Today’s “how to” is a bit different from most. Spam is the bane of any email user. Sure, you can use filters, anti-spamming software and other “solutions,” but nothing completely frees you from the onslaught of spam and email scammers.
Luckily, there’s a new way to keep the spammers/scammers so busy, they won’t have as much time to scam you and your loved ones.
How To Use an Email Bot to Waste Email Scammers’ Time
When you get a scam email, forward it to “me@rescam.org.” this will activate a bot that New Zealand security company Netsafe has developed. The bot will keep the scammer busy emailing back and forth with it, thereby subtracting from the time the scammer would normally have to rob humans. (Netsafe Via BoingBoing)
Introducing Re:scam – an artificially intelligent email bot made to reply to scam emails. Re:scam wastes scammers time with a never-ending series of questions and anecdotes so that scammers have less time to pursue real people.
If you think you’ve received a scam email, forward it to me@rescam.org and we’ll take it from there. We’ll even send you a summary of the conversations Re:scam has had with the scammer – sometimes they can be quite funny!
Re:scam is an initiative aimed at helping people from becoming fraud victims by occupying the time and resources of scammers through deploying a well-educated artificially intelligent chat bot. Instead of junking or deleting a scam email, you can now forward it to Re:scam who will continue the conversation indefinitely – or until the scammer stops replying.
Re:scam can take on multiple personas, imitating real human tendencies with humour and grammatical errors, and can engage with infinite scammers at once, meaning it can continue an email conversation for as long as possible. Re:scam will turn the table on scammers by wasting their time, and ultimately damage the profits for scammers.
Netsafe says they do not include your email address or the original email content when they engage the scammer.
The New Zealand security firm notes that it could take anywhere from a few seconds to a few days for the bot to reply to the scammer each time, as the bot is designed to vary times between replies, so as to appear more human.
For more tips and tricks that can help you make better use of your Mac, iOS device, Apple Watch, or Apple TV, be sure to visit the “How To” section of our website.
