back to article Fake NIPS slip site scandalizes AI world

A cheeky website is pretending to take attendee registrations and hotel bookings for folks heading to the upcoming Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference in Montreal, Canada, at the end of this year. Thousands of AI researchers and previous attendees received an email from the official NIPS team warning of the …

  1. Ivan Vorpatril

    "The Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) 2019 conference in Vancouver also reported similar shenanigans."

    They saw right through that one.

  2. Korev Silver badge
    Joke

    Hopefully they can nips this one in the bud

    1. Crisp

      Hopefully...

      They will be able to keep delegates abreast of any developments.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Name change?

    Assuming I'm looking at the right one, the real site says they're discussing a name change. Can't think why.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Properly shop them to the Singaporean police

    This is basically deception, so a formal complaint could get far more interesting results.

    Maybe some management education with a lash will stop this sort of idiocy, nothing else seems to work. Ditto for the people who run those call centres that keep swapping called ID for every call they make.

  5. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    "The real NIPS website is nips.cc. Please do not visit nips2018.org."

    Why the hell would organisers of a reputable conference use such a fake sounding web address?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      well maybe it just goes to show the currently levels of AI.

    2. DropBear

      No idea. Let's ask arduino.cc (the reputable one)...

  6. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Oh. Noes.

    "The real NIPS website is nips.cc. Please do not visit nips2018.org."

    Gorillahand Facepalm!!

    I would totally trust a website registered in the Cocos Islands, I would. (insert random Monty Python meme here).

    But the real question is: does nips.cc deliver? Capitalism in action and all that.

    It's like those "inoffical taxi services" that are being cracked down on by authorities .. cruelly delivering customers to the place they want to go.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: Oh. Noes.

      While diverting some to the local quarry?

      If 1 in 30 are eaten by bobcats, the reviews are still 97% positive

  7. Hugh Pumphrey

    Happening everywhere

    I went to a big conference for the first time in many years a few weeks ago (EGU in Vienna, should you care). This scam was being perpetrated on the attendees at that conference too, so I guess it is now a common business model.

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