Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#41

Post by StavrosK » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #26

fiatjaf wrote: post #7

I have never understood what were the goals of these messages. People saying they have a fund of millions. Is everything arranged for me to send money to them? Simpĺe as that?

I half-fell for one of these once. I was a teaching assistant with my contact info posted on our department page, and a woman in Africa wrote seeking a tutor for her son who would allegedly be doing a summer program at my university to prepare for enrollment in the fall. It all seemed reasonable until she wanted to wire funds to my account. I told her to have her son pay me in person, and she never wrote again! This…

How does the scam work, if they're wiring funds to you?

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#42

Post by StavrosK » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29

NoGravitas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, they spammer is hoping to milk you for "fees" that they will say are necessary in order to free up/transfer the money that they have waiting for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner

My God. There really is nothing new under the Sun...

Were you trying to find innovation in scams? I imagine all these are at least thousands of years old :P

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#43

Post by lordnacho » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 1:58 PM UTC

This is not a bad idea. Perhaps if the major email providers had bots that did this sort of thing, spammers would be overwhelmed with responses, with the tiny proportion of real fish lost in the mix.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#44

Post by jasonkostempski » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 2:00 PM UTC

I'm guessing the emails this generates will become flagged as spam themselves. Do spammers use spam filters too or would that prevent them from getting replies?

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#45

Post by StavrosK » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

haylem wrote: post #40

I've said it in the other thread where you mentioned it the other day, and I'll say it again: this is an awesome service! And thanks so much for sharing the source on GitLab to reproduce it. Really great work!

Thank you!

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#46

Post by oelmekki » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

Ahah, this is fun :) But please someone, let google know this exists. I just had a forward refused by gmail because "it contains viruses", and I realize I've forwarded 5 spams before that. I would not want google to think I'm "actually" sending spams :D

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#47

Post by aedron » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 2:06 PM UTC

Very nice, and a great test bed for AI code. Lots of low hanging fruit, like follow-ups to specific branches of conversation, extracting certain information from the spammers replies to make the answers look more real, etc.

Someone should organize a competition to see who can create the longest running conversation (or the funniest one).

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#48

Post by notahacker » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #34

djhworld wrote: post #30

How is the bot tailoring the replies, for example > Hello, I have wired the funds you asked for. Could we please proceed to the next stage? Daniel Wong CEO, MNesty, LLC Is that a canned response? This happens later on in the thread (does it recognise that the topic of the conversation is "funds" rather than say "product")

It has various categories of replies, which right now you can specify when you forward a message (it sends you a management URL back). Later on, when I have enough data, I'll do some simple ML to have it pick a most likely category as a default. Each category comes with its own set of responses, but you can see where the category changed because the bot will start talking about a product and then switch to talking ab…

It'd be more effective if it didn't re-use responses later in the chain (unless it'd totally run out of alternatives). Although, arguably, it's funnier when the spammers/scammers do continue to find new ways to reply to the same couple of questions.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#49

Post by adrianN » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 2:11 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #28

joelthelion wrote: post #2

Really cool. Two remarks: 1) If lots of people start using this, spammers might learn to avoid wasting time with Mnesty's CEO. Having a few more fake companies would help. 2) The bot could probably be made a lot smarter with some natural language processing. But it seems to fill its purpose pretty well already. I think this just shows how desperate for leads spammers are.

I would also suggest giving the spammers more intense work to do. Like a pdf form for new suppliers that they have to download, fill out, sign, scan back in, and return. Or maybe submit to a form page with a horribly difficult captcha.

Submit a form page with an impossible captcha.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#50

Post by probably_wrong » Tue, Nov 22, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

michaelhoffman wrote: post #17

I had a friend who tried messing with spammers and then was hit with a massive DDOS.

Was your friend working for Blue Frog [1]?

I always thought it interesting that no one seriously tried to replicate a tool so good at its job that spammers were actually scared.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Frog