4 ms·

Is there an endlessh for spam calls? Let an ai just sit there and drive them slowly insane so they have less time to defraud other people?

by edrxty 3y ago

SlightlyLeftPad 3y ago
What I actually started doing is setting my voicemail greeting to a fax machine tone. In Google voice you can also put spammers into a penalty box, so only they get the fax machine. This stopped a lot of my spam calls.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  I used to have my answering machine start with a "1" dial tone, which made all the bots connect real people to talk to my regular greeting, and real callers weren't too bothered by it. Nowadays it's harder to use something that doesn't also trick real callers.
  - supertrope 3y ago
    There is overlap between the smartest robocall software and dumbest humans. To be charitable people are not expecting an instruction of "We are screening incoming calls. To ring through press 1." and often react by hanging up thinking they dialed the wrong number. And calling again.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      Yeah, even something that doesn't trick the real callers will at least be annoying. Some things just say "call again to be connected," but robo-callers seem to have caught on.
mtlynch 3y ago
There's a very simple version of this where a recording of a confused but very polite and cooperative elderly man answers the phone and speaks when the other person pauses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_(bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_(bot) https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3b7na/the-story-of-lenny-the-internets-favorite-telemarketing-troll https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3b7na/the-story-of-lenny-th... https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ Some of the recordings are pretty fun. Some scammers stay on the phone with him for almost an hour.
- edrxty 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWrkDOt_IfM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWrkDOt_IfM I found a recording of Lenny at work, this is absolutely brilliant. No ai, just responds in a loop and is extremely well engineered to infuriate the scammers.
hot_gril 3y ago
Yes but the hard part is knowing who to send to it. Currently, services for this use a honeypot to gather spammers' numbers; not sure how that works given that they spoof it anyway. Also any off-phone service relies on setting up forwarding from some voip number, which is never quite the same as a real one.
supertrope 3y ago
I used to intentionally answer robocalls, press 1, and try to transfer then to Lenny. A lot of spam center callers would hang up as soon as I said I was transferring them. One of the spammers I managed to connect to Lenny asked their coworker what was going on and the coworker recognized the Lenny script. I roped in another spammer for several minutes while they tried to sell to Lemmy.

Is there an endlessh for spam calls? Let an ai just sit there and drive them slowly insane so they have less time to defraud other people?

by edrxty 3y ago

Is there an endlessh for spam calls? Let an ai just sit there and drive them slowly insane so they have less time to defraud other people?

SlightlyLeftPad 3y ago

What I actually started doing is setting my voicemail greeting to a fax machine tone. In Google voice you can also put spammers into a penalty box, so only they get the fax machine. This stopped a lot of my spam calls.

hot_gril 3y ago
I used to have my answering machine start with a "1" dial tone, which made all the bots connect real people to talk to my regular greeting, and real callers weren't too bothered by it. Nowadays it's harder to use something that doesn't also trick real callers.
- supertrope 3y ago
  There is overlap between the smartest robocall software and dumbest humans. To be charitable people are not expecting an instruction of "We are screening incoming calls. To ring through press 1." and often react by hanging up thinking they dialed the wrong number. And calling again.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Yeah, even something that doesn't trick the real callers will at least be annoying. Some things just say "call again to be connected," but robo-callers seem to have caught on.

mtlynch 3y ago

There's a very simple version of this where a recording of a confused but very polite and cooperative elderly man answers the phone and speaks when the other person pauses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_(bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_(bot) https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3b7na/the-story-of-lenny-the-internets-favorite-telemarketing-troll https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3b7na/the-story-of-lenny-th... https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/ Some of the recordings are pretty fun. Some scammers stay on the phone with him for almost an hour.

edrxty 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWrkDOt_IfM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWrkDOt_IfM I found a recording of Lenny at work, this is absolutely brilliant. No ai, just responds in a loop and is extremely well engineered to infuriate the scammers.

hot_gril 3y ago

Yes but the hard part is knowing who to send to it. Currently, services for this use a honeypot to gather spammers' numbers; not sure how that works given that they spoof it anyway. Also any off-phone service relies on setting up forwarding from some voip number, which is never quite the same as a real one.

supertrope 3y ago

I used to intentionally answer robocalls, press 1, and try to transfer then to Lenny. A lot of spam center callers would hang up as soon as I said I was transferring them. One of the spammers I managed to connect to Lenny asked their coworker what was going on and the coworker recognized the Lenny script. I roped in another spammer for several minutes while they tried to sell to Lemmy.