Social Web Spam Trends
By Asha

Impermium has released its debut Index about trends in social web spam attacks. The report, based on more than 104 million social media transactions collected over a 100 day period from a base of more than 90 million users spread across 72 countries, reveals the following trends

- Online ID signup fraud: Fraudulent accounts range from a low of 5 percent to an astonishing 40 percent of users. Scammers are registering accounts by the millions as they perpetrate fake “friend requests,” deceptive tweets, and the like, while the black market for bulk social networking accounts is growing exponentially.

- “Sleeper cells” of social web abuse are a ticking time-bomb. In August, Impermium helped protect one prominent social network from a coordinated attack by more than 30,000 fraudulent accounts, which lit up in a single hour and attempted to submit more than 475,000 malicious wall posts. Even accounts you’ve had for years could be lying in wait for just the right moment.

- Social media exploitation techniques are evolving fast. If there is a strong consumer brand or significant news event, it’s being exploited on the social web. Social scammers are increasingly using emotionally-charged news to win clicks, relying on the deaths of Osama Bin Laden and Amy Winehouse, and news around Hurricane Irene and other major stories, to deceive users into clicking on malicious links.

- Uggs was the #1 most exploited brand in social media channels by a factor of 2x over Gucci and 5x over Prada, proving that it’s still 2009 in spam land.

- Porn got stripped. The top consumer categories for social web spam were fashion and electronics, which outperformed porno scams by 3x.

- Mom & Pop are spammers. Small businesses are getting into social web spam.  Impermium’s research found a growing number of small businesses like local restaurants and even Super Shuttle-style services which are reacting to the difficult economy by expanding into spam.