Our thinking

Trolling the trolls

14 February, 2025

Everyone’s heard tales of elaborate psychological ploys to steal money through online scams, often with devastating financial and psychological impacts. People in the UK lost over £11B to scammers last year, with impersonation fraud and counterfeit goods scams being the most common. 

While scams have always been around, digital technology makes it much easier to reach – and manipulate – people from afar. But the technology to counter scammers has been advancing too, including O2’s new AI ‘scambaiter’ bot. The idea is that that the bot, an AI ‘granny’ called dAIsy, wastes scammers’ time, keeping them away from potential (human) victims. It is an effective way of trolling the trolls, and highly entertaining too – check out the video here. 

Wasting scammers’ time is only one part of the solution, as the scambaiter has additional benefits including gathering information on how scams work, which in turn can support O2’s development of educational efforts around scams and preventative technology. The constant battle between scammers and those trying to prevent them uses lots of time and energy (particularly with AI involved). These measures help tip the balance against the scammers, and can make cybercrime less lucrative.  

Of course we all have a part to play too. Luckily, there’s plenty of information out there on how scams work, how to protect yourself and how you can join dAIsy in ruining a scammer’s day by reporting it too. 

By Patrick Bapty