# We flooded our dating app with bots…to scam scammers By [cryptooptesi-m.eth](https://paragraph.com/@cryptooptesi-m) · 2022-08-25 --- Let me tell you a little bit about dating apps in 2022. You meet a nice, young woman named Carolina. After speaking with her for a week, you agree to meet up. She’s coming over. But, at the last minute she messages: > _“My car broke down on the way to your house. Can you send me $40 to fix it ASAP? Google play gift cards would be fine.”_ YOU JUST DONE BEEN **SCAMMED**. My co-founder Zach and I recently started a video dating app, and as user numbers grew, so did the number of scammers harassing people for money. We are a teeny 3-person startup. We have resources like two staplers, a handful of pens, and a computer charger. We couldn’t “throw money at the problem.” Here’s what we did instead… The Dark Dating Pool ==================== When a user signs up for Filteroff, our sophisticated **Scammer Detection System** 🤖 kicks into full gear, doing complex _boop-bop-beep_ math to determine if they are gonna be a problem. When a scammer is detected, we snag them out of the **_Normal Dating Pool_** and place them in a separate **_Dark Dating Pool_** full of other scammers and… BOTS! Oh heck yeah. We built a bot army full of profiles with [fake photos](https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/image) and some artificial intelligence that lets our bots _talk like humans_ with the scammers. This delivered three amazing things for us: 1. Our bots sounded like humans (_kinda_!). 2. The scammers had no clue they had been detected. 3. We received a series of hilarious bot+scammer conversations. The whole thing worked beautifully. Some of these conversations were _too_ good so I asked my two (non-actor) friends to read / react to them **without any prep**. I apologize in advance for my stupid laughing 😶 My favorite Bot + Scammer conversations ======================================= Nurse & Teacher --------------- In this conversation, the bot decides to switch professions, mid-conversation. But, what’s so hard about having three professions… when you’re a bot!? I’m From . ---------- Wait — so where are you from?? WhatsApp Confusion ------------------ When your bot has an existential meltdown. Male or Female? --------------- Don’t lock us bots into gender identities! 555–1234 -------- Ugh, why does everyone on this app have the same phone number? Age Confusion ------------- Age is just a number, for a bot. Banana ------ Okay, at some point you gotta wonder.. how do scammers not realize you’re a bot? Bot Anger --------- Whoa! Easy there scammer. No need to yell at our bot! Jackie ------ Jackie. Jackie. Jackie. Looks like our bot _may_ have gotten stuck in a loop with their name. Time Issues ----------- [It’s 10am in Niceville, but is it 10am in Niceville?](https://www.getfilteroff.com/scammer-bot-series/time-issues) Our silly bot couldn’t figure out what time it really was. Visiting Family on Dating App ----------------------------- Who doesn’t have their entire family on Filteroff? Let’s date together! ❤️ Thanks for reading. And go join our dating app → it’s [Filteroff](http://www.getfilteroff.com/) Oh, and… ======== **_Fun Fact!_** The award for most faked identity goes to Michael! I really want to know why they chose him for _hundreds of profiles._ Maybe he converts the best on dating apps. Michael, if you’re reading this, and if that’s really your name, I’m sorry, but you’re just a hot older guy. **_For the tech-savvy_** 🤓 * Yes, all chats are encrypted. Only the ones between bots and scammers would be delivered to me. * We erred on the side of caution when putting users in the “dark dating pool.” * I apologize for tuning GPT-3 horribly, and writing some bad regex (you’ll know what I mean). --- *Originally published on [cryptooptesi-m.eth](https://paragraph.com/@cryptooptesi-m/we-flooded-our-dating-app-with-bots-to-scam-scammers)*