Check It Out: Don’t Get Scammed in 2026

By Joan Janzen

It’s 2026 and we’ve all heard first-hand accounts of friends and relatives who have been scammed out of thousands of dollars. The calls have become increasingly deceptive and difficult to detect, which is why Chuck Holton, who is a world traveller and war correspondent, felt the need to offer some advice online.

He used the following illustration. Imagine a father gets a call from his daughter. He sees her number on the screen, picks up the phone and hears her voice. She’s panicking, freaking out — but it’s definitely her voice. The call came from her number and her voice is unmistakable.

She says, “My son is hurt. He was in a bike wreck. I’m at the emergency room. They won’t take our insurance. I need cash to get him help. Please send $3,000 as soon as you can. He’s really not doing well!”

What’s going through your head? You know they went on a holiday out of the country. Your heart is pounding, adrenaline is pumping. You’re reaching for your wallet, figuring out how to use PayPal or send money as fast as humanly possible. Every instinct you have is screaming at you to help your children right now. However, Chuck advised what your actual response should be.

You could say, “Wow, that’s scary. Tell me our pass phrase and then I’ll send the money.” Now imagine the voice on the phone — the one that sounds like your daughter — gets aggressive. The voice responds with, “What pass phrase? This is your daughter! My son is hurt!”

That’s when you say you’ll hang up and call back because you don’t believe this is your daughter.

You hang up; your hands are likely shaking because this might actually be your daughter calling. But when you call her back, she’s calm, confused and her son is fine. Nobody is in the hospital. The whole thing was a scam.

The panic you felt and the desperate need to send money immediately without asking questions is exactly what the scammers are counting on. They’re exploiting the one thing that shuts down your rational brain faster than anything else … fear that your loved one is in danger.

Chuck points out the scary part: your phone showed your daughter’s phone number on your caller ID, but it was spoofed. He also said it’s easy to do and there’s no way to tell, other than hanging up and calling back to confirm.

“Your caller ID is lying to you and doing a really convincing job of it. The voice was AI-generated,” he explained. “A few seconds of audio is all it takes to create a realistic deepfake. Maybe they grabbed a Facebook video your daughter posted or maybe a voicemail greeting. It doesn’t matter; it’s out there. It’s public and it’s all these criminals need.”

As he travels around the world, he sees lots of people who lie for a living, “but this AI deepfake stuff is next level,” he confessed.

Criminals can make a computer sound exactly like your kid or your wife. This is happening right now to real people. Grandparents are getting calls from voices that sound exactly like their grandchild. Parents are losing thousands because they’re getting calls from their daughter’s voice saying she’s stranded in another country.

So what can you do about this? Chuck offered some advice. First of all, he advised families to create a family pass phrase. But it’s important to discuss it when you are far away from phones or any recording device. Turn off your phones while creating a pass phrase.

“It might sound crazy, but these devices hear it and it might as well be posted on the Internet,” he advised.

The pass phrase can be a silly question or comment like, “I’m eating pickles.” All your family members know the response is, “purple peaches.” It doesn’t make sense, but that’s the point. Don’t write the pass phrase anywhere. Make it something easy to remember that lives inside your brain and nowhere else.

Secondly, Chuck said cognitive security is an essential skill in 2026. “Assume every image and video you see online is fake until proven otherwise. Expect scams and be pleasantly surprised when they’re not,” he advised. “If that sounds paranoid to you, welcome to 2026, where paranoia is just common sense.”

Thirdly, he instructed his listeners to figure out a backup communication option with people you absolutely need to reach. Don’t just rely on phone numbers; have other options available such as WhatsApp.

“Phone numbers are about as secure as a screen door on a submarine,” the world traveller noted. He said if somebody calls with an emergency, hang up and contact them on a different platform, or FaceTime them so you can actually see their face.

“I know it sounds annoying,” he confessed, “but you know what’s more annoying? Losing thousands to some scammer in their basement somewhere.”

And what more can we expect in the not-so-distant future? He said we’re very close to agent bots flooding the phone lines. That means AI that can hold full conversations, respond to questions and adapt in real time. He foresees it will be a huge problem.

“People already get dozens of realistic spam calls and texts every day and it’s going to get worse,” he warned. “This is genuinely scary stuff. Set up a pass phrase and make it part of your family security plan. It’s right up there with knowing where your fire extinguisher is.”

Because the next call you get could sound exactly like somebody you love.

It’s 2026, so a healthy dose of paranoia isn’t a character flaw; it’s a survival tactic.