Government-backed Anti-Cybercrime Campaign attracts 80,000 users

A groundbreaking campaign targeting young people about the dangers of internet fraud has attracted over 80,000 users.

It features a web app called The Devil's in Your Details, created by digital agency, roll7. It takes users’ names and profile pictures from Facebook and puts them into a, mock, undercover video report.

The campaign, which is backed by the National Fraud Authority (NFA), aims to raise awareness about online fraud and encourage young people, in particular, to protect their personal information.

The Devil’s in Your Details got further endorsement after tech-lover Stephen Fry tweeted his own video to his 4 million followers.

The campaign website, www.thedevilsinyourdetails.com has been put into the AWS cloud by Databarracks.

“We needed the campaign website to be able to handle bursts of web traffic and have the resources available to deliver personalised videos in the thousands, without compromising speed or performance,” says Jon Parsons, Production Manager at roll7. “The scalability and pricing model offered by AWS, as well as the flexible storage capacity it provides through Amazon S3, won us over”.

roll7 engaged Databarracks, as an AWS Solution Provider, to set up and design the platform, for The Devil’s in Your Details, to best make use of the functionality offered by AWS.

"The campaign has already generated a huge, positive response. Feedback on twitter and other social networks has been fantastic. People are evidently using it and enjoying it," reveals Parsons. “The load balancing and auto-scaling features provided by AWS have enabled us to seamlessly handle a very significant amount of user traffic.”

“All in all, compared with traditional methods, the performance increase is massive and furthermore, AWS is extremely competitive,” adds Parsons.

Attila Narin, Senior Manager, Amazon EU said of the project, “Databarracks has shown how AWS can be used to quickly build a secure, scalable and resilient platform for online campaigns. This is a good example of how organisations no longer need to purchase technology infrastructure up front to handle traffic at its highest peak. They can purchase capacity on demand, when they need it, and when the campaign comes to an end it can be scaled down just as quickly with no wasted expenditure.”

“AWS is perfect for these types of projects,” adds Peter Groucutt, Managing Director at Databarracks. “Costs are kept low for development and testing purposes by using small server instances, but when the campaign goes viral and traffic skyrockets, you have the power available to keep up.”

Databarracks initially created a test and development environment for roll7 and advised how to architect and configure the campaign’s website for the AWS Cloud.

“This has been a great project to be involved with. Data security is a matter close to our hearts here and The Devil’s in Your Details campaign is a powerful and innovative way to raise awareness.” says Groucutt.

It is estimated over £38 billion is lost within the UK to fraud, with £0.54 billion lost to online ticketing scams and bogus career opportunity offers – types of fraud young people aged 18-25 suffer from the most. (1)(2)

To view The Devil’s In Your Details video click here: http://www.youtube.com/actionfraud