Addressing the new generation of spam (Spam 2.0) through Web usage models

New Internet collaborative media introduce new ways of communicating that are not immune to abuse. A fake eye-catching profile in social networking websites, a promotional review, a response to a thread in online forums with unsolicited content or a manipulated Wiki page, are examples of new the generation of spam on the web, referred to as Web 2.0 Spam or Spam 2.0. Spam 2.0 is defined as the propagation of unsolicited, anonymous, mass content to infiltrate legitimate Web 2.0 applications.The current literature does not address Spam 2.0 in depth and the outcome of efforts to date are inadequate. The aim of this research is to formalise a definition for Spam 2.0 and provide Spam 2.0 filtering solutions. Early-detection, extendibility, robustness and adaptability are key factors in the design of the proposed method.This dissertation provides a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art web spam and Spam 2.0 filtering methods to highlight the unresolved issues and open problems, while at the same time effectively capturing the knowledge in the domain of spam filtering.This dissertation proposes three solutions in the area of Spam 2.0 filtering including: (1) characterising and profiling Spam 2.0, (2) Early-Detection based Spam 2.0 Filtering (EDSF) approach, and (3) On-the-Fly Spam 2.0 Filtering (OFSF) approach. All the proposed solutions are tested against real-world datasets and their performance is compared with that of existing Spam 2.0 filtering methods.This work has coined the term ‘Spam 2.0’, provided insight into the nature of Spam 2.0, and proposed filtering mechanisms to address this new and rapidly evolving problem

Spammer and hacker, two old friends

Spammers are always looking for new ways to bypass filters and spread spam content. Currently, spammers have not only improved their spam methods but have also moved towards exploiting software security vulnerabilities in order to spread their spam content. Spammers use weaknesses inside web applications to inject their spam content into legitimate websites, redirect users to their own campaign, misuse web users resources, and hide their footprints. In this paper, we investigate security vulnerabilities that are exploited by spammers. We explain these security vulnerabilities, list their importance and provide a scenario of how spammers can exploit them. Additionally, we discuss two possible solutions to counter problems by patching and secure software development. The result of our work highlights importance of concerning security best-practices in developing secure software which lack of that would result to demotion of website popularity, blacklisting of website and lose of users' trust

Web Spambot Detection Based on Web Navigation Behaviour

Web robots have been widely used for various beneficial and malicious activities. Web spambots are a type of web robot that spreads spam content throughout the web by typically targeting Web 2.0 applications. They are intelligently designed to replicate human behaviour in order to bypass system checks. Spam content not only wastes valuable resources but can also mislead users to unsolicited websites and award undeserved search engine rankings to spammers' campaign websites. While most of the research in anti-spam filtering focuses on the identification of spam content on the web, only a few have investigated the origin of spam content, hence identification and detection of web spambots still remains an open area of research.In this paper, we describe an automated supervised machine learning solution which utilises web navigation behaviour to detect web spambots. We propose a new feature set (referred to as an action set) as a representation of user behaviour to differentiate web spambots from human users. Our experimental results show that our solution achieves a 96.24% accuracy in classifying web spambots

Assessing Post Usage for Measuring the Quality of Forum Posts

It has become difficult to discover quality content within forums websites due to the increasing amount of UserGenerated Content (UGC) on the Web. Many existing websites have relied on their users to explicitly rate content quality. The main problem with this approach is that the majority of content often receives insufficient rating. Current automated content rating solutions have evaluated linguistic features of UGC but are less effective for different types of online communities. We propose a novel approach that assesses post usage to measure the quality of forum posts. Post usage can be viewed as implicit user ratings derived from their usage behaviour. The proposed model is validated against an operational forum using Matthews Correlation Coefficient to measure performance. Our model serves as a basis of exploring content usage to measure content quality in forums and other Web 2.0 platforms

Definition of Spam 2.0: New Spamming Boom

The most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, however the term “spam” is used to describe similarabuses in other media and mediums. Spam 2.0 (or Web 2.0 Spam) is refereed to as spam content that is hosted on online Web 2.0 applications. In this paper: we provide a definition of Spam 2.0, identify and explain different entities within Spam 2.0, discuss new difficulties associated with Spam 2.0, outline its significance, and list possible countermeasure. The aim of this paper is to provide the reader with a complete understanding of this new form of spamming

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Evaluation of spam detection and prevention frameworks for email and image spam - a state of art

In recent years, online spam has become a major problem for the sustainability of the Internet. Excessive amounts of spam are not only reducing the quality of information available on the Internet but also creating concern amongst search engines and web users. This paper aims to analyse existing works in two different categories of spam domains - email spam and image spam to gain a deeper understanding of this problem. Future research directions are also presented in these spam domains

Toward spam 2.0: an evaluation of web 2.0 anti-spam methods

Spammers have proven very powerfully adaptable, if we thwart all current spam methods, they will find new loophole to use them. Blogs, comments, forums, opinions, online communities, wikis and tags are nowadays targets for their campaigns. This paper presents analysis of current anti-spam methods in Web 2.0 for spam detection and prevention against our proposed evaluation framework. The framework is a comprehensive framework to evaluate anti-spam methods from different perspectives. Our framework shows that the need for more robust methods which are prevention based, unsupervised and do not increase user and system interaction complexity is highly demanded

Spam 2.0 state of the art

© 2013 by IGI Global. All rights reserved.Spam 2.0 is defined as the propagation of unsolicited, anonymous, mass content to infiltrate legitimate Web 2.0 applications. A fake eye-catching profile in social networking websites, a promotional review, a response to a thread in online forums with unsolicited content, or a manipulated Wiki page are examples of Spam 2.0. In this paper, the authors provide a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art, detectionbased, prevention-based and early-detection-based Spam 2.0 filtering methods