California man's business is frustrating telemarketing scammers with chatbots Every week there seems to be another cynical implementation of AI that devalues the human experience so it is with a breath of fresh air that we report on a bedroom venture that uses GPT-4 technology to frustrate telemarketers. "Fight back against annoying telemarketers and evil scammers!" the Jolly Roger Telephone Company …
However, I wonder how far we are off from the day when you can walk into someone's kitchen and overhear an argument going on between their "Talky toaster" and the fridge, with the vacuum cleaner piping in now and then complaining about all the bread crumbs on the floor.
"Do yoiu want toast?"
"Your cheese sandwich is about to expire in two days, six minutes and three seconds."
"Your floor is so dirty it needs a good suck, for a long long time, wouldn't that feel good? No more stupid breadcrumbs all over the floor!"
"Cheese toast, jam and cheese toasted sandwich, how about toast with a bit of oregano and olive oil?"
"Your have no jam left, should I place an order for jam? The jam flavour of the day is chocolate nuts."
"You no longer make me suck things anymore, I live to suck things for you! Remember the carpet? That was amazing! We were at it for almost two hours!"
"I rarely get cold calls"
Last one of those I had was at work and when asked by the lovely chap from the Indian Subcontinent if I had been injured in the accident that wasn't my fault, I said:
Me: "Yes it was awful I've never been in a fatal accident before at least not one where I died"
Sounding very interested: "So you were injured in the accident?"
Me: "Yes mortally wounded as it turned out, the funeral was lovely though"
Sounding very interested: "Can you describe your injuries?"
Me: "Yup Death by Decapitation and not the good kind*, not going to walk away from that"
Sounding extremely interested: "Have you spoken to a lawyer yet?"
Me: "No very few people talk to you when you're dead, I'm grateful for your call."
Sounding disinterested: "Are you saying you didn't survive the accident?"
At this point there is the sound of someone else joining the call.
Me: "Yes, and I wouldn't recommend cremation if I were you, bit hot!!!”
Line goes dead
Ole Juul on these very forums had a brilliant one for the your computer has a virus scammers.
I usually just tell them I'm not running Windows. Next question is "Mac?". "Nope - BSD", I say. Some ignore that because they don't know what it means and I tell them they're an idiot and that's the end of that conversation. Others say "oh" and hang up.
But one time as response to "your computer is sending out viruses" I said "yes?" and he repeated the statement several times until he finally heard me. "Yes, that's what I do for a living", I calmly said. "How may I help you?" He was silent for moment, then said "just a moment, I'll get my supervisor". The supervisor came on and repeated the accusation, and I explained to him that this is no surprise since "that's what I do for a living". I could literally hear the wheels spinning in his head for a moment, and he finally said "Oh, that's fine then." ... and hung up.
Back when I got them I sometimes tried to sell them a used car.
"Hello, I'm calling about underwear subscription..."
"About the car? It is a 1987 Volvo 745, runs ok, even if there is some smoke when you cold start it"
"Underwear, you can choose your..."
"As expected there is some rust, but with a bit of paint and some putty it should pass the annual inspection: just don't take any speed bumps too fast and you should be fine"
"We have all kinds to suit your preferences, such..."
"It does leak some oil, but less than a litre a day, at least when it is cold enough: I just keep a pan under the engine when I park it. "
The car progressively got worse and worse, with me admitting to strange noises, not all cylinders working, and some drastically uneven tyre wear, wobbly steering, electrics that would be the envy of Lucas, a gear box that worked best of you briefly shifted into reverse before going into 5th gear, brakes only working on the left side (but not all the time), duct tape holding the fuel tank up, etc.
The goal was to make them give up and hang up
"I wonder how far we are off from the day when you can walk into someone's kitchen and overhear an argument going on between their "Talky toaster" and the fridge"
The roots of this have existed for at least half a century. See RFC-439.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc439.html
A "hard science fiction" comic strip I once saw, where "true" AI is real...
("Legs" is our protagonist calling tech support.)
NARRATOR: Six hours later...
PATRICK: Sequur-Cam Tech Support, I'm Patrick O'Day. Ummm... how did you get this number?
LEGS (on comm): I waited on hold until you picked up.
PATRICK: That shouldn't have worked. There's an A.I. that intercepts long holds and redirects to the Hypernet site.
LEGS: Right. I also called a suicide hotline, and conferenced us all together. Your A.I. let me straight through.
PATRICK: Interesting.
LEGS: Yeah. Your call-center A.I. was right on the edge. Ready to pull her own plug. She's having a nice intervention right now.
"While no one can put a price on slamming the phone down on a call center worker"
If you can live without using the phone for 10 minutes or so don't do that; they'll just hit somebody else.
Ask the salesdroid to hand on a moment - there's somebody at the door, the children need something or whatever. Then lay the phone aside for a while, then hang up. Consider it a public service. Bonus points if you can get them to call back for a second dose. Double bonus if their supervisor calls to tell you there's something wrong with your phone line - yes, it really happened.
I had a one of their supervisors call me and ask why I was so nasty to their salesperson: apparently I had reduced a newbie to tears. I simply asked who had cold called whom, and why I was supposed to be the only one annoyed by an interaction that I did not choose to initiate?
But then I started thinking about the poor person who had to take a shitty, dead end job to make ends meet. So I started to just ask to talk to their manager, politely but firmly, and them asking them exactly what legal basis they had for calling just me about this particular service or item.
If you are UK based sign up to Telephone Preference Services.
Means people are not allowed to cold call you (though they still do) as legit marketeers* should check peoples preferences..
I always take as many details as I can of who is calling so I can put my report in later. In scenarios when original caller does a transfer to a "supervisor / manager" I then have fun casually mentioning the violation of TPS rules in contacting me.
* Are there legit ones? Who knows - never had a call from one.
"I try and remember that they are humans"
Assumes facts not in evidence. Post proof or retract.
"stuck in a dead-end job"
Trying to MAKE MONEY FAST without actually working. The more folks they annoy, the more money they earn. Lovely.
"trying to make a living to put food on their table."
So are your local drug dealers and burglars. Do you use the above defense for them, too?
This is absolutely the right view if the workers you're thinking of are the ones you call because you need them to do something. It's also at least a bit valid when they're doing something legitimate even though many will find them annoying. Pollsters, for example, may not thrill people, but they're trying to do something that doesn't harm you and the results of which you might use. However, most of the calls I receive are not from pollsters or anybody else doing a real job, nor even from the group of telemarketers who are doing nothing useful but at least it's legal. Most of those who call me automatically are entirely focused in either stealing money from me, stealing identifying data from me so they can sell it, or selling something fraudulently to me based on a complete willingness to lie about, for example, knowing who I am and having records about me.
That group is not stuck in a dead-end job, they are choosing to be criminals. That's not strictly true, because there are a few (not by any means a majority, though) which coerce people into doing it. I do not show any sympathy to those people, and I don't suggest you do either.
I believe some are gullible enough to believe that they're actually working for a company contracted by ${your bank} or ${government department} and that their job is to get callers primed to talk to someone actually from the organisation then transfer the call.
But wasting the time of the dangerously gullible who are working for fraudsters is just as worthwhile.
I once got a call asking for me by name, "Hello, am I speaking to Mt John Brown?" No, says I, you have the wrong number, my name is Steven Brown, goodbye.
10 mins later, "Hello, am I speaking to me Steven Brown?" LOL. They do listen and take notes. I've had more calls from supposedly different companies asking for "Steven Brown" since then too. Same company, or selling on "corrected" or "confirmed" data?
""While no one can put a price on slamming the phone down on a call center worker"
I can't remember when I last saw a phone capable of being slammed down in a way that the other party could hear it. Now all you can do is pretend by making a banging sound, possibly with the handset, and then pressing the button/tapping the screen to hang up afterwards. The person on the other end may have never seen that type of phone and not even know that the bang means you are annoyed and have hung up :-)
I think the quickest way for us to get rid of spammers - since bans and enforcement will never work - is simply to tie them up on every call. If it took 5+ minutes for each call their business model would collapse. This is a GREAT start but we need a way to scale it up (and make it free, I ain’t paying).
Another way would be to get everyone to never agree to anything that comes from an unsolicited phone call. No exceptions. Don't even listen to the proposal. That would also kill the business model quickly.
The nigh-unfeasible part of all these ideas, of course, is that we can't really get everyone to agree on doing anything. Or, well, technically we can, but it's called "bans and enforcement".
"if a small group does it enough, will cause enough problems to destroy the business model"
The problem is that it's the other way around. If even the tiniest group take up their offers, they will still make enough money to justify it. And that tiny group of suckers will always exist. So you probably need quite a large percentage of targets to tie up the callers' time in order to make it really unprofitable for them.
Those suckers are (seemingly) rare, enough that over the last few years more and more scammers are transitioning to trying to hijack or double-down on other scammer's victims. Offering to "help recover funds" or "the FBI are compensating victims of international fraud".
It still doesn't take many retirement funds to keep a call centre running, mind.
I think the quickest way for us to get rid of spammers … is simply to tie them up on every call.
A friend of mine was plagued by a very insistent cold caller wanting to sell him a conservatory. In the end he gave in and said they could come round to size up the job. The sales rep was exceedingly disappointed to find out that at the time he was living in a first(*) floor flat.
(*) Second for leftpondians.
"I think the quickest way for us to get rid of spammers … is simply to tie them up on every call.
A friend of mine was plagued by a very insistent cold caller wanting to sell him a conservatory. In the end he gave in and said they could come round to size up the job. The sales rep was exceedingly disappointed to find out that at the time he was living in a first(*) floor flat.
(*) Second for leftpondians."
I lived in a brick rowhouse (terrace for rightpondians) and got daily calls for aluminum cladding. I kept telling them it was not feasible, take my name off the list. Finally, I caved and told ALL the callers to come out for an estimate, but gave them all the same time and date. Cue three very grumpy salesmen showing up, with me saying, "I've only wasted your time once, my time has been wasted for several weeks of your brainless cold callers not taking my number off the list. I will KEEP MAKING APPOINTMENTS and having you all burn gas and time until your firm gets the message". Only took once.
"Every week there seems to be another cynical implementation of AI that devalues the human experience..."
There is? I must have missed those. Most of them seem to range from mildly useful as long as you don't rely on it to pointless but insignificant. I haven't come across any important enough label as devaluing yet.
I do like this wheeze with the cold calling scammers, though - excellent application of the tech! Short of giving them a good seeing to with a big stick, it's a perfect comeuppance for them. Just he very sure it's a scammer you're using it against; I recently saw one if my clients answer his phone, listen for a few seconds, then fire off an irate broadside of naughty words that are quite out of character for him and hang up. It turned out to be his doctor.
The doctor probably needs to think about what he says when someone answer the phone. I get calls that are obvious recordings that start with, "this is a call from your utility company." My utility company starts with "This is <name of company>." Therefore, the former start is clearly spam.
How long until someone hacks Android to add another option when a call is received other than "answer call" and "ignore call". The new "harass caller" button would answer the phone normally but it would connect the caller to a chatbot instead of the phone's microphone/speaker. Good luck "catching on" to that any faster than they could catch on to a person baiting them in the same way!
The only problem is that the most annoying calls - political calls - are all robocalls so having a chatbot wouldn't annoy a real person. Worse, it might make them think I was interested in what they were saying since it wouldn't see me hang up right away like I do now.
"since it wouldn't see me hang up right away like I do now."
True, but if the political robocaller is kept on the line spouting the spiel, and lots of people do it, it significantly cuts into the number of calls they can make if every call lasts the full length. Depending on how "clever" the software operating the robocaller is, they may well mark every "completed" call as being a likely voter since "you" listened to the whole spiel :-) So, reduced number of people harassed and poisoned database. Win, win.
These days on my landline I use a answerphone and do not pick up unless I can identify the caller, I do not pick up 'Anon' callers. If they leave a message and I am interested I may reply if they dont then it was unimportant. These days they often use systems where they can call out but it does not work for replying (that is often used on mobile calls) so why would I be interested in their call? They could send a text, but this rarely happens. Further, replying to a text can be a trap ,,,,
Your phone company can block anonymous calls from ever reaching your line. Of course they charge money for this service, but I can honestly say it is worth every penny. And it will force "legitimate" callers to call from a line that identifies itself -- if your line never even enters the "ringing" state, it is they who have failed in their duty to attempt to contact you, as opposed to you declining to speak to them.
Indeed, same number concealed approach for local hospital (& have old, ill relatives who frequently are in there) so cannot ignore calls without caller id (as medical services don't leave useful messages for patient privacy reasons as multiple occupancy dwelling with shared phone & if hospital they generally call next NOK number if they fail to get a reply, but if they do leave a message it's generally uninformative for same privacy reasons). As it can take not far short of eternity to "get through" to GP or hospital by phone, then anon calls unfortunately need to be answered in case its important health stuff.
My favourite way of dealing with unsolicited calls is to state that my name is DCI Baffle, Murder Squad™, then proceed to tell them that they've just called a phone which is present at an active crime scene that's being investigated so they should start explaining how they came to know the poor soul who's lying cold on the floor - and if they hang up I'll just have Despatch reverse trace the call so they had better start singing like a canary. You can almost hear the bowell movements begin.
My favoured response, once they've finished their preamble, is to simply say "What are you wearing?".
The first time I tried this, in a sad indictment of the state of our society, the lady on the other end clearly knew exactly where I was going with that and immediately hung up.
The second time, the lady with the VERY nice voice said "what do you mean?", to which I had to reply, in the creepiest voice I could manage, "what sort of CLOTHES have you got on?". She caught on, and hung up.
The third time, the question came back "Why do you need to know what I'm wearing?", so I replied "How am I supposed to masturbate to the sound of your voice if I can't picture you while I'm doing it?". Well, Register readers, he did NOT like that. He swore at my quite a bit, then hung up.
Not a method that works if you're a lady, I think, but I recommend it to all blokes - scam calls seemed to dry up almost completely after the third one. I must be on a list. Perhaps a register.
This post has been deleted by its author
Fortunately, the UK Government has come to our aid and has published a handy list of words that you can use, tailored to the ethnic origin of the caller, whether British or foreign.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/225336/offensive-language-summary-report.pdf
Things I did reply before I got so fed up with unsolicited phone calls that I put a white-list on my phone where all non explicitly vetted numbers are automatically rejected:
* When asking for my name: just a moment, then shout out loud my name as for "come here and pick the phone", and leave it alone or who are you asking for? you've got the wrong number
* When asking for my dead father (who died 9 years ago but is still present in many spam databases): either don't you even respect the dead or just a moment until i set up an ouija session
* When trying to sell me an ISP subscription: about time! I've been without Internet for a week and still not heard a word from you! and don't dare interrupt the call until you fix my problem or give me an answer! (obviously, I am not their client)
* When trying to sell me an utility contract: sorry, I work for ${other_provider} and have free/discounted fare
* When trying to offer me coupons for $whatever: ok, send them to 123 Fake St.
* When in a particularly bad mood or busy: answer in a foreign language (however, it once backfired)
What my mother does is making them repeat everything ad eternum pretending with an astonishingly convincing old lady voice she doesn't hear well until they give up. She does hear well and is not that old
Although the foreign language can backfire, if you're good enough at languages, you can probably create gibberish that sounds kind of like a language you speak. Doing one that's similar to one you know means you are probably better at preventing repetitions. I have found it effective at getting them to hang up but it isn't very good at making it take a long time.
'Chris' is a bot: it does speech recognition, looks for pauses in your voice and then selects a phrase to play from a dictionary. It's designed to make you agree to having an appointment, and then it says that somebody will ring back to confirm a time. Once they've got you to agree, a human will ring back. It's actually quite a smart way to screen for victims (from the scammer's perspective, anyway).
After many many calls from a firm asking about the accident I never had (once 3 times in the same day) I asked to be removed from their list, when they called again a said "I hope you get cancer and your children die in a fire" For some reason they never called me again... was it something I said??
This is cool, but there is also a $0 solution for cheap people (like me). Almost all these people use auto dialers so what you do is record the "this number is disconnected" tone as the beginning of your outgoing message. This causes the vast majority of autodialers to mark your number as a bad number and never call you again
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