Skip to main content
Email Print Share

"Fraud 'N Real " -- The Discovery Files

The Discovery Files
Audio Play Audio
The Discovery Files podcast is available through iTunes or you can add the RSS feed to your podcast receiver. You can also access the series via AudioNow® by calling 405-875-0058 on any telephone.


An algorithm developed at Carnegie Mellon University makes it easier to determine if someone has faked an Amazon or Yelp review or if someone might have bought and paid for popularity on Twitter.

Credit: NSF/Karson Productions

Audio Transcript:

Poser hoser.

I'm Bob Karson with the Discovery Files from the National Science Foundation.

(Sound effect: typing on keyboard) Reviews on websites may be candidly real or totally fake. Same with the number of someone's followers. Most social media platforms take great pains to weed out the fraudsters, but a team at Carnegie- Mellon has unleashed a powerful weapon they hope will help restore our faith in online reviews and the like.

It's an algorithm called "fraudar," designed to flush out fake followers and reviewers, by analyzing patterns in social media interactions.

(Sound effect: jungle safari music) Scammers go to great lengths to camouflage their identities linking fake accounts with popular sites or celebrities, or hijacking legitimate accounts. Fraudar can see through the camo.

To test their algorithm, the researchers accessed a massive twitter research database. Fraudar ID'ED more than 4000 "suspicious" accounts. The team then compared random samples of those, with samples of non-suspicious accounts.

Result: a hugely higher percentage of suspicious accounts that had links associated with malware, scams, robot-like behavior and ads for services that let you "buy" followers. The CMU team has made fraudar available to all social media platforms as open source code.

Flushing out fakery -- (Sound effect: sunshiney over-the-top positive music, birdies) making for a better, safer, more believable internet experience for everyone!

"The discovery files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.

 
General Restrictions:
Images and other media in the National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery are available for use in print and electronic material by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public. All media in the gallery are intended for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use only.

Images credited to the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, are in the public domain. The images were created by employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties or prepared by contractors as "works for hire" for NSF. You may freely use NSF-credited images and, at your discretion, credit NSF with a "Courtesy: National Science Foundation" notation. Additional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.

MP3 icon
NSF podcasts are in mp3 format for easy download to desktop and laptops, as well as mobile devices capable of playing them.