Your guide to safer kids online
Have you ever heard about Voice Cloning?
Imagine one day your phone rings, itās an unknown number, and when you answer, you hear your childās voiceā¦ crying, saying there was an accident or s/he has been kidnapped and needs help or money immediately.
Your pulse accelerates in the blink of an eye, and if you donāt faint ipso factoāas Iād probably do if that happened to meāyouāll be ready to do anything.
The catch? Itās not your child. Itās AI.
In 2026, more scammers are using "Voice Cloning" technology to commit acts like this. And youād be surprised how easily they can do it by simply taking a tiny snippet of an audio that your kid posted on any public social media platform. Thatās all they need to recreate a person's voice to say anything they want.
š© The Red Flag
If you receive an emergency call from a family member coming out of a strange number, and they immediately ask for money, paying for something, or a wire transferāpause. Even if the voice sounds exactly the same, try to call or locate him/her using the phoneās tracker app (Find My or Find Hub) while pretending itās breaking up or the signal is weak.
ā A Safety Measure: The "Family Code Word"
Today, have a 5-minute meeting with your family in a place with no phones or devices with microphones nearby.
Choose a word: Pick something random and easy to remember (e.g., "Blue Giraffe" or "Crunchy Pepperoni"). And never share this word with friends online or in the physical world.
The Rule: If any family member calls from an unrecognized phone in an ārushā or "emergency", you (the listener) must ask: "What is the code word?"
The Result: If they can't provide it, you know itās a scam. Hang up and call your childās actual phone number immediately.
š£ļø In case you need a script:
"Hey, I read about how AI can mimic voices now. Just to be safe, letās pick a secret family code word. If we ever call each other in an emergency and itās not from our own phones, we have to use this word so we know itās really us."
We, as parents, need to remember that protection doesnāt start with fear; it starts with awareness. Always try to be calm while explaining to your kid(s) some potential risks or dangers, and donāt judge their naivety.
š± Some good news before you go
Fortunately, some entities are trying to help parents in this difficult task of keeping children a bit safer when they are online. This week, for example, the European Commission announced preliminary findings stating that TikTok's addictive designāwith features like infinite scrollingādoes not comply with the Digital Services Act and fails to adequately protect users, especially younger ones.
TikTok's "daily usage time" is too easy to ignore, and its parental controls require too much effort to be truly effective. Therefore, they believe the platform must change its design. This happened only 2 weeks after TikTok, Instagram (Meta), YouTube, and Snapchat were also involved in a lawsuit for a similar behaviour (infinite scroll and autoplay features), but TikTok and Snapchat have settled.
This may looks that is not a big move, but every small action counts in this war against āthe dark sideā of the internet.
In addition, more and more:
Platforms are improving parental controls;
Schools are teaching digital awareness earlier;
More health care professionals are warning about the risks behind too much screen time, and the potential addiction, cognitive issues, and the psychological harm they do to not only childrenās brains but also adultsā.
Awareness is growing, and that matters! However, we canāt rely on third parties to stay vigilant; this is still our responsibility because no one else is going to protect our children as we do.
š Next week,
Weāll be discussing "The Hidden Map" inside your kid's photos.
Stay vigilant!
The VP Team