The Incautious Porn presentation held at SSN2014 in Barcelona. From the Abstract: "We have radically changed our perception of what is public and what is private. While using social networks, search engines and websites determining who has access to our information, our personal details, our habits and preferences is often complex or not easily accessible. Each person's information is sold hundreds of times each day, while surfing websites and social media sites, with information passing from one provider to the other in ways that are subtle and non-transparent: data collected on one site may be used on other sited to sell us advertisements or to investigate on our lives. On top of that, most people tend to interpret social media sites as new forms of public spaces, and it is fundamental for service providers' strategies that this perception is maintained, to promote our full disclosure, allowing them to collect even more data about ourselves. We used the project Incautious Porn to investigate on this scenario, to explore the shifting and blurring of the boundaries of what we perceive as our privacy and as our private and public spaces. Incautious Porn uses the operations of a fake company systematically invading our privacy (even to the point of performing simulated forms of blackmail) to collect enormous amounts of information which we have used to analyze this scenario. In Incautious Porn art acts both as a sensor on the transformation of human societies and as a tool for analyzing its effects. The effects of the Incautious Porn project and communication campaign have been massive, bringing it to the attention of a large, global, audience and, thus, allowing the research team to benefit from a large data set. Furthermore, the actions of the blackmailing fake-company have been led using an ethical approach: no money was taken from people, and all their personal data has been preserved, also using the initiative as a testing lab for novel privacy and security preservation techniques, and as a campaign for awareness about the transformation of people's perception of contemporary private/public spaces." more info at: http://www.artisopensource.net/projects/incautious-porn.html

1. Incautious Porn
an anthropological experiment in blackmail and the
perception of private/public space online
Salvatore Iaconesi (salvatore.iaconesi@uniroma1.it)
Oriana Persico (oriana.persico@gmail.com) SSN2014
www.artisopensource.net

5. ARTS + !
SCIENCES +!
HUMANITIES

6. how do Internet users
understand the reach and
implications of the content
and information they publish
online as a result of their
daily digital life?

7. • Transmedia: Jenkins, 2006
• Simulacra: Deleuze, 1968, and Baudrillard, 1981
METHODOLOGY

8. • basic reflection of reality
• perversion of reality
• pretense of reality
• simulacrum
SIMULACRUM

9. • users produce content and publish it
• operators harvest it and process it
• using algorithms which are completely obscure
• use the results for business models
MIMICRY

10. • people do not read them
• even if they did, few understand them
• Example: “check if your number is on our
database"
Terms of Service

11. Ethical Issues
preserve people's privacy and to avoid causing harm or
damage to them

12. • Hashed phone numbers
• our number on the paintings
• immediate refund and privacy protection toolkit and
documentation

13. Results

14. • 2 Million views
• 187 paintings sold
• 7353 phone numbers verified
• 4 removal requests
• 30000+ messages
• wide discussion on social networks/blogs/…

15. • 8% understood how Incautious Porn mimicked
common business models
• 22% think it is blackmail
• 12% started intense conversations
• 38% express strong opposition
• 15% “if they put their phone number out there, well
they deserve it.”

16. Conclusions

17. • little to no perception
• neither on the medium-long term persistence of
published information,
• nor on the possibility for it flow and traverse across
different agencies

18. • due to:
• interface politics
• literacy
• awareness

19. • Interface Politics:
• interfaces are focused on the description of
a state of continuous present
• break of perception through opacity

20. • Literacy and Awareness!
• common analysis does not go beyond
generic statements: “they sell us everyday,
hundreds of times, whenever we click on
something”

21. • Pros/Cons!
• successful in providing tools for
ethnographical and psychological
observation
• negative approach finally revealed to be a
limit

22. Incautious Porn
an anthropological experiment in blackmail and the
perception of private/public space online
Salvatore Iaconesi (salvatore.iaconesi@uniroma1.it)
Oriana Persico (oriana.persico@gmail.com) SSN2014
www.artisopensource.net