DeepMUI: A novel method to identify malicious users on online social network platforms

Abstract

SummaryThe use of online social network (OSN) platforms has become an essential component of contemporary society, facilitating global connectivity, and information sharing among individuals. The proliferation of malicious users has emerged as a noteworthy obstacle, exerting a detrimental effect on the authenticity of the data disseminated through these channels. A malicious profile is created with the intention of disseminating false information, manipulating perspectives, and executing harmful actions, including phishing schemes, identity theft, and the propagation of malware. Consequently, the identification of malicious users has emerged as an essential undertaking for both OSN platforms and researchers. The objective of this study is to investigate the issue of identifying malicious users on OSN platforms. The DeepMUI model has been introduced as a new approach to identifying malicious users on OSN platforms, utilizing user profile metadata‐derived characteristics. The DeepMUI architecture is composed of long short‐term memory and convolutional neural network models. Additionally, it integrates alterations to the pooling layer to improve its overall efficacy. The experiments have demonstrated that DeepMUI exhibits promising results in the task of identifying malicious users, with greater accuracy and minimal loss compared to existing methods.