Bot sweet-talks personal data out of chatters

Found on Arstechnica on Friday, 14 December 2007
Browse Pranks

As if there needed to be another reason to be wary of chat rooms geared toward meeting people and having flirtatious, cyber-relations with them, doing so can now put you at increased risk of identity theft. CyberLover.ru, a new site out of Russia, boasts that buyers of its software will be able to trick unsuspecting marks into handing over their personal information.

The bot is able to simulate a number of different personalities, ranging from "romantic lover" to—this is not a joke—"sexual predator".

"The program can find no more information than the user is prepared to provide," an employee identified as Alexander told Reuters. "If you have someone who is ready to hand over secret information to the person they are chatting to after having known them for all of five minutes, then in that case a leak of information is possible."

It is fun to drop a bot into such a channel though. However, the available AI bots aren't that great without training, so people spot them after chatting a few lines.