US university graduate creates 'ScareMail' to confuse NSA snooping tool

A US university graduate has reportedly developed a way of annoying the National Security Agency and confuse their alleged email snooping tool.

Artist Benjamin Grosser has created a Gmail browser extension called 'ScareMail' that is designed to insert fake scare stories with words that are threatening as per NSA rules.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the extension has been designed to disrupt NSA's surveillance efforts by making their search results useless.

Grosser said that the tool, which took him three weeks to build, works by randomly generating phoney stories that include keywords featured on a Department of Homeland Security list used for searching social media websites for possible threat like 'al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, cyber attack, North Korea and chemical burn'.

The NSA snoop-op leaks by Edward Snowden revealed the methods used by the agency to track doubtful mails and conversations as part of a tool called XKEYSCORE.

The report said that Grosser's extension merely sends nonsensical emails in order to confuse spies who have to scrutinize it.

Grosser explained that his aim is not just to annoy the NSA and confuse their tracking systems, but to provoke questions about the relationship between words and surveillance adding that his ScareMail reveals that words

He further pointed out if every email contains the word 'plot', or 'facility', for example, then searching for those words becomes a fruitless exercise, the report added.