A Mapping Study to Investigate Spam Detection on Social Networks

Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and SinaWeibo have become increasingly important for reaching millions of user globally. Consequently, spammers are increasing using such networks for propagating spam. Existing research on filtering techniques such as collaborative filters and behavioral analysis filters are able to significantly reduce spam. In recent years, online social networks have become the most important medium of communication among individual and organization to interact. Unfortunately, driven by the desire to communicate, fraudster or spammers have produced deceptive spam or unsolicited commercial email(UCE). The fraudsters’ or spammer activities mislead potential users and victims reshaping their individual life and general communication on social network platform. The aim of this study is to understand, classify and analyze existing research in spam detection on social networks, focusing on approaches and elements that are used to evaluate the general framework of spam detection and its architectural framework from the users perspective, service provider and security analyst ‘s point of view. This paper presents a systematic mapping study of several spam detection techniques and approaches on social networks that were proposed to measure to evaluate the general framework of spam detection on social networks. We found 17 proposals that could be applied to evaluate spam detection on social networks, while 14 proposals could be applied to evaluate the users, service providers and practitioners. Various elements of spam detection on social networks that were measured are reviewed and discussed. Only a few of the proposed spam detection on social networks are soundly defined. The quality assessment of the primary studies detected many limitations and suggested guidelines for possibilities for improving and increasing the acceptance of spam detection on social networks. However, it remains a challenge to characterize and evaluate a spam detection and framework on social networks quantitatively. For this fact, much effort must be made to achieve a better spam detection approach in the future that will be devoid of problem anomaly detection, fault detection, malware detection and intrusion detection General Terms Spam detection, Security, Mapping study,Spam detection metrics.