What’s Your Safe Word?

What’s Your Safe Word?

The title may have gotten you excited, and if that is the case, awesome!  The topic du jour is safe words, and do you have one?  I suppose it is worth sharing a little context on this before asking the question.  You see, we are living in a different age than we ever have.  An age where cybercrimes and artificial intelligence are soon to be teaming up to make a really dangerous combination.

Heck, even online, half the videos you see, and likely share, are AI-generated as this stuff is becoming more human-like than we could have ever imagined.  It can imitate pictures, scenes, and scary as it sounds, your voice.  There is virtually nothing this technology can’t replicate, and we are still in the infancy stages of tapping its full power. 

Now, there certainly will be some neat and accretive benefits to all this technology, but we can focus on that in a different blog.  For today, we are talking about the darker side of artificial intelligence. 

Family Safe Word

It dawned on me this past weekend as we were away celebrating my brother’s 40th birthday.  Me and my bros were talking about AI and all the interesting use cases.  This is when my baby brother, who is wicked smart with this stuff, said we need a family safe word.  We stopped for a second and were like, ” Go on….”  He goes on to opine that with the ability of artificial intelligence to act, sound, look, write, and mimic you, it is prudent to come up with a “safe word”. 

It got us thinking and debating for a moment, but the reality is, baby bro was 100% right.  Every single one of us should go through the following exercise.

Exercise

Find a time when you and your family are all in the same room.  I’m talking about parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews.  Basically, everyone who is in your immediate family and that makes the most sense.  Now, take out your cell phones and put them in a basket far away from the family dialogue. I know it seems extreme.  Then, with cell phones out of earshot, have a discussion with your family about what your safe word will be.  This will be a word known only to you and your family.  It should be unique to you, and obviously, the more obscure or hard to guess, the better.  Got it?  Great!

Now that you have come up with your safe word, commit it to memory.  Feel free to write it down if you must, but if so, do so with a pen and paper and save it somewhere only you know.  Obviously, avoid putting it in your phone or any other technology. 

Having created your family’s safe word, the natural question is what is next?  What is next is, hopefully, you don’t have to use it.  But, if/when you do this will be the authentication word that can uniquely identify you over the phone when asked.

For instance, you get a call from your brother who says Mom is in the hospital. I need you to quickly wire some money to pay for her mortgage.  You respond with, of course, anything for mom, but first, what is the safe word?  This is where they are queued to mention your safe word, perhaps banana pancakes (yes, it was in contention for our safe word).  You can clearly see where this is going, I’m sure.  At this point, the voice on the other end of the phone must say banana pancakes to get you to proceed with whatever they are requesting on the other end of the phone.

I know it sounds a bit apocalyptic, but I am telling you the time has come where this is a very prudent emergency tactic.  It is getting harder and harder to trust anything you see, read, or hear these days, and taking an ounce of protection will certainly protect you from a pound of issues. 

Have I convinced you yet to go create your family safe word?  Hopefully, me and my banana pancakes have done our job.

As always, stay wealthy, healthy, and happy.