Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/28/tech-support-scammer-talks-to.html
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Not the most impressive phone bot I’ve heard, in fact because she mostly says “uh huh” and “yes, go on” it should be a tell to him that she’s bot, particularly when he asks her the bluntly sexual questions.
“Are you listening me? You are not listening me.”
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I think they’re using the robot voices to try to save the human scammers a little time.
I’ve been getting the robot voices on voicemails with all kinds of scams (the “you owe the IRS money and we are going to put you in the jail” scam, and the “we suspend your Social Security number for suspicious activity” and the “we have detected virus on your computer and you must call us at Microsoft tech support” and so on).
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Doing gods work there.
Mooooooooom! Did you wash my leggings?
LOL
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Some sort of AI bot, even a rudimentary Eliza-style one, could be real fun to spring on the scammers.
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The best bot is the one showcased in the “Lenny” series, which can be found on YouTube.
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I love that this is a service one can subscribe to, but it’s way too much work for me given the number of these I get. It’s easier to just not answer them, and use NoMoRobo for robocalls.
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I wouldn’t call this a bot, its more of a recording to play to scammers.
I usually just keep them on the phone asking them questions and having them explain to me what they mean by mouse, and screen, and how to turn my computer on, eventually I tell them I don’t even have a computer but I try to waste as much time of their’s as i can, as long as i am not busy. Otherwise, if I am busy I just say “let me transfer you to my supervisor, one second”, and then I just say “johnson, head of fraud investigations how can i help you”. that usually ends the call pretty quickly.
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It’s not quite the same, but we have had a lot of calls wanting us to take part in a survey. Our reply - which isn’t something we thought up ourselves - goes something like this: “Hello, certainly, we are happy to participate in your survey, but this Is a consultancy business and we do bill for our time. How long is your survey likely to take? Ten minutes? I’m sorry, but it’s company policy that we cannot bill for less than an hour. We’re still happy to participate, but the charge will be £500. How will you be paying for that?” I’ve never had a survey call last longer than that. The other scam calls we get tell us that we have a virus on our computer. “Which one? We have seven! Tell us the IP address of the one with the problem. Okay, the MAC address if you can’t do the IP address. You don’t know what an IP address is? What kind of virus checker are you? No I can’t load anything onto these machines without quarantining it first…” etc.
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Lenny was the best. I’m surprised there isn’t some sort of app for doing that by now.
Ontario, with a Federal election coming and a provincial government in the PR tank, is ground zero for robo-surveys. I listen for the company name at the start, before hanging up, and I’ve never heard of some of them.
I suspect that some of them are from shadowy groups (aka the Conservative Party) trying to build a database of voters, rather than honest polling.
Also using texts:
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If they’re in her brother’s room, she sure as heck better wash 'em now!
Came here to mention lenny, so I guess Ill have to third.
This bot DOES do a great harried mom, but it’s script has some things lenny does a little better. Plus, lenny is more the target for your scammers, whereas harried mom will likely just hang up at some point.
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If you have the time and/or patience, it is SOOO much more fun to do this in person.
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