@sveckert

This talk investigates the business of fake likes and fake accounts: In a world, where the number of followers, likes, shares and views are worth money, the temptation and the will to cheat is high. With some luck, programming knowledge and persistence we obtained thousands of fanpages, You Tube and Instagram account, where likes have been bought from a Likes seller. We were also able to meet people working behind the scenes and we will prove, that Facebook is a big bubble, with a very high percentage of dead or at least zombie accounts. The talk presents the methodology, findings and outcomes from a team of scientists and investigative journalists, who delved into the parallel universe of Fake Like Factories.

When you hear about fake likes and fake accounts, you instantly think of mobile phones strung together in multiple lines in front of an Asian woman or man. What if we tell you, that this is not necessarily the whole truth? That you better imagine a ordinary guy sitting at home at his computer? In a longterm investigation we met and talked to various of these so called “clickworkers” - liking, watching, clicking Facebook, You Tube and Instagram for a small amount of money the whole day in their living room. Fortuitously we could access thousand campaigns, Facebook Fanpages, You Tube videos or Instagram accounts. Thousands of websites and accounts, for which somebody bought likes in the past years. But we did not stop the investigation there: We dived deeper into the Facebook Fake Accounts and Fake Likes universe, bought likes at various other Fake Likes sellers. To get the big picture, we also developed a statistical method to calculate the alleged total number of Facebok User IDs, with surprising results.

Other people: Dennis Tatang pkreissel

This talk investigates fake science factories; international twilight companies whose sole purpose is to give studies an air of scientific credibility while cashing in on millions of dollars in the process. We present the findings, outcomes and methodology from a team of investigative journalists, hackers and data scientists who delved into the parallel universe of fraudulent pseudo-academic conferences and journals. The story was published in Germany (ARD and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin) in mid of July and then went around the world. How did it begin? What did we learn in the process? And: What happened since the story got published?

Until recently, fake science factories have remained relatively under the radar, with few outside of academia aware of their presence; but the highly profitable industry has been growing significantly in the last five years and with it, so are the implications. To the public, fake science is often indistinguishable from legitimate science, which is facing similar accusations itself. We expose the scale and value of two fake science operations: Well-known institutions and professors who abuse this route of publication for personal gain and the deadly consequences when the public believe in fake cures or weird discoveries that seem scientific at a very first glance. Beyond the pressure to publish, we find varying motivations from paid vacations and promotions to obtaining stipends and research grants. Our findings highlight the prevalence of the pseudo-academic conferences, journals and publications and the damage they can and are doing to society. For 35C3 we did some extra analytics and will publish new numbers, how pseudo-academic publishing has dropped since the story got out in several countries in July 2018.

Other people: @tillkrause Peter Hornung

When thinking about surveillance, everyone worries about government agencies like the NSA and big corporations like Google and Facebook. But actually there are hundreds of companies that have also discovered data collection as a revenue source. We decided to do an experiment: Using simple social engineering techniques, we tried to get the most personal you may have in your procession.

When thinking about surveillance, everyone worries about government agencies like the NSA and big corporations like Google and Facebook. But actually there are hundreds of companies that have also discovered data collection as a revenue source. Companies which are quite big, with thousands of employees but names you maybe never heard of. They all try to get their hands on your personal data, often with illegal methods. Most of them keep their data to themselves, some exchange it, but a few sell it to anyone who's willing to pay. We decided to do an experiment: Using simple social engineering techniques, we tried to get the most personal you may have in your procession. Your “click-stream data”, every URL you have been visiting while browsing the web. After a couple of weeks and some phone calls we were able to acquire the personal data of millions of German Internet users - from banking, over communication with insurance companies to porn. Including several public figures from politics, media and society. In the talk, we'll explain how we got our hands on this data, what can be found inside and what this could mean for your own privacy and safety now and in the future. * Introduction & background * Who collects data and for which purposes * How we got our hands on a large data sample * What's in it? Detailed analysis of the data set * How does it work? Analysis of the collection methods * Outlook: Can we still save our privacy?

Other people: Andreas Dewes