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Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

spa.mnesty.com

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Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

#3
post #2

From glancing over some conversations, it looks like the bot is mostly talking to other bots. That said, I think it’s nice to be able to reflect the same attack vector upon the attackers to make the attack less efficient and hopefully less attractive.

Many of the replies seem like they involved at least some human effort, although it would be nice to be sure--I wonder if there's some way to introduce some spammer-appropriate text captcha into the exchanges?

Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

#6
post #2

From glancing over some conversations, it looks like the bot is mostly talking to other bots. That said, I think it’s nice to be able to reflect the same attack vector upon the attackers to make the attack less efficient and hopefully less attractive.

> That said, I think it’s nice to be able to reflect the same attack vector upon the attackers to make the attack less efficient and hopefully less attractive.

If it's just bots replying - which honestly doesn't actually seem to be the case - I don't think it's going to make a big dent in their efficiency. It might backfire, though, and just cause more garbage traffic.

Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

#7

This is the email version of when Telemarketers call me and ask to "speak with someone in the house between the ages for x-y" to which I say, "sure just a sec", then put the phone down on the desk and walk away.

You're lucky that your spam calls come from a human. All I get is bots calling to tell me I've won a free cruise.

Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

#9
Well done. It does get the spammers frustrated. I remember reading about a similar thing[1] where instead of emails it was automated telephone replies and the scammers were cussing at the bots and generally super confused.

It did also manage to flood their phone lines making their call center useless for a while.

[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bj8wg4/we-talked-...

Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

#10
post #7

This is the email version of when Telemarketers call me and ask to "speak with someone in the house between the ages for x-y" to which I say, "sure just a sec", then put the phone down on the desk and walk away.

You're lucky that your spam calls come from a human. All I get is bots calling to tell me I've won a free cruise.

I've found that if I don't recognize the number, I answer the phone and don't say anything. If no voice comes over the line within 5-10 seconds, I hang up.
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