Detecting spammers on social networks

Social networking has become a popular way for users to meet and interact online. Users spend a significant amount of time on popular social network platforms (such as Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter), storing and sharing a wealth of personal information. This information, as well as the possibility of contacting thousands of users, also attracts the interest of cybercriminals. For example, cybercriminals might exploit the implicit trust relationships between users in order to lure victims to malicious websites. As another example, cybercriminals might find personal information valuable for identity theft or to drive targeted spam campaigns. In this paper, we analyze to which extent spam has entered social networks. More precisely, we analyze how spammers who target social networking sites operate. To collect the data about spamming activity, we created a large and diverse set of "honey-profiles" on three large social networking sites, and logged the kind of contacts and messa...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: ACSAC
• Authors: Gianluca Stringhini, Christopher Kruegel, Giovanni Vigna
• Keywords: ACSAC 2010, Security Privacy, Social Network, Social Networking Sites, Spam Campaigns