Attempts to influence elections are by no means new, but highly targeted online advertising requires people to think about social engineering in the form of political messaging in a new way, according to Chris Olson, CEO of The Media Trust.
On the CyberWire’s Hacking Humans podcast, Olson noted that all political advertising uses the same platforms to target people, but they target different constituencies with very different content.
“The way that they're manipulated goes back to pre-digital days in that particular constituencies with particular goals of moving different people in a direction,” he said. “Whether that's to get them to vote for someone, it's to sow discord, it's to get them to go out on the street to protest, those are more – what we would say more nefarious use cases. And in particular, they're nefarious if the deliverer is obfuscating or not telling the truth about who they are when they deliver those messages, or if the messages are simply false.”
He added that it’s hard for people to distinguish which information should be trusted, because the messages are intended to play on their emotions. This is true for both legitimate political advertising and for disinformation.
“First, consumers can see very little,” Olson said. “It's not easy for them to notice these things are false, and it's especially true when they read something and their emotions get peaked; they forget to remember that they're supposed to care who sent them the message.”
Olson explained that the online ecosystem has created a situation where most content shouldn’t be taken at face value. He concluded that people need to develop the ability to be skeptical by default, particularly when it comes to outlandish stories.
“Unfortunately today, most of what is delivered on the worldwide web can't be trusted,” Olson said. “It doesn't mean that most of it isn't true, but it can't be trusted. So skepticism is the first step. And once you're skeptical and understanding that something is being targeted to you for a purpose rather than you just stumbled upon the information, and you know that there are people with some form of goal behind it, that they're trying to get you to do something, you can look at it in a different way.”
New-school security awareness training can change how your employees think about what they see online, whether it’s a potentially malicious email or an advertisement that’s trying to get inside their head.
The CyberWire has the story: https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/cw-podcasts-hh-2019-11-14.html
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