Scamming the scammers

Apate’s aim is to defeat global phone scams with conversational AI, taking advantage of systems already in place where telecommunications companies divert calls they can identify as coming from scammers.

Kafaar was inspired to turn the tables on telephone fraudsters after he played a “dad’s joke” on a scam caller in front of his two kids while they enjoyed a picnic in the sun. With inane chatter, he kept the scammer on the line. “The kids had a very good laugh,” he says. “And I was thinking the purpose was to deceive the scammer, to waste their time so they don’t talk to others.

“Scamming the scammers, if you like.”

So AI bots are wasting the scammer’s time, and (I like this bit particularly) they are learning what is most effective at doing that. Link (1,100 words): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/07/ai-chatbots-phone-scams.

Scammers are trying to make a “sale.” If you waste their time, they can’t be scamming someone else. My own experience is that a phone scammer usually asks for the expiration date on my credit card early in the conversation, so I just say, “Oh, the card’s in the other room, hold on a second.” Then I put the phone on the desk and go on with other stuff for ten minutes.

Some things to watch for:

• Scammers can use a fake Caller ID. The number that is displayed is not trustworthy.
• Government agencies don’t contact you via phone. I got a very realistic-sounding scammer pretending to need my Medicare number in order to send me a new card. She even knew the first two and last two letters/numbers… which in fact are the same for everyone, or something. (I told her I’d check with the Social Security website.)
• “Windows” doesn’t call you either. It’s a scam.
• If you think a caller is a scammer, don’t even pick up. That tells them that at least they found a real person, and you’ll get more calls. (Unless you want to chat and waste their time.) A real person will leave voicemail.
• Never use the word “Yes” with a phone scammer. Supposedly this can be recorded as proof that you agreed to sign up for something.
• Email: No real site will email you asking you to enter a password. Hover your mouse over the link. That will show you the actual link, which can be entirely different from the displayed link.

And just two of many good news items from Fix the News:

A ‘liberal, democratic, non-discriminatory, non-sectarian Bangladesh’
Following the ‘people’s victory‘ after student protests in July, the country’s new caretaker leader, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, has called for a ‘new Bangladesh‘, promising free, fair, and participatory elections and emphasising the role of citizens in deciding the government’s fate. It’s still early days—but if even half those promises are met, it will be a huge victory for democracy. Time

US cancer death rates have fallen by a third since 1999
A new CDC report has found that cancer death rates dropped from 200.7 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 142 per 100,000 in 2022. This equates to roughly three million additional Americans alive today due to reduced cancer death rates over the past two decades. The decrease is credited to advances in treatment, technological innovations, and lower smoking rates. Baltimore Sun