RTH‘s latest is out. I have two articles in this issue:

iProducts vs. weProducts

“The stark contrast between two remarkable devices reaches beyond mere dollars and into the realm of technological philosophy.”

Time for Strong Leadership on the Environment

“Changing consumer behaviour will help the environment, but without strong leadership from business and government we won’t get far.”

There is lots more good stuff as always.

Also, if you’re in the Hamilton area, come to the party on Saturday!

Hardly a day goes by without some online scam artist emailing me, usually with the standard Nigerian or 419 scam. You know, the ones that start with “Dear friend, I am an officer at a bank/government leader in exile/international merchant” and go on to outline why they need help retrieving some vast sum of money.

In the past, I have successfully wasted large amounts of these scammers’ time simply for amusement. Conceivably, if everybody were to do this, the amount of time the scammers would spend dealing with people who are just stringing them along might make the scam an unprofitable use of their time.

However, this would be far too time-consuming, especially since the scammers can send out thousands of emails at the click of a button.

That’s where the use of automated chatterbots come in. A chatterbot is a “computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods”.

Basically, it’s a program that is designed to respond to things you say as though it is a human being. You can try one out by going here and clicking the “Chat with Alice” link on the left.

These programs are not very convincing when you know what you’re dealing with, but when someone is convinced they are chatting with another human being, the person can sometimes be fooled, often with hilarious results – for example, horny people trying to strike up sexual conversations in online chat rooms (warning, graphic content).

My idea is to apply this concept to scammers. A program to deal with scammers could be created that would work something like this:

1. You receive an email from an online scammer. You forward this to another email address that belongs to the anti-scammer chatterbot (I’ll call this program the scambot from now on.)
2. The scambot would receive the email and scan it for relevant keywords. (The scambot would already be set up to generally deal in subjects related to finances, bank accounts, retrieval of funds, etc.)
3. The scambot prepares an email response and sends it to the scammer, thus initiating an email conversation with the scammer. Since the email will be coming from the scambot’s own email address, no further user action is required. However, the scambot will maintain a record of emails in thread format, allowing the user to step in and drop in some more convincing emails if the user wishes.

I believe that the scambot could waste large amounts of time for scammers for several reasons. First, many of these scammers speak English as a second language, so they are not as likely to pick up on cues in the scambot’s responses as a native English speaker.

Second, it would be possible to use social engineering techniques in the scambot’s initial responses that would help overcome the skepticism of the scammer. For example, the scambot could also pose as someone who speaks English as a second language, or as someone who is somewhat addled (e.g. an elderly person with a touch of dementia but a ton of money).

Finally, greed is a powerful motivator.

[tags]scams, 419, chatterbots, artificial intelligence[/tags]

A Guantanamo detainee writes:

I am writing from the darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo in the hope that I can make our voices heard by the world. My hand quivers as I hold the pen.

In January 2002, I was picked up in Pakistan, blindfolded, shackled, drugged and loaded onto a plane flown to Cuba. When we got off the plane in Guantanamo, we did not know where we were. They took us to Camp X-Ray and locked us in cages with two buckets — one empty and one filled with water. We were to urinate in one and wash in the other.

At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.

[tags]Guantanamo[/tags]

This is “Video from recent storm in Portland, Oregon. One resident heard crunching outside his apartment and witnessed about 15 car accidents at the intersection, many of which he captured on home video.”

It must not have been fun for the people involved, but it’s sure fun to watch.

Eleven days without a post! This must be some sort of record, one that I’m not terribly proud of. I have my reasons, which I hope to share with you at some point (now is not the time).

There are a couple of things I’d like to mention now, however.

A few minutes ago I got a call from Canadian Tire Financial Services. I have a Canadian Tire Mastercard. They were calling to offer me, their “valued customer”, an identity theft assistance plan.

For only $6.95 per month (the first six months are “free”), if a criminal assumes my identity and steals my money, uses my credit and debit cards, drains my bank account, and generally wreaks havoc with my finances and records, I could call up Canadian Tire and they’d help me out.

My response to this phone call was an emphatic “no” and I explained why: this is practically extortion. It’s a protection racket.

Worse, for a financial services company, they are providing a service that gives them a vested interest in making sure identity theft remains a problem, because without identity theft no one would be motivated to sign up.

This is different than insurance, because they’re not offering to pay me back what someone steals from me, they’re just offering to help me straighten things out. This is different than burglar alarms, because the intent is not to stop a crime in progress, it’s simply to clean up the mess afterwards.

“I’m not going to live in fear of identity thieves,” I told the woman, and that was that (I don’t think my response was on her script).

The second thing I’d like to mention is Raise the Hammer’s Second Anniversary Party. If you’re in the area on Saturday, January 27, please stop by.