ScamKiller is a botnet designed to combat the widespread issue of online scams that require human interaction to be successful. Our aim is to make scamming online obsolete, and to have a real-world impact on the quality of life of our users. Scammers have been taking advantage of people's lack of technical knowledge, using social engineering techniques to overcomplicate or overpromise the process of getting results. These scams target small amounts of money that are too insignificant for governments to investigate, leaving victims with little recourse. The prevalence of this problem on social media platforms is alarming, with few platforms taking action against these scams
Reporting scammers has little effect as they can easily create new accounts. Victims are often embarrassed and silenced, and social media platforms seem to encourage the existence of scam accounts. This problem will never improve without human moderators and strict server rules to shut down scams as soon as they are found.
ScamKiller proposes a botnet that users install on their computers. These bots would scan comments on social media platforms to find and target obvious scam accounts. The goal is to waste as much of the scammer's time as possible, preventing them from successfully scamming other users. If the scammer stops responding or blocks the bot, the account is remembered by the botnet and targeted more frequently. The bot will attempt to read the context of the conversation and play along as long as possible, pretending to be confused and asking questions to get the scammer to elaborate. If the bot cannot discern any reasonable context or the scammer refuses to interact with the bot, they will be spammed with fear-inducing messages claiming that they are being hunted down by authorities.
Our goal is not to eradicate online scams forever, as that would be impossible. We want to inspire empathy and compassion in attackers and to empower average users in the digital arms race. With enough people using ScamKiller, social media platforms will be unable to stop it, making scamming online far less profitable and less appealing to attackers.
Although there may be ways to circumvent ScamKiller, it will still make a significant impact on reducing the success rate of online scams.