Socialbot Network Collects Data From Facebook Users, Leaves Facebook Immune System Clueless

Researchers at University of British Columbia had setup 102 Socialbots with a single Botmaster to experiment on the world's largest social networking site Facebook. The researchers claimed that Facebook is not competent enough to protect identity theft from Socialbots. Socialbots are automated software which are programmed to automatically post status updates, send friend requests and messages revealing themselves as humans rather than bots.

Researchers used them by enabling them to create fake accounts by using online services to break CAPTCHAs and putting up attractive profile images from HotOrNot. The bots also used the API from iheartquotes.com to put status updates. By creating a Socialbot Network the researchers sent 8,570 friend requests out of which only 3,055 people accepted the requested but a total of 1,085,785 accounts were infiltrated and private data of the users were exposed. The experiment was carried out for a period of eight weeks.

The working of the Socialbot Network could be explained in the following manner.

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The above image gives us an idea that when a socialbot has befriended one account then it would try to get into the accounts of friends of friends. This would increase the "Mutual Friends" scenario, thereby raising the acceptance rate to 60%. By using this concept the bots gathered 14,500 home addresses along with 46,500 email addresses.

The researchers felt a need for the improvement in the Facebook Immune System (FIS). At the end of the eight week experiment they found out that only 20% of the socialbot accounts were blocked only because some users flagged them as spam and not because of FIS. Finally the researchers concluded the experiment with over 250GB of user information, indicating users to think about what they really want to share on these type of social networking sites by risking their identity theft.

Source: <a href="https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/11/01/socialbot-network-harvest-data-facebook/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Socialbot Network finds it easy to harvest data from Facebook users – Naked Security</a>