WHAT ARE SOCIAL SPAM AND ABUSE?

Impermium defines social web spam as any unwanted content that someone experiences on social network or in user-generated content sites on the Internet. Social web abuse involves malicious efforts to take advantage of social channels, including password hacking, malware placement, fake follower and friending schemes, account takeovers, bogus registrations, and more.

Five years ago, social web spam and abuse practically didn’t exist. But this year, 90% of social network users have experienced it – and victims are beginning to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because social networks are relatively new to users, and cybercriminals are already inside them, we can expect the damages to mount for many years to come.

Social spam is evolving fast, but you can stay informed by reading our blog, The Allied Front.

THE COST OF PROTECTION

Despite the rapidly growing problem of social spam, there remain few commercial products that provide adequate protection. Left with few alternatives, many sites try to develop their own, only to find the cost of monitoring and clean up quickly become major cost centers. Worse still, these solutions often employ user-unfriendly solutions like CAPTCHA, rate-limits, and error-prone rules -- techniques that can degrade user experience and hurt conversion for your good users as well as bad.

Luckily, you no longer have to maintain your own dedicated engineering team to keep your site safe from spam and abuse. With Impermium, your site is defended by a dedicated team with proven expertise defending against social spam, freeing you to focus on the things that matter most to your site. With our turnkey, subscription-based service, your site can be protected start-to-finish within hours.

Learn more »

Where are you most vulnerable?

Below are the most common areas for social web spam and abuse to occur. Are you having problems with:

User-generated Content
  • Comments
  • Profile Pages
  • Status Messages
  • Photos or video
Account Registration
  • Online Account Creation
  • Password Recovery
  • Followers or Friends
  • Reputation or Karma
  • Privileged Access Levels
Account Security
  • Login
  • Premium Content
  • Messaging features

If you checked more than 3, you should start planning now for a long campaign protecting your site, or contact us »



The top five costs of managing the problem

  1. Brand impact of low-quality content and users
  2. Customer support to take down offending content
  3. Impact of bogus users on key business metrics
  4. User experience detractors like CAPTCHA, rate limits, and keyword blacklists
  5. Keeping hand-tuned rules, defenses, and booby-traps up-to-date