Maryam Al Fehani, Incident Response Coordinator, IT Department at Qatar Central Bank, delivering a presentation at the 5th Annual Information Security Conference at Sherton Hotel, Doha, yesterday. Pic: Abdul Basit/The Peninsula
DOHA: The use of ‘social bots’ in spreading misinformation, fake news, unsolicited/malicious information, and even for sending malware, is emerging as a big challenge for the industry all over the world, noted an expert at an event yesterday.
‘Social bots’ are computer algorithms based on AI (artificial intelligence) designed to mimic human behaviour. Social media users often fall prey to such malicious bots designed to manipulate people’s mind or influence their decision making process through misinformation aiming to exploit the end users.
Netizens, especially the social media users, all over the world, including Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries with high mobile and internet penetration, are facing challenges in differentiating between social bots and an actual person they are communicating with.
As the world has become so dominated by social media like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and other similar platform for social exchange, the social bots have infiltrated this very ecosystem for the use or abuse of their hidden objectives or nefarious designs.
“The use of social bots to sway public opinion and spreading misinformation or sending malware is common all over the world. There are case studies and researches done in several countries, including the US, the UK, Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, Ukraine and many other countries. Actually it’s a worldwide phenomena which is growing fast,” Maryam Al Fehani, Incident Response Coordinator, IT Department at Qatar Central Bank, told The Peninsula on the sidelines of the 5th Annual Information Security Conference for the Financial Sector, which concluded yesterday.
Al Fehani, who is also an expert on the subject, provided a presentation on ‘The Use of Social Bots to Spread Misinformation’ at the conference, added that social bots are used in various ways, for instance, also to send a malware like virus or many other purposes such as mining data.
“Sometimes you get a link on your mobile, and when you click on it, some files automatically get downloaded in your device, and steal information about your various activities. Social bots are also used to disseminate misinformation, specific message or fake news, depending on their objectives.”
She said that there are different strategies, for example, sometimes they try to send trending #tags, or sometimes if there is a trending #tag some social bots may to spam it also.
“For instance, at times during internet surfing you may come across something of your interest, but when you click on it, some random pictures or messages prop up, which have nothing to do with the actual topic you intend to look for,” explained Al Fehani.
Social bots are designed to serve different purposes. Some are useful and used as customer service providers.
They artificially interact with users, receive data, and accordingly provide them back with the desired information, and many other bots are malicious designed to serve nefarious objectives such as influencing or manipulating public opinion before elections.
She iterated that the use of social bots are growing fast and becoming pervasive, and so are the challenges.
However, she also noted that some social media platforms have their own ways to stop some types of bots, but not all. Therefore, users continue to struggle in differentiating between a social bot or an actual person s/he is talking to.
