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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

#31

Post by simfree »

ttul wrote: post #26
axus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah! So step 2 is wait for the spammers to automate blacklisting of Daisy phone numbers, and only then start rolling out a (paid) Daisy option to customers. Not connecting calls doesn't waste spammer money, but maybe Daisy does. If the big telco can find 10 righteous callers from a a bad actor telecom, they should keep routing the calls.

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.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#32

Post by neilalexander »

ttul wrote: post #26
axus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah! So step 2 is wait for the spammers to automate blacklisting of Daisy phone numbers, and only then start rolling out a (paid) Daisy option to customers. Not connecting calls doesn't waste spammer money, but maybe Daisy does. If the big telco can find 10 righteous callers from a a bad actor telecom, they should keep routing the calls.

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.

Better yet, route all calls for all disconnected/unassigned numbers in their part of the numbering plan to it. It would probably kill robocalling overnight.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#33

Post by wzsddtc »

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.

I think you have just described LinkedIn's business model, minus the fact that you don't get the money but the filter provider does.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#34

Post by morkalork »

watusername wrote: post #29

If you use a VoIP service like Twilio and voip.ms, you can set up a very simple IVR menu that just asks unknown callers to press 1 to be connected to you. No AI involved. For me, this has been surprisingly effective against robocalls. Obviously this isn’t going to work against scammers who call directly, but most of the spam calls I receive start with some pre-recorded message which isn’t going to pass the menu. Edit…

If they ever get clever enough to automate the menu selection, it would be funny to have an infinitely deep IVR sort of like the tar pits people build on websites to trap web crawlers.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#35

Post by cedws »

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.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#36

Post by tokioyoyo »

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.

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.

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#37

Post by jollyllama »

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.

Wow. There should be a way to opt out of this, at least. Isn't this a violation of common carrier laws?

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#38

Post by wepple »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #20

I'm imagining this is just a publicity stunt, and I'll say it's a very good one. However I can't see it being very practical. There are lots of scam calls to keep up with and LLMs and text-to-speech models are expensive to run. If they do run this in production, the costs of running hundreds of 'Daisies' will inevitably be passed onto the consumer, and worse still, if the scammers are calling in through PSTN lines or…

Every type of defensive tech is nothing more than driving up the cost of attack.

Doubling the dwell time for a scammer will halve their profits. That could have interesting second-order effects. Perhaps it makes it not worth it for some subset?

Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

#39

Post by immibis »

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.

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.
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