Anna Larkina about the profession of pornanalytics
We recently found out how to deal with panic in the economic sphere and what to do with money in a crisis. The new initiative of the Safe Internet League revealed another problem of society - confusion before the Internet and relentless talk about the need for parental control. Wonderzine talked with Anna Larkina, a porn analyst in Kaspersky Lab. She told what her profession is, how the Internet categorizes porn, whether it is worth setting parental controls and what is really worth fearing on the Internet.
The profession of porn analytics for most people does not exist. Can you explain what you are doing specifically and what it is all about?
Basically, a porn analyst is a person who analyzes pornography. It sounds trite, so everyone thinks that I watch porn all day long. In fact, you have to deal with pretty awful things, like violence. I immediately recall a story about a guy from YouTube, who was also engaged in similar work - he was watching a video about violence, and six months later he needed a psychiatrist. This is not very clear to me - in fact, it is completely unnecessary to consider all this, it is enough to hook the information to the corner of the eye. The main work happens with the url, not with the video, with the other side of the site - with the code - too much fuss. Porn analyst is a person who considers violence, pornography, knows prescriptions of drugs and should be sufficiently informed from all sides. For example, in order to detect violence in the lyrics of a Norwegian black metal player, it is necessary to know at least a couple of names of groups of similar subjects in order to catch and block them. There, of course, there is complete horror. For example, the song says "I dismembered a child and smeared it with his blood." It seems to me that such a thing must be caught, and we try.
Who forms the agenda on what is porn, violence and other things? Are there any guidelines you are targeting?
It seems to me that this is unconditionally shaped by society. How can you understand that this is porn? And how to understand that something - food or toys? A hard question, of course, you just don’t think about it - you go on the Internet, you look, and instantly comes an understanding: yes, this is porn, no, this is not violence.
And how did this profession appear and who was first in it?
According to my feelings, this profession should have appeared with the emergence of the Internet itself, since porn has penetrated there almost instantly. Find the very first analyst unrealistic, search engines on this topic do not say anything. Obviously, this was some kind of person who was thinking about how to protect children from this.
To talk about children. You probably read about the latest initiative of Elena Mizulina. She created a base of innocent images of child porn. Do you belong to the category of people who are involved in this?
Not.
That is, other people help her to do this, in fact, also porn analysts?
Most likely, this is someone from Roskomnadzor, I have nothing at all to do with government activities. The state blocks and we detect.
There are children who want and will find. And there are those who do not want - and the search engine gives them porn results
On the technical side, how is the search for porn? You also do not fall on the mail links to the video?
We have very smart robots. We initially trained them, trained them up and stuffed them with information, with the help of which they run on the Internet and categorize it. We constantly give them some new information. The better the robot is informed, the more sites we see and detect. We do almost nothing by hand, except that we feed him up-to-date and up-to-date information. Take the same Norwegian black metal: a new song appeared - fed it to the robot, he already knows about it and he already catches it. I cannot reveal detailed information about the engine - this is a working moment. I can only add that it is very advanced, it’s not just black and white lists - it’s a giant database in 10 languages, and almost everything is automated here. When I started to work, we all searched and blocked with our hands. For more than five years, our base has grown 100 times, if not more, and expanded in languages.
Are there any things that the robot does not catch? there is such an urban legend that image search cannot distinguish an African American from a member, that it is very difficult to detect the dark member - is this true?
Yes. For four years we have focused not on the image detector, but on expanding the database from a textual point of view. It is much more important to have more textual information about the Internet than to recognize pictures. What site can be a picture with a member? It is clear that in pornography. Although it happens that members, and not only them, are not caught on porn sites, but we still catch it.
How do you feel about the idea of parental control? My sister and brother are teenagers, and I understand perfectly well that whatever parental control you put on, they will find everything if they want. In addition, they know about sex, although we never talked about it with them. Why is it necessary, if you still find?
There are children who want and will find. And there are those who do not want - and the search engine gives them porn results. Parental control primarily protects against accidental hits, and then deliberately blocks sites. If the child wants to go to see pornography on the "pornkhab", then parental control will not allow this. And if he is looking for an essay and a pornobanner falls out or a porn site falls out, this is terrible, and parental control protects against this. For example, my niece saw a photo of a corpse on the First Channel website. For the first time in my life. It was the announcement of a program, and after that she called me and burst into tears, said "I do not want to see this." I quickly put her parental control. I really love my profession not for the fact that you can watch porn there, but for the unreal benefit that it brings, and you can see this benefit.
And when did you first see porn?
I found a cassette from my parents in the closet and looked at it; I was eight years old. There was no shock, and this is a classic story among people of my age. All stumbled more or less randomly. I remember that I sat down on the sofa and thought: I will never do that. On the Internet, this is too much - if I had it in my childhood, and even without blocking, then I probably would have been more emancipated morally, if I expressed myself correctly. A lot of all sorts of dirt. Although on the other hand, much of this dirt must be purposefully searched for, but I would not look for it.
But after all porn, let's be frank, this is sex - we all do it, just do not shoot. But violence is worse, but in Russia nobody fights with dill, and everything is with porn. Why it happens?
In fact, a lot of mind and strength are not needed to conquer pornography. Parental control is required to detect this category very, very well, because it is quite simple. From the side we can say that now everyone is very fixated on porn. About two years ago, the state and the fighters for the protection of children on the Internet had the "drugs" trend. No one forgets violence, they just talk less about it.
And you did not have to hear stories or meet with children who somehow mastered all sorts ofvpn andTOR, and they are your parental control, so to speak, turned?
I personally did not meet, but I heard such stories. These are isolated cases. If the child is able to crack the control of Kaspersky, then perhaps he does not need protection. Maybe he is already so intelligent and conscious that the meaning is lost in this. Such a child knows what is going on, going to porn sites.
Do not you think that this story is more about bigotry than about the real protection of children? The story is unpopular with the masses: “bring up better than your children, and then they will not look for sites with violence and fucking horses”? All the opposite: bring up as you want, but on the Internet they will not see porn.
The trend now is this: the generation of people who had the Internet as a child is growing up and already has its children. These new children will be much more secure than children born to people without the Internet in their youth. I will correctly explain everything to my future children (even apart from my work), since I understand perfectly well what the Internet is and what you can stumble upon. My peers, 25-26 years old, are the same, everyone has had the Internet since 15. The ignorance of parents will eventually go away, but now this is a huge problem. Parents buy children a computer-tablet-phone, just not knowing what it is. Well, the Internet and the Internet, some thing, I'll check the mail. It is up to them that they must be informed that first of all they need to self-educate, this is already a necessity. At the other extreme, completely blocking the child’s Internet connection is also not an option. If the child does not know how to work with the Internet and with a laptop, then he will be poorly adapted in society, and there is no getting away from it. As a rule, only parents have to blame for everything - they have not overlooked and do not know. And parents scold the whole Internet, and this is like life scolding.
I have two monitors, and on one of them I forgot to close the picture where a huge horse has sex with a woman
Have you had any inconvenient cases at work?
Rather, I set. We have open space here, and everyone can see what I do. I have two monitors, and on one of them I forgot to close the picture, where a huge horse has sex with a woman. Colleagues passing by me, fell into a stupor. They stopped, said, "Oh, God," and moved on. Somewhere in ten minutes, I realized that something was wrong - and, surely, the horse was there. But the worst thing that happened was when I read an interview with a fighter for the rights of bestiality on one of the sites. She told colleagues, although they shied away from me, but I said “I can't hold it in myself, please listen!”. When you see such unpleasant sites - this is one thing, but when you read an interview with a person who describes his feelings, the effect is completely different. This is the worst thing there is, because visually it is all not so bad. Much worse than some psychological things.
In general, the porn you sort is somehow divided into categories?
In a product that you can buy, we simply block sites, and nothing is divided there. That is, the category of BDSM, we do not separate from the "youngsters" - porn is porn. But now we are doing a serious big project, where we divided pornography and erotica, LGBT. Who wants to see some of these categories, he will remove the check mark. There are also categories "lingerie", "sex shops", "sex education" and "18+ dating".
And in "sex education " What is included and what is so bad about it? It is necessary now.
There are articles on Wikipedia about sex. They are harmless, but children in 5 years are better off not to see, so let them be detected. This category is designed for very young children. There are things for which the parents themselves must be responsible. Well, for example, an adult was looking for porn in Google, having logged in under his account, and in the browser such information is collected for subsequent analysis of advertising preferences. Therefore, when a child comes and enters his favorite children's website, he sees contextual banners with pornography there. Surely, you noticed that when looking for plane tickets or hotels, then booking.com ads appear on third-party websites - that is, the browser issues ads according to your recent requests. Here is the same story. It is elementary to deal with banners - it is enough to turn on the anti-banner, they have a simple technical structure and they all work more or less well. Every bona fide product that provides security on the Internet must contain it.
We return to the conversation that all this is the task of the parents.
In the first place parents, and in the second - parental control. The result will be only in the aggregate. A parent must explain things that control cannot block, for example, cyberbullying - cyber etching. No RK (parental control - Ed.) In the world can say that he won it, because the problem is psychological. Catching a classmate who writes messages to an adult on Facebook is not easy at all. The age when cyberbulling is especially effective is 13-17 years old, and from now until twenty years of age, parents often relax and no longer follow the child. Against pornography, drugs, and another mountain of rubbish, parental control, of course, will help.
Do your parents know what you do?
When I got a job, I was 20 years old, and I told them: "Pornography has to be watched and filtered, and I study drug prescriptions. In general, I protect children on the Internet." Dad works in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, so he said: "Well, well done." Mom, of course, more emotional. He asks why I need this - "to spoil my aesthetic perception of the world." And in general, I wondered if it was hard for me to look at it every day. I answer her that I am benefiting. It is easier for girls to survive all this, guys are weaker in this regard. Only once it happened, which was especially hard - when I watched a lot of news all day, how Gaddafi was killed. Eight hours in a row. I got up and went to the bar. This rarely happens. Sometimes, of course, I resent, jump up and make a panic, but this is more like a theater, especially not twitching inside.
Do you all know about the users who post porn?
Are you talking about blocking threats on the vine? We have no confrontation with porn traders, we do not cooperate with them, we do not know them by sight. A person posting regular pornography is not a criminal. And the nursery is, but catching them is not our task. Our task is to detect the content. In the entire history we have not been asked to find such people even once.
And in terms of content, is it really possible to create one big Chinese firewall in Russia?
It is all meaningless. People tend to exaggerate the problem. The Unified Registry is a tool that blocks content that is prohibited in the country. Normal porn is not included. In any civilized country there are similar laws, and ours are still quite soft. In the US, the girl was awarded a large fine for what she tweeted that such a senator was a fool. Many on the Internet behave very freely.
And the application "Secret" confirmation.
It is enough just not to install. Everyone is afraid that there is a lot of information on the Internet, everyone does not know how to deal with it, and they quickly want to block it. The situation that is developing in our country is developing all over the world. If you want to go to the Al-Qaeda website in the USA, then you will receive a huge emblem and the inscription “blocked by the state” The more the Internet enters everyday life, the more people understand how to work with it. I think that in ten years everything will be sorted out and everything will function without panic. Panic is caused by something new and unknown. It's just that they love to shout on the Internet: "Oh my God, we will be banned now by everyone!" No, everything will be fine.
Photo by Anna Larkina given "Kaspersky Lab".