Propaganda, Fraud, and Disinformation
Social media responds to heightened pre-election intensity, while data breaches continue apace. This Week in Fraud Trends, November 1, 2019.
As the U.S. starts looking ahead to the 2020 elections, what should we expect from propagandists, fraudsters, and disinformationists? What role will social media play? Should we expect more or less fake news? Will deepfakes get even better, or will they go away? These are the kinds of questions already grinding away in the minds of many, and things are only going to get more intense the closer we get.
Some platforms are already making their intentions known. As reported by Ars Technica this week, Twitter is making a big move:
“Twitter might be the president’s favored platform and a valued way for candidates to spread their messages far and wide, but starting next month, elected officials and candidates alike are going to have to make sure all that traffic comes organically. That’s because they won’t be allowed to pay for political advertising.”
Meanwhile, over on Facebook, we have some news from The Next Web about disinformation proliferation:
“Facebook, once an innocent tool to share ‘what’s on your mind’ has increasingly been weaponized by governments to spread disinformation and manipulate elections — something hundreds of the tech giants’ employees outlined in an open letter this week that urged the company to rethink its stance on political ads.”
Evidence of proactivity from Facebook on the matter of content abuse certainly makes for welcome news, but things aren’t exactly perfect quite yet, as we learned this week from The Verge:
“The professional services firm Cognizant will exit the content moderation business after two Verge investigations into working conditions at sites dedicated to Facebook, the companies said today. Cognizant had hired thousands of moderators around the world to remove hate speech, terrorism, and other inappropriate content from platforms including Facebook, Google, and Twitter.”
Outside of politics and social media, we got a fair dose of business-as-usual this week as regards fraud and cybersecurity news. For example, it will be no surprise to readers of this series that stolen credentials are available for sale online. However, even hardened fraud-heads may be shocked by some of the numbers contained in an article this week from TechRadar:
“Research from ImmuniWeb found over 21m credentials belonging to Fortune 500 companies available to purchase online, with over 16m of these being compromised during the last 12 months.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? The reality is, our online world currently represents a sea of exploitable vulnerabilities, and something has to be done. Which begs the question, can something be done?
The answer is … YES!
Here at DataVisor, we know unsupervised machine learning holds the key to a safer and more prosperous future for all. With every client we serve, we see the results. Which is why we were so excited earlier this week to announce a new partner program that will extend advanced UML capabilities to a whole new array of use cases and markets:
“Through this initiative, DataVisor is delivering its unsupervised machine learning (UML) engine and machine learning and feature engineering technology to new use cases and markets. It gives partners a powerful offering to strengthen anti-fraud solutions. And by working closely with the DataVisor team of specialists, partners gain access to not only the most advanced technology and products, but also world-class domain expertise without having to invest in training or appointing additional resources themselves.” — David Cassady, Vice President, Business Development, Partnerships, and Sales, DataVisor
Join us next week, to learn the latest in fraud news!
