‘LET’S TALK BUSINESS’: an Installation to explore online scam narratives

Symposium:

• ISEA2015: 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA2015:  

• ‘LET’S TALK BUSINESS’: an Installation to explore online scam narratives

• Andreas Zingerle
• Linda Kronman

• Keywords: phone scams, audio installation, interactive storytelling, reverse engineering, artivism

  16th century ‘face to face’ persuasion scams adopted to letters, telephone, fax and Internet with the development of new communication technologies. In many of today’s fraud schemes phone numbers play an important role. Various freeto-use on-line tools enable the scammers to hide their identities with fake names, bogus business websites, and VoIP services. These fake businesses or personas can appear more legitimate when connected to a phone number, enabling a faster, more personal contact to the victims. With the typology of a sample probe of 374 emails, commonly used in business proposal scams, the emails were categorized and tested to see how believable the proposals sound once the scammers were contacted by phone. The research can be explored in a 5- channel interactive audio installation called ‘Let’s talk business’ that uncovers which business proposals and scam schemes are commonly used, and how believable the proposals sound once the scammers are called.

• Full text (PDF) p. 965-966

Category:

• Poster