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Dev Teaches Bot to Talk Spammers' Ears Off

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday September 27 2016, @11:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the sweet-sweet-honeypot dept.

rob_on_earth writes:

From the register

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?]

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:24AM (#407190)

    But those individuals will not respond to the spam trolling bot and not get tied up in this rabbit hole. Those who take the spam troll bait get what they deserve.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by butthurt on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:59AM

    by butthurt (6141) on Wednesday September 28 2016, @06:59AM (#407250) Journal

    Spam doesn't only harm us when we respond to it. The harm it does lies also in:

    - time spent examining mail to determine whether it's spam
    - storage space used by spam
    - time spent downloading spam
    - failure to see messages we want to see because they were among spam
    - delays or rejections of desired messages by inaccurate spam filtering

    This bot may e-mail people who never wrote to it. You seem to be saying that ignoring the bot's messages is a suitable response. It was an option for the creator of the bot, as well. For emotional reasons, he decided against it:

    That “Spam” button on Gmail just didn’t get me going anymore. There’s no reward. I was seeking revenge.. and some comedic relief.