Approach could help software learn how to identify fake accounts with less honorable intentions.
July 11, 2010 by raj
Filed under IT News, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Strategy
By Tom Simonite
It’s not unusual to have user profiles on multiple social networks, or even separate accounts on sites like Twitter–one for work and one for play. But Kyumin Lee at Texas A&M University has 60 Twitter accounts, and not because he’s popular.
Lee’s accounts are “honeypots,” designed to attract the attention of the spammers that increasingly use social networks to spread links to malware and phishing Web sites. Software developed by Lee monitors messages sent to the honeypot accounts to learn the tactics used by spammers.
“The concept of a honeypot is well established at the network level,” says Lee. Usually it takes the form of unprotected computers used to monitor spam e-mail or network-based attacks. “We decided to apply it at a higher level to learn about spam in social networks.” Lee is carrying out the project with A&M colleagues James Caverlee and Brian David Eoff, and with Steve Webb at Georgia Tech University. The work is partially supported by a research award from Google.
The honeypot accounts, like this one, automatically post updates drawn from a collection of 120,000 real tweets harvested from Twitter. The team has also deployed honeypots on MySpace, and created software that uses dummy profiles on both networks to learn about spammer tactics. “We have a bot monitor who contacts our profiles, ” says Lee. “It looks at what they put in their messages and also accesses their profile to see their demographic information and past updates.”
So far, Lee says, “our 61 honeypots tempted and collected 30,867 spammers on Twitter.” The data gathered by those bots can also be used to train “classifier” algorithms to identify spammers that haven’t yet contacted a honeypot. A classifier trained using the Twitter honeypots proved capable of correctly identifying spam profiles more than 80 percent of the time. A public Web service is being built from the trained model that will allow people to look up which accounts it considers spam, and submit corrections for any that are misidentified, says Lee.
Spam and phishing attacks delivered over social networks are a growing problem, says Don DeBolt, director of threat research for IT software firm CA Technologies. For example, a phishing scam operating over Twitter recently stole the iTunes accounts of some users. “People immediately trust these applications because it is how they communicate with friends,” DeBolt explains. “Because people are sending much less text than an e-mail, and URL shorteners are often used, it is harder for people to realize a message may not be real.”
DeBolt’s team maintains honeypot profiles of its own, and monitors them manually to look for new spammer tactics. “We have to take great care, though, in curating them as research profiles that don’t impersonate a real person,” he says.
The fact that social network honeypots must be part of a community is a fundamental difference from the conventional approach, says Azer Bestavros, a networking specialist at Boston University who has, in the past, worked on analyzing blog spam. A honeypot computer on a network is typically allocated to “dark” address space so that they would never legitimately be contacted by another machine.
“Other users could consider our honeypot a real person,” Lee acknowledges. “But we do not have friends or contact other people, and on Twitter our profiles posted random messages so a normal user would not think to contact us.”
Some messages and friend requests sent to a social honeypot may be from legitimate users, so information collected from them needs to be treated carefully, says Bestavros. Lee and colleagues are experimenting with varying the output and demographic characteristics of their honeypots to find out what most attracts spammers–for example, varying the dummy user’s age and location, or the frequency of their updates. “Most of the spammers present themselves as college-age females,” says Lee. Data from MySpace honeypots shows that most claim to be located in California, and so far it seems that college-age males are the preferred target.
Lee and colleagues are also interested in trying the approach on the world’s largest social network: Facebook. “It is a more private network, but if we were able to get permission from them it would be interesting to try it there,” he says.
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Share on Facebook Approach could help software learn how to identify fake accounts with less honorable intentions.Users can share information, but the network only sees encrypted data
July 1, 2010 by raj
Filed under Social Media, Social Media Marketing Strategy
Picture sharing: This photo will be tagged and sent to the users’ friends—but it will be encrypted so that the company that handles the network won't be able to see it.
Researchers at Microsoft have developed mobile social networking software that lets users share personal information with friends but not the network itself.
“When you share a photo or other information with a friend on [a site like] Flickr, their servers are also able to read that information,” explains Iqbal Mohomed, a researcher at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, who developed the new network, called Contrail, with several colleagues. “With Contrail, the central location doesn’t ever know my information, or what particular users care about–it just sees encrypted stuff to pass on.”
When a Contrail user updates his information on the network, by adding a new photo, for example, the image file is sent to a server operating within the networks’ cloud, just as with a conventional social network. But it is encrypted and appended with a list that specifies which other users are allowed to see the file. When those users’ devices check in with the social network, they download the data and decrypt it to reveal the photo.
Contrail requires users to opt-in if they want to receive information from friends. When a person wants to receive a particular kind of update from a contact, a “filter” is sent to that friend’s device. If, for example, a mother wants to see all the photos tagged with the word “family” by her son, she creates the filter on her phone. The filter is encrypted and sent via the cloud to her son’s device.
Once decrypted, the filter ensures that every time he shares a photo tagged “family,” an encrypted version is sent to the cloud with a header directing it to the cell phone belonging to his mother (as well as anyone else who has installed a similar filter on his device). Encryption hides the mother’s preferences from the cloud, as well as the photos themselves. Each user has a cryptographic key on his or her device for every friend that is used to encrypt and decrypt shared information.
Contrail runs on Microsoft’s cloud computing service, Windows Azure, and the team has developed three compatible applications running on HTC Windows Mobile cell phones. “This is an [application programming interface] on top of which you can build all kinds of social applications,” explains Mohomed. “We just developed these applications to demonstrate what it can do.”
As well as the picture-sharing app, the researchers created a tool for sharing location information with friends. Friends can receive a notification when a user enters an area drawn on a map (see video of the app being demonstrated). But users restrict the amount of information shared by their phone. “It’s my location, so I get control,” says Mohomed. “If my boss wanted to track my location, I could allow them to do it only during the week, for example.”
Mohomed thinks some people will be attracted by the idea of a more secure social network, although he admits that a provider might need to find a different business model–many networks, including Facebook, rely on being able to access user data in order to deliver tailored advertising.
“I may not care that Flickr can see my photos and messages, but people may feel differently about location sharing,” says Mohomed. “Imagine you are using an application that allows you to track your kid’s cell phone–what if their server is compromised?”
David Koll, a researcher at the University of Göttingen, Germany, agrees that such scenarios are worth worrying about. He points out that there have been recent examples of servers being hacked. Social service provider RockYou, for example, had the login details of 32 million users stolen last year. “It’s good to think about different ways to run social networks,” he says. “People are becoming more aware of their privacy, and having a central store that knows everything has risks.”
Koll and his Göttingen colleagues are working on an alternative social networking architecture for mobile devices of their own. It would do away with a central server altogether, and have user data in secure caches distributed across the devices in the network. Having a central server has benefits, though. A cloud-based platform is straightforward to scale, says Mohomed. “If you have more users or traffic all of a sudden, perhaps due to a natural disaster, you just add more cloud instances to handle it.”
Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/web/25640/page2/
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Share on Facebook Users can share information, but the network only sees encrypted data5 reasons why marketers need to take YouTube seriously (as much or more so then Facebook and Twitter marketing)
June 22, 2010 by scottweiss
Filed under E-business Solutions, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Strategy
by Scott Weiss, Founder/Executive Producer at zpop media
Nobody can deny the power and reach of YouTube. Millions of unique visitors a month, billions of streams, you’ve all heard about the numbers. What’s compelling is how YouTube appears to be widely ignored in the social media marketing space, or at least, put into a position far behind Facebook and Twitter for relevance and importance.
Interestingly enough, it is the only essentially free option in the market that can help marketers achieve a wide array of goals that the other options (Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing) only touch on.
1. Branding
Nothing packs an emotional punch like video, and YouTube makes video easy. A YouTube channel does not limit the amount of videos you can add at any given time, and allows the option to feature specific videos and organize videos by priority. Additionally, custom YouTube channel designs are relatively easy and provide branding that Facbeook profile pages can’t match:
Branded Carl's Jr channel
2. SEO
YouTube provides simple and effective search engine optimization techniques using metadata that can be added to videos you upload. Video titles, keywords, and descriptions can impact not just where your videos show up in YouTube searches, but in organic Google searches as well (you’ve all seen videos appear in search results, almost always from YouTube):
Videos in Google search results
3. Community
With comments, subscriptions, friends, etc., YouTube provides all of the essential community options you get from Facebook. With its viral elements, the more original and entertaining your videos are, the more views you’ll get, and likely more comments, which will lead to better search rankings and visibility for your videos. Video responses are another way to engage with your customers/audience (vs. Facebook comments which are static text) – and brands should encourage their viewers to video comment on their videos, which only extends their brand deeper into the YouTubesphere.
4. Analytics
YouTube’s deep analytics offer insight into which videos are being watched, when, by whom, and how they are being found. This data helps marketers benchmark what works and what doesn’t, optimize keywords and descriptions, and engage with their video’s successes and failures.
5. ROI
It’s not enough to just set up a channel and post videos, businesses should be monitoring on a daily basis which videos are working best, and re-focus when necessary. After all, every video click could be as valuable or more as a Google AdWord pay per click, which in some cases cost as much as $10-$15 or more. Imagine the value of 10,000 videos clicks that you paid nothing for (other then the cost of production for the video which should be minimal.) You just can’t get that kind of ROI from any other advertising medium.
It is for the above reasons (and others) that it can easily be argued that YouTube is the most cost effective and valuable social media (or just general) marketing and advertising vehicle for businesses available on the web.
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Share on Facebook 5 reasons why marketers need to take YouTube seriously (as much or more so then Facebook and Twitter marketing)5 Hidden dangers of Facebook
June 12, 2010 by raj
Filed under IT News, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Strategy, What Works In Internet Marketing
Over the last few years, Facebook’s growth has been phenomenal. The world’s no. 1 social networking site also recently beat Google to become the most visited Web site in the US for an entire week at a stretch. However, the site has also lately being receiving lot of flak for its privacy policies.
An expert in online privacy has drawn attention to the five dangers of sharing information on social networking site Facebook. Joan Goodchild, senior editor of CSO (Chief Security Officer) Online, claims marketing efforts by the company often results in a compromise on account holders’ privacy, reports CBS News.
Goodchild noted five risks of using Facebook. They are:
Risk 1. Your information is being shared with third parties.
According to Facebook policy as on April 2010, “When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. … The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” … Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.”
Risk 2. Privacy settings revert to a less safe default mode after each redesign.
In March, private e-mail according to a Gawker report, private email addresses that many Facebook users wanted to keep hidden were revealed publicly on a multitude of Facebook profiles. The glitch was later resolved by Facebook.
Risk 3. Facebook ads may contain malware.Recently, a Facebook event invitation was reportedly sent to some over 2,300 friends of Jim Breyer, Accel Partners venture capitalist who sits on Facebook’s board of directors, asking “Would you like a Facebook phone number?” However, the message was actually a scam and the users who entered their passwords in response to the message in turn sent the whole thing to their friends lists too.
“This was a phishing scam and Jim’s account appears to have been compromised,” read a statement from Facebook as provided to venture industry news site PEHub.
Risk 4. Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable.
On May 6th, the popular social network patched a major security bug that allowed users to snoop on their friends’ private chats, and view their pending friend requests. The exploit forced Facebook to temporarily disable chat.
Risk 5. Scammers are creating fake profiles.
Earlier this week, 15 privacy and consumer protection organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that the site manipulates privacy settings to make users’ personal information available for commercial use. (ANI)
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Share on Facebook 5 Hidden dangers of FacebookTwitter warns of possible traffic outages
June 12, 2010 by raj
Filed under Social Media, Social Media Marketing Strategy, What Works In Internet Marketing
WASHINGTON: Twitter, which has suffered a series of outages this week, warned Friday that there could be more problems amid heavy World Cup traffic.
Jean-Paul Cozzatti, a Twitter engineer, said on the Twitter blog that the micro-blogging service’s problems this week were due to an internal network being over-capacity.
Cozzatti said Twitter was doubling capacity and rebalancing traffic on the network to redistribute the load.
When Twitter goes down, a picture of a whale — known as the “fail whale” — appears on Twitter.com and Cozzatti said his engineering team was hoping for fewer appearances by the creature.
“You may still see the whale when there are unprecedented spikes in traffic,” he said.
“For instance, during the World Cup tournament — and particularly during big, closely-watched matches — we anticipate a significant surge in activity on Twitter.
“While we are making every effort to prepare for that surge, the whale may surface,” he said
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Share on Facebook Twitter warns of possible traffic outagesTwitter buys Web analytics company
June 12, 2010 by raj
Filed under IT News, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Strategy, What Works In Internet Marketing
WASHINGTON: Twitter said it had bought Smallthought Systems, a small Web analytics firm. “As we grow, analytics becomes an increasingly crucial part of improving our service,” Kevin Weil, the head of analytics at the micro-blogging service, said in a blog post.
Weil said the San Francisco-based Twitter was particularly interested in a tool from Smallthought called Trendly, which allows users to sort through analytics data from Google.
The four-member team at Smallthought “will focus on integrating ideas from Trendly into our current tools and building innovative realtime products for our future commercial partners,” Weil said.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.
Twitter has made a number of purchases recently including Cloudhopper, a small SMS technology company, and Atebits, a company that developed an iPhone program for Twitter.
Twitter, which was launched in March 2006, allows users to exchange 140-character-or-less messages known as “tweets.”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Twitter-buys-Web-analytics-company/articleshow/6036418.cms
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Share on Facebook Twitter buys Web analytics companyTwitter hits two bln tweets a month
June 12, 2010 by raj
Filed under IT News, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Strategy, What Works In Internet Marketing
LONDON: Micro-blogging site ‘Twitter’ has reached yet another milestone, two billion tweets every month, the website has announced.
According to the company’s chief operating officer Dick Costolo, around 65 million tweets are sent on ‘Twitter’ each day, equating to around 1.96 billion tweets every month.
Twitter reached 15 billion tweets at the end of last month, three months after it broke the 10 billion count, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.
Costolo also said the service sees around 135,000 new registrations each day, though it is not clear how many of those are individuals rather than businesses.
The increasingly influential company announced on Monday that it is hiring a Washington liaison to manage relations with the White House.
In an interview last month, Costolo had earmarked Los Angeles and New York as the bases that would probably be next on the expansion list, and then the UK and Japan, where the site’s growth is “massive”.
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Share on Facebook Twitter hits two bln tweets a monthTwitter to use own Web link shrinker
June 11, 2010 by raj
Filed under IT News, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Strategy, What Works In Internet Marketing
SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter plans to start using its own Web link shortener on addresses that users include in tweets.
Starting this summer, Twitter will use its new “t.co” domain name to shorten links that users post directly on Twitter.com or through applications such as TweetDeck. That will help the posts stay within the service’s 140-character limit. The company is currently testing its linking technology with some employee accounts.
Users won’t always see their links displayed as “t.co” addresses, though. If you get Twitter updates sent to your phone via text messaging, a link might show up as a “t.co” address. But you might see the full address or the Web page’s title when looking at that same post on Twitter.com.
“Ultimately, we want to display links in a way that removes the obscurity of a shortened link and lets you know where a link will take you,” Twitter spokesman Sean Garrett wrote on Twitter’s blog
Garrett said that this method of packaging links is meant to improve user safety and will help Twitter gather data for its “promoted tweets,” which are Twitter posts paid for by advertisers to appear in search results on the site.
He also noted that in March, Twitter started using its own “twt.tl” address to automatically channel links that users sent in messages directed specifically at another user. That was a way for Twitter to spot and cut down on the spread of malware and other unsavory content that links can lead to; Twitter can simply disable a “twt.tl” address if it led to a questionable site.
Twitter used to automatically shrink links on tweets as well — first using TinyURL, later using bit.ly — but the site doesn’t currently do so. So if you want to share a long link with friends, you’d have to go to TinyURL, bit.ly or another service to shorten the link first.
Even after Twitter implements “t.co,” Garrett said that users will still be able to use link shorteners of their choosing. This means you should still be able to take advantage of traffic analysis and other features that come with those services. But those shortened links will be converted into a “t.co” address.
The effect of Twitter’s move on existing link shorteners is likely to be small. After all, they are also commonly used in e-mails, Facebook posts and other settings.
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Share on Facebook Twitter to use own Web link shrinkerFacebook & Privacy! Will you ‘like’ it?
June 8, 2010 by raj
Filed under IT News, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Strategy, What Works In Internet Marketing
NEW DELHI: The popular social networking site Facebook has launched a ‘Facebook & Privacy’ page in another desperate bid to salvage its lost reputation amidst rising privacy concerns.
The company and its founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg have had to face severe criticism from media and users alike in the last few weeks over the issue.
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Share on Facebook Facebook & Privacy! Will you ‘like’ it?No date in mind for IPO: Facebook CEO
June 7, 2010 by raj
Filed under IT News, Social Media, What Works In Internet Marketing
CALIFORNIA: Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said he has no date in mind to take the Internet social networking company public, and defended changes to the service that have provoked privacy concerns.
The world’s largest social network last week unveiled a set of features to give its nearly half-billion users better control over what data they share with the public.
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Share on Facebook No date in mind for IPO: Facebook CEO
