Email scammers targeted by new bot that inundates them with endless annoying questions

'Just like you, I mqke typos, and jokes that no one appreciates'

(Re:scam)

An artificially intelligent bot that inundates email scammers with a never-ending stream of questions has been created.

Re:scam is designed to waste the time of the people behind email scams, and annoy them until they give up.

It’s been developed by Netsafe, which says it’s time regular web users “fought back”.

At the time of writing, Re:scam has sent over 16,000 emails to scammers which, according to Netsafe’s calculations, have collectively wasted more than 25 days of scammers’ time.

“I adopt one of my many personalities to continue the conversations of any would-be victim,” the bot, which also describes itself as “super-interested” and “a bit naive”, says.

“I waste their time with a never-ending series of questions and anecdotes so that they have less time to pursue real people. Just like you, I mqke typos, and jokes that no one appreciates.

“They won't know when they're scamming, or getting scammed out of their own time. It’s bad for business.”

According to Netsafe, $12 billion is lost globally each year because of phishing scams.

The organisation is inviting anyone who thinks they’ve been targeted by a scam email to forward it to Re:scam, which will verify if it is a scam or not.

It will then use its own email address to target any scammers it manages to detect.

“Deleting a scam email protects you, but forwarding to me@rescam.org protects others,” says Re:scam. “It's also kinda funny.”