Research proposal to the WebScience Summer School 2012 commissionby Martine de Vos, Peter Kraker, Tatiana Tarasova, Tobias Käfer Leiden, The Netherlands. July 13, 2012. License: CC-BY

1. STOP
SCAM
Research proposal to the WebScience Summer School 2012 commission
by Martine de Vos, Peter Kraker, Tatiana Tarasova, Tobias Käfer
Leiden, The Netherlands. July 13, 2012.
License: CC-BY

2. Looks familiar?
Source: 419eater.com

3. Looks familiar?
Source: Our inbox

4. 487 million dollars reported in
losses due to online fraud in 2011
Source: US Internet Crime Complaints Center
10% of online users became vicitim
of fraud in 2010 in the UK
Source: Verisign
Other consequences are
kidnapping, murder, and
suicide
Source: Wikipedia

5. The process of scamming
Scammer one They engage in
sends tons recipient conversation and Report to
of emails reacts build trust Bank transfer the police
(hopefully)
Our focus

6. The process of scamming II
…
scammer Person A Person B Person C Bank
You are about to
transfer 10,000
dollars...
are you sure?
Pattern repository
watchdog

7. Computational Linguist
How to discover the patterns?
team
Developer
Psychologist Do all the tedious work…
How to stop the conversations?
Patterns in hoax trust-building conversations?
Computer Scientist
(Machine learning)
How to discover the patterns?

8. Email providers Message boards
data/consortium
Internet Crime Scambaiting
Complaint Center communities

9. Research plan, work packages
User studies Development of User Interface Off-line validation Real-world validation
Analysis of Development of (historic scam data) (volonteering users)
interaction patterns detection system
Key performance indicators (KPIs): Outcome: Scam detection software
• High precision and recall in the scam detection • Plugins for off-line e-mail clients
• Reduced rate of successful scams • Software for E-Mail systems
• Software for Message-Boards
• Software for social networks

10. Outlook…
Most fraud occurs offline with 3 bn dollars in
the US alone
Warning! This
person might
be a
scammer!
Google Goggles Image Source: Thomas Hawk, CC-BY
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/