Chatbots have been a way to test steadily improving artificial intelligence for a while, probing it with questions to receive an incredibly human response. It turns out that this can be incredibly useful, as non-profit organisation Netsafe has launched its own Re:scam email bot to combat scammers.

While some people still, unfortunately, fall victim to the numerous scams roaming about the internet, some of the keen-eyed potential victims managed to turn the tables on their attackers by wasting the scammer’s time in conversation, never intending on giving up personal details. This is what is known as ‘scambaiting’, which has become rather popular.

The problem with this, is that the defending party is also having their time wasted, which is where Netsafe’s Re:scam comes in. The AI is designed to keep scammers busy, stringing them along into thinking they might eventually get the victim’s details. And the best thing about it, is that Re:scam won’t stop until the scammer does.

All the user needs to do is forward the suspicious email to me@rescam.org, which will begin a potentially lengthy conversation with the scammer, without even using the original email address. When the scammer finally stops replying, the user will receive a report of how the conversation went, so you can read in amusement, knowing that this person was too busy to bother anyone else.

Re:scam’s AI isn’t particularly sophisticated, utilising pre-programmed misdirects similar to previous attempts at automated scambaiting, but it does so in a much more efficient and personable way. Netsafe’s aim is to get so many people using Re:scam that scammers won’t have time to both real humans any more, potentially saving on the estimated $12 billion that the company predicts is spent on phising scams every year globally.

KitGuru Says: $12 billion is no small number, showing just how much of an issue scammers can be. Hopefully it’ll be a long while before the scammers make use of their own AI. Now that you can easily fight back, will you be making use of Re:scam?

Become a Patron!