins and outs of it and I'm like, huh, like my spider sense was tingling a little bit, but I'm looking at, I'm like this one is worth replying to and getting some information about. 

02:00
So there was a little bit of back and forth about it. 

02:03 - Anne (Host)
So you did reply, and then there was. 

02:05 - Tom (Host)
There was more conversation. 

02:06 - Anne (Host)
Yeah, there was more conversation, which is what I always do when I'm trying to find out more information about a job to make sure it's legit. 

02:12 - Tom (Host)
Right Now, around the same time, maybe a couple of days after that, someone posted on a Facebook group hey, I got this email. It was saying this and this Did anyone else get it? Does it seem legit? And it looked like it was the same email that I had gotten, so I was following that it turns out. 

02:28
It was posted by our friend, bridget Real, who is the co-founder of VA for VO, the virtual assistant site that helps voice actors, and we talked about it a little bit and we're both like, yeah, we're going to keep digging a little bit and see what's going on. And then her business partner, lynn, also got the email and I was getting ready to accept it just to see what would happen. And that morning I got a message from her saying hey, did you accept this project? Yet I'm like no, why? And she said because both of us accepted the project. We both got cast for the same exact project. We both got the same exact script. They sent me the script. 

03:00
So then I did this. I went to Gemini, google Gemini, which is my AI bot of choice, and I did the prompts. I said you are an expert at detecting scams. Please analyze this script and let me know if you think that this script could be used to harvest a voice actor's voice to clone it. A voice actor's voice to clone it. And it did its analysis and I've got like the 2.5 advanced. So it takes a little time. And it wrote back oh, yes, it does. And here are all the reasons why this, this, this, this, this, this and this. And then I sent that information to Bridget and