Zelle Is Using My Name and Voice without My Consent

Okay, so this is weird. Zelle has been using my name, and my voice, in audio podcast ads—without my permission. At least, I think it is without my permission. It’s possible that I gave some sort of blanket permission when speaking at an event. It’s not likely, but it is possible.

I wrote to Zelle about it. Or, at least, I wrote to a company called Early Warning that owns Zelle about it. They asked me where the ads appeared. This seems odd to me. Podcast distribution networks drop ads in podcasts depending on the listener—like personalized ads on webpages—so the actual podcast doesn’t matter. And shouldn’t they know their own ads? Annoyingly, it seems like it’s time to get attorneys involved.

What would help is to have a copy of the actual ad. (Or ads, I’m assuming there’s only one.) So, has anyone else heard me in a Zelle ad? Does anyone happen to have an audio recording? Please email me.

And I will update this post if I learn anything more. Or if there is some actual legal action. (And if this post ever disappears, you’ll know I was required to take it down for some reason.)

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Posted on January 19, 2024 at 3:05 PM • 23 Comments

Comments

CheddarB0b42 • January 19, 2024 4:14 PM

Do you need actual evidence before sending a boiler plate cease and desist letter? Seems like you wouldn’t…

Loren • January 19, 2024 5:12 PM

This might sound crazy (and I have no idea who/what Zelle is) but…

if I was testing AI-generated voice and I wanted to damage my competitor(s), I might make the fake voice of someone famous but mention my competitor(s) rather than myself.

of course it makes sense to use the voice of someone famous that actually writes about this type of topic, if you want to make a test case.

This might explain why Zelle asked you for details of where the ad appeared. They might be a victim as well rather than the creator of the ad.

Regards,
Loren

lurker • January 19, 2024 5:14 PM

@Bruce
“They asked me where the ads appeared. This seems odd to me.”

Nope, not at all odd. Your personal profile will be of somebody likely to be interested in “Schneier” products. They splash their ads all over the place, but Zelle, or their ad agency, may be sufficiently business-like that they can stop targeting you at that particular place.

I’m outside the USA and outside Zelle’s likely target audience, so, sorry, I can’t help with evidence.

Scottij • January 19, 2024 5:28 PM

I can imagine they have lots of ad and marketing activity with a variety of accounts on different ad networks. I wonder if they need that information to know who would be responsible for that ad placement to figure out who within their organization is doing this?

William • January 19, 2024 5:42 PM

My sympathies in this affront and I apologize in advance for my sheepishly making light of the situation, but it almost sounds like the next level in targeted advertising. What next, an AI generated voice of my deceased mother advising me to buy ACME life insurance?

Hope you are able to resolve the issue without much difficulty.

Dan • January 19, 2024 6:52 PM

I have heard this ad. It’s actually a relief to know that it was prepared without your consent – at the time I was disappointed to hear you shilling for Zelle. I’m like 85% sure that I heard it on the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast, but it would have been months ago (Spring/Summer 2023?) and in any event I certainly no longer have the file.

Australia • January 19, 2024 10:27 PM

If it is any consolation Mr Schneier. Your legal action may be a public service by creating a precedent. Or at the least, acting as a deterrent to anyone considering similar misbehaviour in future. As such, legal action on the public record would be preferable to settling privately

Steve Friedl • January 20, 2024 11:00 AM

For those unfamiliar, Zelle is a consumer-to-consumer money transfer platform similar to Venmo or CashApp, but it’s run more or less by the banks directly. It’s legit and super useful (minus the ventrilofake ads).

Chris Becke • January 20, 2024 11:14 AM

If a post with public comments is taken down, doesn’t that infringe on the free speech rights of the commenters?

iAPX • January 20, 2024 11:25 AM

If a post with public comments is taken down, doesn’t that infringe on the free speech rights of the commenters?

On a public place it is the case.
But no website is considered a public place, and everyone have rules that are enforced, that take locally precedence on the 1st Amendment.

For example here you should follow the rules, elsewhere your post might not be accepted.
An old friend said it in French: Est maître des lieux celui qui les créé et les organise/The master is the one creating and managing the place (more or less).
You have to respect these rules.

Still 1st Amendment partially apply, on the condition you follow the local private rules, to protect you against retaliation of any kind for what you said or write.

Free Speech and 1st Amendment apply everywhere, but local private rules override it on private places or websites. Respect the rules!

Winter • January 20, 2024 12:18 PM

@Chris Becke, iAPX

If a post with public comments is taken down, doesn’t that infringe on the free speech rights of the commenters?

As @iAPX writes, not in a private space. Think of articles in a printed newspaper. No one can be forced to print your articles, and no one can be forced to make your newspaper available in your place. If you want to read a newspaper or article I object to, I am free to make you do that outside of my house or business.

The American First Amendment only forbids federal, state, and local authorities to ban speech or writing, not private persons or businesses.

Clive Robinson • January 20, 2024 6:43 PM

@ Chris Becke, iAPX, Winter, ALL,

“If a post with public comments is taken down, doesn’t that infringe on the free speech rights of the commenters?”

Also remember politicians hate free speach as it alows redress against their many many failing both past and present (and even future). Which can effect not just their ability to wield power but to insanely profit by it in various ways (not least in the US the best standard health care scheme thus enhancing life expectancy by oh twenty years above average or more).

If you think I’m joking look at all the attacks by those on the hill in their commities under the disguise of “ineffective moderation” and the desire to get rid of section 230 (c)(1) which is all that remains of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA96).

It’s twice been amended by other acts.

Firstly the “Digital Millennium Copyright Act”(DMCA) which has been nothing but trouble in most of it’s existance, removing huge swaths of what were once seen as individuals rights to Corporate advantage (like the right to repair, second sale, suppression of free speech etc).

Secondly the real scary one for Women. The “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act”(FOSTA-SESTA 2018) had eliminated the safe harbor for service providers in relationship to federal and state “sex trafficking laws”.

The “sex trafficking” is very ill defined, and since the overturn of Roe v. Wade by the current nut job majority on SCOTUS, there is genuine fear that various states that have already brought in draconian “faux-religious nut-bar” legislation to rob women of the rights of choice and control over their bodies the likes of FOSTA-SESTA2018 will be used to deny women access to information.

But do not forget the 2020 EO13925 signed in by Trump that has since been revoked. Lets just say the best thing that could be said about it was, “it was about as misguided as you can get and based on a false propaganda argument”. Essentially that effectively every word Trump uttered must be seen as the absolute truth and pushed out to the world public without constraint, even if actually illegal in other Soverign States…

Lets just say Hellon Rusk’s version of such has shown quite clearly the undesirability of such thinking.

T • January 21, 2024 6:14 AM

Heard part of it in the background and was stunned, assumed it was a scam. Probably heard on The Vergecast or Smartless.

Sean • January 21, 2024 8:26 AM

Would say the best way to place a canary would be to remove the article, hide the comments, and replace the article text with an image of a canary from Wiki.

h t t p s: / /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revival_cage.jpg

Seems the right image.

Anonymous • January 21, 2024 9:40 AM

Sorry this is happening to you Professor Schneier; I am expecting these types of reputation attacks to become more prevalent against security rockstars.

@Chris Becke, iAPX, Winter, Clive, All

If a post with public comments is taken down, doesn’t that infringe on the free speech rights of the commenters?

“Your freedom of speech does not compel me to publish your words.” Commenting Policy for This Blog

Anon2 • January 22, 2024 2:36 AM

@Anonymous, @Moderator

Thank you for highlighting Bruce’s Commenting Policy. I hadn’t really read it before so this was a good opportunity to do that. And like with all these blog posts I had a look at the comments. With 249 comments there’s a lot been said. I read a few of the initial ones and some of the latest ones.

I noticed that comment #416794 appears to be advertising/spam (Dated January 28, 2023 8:59 AM).

JonKnowsNothing • January 22, 2024 4:33 PM

@Bruce, All

It seems that our host is not the only famous person (1) currently being impersonated by AI. 4

The President of the USA is making the rounds by Deepfake + AI. Reports are the AI Bot is “speaking” in the President’s voice and the dialog is not in alignment with the President’s policies and not in alignment with Democratic Party policies-platform.

  • You can’t tell the players without a scorecard (2)

===
1)

Non-famous persons who get impersonated are generally subject to various ripoffs and robo-signing schemes.

2)
ht tps: // en .wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_M._Stevens

  • was a food concessionaire from England
  • On arrival in the United States, he became obsessed with baseball and quickly made his mark by designing and selling the sport’s first scorecard; a design still in use to this day.
  • You can’t tell the players without a scorecard

SpaceLifeForm • January 22, 2024 9:56 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing, Bruce, ALL

The spoofed phone number is interesting

‘https://www.wdtimes.com/news/national/ai-generated-robocall-impersonates-biden-in-an-apparent-attempt-to-suppress-votes-in-new-hampshire/article_2910b1e9-1dba-57d5-979f-39f5d4a22171.html

It’s not known who is behind the calls, though they falsely showed up to recipients as coming from the personal cellphone number of Kathy Sullivan, a former state Democratic Party chair who helps run Granite for America, a super-PAC supporting the Biden write-in campaign.

Sullivan said she alerted law enforcement and issued a complaint to the attorney general after multiple voters in the state reported receiving the call Sunday night.

Winter • January 23, 2024 1:18 PM

@JonKnowsNothing

The President of the USA is making the rounds by Deepfake + AI.

Having deep fakes telling voters not to vote is in line with general GOP election strategied.

As the great Republican thinker and strategist, D. J. Trump said:
The things [the Democrats] had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again [1]

The Republican party clearly understands that their support in the American population is too small to win elections if all Americans are able to vote [2]. As it was formulated in 1980 [2]:

“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

[1] ‘https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus

[2] ‘https://youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw

William • January 24, 2024 7:17 PM

@ Chris Becke, I think you’re confusing freedom of speech with freedom of the press; the latter only applies to people who own a press, or in this case a website.

aercondtoned arbuncl(e) • January 26, 2024 7:14 PM

It would be nice if more of us could utilise E-Prime instead of an all we can eat buffet of personal reputation slandering.

and what about signing with unprintable characters?

Havana Syndrome rebranded as “SIGHIT”.

The main idea is to reduce the bidirectional backwash of assumptions.
No worries, I get it wrong all of the time also, just like all of us English (ab)users.

Okay, that’s all for a while.
My allowance of comments is used up for 2024.
Good luck to a swell CG(I) google form club.

jozart • February 15, 2024 5:07 PM

As at least one other person commented, the ad may not have been created by Zelle. This is the first thing that came to mind when reading your post.

When I had some free Google or Facebook ad dollars to spend, I spent them, on occasion, by posting ads in support of my favorite charities, and I was surprised that there was nothing preventing me from doing it – because in the wrong hands it might be damaging, or trigger a law suit.

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