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Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

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Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#251

Post by pnut »

primitivesuave wrote: post #180
Pikamander2 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine India will gradually crack down on it more over time. The tech industry there is growing massive and they surely aren't happy about being associated with scammers.

They won't. The companies that operate these scam centers are diversified criminal enterprises run by ultra-wealthy and politically connected individuals. These people own the police, they own the politicians, and until fairly recently, they owned the voters through massive vote-buying schemes. You can get away with murder in India if you're wealthy enough (e.g. the case of Jessica Lal, murdered by a politician's son…

I just googled Jessica Lal and the Wikipedia article suggests that the rich murderer was convicted and sentenced to life in prison?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jessica_Lal

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#253

Post by ryandrake »

xnorswap wrote: post #239
ryandrake wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's themed as a "tax" levied by the NPCs and its value is destroyed rather than paid to the recipient of the message. It’s a cool idea and would work good for real world fines, too: fines that destroy the money paid instead of transfer it (to the city, the court, the police and so on). The fines would disincentivize bad behavior, while also not incentivizing the police to “go generate some crime” because it pays t…

Some argue that's how taxes work already. Taxation destroys money, government spending creates money. MMT (modern monetary theory) argues that taxation isn't about "funding", it's actually about controlling inflation. MMT is somewhat controversial.

Totally agree, but only if those taxes go to the entity that creates the money. From the federal government's point of view, who prints money, there is zero difference between collecting money and throwing it in a furnace. Both do the same thing. Money is just a piece of paper that says "the government owes you a debt of one buck". So if it is returned to them, they no longer owe it to you, and if it gets destroyed, the same thing is true.

But if those taxes go to the State of California, it's different. They don't print money, so it becomes a real debt to them. Destroying it in that case would cancel that debt and free the debtor (the Treasury) from that obligation.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#254

Post by ddtaylor »

e-khadem wrote: post #174
ddtaylor wrote: post #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 b…

> I would rather a world where scammers odds at making a living at this are so poor they won't bother Then what's stopping the scammers from finding another "evil" job that makes money? You have to remember that humans tend to not enjoy accomplishing thievery and the scammers most often do this out of necessity. Of course there are big call center operators who truly are terrible people, but this conclusion is true f…

> You have to remember that humans tend to not enjoy accomplishing thievery and the scammers most often do this out of necessity.

There are endless ways to earn an honest living. Nobody stealing from vulnerable people and the mentally degraded is forced to. I fully believe that people can survive without scamming seniors for a paycheck.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#255

Post by ddtaylor »

botanical76 wrote: post #206
e-khadem wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would rather a world where scammers odds at making a living at this are so poor they won't bother Then what's stopping the scammers from finding another "evil" job that makes money? You have to remember that humans tend to not enjoy accomplishing thievery and the scammers most often do this out of necessity. Of course there are big call center operators who truly are terrible people, but this conclusion is true f…

What is your suggestion? It seems like you could discourage any form of preventative action against immoral behaviour this way. There is _always_ something worse than the problem at hand.

It's a very common way of justifying poor behavior or criminal activity. It's basically "if they didn't sell the drugs someone else would" or "if they didnt steal someone else would" etc.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#256

Post by tim333 »

arrowsmith wrote: post #224
mcntsh wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow the HN crowd is younger than I thought. Voicemail

I’m old enough to remember voicemail and I’ve never seen it referred to as “VM”.

Not only is voicemail still a thing but just yesterday my iPhone took it upon itself to identify an incoming call as 'suspected spam' and route it to voicemail. I didn't tell it to do that so I guess it's part of some update Apple have pushed. I sometimes wish Apple would ask me first before that kind of thing! Although I probably would have ok'ed that one if they had asked.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#257

Post by Anamon »

worthless-trash wrote: post #217
ttul wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend works for a big telco and is the guy fixing this problem for them. They have amazing powers of deception when they need it. New numbers can be conjured up at any time.

I hate to say this.. but I find this very difficult to believe.. I don't think any telco puts effort into stopping spammers.. I'd like them to but I don't think it's something they either can care or legally capable of fixing.

I work for a telco, though not in that department. We put a lot of effort into trying to block spam calls, and adapting systems to the newest tricks. The reason why the results aren't better is (I'm being told) a combination between IP telephony making reliable source tracing all but impossible, and common carrier laws which mean that you can't block a call unless you're 100% certain it's a scam, otherwise you open yourself up to being sued.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#258

Post by red-iron-pine »

Szpadel wrote: post #121
lhamil64 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they catch on and un-blacklist the numbers periodically.

we all know the end game: ai scammer talking to ai granny

dead internet theory, telco edition.

presumably someone is still getting charged for calls and AI -- and therefore someone is making money -- in this situation though, non?

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#259

Post by red-iron-pine »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #231
akoboldfrying wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't "emailing you first" just kicking the can down the road? What stops spam emails getting through to you? (Besides the exact kind of heuristic filtering you seem to be objecting to, that is.)

Email spam filters have the advantage of being able to see the content of the message, so hopefully they're more accurate. The disadvantage of email is that it doesn't work for urgent use cases, like Disneyland calling the parent of a lost child.

Disneyland will have a handful of IPs and phone numbers, and I'd bet my hat will have a team aggressively calling any ISP or provider that flags them as spam.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#260

Post by red-iron-pine »

plagiarist wrote: post #156
swores wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a great solution to the minority of people like you and me who wouldn't mind the added steps of approving every real phone call as not spam after, having to remember how to set that you're expecting a call from a random number, etc. I can't see it being acceptable to enough people for any network to go down this road unless spam levels get way worse.

Reporting spam should be the other way around, it defaults to assuming a normal interaction. Consider: if you get harassed with a call or text you don't like, you send an SMS with that phone number to some known short code. You then receive $1 from the caller. If the caller cannot be found, the last verifiable link in the chain is responsible for paying the fine. This would cause carriers to behave overnight, instead…

couldnt they just automate ways to handle the code?

plus a lot of spam comes out of compromised phones, or compromised systems. what good is this if i have your phone, or just your SIM?

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