Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time

This is cool when some independent hacker / artist does it as "Lemmy".

When a big telecom does it, the second thing they do with it is to fuck up the spam detection so bad that every third phone call I make gets answered by "Daisy".

And just think about it - why would a telecom need this tech? They can already drop the spam calls and stop routing calls from the bad actor telecoms who enable the spammers. They don't do that because they prefer to collect a few cents a call from them rather than serve their customers better. It's everyone else who needs this.

They're not intercepting calls over their network from suspected bad actors; rather, they've created some phone numbers that always go to Daisy - see https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/11/virgin-media-o...

Ah! So step 2 is wait for the spammers to automate blacklisting of Daisy phone numbers, and only then start rolling out a (paid) Daisy option to customers.

Not connecting calls doesn't waste spammer money, but maybe Daisy does.

If the big telco can find 10 righteous callers from a a bad actor telecom, they should keep routing the calls.

My friend works for a big telco and is the guy fixing this problem for them. They have amazing powers of deception when they need it. New numbers can be conjured up at any time.

The new fad among wireless carriers here in the US is to route what they think are spam calls to a fake voicemail box.

Voicemail that is left in this generic voice mail box never makes it to their customer and the customer is completely unaware that some of their calls have been diverted.

Then suddenly, calls from consenting callers to consenting receivers are labeled as spam and blocked. What can you do about it? Nothing. Switch to email, I guess. Oh wait, same problem.

reductio ad absurdum: we're back to Pony Express

Bulk scams by mail are at least less common because mail fraud is investigated pretty seriously and results in federal felony charges. Not to mention the cost of initiation is much higher. Unfortunately individuals are still sometimes targeted.