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Security Firm Creates Chatbot To Respond To Scam Emails On Your Behalf (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the right-back-at-ya dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Chatbots. They're usually a waste of your time, so why not have them waste someone else's instead? Better yet: why not have them waste an email scammer's time. That's the premise behind Re:scam , an email chatbot operated by New Zealand cybersecurity firm Netsafe. Next time you get a dodgy email in your inbox, says Netsafe, forward it on to me@rescam.org, and a proxy email address will start replying to the scammer for you, doing its very utmost to waste their time.

4 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. An interesting tactic by Baron_Yam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anything that increases the cost of spam scams relative to the returns is worth investigating to see if it's practical, because ultimately you have to attack the economics to kill the beast.

    I'd actually like to see this run on my local system, though.

  2. Re:Love the idea by pr0nbot · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sir,

    I am having many!! such ideas. In fact I have been a succesfull businesman more than 23 years and am in possession of a substantial!! quantity of monies. But, unfortunately I, am most Sorrowfully in dispute with the Ghanaian tax authorities who have frozen my accounts. However my esteemed solicitor, Dr Goodlove Simons III has assured me that through the payment of a fine of no more than $250US I will be able able to transfer these monies with much expeditiousness to an overseas bank account. I am prepared to offer a reward of $2500 in exchange for your immediate trnafser of $250US to the following account: IBAN002300203 Acct holder Ghanaian Tax Authorities, Apt 3b Rhodes House N2389 Lagos, Nigeria

    In anticipation of your excellent assistance, and with many!! thanks, Rev Alfons Dauphine

  3. Re:Brilliant idea by goose-incarnated · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These Nigerians are barely computer literate and barely literate at all. They will struggle to pass a Turing test themselves. I think that even Eliza level chatbots will fool them. The idea is that they will have to manually sift through thousands of emails per day to find the real mark, and I think that this idea will work.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  4. Re:Skeptic by Aighearach · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It may be that figuring out what the email addresses are is not the hard part of scamming.