topic Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID in Credit Cards

American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

Total_Synergy — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:30:30 GMT

I know today is the 'big reveal' for the updated Platinum card, so "Amex attention" may be elsewhere... These past 2 weeks I've needed to make phone calls to Amex (for both personal and business cards) and while waiting for a human to connect, have received a canned pitch to start using my voiceprint to confirm my identity, with "Press 1 to enroll or Press 2 to opt-out". I chose to opt-out every time. Today I received an email regarding my choice:

You have successfully opted-out of Voice ID. By opting out, you will not be able to use your voice to authenticate yourself when speaking with American Express; however, this will not affect how we manage your account.

Please keep in mind

Your voice is unique to you, so when enrolled, only you will be able to access your account using Voice ID. If you wish to enroll in Voice ID to help protect your account from identity fraud, please call the number on the back of your Card.

What do other myFICOers think about this Voice ID effort? Is it simply an effort to streamline telephone operations? Are there downsides, such as an inevitable "Voice ID data breach" in the future? Should we just roll with it and jump aboard?

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

Vinjints — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:51:44 GMT

What are you going to do when you have to call in with a cold or the flu?

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

Ushio — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:58:15 GMT

I'm not sure how much I trust voice ID yet. But honestly I don't know all that much about it either. When you can make AI of Winston Churchill sing Gangnam Style with ease, I find trusting voice a little difficult. But I definitely have research to do.

Amex hasn't been pushing that on me, but Schwab has been. And I'm opting out for now. We'll see though.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

ptatohed — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 16:16:25 GMT

I don't know anything about it but I would bet you that, even if you opt in, you'll still get asked all the regular verification questions anyway.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

NoHardLimits — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 17:08:43 GMT

I had to call Wells Fargo customer service earlier this week and was presented with the option to set up voice verification. I opted-in. We'll see if that saves me any time the next time I have to call.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

Kforce — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 17:33:21 GMT

@NoHardLimits wrote:
I had to call Wells Fargo customer service earlier this week and was presented with the option to set up voice verification. I opted-in. We'll see if that saves me any time the next time I have to call.

Navy is pushing it also.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

GZG — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 17:38:22 GMT

would need to check how easily it can be cicrumvented

if you have audio out in public of you speaking somehwere, they can take that and use AI to generate more of your voice, I'd like to think the security is good enough not to be fooled by that, but I'm not sure

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

Varsity_Lu — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 20:21:09 GMT

@Vinjints wrote:
What are you going to do when you have to call in with a cold or the flu?

Or the day after you were at a big game screaming your head off. Come on, AmEx!

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

CashOutReFi — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 02:03:39 GMT

So I actually work for a phone company that facilitates this service for customers, such as banks (i.e. the bank is our customer).

You call in and if you opt in, it essentially creates a 3-way call with the voice authentication vendor of the bank's choice.

Your "voiceprint" is stored securely, but my main concern is how good AI-created "deepfakes" are today. I highly suggest Googling "tom cruise deepfake playing golf" and then let me know if you still want to let voice recognition alone allow access and changes to your financial world.

https://www.tiktok.com/@deeptomcruise/video/6932166297996233989

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

MisterFico — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 20:25:03 GMT

I remembered reading this thread a while ago, and came back to reply with something different yet related. I called Fidelity today to ask about a transfer. There was no mention at all in the call about Voice ID. Shortly after the call I received an email saying:

During a recent conversation with a representative, Fidelity MyVoice was enabled on your account to streamline your identity verification process. If you are aware of this change, you don't need to do anything.

If you did not make this change, please call us immediately at 800-343-3548.

Suffice to say I called back immediately and had it undone. I asked on the second call if it was legal, what the first represenative had done signing me up without knowledge or consent. She ducked the question but reversed it for me and said she'd leave a note on file to make it clear I don't want it.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

Total_Synergy — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 01:09:57 GMT

Thanks for the heads up @MisterFico. And they wonder why we don't trust them...

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

SpaethCo — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 02:07:28 GMT

I'm fine with this sort of thing if it's a layered additional factor of identification and it doesn't become a replacement for other verification methods.

Say I'm going to call in and make a change to my account like adding an authorized user. If I have to provide other account details like a security key word and the voice has to match my voiceprint I don't see how that doesn't improve the situation.

There is so much information leaked out there that anyone can supply my billing address, SSN, and a bunch of other typical data used to validate my identity. At least adding a voiceprint verification on top of that will eliminate the lazy scammer who aren't putting in the effort to discover what my voice sounds like and make the necessary investment to fake it on a live phone call.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

MisterFico — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 09:28:50 GMT

@SpaethCo wrote:
There is so much information leaked out there that anyone can supply my billing address, SSN, and a bunch of other typical data used to validate my identity. At least adding a voiceprint verification on top of that will eliminate the lazy scammer who aren't putting in the effort to discover what my voice sounds like and make the necessary investment to fake it on a live phone call.

Respectfully, I think there's something important here which hasn't dawned on you. When they set you up for it, obviously a file or set of files dedicated to the purpose is created and stored. When there's a data breach, or an internal data theft, that gets taken and probably along with all the data types you mentioned.

Any scammers who have that voice ID data, and who are able to match it to a few basic criteria such as name, phone number and financial institutions you have accounts with, simply then extract a piece of the voice recordings used to set you up for voice ID features. They then spoof your number and play that in to the phone call to get past the initial security.

They don't have to keep sounding like you once they are through the automated bit in the beginning; it's not as though the phone reps are looking out for a particular voice from the customer.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

SpaethCo — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 12:49:46 GMT

@MisterFico wrote:
Any scammers who have that voice ID data, and who are able to match it to a few basic criteria such as name, phone number and financial institutions you have accounts with, simply then extract a piece of the voice recordings used to set you up for voice ID features. They then spoof your number and play that in to the phone call to get past the initial security.

I have no specific knowledge of Amex's implementation, but I do have some experience seeing this type of identification implemented elsewhere. I have never seen a system that saves actual voice recording data; the only thing that typically gets stored on a well designed system is a calculated hash based on key characteristics that are present in the audio. Hashes are by their nature entirely irreversable.

For example, a common tool used to validate if you have downloaded a good copy of a file is sha256sum. It produces a 64 character output on any size file, regardless if the file is 10 MB or 10TB. That 64 character string will only match between 2 files if they are a 100% bit perfect copy, but there is not enough information present in the hash output to recreate the source file itself. 64 characters is not enough data to reconstruct a 10TB file, but it is enough infomation to determine if 2 10TB files are identical.

In every implementation I've seen if an attacker were able to acquire the entire stored data set the best they could do is run various voice samples through the same audio inspection and hashing algorithm to check if a source voice matches the same derived hash. It is certainly possible for an attacker to keep generating multiple iterations of source audio and running it through the algorithm looking for matches, but even with the GPU arms race taking place today that's still pretty computationally expensive to generate that many unique sources of sample audio.

They don't have to keep sounding like you once they are through the automated bit in the beginning; it's not as though the phone reps are looking out for a particular voice from the customer.

Again, I have no specific knowledge in how Amex has this implemented, but in other implementations I've seen the inspection algorithm is applied continuously throughout the call. It's not just an upfront thing to get you in the front door, but it's an ongoing "score" that is continuously calculated and evaluated for the entire duration of the phone call.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

Pppoolboy — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 19:34:25 GMT

Agree with the hashing comment. It's like Shazam. It can take a recorded soundprint and tell you if it matches a song in its database but it can't recreate the song itself from that digital soundprint.

Also, if someone is so determined to access your accounts that he or she is generating deep fakes of your voice, you should really be hiring a security firm to protect you.

All in all, the only problem I have with it is... as my grandpa always used to say... what happens when it breaks? That is, what happens when you call in and it gets your voice wrong and says you're not you? That's far more likely than someone breaking into your account.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

Varsity_Lu — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:30:43 GMT

@Pppoolboy wrote:
Also, if someone is so determined to access your accounts that he or she is generating deep fakes of your voice, you should really be hiring a security firm to protect you.

Make a fake app that accesses your phone mic, capture your voice, use AI to generate a voice, boom, you're in. I think you greatly underestimate the power of technology today. There are already tons of harmful fake apps that people have on their phone that are collecting data and selling it to malicious third parties. Collecting voice data would not be a problem whatsoever.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

SpaethCo — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:50:27 GMT

@Varsity_Lu wrote:
Make a fake app that accesses your phone mic, capture your voice, use AI to generate a voice, boom, you're in. I think you greatly underestimate the power of technology today. There are already tons of harmful fake apps that people have on their phone that are collecting data and selling it to malicious third parties. Collecting voice data would not be a problem whatsoever.

Capturing that voice data via an app isn't even necessary at all. Do you have a personally recorded voicemail greeting? How about for your work number? Can calls be transferred to you at work? Have you ever participated in a conference that was recorded and made available on a platform like Youtube?

This is why voice verification is a poor choice if it becomes the only verification method, however, it can still be incredibly useful as one of many account verification methods.

It's possible for someone to spoof your voice.

It's possible for someone to force-port your cell phone number to be able to intercept text messages.

It's possible for someone to discover your password (particularly if you don't use a password manager).

It's possible for someone to know the answers to key security questions.

The likelihood that someone is able to put all of that together outside of a very targeted attack is pretty small.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

MrsCHX — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 01:26:47 GMT

Idk why the site is being so weird and not accepting my post, then posting a blank response.

security would be a concern for me.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

Matt9543 — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 04:56:28 GMT

@MisterFico wrote:
I remembered reading this thread a while ago, and came back to reply with something different yet related. I called Fidelity today to ask about a transfer. There was no mention at all in the call about Voice ID. Shortly after the call I received an email saying:

During a recent conversation with a representative, Fidelity MyVoice was enabled on your account to streamline your identity verification process. If you are aware of this change, you don't need to do anything.

If you did not make this change, please call us immediately at 800-343-3548.

Suffice to say I called back immediately and had it undone. I asked on the second call if it was legal, what the first represenative had done signing me up without knowledge or consent. She ducked the question but reversed it for me and said she'd leave a note on file to make it clear I don't want it.

I'm not sure how they would've enrolled you in it without your knowledge. Everytime I've enrolled, I've had to repeat 2-3 times the same phrase over and over. If you didn't do that, then you weren't enrolled with your voice and I would've immediately escalated to a supervisor to review the call since you didn't partake in the enrollment process.

Re: American Express - Push for Customers to use Voice ID

Pppoolboy — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 16:23:26 GMT

Ehh... I stand by my statement that if you have someone determined enough to target you in particular by creating digital voices that are close enough to yours to fool online banking security systems, you have bigger problems than having your voice spoofed. Seek professional protection immediately LOL