Chatbot Designed to Deliberately Time waste Scammers

Re:scam bot Designed to waste the time of scammers

Every now and then you receive a (poorly worded) e-mail offering you the chance to get rich quick. This might be a Nigerian Prince looking to share his fortune with you. It could be that you’ve won the Ugandan lottery. The bottom line is that they’re all lies, its scammers at work.

I have to admit, I have personally, on occasion, taken the time to write them back. Generally, I use equally poorly worded grammar and syntax, occasionally changing my details completely. You would be amazed at how persistent they can be about my Western Union payment. The problem is, unlike certain Amazon scammers, these people generally tend to either get ignored or get away with it.

A software company from New Zealand, called Netsafe has decided to remove the hassle yourself by creating Re:scam bot. A program specifically designed to adaptively respond to make detection of the AI very difficult for the scammer.

A very clever chatbot

The intention of the chatbot is to waste as much time as possible of these scammers. For every minute they waste conversing with this AI is one less minute in which they might find a new victim.

This isn’t the first anti-scam chatbot we’ve seen. For example, a telephone one of those pesky PPI calls was also created. It does, however, present a funny way to annoy them.

In a report via CNET, once the Re:scam bot determines that the conversation has ended, it will forward you a copy of the entire chain. You, therefore, get to see the fruit of its timewasting labors. The results should be pretty awesome. Well worth trying out for yourself.

The official website can be visited here.

Why not give it a go? As far as I’m concerned anything that wastes a scammers time is good news.