New spam: How scammers use interactive robots from the cloud
The journalist of the Ars Technica edition, Sean Gallagher, spoke about the new technology used by telemarketers with the help of cloud services - “external interactive voice responses”. Speaking human language - now robots can call potential customers and pretend to be a living person.
It was the middle of the day, my phone rang - an unfamiliar but clearly local number appeared on the screen. I had thought that it was one of my children calling from a friend’s device (because he had forgotten his own at home) to ask to be picked up from school. I answered the call and rather quickly felt like a participant in an experiment to test the effect of the " sinister valley ."
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“Good day!” Said a voice on the other end of the line, I answered the greeting. "My name is Amy, I am the senior client representative of American Direct Services." Then "Amy" was silent for a couple of seconds.
“Is this a computer?” I asked. A couple more moments passed, and I heard “no” in response. She then informed me that I had been selected as a possible winner in a million-plus lottery lottery.
In fact, Amy was a program for external interactive phone calls running on a server in some kind of cloud data center. The company, which was behind the organization of such calls, turned out to be another scammer's office, “breeding suckers” with the help of promises of mythical winnings in the lottery and on the stakes. I found this out when, ultimately, the robot switched me to a living person who could be asked some leading questions.
Before that, I had fun searching for "vulnerabilities" in the logic of "Amy" (a record of the conversation in English is posted here )
Systems of external telephone interactive communications (IVR) are the newest variation of robotic calls. That is, the software, which usually helps us all to wade through the voice menus of banks and insurance companies, has now fallen into the hands of telemarketers, who have begun to use it for outgoing calls.
The relative cheapness of such cloud systems makes it possible to use them for phone calls as easily as sending an email newsletter. And do not configure your own VoIP-server.
Scammers bypass various blocking and blacklists often changing numbers, and now they have learned how to use local numbers. To do this, scammers acquire a pool of VoIP-numbers registered in the code of the desired region, and hide the real location of their company behind a virtual telephone switchboard, which routes calls across the country or even beyond its borders.
Using cloud platforms, they can cheaply send a large number of robotic calls, attracting a live person only to communicate with customers who did not hang up after several minutes of communication with the computer.
Many IVR systems offer API developers with the help of which they can create telephone robots that make outgoing calls as well. Depending on how a particular interlocutor answers the questions, the system can redirect the call to the desired number within the company, where a living person will already try to finally close the deal. Below is a promotional video of one of these systems:
When the system with which I spoke, eventually transferred me to a living person, I was able to talk with him a little. The employee said that his name is Nick, and he works in the office of American Readers Services in El Paso, Texas.
I asked him why his company uses a system that pretends to be a living person. He laughed and replied that "The system is not trying to deceive anyone, it's a computer." And he added that this software allows the company to save on employees like it. In response to my request for a conversation with someone from his superiors, he gave me a new phone number, but it was impossible to reach him.
It was the middle of the day, my phone rang - an unfamiliar but clearly local number appeared on the screen. I had thought that it was one of my children calling from a friend’s device (because he had forgotten his own at home) to ask to be picked up from school. I answered the call and rather quickly felt like a participant in an experiment to test the effect of the " sinister valley ."
')
“Good day!” Said a voice on the other end of the line, I answered the greeting. "My name is Amy, I am the senior client representative of American Direct Services." Then "Amy" was silent for a couple of seconds.
“Is this a computer?” I asked. A couple more moments passed, and I heard “no” in response. She then informed me that I had been selected as a possible winner in a million-plus lottery lottery.
In fact, Amy was a program for external interactive phone calls running on a server in some kind of cloud data center. The company, which was behind the organization of such calls, turned out to be another scammer's office, “breeding suckers” with the help of promises of mythical winnings in the lottery and on the stakes. I found this out when, ultimately, the robot switched me to a living person who could be asked some leading questions.
Before that, I had fun searching for "vulnerabilities" in the logic of "Amy" (a record of the conversation in English is posted here )
- If you win the lottery, then what will you spend the money on?
“Well, for beer, computers ... and explosives.”
- Great idea! I hope you win!
Systems of external telephone interactive communications (IVR) are the newest variation of robotic calls. That is, the software, which usually helps us all to wade through the voice menus of banks and insurance companies, has now fallen into the hands of telemarketers, who have begun to use it for outgoing calls.
The relative cheapness of such cloud systems makes it possible to use them for phone calls as easily as sending an email newsletter. And do not configure your own VoIP-server.
Scammers bypass various blocking and blacklists often changing numbers, and now they have learned how to use local numbers. To do this, scammers acquire a pool of VoIP-numbers registered in the code of the desired region, and hide the real location of their company behind a virtual telephone switchboard, which routes calls across the country or even beyond its borders.
Using cloud platforms, they can cheaply send a large number of robotic calls, attracting a live person only to communicate with customers who did not hang up after several minutes of communication with the computer.
Many IVR systems offer API developers with the help of which they can create telephone robots that make outgoing calls as well. Depending on how a particular interlocutor answers the questions, the system can redirect the call to the desired number within the company, where a living person will already try to finally close the deal. Below is a promotional video of one of these systems:
When the system with which I spoke, eventually transferred me to a living person, I was able to talk with him a little. The employee said that his name is Nick, and he works in the office of American Readers Services in El Paso, Texas.
I asked him why his company uses a system that pretends to be a living person. He laughed and replied that "The system is not trying to deceive anyone, it's a computer." And he added that this software allows the company to save on employees like it. In response to my request for a conversation with someone from his superiors, he gave me a new phone number, but it was impossible to reach him.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/256361/
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