be harvested by socialbots. More
important, large-scale infiltration can lead to erosion of trust
between users, which is the basic
fabric of the SNS ecosystem.
As with any other socio-tech-
nical system, countermeasures
require both technical and human
factors. From the technical side,
SNSs can make the SbN operation
more difficult and less profitable
by, for example, improving the
accuracy and the speed of detect-
ing and blocking the bots. From
the user side, increasing aware-
ness and helping users make bet-
ter decisions when they receive
connection requests are also
avenues for further research.
Socialbots and
Marketing
DuBose Cole
Yazan Boshmaf ( http://ece.ubc.ca/~boshmaf) is a
Ph.D. student at UBC interested in social network
security and adversarial learning. Ildar Muslukhov
( http://ece.ubc.ca/~ildarm) is an M.Sc. student
at UBC interested in online social networks and
mobile security. Konstantin (Kosta) Beznosov is an
associate professor at UBC doing research in computer security. Matei Ripeanu leads the Networked
System Laboratory ( http://netsyslab.ece.ubc.ca)
at UBC and is interested in large-scale distributed
systems with a focus on self-organization and
decentralized control.
Within the realm of marketing,
the use of social robotics currently has limited exposure.
Initially, their use may seem
at odds with digital marketing
for brands, especially in social
media, as the most productive
activity comes from a genuine
conversation with the consumer.
However, socialbots are still a
March + April 2012