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SUMMARY:Understanding\, Characterizing\, and Detecting Facebook Like Farms
  - Dr. Emiliano De Cristofaro\, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor)\, Un
 iversity College London
DTSTART:20160322T140000Z
DTEND:20160322T150000Z
UID:TALK64781@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Laurent Simon
DESCRIPTION:*Abstract:*\nAs the number of likes of a Facebook page provide
 s a measure of its seeming popularity and profitability\, an underground m
 arket of services has emerged that aim to boost page likes. In this talk\,
  we aim to shed light on the "like farms" ecosystem\, presenting three set
 s of results.\nFirst\, we report on a honeypot-based measurement study: we
  analyze likes garnered using\, respectively\, Facebook ads and farms\, an
 d highlight that some farms seem to be operated by bots and do not really 
 try to hide the nature of their operations\, while others follow a much st
 ealthier approach.\nWe then take a look at existing graph-based fraud dete
 ction algorithms (including those currently deployed by Facebook)\, showin
 g that stealthy farms successfully evade detection by spreading likes over
  longer timespans and by liking many popular pages to mimic normal users. 
 \nFinally\, we analyze features extracted from timeline posts. We find tha
 t like farm accounts tend to more often re-share content\, use fewer words
  and poorer vocabulary\, target fewer topics\, and generate more (often du
 plicate) comments and likes compared to normal users. Using these timeline
 -based features\, we experiment with machine learning algorithms to detect
  like farms accounts\, obtaining appreciably high accuracy (as high as 99%
  precision and 97% recall).\n\n*Bio:*\nEmiliano De Cristofaro is a Senior 
 Lecturer at University College London (UCL). Prior to joining UCL in 2013\
 , he was a research scientist at PARC (a Xerox company). In 2011\, he rece
 ived a PhD in Networked Systems from the University of California\, Irvine
 \, advised (mostly while running on the beach) by Gene Tsudik. His researc
 h interests include privacy technologies\, applied cryptography\, privacy 
 and security measurements. He has served as program co-chair of the Privac
 y Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) in 2013 and 2014\, and of the Wo
 rkshop on Genome Privacy and Security (GenoPri 2015). His ugly\, yet up-to
 -date\, homepage is available at https://emilianodc.com
LOCATION:LT2\, Computer Laboratory\, William Gates Building
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