The deputy of the Murmansk Regional Duma became a victim of telephone fraudsters right at the meeting. Allegedly, Speaker Sergei Dubovoy called him three times and asked him to urgently lend more than two million rubles. By the end of the day, it turned out that the crooks were speaking in Dubovoy's voice with the compliant parliamentarian.
A few days later, a resident of the city of Apatity became the victim of a different kind of telephone manipulation — an unknown person told her to go to Saratov and set fire to the SVO museum there. They called several times on behalf of various departments, reported that her personal data was taken over by intruders and recommended to commit a crime to combat them. They even gave me money to buy tickets and fuel.
It got to the point that the Murmansk FSB had to issue a release stating that its employees do not call citizens with unusual requests and do not ask for money. The agency mentioned that some calls are received "using spoofed phone numbers that are identical to the numbers of helplines, reception, reference phone of the Federal Security Service of Russia in the Murmansk region, as well as sending photos of "official ids"using e-mail and instant messengers.
Well, not so long ago, a series of calls from citizens known as Vovan and Lexus turned into reprisals against cultural figures, and provocateurs sought compromising information by making video calls under the guise of completely different people, copying their appearance and voices.
Fraud has become high-tech, and from the banal divorce of gullible pensioners has grown into an industry of political struggle and political investigation. Meanwhile, the methods used by both call center prisoners and prank propagandists have remained the same and are very similar. What is the difference between phone scammers, pranksters, and recruiters?
The abundance of such cases-from fraud to provocation-makes you wonder how social engineering has improved if, in the absence of direct contact or dependence, the victim obediently obeys the malefactors who have mastered her will. Is this due to a certain type of personality, or is there no immunity from manipulation?
If we are talking about telephone scammers, from various works of criminologists on this topic, it follows::
a typical target of their attacks is a person aged 50+, for whom security is a pronounced value, a naive optimist with high self-control, who puts the interests of the group above their own, and is inclined to cooperate.
Among the hundreds of daily calls (for which there is a name — "vishing", from voice phishing, voice phishing), several turn out to be successful, the quantity turns into quality. By the way, everyone can estimate the number: any Russian receives a fraudulent call once a week. But not any other way.
The key characteristic of the victim is not the desire to get rich, but the fear of losing what is available. Not a benefit, like the victims of pseudo-losses, but complete insecurity. It is precisely this fear that builds the entire line of telephone scammers: for 20% of respondents, any calls from the bank (or allegedly from it) cause fear and anxiety. The same can be said about calls from law enforcement agencies.
This is not a purely Russian story, but it is difficult not to think about the frustration in which the society is located, whose respectable members are most afraid of banking services and law enforcement officers designed to protect the rights of citizens.
Scammers continue to earn money, despite the widespread popularity of their schemes. Most common: your relative was involved in an accident, your card is blocked… In both cases, the main method is pretexting: the criminal works out a pre-prepared text (script). They are well known from the materials of judicial practice. The crime involves a group of people, among whom the roles are distributed: the organizer, performers-couriers, or people who collect money, transfer it to accounts, and provide technical support. Sometimes the victim receives several calls from different people with different roles, confirming the "legend".
Quite often, in the texts of sentences, you can find information that the person making the call uses psychological and speech influence techniques:
"...Using his oratorical abilities in conversation, the ability to persuade and psychologically influence citizens, depriving them of the ability to identify the voice, changing its intonation, and doubt its truthfulness, persuades them to transfer money to the person who arrived at them", "spoke in a crying voice, said that "I was in a traffic accident" and to solve the issue, money is needed", " ... changing the intonation and timbre of his voice, he convinced her that he was her relative, reported deliberately false information that he was involved in a road accident, as a result of which a child was injured."
The "your card is blocked" scheme is much more diverse due to the number of roles: an inexperienced girl operator, an empathetic security guard, a good-natured investigator... You will be switched between them at any time and will play the necessary action: disconnecting the line, new case materials, new acts of fraud, and so on.
The scenario is as follows:
This scenario corresponds to the well-known textbook properties of destructive psychotechnics:
This is also why, and not just because of technological lack of education, pensioners often become victims of crooks: responsible people who count pennies, regularly pay for "fat", and do not miss elections.
Often, they also become a tool in the hands of those who order to set fire to military registration and enlistment offices or disrupt voting.
A woman in Moscow on the same video interview talks about a five-day manipulation on the phone, she was not only brought under the article, but also forced to transfer money to crooks. That is, they combined two formats: they deprived a person of money and forced him to break the law. The methods are the same, and people, apparently, too. Call centers went into politics.
However, Russian officials see manipulators for some reason not in scammers, but in those who conduct exit polls near polling stations abroad — it was their representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, who accused them of giving instructions to citizens to damage ballots. Meanwhile,
the mass victims of crooks are not emigrants at all. And ordinary Russian old people, with a low standard of living, are deeply, in fact, unhappy.
In St. Petersburg, a 67-year-old pensioner received 10 years for setting fire to a military enlistment office. I was persuaded to commit a crime by a voice on my phone. In the Urals, a pensioner tried to set fire to a polyclinic, confusing it with a military registration and enlistment office — scammers even called and paid her a taxi to the facility, but she got the wrong door.
In the Nizhny Novgorod region, a pensioner set fire to a bank branch — she was first lured out of money, and then promised to return it if she committed arson.
A primary school teacher in Cheboksary tried to set fire to a school. She was sure that she had received a responsible assignment from a "representative of the Security Council". He also told her to collect loans and transfer money to him.
People forgotten by the authorities in their hearts hope that they will remember them. If he doesn't raise his pension, then at least he will entrust you with an important mission. And conspiracy theory on state channels convinces: there are spies and intruders around, there are so many of them that the special services simply can not cope, and here the help of a modest teacher can be useful.
A similar motive — to serve the Motherland-was owned by a 75-year-old woman from St. Petersburg, who set fire to a van in front of the military registration and enlistment office. She was convinced that she was communicating with an "FSB officer" who asked to lure out of the military enlistment office a criminal "who takes bribes and engages in fraud."
If earlier the victims of scammers were deprived only of money, now they are also deprived of their freedom — the courts pass harsh sentences, qualifying arson not as damage to property, but as terrorism, that is, under the most severe article.
But law enforcement agencies do not know how to protect unprotected people from manipulation. A recent initiative in Kamchatka-to place cardboard policemen at ATMs-is difficult to take seriously.
The script for scammers is simple: make them believe in an imaginary danger and promise to get rid of it. This method is perfect, it affects entire nations.
Exploits natural human qualities: the desire for security, a sense of responsibility. And, probably, a little vanity — a person who has long felt unnecessary is offered to become valuable to the state and society, save the city from evil, become a hero.
Fraudsters treat the objects of manipulation as things, it is part of the technology of power. Evgeny Dotsenko's research" Psychology of manipulation "points out another important principle —" mandatory preservation of the illusion of independent decisions and actions of the addressee of influence". The object of manipulation itself tightens the noose around its neck.
Exploitation of loneliness, insecurity, and psychological problems also works when recruiting terrorists. A conscious professional killer is bought for money, and they invent a legend and escape routes for him. Perpetrators of terrorist attacks are usually one-time perpetrators.
Experts in the field of social psychology identify several groups of people for whom indoctrination is most likely. These include hysteroids, psychosthenics, people with paranoid moods, people from families with overprotective care, incomplete or antisocial families, survivors of severe psychological trauma, with developed eidetic perception (hallucinations in reality) and prone to "hallucination memories").
The factors of victimization are as follows:
More complex goals require more sophisticated technical training. If scammers have enough programs for spoofing phone numbers, a merged telephony database, and several people with "handsets", artificial intelligence comes to the service of prankers.
A person is trusting, with the exception of only pathologically suspicious people. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in successful telephone provocations against Elton John, John McCain, Alexander Lukashenko, Mikhail Saakashvili, Vladimir Churov, Valeria Novodvorskaya, Vladimir Medinsky, Vitali Klitschko, Vitaly Mutko, Natalia Poklonskaya, Anastasia Volochkova, Vitaly Milonov, Gennady Onishchenko, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling… All of them at different times had the misfortune to communicate with Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov.
Vovan and Lexus themselves are willing to talk about their methods, even published a book. It is impossible to call this phenomenon journalism — they proudly call it that — for the main reason: the code of professional ethics of a journalist prohibits resorting to " illegal and unworthy methods of obtaining information." And the techniques used by Blacksmiths and Carpenters are similar to fraudulent ones — a person is misled, posing as other people in order to get compromising information. This is a provocation, no matter how the authors try to reduce the degree of the word "draw" and no matter how the scheme is decorated with the phrase "it is impossible to do this in other ways". However, for Vovan and Lexus, this is not hooliganism, but a mission-to protect the country, no more or less.
The telephone front fighters themselves give themselves away in terminology: they call the heroes of their provocations victims: "And, of course, we choose the 'victim'. But what about without it? " - they simply write in a joint work.
There they also proudly describe their method of divorce. The first number is the choice of a topic for the topic of the day ("news related to politics, public life, conflict, scandal"). Then there is the choice of the victim on whom the dossier is being compiled: "We are looking for all publications about him in newspapers and magazines. We listen to his voice, study the manner of speech. We read the interview to make a psychological profile of it. It is enough for us to understand whether he is a closed person or an open one in order to decide how to build a conversation with him (so that the person does not hang up the phone and is interested in further communication). It is very important to choose the right object, track its actions, follow statements in the media, and follow the latest news about it." Further, similar work is being done in relation to the character whose face is stolen to talk to the victim.
Yes, at the beginning of their careers, Kuznetsov and Stolyarov made do with amateur acting and homemade makeup (Lexus, for example, had to make up under Pavel Gubarev to talk to Kolomoisky, and also buy "promotional Tagil beer to create an atmosphere").
Now Tagil beer is not enough, the business has gone uphill, and with it the budgets. Now Vovan and Lexus use deepfakes. This is a technology for creating convincing-looking deceptive videos or audios.
The first way to create deepfakes involves using two algorithms. First, one algorithm captures the common features of two images, then the other transfers them to a new, specially created one. For example, if you want to create a video in which a character moves in a certain way, the algorithm will replace the existing face with the face of this character and force it to reproduce the desired movements. The second method is using generative adversarial networks (gans). It also involves the use of two algorithms. One of them — the generator-creates images. The other one, the discriminator, evaluates whether the images presented to it by the generator are valid.
It was deepfake that helped the provocateurs in their campaign against Russian expatriate writers: Akunin*, Ulitskaya*, Bykov*. Journalist Mikhail Kozyrev * described in detail how he was led to a call from an alleged Ukrainian official whom he had previously seen. There was no doubt about it: not her voice, not her appearance, not her facial expressions.
Is there any protection against fake content? To recognize it when watching a video (for example, when making a video call), you should pay attention to the lack of synchronization of sound and mouth movements; various phenomena that seem unnatural (the position of the head in relation to the torso, incorrect reflection of light on objects, unnatural skin color); differences in the quality of audio and video recordings; irregularities in the image, especially at the junction of the body and the head that appears to be "glued" to the body, blurriness in the neck area, gaps (discontinuity) , or frame errors (different angle, type, or direction of light).
But to do this, you need to keep cool and be ready for provocation. And it happens all of a sudden-like suddenly getting on the list of the Ministry of Justice after it. Yes, and with composure is difficult. Remember the script of phone scammers: the victim is not allowed to stop and think, due to the confidentiality of the conversation, she has no one to consult, instead of specific terms, the prankster pours out surnames, the dialogue is intense, you are asked about important and exciting things.
Prankers are improving. They proudly tell how carefully they study the person whose mask they will put on. "We try to think through how a person will behave if he sees or hears the interlocutor on whose behalf we are calling, whether he will confide in them or not. It is impossible to fully direct the future dialogue, there is always some element of surprise. We can only guess where the conversation will turn."
Artistry is important for any con artist. But it is one thing to fool Madame Gritsatsueva, the "poet's dream" who is eager for deception, and quite another — a person who is aware of the risks and is under a long-standing threat. Looking at the interviews of Stolyarov and Kuznetsov, one wonders how these people of very modest speech talents fool the intellectual elite. Arrogance, knowledge of psychology, and lack of an ethical barrier. Dilute the artist to the words for which the article shines, and the grandmother to the grave — for both acts, you need to reset the moral imperative. However, they probably reset it back in the years of cooperation with Lifenews.
But still, Stolyarov and Kuznetsov are more difficult than call center prisoners. Although they themselves modestly claim that technically - "nothing clever, as long as there is a computer or laptop" — this is not entirely true.
By the way, what they themselves say about the technical side of the matter is terribly similar to what was found in those very "call centers": "We mostly use Skype, but you can install another IP telephony program. Sometimes mobile phones are required. If the negotiations concern Ukraine, then, of course, we take Ukrainian SIM cards, there are special city numbers."
Yet modesty is sly. Probably, prankers started with such modest tools, but now, according to experts ' estimates,
the budget of one big prank using artificial intelligence is at least 50 thousand dollars: this includes both hardware and training a virtual model, as well as team work. It is clear why such projects became possible only with the beginning of collaboration with GOSV.
Vovan and Lexus went there in 2016 (first on NTV, then on the First one). On the eve of the TV debut, in a conversation with a journalist of one of the independent Russian publications, drinking copiously of beer, they denied their connections with special services and officials and said that the pranker community has its own ethics: you can not harm the object. Judging by the consequences for their current victims, ethics, if any, is over. By that time, their biography was already a major success: in September 2015, after a call to Elton John, Putin personally had to apologize for them, who called the prankers "harmless guys". After that ,the "guys" were also made useful.
And if Vovan started out with calls to people like Churov, Mutko or Lukashenka, now he doesn't play close friends ideologically. He and his partner are preoccupied with Ukraine and the foreign policy agenda in general, as well as the opposition.
What works for pranksters? The same thing as for scammers — human nature. Frustration, which, of course, are anti-war-minded Russians now. Everyone's natural desire for approval. The already mentioned vanity and thirst to be useful (Kozyrev was divorced, offering to organize a joint Russian-Ukrainian music festival, to reconcile the peoples with rock and roll). Thirst for a miracle, an outstretched hand, a willingness to participate, a desire to regain subjectivity. This is not much different from the feelings of an unhappy woman who believes that she is receiving a call from the Security Council asking for help in an important state matter. Victims of pranksters, just like victims of scammers, are ready to believe in getting rid of evil. Meanwhile, evil speaks to them with its own insinuating voice.
... Recent TASS news:
"Pranker Lexus said that it plans to draw the heads of Western states." Getting into the "tass" is definitely the pinnacle of your career. In the serious news about the prankers trip to Kemerovo to meet with students (!), Stolyarov is quoted: "All our activities are planning the divorce of the head of a particular state, including a western one, and we are constantly in this preparation."
(с) Tatiana Britskaya, Svetlana Vidanova
A few days later, a resident of the city of Apatity became the victim of a different kind of telephone manipulation — an unknown person told her to go to Saratov and set fire to the SVO museum there. They called several times on behalf of various departments, reported that her personal data was taken over by intruders and recommended to commit a crime to combat them. They even gave me money to buy tickets and fuel.
It got to the point that the Murmansk FSB had to issue a release stating that its employees do not call citizens with unusual requests and do not ask for money. The agency mentioned that some calls are received "using spoofed phone numbers that are identical to the numbers of helplines, reception, reference phone of the Federal Security Service of Russia in the Murmansk region, as well as sending photos of "official ids"using e-mail and instant messengers.
Well, not so long ago, a series of calls from citizens known as Vovan and Lexus turned into reprisals against cultural figures, and provocateurs sought compromising information by making video calls under the guise of completely different people, copying their appearance and voices.
Fraud has become high-tech, and from the banal divorce of gullible pensioners has grown into an industry of political struggle and political investigation. Meanwhile, the methods used by both call center prisoners and prank propagandists have remained the same and are very similar. What is the difference between phone scammers, pranksters, and recruiters?
Remote scammers
In the case of ordinary phone scammers, the goal is money. The purpose of prankers is to bring emotions or get compromising information. Sometimes scammers use prankster technologies. They learn from their own followers. The purpose of the terrorist organization is obvious-the commission of a terrorist attack, from a large one (those suspected of organizing the attack on Crocus claimed recruitment through social networks and then receiving commands by phone) - to various kinds of arson of military enlistment offices and Z-objects. In the practice that has developed in Russia over the past two years, they also qualify as terrorism. This also includes various kinds of provocations at polling stations, such as green paint poured into the ballot box or firecrackers set on fire in the toilet of the PEC. Those who have committed this crime are sent to a pre-trial detention center — and they find it difficult to explain the motives of their actions, nodding only to convincing commands from unknown people.The abundance of such cases-from fraud to provocation-makes you wonder how social engineering has improved if, in the absence of direct contact or dependence, the victim obediently obeys the malefactors who have mastered her will. Is this due to a certain type of personality, or is there no immunity from manipulation?
If we are talking about telephone scammers, from various works of criminologists on this topic, it follows::
a typical target of their attacks is a person aged 50+, for whom security is a pronounced value, a naive optimist with high self-control, who puts the interests of the group above their own, and is inclined to cooperate.
Among the hundreds of daily calls (for which there is a name — "vishing", from voice phishing, voice phishing), several turn out to be successful, the quantity turns into quality. By the way, everyone can estimate the number: any Russian receives a fraudulent call once a week. But not any other way.
The key characteristic of the victim is not the desire to get rich, but the fear of losing what is available. Not a benefit, like the victims of pseudo-losses, but complete insecurity. It is precisely this fear that builds the entire line of telephone scammers: for 20% of respondents, any calls from the bank (or allegedly from it) cause fear and anxiety. The same can be said about calls from law enforcement agencies.
This is not a purely Russian story, but it is difficult not to think about the frustration in which the society is located, whose respectable members are most afraid of banking services and law enforcement officers designed to protect the rights of citizens.
Scammers continue to earn money, despite the widespread popularity of their schemes. Most common: your relative was involved in an accident, your card is blocked… In both cases, the main method is pretexting: the criminal works out a pre-prepared text (script). They are well known from the materials of judicial practice. The crime involves a group of people, among whom the roles are distributed: the organizer, performers-couriers, or people who collect money, transfer it to accounts, and provide technical support. Sometimes the victim receives several calls from different people with different roles, confirming the "legend".
Quite often, in the texts of sentences, you can find information that the person making the call uses psychological and speech influence techniques:
"...Using his oratorical abilities in conversation, the ability to persuade and psychologically influence citizens, depriving them of the ability to identify the voice, changing its intonation, and doubt its truthfulness, persuades them to transfer money to the person who arrived at them", "spoke in a crying voice, said that "I was in a traffic accident" and to solve the issue, money is needed", " ... changing the intonation and timbre of his voice, he convinced her that he was her relative, reported deliberately false information that he was involved in a road accident, as a result of which a child was injured."
The "your card is blocked" scheme is much more diverse due to the number of roles: an inexperienced girl operator, an empathetic security guard, a good-natured investigator... You will be switched between them at any time and will play the necessary action: disconnecting the line, new case materials, new acts of fraud, and so on.
The scenario is as follows:
- You are thrown out of the rut by a direct statement about the fact of fraud, which they will help you deal with. You were scared and promised to help. A reception that immediately makes you dependent on the caller.
- Inciting fear: a direct question about calling the police, a disturbing story about fraudulent transactions with personal data, colorful threats.
- Forcing quick action: you must act strictly according to the rules, otherwise you will become an accomplice to the crime. Critical thinking is disabled, you need to hurry.
- Total control of the situation: we are always in touch with you, every minute, you are not allowed to think, emotionally confusing. If you are prone to mood swings and uncontrolled excitement, this will not be difficult.
- Confidentiality: you are not allowed to disclose information about the operation to anyone, even the real security service of the bank — no one can be trusted right now.
- Threats: if you don't comply with the imposed regulations, you are breaking the law yourself.
- Promises and proofs: all your questions will be clearly answered, and the Major will then personally watch the surveillance video with you in his office. The employee will provide an ID card (they will generate any document within a few minutes).
- Use financial and legal terminology.
This scenario corresponds to the well-known textbook properties of destructive psychotechnics:
- the impact on the psyche is carried out in extreme intensity mode;
- the object is removed from its usual social environment and loses its choice (you can't tell anyone what's going on);
- the object's chronically unstable psychophysical state is maintained;
- "learned helplessness" is formed, the inability to make an independent decision outside the control of the manager.
This is also why, and not just because of technological lack of education, pensioners often become victims of crooks: responsible people who count pennies, regularly pay for "fat", and do not miss elections.
Often, they also become a tool in the hands of those who order to set fire to military registration and enlistment offices or disrupt voting.
"Security Council asks to set fire to school"
Yalta, Kaliningrad, Moscow, Altai, Voronezh - "greengrocers" in different cities turn out to be respectable pensioners. A woman detained at a police station near Voronezh, in a cell (the interrogation was immediately leaked to the network), confusedly tells that a man called three days ago and said that a loan of 100 thousand rubles was allegedly issued for her. To write off the debt, you need to fill the trash can with green paint.A woman in Moscow on the same video interview talks about a five-day manipulation on the phone, she was not only brought under the article, but also forced to transfer money to crooks. That is, they combined two formats: they deprived a person of money and forced him to break the law. The methods are the same, and people, apparently, too. Call centers went into politics.
However, Russian officials see manipulators for some reason not in scammers, but in those who conduct exit polls near polling stations abroad — it was their representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, who accused them of giving instructions to citizens to damage ballots. Meanwhile,
the mass victims of crooks are not emigrants at all. And ordinary Russian old people, with a low standard of living, are deeply, in fact, unhappy.
In St. Petersburg, a 67-year-old pensioner received 10 years for setting fire to a military enlistment office. I was persuaded to commit a crime by a voice on my phone. In the Urals, a pensioner tried to set fire to a polyclinic, confusing it with a military registration and enlistment office — scammers even called and paid her a taxi to the facility, but she got the wrong door.
In the Nizhny Novgorod region, a pensioner set fire to a bank branch — she was first lured out of money, and then promised to return it if she committed arson.
A primary school teacher in Cheboksary tried to set fire to a school. She was sure that she had received a responsible assignment from a "representative of the Security Council". He also told her to collect loans and transfer money to him.
People forgotten by the authorities in their hearts hope that they will remember them. If he doesn't raise his pension, then at least he will entrust you with an important mission. And conspiracy theory on state channels convinces: there are spies and intruders around, there are so many of them that the special services simply can not cope, and here the help of a modest teacher can be useful.
A similar motive — to serve the Motherland-was owned by a 75-year-old woman from St. Petersburg, who set fire to a van in front of the military registration and enlistment office. She was convinced that she was communicating with an "FSB officer" who asked to lure out of the military enlistment office a criminal "who takes bribes and engages in fraud."
If earlier the victims of scammers were deprived only of money, now they are also deprived of their freedom — the courts pass harsh sentences, qualifying arson not as damage to property, but as terrorism, that is, under the most severe article.
But law enforcement agencies do not know how to protect unprotected people from manipulation. A recent initiative in Kamchatka-to place cardboard policemen at ATMs-is difficult to take seriously.
The script for scammers is simple: make them believe in an imaginary danger and promise to get rid of it. This method is perfect, it affects entire nations.
Exploits natural human qualities: the desire for security, a sense of responsibility. And, probably, a little vanity — a person who has long felt unnecessary is offered to become valuable to the state and society, save the city from evil, become a hero.
Fraudsters treat the objects of manipulation as things, it is part of the technology of power. Evgeny Dotsenko's research" Psychology of manipulation "points out another important principle —" mandatory preservation of the illusion of independent decisions and actions of the addressee of influence". The object of manipulation itself tightens the noose around its neck.
Exploitation of loneliness, insecurity, and psychological problems also works when recruiting terrorists. A conscious professional killer is bought for money, and they invent a legend and escape routes for him. Perpetrators of terrorist attacks are usually one-time perpetrators.
Experts in the field of social psychology identify several groups of people for whom indoctrination is most likely. These include hysteroids, psychosthenics, people with paranoid moods, people from families with overprotective care, incomplete or antisocial families, survivors of severe psychological trauma, with developed eidetic perception (hallucinations in reality) and prone to "hallucination memories").
The factors of victimization are as follows:
- low self-esteem with a constant, often aggressive willingness to defend your identity;
- experiencing social injustice with a tendency to project the causes of life's failures outward;
- social isolation and alienation, the feeling of being on the sidelines of society and losing a life perspective;
- strong need to join or belong to a significant group.
Phone front
Pranksters, on-air crooks who are interested in politicians, officials, public figures, athletes, show business stars, using seemingly similar methods, are guided by completely different criteria in choosing a victim. Calling people established, stable, they exploit simple human vanity. And the desire for approval that is common to everyone — from a single pensioner to a well — known writer.More complex goals require more sophisticated technical training. If scammers have enough programs for spoofing phone numbers, a merged telephony database, and several people with "handsets", artificial intelligence comes to the service of prankers.
A person is trusting, with the exception of only pathologically suspicious people. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in successful telephone provocations against Elton John, John McCain, Alexander Lukashenko, Mikhail Saakashvili, Vladimir Churov, Valeria Novodvorskaya, Vladimir Medinsky, Vitali Klitschko, Vitaly Mutko, Natalia Poklonskaya, Anastasia Volochkova, Vitaly Milonov, Gennady Onishchenko, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling… All of them at different times had the misfortune to communicate with Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov.
Vovan and Lexus themselves are willing to talk about their methods, even published a book. It is impossible to call this phenomenon journalism — they proudly call it that — for the main reason: the code of professional ethics of a journalist prohibits resorting to " illegal and unworthy methods of obtaining information." And the techniques used by Blacksmiths and Carpenters are similar to fraudulent ones — a person is misled, posing as other people in order to get compromising information. This is a provocation, no matter how the authors try to reduce the degree of the word "draw" and no matter how the scheme is decorated with the phrase "it is impossible to do this in other ways". However, for Vovan and Lexus, this is not hooliganism, but a mission-to protect the country, no more or less.
The telephone front fighters themselves give themselves away in terminology: they call the heroes of their provocations victims: "And, of course, we choose the 'victim'. But what about without it? " - they simply write in a joint work.
There they also proudly describe their method of divorce. The first number is the choice of a topic for the topic of the day ("news related to politics, public life, conflict, scandal"). Then there is the choice of the victim on whom the dossier is being compiled: "We are looking for all publications about him in newspapers and magazines. We listen to his voice, study the manner of speech. We read the interview to make a psychological profile of it. It is enough for us to understand whether he is a closed person or an open one in order to decide how to build a conversation with him (so that the person does not hang up the phone and is interested in further communication). It is very important to choose the right object, track its actions, follow statements in the media, and follow the latest news about it." Further, similar work is being done in relation to the character whose face is stolen to talk to the victim.
Yes, at the beginning of their careers, Kuznetsov and Stolyarov made do with amateur acting and homemade makeup (Lexus, for example, had to make up under Pavel Gubarev to talk to Kolomoisky, and also buy "promotional Tagil beer to create an atmosphere").
Now Tagil beer is not enough, the business has gone uphill, and with it the budgets. Now Vovan and Lexus use deepfakes. This is a technology for creating convincing-looking deceptive videos or audios.
The first way to create deepfakes involves using two algorithms. First, one algorithm captures the common features of two images, then the other transfers them to a new, specially created one. For example, if you want to create a video in which a character moves in a certain way, the algorithm will replace the existing face with the face of this character and force it to reproduce the desired movements. The second method is using generative adversarial networks (gans). It also involves the use of two algorithms. One of them — the generator-creates images. The other one, the discriminator, evaluates whether the images presented to it by the generator are valid.
It was deepfake that helped the provocateurs in their campaign against Russian expatriate writers: Akunin*, Ulitskaya*, Bykov*. Journalist Mikhail Kozyrev * described in detail how he was led to a call from an alleged Ukrainian official whom he had previously seen. There was no doubt about it: not her voice, not her appearance, not her facial expressions.
Is there any protection against fake content? To recognize it when watching a video (for example, when making a video call), you should pay attention to the lack of synchronization of sound and mouth movements; various phenomena that seem unnatural (the position of the head in relation to the torso, incorrect reflection of light on objects, unnatural skin color); differences in the quality of audio and video recordings; irregularities in the image, especially at the junction of the body and the head that appears to be "glued" to the body, blurriness in the neck area, gaps (discontinuity) , or frame errors (different angle, type, or direction of light).
But to do this, you need to keep cool and be ready for provocation. And it happens all of a sudden-like suddenly getting on the list of the Ministry of Justice after it. Yes, and with composure is difficult. Remember the script of phone scammers: the victim is not allowed to stop and think, due to the confidentiality of the conversation, she has no one to consult, instead of specific terms, the prankster pours out surnames, the dialogue is intense, you are asked about important and exciting things.
Prankers are improving. They proudly tell how carefully they study the person whose mask they will put on. "We try to think through how a person will behave if he sees or hears the interlocutor on whose behalf we are calling, whether he will confide in them or not. It is impossible to fully direct the future dialogue, there is always some element of surprise. We can only guess where the conversation will turn."
Artistry is important for any con artist. But it is one thing to fool Madame Gritsatsueva, the "poet's dream" who is eager for deception, and quite another — a person who is aware of the risks and is under a long-standing threat. Looking at the interviews of Stolyarov and Kuznetsov, one wonders how these people of very modest speech talents fool the intellectual elite. Arrogance, knowledge of psychology, and lack of an ethical barrier. Dilute the artist to the words for which the article shines, and the grandmother to the grave — for both acts, you need to reset the moral imperative. However, they probably reset it back in the years of cooperation with Lifenews.
But still, Stolyarov and Kuznetsov are more difficult than call center prisoners. Although they themselves modestly claim that technically - "nothing clever, as long as there is a computer or laptop" — this is not entirely true.
By the way, what they themselves say about the technical side of the matter is terribly similar to what was found in those very "call centers": "We mostly use Skype, but you can install another IP telephony program. Sometimes mobile phones are required. If the negotiations concern Ukraine, then, of course, we take Ukrainian SIM cards, there are special city numbers."
Yet modesty is sly. Probably, prankers started with such modest tools, but now, according to experts ' estimates,
the budget of one big prank using artificial intelligence is at least 50 thousand dollars: this includes both hardware and training a virtual model, as well as team work. It is clear why such projects became possible only with the beginning of collaboration with GOSV.
Vovan and Lexus went there in 2016 (first on NTV, then on the First one). On the eve of the TV debut, in a conversation with a journalist of one of the independent Russian publications, drinking copiously of beer, they denied their connections with special services and officials and said that the pranker community has its own ethics: you can not harm the object. Judging by the consequences for their current victims, ethics, if any, is over. By that time, their biography was already a major success: in September 2015, after a call to Elton John, Putin personally had to apologize for them, who called the prankers "harmless guys". After that ,the "guys" were also made useful.
And if Vovan started out with calls to people like Churov, Mutko or Lukashenka, now he doesn't play close friends ideologically. He and his partner are preoccupied with Ukraine and the foreign policy agenda in general, as well as the opposition.
What works for pranksters? The same thing as for scammers — human nature. Frustration, which, of course, are anti-war-minded Russians now. Everyone's natural desire for approval. The already mentioned vanity and thirst to be useful (Kozyrev was divorced, offering to organize a joint Russian-Ukrainian music festival, to reconcile the peoples with rock and roll). Thirst for a miracle, an outstretched hand, a willingness to participate, a desire to regain subjectivity. This is not much different from the feelings of an unhappy woman who believes that she is receiving a call from the Security Council asking for help in an important state matter. Victims of pranksters, just like victims of scammers, are ready to believe in getting rid of evil. Meanwhile, evil speaks to them with its own insinuating voice.
... Recent TASS news:
"Pranker Lexus said that it plans to draw the heads of Western states." Getting into the "tass" is definitely the pinnacle of your career. In the serious news about the prankers trip to Kemerovo to meet with students (!), Stolyarov is quoted: "All our activities are planning the divorce of the head of a particular state, including a western one, and we are constantly in this preparation."
(с) Tatiana Britskaya, Svetlana Vidanova
