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Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

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Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#61

Post by jessaustin »

StavrosK wrote: post #41
Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Don't know where GP is, but in USA you can forge a check with bank and account numbers. Of course the check must still be cashed, but perhaps a string of deposits and new checks on different accounts would make this take long enough to get actual cash...

The stereotypical 419 scam, however, has some "plausible" reason why the main transfer has to wait on a smaller transfer in the other direction.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#62

Post by StavrosK »

oelmekki wrote: post #55
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 love the randomness :) Just followed this one : https://spa.mnesty.com/conversations/rqtunkps/ > - we want to give you $10,500,000.00 !!! > - thanks, but it's out of our budget. Can you make an effort? I can only imagine the spammer reaction :D "Wait... wat?"

Wait, how did you follow that one? Isn't it unlisted?

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#63

Post by chriswarbo »

fiatjaf wrote: post #15

What happened to hashcash proposals to email protocols?

The problem with hashcash for email is that there's no way for the sender and receiver to negotiate the amount of work to be proved, so they must correctly guess how much to perform/require. The most sensible requirement to guess is zero, since all existing email is sent without any proof of work, and the value of interoperability is higher than blocking spam. After all, if you're willing to lose interoperability, you can block 100% of spam by just not using email at all!

Note that it may be possible to have servers negotiate an amount of work to perform, but having someone else (the server) perform the work defeats the point of the system. The client must be told to do the work, but it's a core feature of email that it's not realtime: messages can be composed offline, and queued up by servers, so by the time a "needs more work" response is received, there's no way for the server to send a message back to the client.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#64

Post by conjectures »

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.

IFL this. Someone please make this happen.

'[country] rules mean we need you fill out the attached pdf. Please complete and upload to [... IP logging website]'

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#65

Post by conjectures »

jpalomaki wrote: post #19
hga wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the goals is to find someone who'll fall for such a scheme. If it was more plausible, they'd waste time on someone who'd end up not pulling the trigger when they realized it was too likely to be a scam.

Once spammers start using bots to carry conversation, this might change. If bots can handle part of the communication, it probably makes sense to start planning more subtle scams.

I'd assume they are already.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#66

Post by brightball »

I love this. I've actually presented on the concept before - more so about ensuring that people targeting your user base have to waste a lot of time without realizing it by doing things like shadow bans weeks before actually "detecting and cancelling their account" but this is a perfect example of the concept.

Everything, even spam, is based on ROI.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#67

Post by StavrosK »

oelmekki wrote: post #46

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

Google refused because the forward contained viruses? Hmm, maybe if you strip the link?

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#68

Post by michael_h »

StavrosK wrote: post #41
Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Usually, you have to wire the fees in advance of the 'payout'. Spend a couple thousand to receive your millions.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#69

Post by zhte415 »

nkrisc wrote: post #52
StavrosK wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It even managed to get a discount!

Can I have this bot negotiate everything for me?

If it is a single-issue negotiation (i.e. know your own bottom line and there is no BATNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat... other than this one choice), therefore you're not afraid to lose (i.e. there are lots of potential suitors), then bargain like a maniac. The only thing they have to hold you by is a time-limited offer, but by doing this they've revealed part of their own non-bottom line (i.e. fear of losing is part of their BATNA), so explore this.

Have recommended before and recommend again the book 'Getting to Yes', and Harvard's very open research and sharing in this area: http://www.pon.harvard.edu/

Getting too serious? Not at all. Harvard's role-plays that can be purchased very cheaply ($1-3 per copy) are great teamwork activities.

They tend to focus on numerical amounts denominated in dollars, but these financial numbers can be easily substituted for time, number of people, anything that's a number. Practicing new concepts with things you're immediately familiar with tends to lead to remembered solutions. Instead save the comparison and application to the postmortem.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#70

Post by bkmartin »

StavrosK wrote: post #41
Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

I think that once they get all your bank info they will do a withdraw from your account? That is the only thing that makes sense to me.
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