What is Deepfake Phishing? How to Avoid It

Imagine having a crush on Brad Pitt all your life, just to be scammed by Brad Pitt. Well, when something similar happened with a French lady not so long ago, who sent almost a million dollars to the supposed Brad Pitt, people questioned her actions, deeming them stupid online. However, this is a loss that millions of people worldwide suffer every year due to identity theft and deepfakes. This guide discusses what deepfake phishing is and how you can avoid it by being responsible citizens. 

NOTE: With the advancement in AI, deepfakes can feel very realistic. A deepfake can also be made depicting your own self, tasked to crawl in your ecosystem, get in control of your devices, and steal your personal information for cyber attackers. A deepfake can unlock your phone with Face ID. 

However, it must never get hold of your personal accounts and passwords. With a dedicated password manager like FastestPass, secure all your passwords and confidential information in an encrypted vault, with no chances of a data breach!

In this blog, learn what a deepfake is, how to spot a deepfake, how to react when your instincts tell you about a deepfake, a protection guide against deepfakes, and more.

What is Deepfake Phishing?

Before you learn what a deepfake attack is, first make sure you have all the necessary information on how to spot deepfake phishing. 

A deepfake is an AI-engineered attack in the form of an image, a video, a text, a voice note, a call, or anything related to the mentioned, that could be performed offline in certain instances and not just online. 

To learn what it actually is, the best way would be with deepfake attack examples. Think of it like this: everybody scrolls Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok. With the overuse of AI, you may bump into hundreds of AI-generated reels, some of which are very easy to tell are generated by AI, like a video of a cat speaking into a microphone, a kid running from a hospital bed, etc. 

However, what’s not easy to tell apart from AI and original videos are the ones with famous celebrities. It takes a lot of time to figure out if indeed the video reel you are watching is really a celebrity or a deepfake, with the advancements in AI reel-creating tools making it almost impossible for the human eye to figure out the nature of a video.

Luckily enough, the human eye can still be able to detect a deepfake video, which makes it easy to distinguish AI and reality. 

How Deepfake Phishing Works

Imagine you are sitting at home one moment, totally unbothered by what’s going on apart from the moment you are living in, and suddenly you receive a text. The text leaves you in a state of shock, which could be anything about a loved one (the actual scammer pretending to be a loved one) demanding money for another loved one (the real person related to you) through their official phone numbers, Facebook, Instagram, and even WhatsApp. 

If a scammer can get into a person’s personal accounts, they can easily create a deepfake of that person’s face or voice in no time, with the availability of AI deepfake tools. 

The deepfake phishing scam works when you panic and can’t think in the right state of mind, rather than act on the seriousness of the matter, which, at the time being, does look serious. Your next step may be to open your banking account and transfer a large sum of money to the person asking you for it. 

Types of Deepfake Phishing

Now you already know how deepfake creation takes place. But what are the most common types of deception and manipulation done through deepfakes? Let’s have a look at some of the most common types of deepfake social engineering attacks in today’s date:

Emails/Messages (deepfake email scam)

The most common type of deepfake is the email deepfake; moreover, it is often a borderline scam. You can find out when it’s a deepfake rather easily, as the sender pretends to be someone from an authoritative background. It could be a company or someone famous that the deepfake is pretending to be. 

Have a look at this example of the scammer pretending to be an official employee at Microsoft: 

Video Deepfakes

Now comes the video deepfake. With the advent and sudden boom of AI, video deepfakes have emerged as the most visible form of deepfakes today. With tools like Sora, Gemini, and others, it’s become very easy to train AI models and perfect the deepfake, making it look exactly like the real version. 

Voice Cloning (Audio Deepfakes)

With the advancement in AI tools, especially with their integration in your phone’s software, it’s very easy to change your voice to a different voice and talk to someone with a different accent, without them even knowing who it is. 

In case of voice cloning, the attacker engineers the voice of the person, then calls their close one acting like the person themselves, and tries to scam them. 

Deepfake Email Scams vs. Traditional Phishing

Deepfakes elevate scams by mimicking micro-expressions, accents, and hesitations; elements AI now replicates with 98% accuracy: 

Aspect	Traditional Phishing	Deepfake Phishing
Medium	Emails, texts with bad grammar/links	Voice calls, videos, live streams
Detection Difficulty	Easy (typos, odd domains)	Hard (perfect mimicry of tone/emotion)
Success Rate	1-5%	Up to 30% in simulations
Cost per Incident	$1,000-$10,000	$100,000+

How to Identify AI Deepfake Phishing Attacks

Some deepfakes are very easy to identify, while some are too difficult to distinguish from the original. In case it’s an email or video deepfake, notice the sender’s email address and look for the tiniest of details that can be off-putting, and you can find them in an instance or two.

For video deepfakes, look for the slightest impression of any kind of logos on the video. If not found, try looking for irregularities with the video. Pause the video, play it on half the speed, and monitor the entire subject on the screen as well as the background with close concentration. 

How To Protect Against Deepfake Phishing Scams

Here’s how you can protect yourself and your organization from deepfake scams:

Train Your Team to Spot Deepfake Scams

Teach staff to spot warning signs like unusual requests, sudden urgency, awkward phrasing, or voice and video that feel slightly “off.” Make reporting easy so employees can flag suspicious messages quickly, rather than responding first and checking later.

Use AI-Based Threat Detection Tools

Use security tools that can analyze email, voice, video, and message patterns for signs of manipulation. Modern detection systems can help flag suspicious content earlier, especially when deepfake scams are blended with phishing or impersonation attempts.

Set Up Strong Authentication Controls

Use multi-factor authentication across email, banking, and internal applications. Add stronger controls like passkeys, device-based verification, or approval workflows for sensitive actions. Even if a deepfake message tricks someone, layered authentication can stop the attack from succeeding.

Run Regular Security Reviews

Review your security setup often to find weak points before attackers do. Check who has access to what, test response procedures, and make sure training is current. Audits help teams stay prepared as deepfake tactics keep changing.

Confirm Requests Through a Different Channel

If a request seems urgent or unusual, confirm it through a separate trusted channel. Call the person back using a known number, message them through a different account, or check with a supervisor before acting.

Pay Attention to Visual and Audio Clues

Deepfakes often have tiny flaws, such as strange blinking, unnatural lip movement, flat audio, or odd shadows. In voice scams, listen for pauses, robotic tones, or words that do not match the speaker’s usual style.

Double-Check Before You Share

Avoid posting too many personal videos, voice clips, or business details online. The more content attackers can scrape, the easier it becomes to build convincing deepfakes.

FAQs

The End

Deepfake phishing is becoming more convincing, but it is not impossible to spot or stop. The best defense is a mix of awareness, verification, and strong security habits. By training your team, using multi-factor authentication, checking requests through another channel, and staying alert to small visual or audio clues, you can reduce the risk of falling for these scams. In a world where fake voices and videos can look real, caution is no longer optional — it is part of staying safe online. Never share your personal details with anyone on the internet, even with your family; it could be someone pretending to be them, and not them in reality. FastestPass offers the best industry-standard dedicated password manager that gives you the best practices to safeguard your confidential information!