Online Deception in Social Media

The unknown and the invisible exploit the unwary and the uninformed for illicit financial gain and reputation damage

Multiple Account Identity Deception Detection in Social Media Using Nonverbal Behavior

Identity deception has become an increasingly important issue in the social media environment. The case of blocked users initiating new accounts, often called sockpuppetry, is widely known and past efforts, which have attempted to detect such users, have been primarily based on verbal behavior (e.g., using profile data or lexic al features in text). Although these methods yield a high detection accuracy rate, they are computationally inefficient for the social media environment, which often involves databases with large volumes of data. To date, little attention has been paid to detecting online decep- tion using nonverbal behavior. We present a detection method based on nonverbal behavior for identity deception, which can be applied to many types of social media. Using Wikipedia as an experimental case, we demonstrate that our proposed method results in high detection accuracy over previous methods pro- posed while being computationally efficient for the social media environment. We also demonstrate the potential of nonverbal behavior data that exists in social media and how designers and developers can leverage such nonverbal information in detecting deception to safeguard their online communities

Modeling profile-attribute disclosure in online social networks from a game theoretic perspective

Privacy settings are a crucial part of any online social network as users are confronted with determining which and how many profile attributes to disclose. Revealing more attributes increases users chances of finding friends and yet leaves users more vulnerable to dangers such as identity theft. In this dissertation, we consider the problem of finding the optimal strategy for the disclosure of user attributes in social networks from a game-theoretic perspective. We model the privacy settings\u27 dynamics of social networks with three game-theoretic approaches. In a two-user game, each user selects an ideal number of attributes to disclose to each other according to a utility function. We extend this model with a basic evolutionary game to observe how much of their profiles users are comfortable with revealing, and how this changes over time. We then consider a weighted evolutionary game to investigate the influence of attribute importance, benefit, risk and the network topology on the users\u27 attribute disclosure behavior. The two-user game results show how one user\u27s privacy settings are influenced by the settings of another user. The basic evolutionary game results show that the higher the motivation to reveal attributes, the longer users take to stabilize their privacy settings. Results from the weighted evolutionary game show that: irrespective of risk, users are more likely to reveal their most important attributes than their least important. attributes; when the users\u27 range of influence is increased, the risk factor plays a smaller role in attribute disclosure; the network topology exhibits a considerable effect on the privacy in an environment with risk. Motivation and risk are identified as important factors in determining how efficiently stability of privacy settings is achieved and what settings users will adopt given different parameters. Additionally, the privacy settings are affected by the network topology and the importance users attach to specific attributes. Our models indicate that users of social networks eventually adopt profile settings that provide the highest possible privacy if there is any risk, despite how high the motivation to reveal attributes is. The provided models and the gained results are particularly important to social network designers and providers because they enable us to understand the influence of different factors on users\u27 privacy choices

Wholetruth, Untruths and Lies: An ethnographic study of communicative interaction between professional caregivers and people with dementia

The current literature highlights that professional healthcare staff admit to regularly telling lies in practice, to people with dementia. This, despite the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the General Medical Council being explicit in their codes of conduct that nurses and doctors must not tell lies to patients. Both codes also highlight the duty of beneficence and non maleficence, and it is known, that sometimes, telling the truth to people with dementia can cause great distress. The purpose of this study was to use ethnography to undertake a critical analysis of the concept of lying in clinical practice in the context of people with dementia. The aims of the study were as follows: • To develop a taxonomy of lies • To use the taxonomy to develop a model which could be used in practice, to explore the impact of lie telling Current literature has used either phenomenology or grounded theory to ask staff their perceptions of what they say when they tell lies. Uniquely, the methodology used for this study was ethnography, with the researcher acting as a complete participant observer, observing lies told in practice to people with dementia by staff (nurses, doctors, allied health professionals and healthcare assistants). By using ethnography, this study has recorded previously unidentified phenomenon and brought new knowledge and insight to the topic area. Data was collected from two wards for people with moderate to severe dementia over a period of 45 shifts, equating to approximately 338 hours. The data was analysed using thematic content analysis. Six categories of lies emerged from the data which formed the taxonomy: familiarity, banter, props, going along with, avoidance and delaying and blatant. The taxonomy was then used to develop the Lie ARM (Affective Reflection Model) to enable healthcare professionals to reflect on the practice of telling lies and consider the effectiveness of them. Findings from the study can be used to challenge current policies around lie telling; specifically, that whilst truth should always be the starting point, telling lies to patients with dementia can be a kind and effective intervention to support their personhood and reduce distress