Investigating and Validating Scam Triggers: A Case Study of a Craigslist Website

The internet and digital infrastructure play an important role in our day-to-day live, and it has also a huge impact on the organizations and how we do business transactions every day. Online business is booming in this 21st century, and there are many online platforms that enable sellers and buyers to do online transactions collectively. People can sell and purchase products that include vehicles, clothes, and shoes from anywhere and anytime. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify and validate scam triggers using Craigslist as a case study. Craigslist is one of the websites where people can post advertising to sell and buy personal belongings online. However, with the growing number of people buying and selling, new threats and scams are created daily. Private cars are among the most significant items sold and purchased over the craigslist website. In this regard, several scammers have been drawn by the large number of vehicles being traded over craigslist. Scammers also use this forum to cheat others and exploit the vulnerable. The study identified online scam triggers including Bad key words, dealers’ posts as owners, personal email, multiple location, rogue picture and voice over IP to detect online scams that exists in craigslist. The study also found over 360 ads from craigslist based on our scam trigger. Finally, the study validated each and every one of the scam triggers and found 53.31% of our data is likelihood to be considered as a scam

COVID-19 Pandemic’s Impact on Online Sex Advertising and Sex Trafficking

Disruptive social events such as the COVID-19 pandemic can have a significant impact on sex trafficking and the working conditions of victims, yet these effects have been little understood. This paper examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on sex trafficking in the United States, based on analysis of over one million sexual service advertisements from the online platform Rubratings.com, using indicators of third-party management as potential proxies for trafficking. Our results show that there have been measurable changes in online commercial sexual service advertising, both with and without third-party management indicators, in the United States, with a significant decrease occurring around the time of the start of the pandemic and the issuance of stay-at-home orders followed by an increase to levels well above pre-pandemic levels corresponding in time to when COVID-related restrictions were relaxed. We argue that the initial decrease could have been induced by a loss of demand for sexual services due to pandemic-related health concerns, but that a confluence of factors, including the lack of economic and social support for those working in the commercial sex industry, may have increased the number of people vulnerable to being exploited and becoming trafficking victims. This research adds to the under-standing of the way sex trafficking adapts to events in the public sphere

A Risk Analysis and Data Driven Approach to Combating Sex Trafficking

Sex trafficking is a heinous criminal act that compels victims in the United States and worldwide to perform commercial sex acts through force, fraud, coercion, or age (TVPA, 2000). This dissertation takes a risk-analysis and data-driven approach to attain a better understanding of the problem, with the goal of showing that such an approach can help comprehend misallocation of resources, reform policy, reinforce social services, or support populations vulnerable to sex trafficking. Sex trafficking is a complex problem and must be studied both qualitatively and quantitatively in order to provide those in a position of influence with an improved basis for decision-making. In Chapter 2 of this dissertation, I outline the risks associated with sex trafficking and suggest that risk analysis tools can be useful for antitrafficking efforts, as they can provide context-sensitive, empirical knowledge as well as a way to communicate neutrally about a charged topic. Building on the understanding of this complex crime, in Chapter 3 I analyze online commercial sex work advertisements to draw conclusions about the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on sex trafficking, showing a measurable impact of the pandemic-related stay-at-home orders on advertising, and likely on the vulnerability of at-risk populations to trafficking. Finally, in Chapter 4 I use data collected by myself and a collaborator on sex work advertisements as a basis to explore three quantitative methods for detecting anomalies in time-series data. Based on the results of this sex trafficking case study, I evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of each method for risk-based decision-makers and discuss how these methods can be integrated into a broader risk framework. This dissertation contributes to the field of sex trafficking research by offering improved methods for detecting anomalous behaviors in the system and advancing the application of these techniques for the risk analysis community. Although they are specifically designed for sex trafficking, analysts can apply these methods to many of the risk-related challenges of our future.PHDIndustrial & Operations EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/170041/1/juliaoh_1.pd