System to prevent scams

A smart system to deter scams comprising:

• a messaging server;
• a cognitive system through natural language understanding to understand and interpret text messages and create a personalized response to the text messages so as to intelligently interact with a sender of the message;
• a cognitive engine agent in cooperation with the cognitive system to monitor incoming messages received by the messaging server for scam messages, identify the incoming message as a scam message, and reply through the messaging server to the scam message;
• at least one non-transitory storage medium that stores instructions;
• at least one processor that executes the instructions to:
• load samples of scam messages, load at least one bait message account and load black-market web sites that sell message accounts;
• register the at least one bait message account with the black-market web sites to increase a likelihood of receiving scam messages in the at least one bait message account from scammers that use the black-market web sites to gather new target message accounts;
• monitor incoming messages for scam messages for the at least one bait message account;
• monitor by the cognitive engine agent incoming messages for scam messages;
• receive by the cognitive engine agent through the message server an incoming message;
• identify the incoming message in the at least one bait message account as a scam message comprising compare the loaded samples of scam messages as a basis for identifying the incoming message for the at least one bait message account as the scam message;
• reply by the cognitive engine agent in cooperation with the messaging server to the scam message to initiate a message conversation with the sender of the scam message, the message conversation comprising one or more reply messages to the sender of the scam message that reply to the scam message and any subsequent scam messages from the sender of the scam message with each reply message being an intelligent, interactive message using natural unscripted language to appear as if the one or more reply messages was written by a human and is responsive to a content of a scam embodied in the scam message and any subsequent scam messages.

A computer program product for deterring scams, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a computer to cause the computer to perform a method comprising:

• loading at least one bait message account and black-market web sites that sell message accounts;
• registering the at least one bait message account with the black-market web sites that sell message accounts to increase a likelihood of receiving scam messages in the at least one bait message account from scammers that use the black-market web sites to gather new target message accounts;
• monitoring by a cognitive engine agent incoming messages for the at least one bait message account;
• monitoring by the cognitive engine agent incoming messages for scam messages;
• receiving by a messaging server an incoming message having a sender of the incoming message;
• identifying by the cognitive engine agent the incoming message as a scam message comprising identifying incoming messages for the at least one bait message account as scam messages;
• replying by the cognitive engine agent in cooperation with the messaging server to the scam message by initiating a message conversation with the sender of the scam message, the message conversation comprising one or more reply messages to the sender of the scam message replying to the scam message and any subsequent scam messages from the sender of the scam message with each reply message being an intelligent, interactive message using natural unscripted language to appear as if the one or more reply messages was written by a human and is responsive to a content of a scam embodied in the scam message and any subsequent scam messages.