This article is more than 1 year old

Dev teaches bot to talk spammers' ears off

Crims are so keen to chat they respond to random hipsterisms and send legit discount codes

Brian Weinreich has been trolling spammers for two years using a bot that fires realistic and ridiculous replies to the pervasive online salespeople.

The noted security developer created the bot as a means to waste the time of the blowflies of the internet after being affronted by a deluge of unsolicited sales pitches directed at his "sacred" inbox.

Weinreich (@BeWeinreich) has posted 16 hilarious conversations in which his bot dubbed Sp@m Looper managed to engage spammers in lengthy chats.

"My inbox is a sacred place, and spammers shit all over it," Weinreich says.

"I get in the zone when responding to emails, and it’s tough to jump from an email about our businesses pricing strategy, to reviewing the latest bug reports, to [spam].

"That spam button on Gmail just didn’t get me going anymore. There’s no reward. I was seeking revenge, and some comedic relief."

Weinreich says he figures his bot will waste spammer's time reducing the resources they can devote to perfecting new techniques.

The bot in most conversations requests more information from sellers. In one conversation the bot even bagged a $50 discount on marketing services.

Weinreich upped the difficulty settings and integrated a hipster module which dropped a run of nonsensical phrases ("tacos whatever post-ironic meditation mixtape distillery yolo freegan cleanse" read one) to troll spammers even harder. Some spammers simply ignored the phrases and continued trying to land a deal.

Admins can run their own Sp@mLooper or build a different version by visiting Weinreich's GitHub page. ®

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