Your weekly dose of scam-proofing in 3 minutes or less. No fluff, just the latest hacks, scams, phishing attacks, and cyber cons you actually need to know about.

It is the morning of the election. You have a voicemail.

It is your candidate. You recognise the voice immediately. He is telling you to stay home today, to save your vote for later. He sounds calm. Certain. Official.

You do not vote.

Three days later you find out the call was fake. An AI-generated voice clone, sent to thousands of voters in New Hampshire in January 2024. The political consultant behind it faced a $6 million fine. The people who stayed home cannot get their vote back.

That is the version that steals your participation. There is another version that steals your money. And another that steals your identity. They all run on the same fuel: the fact that during an election, you are engaged, emotional, and more likely to act quickly on something that feels urgent and official.

1️⃣ Fake voter registration messages

A text arrives. Your voter registration needs to be verified or you will be removed from the electoral roll. There is a link. The site looks exactly like your government's official registration page.

You enter your name, date of birth, address, and national ID number. None of it goes to any electoral authority.

Here is the thing most people do not know:

You cannot register to vote by phone, email, or text. In any country.

In the US, registration happens online via official government sites, by post, or in person. In the UK, Australia, Canada, same story. If someone sends you a link to register or verify your registration, it is not legitimate. Go directly to your government's official electoral website. Type the address yourself.

2️⃣ AI voice clones and deepfakes

The New Hampshire robocall was not an isolated incident. It was a proof of concept. Since then the technology has become cheaper, faster, and more convincing.

In Ireland's presidential election, a deepfake video falsely showed a candidate withdrawing from the race and claiming the election had been cancelled. Real voters, seeing what appeared to be an official announcement, almost stayed home.

In the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral race, AI-generated videos were used to spread false information about candidates and voting procedures — at a scale and quality that set a new standard for what local election interference now looks like.

This is not hacking ballot boxes. It is hacking the decision of whether to show up at all.

3️⃣ Fake campaign donation pages

You want to support a candidate or a cause. You click a link from a social media post. The page looks right — the candidate's name, their photo, their branding. You enter your card details.

The money does not reach the campaign. The card details go to the scammer.

The FBI has repeatedly warned about fake Political Action Committees that operate exactly like legitimate campaign organisations, professional websites, official-sounding names, receipts after every donation while keeping everything that comes in. These are federal crimes. They are also very difficult to spot without checking.

4️⃣ Phishing under cover of election admin

In January 2025, councils across the UK reported a wave of phishing emails impersonating electoral registration authorities. The fake sender address [email protected], was designed to look official. The email told recipients they needed to supply additional information to remain on the register. Clicking the link handed personal data directly to the attackers.

Real electoral authorities do not send unsolicited emails asking you to click a link and re-enter your details. If you receive one, go to your council's official website directly and call them on the number listed there.

Nobody wants to lose their vote.

That single fear, that something has gone wrong with your registration, that your ballot has been rejected, that your candidate is asking you to do something, cuts through the normal level of scepticism most people apply to unexpected messages. It feels too important to ignore. Too risky to delay.

Scammers know this. They time their attacks to coincide with registration deadlines, polling days, and the days immediately before major votes, when that anxiety is at its peak and the window to verify anything feels impossibly small.

And election cycles create the perfect information environment for fraud. During a campaign, people receive more unsolicited contact from more unfamiliar organisations than at any other time of year. Political parties, campaign groups, local councils, national authorities. In that noise, a fake one is almost impossible to identify by feel alone.

- New Hampshire, January 2024: An AI-generated robocall mimicking President Biden's voice told thousands of Democratic primary voters not to vote, that their participation should be saved for November. The political consultant responsible faced a $6 million FCC fine for caller ID spoofing. The voters who stayed home had no recourse.

- UK electoral phishing, 2025: A coordinated phishing campaign impersonating local electoral registration authorities was reported across multiple UK councils. Fake emails claimed recipients needed to supply additional information to remain registered. The NCSC issued guidance. The fake domain register-to-vote.electoral.agency, was specifically designed to look like a government address to anyone reading quickly.

- Fake PAC network, ongoing: The FBI has issued multiple warnings about fraudulent Political Action Committees operating as convincing campaign organisations. Professional websites. Branded receipts. Emotional appeals tied to real political issues. Every donation going directly into the pockets of the operators. These operations peak in the weeks before major elections, when donation volumes are highest and scrutiny is lowest.

🚩 Any unsolicited text, email, or call about your voter registration, especially one with a link or asking for personal details.

🚩 A robocall, voicemail, or video from a candidate saying something dramatic, telling you not to vote, announcing the election is cancelled, or making an out-of-character statement.

🚩 A donation link shared on social media, even by someone you follow, that does not go to the campaign's own verified official website.

🚩 Any request connected to elections that involves clicking a link, entering personal data, or making a payment urgently.

The one rule that covers most of this:

Go directly to official sources for everything election-related. Type the address. Do not click links from texts, emails, or social media. Voter registration, polling locations, donation pages, find them yourself, on the official site, every time.

✔ Remember: you cannot register to vote by text, email, or phone

If a message arrives telling you to verify your registration via a link, that is the scam. Full stop. Go to your government's official electoral website directly and check your registration status from there.

✔ Verify before you donate

Before giving to any campaign or political organisation, go to the candidate's official website independently and donate from there. If you found the link on social media, start again from the official site. The extra thirty seconds is the entire difference between a real donation and a stolen card.

✔ Pause before sharing political video or audio

AI voice cloning and deepfake video are convincing enough now that the old "does it look real" test is no longer reliable. If a clip shows a candidate saying something dramatic or designed to provoke an immediate reaction, check it against two or three independent news sources before doing anything with it. Sharing a deepfake is how it spreads. You do not want to be the one who amplifies it.

✔ Report it

UK: report to the NCSC and your local council.
US: report to CISA and the FBI's IC3.
Australia: report to the AEC and ReportCyber.
These organisations take down fake sites and numbers faster when people report them. It takes two minutes and protects whoever receives the same message next.

You cannot register to vote by text. If someone just sent you a link to do exactly that, now you know what it is.

That's it for this week.

Election scams are not about ballot boxes. They are about the moment when your civic instinct overrides your scepticism. Your registration. Your donation. Your candidate's voice on a voicemail telling you to stay home.

Go to the source directly. Verify before you donate. And if something arrives that tells you your vote is at risk, slow down, because that urgency is the mechanism, not the message.

Catch you next time,

Dan & the Goldphish Team

📌 P.S. Know someone who is actively following an election campaign right now, donating, sharing, registering others to vote? Send this before they click something they shouldn't.