ScholarlyCommons

Title

Link Spamming Wikipedia for Profit

Author(s)

Andrew G. West, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Jian Chang, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Krishna Venkatasubramanian, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Oleg Sokolsky, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Insup Lee, University of PennsylvaniaFollow

Date of this Version

9-1-2011

Document Type

Conference Paper

Recommended Citation

Andrew G. West, Jian Chang, Krishna Venkatasubramanian, Oleg Sokolsky, and Insup Lee, "Link Spamming Wikipedia for Profit", 8th Annual Collaboration, Electronic Messaging, Anti-Abuse, and Spam Conference , 152-161. September 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2030376.2030394

Comments

8th Annual Collaboration, Electronic Messaging, Anti-Abuse, and Spam Conference Perth, Australia, September 2011 (co-Best Paper Award).

Abstract

Collaborative functionality is an increasingly prevalent web technology. To encourage participation, these systems usually have low barriers-to-entry and permissive privileges. Unsurprisingly, ill-intentioned users try to leverage these characteristics for nefarious purposes. In this work, a particular abuse is examined -- link spamming -- the addition of promotional or otherwise inappropriate hyperlinks.

Our analysis focuses on the "wiki" model and the collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia, in particular. A principal goal of spammers is to maximize *exposure*, the quantity of people who view a link. Creating and analyzing the first Wikipedia link spam corpus, we find that existing spam strategies perform quite poorly in this regard. The status quo spamming model relies on link persistence to accumulate exposures, a strategy that fails given the diligence of the Wikipedia community. Instead, we propose a model that exploits the latency inherent in human anti-spam enforcement.

Statistical estimation suggests our novel model would produce significantly more link exposures than status quo techniques. More critically, the strategy could prove economically viable for perpetrators, incentivizing its exploitation. To this end, we address mitigation strategies.

Subject Area

CPS Internet of Things

Publication Source

8th Annual Collaboration, Electronic Messaging, Anti-Abuse, and Spam Conference

Start Page

152

Last Page

161

DOI

10.1145/2030376.2030394

Copyright/Permission Statement

© ACM 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Proceedings of the 8th Annual Collaboration, Electronic Messaging, Anti-Abuse, and Spam Conference, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2030376.2030394.

Keywords

collaboration, link spam, wiki, measurement study, spam attack model, defense strategies