I read some of the conversations on the site; it’s quite interesting that the boys managed to have the same conversation over and over almost in the exact order.
Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time
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Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I have heard of these automated systems wait for a sound before it logs you as reachable for further annoyances.
If I do answer, I stay silent even muting my phone. Usually call just hangs up.
I get the cruise every few months, from a spoofed local numbers. As soon as I say hello, the automated recording went off.
I had a friend who liked playing around, and drafted fake PayPal confirmations and western union statements as proof he sent the scammers money. They were confused why they didn't have his funds asking him to triple check recipient info and resend, which he would send another fake confirmation.
They would eventually catch on cussing him out after weeks
Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time
#13This remembers me of rescam.org
Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time
#14From 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.
I think that's mostly because conversations in the home page are sorted by frecency right now. That naturally favors bots, because they respond more immediately.
Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time
#15I love the use of the subdomain and email sp@mnesty.com to hide the name from spammers. But won't human spammers eventually figure out what mnesty.com is and stop responding?
Sure, but the goal is to waste their time a bit, you can't fool them forever anyway.
Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time
#16From 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.
It is mostly - but there are some where its obvious the spammer gets frustrated: "I believe you must be a fool or an idiot to think am here to play games." - Spammer [1].
Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time
#17I have been using this site for about a month on every piece of spam that tells me to write back. But, I have not gotten any responses. How are they even making money if they don't respond to clearly interested potential customers?
Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time
#18I love the use of the subdomain and email sp@mnesty.com to hide the name from spammers. But won't human spammers eventually figure out what mnesty.com is and stop responding?
Sure, but the goal is to waste their time a bit, you can't fool them forever anyway.
True, but also being a bit more random where it's not trivial to filter the bot on the spammers side would make it just a little bit harder to ignore.
Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time
#19Well 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-...
Some magnificent genius has created the perfect bot for hooking predatory telemarketers. "Lenny" is a slightly confused elderly man with poor hearing. He wanders off topic, he isn't sure what you just said and he is absolute catnip for crooks. If you haven't heard a call to Lenny, you're in for an absolute treat. This call from a tech support scammer lasts an exhausting 31 minutes:
Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time
#20Add support for SMS and it’ll be perfect.