Fighting Spam on Social Web Sites: A Survey of Approaches and Future Challenges

Abstract

In recent years, social Web sites have become important components of the Web. With their success, however, has come a growing influx of spam. If left unchecked, spam threatens to undermine resource sharing, interactivity, and openness. This article surveys three categories of potential countermeasures'those based on detection, demotion, and prevention. Although many of these countermeasures have been proposed before for email and Web spam, the authors find that their applicability to social Web sites differs. How should we evaluate spam countermeasures for social Web sites, and what future challenges might we face?