Beyond The Shadows: Business Lessons from the Dark Web | Scott King @ Digifest 2019
And. We'll move on to our next presentation. By. A gentleman by the name of Scott King. From. Critical mass who's joining us from the city of calgary scott, joined critical, mass in 2012, he. Considers himself an expert at providing strategy, for, grudge purchase, brands like consumer, packaged goods such. As Clorox, GLAAD liquid, plumr and financial, services including, city and u.s., delay, his, background includes 16, years in digital marketing and advertising, across. A range of brands and industries, and, given the chance to pick between a book and a movie he'll pick the movie every single time and. Let's give a round of applause and welcome Scott, King to the stage. Hi. Everybody thank you for coming. Yeah, as mentioned I'm from Calgary. And I work at critical mass I actually work primarily, out of the Chicago office although I do live in Calgary. We're. Gonna talk about crime today because. Crime is inspirational. And technology. And crime is even better. Before. I get going I, just want to talk a little bit about where I'm from there's, 950, of us at critical mass and. We have offices, all over the world we're, primarily a marketing, and advertising agency, but, technology. Has always been a core, part. Of what we do. As. Mentioned, I like things that people don't like to buy so for a long time I worked on bleach. The, nice thing about bleach is bleach kills germs germs, causes a flu, so, we did a project a few years ago to. Try to prevent the flu because. The truth of the flu is that it, takes about 24 hours to go across the country so, if you've seen flu trackers before they, always, work on a map right so. What's the point of a map when you're 18 hours away from an outbreak so, the thought here was could we use the Twitter feed the, whole Twitter feed the whole firehose, to. Determine, if people were getting sick in an area and, we found a company called bottle nose and. What bottle nose does. Is their defense contractor, and their, whole job is to find out if it's 14 year old kids making jokes or actual, terrorists, making threats, and that. Same technology, allowed us to determine if somebody was just not, wanting to go to work one day or was actually starting. To get sick and so he started being. Able to prevent or predict. The flu within, about three, days of, when it was going to get bad in your area and then, we visualized, it like this. One. Of the original versions the red one just said call mom which was. Not. To be outdone, of course pine-sol which is also owned by Clorox, they. Have a long-standing problem, where people believe that that is just a floor cleaner and. So we wanted to show the versatility, of that and at the time. YouTube's. Audience, is very broad most, people watch YouTube and it's great the. Categories, in YouTube are also incredibly broad so. We wanted to exploit that by, creating a video for every category in YouTube everything. From makeup tutorials, all the way down to cat videos and so, he created this. You're. Watching the pine-sol we're pine-sol, case study are you gonna give us an award for it we don't know we're not judges but, we do know that our 19, hyper targeted, pre-roll ads deserve one pine-sol. Needed a way to show that the product can clean a lot more than just floors working, with Google we determined, the most popular, search for every YouTube category, then, using, affordable stock, video and a disruptive, and quirky tone we, made a pre-roll, video that lint cleaning with pine-sol to that YouTube search here's, a taste. Mr.. Bardington is deciding, whether to jump on the table or the counter how, does he know which we, don't know we, find them hard to read but. We do know how to clean a counter in tabletop. Pine-sol. We're. Not cats. Painted. Lizard is wondering if this gig will be their big break we. Don't know we, don't have tickets we. Decided the best way to convince our customer, was to meet them where they already were with, a message related, to what they're already interested, in not. Only did people like it but we got tons of views and saw, a 93. Percent completion. Rate for our videos which, is impressive because it's 20 percent higher than the average well. We don't know a lot of things we do know how to show the versatility of pine-sol. And how to make fun of ourselves a bit to pine-sol.
Give, Us a medal. We. Didn't win a medal. Technology. Is and as an inspiration, is fun sometimes. It's. Quirky like this sometimes. It's important like the flu sometimes. The entire idea comes out a technology, when Apple, released beacons, quite a few years ago we did a project with the UN and, in. My whole career in 16 years the work I'm I'm absolutely. The most proud of and it's. Also the thing that taught me the, lesson to look at any technology, no matter where it's from and see if there's something worth learning from it. Land. Mines IEDs. Unexploded. Ordnance. Artillery. Shells. You've. Just triggered a vs2, point, to explosive. Dyes. You've. Just triggered a prom one bouncing, any explosive, device. These. Grim weapons don't discriminate. They. Killed civilians, soldier, alight. The. Black Widow p.m., and mine contains, more explosive, the m77. Is fitted with a parachute, like a Oh 2.5. Has an approximate, kill radius of 20 meters right. Here. And. Right. Now. You. Are surrounded. By landmines. We're, fortunate. We. Earned the, right. To have that installation, in the lobby, of the UN headquarters, in New York after that and we're very proud. So. We have a remarkable line-up. Of customers, mad. At the beginning mentioned, one in particular USAA. If, you watch CNN here in Toronto you probably see USAA ads. They. Are, a, financial. Services organization, they started as roadside. Assistance and insurance, but, they're unique in that they only serve military, and the family of military they, have 13, million members. Complete. Like full service financial like. Right up to investing. They've. Been around for about a hundred years now and. For a bank they, are like, all banks very conservative. But, they're also willing to ask interesting, questions because. They're member base is so unique people. That. Are deployed. Service. People have, really different banking, needs than than, regular people and so we, did a project for them on, the topic of card skimming a few, years ago and what, we were doing that we found out what happens to skimmed cards after of course they go to the dark web there, were a hundred and sixty five thousand, USAA, member, cards that we found on there they were, $12.95.
Us Which. Means that none of them were active or work but it's still a scary prospect, rather. Than panicking, and shutting it down we have very. Brave clients in San Antonio Texas. They came back and they just said this. Can. We learn anything from the dark web and, of course my, answer was yeah I love crime let's go do some crime. So. Before we start talking about that let's talk a little bit about a thing I call little rebellions. We. Are all familiar with iteration, in the idea of improving technology. As it goes and I. I think that the, thing that we don't often talk about enough is that there's, always like one thing that we we, renege on there's always one thing we go back to in, a case of cryptocurrency of course it's very difficult to copy and. We. Went, back from. Where credit cards were which are incredibly, easy to copy to, make cryptocurrency happen, or. If you want to talk about music, originally. You're limited, by the lie. Of CDs, or records or, tapes that you had and. Then we move to buying one song at a time and the butyl beautiful, thing about that was you have access to all the music in the world and you get to keep it but we traded that in for streaming where sometimes your access, to a song you love just vanishes, and. And, so we went back on that principle, and with. The dark web. The. Thing that we reneged on was. The. Decentralized. Control, so. What. What we started with with VPN, was. Very. Private and it was closed systems, we, traded that in for the World Wide Web which is highly public easy to track you there's no privacy built into it and then the dark web works in a completely different way it's, open it's decentralized, but, it's also private. So. When we went back to USAA. We. Had some stuff to tell them about the dark web and so the, dark web is very difficult to track because it's built without tracking in it but, we know a few things about it there's about a million gigabytes of data that go through it a day not. All of that is lovely there's, about a hundred and eighty million dollars a year that is transacted, through it and. There's. About 1.5, million buyer reviews, the truth of that 180, million dollars actually it's just drugs that's. There's. More transactions. Happening that but drugs are 180 million dollar business. This. Is a terrible. Fraction, of the overall global, drug business but it's still a lot of money, we. Went back to USAA and we said to them you know there's two things you need to do you need to be more active in your members to security, and you need to adopt, some. Of the principles, of the dark web and so that's what I'm going to talk to you guys about today the principles, of the dark web and why they're useful. All. Right privacy. Resilience, and Trust these are the three things that make the dark web the dark web when, we talk about privacy. What. We're really talking about is you, not being identifiable. In. An odd way at fosters innovation and the reason is is that when we're being watched we do different things and, then. Of course you are in control of your information and of, course the innovation thing is also, about drugs but in, this case it's. Because you're not being walked, so. Let's take a, familiar. How many of you are from out of town how. Many of you had to check into a hotel when you came in okay you're gonna have a real bad day. 70%. Of hotels leak information, you. Know the Marriott chain, had. 343, million records, exposed, this year 8 million of them were passwords, or, passports. Pardon me 5 million of them were payment cards so the, the reason, that this is a problem is the hotel check-in process is kind of weird like if you really think about how, that works you turn over your ID and then. They verify that you are the person from the booking manually. They take a copy of it and your, credit, card they don't tell you if they're ever going to destroy it which they don't and then. They give you access to your room so in this transaction, you've. Given up complete control of your identity, at the beginning you've, allowed them to copy it and then you've, not made a deal with some of when they're going to get rid of it and so, in the end of course it. Ends up getting leaked. If. You take that and you apply, some principles, of the dark web so privacy first maybe some automation it, starts to look very different why. Are you giving your ID to somebody when you've probably booked online why, not verify, your ID digitally. Once. You're once. You've left the hotel and it's you, know clear that you've not stolen towels or mugs or anything like that why's your data not destroyed of course an employee at, a hotel is incredibly, busy they're not going to stop - to get, rid of the copies of your information, that they made but in a digital world we can automate that and.
Then. Of course you get access to your room. The. Second principle, resilience. Is. About. Three things as well the first one I mentioned before it's decentralized, so the dark web operates in notes and those notes are independent. From one another they all have a job to do their. Office, cated so nobody, really knows who anybody else participating. And it is but, everybody, is there. In. An anonymous way and, then, lastly those nodes are autonomous and so the important thing about autonomy, is that, if you take a node down or take a node out and then. Reattach. It later it's continued, trying to do its job the entire time it's, always trying worked for for, what it's doing and that affords some interesting, ways. To to, create access so. If you take a product like firechat. Does. Anybody use fire Chen have nobody. Okay this is a little, note is a very fun app and it's great in an emergency situation because, it allows you to message without. Having a connection to the internet and. It does it through mesh, networking, so. If you're on this mythical Island, and you want to send a message and there's a bunch of people with fire chat it'll, relay, it through fire, chat from person to person. Just. Like that. Each. Person, in the node is, obfuscated. From the others so the message is hidden, from each person participating. You don't know who, it's getting relayed through but it's getting relayed through everybody the interesting thing about fire chat as if. I send a message to somebody that's not in the local network it'll, continue trying to send that message on every relay it's hid until, that person is able to connect to someone else so, in theory what could happen is if you move to the other side of the island and somebody there had an internet connection it could complete, that with, somebody that's not on this island anymore so the autonomous, part of it continues trying to do its job well. It's. Disconnected. And. The last principle is trust. So trust, in a world of anonymity is very strange thing. Trust, is interesting, in three, ways one trust. When there's anonymity is all about I practice. Saying the word anonymity, for, weeks and I'm so glad that I'm nailing it right now. Reputation. Is the. First bit so your ability to maintain. Some, you know semblance, of brand, and, recognition. By doing. The thing that you're supposed to do anonymity. Gets. In the way of that of course it's, easy once, you've met me to say there's Scott I saw him talk about a thing one time I'll ask him questions, but, if I'm, completely, anonymous, to you anybody, could be me anybody could walk up and pretend to be me and at, any given time so the last bit of trust. Of course is brokering, and so this, idea that there are neutral, third parties that, facilitate. Transactions, between people so if, we take that in a really literal sense let's look at a very. Basic ecommerce, flow you, find a product pay for the product and then you review the product afterwards, in, a world where there is a, lack of trust, where there's anonymity you, have to add a couple of steps to that it goes find and pay and there's a big gap and review what, fills in that gap is the brokering, so yes, he has the money for it or she has the money for it and yes, the seller has the product once, it's fulfilled, then the, money is released and the. Deal is complete, this is the way eBay editors work for a really long time on. The dark web because, everything is heavily encrypted it's, much harder to deal with the support of that and drug. Dealers amazingly, are very good at it drug dealers on the dark web have a ninety seven point eight percent, positive. Review because you won't buy drugs from somebody you don't trust it's. Very very simple. So. That one yeah. It's about the same as ebay sellers so, eBay, sellers probably. Get in on that drug dealing business, this. Is a quote that I really love from from, the dark web so is everybody familiar with the Silk Road, there's, no Silk Road some, via okay for. Those of you who don't very. Big marketplace from a few years ago a guy, in San Francisco named Roth's Albright, who, called himself Dread Pirate Roberts is that right Pirate. Roberts yeah. Okay I got some nodding heads kid, he. Set. Up this marketplace, it did millions of dollars a year the FBI shut it down three, months later the Silk Road too came up has nothing to do with Ross whatsoever, the amazing thing was is that people recognize, their old dealers, from.
The Original, Silk Road even, though they were completely anonymous, and that quo. Is one, of the reasons so. When the. Drugs, come to your house they're. Packaged, in a way to avoid, detection and, each. Drug dealer does it in a slightly different way and if they're stealth as they call it is very good sometimes, it can fool you it looks like junk mail and so. What, was happening was people were saying I order drugs from my old dealer it's definitely, not my old dealer because when it showed up it was packaged a different way so. Those. Three principles the idea of privacy resilience. And Trust in a in a non criminal world so I love crime but you don't have to love crime, really. Just they mean three things. Privacy. Is all about protection so protecting, you. Your business, liability. For having records leak but also protecting, customers, you know from. Themselves. In many ways, resilience. Is all about access, and accessibility. So, making, systems that are available especially, if you make important, systems like. The UN does and then. Trust of course is about loyalty so. Building, trust, you. Know allows you to, keep, customers and grow, your customer base and. Keep them loyal and some of the things that happen on the dark web or just straight-up good customer, service ideas, that. We could borrow. So. That's it a question I often get asked is how can you get on the dark web the answer is on the right tor the tor browser if you want to try the dark web out that's, how you can do it I borrow, heavily from Jamie Bartlett's, book the, dark net in this presentation, so if you want to get into. The the deep dark of that web that's. A great book to read thank, you very much. Thanks. God we've, got a few minutes for questions and I definitely want to open. It up to the floor. There's. A microphone over here if you have a question raise your hand really high and we'll get someone to run over to you and, ask a question over here on this side. Can. You talk about how your if you can your client, benefited, from your information, about the dark web yeah absolutely so a, couple of things that came, out of that is, is anybody familiar with the messaging system called. Signal. Edward. Snowden like to talk about it a lot so one. Of the things USAA would like to implement now that they've seen this work is customer, service buy a signal when. Soldiers, are deployed especially. In places like Iraq, and Egypt where. There's like heavy communication. Monitoring, signal, allows them to remain encrypted when we make those transactions, so customer, service reps from USAA, will, be trained how to use signal to help soldiers that are deployed. Great. Any other questions out in the audience. That, I can, I add to that actually, absolutely one other thing this is a very. Process. Centric, sort of thing but we're. Now starting to talk to the client about more. About privacy first design so thinking about how, you design, systems, that are inherently private much in the way the dark, web is so there's. When. You have military. Families, giving power, of attorney and access, to people is very common and. The systems that have been developed to do that in the past have, been, you, know somewhat insecure there's, literally a PDF, available. To military, service people in the US that tells them to write down their bank name, and password, user name and password before, they get deployed which is an awful, idea just terrible because they're people out there that like me that love crime. Scott. Why are people so. Loose. Now with their private information even, just from experience I, I asked this question a lot in usability, testing. Especially. When it when I do work in regulated, industries, how, important, is privacy, to you and they say oh you know it's, a legitimate, enough website, I don't really worry about it sure, yeah the other thing you hear a lot is I don't have anything to hide and. So. Like why would I worry about this if I'm not a criminal or I don't you know do something bad every day or but. I mean like all pieces of information they can be connected in ways that you didn't intend and end, up making you look like you're you.
Know, Participating. In crime there's a good example of that from. A guy who wrote cold case the TV show cold case so, he's sitting having breakfast, with his family one morning and the FBI comes through the door and they. Whisk him out and they whisk his wife and kid out it turns out that the reason they were there was. Because his search history had a lot to do with, killing. His wife cutting. Off her head and dealing. With the body and he was because he was researching the show he writes for not, because he had any intention, of course of doing something terrible to his wife yeah. Is. What's. The lesson there. That. Just. Because you don't think you have anything to hide doesn't mean it doesn't look like you have something to hide there's. In incognito. Browser, help, ya know, that, protects, you from people, finding. Out what you've looked at when they sit down to use your computer but all that information, is still transferred and they'll clear if, you're worried about that you should use torque yeah, yes. If. You want to know how to get around. Issues. Talk. To Scott after any other questions, from the audience out there I, must. Be really scary it's, just never really occurred to me because I usually when I talk about these things I talk about them in isolation like I'll go and I'll talk about privacy, I'll go talk about resilient. Networks or something like that but I never talk about them all at once. I'm. Curious about this user rating, situation. For drug dealers because is, this, is. This really, a thing and it you, must be tweaking what you American data when you refer, to us AAA yeah. Yeah, absolutely you said, user. Reviews are super, important, to dealers. Because. Their. Their. Ability. To deliver a product that is not allowed is the, whole reason they exist and if. You have any lack of trust in them of course you're not going to purchase from them any more repeat businesses, the the bread and butter of selling. Drugs or guns, or whatever else you can buy on on the dark web and so the customer service is surprisingly. Good like, there. Was a comment Jamie, Bartlett made, where he said sometimes when I was looking through the marketplaces. On the dark web it felt like I was looking at Zappos, with pornography. So. Not, unlike a. Previous. Chance today where a, pornography. And gambling, are pushing an augmented, reality in, machine. Learning do, you feel like the dark web is actually pushing us to be better at security, and. Privacy yeah, I hope so I mean the, first time I talked about privacy I thought it was really serendipitous. That there had been a big breach with with Facebook and like a bunch of Facebook information was exposed and then, of. Course the next time I did that talk Facebook had been breached. Again and today, I'm talking, this morning they were breached, again so so, yeah I think it I think it's important and and I don't think. Businesses. That trade and information, are going to prioritize the.
Safety Of your information, so you have to do it, I've. Been receiving. Spam, messages, lately saying, I know your password, send. Me cryptocurrency. To this address they, definitely know your password yes. So, everybody's. Got their phone on them I'm not gonna be upset if you pull out your phone right now and try this go, - go - have I been poned comm, PW, and needy. You guys know what that is you're giggling yeah how many times have you been caught in a breach I'm at 14, yeah. Yeah. So. Have I been poned calm. And. Just plug your email address in there see if that has. Been part, of any breed it almost said, the guy the money why would he still have my heck yeah. You. Didn't use a broker, I didn't yeah I didn't use the red alias it's. It is true though you know, this. Is happening more and more how, many of you in the audience have gotten a call, from your credit card company saying, oh we need to send you a new card your cards been compromised, no. There should be more than that actually to be honest it's. Happened to me like five times in the last five, years so, it's, a thing that happens quite, regularly and, maybe it's because I stay in hotels yeah. Hotels are bad for that of gas, stations are notoriously. Bad the United States is not where. We are banking, lies the u.s.. Implementation. Of the chip system on cards is still, being rolled out and so card skimming is incredibly. Easy and and, popular. There, and it grows and in the UK it did the same thing you know and I guess, 2010, when, they implemented, the chip and pin system they saw card, skimming and card, fraud go through. The roof right up until the day where it was completely implemented, and then it falls off the, people, that are trying to skim those cards they see their opportunity, window shrinking, and then they ramp things up which, is currently happening in the US. One. More question for me unless there are other from the audience and then we'll move on in the program. Why. Are people so, okay. With interacting, with the dark web, well. It's so. It's very difficult to tell how many people are, okay with it the, estimates, that that I've been able to pull up range, quite a bit but the most common number that's thrown out is 5 million which, isn't a lot of people like that's why that, number 180, million dollars in drugs a year through the dark, web is first of all probably wildly. Inaccurate, but also small, as that's this American or worldwide the right way well a worldwide yes okay now so. It's not as many people as you think know that it makes a big headline but, it's still a relatively small number of people I feel like sometimes Craigslist. Is like the dark web Craigslist. Is a good place to go and find, things, that, you would access through the dark web so is reddit yeah, there's no search engines on the dark web. All. Right give it up for Scott King everybody thanks so much everybody. Tips, and tricks on getting through the dark web here. You.
2019-06-17 00:59
