Deliverable D5.2 “Implementation of browser add-on that detects false information and fake identities in OSN”

Online Social Networks (OSN) have a big part of our life today. OSNs have numerous advantages as they allow people to connect, share information easily, and many more, all with some clicks in our browsers. On the other hand, these media can become very powerful tools in the hands of malicious users. Many people find the idea of hiding behind a screen to share their hate, raid, racist ideas very appealing. In addition, this becomes even more tempting knowing that they can completely cover their identity by creating a fake account in OSNs so they can stay untraceable and unlinkable with their real identity.

More scary, these malicious users often use those fake accounts to lore young people closer to them with the intention of obtain sexual contact with unsuspecting youngsters. Actually, recent studies reviled that one in five teenagers who regularly log on to the Internet says they have received an unwanted sexual solicitation via the Web. Solicitations were defined as requests to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk, or to give out personal sexual information. The most worrying part of this study is that only 25% of these youngsters told their parent about those incidents1.

Having all the above in mind, one of the main objectives of the ENCASE project is to implement and design a browser add-on, along with its corresponding Intelligent Web-Proxy (IWP) for capturing and analysing the social network information of a user and identifying whether that user is fake. In addition, the add-on should warn the minor when he communicates with persons that lie about their identity or when they communicate with persons of bad reputation due to cyberbullying or predation.

Moreover, the custodians of the minors are notified in case any malicious activity of that kind is detected by the IWP, through their Parental Console, which was also designed and implemented as part of this effort.

This document demonstrates the browser add-on, installed on the browser of the minor that is able to detect whether a user is a sexual predator by analysing the nature of the conversation the minor had with that user. In addition, we demonstrate the practice of our research for detecting fake users and bots in Twitter. Last, we demonstrate the Parental Console, where the custodians of the youngster receive notifications of this activity, along with monitoring the chat of the minor, if and only if the minor accepts to share this information with their parents.