research-article

Twitter: who gets caught? observed trends in social micro-blogging spam

Authors:

Abdullah Almaatouq,

Ahmad Alabdulkareem,

Mansour Alsaleh,

Vivek K. Singh,

Abdulrahman Alarifi,

Alex (Sandy) PentlandAuthors Info & Claims

WebSci '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM conference on Web science

Pages 33 - 41

https://doi.org/10.1145/2615569.2615688

Published: 23 June 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Spam in Online Social Networks (OSNs) is a systemic problem that imposes a threat to these services in terms of undermining their value to advertisers and potential investors, as well as negatively affecting users' engagement. In this work, we present a unique analysis of spam accounts in OSNs viewed through the lens of their behavioral characteristics (i.e., profile properties and social interactions). Our analysis includes over 100 million tweets collected over the course of one month, generated by approximately 30 million distinct user accounts, of which over 7% are suspended or removed due to abusive behaviors and other violations. We show that there exist two behaviorally distinct categories of twitter spammers and that they employ different spamming strategies. The users in these two categories demonstrate different individual properties as well as social interaction patterns. As the Twitter spammers continuously keep creating newer accounts upon being caught, a behavioral understanding of their spamming behavior will be vital in the design of future social media defense mechanisms.

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Cited By

Liu Y(2025)Signed Latent Factors for Spamming Activity DetectionIEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security10.1109/TIFS.2024.351657320(651-664)Online publication date: 2025
https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2024.3516573
Almaslukh ALiu YMagdy A(2024)Scalable Spatio-temporal Top-k Interaction Queries on Dynamic CommunitiesACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems10.1145/364837410:1(1-25)Online publication date: 16-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3648374
Almuzaini APennock DSingh V(2024)Accuracy and Fairness for Web-Based Content Analysis under Temporal Shifts and Delayed LabelingProceedings of the 16th ACM Web Science Conference10.1145/3614419.3644028(268-278)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3614419.3644028
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Index Terms

Twitter: who gets caught? observed trends in social micro-blogging spam
1. Information systems
  1. Information systems applications
    1. Data mining

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

WebSci '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM conference on Web science

June 2014

318 pages

ISBN:9781450326223

DOI:10.1145/2615569

General Chairs:
Filippo Menczer
Indiana University, USA
,
Jim Hendler
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
,
William Dutton
University of Oxford, UK
,
Program Chairs:
Markus Strohmaier
GESIS & University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
,
Eric T. Meyer
University of Oxford, UK
,
Ciro Cattuto
ISI Foundation, Italy

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

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Published: 23 June 2014

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WebSci '14: ACM Web Science Conference

June 23 - 26, 2014

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WebSci '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 29 of 144 submissions, 20%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 245 of 933 submissions, 26%

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Cited By

Liu Y(2025)Signed Latent Factors for Spamming Activity DetectionIEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security10.1109/TIFS.2024.351657320(651-664)Online publication date: 2025
https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2024.3516573
Almaslukh ALiu YMagdy A(2024)Scalable Spatio-temporal Top-k Interaction Queries on Dynamic CommunitiesACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems10.1145/364837410:1(1-25)Online publication date: 16-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3648374
Almuzaini APennock DSingh V(2024)Accuracy and Fairness for Web-Based Content Analysis under Temporal Shifts and Delayed LabelingProceedings of the 16th ACM Web Science Conference10.1145/3614419.3644028(268-278)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3614419.3644028
Tsuchiya TCuevas AChristin NChua TNgo CKa-Wei Lee RKumar RLauw H(2024)Identifying Risky Vendors in Cryptocurrency P2P MarketplacesProceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202410.1145/3589334.3645475(99-110)Online publication date: 13-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3589334.3645475
Tsuchiya TCuevas AMagelinski TChristin N(2023)Misbehavior and Account Suspension in an Online Financial Communication PlatformProceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202310.1145/3543507.3583385(2686-2697)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543507.3583385
Dahlan KTerras M(2021)A Social Network Analysis of the Oceanographic Community: A Fragmented Digital Community of PracticePreservation, Digital Technology & Culture10.1515/pdtc-2020-003049:4(159-181)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1515/pdtc-2020-0030
Chowdhury FAllen LYousuf MMueen A(2020)On Twitter Purge: A Retrospective Analysis of Suspended UsersCompanion Proceedings of the Web Conference 202010.1145/3366424.3383298(371-378)Online publication date: 20-Apr-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3366424.3383298
Resende JDurelli VMoraes ISilva NDias DRocha L(2020)An Evaluation of Low-Quality Content Detection Strategies: Which Attributes Are Still Relevant, Which Are Not?Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 202010.1007/978-3-030-58799-4_42(572-585)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58799-4_42
Mazza MCresci SAvvenuti MQuattrociocchi WTesconi MBoldi PWelles BKinder-Kurlanda KWilson CPeters IMeira W(2019)RTbustProceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science10.1145/3292522.3326015(183-192)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3292522.3326015
Lord SSeavey KOren SBudney AMarsch L(2018)Digital Presence of a Research Center as a Research Dissemination Platform: Reach and Resources (Preprint)JMIR Mental Health10.2196/11686Online publication date: 24-Jul-2018
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