Recently, we got to get our hands dirty on some URL data from bitly which comprised of suspected URLs that have been clicked by Internet users in October. We thank bitly and particularly Brian David Eoff (senior data scientist) and Mark Josephson (CEO) for sharing this data with us. We analysed about 269,973 URLs marked “suspicious” by bitly to understand how these links are posted and clicked. Figure 1 shows a graph of some of the most common domains for which multiple suspicious URLs were shortened using bitly. Domains like coupons4more.net , 123direct.info , lucinda34drejka.com and apprillss.info had more that 1,000 URLs each which were marked suspicious by bitly. bitly uses real-time spam detection…

BlackBerry officially released BBM for Android and iOS on 22nd Oct, 2013. And within 24 hours, the net download of the BBM app had hit 10m. People are crazily sharing there BBM PINs all over the Internet, most popular places being Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Several hashtags related to BBM have been trending on Twitter at various locations and this is what caught our eye – people sharing their PINs recklessly, seeking for friends, bragging about getting a PIN finally before the others or after a long wait! Do you think there is no harm in posting your PIN publicly? Then go through several posts on BlackBerry forums about users…

Well, it’s been 2 months since I returned from the United States of America but it all still looks fresh as I sit down to put it in words! 🙂 It was about a year back that I learnt my plausible visit to the University at Buffalo (UB), NY and the news left me all afluttered! As much as I was excited for my first international travel to this beautiful country, my parents were equally nervous as I am known to be an over-pampered and not-so-independent girl (yea, majority including my parents think so :(). The most important thing for my travel was to get a passport! (I didn’t have…

Privacy in Open Government Data As they say, ideas can be life changing… and an idea changed my life too (in a positive way, of course! :)). It is amazing and satisfying to see how ideas turn into reality! It was an year back I, along with Mayank Gupta (B.Tech , DCE) started working on an idea which revolved around the lines of open government data and its potential malicious use. Information portals in the form of the e-governance websites (e.g., voter-id, driving license, mtnl phone directory) run by Delhi Government in India provide access to personally identifiable information (PII) of the residents of Delhi. Information like name, address, age,…

The words “Bhelcome Raghav” caught my attention as I walked into the lab for the first time. Paridhi was sitting in her chair with a huge grin on her face, most amused with the arrival of a new intern. The two months and a half that I spent working with Precog went past like a breeze. When I look back at the summer of 2013 the first thing I am reminded of are all those amazing conversations I had with everyone I worked with. Right from the intricacies of decay analysis on social media to my supposed “American accent”, I think we covered everything. It took me a while to…

At IGI Airport, in a flight at 4:15pm, talked to all my family, friends, colleagues, and told them that `THE TRIP’ was finally taking place. Scared, excited, ready to learn and explore, I knew the trip bagged many things for me. I was flying to RIO DE JANERIO, BRAZIL (The Trip), to attend WWW conference to present joint our work with Prof. Joshi on “Identity Resolution” at WoLE. This was my second WWW, after 2011.  Thrilled, I kept on polishing and practicing my presentation in the flight, people thought I was weird because I was talking too much IDENTITY (u see). Reached Rio, settled down, roamed around a bit and then…

“We are the generation of Social Media, Our biggest Revolution is a Tweet of 141 characters.” ― Sandra Chami Kassis The social aspect of the web has been quite astonishing. No one before 2004 thought online social networking can be something this big that almost all the Internet companies will have to go “Social” to gain people’s attention. When Facebook started showing the potential of Online Social Networking (this is how everyone remembers, Friendster and Mysapce are dispensable ), it caught everyone’s imagination and spawned an urge to create more social networks for special needs. And now that we are connected through multiple social networks, do we really share everything that…