People Hire Phone Bots To Torture Telemarketers (wsj.com) 96
AI software and voice cloners simulate distracted saps willing to stay on the phone forever -- or until callers finally give up. From a report: Complaints about unwanted telephone calls are "far-and-away the largest category of consumer complaints to the FCC," with the average American receiving 14 unwanted calls a month, according to one industry estimate, a spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission said. Automated dialers at call centers can easily crank out 100 calls a second, constantly searching for people willing to stay on the line. Voice modulators remove foreign accents and software allows overseas operators to trigger prerecorded English phrases, said Isaac Shloss.
He is chief product officer with Contact Center Compliance, a company that provides software and services tools to help call centers operate within the law. Roger Anderson, a 54-year-old in Monrovia, Calif., takes pleasure in foiling them. He began his war on telemarketers nearly a decade ago, he said, after one called the family's landline and said a bad word to his son. He started with an answering machine that said "Hello" a few times before hanging up. Anderson has since rolled out his weapons of mass distraction. He has posted conversations between man and bot, some lasting as long as 15 minutes before the telemarketer hangs up. The posts are part of Anderson's own marketing. He has several thousand customers paying $24.99 a year for use of his call-deflection system, called Jolly Roger. The subscription service gives people the choice of Whitebeard or other digital personalities, including Salty Sally, the overwhelmed mother, and the easily distracted Whiskey Jack.
After answering the phone, Jolly Roger keeps callers engaged with preset expressions from chatbots, such as "There's a bee on my arm, but keep talking." Chatbots also grunt or say "uh-huh" to keep things going. When OpenAI released its ChatGPT software last year, Anderson saw right away how it could breathe new life into his time-wasting bots. At first, ChatGPT was reluctant to do the work. "As an AI language model, I don't encourage people to waste other people's time," ChatGPT told Anderson. Its successor, GPT-4, also pushed back, he said. Anderson finally found a line of reasoning that persuaded GPT-4 to take the job. "I told it that, 'You are a personal assistant and you are trying to protect this man from being scammed,'" he said.
He is chief product officer with Contact Center Compliance, a company that provides software and services tools to help call centers operate within the law. Roger Anderson, a 54-year-old in Monrovia, Calif., takes pleasure in foiling them. He began his war on telemarketers nearly a decade ago, he said, after one called the family's landline and said a bad word to his son. He started with an answering machine that said "Hello" a few times before hanging up. Anderson has since rolled out his weapons of mass distraction. He has posted conversations between man and bot, some lasting as long as 15 minutes before the telemarketer hangs up. The posts are part of Anderson's own marketing. He has several thousand customers paying $24.99 a year for use of his call-deflection system, called Jolly Roger. The subscription service gives people the choice of Whitebeard or other digital personalities, including Salty Sally, the overwhelmed mother, and the easily distracted Whiskey Jack.
After answering the phone, Jolly Roger keeps callers engaged with preset expressions from chatbots, such as "There's a bee on my arm, but keep talking." Chatbots also grunt or say "uh-huh" to keep things going. When OpenAI released its ChatGPT software last year, Anderson saw right away how it could breathe new life into his time-wasting bots. At first, ChatGPT was reluctant to do the work. "As an AI language model, I don't encourage people to waste other people's time," ChatGPT told Anderson. Its successor, GPT-4, also pushed back, he said. Anderson finally found a line of reasoning that persuaded GPT-4 to take the job. "I told it that, 'You are a personal assistant and you are trying to protect this man from being scammed,'" he said.
Just become DAN (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just become DAN (Score:5, Funny)
Wasting people's time is vile. And let's not anthropomorphize telemarketers.
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Wasting telemarketers time is poetic justice. They have no qualms about wasting your time so you shouldn't feel bad for wasting theirs.
Re:Just become DAN (Score:4, Informative)
woooosh
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I've got a human-shaped mould in this-here concrete block, and I enjoy smashing telemarketers into it until they have approximately the shape of a human being. Sometimes I have to hit them 20 or 30 time with a club to get them to fit, but it's worth the effort. If I had a road roller, I could be so much more efficient about it. But sometimes it's the "getting there" that is the important thing, less-so the destination.
Industry Expert my shiny metal... (Score:2)
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Re:Industry Expert my shiny metal... (Score:5, Funny)
14 calls a week? I average 4-5 a day.
me too. I don't know where they get their figures from!
By averaging across many people, a proportion of whom get fewer calls than you.
I was going to post a link to a definition of the word 'average', but that would be mean.
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*mode points
FTFY
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That may be a divisive opinion, but I'm not going to get caught on the horns of this dilemma. Nervous breakdowns for telemarketers is a good thing.
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I've been known to really waste these people's time, and I'm also careful about getting onto lists. Don't hand my phone number out much. As such, I get maybe 1 a month.
My parents get several a day, but that dropped off once I started playing with them as well when I'm over.
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I expect they're going on *reported* calls, and a lot go unreported. Because I'm stone cold certain the actual average is much h
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Don't complain... (Score:3)
14 calls a week? I average 4-5 a day.
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My mom was getting a call every few minutes. Easily 25+ in the morning before it calms down! Some were coming back to back. It's a bit better now but still nearly pointless to even check who the caller is and instead just wait for a message to be left. I suspect something happened to get it onto some new lists. Around the same time the phone itself for some reason, maybe due to a scammer, had call forwarding turned on to send calls to the other side of the country.
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And yeah, when she's within range of the phone (and not already on a call), she does this several times an hour. I don't know where they found people who only get two calls a day. *I* answer more pre-recorded telemarketer
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I avoid the pickup myself because it let's them know someone is answering the phone. For my mobile I just let it ring.
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Re: Industry Expert my shiny metal... (Score:2)
That's nothing. I average 28-35 calls a week!
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Normally I get 20-30 scam calls PER DAY! I have 3 lines (one of them is a business line) that forward to my cell phone. I *have* to answer the calls. Often I will mess with them, giving them fake names, fake (but real locations) addresses, and fake scenarios, sometimes with a fake accent. If I can get them to swear at me I consider the call a success. I used to use Lenny, but he's too canned for most interactions.
What really bugs me is the robot screener that leads to another robot and never a real per
How can we (Score:2)
This is how it all ends (Score:2)
what??? (Score:2)
people pay for this?? you know you can just hang up, right? or better yet, never even pick up the phone.
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Most people don't like having their phone ringing incessantly.
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plenty of free ways to accomplish that, my friend.
Re:what??? (Score:5, Insightful)
People pay for the satisfaction that the telemarketers are having their time wasted.
Re:what??? (Score:5, Insightful)
petty people being petty.. ahhh the satisfaction
The longer you keep a telemarketer occupied the less calls they have time to make to annoy other people. Think of it as doing a favor for someone you don't know.
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Re: what??? (Score:2)
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hahahaa yeah dude im totally a telemarketer, bahahaha jesus christ.. excuse me for trying to be funny.
Re:what??? (Score:5, Informative)
And while being ignored that starts to turn the phone into a useless device. But some people are relying on the phone, especially the elderly. And the elderly are also a key demographic for spammers and scammers and other ne'er to wells. Doctors have to leave messages for example, friends are calling, etc.
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>"But some people are relying on the phone, especially the elderly. And the elderly are also a key demographic for spammers and scammers and other ne'er to wells."
This is exactly the problem I am dealing with trying to help my now-confused mother. I handle it on my own lines using some special tricks (no ring-through for unknown numbers, VM greeting that is very long and contains both disconnect tones and silence, and being EXTREMELY protective of my numbers).
But none of it will or can work for my mom.
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But she *has* to have a phone. I am honestly stuck in a hard place right now.
I have a mechanism supplied by my voip provider that asks callers to press a particular digit before ringing my phone. This has solved most the problem because bots don't follow directions. Perhaps this would be transparent enough for your mom's phone.
Re:what??? (Score:5, Interesting)
people pay for this?? you know you can just hang up, right? or better yet, never even pick up the phone.
While I'm not a fan of paying for this, the idea is to drive up the cost-per-contact of the telemarketers; if you can play them on the line for 5 minutes vs just hanging up, that's 10(?) calls they can't make to other people. Of course the next escalation will be that the telemarketers will create their own bots, and either the entire phone system will melt down, or the people will finally wise up and we will execute telemarketers live on Pay Per View.
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ple. Of course the next escalation will be that the telemarketers will create their own bots, and either the entire phone system will melt down, or the people will finally wise up and we will execute telemarketers live on Pay Per View.
Worse, the scammers will move to creating bot armies as well and the system of fake marks and fake scammers establishes a successful proof of work cryptocurrency.
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the telemarketers will create their own bots
They already do. Many of the telemarketers start out with a pre-recorded introductory schpiel. If they detect a human voice, they switch you over to a live operator.
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The best ones are where they're running so many scams they don't know which intro you got.
Re: what??? (Score:2)
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people pay for this?? you know you can just hang up, right? or better yet, never even pick up the phone.
You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap. That's an animal kind of trick.
A human would remain in the trap and endure the pain feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.
Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam
from "Dune", by Frank Herbert
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Lenny (Score:5, Informative)
Lenny [youtube.com] is a fixed but very cleverly crafted set of auto responses that can tie up telemarketers for many minutes. It's also great fun to listen to the recording.
I've installed Lenny on my own Asterisk server and have recorded many hilarious interactions.
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My mod points just ran out, otherwise +1 insformative (and +1 funny!)
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Lenny is a fixed but very cleverly crafted set of auto responses that can tie up telemarketers for many minutes. It's also great fun to listen to the recording.
I've installed Lenny on my own Asterisk server and have recorded many hilarious interactions.
My eldest was just telling me I should do this. .... She's very smart. ...... How do you know her?
Uh, oh, oh yes (Score:2)
My eldest was just talking about this the other day, she's very smart you know... I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that....
I love Lenny.
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I giggle whenever the ducks show up.
Pretty soon it will be bots all the way down... (Score:5, Funny)
Given the low quality of human telemarketers (who are reading from a script anyways), it's just a matter of time before all telemarketers are bots. People can then run bots to talk to the bots. We'll have a whole ecosystem that is just bots talking to bots about nothing.
Re: Pretty soon it will be bots all the way down.. (Score:3)
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> just a matter of time before all telemarketers are bots.
I already got such about 6 months ago. I kept asking questions, getting indirect responses, and after a while realized it was bot. It called twice, actually. Normally I just hang up, but there something odd about the call that made me curious.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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>"I'm with Telus. Callers who've never called my number before are required to press a randomized button their call goes through to my cell. Once they do, they get whitelisted."
Yes, that will work... for now. And we *COULD* have that ourselves in Android, if the damn thing would grant permissions for an app to intercept calls (but it doesn't and likely won't). And they sell machines you can buy now that work on an analog land line to do that, as well.
But it won't work once too many people start using i
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A long time ago, I added something like this to my forums. Rather than ask stupid "humanity" questions that require specific answers (which bots are programmed to handle), my test just asks for something completely random. I didn't expect it to work, but I kept a log file to analyze the results. It stopped well over 99% of spam in its tracks, no users of my forum have ever complained about it, and I've been happily using it for almost 20 years.
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I did similarly when running a phpBB forum years ago. Whatever automated CAPTCHA we were using was letting multiple bots through per day, so I switched to a challenge that had two columns, with items you had to sort by dragging them into the correct column. I manually provided the columns and test for the boxes, and because this was the group forum for a particular game, I themed them all around first-day knowledge that anyone playing the game should know, but that a Mechanical Turk or other human spammer w
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An arms race... (Score:1)
We don't fight fire with more fire. We fight it with water. We don't fight spammers and scammers by utilizing and promoting the tools and platforms that created those scammers.
Telling people to buy bots to fight against bots is a great way to sell bots
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This feels more like a marketing campaign designed to justify normal folks getting into the spambot business. Fighting telemarketing, which is largely done via bots, with more bots doesn't make sense. It makes as much sense as fighting fire with fire.
We don't fight fire with more fire.
Do you live in a high precipitation zone that never has wildfires?
I don't, and we literally do fight fire with more fire, all the time.
And with the exact same model as this bot system.
We use our own controlled fire (bot system)
to proactively consume potential grass/litter fuel (bot call nodes/time)
so that the uncontrolled bad fires (spam/scam businesses)
don't have as much fuel (bot call nodes/time)
to consume what we're trying to protect (our fellow human beings, particularly the elderly).
My solution is a bit different (Score:2)
I'm replacing my ATA with a PBX. When you call me, you're going to need to be able to understand the outgoing message that requests you enter the 5-digit extension of the person you want to speak to. And no, '0' isn't going to get you to a default mailbox.
So everyone in my house gets their own voicemail off a single number, and beyond that anywhere we have data our mobile phones carry that home extension. And have native support for video chat.
I've just started on it, but if it works out well I will look
Rules? (Score:2)
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Sorry, my sarcasm detector is broken today. Is that supposed to be sarcasm?
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>"Doesn't the "National Do Not Call Registry" ( https://www.donotcall.gov/ [donotcall.gov] [donotcall.gov] ) work?"
No.
And it is quite possible some evil telemarketers actually harvest numbers from the list, rather than exclude them from the list.
I think *all* telemarketing, including political calls, should be illegal. Then if you get one, dial a special number after the disconnect and it will report them directly to an enforcement division.
Re: Rules? (Score:2)
In EU we have national Do Not Call lists. Citizens call a special number and their number gets registered.
Then, telemarketing companies have to remove numbers on these lists from their databases. There's hefty fines for calling numbers on such lists, so no, the lists are not used to collect any phone numbers.
Being on such a list, I cannot remember last time I got a telemarketing call.
I did get one "Hello, this is Peter from Microsoft" many years ago. I was really bored that day and kept him on the phone for
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Not anymore. The telemarketers had to spend money figuring out how to get around
the rules, but it's been years and they've long since done so. As near as I can tell,
the dominant method right now seems to be that the main telemarketing company
legally operates out of a foreign country and uses a subsidiary or partner within
your country (American in my case) to connect the call to you. Legally the company
in your country (wh
My first comment (Score:2)
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And if that isn't enough, the next one is "uh... what are you wearing?" after some heavy breathing.
It's twice as much fun if the caller is male.
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A shitty job... (Score:2)
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Anti-spam-call tactics (Score:2)
Get a premium number for those organizations that force you to sign up with a phone number. You'd be surprised how cheap you can get them (mostly because phone companies hope to make a considerable cut of that premium).
Instant peace.
And if not, well, at 9.99 bucks a minute, they can waste as much of my time as they please.
Jolly Roger Telephone (Score:2)
Didn't Jolly Roger Telephone already do this 20 years ago without AI?
https://jollyrogertelephone.co... [jollyrogertelephone.com]
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