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Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

news.virginmediao2.co.uk

61–70 of 277 posts

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#61
post #33
post #23

Seems like the logical endpoint of a lot of this is people getting paid directly for their attention. Want to call me? I've set a price of $5/call that I answer, and an additional $10/minute of listen time after the first 10 seconds. Want to send me an email? $1/email and $5/100 words. Anyone I have emailed is automatically on my allow-list, which I can also adjust manually.

I think you have just described LinkedIn's business model, minus the fact that you don't get the money but the filter provider does.

Yes. There are all kind or brokers selling the attention of their audiences: Google, TV Networks, podcasts, LinkedIn, etc. I'd like to see another attempt at disintermediation in the space.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#62
post #23

Seems like the logical endpoint of a lot of this is people getting paid directly for their attention. Want to call me? I've set a price of $5/call that I answer, and an additional $10/minute of listen time after the first 10 seconds. Want to send me an email? $1/email and $5/100 words. Anyone I have emailed is automatically on my allow-list, which I can also adjust manually.

Satoshi Nakamoto's first visionfor Bitcoin was just this - pay-to-send email.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#64
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's similar to the idea I had for combating texting spam: - If your number is in my address book then texts are free for you - If this is the first time you are contacting me then you pay me $1 There are probably downsides and ways this will screw up real relationships but it will certainly increase the cost of spam.

One issue I can forsee: - Every contractor (plumber etc) you hire will ask you to please add them to your contact list first so that they can message you. - After a while of half their clients not doing that and lots of fees on their end, contractors stop providing a phone number at all, asking you to please install ContractorApp to communicate with them.

I love every part of this. Not having things in writing is one of the most common tactics with bad contractors. And I miss their call backs because I have unknowns goto spam, so I have to remember to disable that feature...

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#65
post #52
post #23

Seems like the logical endpoint of a lot of this is people getting paid directly for their attention. Want to call me? I've set a price of $5/call that I answer, and an additional $10/minute of listen time after the first 10 seconds. Want to send me an email? $1/email and $5/100 words. Anyone I have emailed is automatically on my allow-list, which I can also adjust manually.

If you have already sorted the world between people you want to take calls from and people you don't, why wouldn't you just block the people you don't want instead of charging them money?

My attention is valuable. I should be able to sell it on my terms.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#66
I love that they are weaponizing the perceived kindness of senior citizens in this way. Many of the victims of scams are some of the nicest people ever that were taken advantage of in some capacity - usually while trying to help someone. It's the digital age equivalent of staging a broken down cart and then robbing some old folks. I think most of us hate the idea of the "solution" being to not go near anyone with a broken down cart out of fear.

I'm not saying this fixes everything, but I would rather a world where scammers odds at making a living at this are so poor they won't bother versus a world where everyone has to block every number by default and live in metaphorical bunkers to never interact because you might be a scammer.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#67
post #35

Very nice to see, my grandmother was recently scammed out of a large amount of money. Luckily the bank reimbursed her. Scammers are a stain on the reputation of India. You could argue it's unfair to tar an entire country with the same brush, but quite clearly rule of law isn't properly functioning over there and there's complicity in letting them do this. Same goes for Nigeria.

[deleted]

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#68
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's similar to the idea I had for combating texting spam: - If your number is in my address book then texts are free for you - If this is the first time you are contacting me then you pay me $1 There are probably downsides and ways this will screw up real relationships but it will certainly increase the cost of spam.

One issue I can forsee: - Every contractor (plumber etc) you hire will ask you to please add them to your contact list first so that they can message you. - After a while of half their clients not doing that and lots of fees on their end, contractors stop providing a phone number at all, asking you to please install ContractorApp to communicate with them.

Maybe when you first receive a text you see:

This message is from an unknown number. (Accept / Block / Charge sender $1)

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#69
post #13

This is cool when some independent hacker / artist does it as "Lemmy". When a big telecom does it, the second thing they do with it is to fuck up the spam detection so bad that every third phone call I make gets answered by "Daisy". And just think about it - why would a telecom need this tech? They can already drop the spam calls and stop routing calls from the bad actor telecoms who enable the spammers. They don't d…

They're not intercepting calls over their network from suspected bad actors; rather, they've created some phone numbers that always go to Daisy - see https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/11/virgin-media-o...

Ah, so it's a honeypot.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#70
post #60

Great PR move, but surely better to invest in more basic security measures supported by their app (chain of trust, verified callers/messaging etc). Instead their app is primarily a react native sales tool. Part of the reason that o2 was so affected by scammers calling from south Asian call centres with “the latest offers” was because they used to do exactly this with their customers.

To be clear while I don't enjoy the idea of receiving low-effort sales calls, I do think that real scammers are different. Real scammers don't have a business, aren't willing to go to court, etc.
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