Invite abuse prevention

Abstract

Techniques for invite abuse prevention are described. In an implementation, data that describes mutual activities of the clients with one or more resources available via a service provider is obtained from multiple clients. The service provider may use this data regarding mutual activities to ascertain activity scores between clients that interact directly. The ascertained activity scores may then be used to compute a score between two subject clients to control invites and / or other interactions between the clients. Computing the score may include determining one or more connections between the two clients through clients that interact directly, calculating candidate values for the one or more connections, and selecting one of the candidate values as the computed score using various techniques. The computed score may be used in various ways to control invites and / or other interactions between the clients using the one or more resources.

Description

Background technique [0001] The popularity of social networking via online networking sites / services is increasing. People can use social networking sites in various ways to keep in touch with friends, establish new connections with others, post status updates, and share information such as recommendations, pictures, and discussions with others. [0002] In order to establish connections in social networks, users can send and receive invitations to become part of each other's network. When the invitation is accepted, the user becomes a "friend" and can then transmit and share information. Unfortunately, this mechanism may be abused by attackers (such as spammers) who may create accounts and send out large numbers of invitations for illegal and / or undesired purposes. Attackers often use attractive and familiar names that will mislead some invitees to accept the invitation. Once the attacker and the victim invitee become friends, the attacker can “spam” by sending unsolicited mes...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Accordingly, one challenge faced by providers attempting to maintain and / or increase the popularity of social networking sites is controlling unsolicited messages from spammers

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