An online safety organisation based in New Zealand has created a new program to turn the tables on online scammers.
Independent non-profit online safety organisation Netsafe, based in Auckland, has developed an artificially intelligent email bot dubbed “Re:scam”, which tackles email scammers by simply wasting their time.
If an internet user receives an email they suspect is a scam, they are encouraged to forward the sender’s email address to Re:scam via the email address me@rescam.org, which will then start an automated conversation with the scammer with the sole purpose of wasting their time.
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Netsafe has described it as “the world’s most inefficient and unhelpful chatbot”.
Re:scam went live on Wednesday, reports the Guardian, after more than a year of planning and programming. The site reports that New Zealanders lose around NZ$250m (£132m) annually to cyber crime.
To promote Re:scam, Netsafe released a trailer for the service, with some humorous examples thrown in:
The company also launched a separate Re:scam bot Twitter page, publishing examples of the bot’s handywork.
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