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Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

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Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#241

Post by dizhn »

Toutouxc wrote: post #230
mcntsh wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow the HN crowd is younger than I thought. Voicemail

Dunno about the US, but where I live (Czechia, in Europe), voicemail is simply not a thing. I've never used it in my life and I don't know anyone who's ever used it, young or old.

We have it here for mobile but by default providers set it to "call waiting" instead. One of the reasons people don't use voicemail (other than not knowing it exists) is they charge you money to leave a message. Your plan minutes don't count. They probably charge you to listen to messages too.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#242

Post by robertlagrant »

optimalsolver wrote: post #166
brap wrote: post #89

This reminds me of “shadow banning” - instead of letting the misbehaving user know they’ve been banned, and let them find a way around it, you make them believe they’re not banned and let them waste their time interacting with the system (without actually interacting with others), this makes them spend less time on actual misuse and it makes the penalty for it more expensive. Good strategy. Cruel too. So I don’t thin…

The next step up is "heaven banning": https://x.com/nearcyan/status/1532076277947330561

You're completely right! Genius comment.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#243

Post by latexr »

optimalsolver wrote: post #166
brap wrote: post #89

This reminds me of “shadow banning” - instead of letting the misbehaving user know they’ve been banned, and let them find a way around it, you make them believe they’re not banned and let them waste their time interacting with the system (without actually interacting with others), this makes them spend less time on actual misuse and it makes the penalty for it more expensive. Good strategy. Cruel too. So I don’t thin…

The next step up is "heaven banning": https://x.com/nearcyan/status/1532076277947330561

That makes no sense. Why would you spend more money and electricity to keep trolls around longer?

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#244

Post by eskathos »

alphan0n wrote: post #129
gorkish wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always ask the robocalls to say something specific. It finally worked the other day! A robot repeated "chrysanthemum" back to me when asked. Sadly it seemed to be limited to this one single trick; as I continued my attempts to exploit it, it abruptly apologized and ended the call. Cute, but one day I am going to get lucky and a scammer is going to get absolutely wrecked.

Chrysanthemum is also my go to. That or “You’re in a desert. You’re walking along in the sand when all of a sudden.. you look down and see a tortoise..”

"Tortoise? What's that?"

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#245

Post by hannofcart »

robust-cactus wrote: post #200

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 wit…

I don't think the scammers are using sequential iteration over numbers. I suppose it's more efficient to just call numbers exposed in a data breach.

Your suggestion won't help circumvent that. I think.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#246

Post by another-dave »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #197
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.

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.

It'd work well for both ends of the spectrum (spam callers & friends) but think would kinda fall down in the middle though — kids' school, doctor's office, plumber coming to service your boiler.

Where you are expecting a call and it's definitely not spam, but they're not going to be ringing from a pre-approved whitelist. Don't think they'd want to be putting $1 per call on the line and hoping for people to remember to click the right button afterwards

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#247

Post by brap »

latexr wrote: post #243
optimalsolver wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next step up is "heaven banning": https://x.com/nearcyan/status/1532076277947330561

That makes no sense. Why would you spend more money and electricity to keep trolls around longer?

The longer they spend in heaven, the less they spend trolling. I’m not saying it’s worth the cost, but it’s something to consider.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#249

Post by optimalsolver »

latexr wrote: post #243
optimalsolver wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next step up is "heaven banning": https://x.com/nearcyan/status/1532076277947330561

That makes no sense. Why would you spend more money and electricity to keep trolls around longer?

It keeps the engagement metrics up without poisoning the discourse.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#250

Post by GoblinSlayer »

Nition wrote: post #54
guidoism wrote: post #51

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.

Here they do already use watsapp, viber etc for communication, maybe because they are cheaper.

>Every contractor (plumber etc) you hire will ask you to please add them to your contact list first so that they can message you.

This is reasonable. If they want to reach me, they should whitelist in advance instead of hoping they can randomly get through.

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