Beginning to Push Back Against Scammers

Roger Anderson (WSJ)

Scam artists pollute all avenues of communication--telephone, email, text messages, social media...except for the plain old U.S. Postal Service!--and we've posted our frustrations over the years. I'm willing to spend time and money to entrap some of these people, but the authorities can't be bothered. The next best solution is to make the crooks spend a lot of time on a lead that comes up empty.

Roger Anderson of Monrovia, CA has written software that uses artificial intelligence whose objective is to waste the time of telemarketers and scammers.

Anderson 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...

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.

This sounds like a terrific invention by a motivated entrepreneur. This year our phone calls have died down, but if they pick up I'll give the product a try. $24.99 per year should buy a lot of emotional enjoyment.