# False Positive _Let's get personal._ Published: 2015-09-01 Live project: [http://false-positive.net/](http://false-positive.net/) What happens when machines start to speculate? False Positive deploys text messaging, stealth infrastructure, street intervention, and data visualization to enact a surveillance conspiracy engaging the public in an intimate, techno-political conversation with the mobile technologies on which they depend. ## Key visuals - Visitor signing up at the Candygram booth while a branded staffer looks on - Phone showing an unsolicited Candygram text asking the recipient for their email address - Nighttime crowd passing the Candygram popup shop at Nuit Blanche in Brussels - Three phones showing the Candygram SMS exchange laced with hidden surveillance codewords - Stealth cellular base station in a black case with GSM and WiFi antennas - Candygram ad showing a businesswoman on her phone with the slogan you are more than just a number - Profile screen prompting staff to ask about favoured malawi, bonding-type fm and design kerouac - Speculative Big Five personality chart, type 79394, plotted over a blurred person - Associations screen overlaying scanned notes with words like cultures, socii and kollabora - Candygram ad of a woman on the street with her phone and the slogan we know you better than you think - Candygram advertisement with a telecom tower against a blue sky and the company logo - Candygram staffer beside a screen listing speculative profile keywords about a visitor - Profile interests screen listing Sharks, Guns, Google Alerts, Servers and Personal Finance - Profile prompts over a network graph — visual food, other bullet, culinary profile and local project - Profile prompts over a folded newspaper — tiny architecture, other profile and linkedin summary - Speculative Big Five personality chart, type 68723, plotted over a blurred face - Outlook screenshot of a Candygram HQ email announcing the company's sell-out - Profile screen prompting staff to ask about welcome cv, next city and hertzian philip - Profile interests screen listing Los Angeles, Graphic Design, Fresno, Urban Planning and Journalism - Dark map of Los Angeles labelled Home Town in a speculative personal profile - Profile prompts over a blurred pavilion — other habitats, short host and long jul - Candygram tri-fold brochure with a cell tower photo and the slogan Let's get personal - Diagram of Candygram mining an email address via Full Contact, Facebook and Google into a profile ## Summary video ## Corporate Fiction In order to engage people in a reflection on current practices in corporate profiling, we invented a new network provider called [candygram](http://www.candygram.info) — a company which is *very* interested in its customers. Candygram had a presence at Ars Electronica, a popup shop at Nuit Blance in Brussels, Medialab Prado and FACT, Liverpool. ![Candygram booth with branded teardrop flag, a face-association screen, laptop and headphones]() ![Nighttime crowd passing the Candygram popup shop entrance at Nuit Blanche in Brussels]() ## Getting in touch ![Candygram staffer beside a screen listing speculative profile keywords about a visitor]() In addition to the physical realm, the company fiction was also present in the hertzian space. Visitors would unsolicited receive text messages and could engage in a Kafka-esque dialogue with the company as soon as their phones booked into our cellular network. ![Stealth cellular base station in a black case with GSM and WiFi antennas labelled BladeRF]() ![Phone showing an unsolicited Candygram text welcoming the recipient and asking for their email address]() Our assistants followed a sales script, with the goal to obtain email addresses from customers and set them up for a peronal consultation appointment. Once we had the email address, we would start to scrape and mine the web for information related to them. In exchange, we offered candy. ![Visitor signing up at the Candygram booth while a staffer in a branded shirt looks on]() ![Diagram of Candygram mining an email address via Full Contact, Facebook and Google into a personal profile]() The [Full Contact](http://fullcontact.com) online service offers *"person-based insights [that] can help you power awesome interactions"*. It allowed us to retrieve personal websites, social media profiles as well as demographic information and images solely based on the email address. We used the [Pattern python library](https://web.archive.org/web/20170819052058/http://www.clips.ua.ac.be:80/pattern) to download and analyse the text contents of these sites, and ran additional image queries and data mining procedures to create personality profiles of the participants. ## Personal profiles and consultation In the personal consultation sessions, participants were confronted with all the information we gathered about them; an escalation from straightforward demographic information to speculative, associative extrapolations, culminating in a psychological profile based on the [big 5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits) personality traits. ![Participant and staffer viewing a Big Five personality profile screen during a personal consultation]() ![Dark map of Los Angeles labelled Home Town, part of a speculative personal profile]() ![Profile interests screen listing Los Angeles, Graphic Design, Fresno, Urban Planning and Journalism]() ![Profile screen prompting staff to ask about welcome cv, next city and hertzian philip]() ![Speculative Big Five personality chart, type 68723, plotted over a blurred face]() ## Workshops and recommendations ![Candygram tri-fold brochure with a cell tower photo and the slogan Let's get personal]() The consultation ends with some recommendations on how to protect your personal data and some strategies to avoid profiling practices. We also ran workshops and cryptoparties in connection to the installation. ![Cryptoparty workshop with participants gathered around laptops at a table]() ## Our Incredible Journey The corporate fiction ended at FACT, Liverpool, with an ["Our Incredible Journey"](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/) letter, announcing a total sell-out of the company. ![Outlook screenshot of a Candygram HQ email announcing the company's total sell-out]() ## Credits In collaboration with [Mark Shepard](http://andinc.org/) and with temporary support from [Julian Oliver](https://julianoliver.com). --- [View on truth-and-beauty.net](https://truth-and-beauty.net/projects/false-positive)