Re:scam
Netsafe
Issue 47 | June 2018
Agency
DDB Group New Zealand
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Damon Stapleton Executive Creative Director Shane Bradnick Creative Directors Brett Colliver, Mike Felix Art Director Sarsha Drakeford Copywriter Geordie Wilson
Production Team
Agency Executive Producer Judy Thompson Agency Producer Alva Casey Digital Creative Director Haydn Kerr Executive Digital Producer Johannes Gertz Senior Developer Simon Betton Head of Digital Design Jason Vertongen Lead Front End Developer Paul Hutcheon Social Creative Director Wihan Meeholz Social Planner Liam Norris Social Manager Harry Wilde
Other Credits
CEO, Netsafe Martin Crocker Chief Technology Officer Sean Lyons Director of Outreach Alistair Haydock Marketing & Communications Officer Kimberley Burgess Communications & Engagement Advisor Elizabeth Maddison Other CEO Justin Mowday Lead Business Partner James Blair Business Directors Katya Urlwin, Jaheb Barnett Business Manager David Owen Business Co-ordinator Jarrod Stevenson Managing Director, Mango Claudia McDonald Senior Account Manager, Mango Max Burt Account Manager, Mango Chloe Tonkin
Date
November 2017
Background
Netsafe is a cyber-security company. Their mission is to make the internet a safer place. Email scamming has become a $12 billion-dollar industry affecting millions of people every year. But email scammers are difficult to prosecute and victims often have no means of receiving justice, or compensation. The task was to find a way of stopping scammers, while also educating people on what to look out for.
Idea
To fight back and prevent so much money being lost to scammers each year, Netsafe created Re:scam, an AI chatbot that is designed to do the one thing you shouldn’t: reply to scams. When a suspicious-looking email gets forwarded to Re:scam, if the bot identifies it as scam, it begins a never-ending conversation, so scammers waste their time talking to a chatbot instead of to real targets.
With multiple personalities and an ever-growing vocabulary plus the ability to generate false account information, there is no way for scammers to know that they're talking to a computer. Users can also share the conversations they’ve initiated, and communicate with Re:scam via social media.
Results
So far Re:scam has sent over a million emails to scammers, wasting over five years of their time. It also earned over 279 million media impressions in major global publications, creating mass awareness of email scamming as an issue and the work that Netsafe is doing to make the internet safer.
Our Thoughts
If you had the time and energy to reply to some of the scam email you get, what would you say? The beautiful thing about this bot is that it is constantly learning new and hilarious ways to engage the scammers in conversation.
“How can I join your secret society?” is one. “Do you have bingo nights?” is another.
“How soon can I expect to receive this money? I owe Reader’s Digest a significant amount of money and I’d love to pay them back before the take legal action.”
Joy of joys, one scammer even emailed Re:scam to ask it to stop emailing him/her.
I love the idea of an endlessly chatty chatbot. And how DDB NZ have found a very different use for a chatbot to the standard customer support service.