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European Symposium on Research in Computer Security

ESORICS 2012: Computer Security – ESORICS 2012 pp 307–324Cite as

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Exploring Linkability of User Reviews

Exploring Linkability of User Reviews

  • Mishari Almishari19 &
  • Gene Tsudik19 
  • Conference paper
  • 3680 Accesses

  • 38 Citations

  • 3 Altmetric

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNSC,volume 7459)

Abstract

Large numbers of people all over the world read and contribute to various review sites. Many contributors are understandably concerned about privacy in general and, specifically, about linkability of their reviews (and accounts) across multiple review sites. In this paper, we study linkability of community-based reviewing and try to answer the question: to what extent are ”anonymous” reviews linkable, i.e., highly likely authored by the same contributor? Based on a very large set of reviews from one very popular site (Yelp), we show that a high percentage of ostensibly anonymous reviews can be accurately linked to their authors. This is despite the fact that we use very simple models and equally simple features set. Our study suggests that contributors reliably expose their identities in reviews. This has important implications for cross-referencing accounts between different review sites. Also, techniques used in our study could be adopted by review sites to give contributors feedback about linkability of their reviews.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, University of California, Irvine, USA

    Mishari Almishari & Gene Tsudik

Authors
  1. Mishari Almishari
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  2. Gene Tsudik
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Bramante 65, 26013, Crema, Italy

    Sara Foresti

  2. Computer Science Department, Columbia University, 1214 Amsterdam Avenue, 10025, New York, NY, US

    Moti Yung

  3. Institute of Informatics and Telematics, Information Security Group, National Research Council, Pisa Research Area, Via G. Moruzzi 1, 56125, Pisa, Italy

    Fabio Martinelli

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Cite this paper

Almishari, M., Tsudik, G. (2012). Exploring Linkability of User Reviews. In: Foresti, S., Yung, M., Martinelli, F. (eds) Computer Security – ESORICS 2012. ESORICS 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7459. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33167-1_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33167-1_18

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-33166-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-33167-1

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