SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Robert Platt Bell writes at his blog "Living Stingy" about Lenny, a library of videos which play recordings to telemarketers trying to sell services (or scams). Lenny picks up calls and answers them with pre-recorded audio clips from a doddering Australian man, sometimes keeping telemarketers on the phone for over 20 minutes. "Lenny confounds and confuses, but sounds totally real," writes Bell. "Some telemarketers talk to him for nearly a half-hour, before they figure out that he's either a recording - or senile."
According to developer Mango, Lenny is a program that uses voice recognition techniques to detect when a telemarketer is through speaking. When Lenny doesn't hear anything, he says his next prompt. If the telemarketer doesn't speak, or speaks too quietly, Lenny will ask them to speak up. This makes him sound more "real". After the 16th prompt, Lenny starts over. The current "record" of sorts is a pair of telemarketers who were kept occupied by Lenny for over 38 minutes. Want to talk to Lenny, or transfer a telemarketer to him? Here's how.
But who is the real Lenny? According to Internet chatter he's an actor in Brisbane, Australia — though clearly of English origin — who made his recordings for a company that wanted to respond in kind to time-wasting callers. About 2013, however, the original Lenny stopped working, so Mango and other tech-types decided to recreate him based on the published recordings. "The dishonest telemarketers are the ones that Lenny is really intended for," explains Mango.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Friday November 20 2015, @01:59PM
As well as that, there used to be a web site with a whole collection of Lenny calls but it has vanished. The recording in the link here is one of the best I have heard though - it loops through the ducks "incident" twice, and it includes it dawning on the caller (a real windbag) that it is a recording. You'd think all tele-marketeers would have heard of Lenny by now; maybe it's time for a different persona.
I recently tormented an Indian-accent scammer calling from "Windows" who said my PC had a virus. I fired up XP in a VM (hosted on Linux) and went along with him. He was painfully slow, and so was I. Like :-
Scammer : "Sir, could you find the key to the right of the C-T-R-L key" [He was very polite]
Me: "There isn't one, only a blank space" [I have an IBM model M, from c1990]
Following his instructions it took 15 minutes for me just to open the browser. He could have just said "Open the browser". We downloaded "Teamviewer" and they (an accomplice I think) started a command line session. My nerve broke at that point and I shut the VM down. "What are you doing sir?!" "I've had enough fun for today" I relpied. It had taken 35 minutes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @04:34PM
They used to call me a few times per week. I gave them the runaround also, until I get tired of it. The last time they called, I told them to call me back on my landline because this was my carphone, and gave them a hilarious number to call. Never got another call after that.