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Meet Lenny, the Bot that Tricks and Tortures Telemarketers

posted by martyb on Friday November 20 2015, @08:52AM   
from the turing-test-contestant? dept.

HughPickens.com writes:

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.

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Original Submission

• Only say hello once Only say hello once (Score: 4, Interesting) by snick on Friday November 20 2015, @02:33PM

  by snick (1408) on Friday November 20 2015, @02:33PM (#265814)

  When you answer the phone, only say "hello" once, and then just wait. A lot of telemarketing systems wait until you say "hello" to transfer to a person, and if the person doesn't hear you repeating "hello" they will hang up.

  I use a full frontal assault when I get the outright scam calls ("this is technical support calling about a problem with your computer") My response is a direct: "Does your mother know that you cheat old people for a living?" That usually ends the call.

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• Re:Only say hello once (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 22 2015, @06:19AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 22 2015, @06:19AM (#266460)

  Just say "hold on" and leave them hanging, then check in when you next remember to see if they are still on and if they are get them to hold on a bit more.

  Parent