Kangze Peng | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

ScamPilot: Simulating Conversations with LLMs to Protect Against Online Scams

Fraud continues to proliferate online, from phishing and ransomware to impersonation scams. Yet automated prevention approaches adapt slowly and may not reliably protect users from falling prey to new scams. To better combat online scams, we developed ScamPilot, a conversational interface that inoculates users against scams through simulation, dynamic interaction, and real-time feedback. ScamPilot simulates scams with two large language model-powered agents: a scammer and a target. Users must help the target defend against the scammer by providing real-time advice. Through a between-subjects study (N=150) with one control and three experimental conditions, we find that blending advice-giving with multiple choice questions significantly increased scam recognition (+8%) without decreasing wariness towards legitimate conversations. Users' response efficacy and change in self-efficacy was also 9% and 19% higher, respectively. Qualitatively, we find that users more frequently provided action-oriented advice over urging caution or providing emotional support. Overall, ScamPilot demonstrates the potential for inter-agent conversational user interfaces to augment learning.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Promoting Online Safety by Simulating Unsafe Conversations with LLMs

Generative AI, including large language models (LLMs) have the potential -- and already are being used -- to increase the speed, scale, and types of unsafe conversations online. LLMs lower the barrier for entry for bad actors to create unsafe conversations in particular because of their ability to generate persuasive and human-like text. In our current work, we explore ways to promote online safety by teaching people about unsafe conversations that can occur online with and without LLMs. We build on prior work that shows that LLMs can successfully simulate scam conversations. We also leverage research in the learning sciences that shows that providing feedback on one's hypothetical actions can promote learning. In particular, we focus on simulating scam conversations using LLMs. Our work incorporates two LLMs that converse with each other to simulate realistic, unsafe conversations that people may encounter online between a scammer LLM and a target LLM but users of our system are asked provide feedback to the target LLM.

cs.HC↗