This chatbot will tackle scammers by wasting their time

An online safety organisation based in New Zealand, has developed an artificially intelligent email bot has a new approach to the problem of email scammers.

The Re:scam bot, which was developed by Netsafe, tackles email spammers and scammers by wasting their time. Any time you get a scam email, you can forward that email to Re:scam (me@rescam.org) which will then engage in conversation with the scammer.

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"Re:scam can take on multiple personas, imitating real human tendencies with humour and grammatical errors, and can engage with infinite scammers at once," says Netsafe.

It may take several email exchanges for the scammer to realise he or she isn't talking to a human, effectively reducing the scammer's potential victims.

Once the conversation has ended, Re:scam will send a copy of the email chain back to you, which could be fun to read back, depending on the foolishness of your scammer.

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