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Microsoft Researchers Slash Skype Fraud By 68%
mask.of.sanity writes "Life could become more difficult for fraudsters on Skype thanks to new research by Microsoft boffins that promises to cut down on fake accounts across the platform. The research (PDF) combined information from diverse sources including a user's profile, activities, and social connections into a supervised machine learning environment that could automate the presently manual tasks of fraud detection. The results show the framework boosted fraud detection rates for particular account types by 68 per cent with a 5 per cent false positive rate."
So the arms race may be tilted in favor of Skype for now, but in 6 months we'll have an article "Fake profiles up 200% on Skype".
The headline implies that the fraud has already been slashed.
But the story says it's just a research project where they were looking into techniques to combat fraud.
No fraud has been slashed yet.
So let me get this straight...
Your new filter works better than today's filter...against today's spam
But today's spam is designed to circumvent today's filter, and spammers will change their techniques as soon as you switch to the new filter.
This is the classic Antivirus problem, where new and unusual AV programs get great ratings until they become popular and virus developers start coding with them in mind.
And now you've also published how your new filter works, to make it even easier for spammers to circumvent your new filter. Great.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Improving detection by 68% != Reducing fraud by 68%
Imagine that previous methods caught 10% of the fraudulent accounts. New tech improves that to 16.8%. It's a 68% improvement in the fraud detection rate, but only a 6.8% "slashing" of the fraudulent accounts.
(And 5% false positives is pretty horrific)
Hopefully their research concluded that they should validate email addresses. I have about a dozen Skype accounts (though I never use the service) because of fraudulent account sign ups. The simple act of validating email addresses prior to issuing an account would fix this. Hell, even a product targeted at the lowest common denominator (Facebook) has managed to figure that out.
You forgot to write "Micro$oft."
90% of my online accounts are fake, even this one. I create new accounts with new names to preserve my privacy, I have multiple hotmail, gmail and Facebook accounts specifically for this purpose. Sure the NSA types might see through this, but the average marketing agency won't. In real life, you can separate your worlds. My wife's circle of friends know me, but they don't know my friends, same goes for work 'mates', extended family etc. I have the power to keep things separate. It seems this choice is being slowly removed in online life as every web service demands you use your real name. Who wants to live in a world where everyone knows everything? We need a right to anonymity online.
Don't kid yourself.
Just because you post AC and switch email accounts often doesn't mean they aren't tracking you. If anything actively trying to avoid being tracked probably draws more attention.
What happens if you get caught in 5% fake positive? An e-mail asking for confirmation or a SWAT RAID?
Just hit 46. Guess I still haven't grown up.
Proper channels? Microsoft? Bwahahahaha.
Find me a link for any Microsoft product ever where you can get support from people other than other frustrated users.
Don't fall for it. Growing up is a Pyrrhic Victory.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Hangouts is doing wonders for me now so I dont mind if my skype account is shut down
People once told me 68K ram was all we needed,
Microsoft has made it possible to now record 100% of all conversations and store them indefinitely for the nsa
Hmmm I seem to recall a complaint that the NSA (and others) couldn't break Skypes' encryption and wanted help.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
It was popular with the crooks.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Then an investment group Silver Lake Partners gained controlling interest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... (interesting crew there)
Then no more complaints or request for help by the NSA.
A couple years later Skype was acquired by Microsoft,
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...
It's a fascinating coincidence.
Innit.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Here's my take. Microsoft got some data back from the NSA and are
now busy doing some parallel contruction to a) make that data operational
and b) make the operationalization optimal (effective use, good PR, etc.).
Skype charged my credit card $60 a year after I cancelled my phone number. It somehow got un-cancelled. They gave no warning and just charged it, and won't respond to any of my requests for a refund. I've cancelled it again, but who's to say they won't do it again next year? I never agreed to recurring charges. (I never do for any service.)
I've only used skype a few times. What is skype fraud?
My understanding of skype is it's basically a video phone using your general purpose computer.
I read some of TFA looking for what types of fraud they are talking about, but didn't see any detail. They mention credit card fraud, but that's not a feature of skype. I mean, if some stranger knocks on your door, and when you answer, asks for your credit card number, and you give your credit card number, that's not a weakness in your door or lock, that's a weakness in you.
What I do with my landline is never answer if I don't recognize the number or name in the caller ID. Couldn't I do the same with skype, never answer if I don't know who is calling? There you go, 100% fraud prevention.
90% of my online accounts are fake, even this one.
That's exactly what all parents should teach kids to do: Don't talk to strangers (whether online or in the real world. And especially don't give them true real-life information. And remember - to your kids, Zuckerberg and the Google kids giving out "free" internet services are just as much strangers as a guy in an unmarked van handing out free candy to kids. I thought that's just basic parenting skills; and one of the first rules anyone teaches kids.
It's the people who deliberately make it seem that they are not avoiding tracking in order to cover that they're avoiding tracking that are the ones to watch for.
rewriting history since 2109
The 5% figure makes me suspect that they are modeling behavior with a gaussian distribution, and looking for values in their metrics that deviate more than 2 standard deviations from the mean: the classic "95% confidence interval." With this criterion, one would expect, by chance, that 5% of all non-fraud situations to be caught in the net.
I don't think it's uncommon for fraud-detection businesses to live with a moderate false-positive rate like this. Increasing the confidence interval to, say, 99% (3 standard deviations) results in fewer false positives but also more false negatives. The "sweet spot" balances losses from missing the false negatives against the cost of the false positives. Of course that's not very comforting if you're in the false positives, but I don't think that's a reason to discard probability-modeling for fraud-detection.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
* Stolen money from the accounts (you didnt use it before expiration) ...Go go Power Rangers, this year will be the year of Jabber on the desktop
* Centralize the traffic (no more P2P)
* Screwed client for Linux
* Removed "Now Llstening to..." status
Its not clear just what Microsoft did with the traffic.
Their page still insists they are using P2P for traffic but a centralized directory. I don't know how much I believe that.
The centralized directory is probably forced on them for CALEA compliance, so that the NSA can track who calls who.
The Business Case for Microsoft to buy Skype never made any sense at all, and especially not at the price they paid. I suspect the NSA paid the entire bill to get Skype into someone's hands that could impose a level of tracking on it that met their needs. They had to get it out of Ebay's hand, because they were incompetent. Microsoft was the only company willing to play ball, add the tracking, preserve an appearance of security and fake encryption, and in return for doing that, they get a platform for free, bought by government funds, washed through Microsoft's opaque accounting.
There still exist Skype clients for Linux, but I don't know a single self respecting knowledgeable Linux user who would put that crap on their machine.
But seriously, Now Listening to? Do you really think anyone cares what you are listening to?
Once you get past your Narcissism, you'll get over scrobbling addiction.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yeah, I've seen the request for re-authorization pop up after expanding ram too.
The first time, I groaned, because it meant a trip through the closet of despair looking for the original Cert Tag.
And further, I go through this every time I increase the memory on one of my virtual windows machines.
But you know what? Nothing needed entering. It found everything by itself. It was literally a "click through."
Me thinks thou doth protest too much.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yep, I'm sure everyone who a machine deems to be undesirable is just going to sit quietly on the sidelines and take no further action like any self respecting fraudster/scammer/spammer always does.
Unless algorithms are smarter than humans and you have a monopoly on such algorithms expect humans to adopt and continue with their bullshit only now they will be much harder to systematically "classify". All the while during this unwinnable evolution of war real people continue to be flagged and collateral damage accrues... but don't take my word for it ... try to send an email and have any assurance if it being delivered and not silently ignored by a "machine learning" algorithm answerable to nobody.
They say this, but someone signed up for Skype on my email account. They just put my email in, (they were Arabic) and for the next 2 weeks I got Skype spam, so I reset this persons account, logged in then I emailed their support, they said sorry, but I asked how they allowed it without verifying it, "just the way it is and it'll probably take 2 weeks for the batch processes to delete your info"
Its a miracle Skype still works on my Nokia N900 (Linux phone, much better than the Windows Phone crap Nokia are doing now and still with functional Skype or at least as functional as Skype on a phone can get)
And wow...I didn't know you were required on Skype to give real, honest, personally identifying information?!?! My account is under a pseudonym under a throw away email account...
Sure it is traceable, but not readily without some decent effort.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Me thinks thou doth protest too much.
You're using the phrase incorrectly. That phrase doesn't mean "You're whining too much". Rather, it is an argument for attributing guilt. An archaic form of the more recent "He who denied it, supplied it".
Sure I sold you robot insurance. But you were attacked by a cyborg. Not covered.
Me think thou doth pedant too much.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
No, I'm part of the minority as well.
You're part of the problem, profiling people in to specific categories based on meta-data and implications of content you observe taken out of context.