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…

Amongst 30 unread emails in my inbox, there was one about ‘Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship 2012’ application which I quickly opened and closed without really reading the content. I had heard about the scholarship before and knew that it was awarded to very few students; mostly from top-notch institutes like the IITs. There was no chance of me getting through, rather read the other emails I thought! But after a lot of persuasion from my father, I grumpily filled out the application form. The application asked for my academic details, achievements (I have a very few!) and a couple of essays, and it took me 8 long hours to…

We, at PreCog, not only do research but also try to build products based on our work for end-users. More often than not, developing scalable, real systems can be a challenging task; much more than just developing the underlying algorithm. It feels good to be part of a research group which has given me perspective to understand the need to create a bridge between research and real-world solutions. Here goes my first PreCog blog entry on one such product we (where I’m the lead) are developing, which aims to detect phishing on Twitter. There has been a lot of research and publications on spam detection on online social media, but there…