TEDxSanAntonio - Brian Brushwood - Social Engineering - How to Scam Your Way into Anything

howdy folks my name is Brian brushwood and I host a little show on the internet called scam school we called the show about social engineering at the bar and on the street which basically means using magic and trickery to fruitful your friends into buying you free beer two years in a row iTunes named us a top video podcast it's kind of hard to see all enhance it for you guys there we go but well I've noticed though is a lot of the same techniques that we use to get people to buy free drinks and scam school are the exact same techniques used by criminals so before we get started for those of you who haven't seen the show let's take a quick look at the kind of things that we do with our social manipulation skills I'm going to teach the course as if I was teaching crime but we don't endorse crime don't do crime all right here's how to commit crime the dictionary says social engineering is the practical application of sociological principles to particular social problems I restate that simply is using cheap dirty psychological tricks to get people to do what you want now keep in mind when you're going to learn some scientific stuff here coming up in a minute anytime I sound smart it's because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants brilliant social mechanics brilliant scientists have written fantastic papers about this and if you want to see the background on a lot of this it's all been written up in robert cialdini's book influence of fantastic work but let's go ahead and get started with fixed action patterns these are blindly mechanical stimulus response patterns of action that we all fall into we see it in all kinds of mating rituals for animals throughout the entire kingdom and the first one we're gonna talk about is a study that proved it in turkeys turkeys are very very smart animal they can recognize a friend from an enemy they can solve some problems but when it comes to taking care of their young amazingly they just rely on a very simple fixed action pattern they listen to the cheap cheap sound of the young and it instantly causes them to want to love and protect them now to prove this scientists do some nutty stuff they grab a polecat the natural predator of the turkey they take a stuffed polecat and pull it on a string right up to a turkey first think Turkey does when he sees wanna kick its ass but then they press play inside a tape recorder inside the polecat polecat makes that cheap cheap sound and instantly the bird wants to nurture and protect it so people when they see this say like okay that's animals animals are dumb people are smart we're reasoning thinking beings ah maybe turns out that there's a bunch of studies that have something to say about that one of my favorite took place in Harvard they wanted to know if it was possible to cut in line using a predictable set of terms so they grabbed a bunch of people that or they found a bunch of people in line looking for a to make copies at a Xerox machine and they sent in someone undercover to try to cut in line now they she said all different combinations of terms for example she might walk up and say excuse me I have five pages can I use the Xerox machine to cut in line 40% of the time people tell her to bug off but 60% of the time they let her go straight up to the front now this blows me away because when I see 60% just for walking up and saying gimme but they went a step farther they tried all different combinations they also had her go up to the front and say excuse me I have five pages can I use the Xerox machine because I'm in a rush and just that little addition of because I'm in a rush caused it to jump to 94% success now when you think about this you're like okay it's obvious she gave a reason they thought about the reason they decided it was a good reason and it went ahead and let her go to the front turns out that's not the case because the magic word is because as long as she said the word because people didn't even pay attention to what came next because they assumed that it was a legitimate reason and they let her go to the front of the line she even came up saying nonsense stuff for example excuse me I have five pages can I use the Xerox machine because I have five pages 94% straight to the front of the line so of course how could we use these things now we're going to take advantage of three psychological backdoors the first one is most obvious I think most of us are aware that when you like someone you're most likely to to grant them a favor do them a favor now of course there's that there you can rely on your natural charm and your wits but there's also ways to induce a feeling of liking in another person and the oldest book I think is still the best how to win friends and influence people it's full of fantastic stuff like make sure to talk and ask questions about them people like to think and talk about themselves make sure to use their name remember their name often called him on birthdays that kind of thing uh and this is something I had a bunch of conversations with a friend of mine Mike super super talented magician we both drive allowed around a lot as we tour all over the United States and you get pulled over from time to time and he and I came up with some rules to using just the liking fixed action pattern to get out of a speeding ticket you don't have a lot of time so you got to be fast first of all you got to relax it's just a ticket if you get if you get that adrenaline rush if you're nervous the side effect of adrenaline is it makes your fingers tremble when your fingers tremble makes the contours cop gets nervous you get a ticket second of all no crying they deal with that all day long yes it's disappointing but then if you cry all it does is it makes them feel really bad as they write you a tickets I have found that if you can get the cop to laugh it is amazing you win the game I've never had a time that I made a police officer laugh and he still gave me a ticket and so obviously the the first way I got a few bits of business I you know situationally you might have a chance to make a joke but in regardless every time they pulled me over the first thing to try to make them laugh sort of takes care of itself because when they asked for my ID this is what I give them right here sometimes it takes a little bit more and when they ask for my insurance I explain to officer this is a rental car and on my insurance on me but I'm told this will help oh these are valid here what about there the community jet no okay so if you could get yourself into a position where you're having a real conversation with them and of course you're not going you know ninety in a school zone the nods are you can work your way to getting just a warning my friend brought round so don't put it best he said I know that if I was their friend there's no way they give me a ticket so the moment I pulled over I figure I got three minutes to become their friend second back door is reciprocation this is the idea that we hate feeling indebted to somebody else and no matter what the item is we want to return the favor to people and there was an interesting experiment in order to prove this Dennis Regan of Cornell put together a fake art appreciation experiment where he grabbed people one was a real tester one was a fake tester right so mister real taster mr. fake tester spent all day rating art saying well how they liked it on a scale of one to five I forget the details but at some point during the day mr. fake tester vanishes and then he comes back one of two ways in a he came back with nothing in Group B he came back with a couple of cokes and a story about how we went to the bathroom grabbed himself a coke and I figured hey what the heck I'll get one for this other guy as well so here's a free coke right then the two went back to studying art now at the end of the evening everybody had the exact same situation the mr. fake tester said hey man I'm doing this raffle and if I sell enough tickets there's a chance I could win a car so if you don't mind buying some as many as you can the more the better amazingly under reciprocation when somebody was given a coke earlier in the day they bought twice as many tickets as without reciprocation now again on the surface you look at this you say well Brian you already said when you like someone you want to do them a favor maybe he just enjoyed the coke thinks this guy's a cool guy for buying on the coke and gives him give them twice as many tickets it turns out that in the exit surveys even if people actively disliked mr. fake tester they still bought twice as many tickets so these are these are fixed action patterns right here now the hard Christmas have have done a fantastic job with this they make sure to give away gifts like the bhagavad-gita or flower and then ask you for for something in response you guys could take advantage of this for those of you flew in if you want to get free drinks or possibly an upgrade of first-class on your way back just keep your bag full of M&M bags and whenever you run into someone just say hey man I figure you're working really hard you could use a little snack cost you like 35 cents if you buy them in bulk and yet the perception of the thoughtful gesture could benefit you in the way of a full first-class fare right now the important thing is this important that this not look like a bribe if anyone thinks they're taking a bribe they get very squirrely and they feel very bad about it so what you want to do is take advantages of what magicians call time delay this is a case where you give the gift early you wait to let it simmer and then later you find yourself in a position to ask for a favor that feeling of reciprocation will stay residual for a long time and the amazing part is regardless of how expensive is the initial token you'll get something of value in return now on the show scam school we actually explain that you don't even have to have a physical object to have somebody want to reciprocate it could be an awesome story it could be a good joke it could be a magic trick and that's why pretty much reciprocation and Viking gets you free beers using scam schools so what we do we want to grab people's attention by by getting getting somebody engaged right so you're at the bar and you don't know anybody there but you want somebody to pay attention to you so we call we have three different classes of tricks we got openers tweeners and closers let me show you you guys want to learn a trick three people yes Brian I do this is something that you could do whether or not anybody's paying attention or not just grab yourself a book of matches this might not work I forgot to ask about fire codes you guys like that you want to learn that alright here I'm going to teach you guys something about this here's the thing when you strike a match you'll notice that there's initial surf sulfur flash just a little bit of smoke there when it burns you got almost no smoke when it goes out that's when you get the most smoke right it turns out that if you inhale whatever that sulfur poison is pretty sure this kills you it turns out that it will actually take all the water vapor out of your lungs and manufacture smoke from nowhere so this what you do is you bend over your hunche you strike towards your face like this it'll burn a little bit so when you do an opener hopefully you've grabbed their attention but the important thing is they're going to ask you to do it again never do it again once is a trick twice is a lesson next up you want to follow up with a tweener these are a little more interactive they require stuff like someone to be able to remember a freaking card or to participate this is one of my favorite tweeners right here let's roll video on this one here now with your left hand if you can karate chop down and break that one time but I'm saying it because great away yeah matching I will buy you a beer buying the three three here we go the question is can you get it the rest of his friends on my side and then finally we have these payoffs these are the closers these are something that if you get somebody to even jokingly promise to buy you a beer if a B or C if that is my card or if you did predict my number then what happens is people have a need to feel consistent they don't like to in public make a promise that they don't intend to keep later on and hopefully by this point you built up enough rapport that they'll feel good about buying you a drink so you get a third backdoor is the most powerful it's the authority fixed action pattern now this one is so potent that it's used very often by con men to defraud other people the NF as a matter fact the famous con man Frank Abagnale actually toured all over the world because he realized that he could pass the most obviously bogus checks if he was dressed as a figure of authority whether it be a police officer a security guard a pilot or a doctor and there's been a number of studies that to see just how far the authority fixed action pattern runs for example Leonard Bickman did one study where he had two guys or the same guy actually once dressed in plain clothes once dressed as a security guard march up and down the street till random people to do stuff hey you stand on the other side of that pole hey you pick up that piece of trash and then measure how often they followed his instructions 42 percent of the time when he was dressed at just as a regular guy 92 percent of the time when he was in uniform and keep in mind he's got no jurisdiction you can anyone rent a security guard costume here in Texas they figured out that the uniform could be nothing more than a well tailored suit for example they went to a busy intersection where people were often waiting for the crosswalk to go and they had two guys the same guy actually either dressed in a well tailored suit or in plain clothes and then they would have him start jaywalking and they would count how many people followed him along as he crossed the street and it turns out when he was dressed in a suit three times as many people would follow him across and now these are the trappings of authority now of course I tour with the stage show and I usually I'm dressed in the you know jeans and a t-shirt I dressed up to you guys it's like it look like an authority uh but uh but for example for me I use my business card this is a way to grab people's attention this thing is a Authority trap you see you got here you got awards nobody knows what any of these awards are they just see laurel wreaths and they're like oh awards you guys got a quote from Jay Leno oh you're on Jay Leno oh no I was on his show I don't want to start any rumors uh and of course an engaging photo op for example look at me from right here I'm giving a talk here at TEDx why because I have zero qualifications I'm here because I host a show on the internet called scam school how did I get to host a show a show called scam school well I wrote a book called cheats cons whittles it tricks fifty seven ways to scam a free drink who was the publisher of this book this guy it's a house of cards but if you have the traffix of authority then people respect you for it ah but in the 10,000 copies of this book I've given away the first run of them I stapled them myself not one person who said and who was the publisher of this book you could also use a trapping of credentials if you want to get backstage at any concert just find the poster slap the words all-access on there really doesn't even matter if it matches the ones everyone else has you can get badges and say just about anything as far as I'm sure I'm pretty sure there's no government auto authorized auto repossessor and of course you can get printers that laminate badges and print out whatever you want but the amazing thing is the folks who are working at the gates at concerts they're not even looking at your credentials they're looking at your body posture they're looking at whether or not you Mets match the dress red when L they're walking they're watching the way you talk and if of course if you want to get past somebody one of the things you can try is you can do stuff like using the word because you're like oh no I got to get backstage because they're already tuned out they know that you have a reason and then it's going to be a fight if they try to tell you no so use the word because you can also use an old sales trick which is remember the person asking the questions is the one in charge of the conversation so try this next time you want to get past somebody walk by you're like oh no I got to get backstage because I got to get backstage in time for the thing and then they're like what's going on the only dad you know do you know where Becky is Becky she had her shadow I'll go find Becky I'll be right back and off you go as long as you're asking questions you're in charge I'll tell you I'll leave you with one little gem here uh if you guys how many guys fly a lot how many guys wish you could take twice the liquids pass at TSA hypothetically hypothetically you know that you guys had can only put so many liquids in one of those I think it's a 1 quart bag theoretically if you had two of those bags and they were in different bins I don't see how the TSA would know and that's it for me I'm Brian brushwood thank you guys so much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 395,275

Rating: 4.7904358 out of 5

Keywords: tedx talk, ted talk, English, United States, tedx, Brian Brushwood, San Antonio, Texas, ted x, Education, ted talks, social engineering, ted, TEDxSanAntonio, scam school, tedx talks

Id: yY-lMkeZVuY

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/dougja]

love this, very informative. some reminding me of things I've previously learnt & not thought about in a while and some new things! thanks for posting

[u/gooberguy25]

Expert on social engineering can't even get a crowd to laugh at his PowerPoint. Hm

[u/[deleted]]

Anyone who enjoyed this should check out the guy's show. Google search Scam School; fun stuff.

[u/mama_llama]

Can I get a summary?