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Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

news.virginmediao2.co.uk

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Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#191

Post by carlosjobim »

xnx wrote: 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.

Even if it was 20c per call/e-mail, it would solve the spam problem overnight, while not interfering significantly with legitimate communication.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#192

Post by kmeisthax »

cedws wrote: 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.

Oh, believe me, Indians fucking hate the scammers, probably more than you do.

Jim Browning (the scambaiter who worked with O2 in this article) has successfully compromised several scam operations, gotten their physical address and other dox, and referred them to the police. The offices get raided, Jim gets some nice CCTV footage of the raid, the operators of the criminal enterprise get a nice perp walk... and then a month later the case is mysteriously dismissed with a bullshit reason about AI deepfakes and "IO" (influence operations, I presume).

The thing to keep in mind is that India's government is run by Modi, a Hindu ultranationalist who wants to deport all the country's Muslims to Pakistan[0]. There's a pretty straightforward pipeline from organized crime to fascism and I wouldn't be surprised if the scammers in question here are part of Modi's power base (or part of other organizations which are part of his power base).

The only thing I could think of to fix this would be to strategically suck people out of India through generous visas for migrants who want to live in a country with functioning[1] institutions. The thing about organized crime is that it relies on having a pool of suckers to continue joining the criminal enterprise - in other words, even the scammers are themselves being scammed. This is one of the less selfish reasons why I'm an open borders fanatic, but I also have to admit that such a policy in today's era has negative political capital.

[0] Which itself has money problems because it's budget gets siphoned off by their own military and they have to beg the IMF for scraps

[1] To be clear, India's institutions still exist, they're just mildly broken.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#194

Post by zahlman »

xnx wrote: 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.

How exactly do you propose to collect the money?

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#195

Post by D-Coder »

simfree wrote: post #31
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.

The new fad among wireless carriers here in the US is to route what they think are spam calls to a fake voicemail box. Voicemail that is left in this generic voice mail box never makes it to their customer and the customer is completely unaware that some of their calls have been diverted.

Sounds like a shadow-ban.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#197

Post by tokioyoyo »

swores wrote: post #58
tokioyoyo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And maybe like a temporary hold of the money, so you get it back if I’m convinced it’s not spam. Probably would resolve 99% of spam issues in the real world and create a chain of trust. Add some temporary disabling feature as well if you’re expecting a call from a random number too, so you’re set.

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.

Not approving all the time, just setting every call by default to $1. Everyone who knows you will call knowing they’ll get their money back. And you can do an easy “add everyone in your contacts to a whitelist”, boom done.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#198

Post by [deleted] »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #128
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get -no exaggeration- several hundred spam mails a day I've seen no legit spam e-mail in years, on my very old, very used, "forums and other logins I don't care about", 2005 gmail address. What provider are you using?

mac.com. I have an OG address that was registered about five minutes after Steve introduced the service. Network Solutions sold it to spammers, and the rest is history. Also, a couple other of my emails (and phone numbers) are associated with businesses, so are sort of public record (not really, but everyone finds out, anyway).

[deleted]

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#199

Post by xelxebar »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #182
bsdice wrote: post #135

The scam and spam call problem is really bad in Germany to this day. And has been for 10 years. A couple years ago I would sit at my desk thinking about a really hard problem in silence. The phone rings. Spam call. Every 30-180 minutes another one. If you now think turn the phone off, well not that easy as CEO of a business when people expect you to be reachable. It creamed my corn so much that I recorded my own voic…

> It creamed my corn so much Come again? Edit: I guess it is in urban dictionary, but my first thought was the last definition listed: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=creams%20my%...

Twin Peaks reference, perhaps? https://twinpeaks.fandom.com/wiki/Garmonbozia

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#200

Post by robust-cactus »

Another solution - drop numeric phone numbers all together and switch to alphanumeric or verified contact only. With numeric, sequential phone numbers you can just robocall all the numbers until you find a victim. Making the search space significantly larger should solve that attack vector. Of course, this will effectively be the same as transitioning from IPv4 to v6 - with all the same associated pain

It'll help with so many things: - in contact syncing systems you can't rainbow table your way to decrypting numbers - numbers can be permanently burned once they're released or deemed as spam. This means every service could ban spammers safely without fear of burning a real user. - people could more easily have alt numbers, non-voip numbers for untrusted services.

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