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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

#261

Post by red-iron-pine »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #250
Nition wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

aye. i have a business relationship with these people, let me know how to communicate with you ahead of time so I can whitelist or clear that.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#262

Post by IshKebab »

Scoundreller wrote: post #214
IshKebab wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... I still get SMS spam. I assume spammers just use other people's hacked phones.

You can get a sim for a few bucks and spam under the rate limit. You can buy jigs that hold hundreds of SIMs connected to a handful of cellular modems connected to a c&c and drip them out.

Right but it costs money to send SMSs. At least it used to. I dunno if they've given up charging for that now since nobody uses them. Tbf I haven't seen a phone contract without unlimited texts for at least a decade I guess.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#263

Post by filmor »

globalise83 wrote: post #163
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…

I have both a German mobile number and landline number, and have never once received a scam and spam call on either in the 8 years I have been living in Germany. I guess it is a problem of having a public contact number on a website.

Depends on the prpvider as well. Vodafone seems to have (had?) zero qualms about passing my old landline number to multiple shady call centers after taking over Unitymedia. The number was not known to anyone but my parents and I opted out of erverything I could find, still for some time got weekly calls. I haven't had that woth Telekom so far.

Spam calls (and even more so: SMS) have gotten much more frequent on my mobile number in the last 2 years. But in this case, it's a number that has been in active use for the last decade and has by now probably been in multiple data leaks... :/

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#265

Post by flir »

Follow-up idea, probably silly:

Robogranny Olympics. Allow people to submit their own bots, Micromouse/koth.org/Battlecode-style. Bots are run on random phone numbers for several weeks, and are ranked on average call length (total time/num calls). The robot that can keep spammers on the line the longest wins the prize.

A condition of submission is that the bot code and weights are published (not open sourced, just published). Competition is repeated yearly.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#266

Post by robust-cactus »

hannofcart wrote: post #245
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.

Fair, but you could throw away numbers more easily in this situation due to data breaches. You could also "update trusted parties" with a new improved scheme overall.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#267

Post by Baeocystin »

pnut wrote: post #251
primitivesuave wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I mean, in that very article it talks about how he was granted probation many times, and has already been released. Doesn't seem very lifey to me.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#269

Post by BlueTemplar »

EasyMark wrote: post #179
immibis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then suddenly, calls from consenting callers to consenting receivers are labeled as spam and blocked. What can you do about it? Nothing. Switch to email, I guess. Oh wait, same problem.

I’ll take my chances. 99%of the people I want to talk to either email/text me first or are already in my contacts list (which I’m not really all that picky about). I’ll accept that failure rate.

Even better : ignore unknown numbers, real unknown people can leave voicemail.

(Hopefully leaving voicemail keeps out of reach of spammers, I guess it's just too expensive for them ?)

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#270

Post by BlueTemplar »

another-dave wrote: post #246
tokioyoyo wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The plumber at least is presumably paid a lot more than $1 for doing that job, and they would most likely just pass the cost onto you ?
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