How to Protect Your Family from AI Scams
A step-by-step guide to setting up Trust Onion and stopping AI-powered impersonation scams before they start.
Your phone rings at 11 PM. It's your daughter, sobbing, saying she's been in a car accident and needs $5,000 wired immediately for a lawyer. The voice is hers. The panic sounds real. But it's not her. A scammer built a clone of her voice from a 3-second clip pulled off her Instagram, and they're counting on you to act before you think.
This is not a future threat. The FBI reported nearly $5 billion in fraud losses targeting adults over 60 in 2024. Voice cloning scams are the fastest-growing category, and most families have no plan for what to do when the call comes.
Trust Onion gives your family that plan. It's a free app that works on iPhone and Android, takes about 60 seconds to set up, and gives everyone in your family a simple, private way to prove they're really who they say they are.
Here's how it works, step by step.
1Download Trust Onion
The app is free on both the App Store and Google Play. There's nothing to pay for and no subscription required.
2Create your family group
Open the app and tap the + button. You can create a new family group, join one with an invite code, or scan a QR code from another family member's phone.
Pick a name for your group (your last name works fine). Once the group exists, you'll see a set of three words on your screen. Those are your family's codewords.
3Invite your family members
Share the invite code with the people you want to protect. Your spouse, your kids, your parents. Everyone who joins the group sees the same three words on their phone at the same time.
This is the most important step. The app only works when the people you care about are in the group with you. A two-minute conversation at dinner ("Hey, install this app, here's the code") is all it takes.
1See the codewords in action
Once everyone is in the group, every phone in the family displays the same three rotating words. They change automatically on a timer, and every member sees them update at the same time.
The words are generated locally on each phone. No server, no cloud, no account required. Trust Onion never sees your codewords because they never leave your device. Each phone calculates them independently using a shared key, so even if your internet goes out, the words still work.
2Use the codewords when something feels wrong
Here's where the plan pays off.
You get a text from an unknown number: "Hey Mom, I dropped my phone in the sink, this is my new number. Can you send me $300 for a replacement?" It sounds like your son. It might even use his usual texting style, because AI can study someone's messages and mimic how they write.
You text back: "What are the three words?"
If they can't answer, it's not your son. Conversation over.
The codewords rotate on a timer, so even if a scammer somehow overheard yesterday's words, they've already expired. And because the words are calculated on each device with no server involved, there's no database to hack and no transmission to intercept.
3Escalate to a Proofie when the stakes are higher
Some scams hit harder than a text. A call from your "daughter" claiming she's been kidnapped. A video message from your "husband" saying he's stranded overseas. When the fear is real and the pressure is intense, words alone might not feel like enough.
That's when you ask for a Proofie.
A Proofie is a verified selfie that proves a real person took it, right now, from their actual phone. It includes the current codewords overlaid on the photo, a timestamp, GPS location, and a cryptographic signature locked to the sender's device biometrics. The first time someone sends a Proofie, the app sets up Face ID (or fingerprint) automatically. After that, each Proofie is unlocked with a Passkey tied to their face.
Here's the key: when each family member joins your group and gets verified, their phone generates a unique Proof ID that's tied to their device and biometrics. Every Proofie they send is signed with that same Proof ID. When you receive a Proofie, the app automatically checks the signature against the verified Proof ID for that family member. If the codes match, you know it's really them. If they don't, the Proofie is rejected on the spot — no scammer can fake another person's Proof ID, even with a stolen phone or a cloned voice.
You can't fake a Proofie with AI. The words change too frequently to pre-generate one. The biometric signature can't be replicated from another device. And the location data confirms where the sender actually is, not where a scammer claims they are.
The Proofie is sent directly to you. Trust Onion doesn't store it, doesn't process it, and doesn't have access to it. It goes from their phone to yours.
Set up your family today
The entire process takes about 60 seconds. Download the app, create a group, share the code with your family. The next time something feels off, you'll have a way to know for sure.