Facebook-spam brings $ 200 million a year
A group of Italian researchers in the field of information security under the leadership of Andrea Stroppa (Andrea Stroppa) and Carlo De Micheli (Carlo De Micheli) has analyzed hundreds of thousands of spam messages in the social network Facebook. Spammers themselves seem to believe that Facebook largely "kept on their shoulders." In the analysis by the expert relied on phrases like, "Hey! Click here to get free software for iPhone! », Short references made by legitimate services Tinyurl.com or bit.ly, as well as links outside the network.
They found a lot of fake fan pages designed to get users to click on the Facebook link. Fighting spammers is an urgent task for the giant social network, currently numbering more than a billion people around the world. Income derived by spammers using it, and by its associated sites do not benefit the community. On average, according to experts, every eighth page on Facebook actually serves to put spam links. Researchers have calculated that the users that are hosting spam posts on pages that have about 30,000 subscribers receive for the post of an average of 13 dollars (from 8 to 20 dollars).
Posts on pages that integrate more than 100 million people, will cost more - an average of $ 58 (35 to 100 dollars). When placed in a social network 18,000 spam messages per day, the annual income of spammers will be from 87 million to 390 million. That is, on average - about $ 200 million. Moreover, spammers assure themselves that their activity is beneficial to the social network. «Facebook does not limit us, because every day we are filling gay funny and interesting content that appeals to users. Without it, Facebook will be an empty place, "- said one of the distributors of spam in the course of communication with researchers
.jpg)
