SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 15 submissions in the queue.
SoylentNews
Brian Weinreich has been trolling spammers for two years using a bot that fires realistic and ridiculous replies to the pervasive online salespeople.
He simply forwards unwanted emails to a specific address and the bot takes over. Offering the spammers open ended questions that they fall over themselves to answer.
My favourite bit from Brian's blog is "after the first month, I didn't have to feed the Looper any more. People were just spamming it on their own.". The spammers were selling on the list of "bitters" to other spammers.
The code is on GitHub
[editor's note: we covered a somewhat similar story here. Does this one have the same ethical implications?]
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Dev Teaches Bot to Talk Spammers' Ears Off
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 34 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
* m2 stares at the monitor... it looks like a hamburger...
m2 - that's a bad sign
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @01:10AM
This guy has a app that will talk to telemarketers. [gizmodo.com] Listen to some of his demonstrations on youtube. Its very realistic. At first I thought it was a real person and he was going to hand it off to the bot to do the work, but the demos are 100% bot from the start,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @09:03AM
Affirmative responses seem rather risky to me.
Anderson’s sophisticated algorithm makes telemarketers think there’s an actual person on the line with random affirmations like “yes, uh huh, right.”
I'd go with "Oh could you hold on for a moment, my XYZ is acting up" then "Let me get a pen and paper". "That sounds interesting.".
"How intriguing". "Sorry, I didn't get that, can you explain it again?".
Lots of stuff that gets them to talk more is less error prone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @09:46AM
Risky how? You think the bot's going to give out bank account access using pre-recorded affirmative responses?
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday September 28 2016, @02:18PM
"Affirmative responses seem risky"
It seems risky to me too. If your bot is saying "Yes" to something, what did it just say Yes to?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @07:17AM
They often don't need the bot to give out bank account info to sign you for stuff. In some cases they have all the info already and all they need is for you to agree to the "upgrade/purchase". If the telemarketer wises up, he could try to get lucky with the confirmation till he gets the Yes, Yes, Yes in a row and then "Thank you very much, sir".
There's often a cooling off period but I think the whole idea is to avoid work on your end while having them do lots of work for nothing.
If in your country saying "Yes" to stuff over the phone isn't binding then sure, then there's no problem with having your Lenny say "Yes".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @03:48PM
> I'd go with "Oh could you hold on for a moment, my XYZ is acting up" then "Let me get a pen and paper". "That sounds interesting.".
LISTEN TO THE RECORDINGS.
That's exactly what he does.
The occasional affirmative is there to keep them on the hook in case they start thinking they are being totally dicked around. People say "yes" all the time without exactly understanding the question, human communication is noisy this makes it more realistic, and thus less risky.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @07:19AM
READ THE COMMENT. THE PROBLEM IS Lenny does say "Yes".
How does a Lenny saying Yes make it less risky than a Lenny who never says Yes (or No)?