Why should you stay silent for three seconds before answering a call from an unknown number? The Ministry of State Security reminds us: this kind of privacy infringement is escalating.

The WeChat official account of the Ministry of State Security published an article noting that recently, a reminder to "stay silent for three seconds before answering a call from an unknown number" has been trending on social media. The reminder points out that after connecting to a victim's call, criminals may deliberately remain silent to trick the victim into responding with "hello" or "who is this." A voice sample of just a few seconds may be used by criminals for AI voiceprint cloning, which can then be used to impersonate the victim's identity in fraud and other illegal and criminal activities. Therefore, when answering a call, one may first stay silent for three seconds, and if the other party also remains silent, the call should be hung up promptly. This reminder sounds the alarm for us regarding biometric information security.