Paying for Likes? Understanding Facebook Like Fraud Using Honeypots

TL;DR

This study systematically compares Facebook page likes obtained through official ads and underground like farms, revealing differences in liker behavior and the presence of bot-operated farms versus stealthy mimicry.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic analysis of Facebook like farms using honeypots, highlighting operational differences and characteristics of fraudulent liking services.

Findings

Some farms are operated by bots and are overt in their operations.

Other farms mimic regular user behavior to evade detection.

The study offers insights into the effectiveness of Facebook's fraud detection methods.

Abstract

Facebook pages offer an easy way to reach out to a very large audience as they can easily be promoted using Facebook's advertising platform. Recently, the number of likes of a Facebook page has become a measure of its popularity and profitability, and an underground market of services boosting page likes, aka like farms, has emerged. Some reports have suggested that like farms use a network of profiles that also like other pages to elude fraud protection algorithms, however, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no systematic analysis of Facebook pages' promotion methods. This paper presents a comparative measurement study of page likes garnered via Facebook ads and by a few like farms. We deploy a set of honeypot pages, promote them using both methods, and analyze garnered likes based on likers' demographic, temporal, and social characteristics. We highlight a few interesting findings, including that some farms seem to be operated by bots and do not really try to hide the nature of their operations, while others follow a stealthier approach, mimicking regular users' behavior.