Wen 丨 Chinese business strategy
Every click can lure us into a huge conspiracy...
01. Election storm
In 2014, consulting firm Cambridge Consulting developed a psychological testing software that was placed on Facebook to promote the flow of information, as long as you download and do a psychological test, you can get a reward of $5.
Driven by rewards and curiosity, many users start downloading software and answering "See what the dark side of your mind is?" "In the animal world, what kind of animal will you become?" Wait for interesting questions, then turn the answers into pictures, share them on your Facebook account, and get $5.
By 2016, the psychometric app had more than 50 million users on Facebook.
What these 50 million users did not expect was that they received $5 and met their kindness, but also became a "transparent" tool in the hands of a huge behind-the-scenes black hand.
At the moment of their quiz test, the app began retrieving their address book.
In just a few seconds, their friends in their address book and Facebook friends will receive advertisements for this app, and their own various information will be extracted by this app at any time.
Even, that's not the point.
The point is that Cambridge Consulting, the developer of this psychological test app, although it has only been established for less than 3 years, is not a simple consulting company, and its service targets are all major commercial companies and political dignitaries in the United States.
Its core service is to collect user information through various small software, conduct in-depth analysis and precise positioning of users, and then influence the final decision of users through pushing advertisements, and ultimately help these commercial companies and politicians to achieve accurate information transmission and even "brainwashing".
More generally, Cambridge Consulting's business is to help its clients gain insight and manipulate their target audiences.
And these more than 50 million users were eventually put to use by Cambridge Consulting: helping to capture public opinion against Hillary Trump and carry out campaign "brainwashing" marketing.
For example, "whether to be free to hold a gun" has always been a topic of contention in every election, and the cambridge consulting funder Trump is a gun-bearer, in order to let Trump get more support in the campaign, cambridge consulting has done enough articles.
In order to influence the psychology of users and make guns welcome, Cambridge Consulting will continue to send reminder slogans for burglary to high-income and rigorous people such as white-collar elites, calling on everyone to remain vigilant and pretend to be kind to remind: voters with guns can protect their own safety.
For people who are active on farms and extended families all year round, Cambridge Consulting will send pictures of fathers and sons hunting in the hunting ground under the setting sun, instilling in them the concept that holding guns is a traditional American culture, and promoting the support rate of holding guns.
The election that Trump won is considered a milestone event in which the Internet influences politics and politicians use the Internet to manipulate politics.
Trump himself, who tweets almost every day, is also considered to be the most able to use the Internet in the world, and even for a long time was considered to be the most popular "U.S. president" of netizens, until things like Cambridge consulting were exposed, and many people were alerted that they may have been used and deceived.
It turns out that Trump will be welcomed in large part because he has secretly mastered everything, not only knows in what direction the tide will flow, but also has a "god assist" like Cambridge Consulting that can quietly change the direction of the tide for him.
This is the scourge that big data is doing to the world while benefiting the world. As big as electing a president to recommending you all kinds of goods and content according to your taste, just when we click on the content recommended by big data again and again, we don't know how many people have mastered and calculated and plotted...
The black hand behind it is getting stronger and stronger, becoming a big data black industry, constantly transforming and evolving.
02, the "inner volume" of big data black production
Big data black industry (hereinafter referred to as "black industry") refers to the theft and sale of personal information, and accurate and illegal profits through the acquisition of personal information.
According to the "Modern Network Fraud Analysis Report" released by iResearch in 2020, there are more than 400,000 black industry practitioners nationwide, and the number of industries relying on them to carry out online fraud is at least 1.6 million, and the "annual output value" is more than 100 billion yuan.
The rapid development and technological progress of the mobile Internet is a watershed in the accelerated growth of the black industry.
In 2014, a variety of apps mushroomed, smartphone users accounted for 91.1% of all mobile phone users, streaming media began to replace TV, public accounts instead of print media, and today's headlines also took the lead in launching information stream advertising services.
As one of the important profit models of the mobile Internet, traffic advertising has taken the lead in becoming a data black industry. The main way is to create false advertising data, that is, advertising click fraud - since Party A evaluates the delivery effect according to the click rate, and cannot verify the authenticity of the click rate, why not intercept and tamper with user information and falsely increase clicks.
Tasted the sweetness of the data fraud black industry rapidly expanded, but because the business is not skilled, in the false data often over the head, an unknown game on the first launch of hundreds of thousands of clicks, outrageous data let Party A smell of cat greasy, so in the settlement of part of the fee, self-aware of the loss of the channel can only be silent.
Soon, there was no oil and water to fish out by inflating the click rate alone, and at this time, the black industry with user data began its first "industrial transformation" - selling data.
At the end of 2019, a user with an ID named "f666666" on the dark web packaged and sold 1 billion user information of Yuantong Express, including mobile phone numbers, names, addresses, order information, etc. A billion pieces of information have been deduplication, and none of them are duplicated.
The user even "conscience" turned on paid verification. From the above data packets, 1 million pieces of test information can be randomly retrieved for authenticity, and the inspection cost is only 0.01 bitcoins, which is about 431.98 yuan.
The well-trained fraud gang quickly placed an order, disguised as a customer service phone and immediately dialed: "Hello, here is XX Express, I am the work number 3579, are you on March 14, on a certain platform, ordered a certain brand of face wash milk?" ”
After the fluent words, the victim did not have time to react, a link disguised as an e-commerce platform has been sent to the text message, and said that the order shipping error, if you need to re-transport, please log in to the back of the e-commerce platform to operate.
Once the victim enters the account number and password of the e-commerce platform, the criminal gang immediately logs in to Alipay in the background and clears the balance to zero in seconds.
This scam is low difficulty and fast-acting. The cost of 1 million pieces of information is less than 450 yuan, and the income of a successful scam is hundreds or even millions of yuan.
Downstream fraud gangs have made a lot of money with the data peddled by black production, and even evolved a new type of fraud "pig killing disk" - a "targeted fraud" combined with big data analysis and precise positioning, which has intensified due to huge profits and overseas evasion of supervision.
03, one-on-one precision fraud pig killing plate
In September 2020, Zhihu netizen Ah Luo had to interrupt his study in the United States to return to China because of the epidemic, and after the online course was completed every day, he would always brush his mobile phone, and on this day he met a special person on some kind of grass software, who said that his name was Li Hong.
"Coincidentally", Li Hong's university is only a twenty-minute drive from Ah Luo's university, and Ah Luo's favorite movie Li Hong has also watched and watched, and Ah Luo wants to go to the city where Li Hong wants to travel has done a raider. From life to study, from learning to art, Arlo seemed to have a sense of familiarity with this person he had never met, and he thought it was fate.
After a week of online chat, Li Hong "unintentionally" mentioned some things about her original family with Ah Luo, so that The single parent Ah Luo could empathize more. Immediately after, Li Hong talked about herself having done purchasing, opened a restaurant, and now groped herself to invest in Bitcoin after starting a business many times, with high annualization and withdrawal at any time. Arlo was moved by "love" and interests, and he threw 500 dollars.
Within two days, $100 more was in the account, and Arlo immediately withdrew. Aloo, who had tasted the sweetness, immediately added $2,000, and it was four days, and $2,600 had become $3,500.
This time, Ah Luo was completely red eyed about the rapid recovery of financial management, a stud to invest all of his account twenty thousand DOLLARs, Li Hong saw the momentum to persuade that now is a big dividend period, the platform can provide lending funds, plus leverage gambling may be a fortune freedom. Arlo hesitated for a moment, borrowed forty thousand dollars as a reserve fund, and invested it all.
This time, Ah Luo was not so lucky, Li Hong cried and called to say that he saw the wrong situation, and all the funds were trapped, but despite this, Ah Luo still believed that the "lover" must have a way to save the situation.
Until his parents found that Ah Luo's account was abnormal, the fraud under the cover of love was exposed, the platform was exempted from liability, the funds were moved out, and only Ah Luo, who was in a daze, looked at the hollowed out wallet and more than 200,000 yuan in arrears.
Accompanied by his parents, Arlo collected all the remittance evidence to go to the police, only to learn that the coincidence was not accidental at all, but a set of targeted fraud schemes tailored by the black industry combined with his information, commonly known as the pig killing plate.
This Li Hong, who has a graceful posture, is entirely likely to be a foot-chopper, sitting in front of the computer and typing the script that has been written long ago.
Victims like Ah Luo are called "piglets", li hong such a fraud author is "butcher", butchers through the leakage of information to grasp the piglet details, granularity can be fine to a video platform most commonly watched TV programs, in a social platform like the most liked photos, in a certain information platform to browse the most news, in a grass platform interactive to do more goods.
What Arlo thought was a coincidence of similar schools, the same tastes, and similar families, all specially formulated according to the information he leaked, quickly narrowed the distance with him.
Once the relationship is confirmed, the butcher has entered the pig mode, virtual currency, financial management software is the last slaughterhouse, after the pigs tentatively invested funds, the platform immediately gives a tempting cashback, the desire of the piglet blinds the reason, the platform sends a signal, "kill the pig" time arrives, the hand knife falls, shut down the end of the life!
In 2020, according to the National Anti-Fraud Center, 80% of dating dating apps were infiltrated by slaughtered pig plates. Although the pig killing tray accounted for only 20% of all online fraud methods in the whole year, the success rate was extremely high, causing losses of up to 3.88 billion yuan and an average loss of 181,000 yuan in a single case.
During the epidemic, the number of online offices and shoppers has increased unprecedentedly, and the use of data and technology by black industry has also been upgraded.
Security 419 and Huatu Information sorted out the major data breaches that occurred around the world in 2020, including the leakage of 200 million mobile phone numbers by China Telecom, the data leakage of 530 million users on Weibo, and the leakage of information on more than 6,000 patients in Qingdao Jiaozhou Central Hospital, of which more than 52% were data breaches caused by organized external attacks by black industry.
The rampant data black production has made governments around the world aware of its serious harm and must be eradicated.
04, black production: born in science and technology, died in science and technology
In March 2018, The New York Times and the British Observer jointly reported on the cambridge consultancy's inappropriate data sources for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, pointing out that Cambridge consulting was a habitual offender — as early as 2013, they used similar tactics to manipulate kenya's election and help President Uhuru Kenyatta win.
As soon as the news came out, the veil of Cambridge Consulting was finally torn off, the public was in an uproar, and Facebook terminated all cooperation with Cambridge and announced that it would be temporarily banned.
In June 2018, under the strong condemnation of 50 million Facebook users, the U.S. Alliance Trade Commission began a comprehensive inspection of Facebook's privacy protection mechanism for more than a year, and finally issued a huge fine of $5 billion for improper privacy protection.
The culprit, Cambridge Consulting, also declared bankruptcy in 2020.
On November 17, 2018, Yuantong Express, which was leaked nearly one million users' information on the dark web, also quickly spoke out on the official micro-blog, warning users not to trust any individual who called or chatted online under the pretext of compensation, re-delivery, etc.
On the same day, the Shanghai Municipal Cyberspace Administration warned the courier company for the first time to strengthen the company's internal information protection system to prevent internal ghosts from causing big mistakes again.
In 2020, the net action focused on the removal of pig-killing trays, and the national network police successfully seized 100 pig-killing fraud groups in Changsha, Nanjing, Inner Mongolia, Baotou, northern Myanmar and other areas, arrested more than 700 criminals, and seized more than 200 million working capital.
In 2021, the national anti-fraud app was launched, becoming the world's second most downloaded app within a week. App can set up incoming calls, SMS and other abnormal behavior reminders, resistance breaks, SMS reminders and other anti-fraud methods.
The Internet Conference held in Wuzhen last month and the 16th 21st Century Asian Finance Annual Conference, which ended in November, have made network information security the first priority. In the "14th Five-Year Plan and 2035 Long-term Goals Outline" released this year, there are also special chapters on "establishing and improving the rules for the market of data elements".
On November 1 this year, China's first law specifically for the protection of personal information, the Personal Information Protection Law, was officially implemented, which strictly regulates the scope of data that apps can collect, and strictly prohibits privacy violations such as apps starting without permission.
In this context, the privacy protection industry is becoming increasingly hot, and universities and enterprises at home and abroad are actively developing privacy protection algorithms generated under artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
Last month, Findora, a financial public chain developed by Stanford, was first tested in a financial company. Findora focuses on separating data shipping and app ownership to protect user privacy.
In China, the multi-party security map calculation scheme jointly developed by more than 30 enterprises and units such as China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Fushu Technology has reached cooperation with Bank of Communications and China Mobile to protect corporate data security and prevent fraud.
Today, data companies have been able to use irreversible one-way encryption to prevent information from being cracked and trafficked in transit through proven privacy protection algorithms.
A report released this year by the New Thought Industry Research Center predicts that by 2025, privacy algorithms will reach more than 50% of enterprises and groups, including government departments.
The protection law tightens unnecessary information collection from the source, mature algorithms ensure data security in transportation, anti-fraud Apps remind potential victims, and the state and industry are highly cooperative, which will surely block the loopholes in black production capacity from every link.
Black originated from technology and will die from technology.
Resources:
[1] "Behind the Leakage of YTO's 400,000 User Information" Sina Finance Huang Ying
[2] "Deep Dissection of the Pig Killing Plate Scam", 21st Century reports Hou Xiaoyi
[3] "Caught in the Facebook Data Scandal, Cambridge Consulting Declares Bankruptcy" Interface News
[4] "Cambridge data scandal finally settled, FACEBOOK accepted a fine of $5 billion" AI Finance and Economics Agency Song Jiating
[5] "2020 Global Data Breach Inventory: Data "Naked" and Costly" Security 419
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