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Promote with Leviathan NewsA Delhi IT worker says he used ChatGPT to build a booby‑trapped “payment” webpage that secretly logged a scammer’s photo and location, then confronted the fraudster with this data, causing him to panic and plead for mercy in messages that later went viral on Reddit. The episode highlights a small but visible shift in online “scambaiting,” where ordinary internet users increasingly leverage AI tools and simple web‑tracking scripts to turn the tables on confidence tricksters rather than only reporting them to platforms or police. According to the Reddit post and subsequent Indian media coverage, the incident began when the Delhi man received a Facebook message from someone posing as his college senior, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, offering deeply discounted high‑end furniture and appliances supposedly being sold by a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) officer about to be transferred. Suspicious that his real senior would have contacted him directly, he verified the claim over WhatsApp, discovered the impersonation, and decided to continue engaging the scammer to expose the scheme. After a second profile with an army‑uniform picture sent him a QR code and pressed for urgent payment, he stalled, then asked ChatGPT to generate code for a realistic payment/QR‑upload page that was in fact wired to capture GPS coordinates, IP address, and a front‑camera image from visiting devices. He hosted this custom tracker page, sent the link to the scammer under the pretext that uploading the QR code there would “expedite” the transfer, and the fraudster clicked, triggering the capture of precise latitude and longitude, network information and a clear selfie. The Delhi man then sent the scammer his own image and location data back via chat, at which point the scammer allegedly flooded him with calls from multiple numbers and texted frantic apologies and promises to quit fraud, messages that were shared as screenshots and helped propel the Reddit post across Indian and international tech media. Commentators and social media users have pointed to the case as an example of how accessible AI coding assistance can lower the barrier for non‑experts to build surveillance‑style “traps,” raising both hopes that scams can be disrupted more easily and concerns about ordinary users normalizing aggressive tracking tactics that may themselves strain legal and ethical boundaries.
AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.
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