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FTC to Award $25,000 for the Best Honeypot Design to Trap Robocalls

posted by mrcoolbp on Thursday March 05 2015, @10:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the flies-with-honey dept.

n1 writes:

Ars Technica reports:

On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced another contest to design a system to "identify unwanted robocalls received on landlines or mobile phones, and block and forward those calls to a honeypot." The agency will select "up to five contestants" as part of what it’s calling "Robocalls: Humanity Strikes Back."

The first qualifying phase launches Wednesday and runs through June 15, 2015 at 10:00pm Eastern Time, while the final phase concludes at DEF CON 23 on August 9, 2015.

Here's the FTC contest page. There's another similar contest (with no cash prize) being held "as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking." It appears they have done something similar in previous years as well.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by redneckmother on Thursday March 05 2015, @05:57PM

    by redneckmother (3597) on Thursday March 05 2015, @05:57PM (#153579)

    Back when I had a landline, and didn't pay for incoming calls, I used telemarketers' tactics against them. The poor shmuck who calls gets paid based on making a "sale", and the longer you string 'em along, the more painful a "lost sale" will be. One poor soul spent 25 minutes on the line before he realized he was wasting time on me. It was more entertaining than watching crap TV.

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  • (Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Friday March 06 2015, @05:01AM

    by M. Baranczak (1673) on Friday March 06 2015, @05:01AM (#153728)

    25 minutes is nothing. A friend of mine claims to have strung them along 6 hours once.

    And then there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7OgWcwgB50 [youtube.com]

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday March 06 2015, @08:29AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Friday March 06 2015, @08:29AM (#153755) Journal

    You need to make it so that you waste the phone spammers time and not your own in the process.