Re:scam will reply to scam emails using an AI chatbot that will waste the time of cyber criminals

IF you get annoyed by those endless scam emails, there is now a free service that offers a hilarious and ingenious solution to deal with them once and for all.

IS THERE anything more annoying than getting one of those scam emails asking for your details so you claim the hundreds of thousands of dollars left to you from a passing relative?

From bank customers being sent a fake notification telling them their ‘payment was unsuccessful’ to fraudulent Netflix account suspension alerts, email phishing scams are constantly bombarding our email accounts.

Thankfully most email scam attempts are easy to detect and can be quickly avoided.

But what if there was a way to troll the scammers who had just tried to make you their victim?

Enter Re:scam — an artificially intelligent email bot made to reply to scam emails, created by not-for-profit organisation Netsafe.

“I adopt one of my many personalities to continue the conversations of any would-be victim,” explained the organisation’s website.

“I waste their time with a never-ending series of questions and anecdotes so that they have less time to pursue real people.

“Just like you, I mqke [sic] typos and jokes that no one appreciates. I’m super interested, a bit naive ... I just have a few questions to ask.”

The free service works by getting people to forward their suspected emails to the organisation, who will complete a check to confirm the email is a scam.

When confirmed, a proxy email address is used to flood the inbox of would-be cyber criminals from the AI chatbot who is pretending to be a vulnerable target.

Once you have forwarded the email nothing else is required on your part, but Re:scam said the more emails you send through, the more effective they will be at wasting the time of crooks.

The organisation also assures it keeps none of your personal details, so you don’t have to worry about that.

Do you like the concept? Continue the conversation in the comments below or with Matthew Dunn on Facebook and Twitter.