11 ms·
Two years spent spamming spammers back
- countryqt30 10y ago@ GOOGLE: BUILD THIS IN GMAIL! :)
- Exuma 10y agoThis is great, and would be even more brilliant if it could integrate some sort of markov chain, like https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditsimulator https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditsimulator I'd love to see it have random answers that are unique based on the question. Then you make it a global service that hundreds of thousands of people can forward messages to, and then you waste spammers time en masse.
- chipperyman573 10y agoThe problem with a markov chain is that the sentences it generates are often nonsensical. A markov chain is useful for predicting a few words out of a sentence a human already has generated, but not an entire sentence.
- gus_massa 10y agoCan anyone forward an email to that address? :) Do you have localized versions? [I'm from Argentina and Most of my spam is in Spanish. I guess no. :( ]
- chrischen 10y agoIt would be great if someone could implement this as a free public service, using neural algorithms to generate responses.
- Waterluvian 10y agoI agree. But I have to say I had a chuckle that the second half of your sentence looks like hipster mode to me.
- chrischen 10y agoThere are services for this already, actually, such as wit.ai and api.ai. Wit.ai is free.
- ikeboy 10y agohttp://www.419eater.com http://www.419eater.com has many organic neural nets doing just that. (Sorry, I've always wanted to make that joke.)
- nkozyra 10y agoActually I think a NN might require way too much supervision. You could feed exits (emails that got no response) into a decision tree to know what to send at any point in the chain to maximize response.
- ttul 10y agoYou could train an LSTM network to generate responses in the same way that google's inbox response suggestions work. Requires a mountain of source data, but hey, you probably have 30GB of email sitting in your Gmail, right?
- sztwiorok 10y agoGreat tool Please share this on github. we will be able to add our sugestions to the list of answers!
- PudgePacket 10y agoThe author gave the link in the article https://github.com/beweinreich/mlooper https://github.com/beweinreich/mlooper.
- sztwiorok 10y agoThanks for it.
- Thrillington 10y agoMlooper?
- brightball 10y agoThese guys operate on an ROI basis. If you waste their time you decrease their ROI. Great tool.
- hackbinary 10y agoThis is why I tend to take spam phone calls for double glazing and PPI. I talked to a guy for an hour once. My strategy to be the affable fool.
- dhimes 10y agoTom Mabe did this and recorded it- released a hilarious cd
- dmoy 10y agoIs that the guy with the fake crime scene?
- bjelkeman-again 10y agoYes. That one is great.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoBest one ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmKtS-k12b0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmKtS-k12b0
- cxmcc 10y agoLove it! For physical spam mails with business reply envelope, I always fold everything back into the envelope and send it back.
- 6502nerdface 10y agoNever thought of that, good call. They presumably pay for the reply postage, reducing their ROI.
- dingaling 10y agoJust remember to tear-off anything that looks personally identifiable ( address, reference numbers etc ). There used to be a trick in the UK of attaching reply envelopes to bricks and putting them back into the postal system, hoping that the spammer would be charged by weight, but Royal Mail put an end to that.
- xenadu02 10y agoSlightly OT but that's because one of the biggest customers of postal services are direct marketers. By sending a brick you're abusing the system and harassing the real customers.
- thingexplainer 10y agoJunk mail wastes more resources in a day than spam ever will. Spam should be legal and junk mail should not be.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mooveprince 10y agoMade my day :)
- imaginenore 10y agoWould be cool to have this in GMail.
- sztwiorok 10y agoGreat idea! I'm sure that GitHub community will help to make it even better https://github.com/beweinreich/mlooper https://github.com/beweinreich/mlooper
- dorianm 10y agoThe logic made me laugh :) def random_reply reply = Reply.order("RAND()").first.content # if the conversation is getting long, start injecting hipster sentences to the end... if self.conversation.emails.count > 10 reply << " #{Faker::Hipster.sentence}" end return reply end P.S.: It's a simple Rails app
- verroq 10y agoShould just connect two or more spammers together and let them offer their products to each other.
- Lasher 10y agoOh that would be awesome, maintain a list of previous spammer emails then generate the responses from a random one of those.
- ortusdux 10y agoReminds me of the cities that setup robocallers to cut down on illegal signs. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-07-19/news/os-litter-signs-robocalls-20120719_1_sign-violators-illegal-signs-sign-scofflaws http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-07-19/news/os-litte...
- tamersalama 10y agoGreat idea! This has the potential of reducing worldwide spam/scam if is implemented by email service providers.
- kalleboo 10y agoThis is a great idea. Waste the spammer's time and it's no longer worth it. The phone version of this is Lenny[0], a set of audio files/Asterisk script which pretends to be a senile, doddering old man (who has a duck problem). There's a reddit user who runs a number you can forward your sales calls to, and he'll pick out the best ones and put on YouTube[1]. The record is keeping a caller on the phone for 56 minutes. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nOGWrXlhl-i_3g https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nO... (edit: if you sort the user's videos by most popular, the top one is something quite amazing)
- estefan 10y agoThis is great! I didn't know about Lenny :-D
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gingerlime 10y agoI was actually thinking it would be awesome to combine the two. Inject a phone number on one/some of the random responses and let Lenny pick up the phone and take it from there...
- spacehome 10y agoIn addition the telemarketers, I wasted a bunch of time listening to Lenny. This is amazing! Thanks! Edit: I love his ducks
- spacehome 10y agoIf I let one of these "Windows Technical Department" guys into my Parallels Windows VM running on OS X, am I exposing myself to any danger?
- mkagenius 10y agoIf you want a youtube clip to talk back to the spammer use : https://dubdial.com https://dubdial.com disclosure: I am one of the author
- GirlsCanCode 10y agoSpam doesn't bother me anymore, but unsolicited phone calls do. The majority of phone calls that come in are not legitimate.
- wofo 10y agoYou should probably check Lenny out: https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoThat's great, is there an app that will do this, like put it down next to your landline phone and let it answer for you?
- kalleboo 10y agoIf you look at the reddit sidebar there's a phone number you can forward to or conference in
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoI saw a SIP number. If there's a POTS number to forward to doesn't the forwarder then pay for the call? With a local responder app there would be no call charge - I don't want this enough to pay for half-hour international call forwarding.
- maouida 10y agoGmail and other popular mail providers should implement something like this. It would be a big step forward in spam fighting.
- tomrod 10y agoTo connect the conversation to David Brin, futurologist, philosopher, and author, this sounds an awful like the crystal spheres in Existence.
- grecy 10y ago> Imagine if this type of thing happened in real-life. You walk out the door in the morning and you’re immediately attacked by Parul, Kevin, and Amelie. I laughed out loud at this, because it's exactly what I'm experiencing now in West Africa. Street vendors are aggressive about selling whatever they have, and they seem to assume I want it - almost like I owe it to them to buy it - I'm not sure if it's because I'm White, or it's just their standard procedure for everyone that walks by. On my 3 minute walk to the local store, I get a minimum of 10 people in my face, trying to sell me cell phone recharge cards, peanuts and limes. Every single day I say no thanks, every single day they try again, sometimes even on the walk back. I've tried ignoring them or not responding at all, and that usually makes it worse - they'll yell louder and louder (assuming I have not heard), hiss, make a kissing noise, and eventually put themselves in my way so I'm forced to acknowledge them. Amazingly, even when I do buy something, and I clearly have it in my hand (a bunch of carrots for example), every single street vendor selling carrots will still try with 100% effort to sell me carrots.
- pmorici 10y agoMaybe that is where they came up with ad re-targeting.
- bigdubs 10y agoObviously not the same but I've had this happen in a couple places and I just say "FUCK OFF" as loud as I can and get visibly upset and they leave me alone after that.
- grecy 10y ago....That's a horrible way to react. I wonder what these people think about you and your country of origin. You are, after all, an ambassador for your country when ever you are outside it.
- bigdubs 10y agoIt's not my first reaction, it's not something I do when I'm traveling, but it's either be slightly loud and aggressive or just suffer in silence. I chose the former.
- Lxr 10y agoThis is hilarious, I love it. I would also love to see this made into a public service with some clever ML algorithms to keep the conversation going as long as possible.
- qgaultier 10y agobrillant !
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoBrilliant! But... of course some of the spammers are bots themselves.
- koytch 10y agoEffing hilarious. Some years ago I spent a few days writing to a 'Russian bride'. It became instantly clear all replies were scripted, there was no connection at all with what I said (The full text of 'I, Robot'? Oh, what interesting things you do…). So I'd say many if not most of the spam scenarios are automated and the whole thing becomes too meta.
- kensai 10y agoThe dude deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for this. Literally pacifying the interwebs! :D
- wojcikstefan 10y agoAren't most of these spam emails automated anyway? If it's just two bots talking, you're not really wasting anybody's time/resources.
- the_duke 10y agoHilarious idea. But one of the first things I would have coded is preventing the same message to be sent again. The examples are full of that.
- brianwawok 10y agoIndeed.. In fact why not take the inbound spams, and save those... and sprinkle them in to the outbound replies?
- maksimum 10y agoYou could consider repeat messages as adding insult to injury. For example you can see in the 24-message conversation with the SEO company, that repeat messages seem to aggravate the spammers.
- the_duke 10y agoGood point, I hadn't thought about that.
- Dagwoodie 10y agoBased on the sample of 24 messages back and forth, it looks like the spammer also had a reply bot because a lot of messages exactly the same canned response.
- wanderr 10y agoBack in the olden days, when the ping of death causing a windows BSOD was a thing, if I was online when I got spam I would immediately look for the spammer's ip and send them a ping of death. I could tell it often worked because then I'd get the same spam again 10 minutes later, so I'd do it to them again, then I'd get spammed again and ping them again until eventually they gave up. I assume their mass mailing program would just start at the top of an email list and send them one by one, without tracking progress, so when the computer crashed they would have to start over. After a few crashes in a row hopefully the spammer would blame the spam sending program for crashing the computer and give up, maybe even demand a refund from whoever sold it to them.
- abhianet 10y agoWhat happens if I send it a mail from an mlooper address? Can I get it to setup an infinite loop?
- codingdave 10y agoSure, great idea, funny and clever and all that. But I disagree with the idea that inboxes are sacred, and disagree with the attitude of "how dare people send marketing to me!" Fraudulent spam is one thing. Plain old marketing or sales cold calls, though... you know people are going to do it. It is their job. And I'd much rather get emails than I can quickly delete and ignore vs. phone calls. And once in a while, someone actually hits on a service that is useful to me. So I don't think the real-life scenario of people badgering you outside the door is accurate. The better metaphor would be one comparing your inbox to your actual mailbox. Sure, junk mail is annoying and most of it gets thrown out. But sometimes that restaurant down the street does send coupons.
- halomru 10y ago>sales cold calls, though... you know people are going to do it. It is their job. Sales cold calls are illegal in my country and happen to me once every few years. My email address isn't so lucky. >Sure, junk mail is annoying and most of it gets thrown out. And more importantly: I can put a simple "no advertisements" sign on my real mailbox and cut down junk to almost zero. I wish I could do that to my virtual inbox. Email junk is far worse than any real-live equivalent in my culture. A better metaphor is having my business and private conversations while walking over a Middle-Eastern market where random people try to sell me stuff.
- jacalata 10y ago> I can put a simple "no advertisements" sign on my real mailbox and cut down junk to almost zero. Fun fact: this isn't possible in the US. I'd never considered how that might influence how Americans think about spam email in general.
- norea-armozel 10y agoIt's a weird thing tbh when most of my mail is literally just advertisements for services around my area. Some of it is interesting but most don't apply to me (ex. Had several mailers for private schooling since there's a couple schools like that in the neighborhood) so I have to wonder how successful is junk mail like that in producing a profitable result. I have to imagine the cost would have to be very low to justify the constant stream of junk mail I receive.
- slinger 10y agoI'm laughing out loud with these MLooper conversations. Made my day :D PS: Nice project btw
- partycoder 10y agoTwo related funny stories if you have the time: - The 7 legged spider story. - The guy that tricked Nigerian spammers into acting the dead parrot sketch from Monty Python
- mastax 10y agoI looked up these links so I might as well paste them here: Spider: http://27bslash6.com/overdue.html http://27bslash6.com/overdue.html Monty: http://www.419eater.com/html/bigman.htm http://www.419eater.com/html/bigman.htm
- MaxLeiter 10y agoIf you find this funny, I highly recommend this TED talk: "This is what happens when you reply to a spam email" https://www.ted.com/talks/james_veitch_this_is_what_happens_when_you_reply_to_spam_email https://www.ted.com/talks/james_veitch_this_is_what_happens_...
- tooFastFuckYou 10y agoFunny, but depends on the reply-to address being legit. Which most aren't. An even better project years ago launched DDoSes against the SITES spammers were linking to. Much better.
- eljimmy 10y agoI once made the mistake of sending a joke reply to a spammer from my legitimate email. Turned out they pulled my phone number from the WHOIS info on my domain which I can only assume they sold to some marketing companies as I received about a dozen cold calls from various "web agencies" from the states. A lot of them were relentless, calling me repeatedly and leaving voicemails.
- Animats 10y agoThe one for phones has been on HN before. This one for spam is nice, but not yet smart enough. With more smarts and some understanding of the messages, it could keep spammers going forever. It doesn't need to be very intelligent; it just needs to get up to the Eliza level. If it detects a spam related to search engine optimization, it should have a list of about a hundred plausible questions it can ask on that subject, for example. There aren't that many spammed subjects. Most email spam, though, is promoting a link, and can't handle an email reply. You'd need something smart enough to go to a web site and sign up with fake credentials.
- dcminter 10y agoWhen especially irritated by spam of this type I like to look up the isp hosting their register link and then sign up on their site with its abuse@ details (or occasionally @localhost for a bit of variety). Every clog in the gears help or at least it's cathartic to imagine so.
- wdr1 10y agoReminds me of the guy who set up an automated voice script on his landline to thwart telemarketers: http://jollyrogertelephone.com/about/ http://jollyrogertelephone.com/about/
- titomc 10y agoOne spammer realised that he is talking to a bot and asks the bot about the three laws. http://www.mlooper.com/conversations/3072 http://www.mlooper.com/conversations/3072
- maaaats 10y agoThis kinda rocked my view on spammers. It's easy to group them together and have a lot of prejudice, but clearly they come in all kinds of forms.
- tempestn 10y agoI would say that this sort of service spam is generally on a different tier from your classic 419 garbage or whatever. Usually those outfits will have their most competent person dealing with email to rope in new customers. Amusing aside: I once hired one of these Indian web dev outsourcing firms to create a super simple form for one of our sites. (Not from a spam email, which I certainly wouldn't want to reward, but probably a similar outfit.) We could have done it in house, but I wanted to see how viable it would be to farm out simple, nicely encapsulated work when it came up. Their failures were many and varied, but the most hilarious was when one of them wanted to givea section of form an orange border. (For some reason. The site's colour scheme was mostly greens with no orange to be seen.) Anyway, he decided the best way to do this was to find an enormous png of a sunset (multiple megabytes), and repeat a small strip of the top 10px or so as a background image in a div behind the area. I'm still not sure whether I was being trolled, or if incompetence on that scale is actually possible. (Normally I would assume it must be the former, but given their myriad other screw-ups, I'm not entirely sure.) Every time I would write to complain about something utterly idiotic they'd done, they would wholeheartedly agree, share in my amazement at how foolish it was, and assure me that that junior programmer had been removed, and someone more senior would be taking over the project. (I went through a couple of levels of seniority, then eventually gave up when the Senior Lead Architect or whoever delivered the orange border monstrosity.) Anyway, the most competent person in that company was definitely the one sending the emails.
- 10y ago
- chrissnell 10y agoThis reminds me of a script I wrote about a decade ago to deal with phishing sites. My script generated first and last names, email addresses, passwords, and credit card numbers that actual passed checksum validation. It would submit these fake entries to a phishing form just as fast as the remote end would take them, polluting their database/inbox/whatever with thousands of bogus submissions. Besides wasting their time and resources, it also smokescreened any legitimate submissions that might have come through.
- aomix 10y agoI thought spamd passive aggressively insulting spammers and tarpitting their connections was a good effort at wasting their time. This is a big step up from that.
- robrenaud 10y agoThere is kind of a interesting Turing test scenario for AI here. Design an AI to maximize number of replies (or total text written) by the spammer. The internet is vast and full of spammers, you'll never run out of real humans providing responses to optimize your system.
- mmwako 10y agoI was just wondering: if every person did this with the spam they get (or maybe automatized by Gmail), spammers would be overflowed with bot answers to their spam emails, and would not be able to differentiate between a potential victim's response, and all the bot replys. This has the potential to actually SOLVE the problem of spam. Think this could work?
- styrophone 10y agoA lot of spam doesn't expect a response and only cares about link impressions.
- ndesaulniers 10y agoPlease adapt this for technical recruiters!